According to reports, a turbine-powered flying board buzzed around Bastille Day celebrations carrying its inventor [Franky Zapata] toting a rifle to promote the military applications of the Flyboard Air. You can see the video record, below.
We’ve heard the board costs a cool $250,000 so you may want to start saving now. There are several versions including one that qualifies in the United States as an ultralight. The board Zapata used can reach speeds of 190 km/h and can run for up to 10 minutes, although the website claims 200 km/h is possible and the company also claims to routinely reach 140 km/h. and 6 minute flight times.
When [Mr. Sobolak] started his DIY Midi Fighter he already had experience with the MIDI protocol, and because it is only natural once you have mastered something to expand on the success and build something more impressive, more useful, and more button-y. He is far from rare in this regard. More buttons mean more than extra mounting holes, for example an Arduino’s I/O will fill up quickly as potentiometers hog precious analog inputs and button arrays take digital ones. Multiplexing came to the rescue, a logic-based way to monitor or control more devices, in contrast to the serial protocols used by an IO expander.
Multiplexing was not in [Mr. Sobolak]’s repertoire, but it was a fitting time to learn and who doesn’t love acquiring a new skill by improving upon a past project? All the buttons were easy enough to mount but keeping the wires tidy was not in the scope of this project, so if you have a weak stomach when it comes to a “bird’s nest” on the underside you may want to look away and think of something neat. Regardless of how well-groomed the wires are, the system works and you can listen to a demo after the break. Perhaps the tangle of copper beneath serves a purpose as it buoys the board up in lieu of an enclosure.
We are looking forward to the exciting new versions where more solutions are exercised, but sometimes, you just have to tackle a problem with the tools you have, like when the code won’t compile with the MIDI and NeoPixel libraries together so he adds an Uno to take care of the LEDs. Is it the most elegant? No. Did it get the job done? Yes, and if you don’t flip over the board, you would not even know.
In a move guaranteed to send audiophiles recoiling back into their sonically pristine caves, two doctoral students at ETH Zurich have come up with an interesting way to embed information into music. What sounds crazy about this is that they’re hiding data firmly in the audible spectrum from 9.8 kHz to 10 kHz. The question is, does it actually sound crazy? Not to our ears, playback remains surprisingly ok.
You can listen to a clip with and without the data on ETH’s site and see for yourself. As a brief example, here’s twelve seconds of the audio presenting two versions of the same clip. The first riff has no data, and the second riff has the encoded data.
You can probably convince yourself that there’s a difference, but it’s negligible. Even if we use a janky bandpass filter over the 8 kHz -10 kHz range to make the differences stand out, it’s not easy to differentiate what you’re hearing:
Garage doors can be frustrating things, being a chore to open manually and all. Many people opt to install a motorized opener, but for some, even this isn’t enough. Hooking up a garage door to the Internet of Things has long been a popular project, and [Simon Ludborzs] decided to give it a shot. Naturally, there were some obstacles to be overcome along the way.
[Simon]’s build is relatively straight down the lines, using an ESP-12 as the brains of the operation, which connects to the internet over WiFi. However, robustness was a major goal of the project, and being reliant on shaky cloud-based services wouldn’t do. This opener is set up to work independently of an internet connection, too. There’s a nifty control panel with glowing buttons to operate the opener, in addition to the webpage served up on the network.
During the development, [Simon] ran into several roadblocks. A set of roller door motors were inadvertently killed, and there were issues in getting the web interface working as expected. None of these were showstoppers, though, and with a little work and some new parts, everything came together in the end. The project was then given a proper commercial-grade case, sourced from AliBaba. This is a great step to take for a project expected to hold up to daily use for years on end. He also took the time to document his tips for easier ESP8266 development, which may prove useful to those just getting started with the platform.
The Arduboy is a tiny, credit-card sized sized video game console that you can build yourself. The Dreamcast VMU was also a tiny, pocketable video game system, but really that’s just where we stored our saves for Crazy Taxi. What do you get when you combine the two? [sjm] did just that, giving us an Arduboy tucked into a Dreamcast VMU.
The guts of the Arduboy is simply an ATMega32u4, the same chip found in many Arduinos, an I2C OLED, and a few other various electronics for USB, power, and battery protection. In short, it’s an easy circuit, and something just about anyone with the skills can build themselves. Since just anyone can get a PCB fabbed, and the Dreamcast already has nice silicone buttons built into the enclosure, it was a simple matter for [sjm] to create a Dreamcast VMU-shaped PCB with all the guts of an Arduboy. The only real difference is the size of the OLED — this one uses a 0.96″ 128×64 OLED, where the original used one with the same resolution but with a significantly larger size.
