Mustang Dash Becomes Bookshelf Art Piece

February 24, 2019 by 17 Comments

Despite most of the common gauges remaining the same over the last 60 years, the automotive dashboard of days past used very different technology to those today. Cable driven speedometers were common, along with mechanical drive for the odometer, too. Fuel and temperature gauges were often wired directly to their senders, and some oil pressure gauges actually ran an oil line right up to the back of the dash. Now, things are mostly handled over the CAN bus, which inspired [Thomas]’s bookshelf-based Mustang build.

The idea behind the project is to build a nice piece of bookshelf art, using a modern CAN-driven Mustang dashboard. Through research and much trial and error, [Thomas] was able to figure out the CAN messages necessary to interface with a 2009 Mustang dashboard. There were innumerable hiccups along the way – [Thomas] had to 3D print his own connectors, reflash CAN bus interfaces, and make more than a few educated guesses to get things working.

The dash is combined with an Arduino with an MP3 shield and a 30 watt audio system, which provides both CAN signals to drive the dash as well as the obligatory sound effects of a Mustang tearing about town. It’s all finished up with an ignition keyswitch and 3 LED-lit buttons in the traditional Mustang colors.

It’s a fun build which does a great job of showcasing the basic tools and techniques required to interface with modern automotive subsystems. Salvaging an instrument cluster can be a great way to add immersion to your home racing sim, too. Video after the break.

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Pathio: New 3D Slicer From E3D

February 24, 2019 by 35 Comments

Having a great word processor won’t actually help you write the next bestselling novel. It might make it easier, but if you have a great novel in you, you could probably write it on paper towels with a crayon if you had to. A great 3D printer isn’t all you need to make great 3D prints. A lot depends on the model you start with and that software known as a slicer. You have several choices, and now you have one more: PathIO, a slicer sponsored by E3D, is out in beta. You can see a video about its features below.

The software has a few rough edges as you might expect from a beta. The slicer doesn’t feed Gcode to a printer directly, although Octoprint integration is forthcoming. Developers say they are focusing on the slicing engine which is totally new. According to their website, conventional slicers immediately cut a model into 2D slices and then decide how to realize each slice with respect to the shell and infill. Pathio works in 3D space and claims this has benefits for producing correct wall thickness and an increase in self-supporting geometries.

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DAT, The HD Video Tape Format We Never Knew We Had

February 24, 2019 by 48 Comments

When we consume our music online via streaming services it is easy to forget the days of recordings being contained on physical media, and to overlook the plethora of competing formats that vied for space in our hi-fi systems to play them. [Andrew Rossignol] has an eye for dated recording media formats as a chiptune enthusiast though, because not only has he found a DAT machine from the 1990s, he’s hacked it to record HD video rather than hi-fi audio.

If you’ve not encountered DAT before, it’s best to consider the format as the equivalent of a CD player but on a tape cassette. It had its roots in the 1980s, and stored an uncompressed 16-bit CD-quality stereo audio data stream on the tape using a helical-scan mechanism similar to that found in a video cassette recorder. It was extremely expensive due to the complexity of the equipment, the music industry hated it because they thought it would be used to make pirate copies of CDs. But despite those hurdles it established a niche for itself among well-heeled musicians and audiophiles. If any Hackaday readers have encountered a DAT cassette it is most likely to have not contained audio at all but computer data, it was common in the 1990s for servers to use DAT tapes for backup purposes.

[Andrew]’s hack involves using the SPDIF digital interface on his Sony DAT player to carry compressed video data. SPDIF is a mature and well-understood standard that he calculated has a bandwidth of 187.5 kB/s, plenty to carry HD video using the H.265 compression scheme. The SPDIF data is brought into the computer via a USB sound card, and from there his software could either stream or retrieve the video. The stream is encoded into frames following the RFC1662 format to ensure synchronization, and he demonstrates it in the video below with a full explanation.

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Flying Convenience Not So Convenient

February 23, 2019 by 19 Comments

It’s a situation that plays out every day, all over the world – you walk into work, and there’s a full-scale foam toilet sitting on the bench, demanding to be used in a crackpot project. This time, it happened to be at the [FliteTest] workshop, and naturally, they set about making it fly.

The team at [FliteTest] are well resourced, with a laser cutter being used to quickly produce a set of custom foam board wings. However, after wing failures on their previous projects, this time the team opted for a riveted aluminium wing spar to add strength. A twin-boom tail is used to try to avoid the cistern from interfering with airflow over the elevator, and careful attention is paid to make sure the center of gravity is in the right position for stable flight.

Despite the team’s laudable efforts, the toilet (somewhat unsurprisingly) flies like crap. It just goes to show, you can strap a brushless power system on to just about anything, but aerodynamics will still be standing ready to bring it all crashing down to Earth.

We’ve seen some great builds from [FliteTest] over the years – before the throne, it was an IKEA chair that soared amongst the clouds. Video after the break.

