An OLED Photo Frame Powered By The ATtiny85

July 19, 2021 by 10 Comments

Rolling your own digital picture frame that loads images from an SD card and displays them on an LCD with a modern microcontroller like the ESP32 is an afternoon project, even less if you pull in somebody else’s code. But what if you don’t have the latest and greatest hardware to work with?

Whether you look at it as a practical application or an interesting experiment in wringing more performance out of low-end hardware, [Assad Ebrahim]’s demonstration of displaying digital photographs on an OLED using the ATtiny85 is well worth a look. The whole thing can put put together on a scrap of perfboard with a handful of common components, and can cycle through the five images stored on the chip’s flash memory for up to 20 hours on a CR2032 coin cell.

As you might expect, the biggest challenge in this project is getting all the code and data to fit onto the ATtiny85. To that end [Assad] wrote his own minimal driver for the SSD1306 OLED display, as the traditional Adafruit code took up too much space. The driver is a pretty bare bones implementation, but it’s enough to initialize the screen and get it ready for incoming data. His code also handles emulating I2C over Atmel’s Universal Serial Interface (USI) at an acceptable clip, so long as you bump the chip up to 8 MHz.

For the images, [Assad] details the workflow he uses to take the high-resolution color files and turn them into an array of bytes for the display. Part of that it just scaling down and converting to 1-bit color, but there’s also a bit of custom Forth code in the mix that converts the resulting data into the format his code expects.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen somebody use one of these common OLED displays in conjunction with the ATtiny85, and it’s interesting to see how their techniques compare. It’s not a combination we’d necessarily chose willingly, but sometimes you’ve got to work with whats available.

SOL75 Uses AI To Design Standard Mechanical Parts

July 19, 2021 by 19 Comments

[Francesco] developed a parametric design tool called SOL75 which aims to take the drudgery out of designing the basic mechanical parts used in projects. He knows how to design things like gears, pulleys, belts, brackets, enclosures, etc., but finds it repetitive and boring. He would rather spend his time on the interesting and challenging portions of his project instead.

The goal of SOL75 is to produce OpenSCAD and STL files of a part based on user requirements. These parameters go beyond the simple dimensional and include performance characteristics such as peak stress, rigidity, maximum temperature, etc. The program uses OpenSCAD to generate the geometries and a core module to evaluate candidate designs. In an attempt to overcome the curse of dimensionality, [Francesco] has trained an AI oracle to quickly accept or reject candidate solutions.

In the realm of parametric design aids, you have projects like NopSCADlib which dimensionally parameterize a large collection of common objects by numbers alone ( a 100 cm long, 6.35 mm diameter brass tube with 1.22 mm wall thickness ) or industry standard specifications ( a 10 mm long M3 socket head cap screw ). This approach doesn’t take into account whether the object will hold up in your application nor does it consider any 3D printing issues. At the other extreme, there are the generative design and optimization tools found in professional packages like Fusion 360 and SolidWorks which can make organic-looking items that are optimized precisely for the specified conditions.

SOL75 seems to fall in the middle, combine characteristics of both approaches. It gives you the freedom to select dimensional parameters and performance requirements, yet bounds the solution space by only offering objects that have been prepared ahead of time by domain experts — if you ask for an L-bracket, you’ll get an L-bracket and not something that looks like a spider web or frog leg.

Once you compile the design, SOL75 generates the OpenSCAD and/or STL files and a bill of materials. But wait — there’s more– it also makes a thorough design handbook documenting the part in great detail, including the various design considerations and notes on printing. Here is a demonstration link for an electronics enclosure which is pretty interesting. There is also an example of using SOL75 to make a glider, which you can read about on the Hackaday.io project page.

For now, [Francesco] has only made SOL75 available in a register-by-email online Beta version, as he’s still undecided on what form the final version will be. Do you have any success (or failure) stories regarding generative designs? Let us know in the comments below.

The Newlib Embedded C Standard Library And How To Use It

July 19, 2021 by 4 Comments

When writing code for a new hardware platform, the last thing you want to do is bother with the minutiae of I/O routines, string handling and other similarly tedious details that have nothing to do with the actual project. On bigger systems, this is where the C standard library would traditionally come into play.

For small embedded platforms like microcontrollers, resources are often tight enough that a full-blown stdlib won’t fit, which is why Newlib exists: to bring the portability benefits of a standard library to microcontrollers.

Whether you use C, C++ or MicroPython to program an MCU, Newlib is likely there under the hood. Yet how exactly does it integrate with the hardware, and how are system calls (syscalls) for e.g. file and input/output handling implemented? Continue reading “The Newlib Embedded C Standard Library And How To Use It” →

Python Your Keyboard Hack Chat With Adafruit

July 19, 2021 by 10 Comments

Join us on Wednesday, July 21 at noon Pacific for the Python Your Keyboard Hack Chat with the Adafruit crew!

Especially over the last year and a half, most of us have gotten the feeling that there’s precious little distinction between our computers and ourselves. We seem welded together, inseparable even, attached as we are day and night to our machines as work life and home life blend into one gray, featureless landscape where time passes unmarked except by the accumulation of food wrappers and drink cans around our work areas. Or maybe it just seems that way.

Regardless, there actually is a fine line between machine and operator, and in most instances it’s that electromechanical accessory that we all love to hate: the keyboard. If you buy off the shelf, it’s never quite right — too clicky, not clicky enough, wrong spacing, bad ergonomics, or just plain ugly design. The only real way around these limitations is to join the DIY keyboard crowd and roll your own, specifically customized to your fingers and your needs — at least until you realize that it’s not quite perfect, and need to modify it again.

