Memristors Are Cool, Radiation-resistant Memristors Even Moreso

October 5, 2024 by 9 Comments

Space is a challenging environment for semiconductors, but researchers have shown that a specific type of memristor (the hafnium oxide memristor, to be exact) actually reacts quite usefully when exposed to gamma radiation. In fact, it’s even able to leverage this behavior as a way to measure radiation exposure. In essence, it’s able to act as both memory and a sensor.

Being able to resist radiation exposure is highly desirable for space applications. Efficient ways to measure radiation exposure are just as valuable. The hafnium oxide memristor looks like it might be able to do both, but before going into how that works, let’s take a moment for a memristor refresher.

A memristor is essentially two conductive plates between which bridges can be made by applying a voltage to “write” to the device, by which one sets it to a particular resistance. A positive voltage causes bridging to occur between the two ends, lowering the device’s resistance, and a negative voltage reverses the process, increasing the resistance. The exact formulation of a memristor can vary. The memristor was conceived in the 1970s by Leon Chua, and HP Labs created a working one in 2008. An (expensive) 16-pin DIP was first made available in 2015.

A hafnium oxide memristor is a bit different. Normally it would be write-once, meaning a negative voltage does not reset the device, but researchers discovered that exposing it to gamma radiation appears to weaken the bridging, allowing a negative voltage to reset the device as expected. Exposure to radiation also caused a higher voltage to be required to set the memristor; a behavior researchers were able to leverage into using the memristor to measure radiation exposure. Given time, a hafnium oxide memristor exposed to radiation, causing it to require higher-than-normal voltages to be “set”, eventually lost this attribute. After 30 days, the exposed memristors appeared to recover completely from the effects of radiation exposure and no longer required an elevated voltage for writing. This is the behavior the article refers to as “self-healing”.

The research paper has all the details, and it’s interesting to see new things relating to memristors. After all, when it comes to electronic components it’s been quite a long time since we’ve seen something genuinely new.

Phoniebox: A Family-Friendly Simple Music Box

October 5, 2024 by 5 Comments

Ever hear of the Phoniebox project? If not – tune in, that’s a hacker’s project your entire family will appreciate. Phoniebox is a software suite and tutorial for building a jukebox controlled through RFID cards, and it can play audio from a wide variety of sources – music and playlists stored locally, online streams like internet radio stations, Spotify, podcasts of your choice, and so on. It’s super easy to build – get a Raspberry Pi board, connect an NFC reader to it, wire up a pair of speakers, and you’re set. You can assemble a PhonieBox together with your kids over the weekend – and many do.

Want some inspiration, or looking to see what makes Phoniebox so popular? Visit the Phoniebox gallery – it’s endearing to see just how many different versions have been built over the six years of project’s existence. Everyone’s Phoniebox build is different in its own special way – you bring the hardware, Phoniebox brings well-tested software and heaps of inspiration.

You already have a case to house a  Phoniebox setup – if you think you don’t, check the gallery, you’ll find that you do. Experiencing a problem? There’s a wealth of troubleshooting advice and tutorials, and a helpful community. Phoniebox is a mature project and its scale is genuinely impressive – build one for your living room, or your hacker’s lair, or your hackerspace. RFID-controlled jukeboxes are a mainstay on Hackaday, so it’s cool to see a project that gives you all the tools to build one.

Overhead photo of a Tandon TM100-1 Floppy Drive and a 5,25" Floppy

How To Revive A Tandon Floppy Drive

October 4, 2024 by 9 Comments

In this episode of [Adrian’s Digital Basement], we dive into the world of retro computing with a focus on diagnosing and repairing an old full-height 5.25-inch floppy drive from an IBM 5150 system. Although mechanically sound, the drive had trouble reading disks, and Adrian quickly set out to fix the issue. Using a Greaseweazle—a versatile open-source tool for floppy disk diagnostics—he tests the drive’s components and explores whether the fault lies with the read/write head or electronic systems.

The repair process provides fascinating insights into the Tandon TM100-1 floppy drive, a key player in vintage computing. Adrian explains how the drive was designed as a single-sided unit, yet hints at potential double-sided capability due to its circuit board, raising possibilities for future tweaks. Throughout the video, Adrian shares handy tips on ensuring proper mechanical maintenance, such as keeping lubrication in check and ensuring correct spring tension. His attention to detail, especially on termination resistors, provided vital knowledge for anyone looking to understand or restore these old drives.

For fans of retro tech, this episode is a must-watch! Adrian makes complex repairs accessible, sharing both technical know-how and nostalgic appreciation. For those interested in similar hacks, past projects like the Greaseweazle tool itself or other Amiga system repairs are worth exploring. To see Adrian in action and catch all the repair details, check out the full video.

