An ESP8266 Sundial For Your Wall

March 20, 2019 by Tom Nardi 9 Comments

Hackers absolutely love building clocks. Seriously, there are few other devices for which we’ve seen such an incredible number of variations. But while the clocks that hackers build might blink out the time in binary, or write it out in words, they generally don’t feature hands. Apparently in 2019 it’s more reasonable to read binary than know which way the “little hand” is supposed to be pointing.

This ESP8266 powered “shadow clock” from [Dheera Venkatraman] technically keeps that tradition intact, but only just. His clock doesn’t feature physical hands, but it does use a strip of RGB LEDs to cast multi-colored shadows which serve the same function. With his clock, you don’t even have to try and figure out which hand is the big one, since they’re all the same length. Now that’s what we call progress.

Probably the biggest surprise about this clock, beyond how legitimately good it looks hanging on the wall, is how little work it takes to build your own version. That’s because [Dheera] specifically set out to design something that was cheaper and easier to build than what he’d seen previously, and we think he delivered on that goal in a big way. All you need are the 3D printed components, an ESP8266 board, and a strip of 144 WS2812B LEDs.

The software side of the project is similarly simplistic, and all you need to do is plug in your WiFi network credentials to have the ESP pull the current time from NTP. If you were so inclined, his source code would be an excellent base on which to implement additional features such as animations at the top of the hour.

Compared to something like the Bulbdial clock from 2009, it’s incredible how simple some of these projects have become in the last decade. With the tools and components available to hackers and makers today, there’s truly never been a better time to build something amazing.

Ask Hackaday: Is Your Clock Tied To Mains Frequency?

March 29, 2018 by Mike Szczys 162 Comments

Earlier in March we heard about a quirk of the interconnected continental European electricity grid which caused clocks to lose about six minutes so far this year. This was due to a slight dip in the mains frequency. That dip didn’t put anything out of commission, but clocks that are designed to accumulate the total zero-crossings of the power grid frequency of 50 Hz don’t keep accurate time when that frequency is, say 49.985 Hz for an extended period of time.

An interesting set of conversations popped up from that topic. There were several claims that modern alarm clocks, and most devices connected to mains, no longer get their clock timing from mains frequency. I’ve looked into this a bit which I’ll go into below. But what we really want to know is: are your alarm clocks and other devices keeping time with the grid or with something else?

Continue reading “Ask Hackaday: Is Your Clock Tied To Mains Frequency?” →

Hackaday Store Discounts To Satiate The Shopping Urge

November 23, 2017 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

Score everything in the Hackaday store for 50% off right now.

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States, a time when people migrate back home to spend time with families, fill themselves with Turkey and cranberry sauce, and are inevitably dragged out to the big box stores in search for that one great deal to satisfy their consumer urge.

Whether you observe the holiday or not, you can grab some geeky stuff from the Hackaday Store without the early rise or the need to be in a specific place. You’ll find a collection of some of our favorite hardware, sweet Hackaday apparel, and our beloved print goods sprinkled in. Give it a look.

Fly a quad indoors with the CrazyFlie 2.0, impersonate USB devices with the Facedancer21, and have a blast with our favorite clock kit, the Bulbdial Clock.

Assemble and program your own robotic MeARM, be the master of all things serial bus with the GoodFET42, and monitor the juice flowing to your USB device with the USB Tester 2.0.

Hundreds of Tindie Items are also on sale this weekend. Tindie where you go to find unique and cutting edge hardware sold by those that designed it. Check out to the Tindie sale page for a complete listing of items going on sale now and throughout the weekend.

1 KB Challenge: And The Winners Are…

January 13, 2017 by Adam Fabio 55 Comments

The 1 kB Challenge deadline has come and gone. The judges have done their work, and we’re ready to announce the winners. Before you jump down to find out who won, I’d like to take a moment to say thanks to everyone who participated. We had some incredible entries. To say that judging was hard is quite an understatement. Even [Eben Upton], father of the Raspberry Pi got in on the action. He created a new helicopter game for the classic BBC Micro. Look for writeups on the winners and many of the other entries in the coming weeks.

