Hackaday Podcast 187: The Sound Of Gleeful Gerbils, The Song Of The Hard Drive, And A Lipstick Pickup Lullaby

September 30, 2022 by Kristina Panos 2 Comments

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Assignments Editor Kristina Panos gushed about NASA’s live obliteration of minor planet Dimorphos using a probe outfitted with a camera. Spoiler alert: the probe reaches its rock-dappled rocky target just fine, and the final transmitted image has a decidedly human tinge.

Kristina brought the mystery sound again this week, much to Elliot’s sonic delight. Did he get it? Did he figure it out? Well, no. The important thing is one of you is bound to get it.

We kick off the hacks with a really neat 3D printed linkage that acts as an elevator for a marble run, and then we discuss a mid-century hack that helps you decide whether it’s time to emerge from the fallout shelter using the contents of your typical 1950s pockets. We spent a few minutes comparing our recent radiation exposure levels — Kristina wins with about a dozen x-rays so far this year, but no full-body CT scans. Then we talk guitars for a bit, remember a forgotten CPU from TI, and spend a few cycles talking about a tone-wheel organ that sounds like a chorus of gleeful gerbils.

Finally, we talk toner transfer for 3D prints, argue in defense of small teams versus large committees, and get all tangled up in cursive.

Direct download.

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!

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Hackaday Prize 2022: Solar Powered LoRa Weather Station For The Masses

September 22, 2022 by Dave Rowntree 20 Comments

[Debasish Dutta] has designed a few weather stations in the past, and this, the fourth version of the system has had many of the feature requests from past users rolled in. The station is intended to be used with an external weather sensor unit, provided by Sparkfun. This handles wind speed and direction, as well as measuring rainfall. A custom PCB hosts an ESP32-WROOM module and an Ai-Thinker Ra-02 LoRa module for control and connectivity respectively. A PMS5003 sits on the PCB to measure those particulate densities, but most sensors are connected with simple 4-way I2C connectors. Temperature, humidity, and pressure are handled by a BME280 module, UV Index (SI1145), visible light (BH1750) even soil humidity and temperature with a cable-mounted SHT10 module.

All this is powered by a solar panel, which charges a 18650 cell, and keeps the show running during the darker hours. For debugging and deployment, a USB-C power port can also be used to provide charge. A 3D printed Stevenson screen type enclosure allows the air to circulate amongst the PCB-mounted sensor modules, without hopefully too much moisture making it in there to cause mischief.

On the data collection and visualization side, a companion LoRa receiver module is in progress, which is intended to pass along measurements to a variety of services. Think Home Assistant, ESP home, and that kind of thing. Software is still a work in progress, so maybe check back later to see how [Debasish] is getting on with that?

This kind of multi-sensor hosting project is nothing new here, here’s a 2019 Hackaday prize entry along the same lines. Of course, gathering and logging measurement data is only part of the problem, visualization of those measurements is also important. Why not use a mechanical approach, such as a diorama?

Frank Drake’s Legacy, Or: Are We All Alone In The Universe?

September 9, 2022 by Maya Posch 85 Comments

When Frank Drake began his astronomy career in the late 1950s, this was an incredibly exciting time for the field. Humanity was beginning to unlock the secrets of the Universe using ever more powerful radio frequency and optical telescopes, including the tantalizing prospect of space-based telescopes. Amidst the ramping up Space Race between the US and USSR, there was an ever-growing excitement about humankind’s future among the stars.

As concrete plans for landings and colonies on the Moon, Venus and Mars were proposed and put into action, it also brought to the forefront many existing and new questions about humanity’s place in the Universe. During Frank Drake’s 92 years on planet Earth – until his passing on September 2nd of this year – he was one of the driving forces behind the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), along with other legends like Carl Sagan.

Although to the average person the acronym SETI is most likely to bring to mind popcorn movies about little grey – or green – men, Drake’s Project Ozma, as well as the SETI Institution and the ongoing Breakthrough Listen project are just some of the attempts made by Drake and his colleagues over the decades to answer that one question that may affect the very course of humankind’s future: are we alone in the Universe?

