Fantastic Micrometeorites And Where To Find Them

August 21, 2019 by 23 Comments

Space is very much the final frontier for humanity, at least as far as our current understanding of the universe takes us. Only a handful of countries and corporations on Earth have the hardware to readily get there, and even fewer are capable of reaching orbit. For these reasons, working in this field can seem out of reach for many. Nevertheless, there’s plenty about the great expanse beyond our atmosphere that can be studied by the dedicated citizen scientist. With the right equipment and know-how, it’s even possible to capture and study micrometeorites yourself!

While you don’t see a meteor shower every day, micrometeorites are actually astoundingly common. They’re just hard to find!

For those new to the field, the terms used can be confusing. Meteoroids are small metallic or rocky objects found in outer space, up to around 1 meter in size. When these burn up upon entering the atmosphere, they are referred to as a meteor, or colloquially known as a shooting star. If part of the object survives long enough to hit the ground, this is referred to as a meteorite, and as you’d expect the smaller ones are called micrometeorites, being on the scale of 2mm or less.

Stardust Proves Hard To Find

Being tiny and having fallen from space, micrometeorites present certain challenges to those who wish to find and identify them. In spite of this, they can be found by using the right techniques and a heck of a lot of hard work.

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Launching A Custom Kerbal Panel

August 21, 2019 by 13 Comments

[Matthew Peverill] is a busy PhD student who loves to make time for a little Kerbal Space Program. He was tired of using such pedestrian controls as a keyboard and mouse for such important work, and wanted something a little more like they have down in Houston.

For this project, he’s focusing on the inputs more than anything else. The intent is not to play solely from this control panel, but to strike a balance between fun inputs and accurate control without screwing up favorite game play modes. It’s based on an Arduino Due, and uses some custom I²C multiplexer boards to wrangle all the various inputs.

We love the look of this panel, especially the appropriately Futura-fonted labels and all the toggle switches. Matthew took inspiration and guidance for this project from a couple of sources, so he’s definitely following in the Hackaday spirit of standing on the shoulders of giants. He’s moved through two prototypes and is working out the bugs before making the next one. The final version will be made of backlit transparent acrylic, and you know we can’t wait to see that.

What, you don’t have access to a laser cutter? Just build a control panel into an old Heathkit trainer or something.

Sushi Roll Helps Inspect Your CPU Internals

August 21, 2019 by 7 Comments

[Gamozolabs’] post about Sushi Roll — a research kernel for monitoring Intel CPU internals — is pretty long. While we were disappointed at the end that the kernel’s source is not exactly available due to “sensitive features”, we were so impressed with the description of the modern x86 architecture and some of the work done with Sushi Roll, that we just had to post it. If the post gets you wanting to actually try some of this, you can check out another [Gamozolabs] creation, Orange Slice.

While you probably know that a modern Intel CPU bears little resemblance to the old 8086 processor it emulates, it is surprising, sometimes, to realize just how far it has gone. The very first thing the CPU does is to break your instruction up into microoperations. The execution engine uses some sophisticated techniques for register renaming and scheduling that allow you to run instructions out of order and to run more than one instruction per clock cycle.

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Rocket Jacket Looks Sharp For CCCamp 2019

August 20, 2019 by 2 Comments

Making your own clothing can be fun, but it’s even better if you can throw some LEDs into the mix and give a new meaning to the term “glow up”. [arturo182] did just that with this custom rocket jacket for CCCamp2019.

We’re getting kind of a stained-glass vibe here.

To create the jacket, a 3D printed frame was created in the shape of CCCamp’s rocket logo. This was then filled with hot glue to act as a diffuser, and fitted with WS2818B LEDs. A Digispark is used as the microcontroller, with its compactness serving well for the wearable application. The assembly is then sewn into the back of a hoodie, with cardboard used on the inside as a backer to help keep things flat and support the weight of the hardware.

Hot glue works great as a diffuser in this application, and animation is easy thanks to the addressable LEDs used in the construction. It’s a great way to get a neon-like look, and we fully expect to see more of these glowy wearables in future!

Dirty Tricks For 6502 Programming

August 20, 2019 by 26 Comments

We know the 6502 isn’t exactly the CPU of choice for today’s high-performance software, but with the little CPU having appeared in so many classic computers — the Apple, the KIM-1, The Commodores, to name a few — we have a real soft spot for it. [Janne] has a post detailing the eight best entries in the Commodore 64 coding competition. The goal was to draw an X on the screen using the smallest program possible. [Janne] got 56 bytes, but two entrants clocked in at 34 bytes.

In addition to the results, [Janne] also exposes the tricks people used to get these tiny programs done. Just looking at the solution in C and then 6502 assembly is instructive. Naturally, one trick is to use the existing ROM code to do tasks such as clearing the screen. But that’s just the starting point.

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Get Ready For Games Night With 3D Catan

August 20, 2019 by 13 Comments

Settlers of Catan is a staple for boardgaming aficionados. Some fans like to express themselves by building a custom set of their own, and [Maclsk] is no different. Enter 3D Catan!

The models for the various pieces were designed in Blender, a great open source 3D modelling program. They were then printed on an Anycubic i3 Mega, taking about 80 hours and using 700 grams of PLA filament. With 116 game pieces, there was plenty of filing and sanding to do.

With this completed, it was then time for paint. [Maclsk] shows off a strong understanding of model painting fundamentals, from dry brushing to using PVA glue to give water elements a glossy sheen. If you’re new to the techniques, sit down with your local Warhammer players – they’ll be more than able to point you in the right direction.

Overall, it’s a great build that really pops on the gaming table. We’ve seen other die-hard Catan fans come out with their own builds, too. Video after the break.

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A Range-Extended Electric Van

August 20, 2019 by 72 Comments

The only thing limiting the range on any electric vehicle isn’t really battery technology, but cost. Customers don’t want to pay more money for an electric car or van that does essentially the same thing as one with an internal combustion engine. This in turn limits the amount of batteries manufacturers put in their cars. However, with enough money, and thus enough batteries, electric cars can get whatever range you want as [Muxsan] shows with his Nissan e-NV200 that gets over 400 miles kilometers on a single charge.

The Nissan e-NV200 is a battery electric vehicle (also available as a badge-engineered Chevrolet van in North America) with a drivetrain from the Nissan Leaf. This means that all of the components from the Leaf basically plug-and-play in this van. [Muxsan] took an extra 45 kWh of batteries and was able to splice them in to the existing battery pack, essentially tripling the capacity of the original 24 kWh pack. Some work was needed to the CAN bus as well, and the car’s firmware needed to be upgraded to reflect the new battery pack, but a relatively simple modification otherwise, all things considered.

While watching the video [Muxsan] also notes how much empty space there is all around the van, and Nissan could have easily upgraded the battery pack at any time to allow for more range. It also took the car 10 hours on a 6 kW charger to charge completely, but that’s not unreasonable for 430 miles of range. If your high voltage DC chops are up to snuff, it’s not impossible to find old Leaf batteries for other projects, too.

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