Fun-Size Geiger Counter Sits Atop A 9-Volt Battery

September 20, 2017 by 29 Comments

Want a little heads-up before walking into a potentially dangerous radioactive area? Sure, we all do. But the typical surplus Civil Defense Geiger counter is just too bulky to fit into the sleek, modern every-day carry of the smartphone age. So why not slim down your first line of defense against achieving mutant status with this tiny Geiger counter (Facebook)?

We jest about the use cases for a personal-sized Geiger counter, as [Ian King]’s inspiration for this miniaturized build was based more on a fascination with quantifying the unseen world around us. Details are thin in his post, but [Ian] kindly shared the backstory for this build with us. Working on a budget and mostly with spare parts, the big outlay in the BOM was $20 for a Soviet-era SBM-10 tube, itself a marvel of miniaturization. While waiting the two months needed for the tube to arrive, [Ian] whipped up a perf board circuit with a simple oscillator and a CFL transformer to provide the 400 volts needed for the tube. The whole circuit, complete with tiny speaker and an LED to indicate pulses, sits neatly on top of a 9-volt battery. The video below shows it in action with a test source.

Geiger counters are not exactly rare projects on Hackaday, and with good reason. Take a look at this no-solder scrap bin counter or this traveling GPS Geiger counter built dead-bug style.

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The Illuminated Waterways Of The United States

September 20, 2017 by 8 Comments

A recent convert to the ways of the laser cutter, redditor [i-made-a-thing] was in want of a project and — stumbling on some waterways maps on Etsy — launched into fabricating an illuminated map of all the waterways in the United States.

The map itself was laser-cut out of 1/4 inch plywood at his local makerspace. Thing is, smaller rivers and tributaries were too narrow at the scale [i-made-a-thing] wanted, so he ended up spending several hours in Photoshop preparing the image so larger rivers would be laser-cut — and not break off– while the rest would be etched onto the surface. After testing the process by making a few coasters, he was ready to get started on the real deal.

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Salvaging Your Way To A Working Tesla Model S For $6500

September 20, 2017 by 80 Comments

If you possess modest technical abilities and the patience of a few dozen monks, with some skillful haggling you can land yourself some terrific bargains by salvaging and repairing. This is already a well-known ideology when it comes to sourcing things like electronic test gear, where for example a non working unit might be purchased from eBay and fixed for the price of a few passive components.

[Rich] from Car Guru has taken this to a whole new level by successfully salvaging a roadworthy Tesla Model S for $6500!

Sourcing and rebuilding a car is always a daunting project, in this case made even more challenging because the vehicle in subject is fairly recent, state of the art electric vehicle. The journey began by purchasing a black Tesla Model S, that [Rich] affectionately refers to as Delorean. This car had severe water damage rendering most of its electronics and mechanical fasteners unreliable, so [Rich’s] plan was to strip this car of all such parts, and sell what he could to recover the cost of his initial purchase. After selling the working modules of the otherwise drenched battery, motor and a few other bells and whistles his initial monetary investment was reduced to the mere investment of time.

With an essentially free but empty Tesla shell in his possession, [Rich] turned his attention to finding a suitable replacement for the insides. [Rich] mentions that Tesla refused to sell spare parts for such a project, so his only option was to purchase a few more wrecked vehicles. The most prominent of these wrecks was nicknamed Slim Shady. This one

The Donor

had an irreparable shell but with most electronics preserved, and would serve as the donation vehicle. After painstakingly transplanting all the required electronics and once again selling what he did not need, his net investment came to less than 10% of a new car!

Was all of the effort worth it? We certainly think it was! The car was deemed road worthy and even has functioning Super Charging capabilities which according to [Rich] are disabled by Tesla if such a Frankenstein build is detected.

At this point it would probably be instructive to ask [Rich] if he would do it again, but he is already at it, this time salvaging the faster self driving P86. We suggest you stay tuned.

[Thankyou to Enio Fernandes for sending in the tip]

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Friday Hack Chat: All About Drones

September 20, 2017 by 4 Comments

In the future, drones will fill the skies. The world is abuzz (ha!) with news of innovative uses of unmanned aerial vehicles. Soon, our flying robotic overlords will be used for rescue operations, surveillance, counter-insurgency missions, terrorism, agriculture, and delivering frozen dog treats directly from the local Amazon aerodrome to your backyard. The future is nuts.

For this week’s Hack Chat, we’re going to be talking all about unmanned aerial vehicles. This is a huge subject, ranging from aeronautical design, the legal implications of autonomous flying machines, the true efficiency of delivering packages via drones, and the moral ambiguity of covering a city with thousands of mobile, robotic observation posts. In short, the future will be brought to us thanks to powerful brushless motors and lithium batteries.

Our guest for this week’s Hack Chat will be [Piotr Esden-Tempski], developer of UAV autopilot hardware for Paparazzi UAV. Paparazzi can be used for autonomous flight and control of multiple aircraft, and we’ll be talking about the types of embedded systems that can be used for these applications. [Pitor] is also the developer of the 1Bitsy ARM dev platform, the Black Magic Probe JTAG/SWD programmer/debugger and the founder of 1BitSquared.

