Hackaday Prize 2023: Tiny RC Aircraft Built Using Foam And ESP12

April 29, 2023 by 13 Comments

Once upon a time, a radio controlled plane was a hefty and complex thing. They required small nitro engines, support equipment, and relatively heavy RC electronics. Times have changed since then, as this lightweight RC build from [Ravi Butani] demonstrates.

The body of the plane is lightweight foam, and can be assembled in two ways. There’s a relatively conventional layout, using a main wing, tailplane, and rudder, or a pusher model with the main wing at the rear and a canard up front. The open hardware electronics package, which [Ravi] calls VIMANA, consists of an ESP12 module with a pair of MOSFETs to act as two independent motor drivers — allowing the plane to be flown and steered with differential thrust.

For more advanced flight control, it can also command a pair of servos to control ailerons, a rudder, canards, or elevons, depending on configuration. There’s also potential to install an IMU to set the plane up with flight stabilization routines.

Thanks to the low-cost of the VIMANA board, [Ravi] hopes it can be used in STEM education programs. He notes that it’s not limited just to aircraft, and could be used for other motorized projects such as boats and cars. We’ve featured an early version of his work before, but the project has come a long way since then.

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The World’s First Agricultural Right To Repair Law

April 29, 2023 by 29 Comments

Long time readers will know that occasionally we mix up our usual subject matter with a dash of farm equipment. Usually the yellow and green variants that come from John Deere, as the agricultural manufacturer has become the poster child for all that is wrong in the fight for the right to repair. An old Deere is worth more than a nearly new one in many places, because for several years now their models have had all their parts locked down by DRM technologies such that only their own fitters can replace them. Now after a long legal fight involving many parties, the repair and parts company iFixit sound justifiably pleased as they announce the world’s first agricultural right to repair law being passed in the US state of Colorado. (Nitter)

This may sound like a small victory, and it will no doubt be followed by further rearguard actions from the industry as similar laws are tabled in other states. But in fact as we read it, with this law in place the game is de facto up for the tractor makers. Once they are required to release any access codes for the Coloradans those same codes will by extension be available to any other farmers, and though we’re guessing they won’t do this, they would be best advised to give up on the whole DRM idea and concentrate instead on making better tractors to fix their by-now-damaged brands.

It’s exciting news for everybody as it proves that right-to-repair legislation is possible, however since this applies only to agricultural machinery the battle is by no means over. Only when all machines and devices have the same protection can we truly be said to have achieved the right to repair.

We’ve reported on this story for a long time, here’s a previous piece of legislation tried in another state.

Compressed Air Keeps Screws Moving Through Modular Production System

April 27, 2023 by 8 Comments

If there’s an unsung hero of manufacturing, it’s the engineer who figures out how to handle huge numbers of small parts. It’s one thing to manually assemble something, picking each nut, bolt, and washer by hand. It’s another thing to build a machine that can do the same thing, but thousands of times in a row, ideally without making mistakes.

Most of us don’t need that level of automation in our processes, but when you do, it results in some interesting challenges. Take this pneumatic screw accelerator that [Christopher Helmke] designed for his modular production system. One of the custom machines in his system is a screw counter, which uses a magnetic wheel to feed screws — or nuts or washers — from a hopper, orient them correctly, and drop them into an output chute. While the counting bit worked quite well, parts would only go so far under the force of gravity in the clear vinyl tube used to connect the counter to the next process.

[Christopher]’s solution was simple but effective. His first prototype simply injects compressed air into the parts feed tube, which pushes the screws through the tubing. It works surprisingly well, propelling the parts through quite a long length of tubing, handling twisting paths easily and even working against gravity. Version 2 integrated the accelerator and a re-orienting fixture into a single part, which mates with a magazine that holds a large number of screws.

There are a lot of interesting features [Christoper] built into these simple parts that are worth keeping in mind. Our favorite is printing channels to guide small cable ties around the tubing to clamp it into the accelerator. We’ll be keeping that trick in mind.

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Air Hockey Solitaire

April 22, 2023 by 3 Comments

While air hockey is a fine amusement, it isn’t much fun if you can’t find someone to play against. Unless that is, you build a mini table with a robotic defender. [Vaib], [Nathan], and [Navish] can show you how. There is a video you can see below that shows two players using the table without the robot.

The project takes a bit of woodworking, as you might expect. You also have to drill 576 holes for the air to lift the puck. Some of the components are 3D printed in PETG, too. The automated defense uses a camera and relies on the fact that the puck is the only red thing on the table. A servo moves to intercept the incoming puck and return the shot. We were disappointed the video didn’t show the automated play.

