SpaceX Drops The Ball On Catching Fairings

May 6, 2021 by 91 Comments

You don’t have to look very hard to find another rousing success by SpaceX. It’s a company defined by big and bold moves, and when something goes right, they make sure you know about it. From launching a Tesla into deep space to the captivating test flights of their next-generation Starship spacecraft, the private company has turned high-stakes aerospace research and development into a public event. A cult of personality has developed around SpaceX’s outlandish CEO Elon Musk, and so long as he’s at the helm, we can expect bigger and brighter spectacles as he directs the company towards its ultimate goal of putting humans on Mars.

Of course, things don’t always go right for SpaceX. While setbacks are inevitable in aerospace, the company has had a few particularly embarrassing failures that could be directly attributed to their rapid development pace or even operational inexperience. A perfect example is the loss of the Israeli AMOS-6 satellite during a static fire of the Falcon 9’s engines on the launch pad in 2016, as industry experts questioned why the spacecraft had even been mounted to the rocket before it had passed its pre-flight checks. Since that costly mistake, the company has waited until all engine tests have been completed before attaching the customer’s payload.

SpaceX’s concept art for propulsive landing

But sometimes the failure isn’t so much a technical problem as an inability for the company to achieve their own lofty goals. Occasionally one of Musk’s grand ideas ends up being too complex, dangerous, or expensive to put into practice. For instance, despite spending several years and untold amounts of money perfecting the technology involved, propulsive landings for the Crew Dragon were nixed before the idea could ever fully be tested. NASA was reportedly uncomfortable with what they saw as an unnecessary risk compared to the more traditional ocean splashdown under parachutes; it would have been an impressive sight to be sure, but it didn’t offer a substantive benefit over the simpler approach.

A similar fate recently befell SpaceX’s twin fairing recovery ships Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief, which were quietly retired in April. These vessels were designed to catch the Falcon’s school bus sized payload fairings as they drifted down back to Earth using massive nets suspended over their decks, but in the end, the process turned out to be more difficult than expected. More importantly, it apparently wasn’t even necessary in the first place.

Continue reading “SpaceX Drops The Ball On Catching Fairings” →

Hacker Spends A Few Cycles Upgrading An Under-Desk Bike

May 6, 2021 by 12 Comments

Pandemic got you way behind on your exercise goals? Us too. But not [codaris] who bought an under-desk bike to get in a bit of cycling while banging away on the keyboard. The only bad thing about this bike is the accompanying app — it’s all-around weak and requires too many steps just to get to peddlin’. It pays to know thyself, and [codaris] knows that this will be a major de-motivator and made a desktop app that does it all, including/starting up as soon as the pedals start spinning.

[codaris] built a Windows application that displays workout data in real time and then saves the stats in a SQLite database after the pedaling stops. It took a fair amount of work to get there, logging the Bluetooth traffic during a ride and comparing that with Wireshark output from a live session to decode the communication between the bike and the app. Turns out there are six commands total, and [codaris] really only needs three — Connect, Start Workout, and Continue Workout.

The app displays the elapsed workout time, speed, distance traveled, and the current RPM. We love that it starts logging and displaying data as soon as [codaris] starts pedaling, because that would be a major goal for us, too.

There’s more than one way to hack a bike. [codaris] was inspired by [ptx2]’s excellent work to un-brick a much more expensive bike with a Raspberry Pi.

Thanks for the tip, [Jhart99]!

Ask Hackaday: If Aliens Came By, Would We Even Notice?

May 6, 2021 by 112 Comments

A few years ago we talked about the chance that the first known extrasolar visitor — Oumuamua — might be a derelict solar sail. That notion has been picking up steam in the popular press lately, and it made us think again about the chances that the supposed rock was really a solar sail discarded or maybe even a probe flying with a solar sail. At the same time, Mars is as close as it ever gets so there is a gaggle of our probes searching the red planet, some of them looking for signs of past life.

All this makes us think: if we did find life or even artifacts of intelligent life, would we realize it? Sure, we can usually figure out what’s alive here on Earth. But to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, “We know it when we see it.” Defining life turns out to be surprisingly tricky, recognizing alien technology would be even harder.

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Putting An Ultra-Tiny Linux Board In A Phone Charger…Eventually

May 6, 2021 by 67 Comments

Among security professionals, a “drop box” is a device that can be covertly installed at a target location and phone home over the Internet, providing a back door into what might be an otherwise secure network. We’ve seen both commercial and DIY versions of this concept, and as you might expect, one of the main goals is to make the device look as inconspicuous as possible. Which is why [Walker] is hoping to build one into a standard USB wall charger.

This project is still in the early stages, but we like what we see so far. [Walker] aims to make this a 100% free and open source device, starting from the tools he’s using to produce the CAD files all the way up to the firmware the final hardware will run. With none of the currently available single-board computers (SBCs) meeting his list of requirements, the first step is to build a miniature Linux machine that’s got enough processing power to run useful security tools locally. Obviously such a board would be of great interest to the larger hacker and maker community.

