Nintendo Headquarters Plaques

3D Print A Piece Of Nintendo History Before The Real One Is Gone

September 24, 2020 by 13 Comments

Nintendo wasn’t always in the videogames business. Long before Mario, the company was one of the foremost producers of Hanafuda playing cards in Japan. From 1930 until 1959, Nintendo ran its printing business from a four-story art deco style building that featured distinctive plaques at the front entrance. We now have a chance to print those former Nintendo HQ plaques at home thanks to [Mr. Talida] who shared some 3D models on Twitter. Talida, a self-described “retro video game archivist”, recreated the plaques via photogrammetry from a number of reference photos he took from a visit to the Kyoto site late last year.

These 3D models come at a crucial time as the old Nintendo HQ building, which sat dormant for years, is set to be turned into a boutique hotel next year. According to JPC, the hotel will feature twenty rooms, a restaurant, and a gym and is expected to be completed by summer 2021 (although that estimate was from the “before” times). The renovation is expected to retain as much of the original exterior’s appearance as possible, but the Nintendo plaques almost assuredly will not be included. For a first-person tour of the former Nintendo headquarters building, there is a video from the world2529 YouTube channel provided below.

It is encouraging to see examples of this DIY-style of historical preservation. Many companies have proven themselves to be less-than-stellar stewards of their own history. Though if his Twitter timeline is any indication, [Mr. Talida] is up to something further with this photogrammetry project. A video export exhibiting a fully textured 3D model of the old Nintendo headquarters’ entrance was published recently along with the words, “What have I done.”

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ESP32 Vulnerability Affects Older Chips

September 24, 2020 by 24 Comments

There is a scene from the movie RED (Retired, Extremely Dangerous) where Bruce Willis encounters a highly-secure door with a constantly changing lock code deep inside the CIA. Knowing the lock would be impossible to break, he simply destroyed the wall next to the door, reached through, and opened the door from the other side. We thought about that when we saw [raelize’s] hack to bypass the ESP32’s security measures.

Before you throw out all your ESP32 spy gadgets, though, be aware that the V3 silicon can be made to prevent the attack. V1 and V2, however, have a flaw that — if you know how to exploit it — renders secure boot and flash encryption almost meaningless.

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Apollo DSKY Replica Looks The Part

September 23, 2020 by 10 Comments

It’s hard to say what exactly it is about the Apollo DSKY that captures so many hackers’ imaginations. Whatever it is, the “Display and Keyboard” unit from the Apollo Guidance Computer has inspired dozens of teardowns, simulations, and reproductions over the years, to varying degrees of success. But this mechanically faithful DSKY replica really knocks it out of the park in terms of attention to detail.

The product of [M. daSilva], this DSKY replica takes a somewhat different path than many of the others we’ve seen. By working from as many original documents as possible, he was able to reproduce the physical size and shape of the DSKY very accurately — no mean feat when working from copies of copies of the original paper prints. Still, the details that are captured, like the gussets and reinforcements that were added to strengthen the original die-cast parts, really make this DSKY look the part. It’s functional, too, thanks to a Raspberry Pi running VirtualAGC, with a Nextion 4.3″ LCD display standing in for the original electroluminescent display. We were surprised to learn the DSKY had a port for nitrogen purging the case; check out the video tour below for that and other tidbits.

Of course, just because [M. daSilva] chose to concentrate on dimensional accuracy for this go-around doesn’t preclude more faithful electronics in the future. Perhaps he can team up with [Ben Krasnow] or [Fran Blanche] and really make this a showpiece.

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Building A USB-C Charger For Canon NB-4L Batteries

September 23, 2020 by 17 Comments

One of the most appealing aspects of USB-C is that it promises to be a unified power delivery system. You’ll no longer need to have a separate power cords for for your phone, camera, and laptop; physically they’ll all use USB-C connectors, and the circuitry in the charger will know how much juice to send down the line for each gadget. But in reality, we’ve all got at least a few pieces of older equipment that we’re not about to toss in the trash just because it doesn’t support the latest USB spec.

