TWANG32 Brings LED Strip Gaming To The ESP32

May 5, 2022 by 1 Comment

Under the Hackaday TV is a modern game console, it’s a well-known model that many of you also probably have, and its main feature is a 3D accelerator which allows it to create the beautifully rendered worlds we’ve all come to know and love. [Mircemk] eschews such fripperies with the Twang project, because it’s a game that’s not 3D, nor 2D, but 1D. The display, indeed the entire gaming surface, is a single strip of addressable LEDs which can be seen int he video below the break.

Behind it all is an ESP32, and a unique one-dimensional joystick using an accelerometer. There’s an audio channel with a little piezoelectric speaker too, and the LED strip is a particularly high-density one from DFRobot. Because this is an ESP32-driven device it has WiFi, upon which is exposed an access point for a network over which is served the game stats as a web page. It may not displace that modern console, but it’s certainly inventive.

Long-time Hackaday readers will be aware that this is only the latest of a long line of one-dimensional games, including a 1D take on the famous PONG.

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Bringing Zelda Classic To The Browser

May 4, 2022 by 6 Comments

Finding a device or app that isn’t a web browser doesn’t seem easy. These days, it is either connected to the web (looking at you ESP32) or is just a web browser pretending to be something else (a la electron, PWAs, or React Native). So, of course, it is on us to create more and more exciting things to browse. [Connor Clark] is one of those people, and he brought Zelda Classic to the browser.

Zelda Classic (ZC) isn’t an official Zelda game. Instead, it’s an old engine designed to run the world in the OG Legend of Zelda and be easily modified to support hundreds of different games. To date, there are over 600 games submitted by a large community. ZC is an Allegro-based Windows-only game, so the first step was to bust out Emscripten to start tweaking the C++ code to support a web environment. Rather than completely port the huge codebase over from Allegro, [Connor] made the jump from Allegro 4 to 5. Allegro 5 has SDL as a backend and adds support for Emscripten.

Unfortunately, the 4 to 5 wasn’t as simple as changing the dependency. The API was wholly re-written, and there is a handy adapter known as Allegro Legacy to help transition a project from one to another. After squashing a multitude of bugs, it was a relatively painless procedure. After a quick detour getting music and level data working, [Connor] faced his next challenge: multi-threading. Efforts to move the main loop off of the browser thread and into a web worker ran into issues with having to yield in loops, deadlocks, and recursive mutexes. Finally, he added music and gamepad support after fixing several bugs in SDL and Allegro.

It’s an incredible journey with many tips and tricks for debugging seemingly intractable bugs. The code is up on GitHub, or jump in and start playing if you’re interested. Why not check out this browser-based OpenSCAD as well?

partially finished print, with the embedded animation

Flip Book Animations On The Inside Of 3D Prints

May 4, 2022 by 5 Comments

We’ve all seen 3D printed zoetropes, and drawn flip book animations in the corner of notebooks. The shifting, fluid shape of the layers forming on a 3D printer is satisfying. And we all know the joy of hidden, nested objects.

Hackaday alumnus [Caleb Kraft] has a few art pieces that all reflect all these. He’s been making animations by recording a 3D printer. The interesting bit is that his print is made of two objects. An outer one with normal infill that gives a solid form, and a layer cake like inner one with solid infill. It’s documented in this video on YouTube.

CAD model of the stack of frames
CAD model of the stack of frames

There are lots of things to get right.  The outer object needs to print without supports. The thickness of the “layer cake” layers determines the frame rate. I had to wonder how he triggered the shutter  when the head wasn’t in the way.

His first, experimental, piece is the classic ‘bouncing ball’ animation, inside a ball, and his mature piece is Eadward Muybridge’s “The Horse, In Motion” inside a movie camera.

We’ve covered [Caleb Kraft] before, of course. His Moon On A Budget piece is wonderful.  And we’ve covered a number of 3D printer animations. and 3D zoetropes.  We particularly were drawn to this one.

Thanks [jmc] for the tip!

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The TPM module that Viktor designed, inserted into the motherboard

TPM Module Too Expensive? DIY Your Own Easily!

May 4, 2022 by 83 Comments

Since Windows 11 has announced its TPM module requirement, the prices for previously abundant and underappreciated TPM add-on boards for PC motherboards have skyrocketed. We’ve been getting chips and soldering them onto boards of our own design, instead – and [viktor]’s project is one more example of that. [Viktor] has checked online marketplace listings for a TPM module for his Gigabyte AORUS GAMING 3 motherboard, and found out they started at around 150EUR – which is almost as much as the motherboard itself costs. So, as any self-respecting hacker, he went the DIY way, and it went with hardly a hitch.

