MIDI Controller In A Cubic Inch

July 27, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 3 Comments

MIDI as a standard has opened up a huge world to any musician willing to use a computer to generate or enhance their playing and recording. Since the 80s, it has it has revolutionized the way music is produced and performed, allowing for seamless integration of digital instruments, automation of complex sequences, and unprecedented control over everything from production to editing. It has also resulted in a number of musical instruments that probably wouldn’t be possible without electronic help, like this MIDI instrument which might be the world’s smallest.

Fitting into a cubic inch of space, the tiny instrument’s volume is mostly taken up by the MIDI connector itself which was perhaps an acceptable size by 1980s standards but seems rather bulky today. A two-layer PCB split into three sections sandwiches the connector in place and boasts an ATtiny85 microcontroller and all the associated electronics needed to implement MIDI. Small threaded screws hold the platform together and provide each layer with a common ground. Four small pushbuttons at the top of the device act as the instrument’s keys.

The project’s creator (and Hackaday alum!) [Jeremy Cook] has it set up to play notes from a piano right now, but has also made the source code available so that any musical action can be programmed onto these buttons. Flexibility is perhaps MIDI’s greatest strength and why the standard has lasted for decades now, as it makes it fairly straightforward to build more comprehensive, easy-to-learn musical instruments or even musical instruments out of retro video game systems.

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Need Many Thin Parts? Try Multi-material Stack Printing

July 27, 2024 by Elliot Williams 9 Comments

Admittedly it’s a bit of a niche application, but if you need lots of flat 3D printed objects, one way to go about it is to print them in a stack and separate them somehow. An old(er) solution is to use a non-extruding “ironing” step between each layer, which makes them easier to pull apart. But another trick is to use the fact that PLA and PETG don’t stick well to each other to your advantage. And thus is born multi-material stack printing. (Video, embedded below the break.)

[Jonathan] wants to print out multiples of his fun Multiboard mounting system backplates, and these are the ideal candidate for stack printing: they’re thin, but otherwise take up the entire build plate. As you’d expect, the main trick is to print thin layers of PETG between the PLA plate layers that you do want. He demonstrates that you can then simply pull them apart.

There are some tricks, though. First is to make two pillars in addition to the plates, which apparently convinces the slicer to not flatten all the layers together. (We don’t really understand why, honestly, but we don’t use Bambu slicer for multi-materials.) The other trick that we expect to be more widely applicable, is that [Jonathan] extrudes the PETG interlayers a little thicker than normally. Because the PETG overflows the lower PLA layer, it physically locks on even though it chemically doesn’t. This probably requires some experimentation.

As multi-material printers get cheaper, we’ve seen a lot more innovative uses for them popping up. And we wouldn’t be so stoked about the topic if there weren’t a variety of hacker projects to make it possible. Most recently, the impressive system from [Armored_Turtle] has caught our eye. Who knows what kind of crazy applications we’ll see in the future? Are you doing multi-material yet?

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A History Of Internet Outages

July 27, 2024 by Al Williams 31 Comments

We heard a story that after the recent hurricane, a man noted that while the house was sweltering hot because the power was still out, his kids were more anxious for the internet to come back online. The Internet is practically a basic necessity for most people, but as you may have noticed with the recent CrowdStrike debacle, the Internet isn’t always reliable. Granted, the problem in that case wasn’t the Internet per se, but a problem with many critical hosts that provide services. [Thomas Germain] from the BBC took the opportunity to recall some of the more bizarre reasons we’ve had massive Internet outages in the past.

While teens after a hurricane might miss social media, global outages can be serious business. With 8.5 million computers dead, 911 services went down, medical surgeries were canceled, and — of course — around 46,000 flights were canceled in a single day. We have short memories for these outages, but as [Thomas] points out, this was far from the first massive outage, and many of them have very strange backstories.

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OSHW Model Rocket Kit Embraces The Hexagon

July 27, 2024 by Tom Nardi 20 Comments

If you’ve ever built a model rocket, you’ll know there’s not a whole lot to them. Essentially it’s a cardboard tube, a plastic nosecone, some fins, and a little clip that will keep it riding the launch rail as it accelerates off the pad. Extra points awarded if you add in a parachute, but strictly speaking, even that’s a luxury. Stick an Estes motor in that thing and send it.