The RTL8188CUS is likely to get integrated later on.

So far, [Walker] has decided on his primary components and is working on a larger development board before really going all-in on the miniaturization process. As of right now he’s planning on using the Allwinner A33 to power the board, a sub-$10 USD chipset most commonly seen in low-cost Android tablets.

The A33 boasts a quad-core Cortex-A7 clocked at 1.2 GHz, and offers USB, I2C, and SPI interfaces for expansion. It will be paired with 1 GB of DDR3 RAM, and an SD card to hold the operating system. Naturally a device like this will need WiFi, but until [Walker] can decide on which chip to use, the plan is to just use a USB wireless adapter. The Realtek RTL8188CUS is a strong contender, as the fact that it comes in both USB and module versions should make its eventual integration seamless.

Even if you’re not interested in the idea of hiding security appliances inside of everyday objects, this project is a fascinating glimpse into the process of creating your own custom Linux board. Whether you’re looking to put into a wall wart or a drone, it’s pretty incredible to think we’ve reached the point where an individual can spin up their own miniature SBC.

The Keyboard You Really Don’t Need Or Want

May 6, 2021 by 48 Comments

Most people think of a keyboard as a flat, vaguely rectangular thing with around 100ish different keys. A mechanical keyboard enthusiast would heartily disagree and point out various tenkeyless, 75%, 60%, or 40% keyboards that strip down the idea of what a keyboard is by taking keys out. [Stavros Korokithakis] takes that notion and turns it on its side by creating the five-button vertical keyboard known as Keyyyyyyyys.

This keyboard, or keystick, is designed to be onehanded and to be eye-contact-free. With just five keys, it makes heavy use of chording to output all the characters needed. It has a maximum of 32 possible states and taking out pressing nothing as a no-op leaves 31 possible key combinations. So [Stavros] had to get creative and laid out the letters according to their frequency in the English language. The brains of Keyyyyyyyys is the ubiquitous ESP32, emulating a Bluetooth keyboard while being wrapped in a simple 3d printed box. The code is hosted on GitLab.

If you don’t know how hard it is to learn a five-key chording keyboard from scratch, definitely check out [Stavros]’ video embedded below. “C’mon h.” We have heard reports that you can learn these things, though.

While this five-button keyboard may seem small, this two-button keyboard still has it beat by three keys. A one-button keyboard is just a morse code keyboard, and we are looking forward to a wireless Bluetooth version. Continue reading “The Keyboard You Really Don’t Need Or Want” →

VME Reverse Engineering

May 5, 2021 by 28 Comments

With some free time on his hands waiting for delayed parts to arrive, [Rik] set out to reverse engineer an old VME system he had acquired. VMEbus computers are based on the standard Eurocard PCB format, which defines a wide range of card sizes — the most common being 6U height like [Rik]’s system. They usually consist of a rack-mounted card cage with a passive backplane. Originally, Motorola 68000-based CPU cards were used in VMEbus systems, but any processor could be used as long as you provided the right signals and timings to the system bus. Eurocard systems are less common these days, but are still used in some applications. In fact, if you’re into synthesizers, you may be using Eurocards today — the Eurorack standard is based on the standard 3U card size.

Back to [Rik]’s project, he had no idea what this system was nor how to use it. A bit of probing around and he found two UARTs, a system monitor, and a way to load and dump S-record files. He documents the process quite well, as the internal layout and memory map of the system is unlocked piece by piece. We also like his method of instrumenting the VMEbus signals — logic analyzers are so small today, you can just mount one inside the rack.

Spoiler alert: [Rik] succeeds in mapping out the memory, writes some small programs in 68k assembly language, and even builds his own LED accessory card so he can blink some lights (as one must do).

We wrote about modularity recently, and VMEbus + Eurocard systems are good examples of modular design. You could quickly put together a robust assembly using entirely off-the-shelf cards, or mix in your own custom cards. But technology advancements in clock speeds and miniaturization have made these card cage, passive backplane systems less and less relevant today. Do any of you still use the VMEbus, or have you designed with them in the past? Let us know down in the comments below.

Learn Engineering Concepts With Some Cool Animations

May 5, 2021 by 5 Comments

All feats of engineering build on a proper understanding of the basic engineering concepts. Learning these concepts from a book or class tends to be a rather uninspiring exercise, unfortunately. To make this task a lot more enjoyable, [The Efficient Engineer] has produced a series of high-quality, easy-to-watch videos on the concepts.

The videos focus mainly on mechanical and structural engineering and contain excellent animations and just enough math to give you a basic understanding. There are 22 videos so far and cover a wide variety of topics, including FEA analysis, stress and strain, aerodynamics, and Young’s modulus. Each video starts with the basics, then digs down into the topic, all the while visualizing the subject being discussed. For example, for FEA he starts with the applications, then covers discretization (meshing) and how to solve the calculations.

For more excellent educational videos, check out [Real Engineering] and [Practical Engineering]. Continue reading “Learn Engineering Concepts With Some Cool Animations” →