We wondered if they had considered making a pair of the detachable robots and letting them play with each other. If you prefer football, the robot could probably adapt. We’ve seen other robot air hockey contenders, so maybe a better idea would be to build different robots and let them compete for a gold medal.

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[CuriousMarc] Repairs A Floppy

April 16, 2023 by 8 Comments

[CuriousMarc] has a pile of 8-inch drives, all marked bad. You can’t just pop over to the computer store and buy a new one these days, so it was off to the repair bench. Although the target drive would do a quick seek,  once it was in use, it just kind of shut down. So [Marc] started sending low-level commands to the device to see if he could isolate the fault. You can watch the whole adventure in the video below.

Using a breakout board, he was able to monitor and exercise all the pins going into the floppy. A quick study of the schematics, and connection to the scope were all [Marc] needed to build some theories of what was happening.

One of the theories was that the head amplifier was disabled, but it turned out to be fine. After several other dead ends, he finally found a broken spring and came up with a creative repair for it. But there was still no clear reason why the drive wouldn’t work. By process of elimination, he started to suspect an array of diodes used for switching, but again, it was another dead end.

Luckily, he had one working drive, so he could compare things between them. He found a strange voltage difference. Turns out the old advice of checking power first might have paid off here. One of the voltage regulator ICs was dead. In all fairness, there are two 12V power supplies and he had checked one of them but had missed the second supply.  This supply is only used for head bias which switches the diodes he had suspected earlier. There had also been a loose pin that might have been a contributor.

With a new power supply IC, the drive worked but needed an alignment. You may never need to repair an 8-inch floppy drive, but the logic in chasing down a problem like this will serve you well on any diagnostic task.

If you think the big drives won’t work with a modern PC, they will. On the other hand, if you need to read some badly enough, you could just use an oscilloscope.

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Hackaday Podcast 214: Jet Engine Hair Dryer, Comic Sans Type Balls, And Belief In Graphene

April 14, 2023 by 4 Comments

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Contributor Emeritus Kristina Panos gushed about all the best hacks of the previous week. But first, a contest! That’s right — hot on the heels of the Low Power Challenge comes the Op Amp Challenge, sponsored by Digi-Key. You have between now and June 6th to dip your toes into the warm waters of analog and show us what you’ve got. Will it be a musical hack? Will you seek high analog precision? We can’t wait to see.

Kristina definitely did not get What’s That Sound this week, which honestly reminded her of a cartoon character getting a piano dropped on them, except the sounds were in reverse order. Then it’s on to the hacks, beginning with a way to make an IBM Selectric typewriter use Comic Sans, a project that’s sure to make you a believer in graphene, and a miniature MNT for every (cargo) pocket.

From there we take a look at a really cool indicator from a 1960s RAF aeroplane and investigate why your multimeter might be lying to you. Finally, we discuss the gargantuan task of building an AR system to rival Google Glass, and the merits of taking a lot of pictures as you go about your hacks.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in  the comments!

Download and savor at your leisure.

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Dyson Hair Dryer Becomes Jet Engine

April 10, 2023 by 18 Comments

While Dyson makes some good products, they aren’t known for being economical. Case in point: [Integza] spent $500 on a hair dryer. While he does have a fine head of hair, we suspected he wasn’t after it for its intended purpose, and we were right. It turns out he wanted to make it into a jet engine! Why? Oh, come on. The fact that you read Hackaday means you don’t need that question answered. Watch the video below to see how it all turned out.

What got [Integza]’s attention was the power of the very small motor. So he immediately, of course, opened it up. The build quality is very impressive, although for $500, shouldn’t it be? While we are sure the Dyson dryer is more robust than our $9 Revlon special, it seems doubtful that it would handle the high temperatures of a jet exhaust. In fact, he’s had plastic meltdown while trying to build a jet before. So this time, he had a different plan.

That plan involved designing a replacement shell for the dryer and having it 3D printed in metal, which may have cost almost as much or more than the dryer. It came out great, though — and some fuel lines and a spark plug later, he was ready to fire it up.

Did it work? You bet. Test equipment was melted accidentally, and eventually, the engine looked like it flamed out. But it generated some very hot exhaust. We’d like to say that no tomatoes were harmed during the production of the video, but we can’t because of our well-developed sense of ethics. Poor tomatoes! We might have used a Mr. Bill doll, but that probably infringes on someone’s copyright.

If you don’t want so much melting, maybe try water cooling. If you could make this reliable, the modification to your car becomes obvious.

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