The Antikythera Mechanism

November 23, 2015 by Kristina Panos 89 Comments

It’s no secret that a great deal of Western civilization was informed by the ancient Greeks. They revolutionized mathematics and geometry, developing astronomy along the way. They built ornate statues, beautiful temples to the gods, and amphitheaters for live entertainment with astonishing acoustics. The influence of the ancient Greeks shaped almost every field of human knowledge, from the arts and architecture to politics, philosophy, science, and technology.

This article was written for the Omnibus vol #02
Order yours now

Like the Babylonians, the Greeks paid close attention to the night sky. Our nearest celestial neighbor, the Moon, was particularly important to them from a planning perspective. For instance, debts might be due on the new Moon. By heeding the Moon’s phases and taking note of eclipse cycles, they found that their harvests were more fruitful, and they had fewer incidents at sea.

As savvy and well-rounded as ancient Hellenistic culture appears to have been, it’s not unreasonable to imagine that the Greeks could have created some kind of computing machine to make their Moon-centered scheduling easier. Based on fragments from in a shipwreck that was discovered in 1900, it seems they did exactly this. Based on scientific dating of the coins and pottery found in the wreck and inscriptions on the bronze remnants, historians and scientists believe the Greeks created a mechanical computer capable of calculating the positions of the Sun and the Moon on any given day. This marvelous device is known as the Antikythera mechanism.

The mechanism was housed in a wooden box and controlled with a knob on one side. It is believed that the front of the box was a display made up of a set of concentric rings with graduations, and that each ring corresponded with one celestial body. Pointers attached perpendicularly to output gears moved around the rings as the knob was turned, showing the paths and positions of these celestial bodies over time. This Earth-centric planetarium also displayed the phase of the Moon as well as the positions of the five major planets known to the ancient Greeks—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

Continue reading “The Antikythera Mechanism” →

Super Simple Cat Feeder

May 12, 2015 by Anool Mahidharia 24 Comments

Sometimes, along comes a hack that is just that. A kludged collection of parts thrown together quickly to solve some problem. [mightysinetheta]’s Upcycled Cat Feeder is just that – no pretensions.

It’s a cat feeder built out of a drill, wall switch and mechanical clock timer for under $10. Pretty much the simplest electric cat feeder you can make. Survives power outages just fine, is single serving, but due to the noise and motion it makes, it is a perfect Pavlovian trainer for the cat. The best way to describe it is as a Rube Goldberg machine.

Set the timer for the planned feed time (up to 12 hours in advance). At the appointed time, the timer triggers, the drill rotates, the old, broken screwdriver chucked in the drill turns. The cord tied to the screwdriver winds up like a winch. This pulls up the lid covering the cat’s dinner plate. The noisy drill announces it’s dinner time. When fully raised, the lid pushes up a short piece of PCV pipe. This flips a switch, that shuts off the drill. If you need build instructions, fear not. [mightysinetheta] has detailed build instructions although the pictures are probably all you’ll need.

Check the video after the break.

Continue reading “Super Simple Cat Feeder” →

Hackaday Links: May 4, 2014

May 4, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 8 Comments

We’ve seen a few builds from the Flite Test guys before, like a literal flying toaster, airsoft guns mounted to planes, and giving an electric plane an afterburner (that actually produced a little extra thrust). Now the Flite Test crew is gearing up for the Flite Fest, an all things remote-controlled flight convention in Malvern, Ohio during the last weekend in July. Seems like a pretty cool way to spend spend a weekend.

Unless you get one of those fancy resistor kits where every value has its own compartment in a case or plastic baggie, you’ll soon rue the day your loose resistors become disorganized. [Kirll] has an interesting solution to hundreds of loose resistors: packaging tape. If you want a resistor, just grab a pair of scissors.

Okay, these Adafruit “totally not Muppets™” are awesome. The latest video in the Circuit Playground series is titled, “C is for Capacitor“. There’s also “B is for Battery“, because when life gives you lemons, light up an LED. Here’s the coloring book.

A few years ago, a couple of people at the LA Hackerspace Crashspace put together an animated flipbook device – something between a zoetrope and the numbers in those old electromechanical clocks – and launched a kickstarter. Now they’re putting on a show, presented by Giant Robot, featuring the animated art of dozens of artists.

Vintage electronics? Yes. Vintage Soviet electronics? Here’s 140 pages of pictures, mostly of old measurement devices.

Retrotechtacular: Singing Bird Automata

August 6, 2013 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

retrotechtacular-birdsong-automata

Our cats were both sleeping near the computer and these videos were driving them nuts. To our ears these birdsongs sound pretty good. They didn’t trick the cats into stalking mode, but they did spark an audible complaint. So the predators aren’t drooling but the mechanical engineers reading this should be. These automata combine the precision of a mechanical clock with a bellows and specialized whistle to recreate birdsong.

