Artistic Robot Has Paints, Will Travel

November 22, 2020 by 1 Comment

Creativity is a very human trait, and one that many try to emulate with robots. Some focus on the cerebral side of things, working with neural networks and machine learning to produce new artistic output. Others work on the mechanical side, building ‘bots that can manipulate tools in the real world for artistic purposes. [Technovation]’s latest build falls into the latter category – a small Arduino-powered ‘bot that likes to paint.

The robot moves around on two wheels, each driven by a stepper motor for accurate movement. The paintbrush itself is controlled with another stepper, which rotates it between the paint pots and the canvas. A servo is used to dip the brush into pots, and to apply it to the canvas. An Arduino Uno runs the show, with the robot currently programmed to paint random lines of various colors on the canvas.

By virtue of its roving design, it could theoretically paint on arbitrarily large canvasses. It’s a platform that could prove highly capable when paired with a neural network and perhaps some machine vision to allow it to concoct more complex artworks. We’ve seen other paint bots before, too. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Artistic Robot Has Paints, Will Travel” →

Blue Pill As A Nerdy Swiss Army Knife

November 22, 2020 by 15 Comments

Not everyone can afford an oscilloscope, and some of us can’t find a USB logic analyzer half the time. But we can usually get our hands on a microcontroller kit, which can be turned into a makeshift instrument if given the appropriate code. A perfect example is buck50 developed by [Mark Rubin], an open source firmware to turn a STM32 “Blue Pill” into a multi-purpose test and measurement instrument.

buck50 comes with a plethora of functionality built in which includes an oscilloscope, logic analyzer, and bus monitor. The device is a two way street and also comes with GPIO control as well as PWM output. There’s really a remarkable amount of functionality crammed into the project. [Mark] provides a Python application that exposes a text based UI for configuring and using the device though commands and lots of commands which makes this really nerdy. There are a number of options to visualize the data captured which includes gnuplot, gtk wave and PulseView to name a few.

[Mark] does a fantastic job not only with the firmware but also with the documentation, and we really think this makes the project stand out. Commands are well documented and everything is available on [GitHub] for your hacking pleasure. And if you are about to order a Blue Pill online, you might want to check out the nitty-gritty of the clones that are floating around.

Thanks [JohnU] for the tip!

RGB Party Bike Flashes With The Beat

November 22, 2020 by 9 Comments

One of the biggest dangers to a cyclist is not being seen at night. To counteract this, all manner of lighting and reflective gear is available to help ensure bicycles are seen on the streets. Of course, you don’t have to stop at the purely practical. [TechnoChic] decided to have some fun with her ride, festooning her party bike with many, many LEDs.

As you’d expect, the RGB illuminations are thanks to WS2812B LED strips. Running the show is  a trio of Arduino Nano 33 IoTs – one for the LEDs on the bike’s frame, the other two mounted on the front and back wheels respectively. This allowed for the easy control of LEDs on the spokes without having to pass data and power lines to the rotating wheels. The LEDs on the frame are even music-reactive, with the Arduino sampling music input via one of its analog-to-digital converters.

Paired with a boombox on the bike, the build makes for a great way to hype up group rides through the city at night. We can imagine such a bike being an absolute hit at Critical Mass, though you’ve probably gotta add a laser or glitter cannon if you’re going to draw attention at Burning Man. If you’re tired of pedaling, you might consider an electric conversion, too. Video after the break.

Continue reading “RGB Party Bike Flashes With The Beat” →

Intel’s Forgotten 1970s Dual Core Processor

November 22, 2020 by 56 Comments

Can you remember when you received your first computer or device containing a CPU with more than one main processing core on the die? We’re guessing for many of you it was probably some time around 2005, and it’s likely that processor would have been in the Intel Core Duo family of chips. With a dual-core ESP32 now costing relative pennies it may be difficult to grasp in 2020, but there was a time when a multi-core processor was a very big deal indeed.

What if we were to tell you that there was another Intel dual-core processor back in the 1970s, and that some of you may even have owned one without ever realizing it? It’s a tale related to us by [Chris Evans], about how a team of reverse engineering enthusiasts came together to unlock the secrets of the Intel 8271.

If you’ve never heard of the 8271 you can be forgiven, for far from being part of the chip giant’s processor line it was instead a high-performance floppy disk controller that appeared in relatively few machines. An unexpected use of it came in the Acorn BBC Micro which is where [Chris] first encountered it. There’s very little documentation of its internal features, so an impressive combination of decapping and research was needed by the team before they could understand its secrets.