Note the relocated status LEDs.

Case in point, the old Canon camera that [Purkkaviritys] modified to take infrared pictures. Instead of abandoning it, he decided to make a custom USB-C charger for its NB-4L batteries. Since they’re just single cell 3.7 V lithium-ions, all he had to do was wire them up to the ubiquitous TP4056 charger module and design a 3D printed case to hold everything together.

He did go the extra mile and replace the SMD charging indicator LEDs on the PCB with 5 mm LEDs embedded into the 3D printed enclosure, though you could certainly skip this step if you were in a hurry. We imagine if you print the enclosure in a light enough color, you should be able to see the original LEDs glowing through the plastic.

This project is yet another example of how incredibly useful the TP4056 module really is. If there’s even a chance you might want to build a rechargeable gadget in the near future, you should have a few of these cheap boards ready to go in the parts bin.

DIY Ergonomic Game Pad Lends A Hand

September 23, 2020 by 8 Comments

Does it seem like everyone you game against can do everything faster than you? Chances are good that they have some kind of dedicated game pad or macro pad with a bunch of custom shortcuts. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, but why buy one when you can build your own? [lordofthedum] did the smart thing when they built their own version of the Azeron game pad, which is an outrageously expensive but ergonomic and cool-looking macro pad that reminds us of the DataHand ergonomic keyboard.

Each finger hovers over a C-shaped group of three switches — one actuates by moving the finger forward, another by moving backward, and the third by pushing down like a regular button. The thumb gets a 4-way joystick. All of these inputs are wired up to an Arduino Pro Micro, which has sort of become the standard for DIY macro pads and keyboards. We think this looks fantastic, and really raises the bar for DIY macro pads.

Need a few more keys, but still want a thumb joystick? Check out the smooth and sweet Sherbet game pad.

Reforming 3D Prints With Salt And Heat

September 23, 2020 by 83 Comments

The biggest problem with fused deposition 3D prints is that while the layers should stick together, they aren’t the same as a solid piece of plastic you would get from, say, injection molding. You can anneal plastic using moderate heat, but it is likely to cause the part to deform or change size. [Free Spirit 1] has a solution for this. Using a powdered salt, the part is packed on the inside and out and put in an oven. The results in the video below look really impressive.

In addition to making the part look solid and — we assume — adding strength, the resulting prints are also water- and gas-tight which was the purpose of the effort. That alone would make the technique worthwhile.

The only thing we noticed is that the part has to have access to hold the salt. Anything not supported would be subject to deformation. However, the ground-up salt is so fine that it should be relatively easy to fill in most parts and, of course, print with 100% infill to avoid hollow internal areas.

[Free spirit 1] used a coffee grinder to get the salt powder, but apparently you can buy “flour salt.” We wondered if other powders might work well, too. Apparently, sand didn’t work out, perhaps because the salt dissolves out in water, so whatever you use, it should probably dissolve in something that won’t attack your plastic.

Annealing isn’t a new idea, and we’d love to see some objective tests on this new method.

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In-vest-ing In Menopause

September 23, 2020 by 28 Comments

Most of us reach for an over-the-counter medicine if we have occasional pain, but menopause doesn’t act like that. Hot flashes don’t build like a headache, dizzy spells don’t wait for a good time, and panic attacks don’t announce themselves. Predicting and addressing sudden hormone shifts is the intent behind Menesto, a vest with sensors, cooling apparatus, and a companion app.

A thermometer and humidity detector monitor the skin for spikes in temperature and moisture to recognize when the wearer is having a hot flash. When an event is registered, a fan blows over a Peltier panel’s cool side and hopefully provides enough chilled air inside the vest. A Peltier panel is a thermoelectric heat engine that moves energy away from one ceramic plate to another, so one half gets cool while the other heats up. Power comes from rechargeable 18650 batteries and all the hardware talks to an ESP8266 on a NodeMCU running Arduino.

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