Build Your Own Glasshole Detector

Connected devices are ubiquitous in our era of wireless chips heavily relying on streaming data to someone else’s servers. This sentence might already start to sound dodgy, and it doesn’t get better when you think about today’s smart glasses, like the ones built by Meta (aka Facebook).

[sh4d0wm45k] doesn’t shy away from fighting fire with fire, and shows you how to build a wireless device detecting Meta’s smart glasses – or any other company’s Bluetooth devices, really, as long as you can match them by the beginning of the Bluetooth MAC address.

[sh4d0wm45k]’s device is a mini light-up sign saying “GLASSHOLE”, that turns bright white as soon as a pair of Meta glasses is detected in the vicinity. Under the hood, a commonly found ESP32 devboard suffices for the task, coupled to two lines of white LEDs on a custom PCB. The code is super simple, sifting through packets flying through the air, and lets you easily contribute with your own OUIs (Organizationally Unique Identifier, first three bytes of a MAC address). It wouldn’t be hard to add such a feature to any device of your own with Arduino code under its hood, or to rewrite it to fit a platform of your choice.

We’ve been talking about smart glasses ever since Google Glass, but recently, with Meta’s offerings, the smart glasses debate has reignited. Due to inherent anti-social aspects of the technology, we can see what’d motivate one to build such a hack. Perhaps, the next thing we’ll see is some sort of spoofed packets shutting off the glasses, making them temporarily inoperable in your presence in a similar way we’ve seen with spamming proximity pairing packets onto iPhones.

Hackaday Podcast Episode 309: Seeing WiFi, A World Without USB, Linux In NES In Animal Crossing

This week Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start things off with updates on the rapidly approaching Hackaday Europe and the saga of everyone’s favorite 3D printed boat.

From there they’ll cover an impressive method of seeing the world via WiFi, Amazon’s latest changes to the Kindle ecosystem, and an alternate reality in which USB didn’t take over the peripheral world. You’ll also hear about a multi-level hack that brings the joys of Linux into the world of Animal Crossing, 3D printed circuit components, and the imminent release of KiCAD 9.

Stick around until the end to learn about a unique hardened glass from East Germany and the disappointing reality of modern voice control systems.

Download the DRM-free MP3 for safe keeping.

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2024 Supercon: Third Round Of Super Speakers

The third and final round of the 2024 Supercon talks announcements brings us to the end, and the full schedule is now up on Hackaday.io.

With Supercon just a couple weeks away, we hope you have your tickets already! Stay tuned tomorrow for a badge reveal.

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Stereoscopic Macro Lens Shows Two Is Better Than One

You’d be forgiven if you thought [Nicholas Sherlock’s] new lens design was a macro lens that was 3D printed. In fact, it is, but it is also a macro lens that takes 3D images using two different cameras. If you have a pair of Sony E/FEs, you can 3D print your own copy today. If you don’t, you might have to adjust the design or wait for future releases. In any event, you are sure to enjoy the example photos, and there’s a video review of the device you can watch below.

The design merges two 4x microscope lenses to provide a 2X stereo image with a 5mm baseline. As you might expect, the secret is a prism in the assembly that allows one camera to shoot directly at the subject and the other to shoot with a 5mm offset. This is trickier than you might think because the cameras shift the image some, also.

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Pour One Out For This Bottle-Playing Robot

If you have an iota of musicality, you’ve no doubt noticed that you can play music using glass bottles, especially if you have several of different sizes and fill them with varying levels of water. But what if you wanted to accompany yourself on the bottles? Well, then you’d need to build a bottle-playing robot.

First, [Jens Maker Adventures] wrote a song and condensed it down to eight notes. With a whole lot of tinkling with a butter knife against their collection of wine and other bottles, [Jens] was able to figure out the lowest note for a given bottle by filing it with water, and the highest note by emptying it out.

With the bottle notes selected, the original plan was to strike the bottles with sticks. As it turned out, 9g servos weren’t up to the task, so he went with solenoids instead. Using Boxes.py, he was able to parameterize a just-right bottle holder to allow for arranging the bottles in a circle and striking them from the inside, all while hiding the Arduino and the solenoid driver board. Be sure to check it out after the break.

Don’t have a bunch of bottles lying around? You can use an Arduino to play the glasses.

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Hackaday Podcast 185: A 2022 Rotary Phone, How AI Imagines Zepplin, Are We Alone In The Universe

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Managing Editor Tom Nardi start off by talking about the chip shortage…but not how you think. With a list that supposedly breaks down all of the electronic components that the Russian military are desperate to get their hands on, we can see hackers aren’t the only ones scrounging for parts. If you thought getting components was tricky already, imagine if most of the world decided to put sanctions on you.

We’ll also talk about kid-friendly DIY stereoscopic displays, the return of the rotary cellphone, and using heat to seal up 3D printed parts for vacuum applications. Join us as we marvel over the use of rubbery swag wristbands as tank treads, and ponder an array of AI-created nightmares that are supposed to represent the Hackaday writing crew. Finally we’ll talk about two iconic legacies: that of the 3.5 inch floppy disk, and astrophysicist Frank Drake.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download, and burn it to your own CD!

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Mokeylaser: A DIY Laser Engraver That You Can Easily Build

[Mark aka Mokey] borrowed his friend’s open-frame laser engraver for a while, and found it somewhat lacking in features and a bit too pricey for what it was. Naturally, he thought he could do better (video, embedded below.) After a spot of modelling in Fusion 360, and some online shopping at the usual places, he had all the parts needed to construct an X-Y bot, and we reckon it looks like a pretty good starting point. [Mark] had a Sainsmart FL55 5.5W laser module kicking around, so that was dropped into the build, together with the usual Arduino plus CNC shield combo running GRBL.

[Mark] has provided the full F360 source (see the mokeylaser GitHub) and a comprehensive bill-of-materials, weighing in at about $400, and based upon the usual 2040 aluminium extrusions. This makes MokeyLaser a reasonable starting point for further development. Future plans include upgrading the controller to something a bit more modern (and 32-bits) as well as a more powerful laser (we do hope he’s got some proper laser glasses!) and adding air assist. In our experience, air assist will definitely improve matters, clearing out the smoke from the beam path and increasing the penetration of the laser significantly. We think there is no need for more optical power (and greater risk) for this application. [Mark] says in the video that he’s working on an additional build video, so maybe come by later and check that out?

Obviously, MokeyLaser is by no means the only such beast we’ve featured, here’s the engravinator for starters. For even more minimalism, we covered a build with some smart optics doing all the work. But what if you don’t happen to have a 5W laser module “lying around” then perhaps try a more natural heat source instead?

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