As you will no doubt have guessed, what they found is no general purpose application processor but a mask-programmed dual-core microcontroller optimized for data throughput and containing substantial programmable logic arrays (PLAs). It’s a relatively large chip for its day, and with 22,000 transistors it dwarfs the relatively svelte 6502 that does the BBC Micro’s heavy lifting. Some very hard work at decoding the RMO and PLAs arrives at the conclusion that the main core has some similarity to their 8048 architecture, and the dual-core design is revealed as a solution to the problem of calculating cyclic redundancy checks on the fly at disk transfer speed. There is even another chip using the same silicon in the contemporary Intel range, the 8273 synchronous data link controller simply has a different ROM. All in all the article provides a fascinating insight into this very unusual corner of 1970s microcomputer technology.

As long-time readers will know, we have an interest in chip reverse engineering.

Beer Pong Difficulty Level: 10

November 21, 2020 by 2 Comments

Beer pong is a fun enough game for those of a certain age, but one thing that it lacks is a way of cranking up the difficulty setting independent of the amount of beer one has consumed. At least, that was the idea [Ty] had when he came up with this automated beer pong table which allows the players to increase the challenge of this game by sliding the cups around the top of the table.

The build uses a belt-driven platform under a clear cover with a set of magnets attached. Each of the cups on the table has a corresponding magnet, which allows them to slide fairly easily back and forth on the table. The contraption is controlled by an Arudino Nano with a small screen and dial that allows the players to select a difficulty level from 1 to 10. The difficulty levels increase the speed that the cups oscillate on the table, which certainly adds another layer of complexity to this already challenging game.

While we hope to eventually see a beer pong table that can automatically arrange the cups as the game is played, we do appreciate the effort to make an already difficult game even more difficult. Of course, if you have problems with the difficulty level you might want to pick up a PongMate CyberCannon Mark III to help with those clutch beer pong shots.

Continue reading “Beer Pong Difficulty Level: 10” →

A Computer In The Game Of Life

November 21, 2020 by 22 Comments

We often hear the term “Turing-complete” without giving much thought as to what the implications might be. Technically Microsoft PowerPoint, Portal 2, and Magic: the Gathering all are Turing-complete, what of it? Yet, each time someone embarks on an incredible quest of perseverance and creates a computer in one of these mediums, we stand back in awe.

[Nicolas Loizeau] is one such individual who has created a computer in Conway’s Game of Life. Unlike electricity, the Game of Life uses gliders as signals. Because two orthogonal gliders can cancel each other out or form a glider eater if they intersect with a good phase shift, the basic logic gates can be formed from these interactions. This means the space between gates is crucial as signals need to be in phase alignment. The basic building blocks are a period-60 gun, a 90-degree glider reflector, a glider duplicator, and a glider eater.

All the Python code that generates these structures is on GitHub as the sheer size of the machine couldn’t possibly be placed by hand. The Python includes scripts to assemble the basic programs as a bank of selectable glider generators. It’s all based on Golly, which is an excellent program for simulating Conway’s Game of Life, among other things. While this isn’t the first computer in the Game of Life as [Paul Rendell] published a design in 2000 and [Adam Goucher] published a Spartan universal computer constructor in 2009, we think this is a particularly beautiful one.

The actual architecture has an 8-bit data bus, a 64-byte memory with two read ports, a ROM with 21 bits per line, and a one-hot encoded ALU supporting 8 different operations. Instructions have a 4-bit opcode which is decoding in a few different instructions. The clock is four loops, formed by the glider reflectors as the glider beams rotate. This gives the computer four stages: execution, writing, increment PC, and write PC to memory.

The Game of Life is an excellent example of Cellular Automaton (CA). There are several other types of CA’s and the history behind them is fascinating. We’ve covered this field before and delved into this beautiful fringe of computer science. Check out the video below to truly get a sense of the scale of the machine that [Nicolas] has devised.

Continue reading “A Computer In The Game Of Life” →

A Rocket Powered Ejection Seat For Model Aircraft

November 21, 2020 by 4 Comments

As radio control planes don’t typically have human pilots onboard, the idea of installing an ejection seat in one is somewhat frivolous. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a lot of fun, and [James Whomsley] has set his mind to achieving the task.

The build process is an iterative one, with [James] solving problems step-by-step and testing along the way. The first task was to successfully launch a small action figure and his flight seat vertically in a controlled fashion. After a few attempts, a combination of rocket motors and guide rails were settled upon that could achieve the goal. Next up, a drogue parachute system was designed and tested to stabilize the seat at the height of its trajectory. Further work to come involves handling seat separation and getting the action figure safely back to the ground.

While action figures aren’t alive and the ejection seat serves no real emergency purpose, we can imagine it would be a hit at the local flying field – assuming the parachutes don’t get tangled in someone else’s model. For those interested in the real technology, our own [Dan Maloney] did a great piece on the topic. Video after the break.

Continue reading “A Rocket Powered Ejection Seat For Model Aircraft” →