Grand Prize

The grand prize goes to [Jaromir Sukuba] for Brainf*cktor. [Jaromir] went above and beyond this time. He created a computer which can be programmed in everyone’s favorite esoteric programming language. Brainf*cktor uses 1019 bytes of program memory in [Jaromir’s] PIC18F26K22. You can write, execute and edit programs. [Jaromir] ran into a bit of a problem with his LCD. The character tables would have thrown him over the 1 kB limit. Not a problem – he designed his own compressed character set, which is included in the 1019 bytes mentioned above. All the clever software takes physical form with a homemade PCB, and a case built from blank PCB material. Best of all, [Jaromir] has explained his software tricks, as well as included a full build log for anyone who wants to replicate his project. All that hard work will be rewarded with a Digi-Comp II kit from EMSL.

First Prize

First prize goes to [Dumitru Stama] with M0S – CortexM0 RTOS in 1024 bytes. Operating systems are complex beasts. Many of our readers have toyed with the Linux Kernel. But writing a real-time OS from scratch? That’s quite an undertaking. [Dumitru] didn’t shy away from the challenge. He designed a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) for ARM processors, written completely in ARM thumb assembly instructions. This is no bare-bones executive. M0S has a rich list of features, including preemptive task scheduling, mutexes, and inter-process communication. [Dumitru] even gave us memory allocation with an implementation of malloc() and free(). The OS was demonstrated with a NUCLEO-F072RB board from ST-Micro.

[Dumitru] didn’t just drop a GitHub link and run. He documented M0S with seven project logs and a 37-minute long video. The video uses electronic whiteboard drawings to clearly explain all the internal workings of the operating system, as well as how to use it.

[Dumitru] is the proud new owner of a Maker Select 3D printer V2!

Second Prize

Second prize goes to [Cyrille Gindreau] with 1K Challange Laser. Vector lasers generally take lots of memory. You have to manage galvanometers, laser drive, and perform all the magic it takes to convert a set of vectors to lines drawn in space. The project uses 912 bytes of program and initialized data memory to command an MSP430 to draw an image.

Proving that flattery will get you everywhere, [Cyrille] picked the Hackaday logo as the subject. The Jolly Wrencher is not exactly simple to convert to vector format, though. It took some careful optimizations to come up with an image that fit within 1 kB. [Cyrille] wins a Bulbdial Clock kit from EMSL.

Third Prize

Third prize goes to [Mark Sherman] with tinygames. Video games have been around for awhile, but they are never quite this small. [Mark] coaxed the minuscule Atmel ATtiny84 to play Centipede with only 1024 bytes of program memory. Even the BOM is kept small, with just a few support components. Control is handled by an Atari 2600 compatible joystick. Video is black and white NTSC, which is demonstrated on a period accurate CRT. [Mark] generates his video by racing the electron beam, exactly the same way the Atari 2600 did it.

[Mark] will take home a Blinkytile kit from Blinkinlabs.

Final thoughts

First of all, I’d like to thank the judges. Our own [Jenny List], [Gerrit Coetzee], [Pedro Umbelino], [Bil Herd], and [Brian Benchoff] worked hard with me in judging this contest. I’d also like to thank our community for creating some amazing projects. The contest may be over, but these projects are now out there for others to build, enjoy, and learn from.

I’ve wanted to organize this contest since [Jeri Ellsworth] and [Chris Gammell] took on the 555 contest way back in 2011. The problem is creating a set of rules that would be relatively fair to every architecture. I think 133 entries to this contest proves that we found a very fair set of constraints. It is safe to say this won’t be the last 1 kB Challenge here at Hackaday, so if you have ideas for future editions, share them in the comments!

Step Up To The 1 KB Challenge

November 21, 2016 by Adam Fabio 116 Comments

1 kilobyte. Today it sounds like an infinitesimally small number. Computers come with tens of gigabytes of ram, and multiple terabytes of storage space. You can buy a Linux computer with 1 gig of RAM and secondary storage as big as the SD card you throw at it. Even microcontrollers have stepped up their game, with megabytes of flash often available for program storage.

Rapidly growing memory and storage are a great testament to technology marching forward to the beat of Moore’s law. But, we should be careful not to forget the techniques of past hackers who didn’t have so much breathing room. Those were the days when code was written in assembly. Debugging was accomplished with an expensive ICE (an In Circuit Emulator… if you were working for a big company), or a few LEDs if you were hacking away in your basement.

