Someone Get This Minimalist Wooden PC A Martini

April 8, 2021 by 19 Comments

It’s interesting to imagine what computers may have looked like throughout different time periods that precede their portability or even their existence altogether. In the 1950s and ’60s, computers still filled entire rooms, but if the age of the PC had arrived earlier one is left to wonder what might a minimalist mid-century PC might look like.

Well, if we were lucky, it would have looked something like [xmorneau]’s cubical computing creation. This DIY beauty is made of scrap oak and a sexy set of hairpin legs. As hot as it looks, [xmorneau] shouldn’t have to worry about overheating — the bottom is completely open except for an intake fan, there’s another fan at the top that exhausts hot air through a mesh grille, and those lovely little legs elevate it four inches off the desk. Our favorite part (after the legs) has to be the secret lid that blends in beautifully.

The cube measures 32cm³ (~12.6in³), so [xmorneau] went with a mini-ATX motherboard, but was able to fit in a full-size graphics card. Everything is mounted internally to wood except for the mobo, which is mounted on a panel of sheet metal that makes up the back wall.

We love the way this looks and are glad to see that this build changed [xmorneau]’s opinion of RGB a little bit, because we can’t help but like it both ways.

Too sophisticated for your taste? Check out this LEGO-Minecraft mashup.

An Open Source Smart Watch You’d Actually Wear

April 8, 2021 by 39 Comments

We’ve seen a number of open source smart watches over the years, and while they’ve certainly been impressive from a technical standpoint, they often leave something to be desired in terms of fit and finish. Exposed PCBs and monochromatic OLED displays might be fine for a trip to the hackerspace, but it wouldn’t be our first choice for date night attire.

Enter the Open-SmartWatch from [pauls_3d_things]. This ESP32 powered watch packs a gorgeous circular 240×240 TFT display, DS323M RTC, BMA400 three-axis accelerometer, and a 450 mAh battery inside of a 3D printed enclosure that can be produced on your average desktop machine. WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity are a given with the ESP32, but there’s also an enhanced edition of the PCB that adds another 4 MB of RAM, a micro SD slot, and a Quectel L96 GPS receiver.

The GPS edition of the PCB

As it’s an open source project you’re free to download the PCB design files and get the board produced on your own, but [pauls_3d_things] has actually partnered with LILYGO to do a run of the Open-SmartWatch electronics which you can pick up on AliExpress right now for just $24 USD. You’ll still need to order the battery separately and 3D print your own case, but it still seems like a pretty sweet deal to us.

On the software front, things are pretty basic right now. The watch can update the time from NTP using a pre-configured WiFi network, and there’s a Bluetooth media controller and stopwatch included. Of course, as more people get the hardware in their hands (or on their wrists, as the case may be), we’ll likely start seeing more capabilities added to the core OS.

While getting our own code running on commercially produced smartwatches holds a lot of promise, the Open-SmartWatch is arguably the best of both worlds. The partnership with LILYGO brings professional fabrication to the open hardware project, and the GPLv3 licensed firmware is ripe for hacking. We’re very excited to see where the community takes this project, and fully expect to start seeing these watches out in the wild once we can have proper cons again.

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CNC Chainsaw

April 8, 2021 by 29 Comments

You can spend a lot of time trying to think of a clever title for a post about a CNC chainsaw. But you’ll finally realize, what else can you say but “CNC Chainsaw?” [Stuff Made Here] actually built such a beast, and you can watch it go in the video embedded below. A custom chainsaw on a Tormach robotic arm. So it is more like a robot using a chainsaw than a conventional CNC machine.

Instead of an XY motion, the machine uses what the video calls an “apple peeler” method and uses the Minkowski algorithm to adjust for the size of the chainsaw. The video is an odd juxtaposition of advanced topics like the Minkowski and basic things like G code.

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Electric Vehicle 1900’s Style: New Leases On Old Tech

April 8, 2021 by 69 Comments

Excited about your new electric vehicle? Thomas Edison would be, too. He tried to produce electric vehicles for Ford around 1900. Petroleum-based vehicles dashed his dreams of the electric car, and the battery he wanted to use languished as a technological dead end. The batteries were long-lasting, sure, but they were expensive and had other problems, not the least of which was producing hydrogen gas. But that battery technology is receiving renewed interest today, because some of the things that made it a bad car battery make it good for alternate energy projects.