But pointing out that lightweight cardboard tubes can be tricky to ship without getting crushed, [Concrete Dog] has come up with HEXA, a clever model rocket kit that uses pre-scored cardstock instead. The immediate advantage is that this allows the rocket to be shipped as flat sheets of material, but as a secondary bonus, once folded into its final shape the rocket has an awesome hexagonal cross section.

As with a traditional kit, both the nosecone and fins are plastic. Except here they’ve been 3D printed in either PLA or PETG depending on their proximity to he hot and fiery area of the rocket. [Concrete Dog] says the printed parts are largely ready to fly as-is, but that some quality time with a piece of sandpaper and a coat of paint could improve the aerodynamics a bit if you were so inclined.

Ready for the best part? [Concrete Dog] has decided to release all of the design files for the rocket under the CERN Open Hardware Licence, meaning you’re free to reproduce and modify the rocket as you see fit. In fact, on July 24th, the HEXA rocket was officially certified as Open Hardware by the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) — a first for a DIY rocket, as far as we can tell.

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George Washington Gets Cleaned Up With A Laser

July 27, 2024 by Tom Nardi 5 Comments

Now, we wouldn’t necessarily call ourselves connoisseurs of fine art here at Hackaday. But we do enjoy watching [Julian Baumgartner]’s YouTube channel, where he documents the projects that he takes on as a professional conservator. Folks send in their dirty or damaged paintings, [Julian] works his magic, and the end result often looks like a completely different piece. Spoilers: if you’ve ever looked at an old painting and wondered why the artist made it so dark and dreary — it probably just needs to be cleaned.

Anyway, in his most recent video, [Julian] pulled out a piece of gear that we didn’t expect to see unleashed against a painting of one of America’s Founding Fathers: a Er:YAG laser. Even better, instead of some fancy-pants fine art restoration laser, he apparently picked up second hand unit designed for cosmetic applications. The model appears to be a Laserscope Venus from the early 2000s, which goes for about $5K these days.

Now, to explain why he raided an esthetician’s closet to fix up this particular painting, we’ve got to rewind a bit. As we’ve learned from [Julian]’s previous videos, the problem with an old dirty painting is rarely the paining itself, it’s the varnish that has been applied to it. These varnishes, especially older ones, have a tendency to yellow and crack with age. Now stack a few decades worth of smoke and dirt on top of it, and you’ve all but completely obscured the original painting underneath. But there’s good news — if you know what you’re doing, you can remove the varnish without damaging the painting itself.

In most cases, this can be done with various solvents that [Julian] mixes up after testing them out on some inconspicuous corner of the painting. But in this particular case, the varnish wasn’t reacting well to anything in his inventory. Even his weakest solvents were going right through it and damaging the paint underneath.

Because of this, [Julian] had to break out the big guns. After experimenting with the power level and pulse duration of the 2940 nm laser, he found the settings necessary to break down the varnish while stopping short of cooking the paint it was covering. After hitting it with a few pulses, he could then come in with a cotton swab and wipe the residue away. It was still slow going, but it turns out most things are in the art conservation world.

This isn’t the first time we’ve covered [Julian]’s resourceful conservation methods. Back in 2019, we took at look the surprisingly in-depth video he created about the design and construction of his custom heat table for flattening out large canvases.

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Vintage Ribbon Cable Repair Saves Poqet PC

July 26, 2024 by Jenny List 19 Comments

It sometimes seems as though computing power in your pocket is a relatively new phenomenon, but in fact there have been ultraportable computers since the 8-bit era. They started to become useful around the end of the 1980s though as enterprising manufacturers started cramming full-fat PC XTs into pocket form factors. Of these the one to own was the Poqet PC, a slim clamshell design that would run for ages on a pair of AA cells . If you have one today you’d be lucky if its display ribbon cable is without faults though, and [Robert’s Retro] is here with a fix previously thought impossible.

A large proportion of the video below the break is devoted to dismantling the unit, no easy task. The cable once exposed is found to have delaminated completely, and he takes us through the delicate task of attaching a modern equivalent. We particularly like the way in which the cable’s own springiness is used to retract it. The result has a white cable rather than the original black, but that’s a small price to pay for a machine that works rather than a broken paperweight.

If early pocket computing is your thing, it’s a subject we’ve covered before.

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