A wooden device with an LED display and speakers

The Inspirer Keeps Your Mood Up With Inspirational Quotes And Soothing Music

December 19, 2021 by Robin Kearey 2 Comments

While some people enjoy the cold weather and long, dark nights in the Northern Hemisphere these days, others may find it hard to keep a positive mindset all through the winter. [Michael Wessel] decided he needed to do something about that and came up with The Inspirer, a desktop display that shows inspirational quotes and plays soothing music.

The design is deliberately bare-bones: a strip of wood, standing upright thanks to two metal brackets, onto which a bunch of components have been screwed, glued and taped. The actual display consists of a row of 14-segment LED modules that can show basic alphanumeric characters; these displays emit white light, but [Michael] added a red color filter in front to give them a more “retro” look.

This device is fully off-grid, so no Internet connection issues will disrupt your flow. A huge database of quotes and a selection of music tracks are stored on a pair of micro SD cards; an MP3 player module handles the music while an Arduino picks a quote, drives the display, and reads the buttons. You can select quotes based on a certain theme: examples include friendship, gardening, money, and love. But if you’re open to anything, you can just set it to “random” and get something from any of the 120 categories.

[Michael]’s simple and straightforward design should hopefully prove inspirational to many hardware enthusiasts. But if you’re looking for something more advanced, we featured a neat pomodoro timer that displays quotes a few weeks ago. Of course, this being Hackaday, we’ve also seen a clock based on literary quotes.

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USB LED Christmas Tree Is Making Spirits Bright

December 13, 2021 by Kristina Panos 9 Comments

[Piotr SB] knows there is no way out of the holidays; the only path is through. You’ve got to find cheer wherever and however you can, so why not cater to your own interests and build the cutest little LED Christmas tree you ever did see? And did we mention it’s USB and absolutely free (as in carols, not eggnog)?

This O-Christmas tree is made up of concentric rings that are built into a tier as you solder the LEDs. And of course you’re supposed use the LED legs as supports! One leg from each LED — 18 green and a red one for the top. Because the PCB is not quite thick enough, you’ll need to add a plastic spacer to get it to stay in the USB port. Not only is this a nice design, the snowflakes and snowman on the silkscreen totally seal the cuteness deal.

Ever get so frustrated with your Christmas tree that you want to just empty a few rounds into the thing? No? Well, you’d have a good reason to if you built this Duck Hunt ornament.

Arduino Drives Faux Spirograph

December 10, 2021 by Al Williams 11 Comments

The holidays always remind us of our favorite toys from when we were kids. Johnny Astro, an Erector set, and — of course — a Spirograph. [CraftDiaries] has an Arduino machine that isn’t quite a Spirograph, but it sure reminds us of one. The Arduino drives two stepper motors that connect to a pen that can create some interesting patterns.

The build uses a few parts that were laser cut, but they don’t look like they’d be hard to fabricate using conventional means or even 3D printing. The author even mentions you could make them out of cardboard or foamboard if you wanted to.

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Hackaday Podcast 147: Animating Traces, Sucking And Climbing, Spinning Sails, And Squashing Images

December 3, 2021 by Mike Szczys 2 Comments

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams get caught up on the week that was. You probably know a ton of people who have a solar array at their home, but how many do you know that have built their own hydroelectric generation on property? Retrocomputing software gurus take note, there’s an impressive cross-compiler in town that can spit out working binaries for everything from C64 to Game Boy to ZX Spectrum. Tom took a hard look at the Prusa XL, and Matthew takes us back to school on what UEFI is all about.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (55 MB)

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LEDs display different pitches in a sunburst pattern

Spiral Music Visualization

November 26, 2021 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

Displaying notes live as they are being played can be a really powerful learning tool, but it’s usually used to learn how to play a specific instrument. This take on the topic is actually a neat way to learn more about music theory — how pitches work together to build the sounds that we hear. The visual tack chosen arranges each of 12 notes into a spiral. As you continue to go up the scale through more octaves, pitches that share the same name line up into a line like a ray projecting out from the sun. So there are 12 rays for the notes in the scale: C, C#/D♭, D, D#/E♭,F, etc.

