Every Computer Deserves A Rotary Encoder

December 13, 2018 by 26 Comments

In the era of touch screens and capacitive buttons, we’d be lying if we said we didn’t have the occasional pang of nostalgia for the good old days when interfacing with devices had a bit more heft to it. The physical clunk and snap of switches never seems to get old, and while you can always pick up a mechanical keyboard for your computer if you want to hear that beautiful staccato sound while firing off your angry Tweets, there’s a definite dearth of mechanical interface devices otherwise.

[Jeremy Cook] decided to take matters into his own hands (literally and figuratively) by designing his own multipurpose USB rotary input device. It’s not a replacement for the mouse or keyboard, but a third pillar of the desktop which offers a unique way of controlling software. It’s naturally suited to controlling things like volume or any other variable which would benefit from some fine tuning, but as demonstrated in the video after the break even has some gaming applications. No doubt the good readers of Hackaday could think of even more potential applications for a gadget like this.

The device is built around the diminutive Arduino-compatible PICO board by MellBell, which features a ATmega32u4 and native USB. This allowed him to very rapidly spin up a USB Human Interface Device (HID) with minimal headaches, all he had to do was hang his buttons and rotary encoder on the PICO’s digital pins. To that end, he [Jeremy] used the fantastic I2C rotary encoder designed by [fattore.saimon], which readers may remember as a finalist in the Open Hardware Design Challenge phase of the 2018 Hackaday Prize. He also added a NeoPixel ring around the encoder to use for some visual feedback and because, well, it just looks cool.

Since all of the core components are digital, there’s not a whole lot required in the way of wiring or passive components. This let [Jeremy] put the whole thing together on a piece of perfboard, freeing him up to spend time designing the 3D printed enclosure complete with translucent lid so he can see the NeoPixel blinkenlights. He got the tolerances tight enough that the whole device can be neatly press-fit together, and even thought to add holes in the bottom of the case so he could push the perfboard back out if he needed to down the line.

[Jeremy] spends a good chunk of the video going over the software setup and development of the firmware, and details some of the nuances he had to wrap his head around when working with the I2C encoder. He also explains the math involved in getting his encoder to emulate a mouse cursor moving in a circle, which he thinks could be useful when emulating games that originally used an encoder such as Tempest or Pong.

We’ve seen similar USB “knobs” in the past for controlling volume, but the additional inputs that [Jeremy] built into his version definitely makes it a bit more practical. Of course we’re suckers for interesting USB input devices to begin with.

Continue reading “Every Computer Deserves A Rotary Encoder” →

The Battle Between Robot Harmonica And Machine Finger Rages On

December 13, 2018 by 12 Comments

When asking the question “Do humans dream of machines?”, it’s natural to think of the feverish excitement ahead of an iPhone or Playstation launch, followed by lines around the block of enthusiastic campers, eager to get their hands on the latest hardware as soon as is humanly possible. However, it’s also the title of an art piece by [Jonghong Park], and is deserving of further contemplation. (Video after the break.)

The art piece consists of a series of eight tiny harmonicas, which are in turn, played by eight fans, which appear to have been cribbed from a low-power graphics card design. Each harmonica in turn has a microphone fitted, which, when it picks up a loud enough signal, causes an Arduino Nano to actuate a mechanical finger which slows the fan down until the noise stops. It’s the mechanical equivalent of a stern look from a parent to a noisy child. Then, the cycle begins again.

The build is very much of the type we see in the art world – put together as simply as possible, with eight Arduinos running the eight harmonicas, whereas an engineering approach may focus more on efficiency and cost. Between the squeaks from the toy harmonicas and the noise from the servos entrusted to quiet them, the machine makes quite the mechanical racket. [Jonghong] indicates that the piece speaks to the interaction of machine (robot harmonica) and humanity (the finger which quells the noise).

It’s a tidily executed build which would be at home in any modern art gallery. It recalls memories of another such installation, which combines fans and lasers into a musical machine. Continue reading “The Battle Between Robot Harmonica And Machine Finger Rages On” →

Jeremy Hong: Weaponizing The Radio Spectrum

December 13, 2018 by 52 Comments

Jeremy Hong knows a secret or two about things you shouldn’t do with radio frequency (RF), but he’s not sharing.

That seems an odd foundation upon which to build one’s 2018 Hackaday Superconference talk, but it’s for good reason. Jeremy knows how to do things like build GPS and radar jammers, which are federal crimes. Even he hasn’t put his knowledge to practical use, having built only devices that never actually emitted any RF.

So what does one talk about when circumspection is the order of the day? As it turns out, quite a lot. Jeremy focused on how the military leverages the power of radio frequency jamming to turn the tables on enemies, and how civilian police forces are fielding electronic countermeasures as well. It’s interesting stuff, and Jeremy proved to be an engaging guide on a whirlwind tour into the world of electronic warfare.
Continue reading “Jeremy Hong: Weaponizing The Radio Spectrum” →

Tiny Art Etched Into Silicon Wafers With Electron Beam Lithography

December 13, 2018 by 17 Comments

Looks like [Sam Zeloof] got bored on his Thanksgiving break, and things got a little weird in his garage. Of course when your garage contains a scanning electron microscope, the definition of weird can include experimenting with electron-beam lithography, resulting in tiny images etched into silicon.