In this Hack Chat, we’ll be discussing Open Source hardware design for UAVs, all things airborne robotics, the sensors that go into these flying robots, the stalled development (ay, another pun) of consumer and prosumer fixed-wing UAVs, ARM embedded systems, and JTAG and SWD programming and debugging. We’re also taking questions from the audience, and here’s the spreadsheet that will guide the discussion.

Here’s How To Take Part:

join-hack-chatOur Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This Hack Chat will be going down noon, Pacific time on Friday, September 22nd. Sidereal and solar getting you down? Wondering when noon is this month? Not a problem: here’s a handy countdown timer!

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Hackaday Prize Entry: MOLBED Braille Display

September 20, 2017 by 15 Comments

Electromechanical braille displays, where little pins pop up or drop down to represent various characters, can cost upwards of a thousand dollars. That’s where the Modular Low-cost Braille Electro Display, aka MOLBED, steps up. The project’s creator, [Madaeon] aims to create a DIY-friendly, 3D-printable,  and simple braille system. He’s working on a single character’s display, with the idea it could be expanded to cover a whole row or even offer multiple rows.

[Madeon]’s design involves using Flexinol actuator wire to control whether a pin sticks or not. He designed a “rocker” system consisting of a series of 6 pins that form the Braille display. Each pin is actuated by two Flexinol wires, one with current applied to it and one without, popping the pin up about a millimeter. Swap polarity and the pin pops down to be flush with the surface.

This project is actually [Madeon]’s second revision of the MOLBED system. The first version, an entry to the Hackaday Prize last year, used very small solenoids with two very small magnets at either end of the pole to hold the pin in place. The new system, while slightly more complex mechanically, should be easier to produce in a low-cost version, and has a much higher chance of bringing this technology to people who need it. It’s a great project, and a great entry to the Hackaday Prize.

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Spy Tech: Nonlinear Junction Detectors

September 20, 2017 by 121 Comments

If you ever watch a spy movie, you’ve doubtlessly seen some nameless tech character sweep a room for bugs using some kind of detector and either declare it clean or find the hidden microphone in the lamp. Of course, as a hacker, you have to start thinking about how that would work. If you had a bug that transmits all the time, that’s easy. The lamp probably shouldn’t be emitting RF energy all the time, so that’s easy to detect and a dead give away. But what if the bug were more sophisticated? Maybe it wakes up every hour and beams its data home. Or perhaps it records to memory and doesn’t transmit anything. What then?

High-end bug detectors have another technique they use that claims to be able to find active device junctions. These are called Nonlinear Junction Detectors (NLJD). Spy agencies in the United States, Russian and China have been known to use them and prisons employ them to find cell phones. Their claim to fame is the device doesn’t have to be turned on for detection to occur. You can see a video of a commercial NLJD, below

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Huge Names Confirm Their Supercon Appearances

September 20, 2017 by 16 Comments

We’re excited to announce the next batch of speakers for the 2017 Hackaday Superconference.

We are especially pleased to welcome Michael Ossmann as a speaker. He presented an RF design workshop at the 2014 Superconference which was sold out, standing room only, and still turned away dozens of people before becoming a hit on the Internet. This year he takes the stage with colleague Dominic Spill as they focus on infrared communications and the uses and abuses of such.

Dr. Christal Gordon threw down an incredible talk on biologically inspired sensors last year and we suspect she will outdo herself this year. Her talk will cover the fanciest of cutting-edge sensors and the trade-offs of selecting the new hotness for your designs. Coming out of this you will know when to go with a suite of tried and true components and when to make the leap to new tech.

Several of this year’s Hackaday Prize Judges will be on hand and presenting talks. In addition to Christal Gordon and Danielle Applestone (announced as a speaker last week), we’re thrilled to have Anouk Wipprecht — internationally known for her work in fashion and engineering, pushing the boundaries of how technology can interface with humans — as a speaker. Nadya Peek from the Center for Bits and Atoms who spoke at Supercon in 2016 with a harrowing tale of an impromptu engineering challenge in Shenzhen has confirmed that she will speak this year.

The ever-popular Sprite_TM will be at Supercon. He has a reputation for bringing the house down with fantastic presentations, be it the Tamagochi Matrix or the Tiniest Game Boy. And we are proud to present the Art Director for Hackaday — Joe Kim will be speaking about the curious connection between art and technology and how developments in one push the other forward.

Ever wonder about the air you’re breathing in the house or at work. So does Natalia Mykhaylova whose work begins to monitor and catalog that information. She will discuss the state of our HVAC systems and what it looks like to bring them into the information age.

Below you’ll find the confirmed speakers we’re announcing today. We’ll have more, as well as a list of confirmed talks next week. Get your ticket now, they will sell out.

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