It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! It’s… A Live Air Traffic Plane Spotting Simulation

July 12, 2022 by 5 Comments

Plane spotting has been a hobby of aviation enthusiasts for generations. Hanging out by the airport, watching aircraft come and go, maybe even listening to Air Traffic Control on a scanner from your local Radio Shack. Yep- we’ve been there, and it can be a lot of fun! But how can those of us who don’t live near a major controlled airport keep up on the action? As demonstrated by the [Information Zulu] YouTube channel’s Live Stream, seen below the break, the action may be closer than you think!

Aircraft on approach to LAX- Virtually

By using publicly available information, software, and some ingenuity, [Information Zulu] has created a live simulation of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) for your simulated plane spotting pleasure. Aircraft positional data is gained through an ADSB receiver and piped into a the flight simulator software with a Traffic Injection Addon, and the simulator itself is used to properly place aircraft, set the weather, and even the correct aircraft types and liveries. Setting off the illusion of a real plane spotting adventure is the live Air Traffic Control radio chatter!

We love the creativity that went into not just making all of the software available, but in combining it into a cohesive product that can be viewed 24/7 on YouTube that, if you squint just right, could be mistaken for a view of the real thing.

If you’re not familiar with ADSB and how it’s used to track aircraft in such a way that anybody can receive it with the right equipment, check out this beginner’s course on ADSB from a few years back!

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Airbus A380 Completes Flight Powered By Cooking Oil

July 12, 2022 by 79 Comments

Fossil fuels are making news for all the wrong reasons of late. Whether it’s their contribution to global climate change or the fact that the price and supply hinges on violent geopolitics, there are more reasons than ever to shift to cleaner energy sources.

In the world of aviation, that means finding a cleaner source of fuel. A test earlier this year took place in pursuit of that very goal, where an Airbus A380 airliner was flown solely on fuel derived from cooking oil.

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Carver M-400 Amplifier Repair Keeps The 1980’s Alive

July 10, 2022 by 21 Comments

Carver is a famous name in audio equipment although they have been known to use odd names for things. For example, the 1980’s vintage M-400 magnetic field power amplifier that [JohnAudioTech] is repairing (see the two videos below). That sounds like something off a bad Star Trek remake, but, apparently, we weren’t alone in thinking that, judging by this 1982 review of the unit from a UK magazine.

Still, it is an interesting high-power amplifier and we love seeing gear of this age torn apart. The beast is rated at 201 watts — you have to wonder if the extra watt is another marketing ploy.

There were actually two units and they looked pretty good for four-decade-old boxes. One sounded pretty good outside of some noticeable buzzing. The other had something shorted inside. If you enjoy watching repair videos, you’ll appreciate this two-parter.

We have to admit — and it may be a personal bias — there is something more pleasing about seeing a PCB populated with a bunch of interesting-looking through-hole components. Modern boards with a sea of surface mount parts tend to look a little bland, aesthetically speaking. Of course, when it comes time to make our own boards, we are happy to use SMD and forego all that hole drilling!

We like watching computer repair videos, in particular. Or sometimes, something really exotic.

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A Mostly Fair Deal For All With A Raspberry Pi

July 7, 2022 by 3 Comments

To be a professional card dealer takes considerable skill, something that not everybody might even have the dexterity to acquire. Fortunately even for the most ham-fisted of dealers there’s a solution, in the form of the Dave-O-matic, [David Stern]’s automated card dealer using a Raspberry Pi 4 with a camera and pattern recognition.

It takes the form of a servo-controlled arm with a sucker on the end, which is able to pick up the cards and present them to the camera. They can then be recognized by value, and pre-determined hands can be dealt or alternatively a random hand. It seems that the predetermined hands aren’t an aid in poker cheating, but a part of the bridge player’s art. You can see it in action in the video below the break.