You’ll probably remember [Sam] from his 2018 Hackaday Superconference talk on his DIY semiconductor fab lab, which he used to create a real integrated circuit. That chip, a PMOS dual-channel differential amp, was produced by photolithography using a modified DLP projector. Photolithography imposes limits to how small a feature can be created on silicon, based on the wavelength of light.

[Sam] is now looking into using the electron beam of his SEM as a sort of CNC laser engraver to produce much finer features. The process involves spin-coating silicon wafers with SU-8, an epoxy photoresist normally used with UV light but that also turns out to be sensitive to electron beams. He had to modify his SEM to control the X- and Y-axis deflection with a 12-bit DAC and provide a custom beam blanker. With a coated wafer in the vacuum chamber, standard laser engraving software generates the G-code to trace his test images on the resist. A very quick dip in acetone develops the exposed chip.

[Sam] says these first test images are not too dainty; the bears are about 2.5 mm high, and the line width is about 10 μm. His system is currently capable of resolving down to 100 nm, while commercial electron beam lithography can get down to 5 nm or so. He says that adding a Faraday cage to the setup might help him get there. Sounds like a project for Christmas break.

Continue reading “Tiny Art Etched Into Silicon Wafers With Electron Beam Lithography” →

RISC-V Will Stop Hackers Dead From Getting Into Your Computer

December 13, 2018 by 35 Comments

The greatest hardware hacks of all time were simply the result of finding software keys in memory. The AACS encryption debacle — the 09 F9 key that allowed us to decrypt HD DVDs — was the result of encryption keys just sitting in main memory, where it could be read by any other program. DeCSS, the hack that gave us all access to DVDs was again the result of encryption keys sitting out in the open.

Because encryption doesn’t work if your keys are just sitting out in the open, system designers have come up with ingenious solutions to prevent evil hackers form accessing these keys. One of the best solutions is the hardware enclave, a tiny bit of silicon that protects keys and other bits of information. Apple has an entire line of chips, Intel has hardware extensions, and all of these are black box solutions. They do work, but we have no idea if there are any vulnerabilities. If you can’t study it, it’s just an article of faith that these hardware enclaves will keep working.

Now, there might be another option. RISC-V researchers are busy creating an Open Source hardware enclave. This is an Open Source project to build secure hardware enclaves to store cryptographic keys and other secret information, and they’re doing it in a way that can be accessed and studied. Trust but verify, yes, and that’s why this is the most innovative hardware development in the last decade.

Continue reading “RISC-V Will Stop Hackers Dead From Getting Into Your Computer” →

[Ben Krasnow] Builds A One-Component Interferometer

December 13, 2018 by 32 Comments

When we think of physics experiments, we tend to envision cavernous rooms filled with things like optical benches, huge coils in vacuum chambers, and rack after rack of amplifiers and data acquisition hardware. But it doesn’t have to be that way – you can actually perform laser interferometry with a single component and measure sub-micron displacements and more.

The astute viewer of [Ben Krasnow]’s video below will note that in order to use the one component, a laser diode, as an interferometer, he needed a whole bunch of support gear, like power supplies, a signal generator, and a really, really nice mixed-signal oscilloscope. But the principle of the experiment is the important bit, which uses a laser diode with a built-in monitoring photodiode. Brought out to a third lead, older laser diodes often used these photodiodes to control the light emitted by the laser junction. But they also respond to light reflected back into the laser diode, and thanks to constructive and destructive interference, can actually generate a signal that corresponds to very slight displacements of a reflector. [Ben] used it to measure the vibrations of a small speaker, the rotation of a motor shaft, and with a slight change in setup, to measure the range to a fixed target with sub-micron precision. It’s fascinating stuff, and the fact you can extract so much information from a single component is pretty cool.

We really like [Ben]’s style of presentation, and the interesting little nooks and crannies of physics that he finds a way to explore. He recently looked at how helium can kill a MEMS sensor, an equally fascinating topic.

Continue reading “[Ben Krasnow] Builds A One-Component Interferometer” →

ICEBreaker, The Open Source Development Board For FPGAs

December 13, 2018 by 40 Comments

The Hackaday Superconference is over, which is a shame, but one of the great things about our conference is the people who manage to trek out to Pasadena every year to show us all the cool stuff they’re working on. One of those people was [Piotr Esden-Tempski], founder of 1 Bit Squared, and he brought some goodies that would soon be launched on a few crowdfunding platforms. The coolest of these was the iCEBreaker, an FPGA development kit that makes it easy to learn FPGAs with an Open Source toolchain.

The hardware for the iCEBreaker includes the iCE40UP5K fpga with 5280 logic cells,, 120 kbit of dual-port RAM, 1 Mbit of single-port RAM, and a PLL, two SPIs and two I2Cs. Because the most interesting FPGA applications include sending bits out over pins really, really fast, there’s also 16 Megabytes of SPI Flash that allows you to stream video to a LED matrix. There are enough logic cells here to synthesize a CPU, too, and already the iCEBreaker can handle the PicoRV32, and some of the RISC-V cores. Extensibility is through PMOD connectors, and yes, there’s also an HDMI output for your vintage computing projects.

If you’re looking to get into FPGA development, there’s no better time. Joe Fitz‘s WTFpga workshop from the 2018 Hackaday Superconference has already been converted to this iCEBreaker board, and yes, the seven-segment display and DIP switches are available. Between this and the Open Source iCE toolchain, you’ve got a complete development system that’s ready to go, fun to play with, and extremely capable.