Hitting this moving target is often as much a software problem as it is a hardware issue, but as is increasingly the case these days, Python is ready to help. To go into depth on how Python can be leveraged for the custom keyboard builder, our good friends at Adafruit, including Limor “Ladyada” Fried, Phillip Torrone, Dan Halbert,  Kattni Rembor, and Scott Shawcroft will stop by the Hack Chat. We suspect they’ll have some cool stuff to show off, in addition to sharing their tips and tricks for making DIY keyboards just right. If you’re building custom keebs, or even if you’re just “keyboard curious”, you won’t want to miss this one.

join-hack-chatOur Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, July 21 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

Samsung Shuttering Original SmartThings Hubs

July 19, 2021 by 83 Comments

Samsung is causing much angst among its SmartThings customers by shutting down support for its original SmartThings home automation hub as of the end of June. These are network-connected home automation routers providing Zigbee and Z-Wave connectivity to your sensors and actuators. It’s not entirely unreasonable for manufacturers to replace aging hardware with new models. But in this case the original hubs, otherwise fully functional and up to the task, have intentionally been bricked.

Users were offered a chance to upgrade to a newer version of the hub at a discount. But the hardware isn’t being made by Samsung anymore, after they redirected their SmartThings group to focus entirely on software. With this new dedication to software, you’d be forgiven for thinking the team implemented a seamless transition plan for its loyal user base — customers who supported and built up a thriving community since the young Colorado-based SmartThings company bootstrapped itself by a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2012. Instead, Samsung seems to leave many of those users in the lurch.

There is no upgrade path for switching to a new hub, meaning that the user has to manually reconnect each sensor in the house which often involves a cryptic sequence of button presses and flashing lights (the modern equivalent of setting the time on your VCR). Soon after you re-pair all your devices, you will discover that the level of software customization and tools that you’ve relied upon for home automation has, or is about to, disappear. They’ve replaced the original SmartThings app with a new in-house app, which by all accounts significantly dumbs down the features and isn’t being well-received by the community. Another very popular tool called Groovy IDE, which allowed users to add support for third-party devices and complex automation tasks, is about to be discontinued, as well.

Continue reading “Samsung Shuttering Original SmartThings Hubs” →

A Look Back On A Decade Of Kerbal Space Program

July 19, 2021 by 24 Comments

Just a few weeks before Atlantis embarked on the final flight of the Space Shuttle program in 2011, a small Mexican company by the name of Squad quietly released Kerbal Space Program (KSP) onto an unsuspecting world. Until that point the company had only developed websites and multi-media installations. Kerbal wasn’t even an official company initiative, it started as a side project by one of their employees, Felipe Falanghe. The sandbox game allowed players to cobble together rockets from an inventory of modular components and attempt to put them into orbit around the planet Kerbin. It was immediately addictive.

There was no story to follow, or enemies to battle. The closest thing to a score counter was the altimeter that showed how far your craft was above the planet’s surface, and the only way to “win” was to put its little green occupant, the titular Kerbal, back on the ground in one piece. The game’s challenge came not from puzzles or scripted events, but from the game’s accurate (if slightly simplified) application of orbital mechanics and Newtonian dynamics. Building a rocket and getting it into orbit in KSP isn’t difficult because the developers baked some arbitrary limitations into their virtual world; the game is hard for the same reasons putting a rocket into orbit around the Earth is hard.

One of my early rockets, circa 2013.

Over the years official updates added new components for players to build with and planets to explore, and an incredible array of community developed add-ons and modifications expanded the scope of the game even further. KSP would go on to be played by millions, and seeing a valuable opportunity to connect with future engineers, both NASA and the ESA helped develop expansions for the game that allowed players to recreate their real-world vehicles and missions.

But now after a decade of continuous development, with ports to multiple operating systems and game consoles, Squad is bringing this chapter of the KSP adventure to a close. To celebrate the game’s 10th anniversary on June 24th, they released “On Final Approach”, the game’s last official update. Attention will now be focused on the game’s ambitious sequel, which will expand the basic formula with the addition of interstellar travel and planetary colonies, currently slated for release in 2022.

Of course, this isn’t the end. Millions of “classic” KSP players will still be slinging their Kerbals into Hohmann transfer orbits for years to come, and the talented community of mod developers will undoubtedly help keep the game fresh with unofficial updates. But the end of official support is a major turning point, and it seems a perfect time to reminisce on the impact this revolutionary game has had on the engineering and space communities.

Continue reading “A Look Back On A Decade Of Kerbal Space Program“ →

3D Print In The Air With A Little Software Support

July 19, 2021 by 11 Comments

We all love 3D printing, but printing anything that has an overhang requires support, right? Maybe not. [Create Inc] has a video showing some 3D prints that seem to hang impossibly in the air — not bridges, but loops just floating in the air. You can see the effect in the video below.

The first part of the post covers gcode basics. Around the 5:30 mark, [Create] talks about his inspiration: FullControl Gcode Designer. You can do a lot with this tool and it inspired [Create’s] similar web-based version.

The point of these tools is to make it easier to create gcode directly instead of using a slicer. You can think of it as assembly language for 3D printing — you can do almost everything in the high-level language — 3D models — but if you want ultimate control you use assembly language, or, in this case, gcode.

The original tool uses Excel which didn’t visualize the output directly and could not provide proper error checking. The new tool solves those problems and is much easier to use.

If you know gcode, you can do a lot of interesting things. You can even put a spring in your step.

Continue reading “3D Print In The Air With A Little Software Support” →