It’s Like LightScribe, But For Floppies!

November 30, 2024 by Jenny List 18 Comments

Back when CD-Rs were the thing, there were CD burner drives which would etch images in the unoccupied areas of a CD-R. These so-called LightScribe drives were a novelty of which most users soon tired, but they’re what’s brought to our mind by [dbalsom]’s project. It’s called PNG2disk, and it does the same job as LightScribe, but for floppies. There’s one snag though; the images are encoded in magnetic flux and thus invisible to the naked eye. Instead, they can be enjoyed through a disk copying program that shows a sector map.

The linked GitHub repository has an example, and goes in depth through the various options it supports, and how to view images in several disk analysis programs. This program creates fully readable disks, and can even leave space for a filesystem. We have to admit to being curious as to whether such an image could be made physically visible using for example ferrofluid, but we’d be the first t admit to not being magnetic flux experts.

PNG2disk is part of the Fluxfox project, a library for working with floppy disk images. Meanwhile LightScribe my have gone the way of the dodo, but if you have one you could try making your own supercaps.

Saving A Samsung TV From The Dreaded Boot Loop

November 30, 2024 by Lewin Day 39 Comments

[eigma] had a difficult problem. After pulling a TV out of the trash and bringing it home, it turned out it was suffering from a troubling boot loop issue that basically made it useless. As so many of us do, they decided to fix it…which ended up being a far bigger task than initially expected.

The TV in question was a Samsung UN40H5003AF. Powering it up would net a red standby light which would stay on for about eight seconds. Then it would flicker off, come back on, and repeat the cycle. So far, so bad. Investigation began with the usual—checking the power supplies and investigating the basics. No easy wins were found. A debug UART provided precious little information, and schematics proved hard to come by.

Eventually, though, investigation dialed in on a 4 MB SPI flash chip on the board. Dumping the chip revealed the firmware onboard was damaged and corrupt. Upon further tinkering, [eigma] figured that most of the dump looked valid. On a hunch, suspecting that maybe just a single bit was wrong, they came up with a crazy plan: use a script to brute-force flipping every single bit until the firmware’s CRC check came back valid. It took eighteen hours, but the script found a valid solution. Lo and behold, burning the fixed firmware to the TV brought it back to life.

It feels weird for a single bit flip to kill an entire TV, but this kind of failure isn’t unheard of. We’ve seen other dedicated hackers perform similar restorations previously. If you’re out there valiantly rescuing e-waste with these techniques, do tell us your story, won’t you?

The Many Reasons For Putting Microphones In Rainforests

November 30, 2024 by Maya Posch 8 Comments

If a tree falls in a forest with nobody around, does it make a noise? In the case of the rainforests equipped with the Rainforest Connection’s Guardian system someone most assuredly will.

Rainforest Connection’s Guardian system up close, with microphone visible. (Credit: RFCx)

Originally created by the people behind the US nonprofit Rainforest Connection (RFCx) using upcycled smartphones to detect the sounds of illegal logging, their project now has grown into something much larger, keeping not only tabs on sounds of illegal activity, but also performing bioacoustic monitoring for scientific purposes.

Currently active in ten countries, the so-called Guardian Platform no longer features smartphones, but custom hardware inside an IP66 weatherproof enclosure and a whole range of communication options, ranging from cellular bands to satellite communications. The petal-shaped solar panels provide the module with up to 30 watts of power, and double as a shield to help protect it from the elements.

Not only is the real-time microphone data incredibly useful for rangers trying to stop illegal logging, it also provides researchers access to countless hours of audio data, which will require detailed, automated analysis. Even better is that if the audio data is available to the general public as well, via their Android & iOS apps (bottom of page), just in case you wanted to hear what that sneaky wildlife in the jungle of Peru is up to right now.

Building A Miniature Rainbow Sand Table

November 30, 2024 by Lewin Day 10 Comments

Sure is coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere. But it can also be beautiful — drag a small ball through it in a controlled manner you can make some really pretty patterns. That’s precisely what this compact build from [Printerforge] does.