Yes, we’ve seen this same project before, but now thanks to the magic of the Hackaday Prize, it’s now in the running for the greatest hardware competition on the planet. You can check out the entire build video and a short demo after the break. Of course, this isn’t the first repurposing of the Arduboy circuit, we’ve seen a flex circuit version, and a version with a crank like the Playdate developed by Teenage Engineering and Panic.
A lot of electronics enthusiasts gravitate to the digital side of the hobby, at least at first. It’s understandable – an Arduino, a few jumpers, and a bit of code can accomplish a lot. But in the final analysis, digital circuits are just analog circuits with the mystery abstracted away, and understanding the analog side opens up a fascinating window on the world of electronics.
Chris Gammell is well-known around hacker circles thanks to his Amp Hour Podcast with Dave Jones, his KiCad tutorials, and his general hacker chops. He’s also got a thing for the analog world, and wants to share some of the tips and tricks he’s developed over his two decades as an electrical engineer. In the next Hack Chat, we’ll be joining Chris down in the weeds to learn the ins and outs of low-level analog measurements. Join us with your questions and insights, or just come along to peel back some of the mysteries of the analog world.
Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.
Is the second cheapest tool you can find any better than the cheapest one?
Readers with long memories will recall there was a time when I amused myself by tacking inexpensive tools or electronic devices to my various orders from the Chinese electronic Aladdin’s Cave. Often these inexpensive purchases proved to be as disastrous or ineffective as you might expect, but sometimes they show unexpected promise, true diamonds in the rough. It’s been a while and life has intervened over the last year, but it’s time to resume this harmless diversion.
Memories Of An Explosive Conclusion
A particularly memorable review came in April 2018, when I bought a five pound ($6.30) desoldering iron. I described it then as an “unholy lovechild of a cheap solder sucker and an even cheaper soldering iron“, and while that was an accurate portrayal it also showed promise as a useful tool that would fill a niche in my requirements. Desoldering is always slightly annoying, and a heated desolder pump genuinely does make a difference. Unfortunately for me, the cheap desoldering tool was not a product I’d recommend that anyone try for themselves. A combination of questionable electrical safety and a propensity to explosively deconstruct itself meant it has languished unused in my big box of cheap junk, and I’m still without a decent desoldering solution. It is time to buy something better, and in the rich tradition of reviewing inexpensive stuff I decided to pick up the next cheapest desoldering iron I could find. Eight pounds ($10) secured me a Shi Yi Tool Sy365-8, and I set to on this review.
The unit arrived in a blister pack along with a wire tool for clearing its nozzle and a metal pointy thing whose intended use is unclear. All the information on the pack is in Chinese, but with Google Translate it was revealed to be nothing more than the usual descriptive text. The iron itself is similar to the previously reviewed model, something like a chunky take on a cheap soldering iron with the plunger and button of a spring-loaded desoldering tool protruding from the handle. It also has the same arrangement of the power cord emerging from the side of the handle below the element, and the same American-style NEMA mains plug.
Commenters assured me last time that in China this is sometimes used as a 230V connector, however for UK mains I put a BS1363A plug on it.
Extra Insulation Gives Confidence
The iron’s tip required tinning to be most effective.
Examining it more closely it was clear where at least some of my extra three quid had gone. The element and tip look very similar to those on the cheaper iron, but where the previous one’s mains cable had entered without sleeving right against the hot metal base of the element, this one has an extra insulating collar between handle and metalwork. It doesn’t have a double-insulated symbol anywhere on it, but unlike the other model it gives me confidence in its 3A twin wire no earth mains cable.
In use, the iron performed exactly as expected. A heated solder sucker is an effective tool, able to more efficiently remove solder than a separate iron and sucker. It smoked a bit on first use due to oil from manufacturing and it could use a bit more power than the quoted 36W because large joints needed a bit of time to get the heat into them, but otherwise it’s exactly the desoldering tool I expected for my 8 quid.
Will It Blow? Or Will It Suck?
This plunger seems to be securely retained.
So to the most important paragraph of the whole review, the one with the answer to the question you’re all asking. Did this tool explosively deconstruct itself as its cheaper competitor had? That solder sucker had been fixed together by friction alone, its piston was a push-on fit, and a bit of usage had dislodged it. I’m pleased to say that this one appears to have a different design with a secure cap over the top of the piston, and try as I might I couldn’t launch its plunger off across the room.
In conclusion then, the Shi Yi Tool Sy365-8 desoldering iron is an effective tool for its size and power rating that appears to have been designed with some thought to electrical safety and which seems well-enough assembled that it remains in one piece during repeated use. It won’t replace your high-end desoldering station, but it’s a handy bench tool for the occasional desolderer.
