Digital Audio Workstation In A Box

September 23, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 4 Comments

Although it’s still possible to grab a couple of friends, guitars, and a set of drums and start making analog music like it’s 1992 and there are vacant garages everywhere yearning for the sounds of power chords, the music scene almost demands the use of a computer now. There are a lot of benefits, largely that it dramatically lowers the barrier to entry since it greatly reduces the need for expensive analog instruments. It’s possible to get by with an impressively small computer and only a handful of other components too, as [BAussems] demonstrates with this tiny digital audio workstation (DAW).

The DAW is housed inside a small wooden box and is centered around a Behringer JT-4000 which does most of the heavy lifting in this project. It’s a synthesizer designed to be as small as possible, but [BAussems] has a few other things to add to this build to round out its musical capabilities. A digital reverb effects pedal was disassembled to reduce size and added to the DAW beneath the synthesizer. At its most basic level this DAW can be used with nothing but these components and a pair of headphones, but it’s also possible to add a smartphone to act as a sequencer and a stereo as well.

For a portable on-the-go rig, this digital audio workstation checks a lot of the boxes needed including MIDI and integration with a computer. It’s excellent inspiration for anyone else who needs a setup like this but doesn’t have access, space, or funds for a more traditional laptop- or desktop-centered version. For some other small on-the-go musical instruments we recently saw a MIDI-enabled keyboard not much larger than a credit card.

There’s No Lower Spec Linux Machine Than This One

September 21, 2024 by Jenny List 46 Comments

It’s not uncommon for a new distro version to come out, and a grudging admission that maybe a faster laptop is on the cards. Perhaps after seeing this project though, you’ll never again complain about that two-generations-ago 64-bit multi-core behemoth, because [Dimitri Grinberg] — who else! — has succeeded in booting an up-to-date Linux on the real most basic of processors. We’re not talking about 386s, ATmegas, or 6502s, instead he’s gone right back to the beginning. The Intel 4004 was the first commercially available microprocessor back in 1971, and now it can run Linux.

So, given the 4004’s very limited architecture and 4-bit bus, how can it perform this impossible feat? As you might expect, the kernel isn’t being compiled to run natively on such ancient hardware. Instead he’s achieved the equally impossible-sounding task of writing a MIPS emulator for the venerable silicon, and paring back the emulated hardware to the extent that it remains capable given the limitations of the 1970s support chips in interfacing to the more recent parts such as RAM for the MIPS, an SD card, and a VFD display. The result is shown in the video below the break, and even though it’s sped up it’s clear that this is not a quick machine by any means.

We’d recommend the article as a good read even if you’ll never put Linux on a 4004, because of its detailed description of the architecture. Meanwhile we’ve had a few 4004 stories over the years, and this one’s not even the first time we’ve seen it emulate something else.

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Hackaday Podcast Episode 289: Tiny Games, Two Modern Modems, And The Next Big Thing

September 20, 2024 by Kristina Panos 9 Comments

This week on the Podcast, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos joined forces to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week.

First up in the news: we’ve announced the 2024 Tiny Games Contest winners! We asked you to show us your best tiny game, whether that means tiny hardware, tiny code, or a tiny BOM, and you did so in spades. Congratulations to all the winners and Honorable Mentions, and thanks to DigiKey, Supplyframe, and all who entered!

We also announced the first round of Supercon speakers, so if you haven’t gotten your ticket yet, now’s the second best time.

But wait, there’s more! We’re already a few weeks into the next contest, where we want you to show us your best ~~Simple~~ Supercon Add-On. We love to see the add-ons people make for the badge every year, so this time around we’re really embracing the standard. The best SAOs will get a production run and they’ll be in the swag bag at Hackaday Europe 2025.

Then it’s on to What’s That Sound, which completely stumped Kristina once again. Can you get it? Can you figure it out? Can you guess what’s making that sound? If you can, and your number comes up, you get a special Hackaday Podcast t-shirt.

Now it’s on to the hacks, beginning with non-planar ironing for smooth prints, and a really neat business card that also plays tiny games. Then we’ll discuss USB modems, cool casts for broken wrists, and archiving data on paper. Finally, we ask two big questions — where do you connect the shield, and what’s the Next Big Thing gonna be? Inquiring minds want to know.

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!

Download in DRM-free MP3 and savor at your leisure.