[mechatronicsguy] built it a few years back but just now got around to documenting it, and we’re sure glad he did. The layout of notes at first looks just like a colorful visualization. But as he mentions in his description, this assigns a shape to each different type of cord. A major cord will have the same shape whether it is played with C, G#, B♭, or any other note as the root. The shape simply rotates around the axis based on that root note. Higher octaves will be shown further out on the radius, but the chord shape will still be the same. Minor, augmented, even modal chords and those with added pitches all have their own unique shape on the display.

You get the best understanding of the visualization by looking at the Python-rendered version in the video below. It’s a nice touch that notes turn grey and fade away after being released so you kind of see where the current chord came from. This isn’t strictly a perk of pre-recordings. While you can feed it MIDI files, you can also play a MIDI instrument and display the visuals live on the hardware version that uses a Teensy with an audio shield.

If you’re looking for examples on how music visualizers are used to teach the instrument, look no further than this Wurlitzer note visualizer replica. Also for those who don’t know, the song being played in the hardware demo (second video below) is Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. Well worth a full listen, it’ll change your life.

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Impressive Off-Grid Hydroelectric Plant Showcases The Hacker Spirit

November 26, 2021 by Ryan Flowers 11 Comments

We all know the story arc that so many projects take: Build. Fail. Improve. Fail. Repair. Improve. Fail. Rebuild. Success… Tweak! [Kris Harbour] is no stranger to the process, as his impressive YouTube channel testifies.

Among all of [Kris’] off-grid DIY adventures, his 500 W micro hydroelectric turbine has us really pumped up. The impressive feat of engineering features Arduino/IOT based controls, 3D printed components, and large number of custom-machined components, with large amounts of metal fabrication as well.

[Kris] Started the build with a Pelton wheel sourced from everyone’s favorite online auction site paired with an inexpensive MPPT charge controller designed for use with solar panels. Eventually the turbine was replaced with a custom built unit designed to produce more power. An Arduino based turbine valve controller and an IOT enabled charge controller give [Kris] everything he needs to manage the hydroelectric system without having to traipse down to the power house. Self-cleaning 3D printed screens keep intake maintenance to a minimum. Be sure to check out a demonstration of the control system in the video below the break.

As you watch the Hydro electric system playlist, you see the hacker spirit run strong throughout the initial build, the failures, the engineering, the successes, and then finally, the tweaking for more power. Because why stop at working when it can be made better, right? We highly recommend checking it out- but set aside some time. The whole series is oddly addictive, and This Hackaday Writer may have spent inordinate amounts of time watching it instead of writing dailies!

Of course, you don’t need to go full-tilt to get hydroelectric power up and running. Even at a low wattage, its always-on qualities mean that even a re-purposed washing machine can be efficient enough to be quite useful.

Thanks to [Mo] for alerting us to the great series via the Tip Line!

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Bluetooth Record Player Puts A New Spin On Vinyl

November 24, 2021 by Kristina Panos 73 Comments

You know, we were just discussing weird and/or obsolete audio formats in the writers’ dungeon the other day. (By the way, have you ever bought anything on DAT or MiniDisc?) While vinyl is hardly weird or (nowadays) obsolete, the fact that this Bluetooth record player by [JGJMatt] is so modern makes it all the more fantastic.

Not since the Audio-Technica Sound Burger, or Crosley’s semi-recent imitation, have we seen such a portable unit. But that’s not even the most notable part — this thing runs inversely to normal record players. Translation: the record stands still while the the player spins, and it sends the audio over Bluetooth to headphones or a speaker.

Inside this portable player is an Arduino Nano driving a 5 VDC motor with a worm gear box. There really isn’t too much more to this build — mostly power, a needle cartridge, and a Bluetooth audio transmitter. There’s a TTP223 touch module on the lid that allows [JGJMatt] to turn it off with the wave of a hand.

[JGJMatt] says this is a prototype/work-in-progress, and welcomes input from the community. Right now the drive system is good and the Bluetooth is stable and able, but the tone arm has some room for improvement — in tests, it only played a small section of the record and skidded and skittered across the innermost and outermost parts. Now, [JGJMatt] is trying two-part arm approach where the first bit extends and locks into position, and then a second arm extending from there and moves around freely.

Commercial record players can do more than just play records. If you’ve got an old one that isn’t even good enough for a thrift store copy of a Starship record, you could turn it into a pottery wheel or a guitar tremolo.