NASA Uses Mars Global Localization As GNSS Replacement For The Perseverance Rover

March 2, 2026 by 16 Comments

Unlike on Earth there aren’t dozens of satellites whizzing around Mars to provide satellite navigation functionality. Recently NASA’s JPL engineers tried something with the Perseverance Mars rover that can give such Marsbound vehicles the equivalent of launching GPS satellites into Mars orbit, by introducing Mars Global Localization.

Although its remote operators back on Earth have the means to tell the rover where it is, it’d be incredibly helpful if it could determine this autonomously so that the rover doesn’t have to constantly stop and ask its human operators for directions. To this end the processor which was originally used to communicate with its Ingenuity helicopter companion was repurposed, reprogrammed to run an algorithm that compares panoramic images from the rover’s navigation cameras with its onboard orbital terrain maps.

Much like terrain-based navigation as used in cruise missiles back on Earth, this can provide excellent results depending on how accurate your terrain maps are. This terrain mapping process used to be done back on Earth, but for the past years engineers have worked to give the rover its own means to perform this task.

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Pan-Tilt Head For Camera Motion Control

March 2, 2026 by No comments

Historically, moving and pointing a camera while filming was the job of a highly-skilled individual. However, there are machines that can do that, enabling all kinds of fancy movement that is difficult or impossible for a human to recreate. A great example is this pan-tilt build from [immofoto3d.]

The build uses a hefty cradle to mount DSLR-size cameras or similar. It’s controlled in the tilt axis by a chunky NEMA 17 stepper motor hooked up to a belt drive for smooth, accurate movement. Similarly, another stepper motor handles the pan axis, with an option for upgrade if you have a heavier camera rig that needs more torque to spin easily. Named Gantry Bot, it’s an open-source design with source files available, so you can make any necessary tweaks on your own. You will have to bring your own control mechanism, though—telling the stepper motors what to do and how fast to do it is up to you.

It’s a heavy-duty build, this one, and you’ll really want a decent metal-capable CNC to get it done, along with a 3D printer for all the plastic pieces. With that said, we’ve featured some other similar builds that might be more accessible if you don’t have a hardcore machine shop in the basement. If you’ve got your own impressive motion rig in the works, be sure to notify the tipsline!

SNES Controllers Are (Almost) SPI-Compatible

March 2, 2026 by 9 Comments

Considering that the Serial Peripheral Interface bus semi-standard has been around since the early 1980s, it’s perhaps not that shocking that the controllers of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) would take at least some strong design hints for the used protocol. This does however raise the question of exactly how compatible a SNES controller is when connected to the SPI master peripheral of any random MCU. Recently [James Sharman] set out to answer this question decisively.

The impetus for answering this question came after [James] designed a separate SNES controller board for his homebrew computer system, which led to many comments on that video saying that he could just have hooked the controller up to the SPI board in said homebrew system.

Here the short answer is that the SNES controller protocol is very close to SPI Mode-1, with a similar arrangement of clock/data/chip select (latch) lines and clocking. If you think of the SNES controller as an SPI device with just a MISO line, you’re basically there already. The only niggle that popped up was that the ‘MISO’ line does not get pulled into a high-impedance state when the active-low latch connection is pulled high.

This was fixable by introducing a 74HC125 tri-state buffer IC, after which both the original SD card and twin SNES controllers could be used simultaneously.

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Cynus Chess Robot: A Chess Board With A Robotic Arm

March 2, 2026 by 4 Comments
Downward-facing camera and microphone in the arm. (Credit: Techmoan, YouTube)
Downward-facing camera and microphone in the arm. (Credit: Techmoan, YouTube)

There are many chess robots, most of which require the human player to move the opposing pieces themselves, or have a built-in mechanism that can slide the opposing pieces around to their new location. Ideally, such a chess robot would move the pieces just like how a human would, of course. That’s pretty much the promise behind the Manya Cynus chess robot, which [Matt] over at the Techmoan YouTube channel bought from the Kickstarter campaign.