We like the project, but sadly at this point we must take [Dave] to task, because while tantalizing us with enough detail to get us interested he’s slammed the door in our faces by failing to show us the code. it would be nice to think that the clamor from disaffected Hackaday readers might spur him into throwing us a crumb or two.

It probably won’t surprise you to find that this isn’t the first Raspberry Pi to find itself dealing cards.

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DIY Airless Tires Work Surprisingly Well

June 30, 2022 by 47 Comments

Airless tires have been “a few years away” from production for decades now. They’re one of the automotive version of vaporware (at least those meant for passenger vehicles), always on the cusp of being produced but somehow never materializing. They have a number of perks over traditional air-filled tires in that they are immune to flats and punctures, and since there aren’t any airless tires available at the local tire shop, [Driven Media] decided to make and test their own.

The tires are surprisingly inexpensive to make. A few pieces of drainage tubing of varying diameters, cut to short lengths, and then bolted together with off-the-shelf hardware is all it takes, although they note that there was a tremendous amount of hardware needed to fasten all the pipe lengths together. With the structure in place they simply cut a tread off of a traditional tire and wrapped it around each of the four assemblies, then bolted them up to their Caterham street-legal race car for testing.

While the ride quality was notoriously (and unsurprisingly) rough and bumpy, the tires perform admirably under the circumstances and survive being driven fairly aggressively on a closed-circuit race course. For such a low price and simple parts list it’s shocking that a major tire manufacturer like Michelin hasn’t figured out how to successfully bring one to a light passenger car yet.

Thanks to [Itay] for the tip!

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RC Car Repair With Beer Can Solder Stencil

June 12, 2022 by 24 Comments

Sometimes it might seem as if your electronics are just jinxed. For [Niva_v_kopirce] it was the control board of his nephew’s RC car that kept frying the transistors. In situations like this, you can either throw it in the bin, invest your time in troubleshooting, hoping to find the error and try to fix it then, or get creative. He chose the latter, and designed and etched a replacement board.

Of course, etching your own PCB isn’t that noteworthy for the average Hackaday reader, although [Niva_v_kopirce] did go the extra mile and added purple solder mask to it, turning the stylishness definitely up to 11. This is also where it gets interesting, when you think of the solder mask as complementary layer for a solder paste stencil. Growing tired of manually applying solder paste, he thought to give a DIY stencil a try this time — using a beer can.

After cutting the can open and flattening it, along with some sanding, he transferred the cutouts from the solder mask onto it, and started etching holes in it. While the result may not be exactly precise, it did the job, especially for a homemade built.

Despite their convenience, stencils are still a rather exotic addition for hobbyists as they rarely pay off for a one-off project with limited SMD component usage. But maybe this was a new inspiration for you now. And if etching metal is outside your comfort zone, cutting plastic can be an alternative, as well as 3d printing.

A Breath Of Fresh Air For Some Arcade Classics

June 7, 2022 by 3 Comments

It’s said that good things come in small packages, which is hard to deny when we look at all the nifty projects out there that were built into an Altoids tin. Now, if that’s already true for the regular sized box, we can be doubly excited for anything crammed into their Smalls variety ones, which is what [Kayden Kehe] decided to use as housing for his mintyPico, a tiny gaming console running homebrew versions of Snake, Breakout, Pong, and a few more.

As the “Pico” might have already given away, the project is built around a Raspberry Pi Pico board, and being intended as portable device, [Kayden] went with a version that also houses LiPo battery charging circuitry. A set of 3d-printed parts pack the board along with a matching battery and a button panel neatly into the tin itself, while a size-appropriate SSH1106 OLED goes into the lid. All design files along with the MicroPython code of the games can be found on the project’s GitHub page.

You may have felt this strange sense of familiarity when you read the project’s name, and indeed, the mintyPi gaming console was a major inspiration for [Kayden] here, as was the Pico Snake project. Considering this was his junior year high school project, this is certainly an impressive and nice mash-up of those two projects.

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