You’ve got to hear it for yourself to appreciate the variety produced by the mechanisms. The first video shows off the device seen on the left. This particular model is from the 1890’s and the demo gives a good look at the arms that open and block a passageway to alter the sound. After seeing that link — which was sent in by [Stefan] — we started searching around for more info on the devices. The one pictured to the right turned up. It’s from YouTube user [Singing Bird Boxes] who has many videos showcasing these types of devices. We picked this one because he tried to explain how each part of the mechanism works. These are still being made today, but there’s something magical about seeing one built during the steam age.

We’d like to make Retrotechtacular a weekly feature every Tuesday. Help us out by sending in links to projects that highlight old technology, instructional videos of yore, tours of museums or similar relics.

Continue reading “Retrotechtacular: Singing Bird Automata” →

Hackaday Links

October 20, 2005 by Eliot 12 Comments

MAKE:Blog has posted photos from their Make Faire at Euro OSCON. Have a look and you’ll see my co-conspirator Fabienne and regular commenter [Markie]. I know [led] was planning on attending. Did anyone else get a chance to go?

We were included in PC Mag’s Top 101 Web Sites under the category Computing – Experts. From the text it sounds like someone actually reads the site, which makes me even happier. [DigitalDame]

The Duxbury high school hacking contest entry deadline was the 14th. Have a look at some of the projects.

[Aleksandyr] wonders why anyone would settle for less than full cellphone SSH. You could even use J2MEVNC if you’re crazy enough.

VGA over Cat5 He says 800×600 works at over 50ft. [jubilantjeremy]

Google Random Number Generator [ravidgemole]

Beautiful mechanical clock that is accurate for 10k years

Palm pilot controlled tattoo machine [dANIEL]

[eric]’s guide for destroying CDs using duct tape.

A roundup of all of the ways to add a Firefox download counter to your site

The tip line

Continue reading “Hackaday Links” →

Lathe Outfitted With Electronic Gearbox

September 19, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 45 Comments

Running a metal lathe is not for the faint of heart. Without proper knowledge and preparation, these machines can quickly cause injury or destroy expensive stock, tools, or parts. The other major problem even for those with knowledge and preparedness is that some of their more niche capabilities, like cutting threads with a lead screw, can be tedious and complicated thanks to the change gear system found on some lathes. While these are useful tools for getting things done, [Not An Engineer] decided that there was a better way and got to work building an electronic gearbox to automate the task of the traditional mechanical change gear setup in this video.

What makes change gears so tricky is that they usually come as a set of many gears of different ratios, forcing the lathe operator to figure out the exact combination of gears needed to couple the spindle of the lathe to the feed screw at the precise ratio needed for cutting a specific thread pattern. It is possible to do this task but can be quite a headache. [Not An Engineer] first turned to an Arduino Nano to receive input from a rotary encoder connected to the shaft of the lathe and then instruct a motor to turn the feed screw at a set ratio.

The first major problem was that the Arduino was not nearly fast enough to catch every signal from the encoder, leading to a considerable amount of drift in the output of the motor. That was solved by upgrading to a Teensy 4.1 with a 600 MHz clock speed. There was still one other major hurdle to cross; the problem of controlling the motor smoothly when an odd ratio is selected. [Not An Engineer] used this algorithm to inspire some code, and with that and some custom hardware to attach everything to the lathe he has a working set of electronic change gears that never need to be changed again. And, if you don’t have a lathe at all but are looking to get started with one, you can always build your own from easily-sourced parts.

Continue reading “Lathe Outfitted With Electronic Gearbox” →

Hackaday Podcast Episode 288: Cyanotypes, Antique 21-Segment Displays, And The Voynich Manuscript In A New Light

September 13, 2024 by Dan Maloney No comments

It’s Friday the 13th, and despite having to dodge black cats and poorly located ladders, Elliot and Dan were able to get together and run down the best hacks of the first week of September. Our luck was pretty good, too, seeing how we stumbled upon a coffee table that walks your drink over to you on Strandbeest legs, a potato that takes passable photographs, and a cool LED display three times better than a boring old seven-segment.

If you’ve never heard of the Voynich manuscript, you’re in luck too, because we got a chance to look inside this medieval comic book literally, with multispectral analysis. Is your cruise ship too short? No worries, just lop it in two and add a section. Speaking of cutting things up, that’s what you need to do to see how your plus-size DIY rocket engine performed after test firing.

And finally, it was a sweep for Jenny this week with our “Can’t Miss” articles, where she both pines for a simpler, smaller web experience and wonders what the future holds for biomass fuels.