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Hackaday Links: September 4, 2022

September 4, 2022 by Dan Maloney 19 Comments

Say what you will about Tesla, but there’s little doubt that the electric vehicle maker inspires a certain degree of fanaticism in owners. We’re used to the ones who can’t stop going on about neck-snapping acceleration and a sci-fi interior. But the ones we didn’t see coming are those who feel their cars are so bad that they need to stage a hunger strike to get the attention of Tesla. The strike is being organized by a group of Tesla owners in Norway, who on their website enumerate a long list of grievances, including design defects, manufacturing issues, quality control problems, and customer service complaints. It’s not clear how many people are in the group, although we assume at least 18, as that’s the number of Tesla cars they used to spell out “HELP” in a parking lot. It’s also not clear how or even if the group is really off their feed, or if this is just a stunt to get the attention of Tesla honcho and notorious social media gadfly Elon Musk.

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Building A Glowing Demon Core Lamp

August 31, 2022 by Lewin Day 15 Comments

The so-called Demon Core was a cursed object, a 6.2 kilogram mass of plutonium intended to be installed in a nuclear weapon. Instead, slapdash experimental techniques saw it feature in several tragic nuclear accidents and cause multiple fatalities. Now, you can build yourself a lamp themed after this evil dense sphere.

A later recreation of the infamous “Slotin Accident” that occurred with the Demon Core. Credit: Public Domain, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Creator [skelly] has designed the lamp to replicate the Slotin incident, where the spherical Demon Core was placed inside two half-spheres of beryllium which acted as neutron reflectors to allow it to approach criticality. Thus, the core is printed as a small sphere which is thin enough to let light escape, mimicking the release of radiation that doomed Louis Slotin. The outer spheres are then printed in silvery PLA to replicate the beryllium half-spheres. It’s all assembled atop a stand mimicking those used in the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1940s.

To mimic the Core’s deadly blue glow, the build uses cheap LED modules sourced from Dollar Tree lights. With the addition of a current limiting resistor, they can easily be run off USB power in a safe manner.

The Demon Core has become a meme in recent times, perhaps as a new generation believes themselves smart enough not to tinker with 6.2 kilograms of plutonium and a screwdriver. That’s not to say there aren’t still dangerous nuclear experiments going on, even the DIY kind. Be careful out there!

Space-Based Solar Power: Folly Or Stroke Of Genius?

August 24, 2022 by Maya Posch 137 Comments

The Sun always shines in space, unless a pesky planet gets in the way. That’s more or less the essential thought behind space-based solar power (SBSP) as newly pitched by ESA’s director general, Josef Aschbacher on Twitter. Rather than putting photovoltatic solar panels on the Earth’s surface which has this annoying property of constantly rotating said panels away from the Sun during what is commonly referred to as ‘night’, the panels would be put stationary in space, unaffected by the Earth’s rotation and weather.

Although a simple idea, it necessitates the solving of a number of problems. The obvious first question is how to get these panels up in space, hundreds of kilometers from the Earth’s surface, to create a structure many times larger than the International Space Station. The next question is how to get the power back to Earth, followed by questions about safety, maintenance, transfer losses and the inevitable economics.

With organizations ranging from NASA to China’s Academy for Space Technology (CAST), to US institutions and others involved in SBSP projects, it would seem that these problems are at the very least deemed to be solvable. This raises the question of how ESA’s most recent proposal fits into this picture. Will Europe soon be powered from orbital solar panel arrays?

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Unpacking The Stowaway Science Aboard Artemis I

August 22, 2022 by Tom Nardi 40 Comments

NASA’s upcoming Artemis I mission represents a critical milestone on the space agency’s path towards establishing a sustainable human presence on the Moon. It will mark not only the first flight of the massive Space Launch System (SLS) and its Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS), but will also test the ability of the 25 ton Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) to operate in lunar orbit. While there won’t be any crew aboard this flight, it will serve as a dress rehearsal for the Artemis II mission — which will see humans travel beyond low Earth orbit for the first time since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

As the SLS was designed to lift a fully loaded and crewed Orion capsule, the towering rocket and the ISPS are being considerably underutilized for this test flight. With so much excess payload capacity available, Artemis I is in the unique position of being able to carry a number of secondary payloads into cislunar space without making any changes to the overall mission or flight trajectory.

NASA has selected ten CubeSats to hitch a ride into space aboard Artemis I, which will test out new technologies and conduct deep space research. These secondary payloads are officially deemed “High Risk, High Reward”, with their success far from guaranteed. But should they complete their individual missions, they may well help shape the future of lunar exploration.

With Artemis I potentially just days away from liftoff, let’s take a look at a few of these secondary payloads and how they’ll be deployed without endangering the primary mission of getting Orion to the Moon.

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