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Design And The Golden Rule

September 19, 2024 by Al Williams 34 Comments

You often learn the golden rule or some variation of it as early as kindergarten. There are several ways to phrase it, but you most often hear: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” While that’s catchy, it is really an aphorism that encourages us to consider the viewpoints of others. As people who design things, this can be tricky. Sometimes, what you want isn’t necessarily what most people want, and — conversely — you might not appreciate what most people want or need.

EDIT/1000

I learned this lesson many years ago when I used to babysit a few HP/1000 minicomputers. Minicomputer sounds grand, but, honestly, a Raspberry Pi of any sort would put the old HP to shame. Like a lot of computers in those days, it had a text editor that was arcane even by the standards of vi or emacs. EDIT/1000 couldn’t be sure you weren’t using a printing terminal, and the commands reflect that.

For example, printing a few lines around the current line requires the command: “/-2,L,5” which isn’t that hard, I suppose. To delete all lines that contain a percent sign, “1$ D/%/A/” assuming you don’t want to be asked about each deletion.

Sure, sure. As a Hackaday reader, you don’t find this hard to puzzle out or remember. But back in the 1980s, a bunch of physicists and chemical engineers had little patience for stuff like that. However, the editor had a trick up its sleeve.

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Real Time Hacking Of A Supermarket Toy

September 16, 2024 by Jenny List 14 Comments

Sometimes those moments arise when a new device comes on the market and hardware hackers immediately take to it. Over a few days, an observer can watch them reverse engineer it and have all sorts of fun making it do things it wasn’t intended to by the original manufacturer. We’re watching this happen in real time from afar this morning, as Dutch hackers are snapping up a promotional kids’ game from a supermarket (mixed Dutch/English, the site rejects Google Translate).

The Albert Heijn soundbox is a small handheld device with a barcode reader and a speaker, and as far as we can see it forms part of an animal identification card game. The cards have a barcode on the back, and sliding them through a reader causes a sample of that animal’s sound to be played. They’re attractively cheap, so of course someone had to take a look inside. So far the parts including the microcontroller have been identified, the ROM has been dumped and the audio reverse-engineered, and the barcode format has been cracked. Still to come are the insertion of custom audio or codes and arbitrary code execution, but knowing these hackers that won’t take long. If you’re Dutch, we suggest you head over to your local Albert Heijn with a few euros, and join in the fun.

European supermarkets can be fruitful places for the hardware hacker, as we’ve shown you before.

High-Speed Jelly Launcher Destroys Toast

September 5, 2024 by Lewin Day 10 Comments

You shouldn’t play with your food. Unless you’re designing some kind of portable cannon to fling it across the room. That’s precisely what [Backhaul Studios] did.

The first step of designing the condiment cannon was deciding what it should fire. Little low-profile tubs of jelly ended up being the ideal. They were stout enough to survive high-speed flight, while their low height was good for aerodynamics. The cannon itself is built from metal and 3D-printed parts. Multiple iterations eventually landed on a flywheel launcher design with big brushless motors and large 6-inch discs. It sounds positively awful in action and can fling jam (jelly) packets at immense speed. From there, it was simply necessary to design a magazine feed system to enable high-speed full-auto jelly delivery.

If you’ve ever hucked ketchup packets at a brick wall, you’ve understood the joy of splattering condiments everywhere. This cannon is just a way to do that faster and more hilariously. We’ve seen other fun builds along these lines before, too. Video after the break.

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Hackaday Podcast Episode 286: Showing Off SAOs, Hiding From HOAs, And Beautiful Byproducts

August 30, 2024 by Dan Maloney 2 Comments

Even when the boss is away, the show must go on, so Dan slid back behind the guest mic and teamed up with Tom to hunt down the freshest of this week’s hacks. It was a bit of a chore, with a couple of computer crashes and some side-quests down a few weird rabbit holes, but we managed to get things together in the end.

Tune in and you’ll hear us bemoan HOAs and celebrate one ham’s endless battle to outwit them, no matter what the golf cart people say about his antennas. Are you ready to say goodbye to the magnetic stripe on your credit card? We sure are, but we’re not holding our breath yet. Would you 3D print a 55-gallon drum? Probably not, but you almost can with a unique Cartesian-polar hybrid printer. And, if you think running MS-DOS on a modern laptop is hard, guess again — or, maybe you just have to get really lucky.

We also took a look at a digital watch with a beautiful display, a hacked multimeter, modern wardriving tools, switchable magnets, and debate the eternal question of v-slot wheels versus linear bearings. And finally, you won’t want to miss our look at what’s new with 3D scanning, and the first installment of Kristina’s new “Boss Byproducts” series, which delves into the beauty of Fordite.