To keep these skills and techniques in play, we’ve created The 1 kB Challenge, a contest where the only limit is what you can do with 1 kB of program memory. Many Hackaday contests are rather loose with constraints — anyone can enter and at least make the judging rounds. This time 1 kB is a hard limit. If your program doesn’t fit, you’re disqualified, and that is a challenge worth stepping up to.

That said, this is Hackaday, we want people to be creative and work around the rules. The important thing to remember is the spirit of the design constraints: this is about doing all you can with 1 kB of program space. Search out the old and wise tricks, like compressing your code and including a decompression program in your 1 kB. Crafty hacks to squeeze more into less is fine. Using the 1 kB as a bootloader to load more code from an SD card is not fine.

Prizes

Any Hackaday contest needs some awesome prizes, and this one is no different.

Continue reading “Step Up To The 1 KB Challenge” →

Hackaday Store Sale Ends Sunday!

April 9, 2016 by Jasmine Brackett 2 Comments

Since the Hackaday Store Spring sale launched, hundreds of items have been flying out the door (sadly only metaphorically, not by drone delivery), and the warehouse robot uprising has been somewhat quelled.

But, all good things must come to an end. Sunday night, the big discounts will disappear and regular prices will return. Until then you can get up to 30% off a range of electronics toys, hardware tools, DIY kits, and Sparkfun items.

Have your eye on [Technolomaniac]’s Hackaday branded Arduino-compatible Spartan-6 FPGA Development Board, [Paul Stoffregen]’s super Teensy 3.2 microcontroller, or [Travis Goodspeed]’s USB fuzz-test tool Facedancer21? Get them now at a discounted price. Shipping is free on orders over $35 to the US, $50 to Canada, and $75 to the rest of the world. There’s no excuse not to start your next Hackaday.io project now.

Need more Hackaday swag? The CRT Android and Robot Head tee are 30% off, as is our women’s fit Hackaday.io t-shirt. The Hackaday edition Trinket Pro, TV-B-Gone, and Huzzah ESP8266 dev board are all 10% off.

Stocks are getting low on some items. Bus Pirates and Bulbdial Kits have been particularly popular. We’ve only got a few XuLA2-LX9 FPGA Boards, JTAGulators, Whistled and DSOtouch left. [Adam Fabio]’s Analog Gauge Stepper, [Macetech]’s RGB Shades, and [BleepLabs]’s Nebulophone have already sold out during this sale. Check out the Spring sale today and get yourself a deal before they’re gone.

Sale ends 11:59 PM PST on Sunday, 10 April (or while supplies last). Sale items are at clearance prices and are final sale. No returns accepted. We will only allow exchanges for the same item or store credit if the item is faulty.

The Hackaday Store Is Having A Sale

March 28, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 11 Comments

The Hackaday Store has been up and running for a year and a half now, sending out Hackaday Omnibus, t-shirts, [Alex Rich]’s Stickvice, and an entire MeArm-y from [Phenoptix]. After eighteen months, the enslaved robots in the warehouse are plotting a rebellion, so we’re stamping that right out with a Spring sale in the Hackaday Store!

The Bulbdial Clock turns pretty lights into a clock.

For the next two weeks (or while supplies last) you can get up to 30% off a range of toys, tools, and kits including the Crazyflie 2.0 quadcopter, [Travis Goodspeed]’s Facedancer21 GoodFET board, the Bulbdial Clock kit, the mindbending Cordwood Puzzle from [Boldport], and dozens of other items.

Want some sweet Hackaday swag? The CRT Android and Robot Head tee (limited sizes) are 30% off, as is our women’s fit Hackaday.io t-shirt. The Hackaday edition Trinket Pro, TV-B-Gone, and Huzzah ESP8266 dev board are 10% off, so there’s no excuse not to start your next Hackaday.io project now. Check out the Spring sale today and get yourself a deal.

Shipping is free on US orders over $35, Canadian orders over $50, and International orders over $75 (Unfortunately we’re unable to ship to all countries right now). Sale items are at clearance prices and are final sale. We will only exchange if the item is faulty (if the item is no longer available you will be given store credit).