Following the schematic from the datasheet, he quickly made a simple KiCad layout, matching it to the pinout from his motherboard’s user manual, then ordered the boards from PCBWay and SLB9665 chips from eBay. After both arrived, [viktor] assembled the boards, and found one small mistake – he designed a module for 2.54mm pin headers, but his motherboard had 2.0mm headers. He wired up a small adapter to make his assembled V1.0 boards work, and Windows 11 installed without any TPM complaints. He shows that he’s designed a new, V1.1 version with an updated connector, too, and published its (untested but should work) design files for us on GitHub. These modules can vary, by manufacturer and motherboard series, but with each module published, a bunch of hackers can save money – and get a weekend project virtually guaranteed to work out.

Regardless of whether the goal of running Windows 11 is ultimately worthwhile, it has been achieved. With scalpers preying on people who just want to use their hardware with a new OS, rolling your own TPM PCB is a very attractive solution! Last time we covered a DIY TPM module for ASrock server motherboards, we had a vivid discussion in the comments, and if you’re looking to create your own TPM board, you could do worse than checking them out for advice and insights!

The MCH2022 Badge Has Landed!

May 4, 2022 by 2 Comments

As spring slowly slides into summer here in Europe where this is being written, the warm weather is a reminder that on the horizon are the summer’s crop of hacker camps. The largest European one this year will be the Dutch MCH2022 near the end of July, and to whet our appetite they’ve made public some details of their badge. And true to the past form of Dutch camps, it’s rather an impressive build.

Since this is another piece of work from badge.team it has the expected ESP32 module, but alongside it on the elegantly-designed PCB there’s an RP2040 and a Lattice ICE40UP5K FPGA. The ESP is there to run the badge team firmware which even includes backwards compatibility with the original SHA2017 badge, the RP2040 ties everything together and provides a multitude of USB peripherals, and the FPGA is there to run user code. From the front, the badge has a Game Boy Advance-style form factor with a large colour TFT screen and the usual joystick and buttons. Other peripherals include a brace of addressable LEDs, a pair of nifty sensors from Bosch, and a 16-bit stereo audio channel that even powers a small onboard mono speaker when no headphones are connected.

The hardware may be slick, but it’s the badge.team firmware that makes this as special as all their previous offerings. It offers the chance to easily write apps either in MicroPython for the ESP32, or as payloads for the FPGA, and what makes it special is that it comes with an online app store from which all the apps can be downloaded. We’re told that it will be able to run a range of emulators out of the box, so we’re really looking forward to seeing the final version at the event. Meanwhile they’ve released a demo video that you can see below the break, and if you’re curious you can take a look at its SHA2017 badge ancestor.

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2022 Hackaday Prize: ArmaLamp Provides Light, No Matter What

May 4, 2022 by 35 Comments

Instant access to electric light is a luxury that most of us take for granted, but in times of crisis, the power is often the first thing to go. So whether you’re worried about a natural disaster or the outbreak of war, a reliable source of light is a must-have in your emergency kit. Creator [bobricius] calls his is ArmaLamp the “Armageddon resistant night lamp”, and while we’re not eager to test that particular claim, it certainly looks robust enough to get you through some tough times.

The basic idea behind the ArmaLamp is to make a light source so simple that, outside of being physically destroyed, it can’t fail. That means deleting the mechanical power switch and designing the circuit so the LED light will kick on automatically in the dark. Rather than using a traditional rechargeable battery, the solar powered ArmaLamp stores its charge in a 10 farad supercapacitor that can be charged and depleted daily without having to worry about long-term degradation.

Charging the ArmaLamp with a simple solar cell is clearly out of the question as it would represent not just a single point of failure, but a particularly fragile one at that. Instead, [bobricius] is using an array of six BPW34 photodiodes that come in a hard plastic package. Combined with an efficient driver circuit that can run the LED even when the supercap is down to 0.3 V, leaving the ArmaLamp outside during the day should provide you with four hours of ultra-reliable light every night.

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Healing Wounds With The Power Of Electricity

May 4, 2022 by 36 Comments

Once upon a time, even a simple cut or scrape could be a death sentence. Before germ theory and today’s scientific understanding of medicine, infections ran rampant and took many lives.

While we’re now well-armed with disinfectants, dressings, and antibiotics, scientists are continuing to investigate new and unique methods to improve the treatment of wounds. As it turns out, a little electricity might actually help wounds heal faster.

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