Advertising itself as a ‘Portable AI Chess Robot’, the Manya Cynus chess robot comes in the form of a case that unfolds into a chess board and also contains the robotic arm that contains the guts of the operation. Powered by the open source Stockfish chess engine, it can play games against a human opponent at a few difficulty levels without requiring any online connectivity or a companion app. It moves its own pieces by picking up the metal-cored chess pieces with its arm, while its front display tries to display basic emotions with animated eyes. A 3-MP downward-facing camera is located on the head section, along with a microphone.

As for how well it works, [Matt] isn’t the best chess player, but he had a fair bit of fun with the machine. His major complaints circle around how unfinished the firmware still feels, with e.g., invalid moves basically ignored with only a barely visible warning popping up on the screen. In general, he’d rather classify it as an interesting development kit for a chess robot, which is where the BLE 5.1-based interface and a purported Python-based development environment provided by Manya seem to come into focus.

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LED Printers: The Quiet Achievers You May Not Have Heard Of

March 2, 2026 by 23 Comments

Many different types of printers have entered the market over the years. Most of us are intimately familiar with the common inkjet and laser, both of which can be found in homes and offices all over the world. Then there are those old dot matrix printers that were so noisy in use, thermal printers, and even solid ink printers that occupied a weird niche for a time.

However, very little attention is ever paid to the LED printer. They’re not actually that uncommon, and they work in a very familiar way. It’s just that because these printers are so similar to an existing technology, they largely escaped any real notability in the marketplace. Let’s explore the inner workings of the printer tech that the world forgot.

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A cylindrical neodymium-iron-boron magnet in shown on a grey background. A white line of boiling liquid surrounds the top edge of the magnet, and a cloud of condensing vapor hangs over it.

Homemade Liquid Oxygen Demonstrates Paramagnetism

March 2, 2026 by 6 Comments

Liquid nitrogen isn’t exactly an everyday material, but it’s acquired conveniently enough to be used in extreme overclocking experiments, classroom demonstrations, chemistry and physics experiments, and a number of other niche applications. Liquid oxygen, by contrast, is dangerous enough that it’s only really used in rocket engines. Nevertheless, [Electron Impressions] made some of his own, and beyond the obvious pyrotechnic experimentation, demonstrated its unusual magnetic properties. Check out the video, below.

The oxygen in this case was produced by electrolysis through a proton-exchange membrane, which vented the hydrogen into the atmosphere and routed the oxygen into a Dewar flask mounted at the cold end of a Stirling cryo-cooler. The cooler had enough power to produce about 30 to 40 milliliters of liquid oxygen per hour, enough to build up an appreciable amount in short order. As expected, the pale blue liquid caused burning paper to disappear in a violent flame, and a piece of paper soaked in it almost exploded when ignited.

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Accidental Climate Engineering With Disintegrating Satellites

March 2, 2026 by 15 Comments

For many decades humankind has entertained the notion that we can maybe tweak the Earth’s atmosphere or biosphere in such a way that we can for example undo the harms of climate change, or otherwise affect the climate for our own benefit. This often involves spreading certain substances in parts of the atmosphere in order to reflect or retain thermal solar radiation or induce rain.

Yet despite how limited in scope these attempts at such intentional experiments have been so far – with most proposals dying somewhere before being implemented – we have already embarked on a potentially planet-wide atmospheric reconfiguration that could affect life on Earth for centuries to come. This accidental experiment comes in the form of rocket stages, discarded satellites, and other human-made space litter that burn up in the atmosphere at ever increasing rates.

Rather than burning up cleanly into harmless components, this actually introduces metals and other compounds into the upper parts of the atmosphere. What the long-term effects of this will be is still uncertain, but with the most dire scenarios involving significant climate change and ozone layer degradation, we ought to figure this one out sooner rather than later.

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