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Thinkpad T25 Gets Less Retro With Hardware Swap

February 23, 2019 by 14 Comments

For many, the Thinkpad T25 was something of a dream come true. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the venerable business-oriented laptop that hackers love so much, it featured a design inspired by “retro” Thinkpads of yore, but with modern hardware inside. Unfortunately, as it was more fan service than a serious revitalization of classic Thinkpad design, the T25 was only ever available in a single hardware configuration.

[kitsunyan] liked the look and feel of the T25, but in 2019 was already feeling a bit let down by the hardware. The screen wasn’t up to snuff, and while the CPU is an i7, it only has dual cores. To make sure the T25 is still viable down the road, it seemed the only option was to try to transplant the hardware from one of the current Thinkpad models into the anniversary chassis. It certainly wasn’t easy, but given the fact that the T25 was more of a redress than a completely new product to begin with, everything came together a lot better than you might expect.

A custom mount installed in the T25

To help put things into perspective, the T25 is basically a modified version of the T470. Last year, Lenovo replaced the T470 with the new T480 that has just the sort of hardware improvements that [kitsunyan] wanted. The T480 was more of a refresh than a complete revamp, so the actual chassis of the machine didn’t change much compared with its predecessor. That being the case, it seemed like it should be possible to transplant the newer T480 components into the T470 derived T25. Got all that straight?

[kitsunyan] was able to put this theory to the test when the opportunity to connect a T25 keyboard to the newer T480 presented itself. Since the 7-row keyboard on the anniversary edition was one of its biggest selling points, seeing if it would work on another machine was kind of a big deal. It didn’t fit physically, and some of the keys didn’t work as expected, but it at least had the same connector and didn’t let out the magic smoke. It represented the first tiny step of a much larger journey.

In the end, it took a lot of trimming, gluing, hacking, and fiddling to get all the new hardware from the T480 to fit into the T25. But if you’re brave enough, the process has been detailed exquisitely by [kitsunyan]. Not only are the part numbers listed for everything you need to order, but there’s plenty of pictures to help illustrate the modifications that need to be made to all the clips, brackets, and assorted widgets that go into a modern laptop.

While we’re very impressed by this project, we can’t say it comes as a complete surprise. We’re well aware of the incredible lengths Thinkpad aficionados will go to keep their machines running into the 21st century. But don’t just take our word for it, you too can join the ranks of the Thinkpad elite.

[Thanks to Pierre for the tip.]

Polar Platform Spins Out Intricate String Art Portraits

February 23, 2019 by 14 Comments

We have semi-fond memories of string art from our grade school art class days. We recall liking the part where we all banged nails into a board, but that bit with wrapping the thread around the nails got a bit tedious. This CNC string art machine elevates the art form far above the grammar school level without all the tedium.

Inspired by a string art maker we recently feature, [Bart Dring] decided to tackle the problem without using an industrial robot to dispense the thread. Using design elements from his recent coaster-creating polar plotter, he built a large, rotating platform flanked by a thread handling mechanism. The platform rotates the circular “canvas” for the portrait, ringed with closely spaced nails, following G-code generated offline. A combination of in and out motion of the arm and slight rotation of the platform wraps the thread around each nail, while rotating the platform pays the thread out to the next nail. Angled nails cause the thread to find its own level naturally, so no Z-axis is needed. The video below shows a brief glimpse of an additional tool that seems to coax the threads down, too. Mercifully, [Bart] included a second fixture to drill the hundreds of angled holes needed; the nails appear to be inserted manually, but we can think of a few fixes for that.

We really like this machine, both in terms of [Bart]’s usual high build-quality standards and for the unique art it creates. He mentions several upgrades before he releases the build files, but we think it’s pretty amazing as is.

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Charging LiPos With USB Power Delivery

February 23, 2019 by 2 Comments

DC power bricks were never a particularly nice way to run home electronics. Heavy and unwieldy, they had a tendency to fall out and block adjacent outlets from use. In recent years, more and more gadgets are shipping with USB ports for power input. However, power over USB has always been fraught with different companies using all manner of different methods to communicate safe current limits between chargers and hardware.

These days, we’re lucky enough to have the official USB Power Delivery standard in place. Even laptop chargers are using USB now, and [FPVtv DRONES] decided to see if it was possible to use such a device as a high current power supply to charge batteries.

The test starts with a MI brand USB C laptop charger. A USB power meter is plugged inline to determine voltage and current output of the charger, while a small microcontroller device is used to speak with the laptop charger and set it to high voltage, high current delivery mode. A lithium battery charger is then plugged in, and the setup is tested by charging two large 4-cell LiPos at over 1.4 amps concurrently.

The setup demonstrates that, with the right off-the-shelf modules, it’s possible to use your laptop charger to run high-current devices, as long as you can spoof it into switching into the right mode. This is the natural evolution of USB power technology – a road which started long ago with projects like the MintyBoost, way back when. Video after the break.

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