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HackFest Enschede: The Type Of Indoor Event We Wanted All Along

October 4, 2024 by 5 Comments

I’m sitting at a table writing this in the centre of a long and cavernous industrial building, the former print works of a local newspaper, I’m surrounded by hardware and software hackers working at their laptops, around me is a bustling crowd admiring a series of large projects on tables along the walls, and the ambient sound is one of the demoscene, chiptunes, 3D-printed guitars, and improbably hurdy-gurdy music. Laser light is playing on the walls, and even though it’s quite a journey from England to get here, I’m home. This is Hackfest Enschede, a two-day event in the Eastern Dutch city which by my estimation has managed the near-impossible feat of combining the flavour of both a hacker event and a maker faire all in one, causing the two distinct crowds to come together.

The Best Of Both Worlds, In One Place

To give an idea of what’s here it’s time for a virtual trip round the hall. I’ll start with the music, aside from the demosceners there’s Printstruments with a range of 3D-printedmusical instruments, and Nerdy Gurdy, as you may have guessed, that hacker hurdy-gurdy I mentioned. This is perhaps one of few places I could have seen a spontaneous jam session featuring a 3D-printed bass and a laser-cut hurdy-gurdy. Alongside them were the Eurorack synthesisers of Sound Force, providing analogue electronic sounds aplenty. Continue reading “HackFest Enschede: The Type Of Indoor Event We Wanted All Along” →

Hackaday Podcast Episode 291: Walking In Space, Lead In The Earth, And Atoms Under The DIY Microscope

October 4, 2024 by 2 Comments

What have you missed on Hackaday this week? Elliot Williams and Al Williams compare notes on their favorites from the week, and you are invited. The guys may have said too much about the Supercon badge this year — listen in for a few hints about what it will be about.

For hacks, you’ll hear about scanning tunneling microscopes, power management for small Linux systems, and lots of inertial measurement units. The guys talked about a few impossible hacks for consumer electronics, from hacking a laptop, to custom cell phones.

Of course, there are plenty more long-form articles of the week, including a brief history of what can go wrong on a spacewalk and how to get the lead out (of the ground). Don’t forget to take a stab at the What’s That Sound competition and maybe score a sweet Hackaday Podcast T-shirt.

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!

Use this link to teleport a DRM-free MP3 to your location.

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Two hands hold a rounded rectangular case with a small lollipop-shaped cutout. The case is dark grey with a bit of white protruding between the two halves in the middle.

Add USB-C To Your AirPods The Easy Way

October 3, 2024 by 7 Comments

While the death of Apple’s Lightning Connector can’t come soon enough, swapping the ports on their products as “category-defining innovations” seems a bit of a stretch. [Ken Pillonel] has designed a set of streamlined, repairable, USB-C adapters for the AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max that show Apple what innovation really means.

If you’ve followed [Pillonel]’s work in the past, you’ll know he’s as a big a fan of repairability as we are here, so this isn’t just a cheap knockoff dongle that’ll be in the trash as fast as your counterfeit wireless earbuds. In the video below, he walks us through his quest start-to-finish to design something compact that gives you all the joys of USB-C without the pain of buying a whole new set of headphones.

We like the iteration on the connector, showing that flexible circuits can do some amazing things, but are still subject to failure at extreme angles. Using a combination of 3D printing, a cool robot sandblasting machine, a pick-and-place, and some old fashioned hand soldering, [Pillonel] treats us to a polished final product that’s put together with actual screws and not adhesive. His designs are all open source, so you can DIY, or he sells finished copies in his shop if you want to give one to your less-than-techy relatives.

[Pillonel] may seem familiar as he’s the guy who added USB-C to the iPhone before Apple and redesigned the AirPods Pro case for repairability. Apple is getting better about repair in some of its devices, for sure, but unsurprisingly, hackers do it better.

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Polaris Dawn, And The Prudence Of A Short Spacewalk

October 3, 2024 by 40 Comments

For months before liftoff, the popular press had been hyping up the fact that the Polaris Dawn mission would include the first-ever private spacewalk. Not only would this be the first time anyone who wasn’t a professional astronaut would be opening the hatch of their spacecraft and venturing outside, but it would also be the first real-world test of SpaceX’s own extravehicular activity (EVA) suits. Whether you considered it a billionaire’s publicity stunt or an important step forward for commercial spaceflight, one thing was undeniable: when that hatch opened, it was going to be a moment for the history books.

But if you happened to have been watching the live stream of the big event earlier this month, you’d be forgiven for finding the whole thing a bit…abrupt. After years of training and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, crew members Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis both spent less than eight minutes outside of the Dragon capsule. Even then, you could argue that calling it a spacewalk would be a bit of a stretch.

Neither crew member ever fully exited the spacecraft, they simply stuck their upper bodies out into space while keeping their legs within the hatch at all times. When it was all said and done, the Dragon’s hatch was locked up tight less than half an hour after it was opened.

Likely, many armchair astronauts watching at home found the whole thing rather anticlimactic. But those who know a bit about the history of human spaceflight probably found themselves unable to move off of the edge of their seat until that hatch locked into place and all crew members were back in their seats.

Flying into space is already one of the most mindbogglingly dangerous activities a human could engage in, but opening the hatch and floating out into the infinite black once you’re out there is even riskier still. Thankfully the Polaris Dawn EVA appeared to go off without a hitch, but not everyone has been so lucky on their first trip outside the capsule.

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