You wouldn’t think a century-old battery technology that was never very popular would make a comeback. But then again, who thought we’d see the return of bell-bottom pants or vinyl records? Continue reading “Electric Vehicle 1900’s Style: New Leases On Old Tech” →

18650 Brings ESP8266 WiFi Repeater Along For The Ride

April 8, 2021 by 30 Comments

We’re truly fortunate to have so many incredible open source projects floating around on the Internet, since there’s almost always some prior art you can lean on. By combining bits and pieces from different projects, you can often save yourself a huge amount of time and effort. It’s just a matter of figuring out how all the pieces fit together, like in this clever mash-up by [bethiboothi] that takes advantage of the fact that the popular TP4056 lithium-ion battery charger module happens to be almost the exact same size of the ESP-01.

By taking a 3D printed design intended to attach a TP4056 module to the end of an 18650 cell and combining it with an ESP8266 firmware that turns the powerful microcontroller into a WiFi repeater, [bethiboothi] ended up with a portable network node that reportedly lasts up to three days on a charge. The observed range was good even with the built-in PCB antenna, but hacking on an external can get you out a little farther if you need it.

While it doesn’t appear that [bethiboothi] is using it currently, the esp_wifi_repeater firmware does have an automatic mesh mode which seems like it would be a fantastic fit for this design. Putting together an impromptu mesh WiFi network with a bunch of cheap battery powered nodes would be an excellent way to get network connectivity at an outdoor hacker camp, assuming the ESP’s CPU can keep up with the demand.

Code Your Own Twitch Chat Controls For Robots — Or Just About Anything Else!

April 8, 2021 by 4 Comments

Twitch Plays Pokemon burst onto the then nascent livestreaming scene back in 2014, letting Twitch viewers take command of a Game Boy emulator running Pokemon Red via simple chat commands. Since then, the same concept has been applied to everything under the sun. Other video games, installing Linux, and even trading on the New York Stock Exchange have all been gameified through Twitch chat.

TwitchPlaysPokemon started a craze in crowdsourced control of video games, robots, and just about everything else.

You, thirsty reader, are wondering how you can get a slice of this delicious action. Fear not, for with a bit of ramshackle code, you can let Twitch chat take over pretty much anything in, on, or around your computer.

It’s Just IRC

The great thing about Twitch chat is that it runs on vanilla IRC (Internet Relay Chat). The protocol has been around forever, and libraries exist to make interfacing easy. Just like the original streamer behind Twitch Plays Pokemon, we’re going to use Python because it’s great for fun little experiments like these. With that said, any language will do fine — just apply the same techniques in the relevant syntax.

SimpleTwitchCommander, as I’ve named it on Github, assumes some familiarity with basic Python programming. The code will allow you to take commands from chat in two ways. Commands from chat can be tabulated, and only the one with the most votes executed, or every single command can be acted on directly. Actually getting this code to control your robot, video game, or pet viper is up to you. What we’re doing here is interfacing with Twitch chat and pulling out commands so you can make it do whatever you like. With that said, for this example, we’ve set up the code to parse commands for a simple wheeled robot. Let’s dive in.

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Compute Module 4 NAS With Custom Carrier Board

April 8, 2021 by 20 Comments

At this point, we’ve seen more Raspberry Pi Network Attached Storage (NAS) builds than we can possibly count. The platform was never a particularly ideal choice for this task due to the fact it could only connect to drives over USB, but it was cheap and easy to work with, so folks made the best of it. But that all changed once the Compute Module 4 introduced PCIe support to the Raspberry Pi ecosystem.

If this impressive NAS built by [mebs] represents the shape of things to come, we’re more than a little excited. On the outside, with its 3D printed case and integrated OLED display to show system status, it might look like plenty of builds that came before it. But pop the top of this cyberpunk-styled server, and you realize just how much work went into it.

At the heart of this NAS is a purpose-built carrier board that [mebs] designed based on the KiCad files the Raspberry Pi Foundation released for their official CM4 IO Board. While not much larger than the CM4 itself, the NAS board breaks out the board’s PCIe, Ethernet, HDMI, and USB. There’s also a header for I2C, used primarily for the OLED display but naturally expandable to additional sensors or devices, and nine GPIO pins for good measure.

Of course, that alone doesn’t make a NAS. Into that PCIe port goes a four channel SATA controller card, which in turn is connected to the hard disk drives that are nestled into their respective nodes of the printed case. A central fan blows over the electronics at the core, and thanks to clever design and a few cardboard seals, pulls air over the drives by way of intake vents printed into the sides.

As impressive as this build is, not everyone will need this level of performance. If you don’t mind being limited to USB speeds, you can 3D print a NAS enclosure for the standard Raspberry Pi. Or you could always repurpose an old PC case if you’d like something a bit more substantial.