The build relies on an ESP32 as the brains of the operation. It employs small 28BYJ-48 motors to run the motion platform. These were chosen as they operate on 5 V, simplifying the build by allowing everything to run off a single power supply. Along with a bunch of 3D printed parts, the motors are assembled into motion system with linear rods and belts in a CoreXY layout, chosen for speed and precision. It’s charged with moving a small magnet to drag a ball bearing through the sand to draw patterns under the command of G-code generated with the Sandify tool.

We’ve seen some great sand table builds over the years. Some use polar coordinate systems, while others repurpose bits of 3D printers. If you’ve got a creative new way of doing it, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Modernizing An Apple IPod, Or: A Modern-Day Ship Of Theseus

November 29, 2024 by Maya Posch 24 Comments

Back in the day the Apple iPod was the personal music player (PMP) to get even if mostly because everyone and their dogs had one. These days most people just use their smartphone as a PMP, but what if you were to take, say, a 5th generation iPod and modernized it? That was the basic idea that [Zac Builds] picked up and ran with, with the results as shown in the video he made about it.

The 5th gen iPod was the first one capable of playing video, and was released in October of 2005. Powering it is a Broadcom BCM2722 for video playback, and came with a 30 or 60 GB HDD. First thing that [Zac] tosses is the old (3.7V, 650 mAh) battery, which appears to be already a replacement for the original, followed by the 60 GB 1.8″ HDD. Next tossed is the 2.5″ 320×240 QVGA screen, which gets replaced by a compatible modern LCD. The case is replaced with a transparent case, along with a transparent touch wheel, and the HDD is replaced with a 256 GB SD card in an iFlash Solo SD card adapter for iPods.

Next up was the installation of more off-the-shelf mods, such as a ‘taptic mod’ – which adds a rumble motor – and replacing the iPod’s 30-pin connector with a USB-C connector, requiring some fiddly soldering and desoldering. Following this a Bluetooth audio transmitter was added, extreme PCB mods performed with a cut-off wheel to make everything fit with a custom midframe and rear case.

Ultimately, the parts left of the original iPod were most of the mainboard and some flex cable, which raises the question of whether it might not have been faster and easier to start off with designing a custom PCB. Perhaps the true value is in the modding journey and not the destination?

Thanks to [Keith Olson] for the tip.

Continue reading “Modernizing An Apple IPod, Or: A Modern-Day Ship Of Theseus” →

A researcher in a safety harness pollinates an American chestnut tree from a lift. Another researcher is on the other side of the lift and appears to be taking notes. The tree has bags over some of its branches, presumably to control the pollen that gets in. The lift has a grey platform and orange arm.

Hacking Trees To Bring Back The American Chestnut

November 29, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 36 Comments

“Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” is playing on the radio now in the Northern Hemisphere which begs the question, “What happened to the American chestnut?” Would you be surprised to hear there’s a group dedicated to bringing it back from “functional extinction?” [via Inhabitat]

Between logging and the introduction of chestnut blight, the once prevalent American chestnut became increasingly uncommon throughout its traditional range in the Appalachians. While many trees in the southern range were killed by Phytophthora root rot (PRR), the chestnut blight leaves roots intact, so many chestnuts have been surviving by growing back from the roots only to succumb to the blight and be reborn again. Now, scientists are using a combination of techniques to develop blight-resistant trees from this remaining population.

The American Chestnut Foundation recognizes you can’t improve what you can’t measure and uses a combination of “small stem assays (SSAs) performed on potted seedlings, improved phenotype scoring methods for field-grown trees, and the use of genomic prediction models for scoring resistance based on genotype.” This allows them to more rapidly screen varieties for blight resistance to further their efforts. One approach is based on conventional plant breeding techniques and has been crossing blight and PRR-resistant Chinese chestnuts with the American type. PRR resistance has been found to be less genetically complicated, so progress has been faster on resistance to that particular problem. Continue reading “Hacking Trees To Bring Back The American Chestnut” →