Daily Prophet Is A Magic Newspaper! (Kinda)

July 3, 2017 by James Hobson 14 Comments

A few gadgets around the house make for excellent display and conversation pieces, but when an artifact from the wizarding world finds its way into a muggle household? Well, you frame it.

Okay so in reality this is really an animated picture frame with a Harry Potter theme — specifically the fabulous newspaper, The Daily Prophet, from the series of novels and movies. Conceived by [Piet Rullins Jr.] after a trip to ‘The Wizarding World of Harry Potter’ attraction at Orlando Studios, he wanted an inventive way to showcase the videos of his vacation.

The seven inch display is secured inside a poster frame, surrounded by a customized front page of the wizard paper — weaving the tale of his trip — and controlled by a Raspberry Pi 3. When someone approaches, an Adafruit infrared sensor detects the movement and activates the display, shutting it off after five minutes in order to preserve the screen and save power. A USB power cable hidden inside the cabinet it’s mounted on adds to the effect of a magical periodical. What, did you think it was powered by magic too?

Continue reading “Daily Prophet Is A Magic Newspaper! (Kinda)” →

Automate The Freight: Front Line Deliveries By Drone

July 3, 2017 by Dan Maloney 49 Comments

Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC, once said that “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.” That’s true in many enterprises, but in warfare, the side that neglects logistics is likely to be the loser. Keeping soldiers fed, clothed, and armed is the very essence of effectively prosecuting a war, and the long logistical chain from rear supply depots to forward action is what makes that possible.

Armies have had millennia to optimize logistics, and they have always maximized use of new technologies to position supplies where they’re needed. Strong backs of men and beasts sufficed for centuries, supplemented by trains in the 19th century and supplanted by motor vehicles in the 20th. Later, aircraft made an incalculable impact on supply chains, allowing rapid mobilization of supplies and supporting the industrial scale death and destruction of the 20th-century’s wars.

Continue reading “Automate The Freight: Front Line Deliveries By Drone” →

Fidget Spinner Gigantor

July 3, 2017 by Michael Uttmark 59 Comments

Had enough of fidget spinners yet? If you haven’t heard, a toy that consists of a bearing in the center of a multi-lobed flat structure that’s designed to spin around the bearing’s axis with little force has taken the world by storm. Usually, these devices are about 10cm in diameter or less. But, everything is bigger in Texas. So, naturally, students from the University of Texas at Dallas got to work making the largest fidget spinner in the world.

Clocking in at 150 pounds and 45 inches in diameter, this thing is undeniably huge. The structure is made out of what looks to be veneered plywood glued together to make a ~2.5in thick structure to put their bearings in. And, after washing their bearings with soapy water, the students get to work press fitting their 2.2in by 10.5in ball bearings into their painted wooden structure. Their video embedded below is an entertaining watch, it starts with a gag, but moves on the project afterwards.

Haven’t gotten enough fidget spinner news? Fear not, we’ve got you. [MakerStorage] has a fidget spinner designed to teach STEAM. Just in case manually spinning a fidget spinner is above you, we’ve got robots on the job. Want to see something more vibrant? How about POV on a fidget spinner?And if you’ll never get tired of fidget spinners, we’ve got a fidget spinner for that too.

Continue reading “Fidget Spinner Gigantor” →

3D-Printed Turbine Rotary Tool Tops 40,000 RPM

July 3, 2017 by Dan Maloney 38 Comments

For your high speed, low torque needs, few things beat a rotary tool like a Dremel. The electric motor has its limits, though, they generally peak out at 35,000 rpm or so. Plus there’s the dust and the chips to deal with from whatever you’re Dremeling, so why not kill two birds with one stone and build a turbine-driven rotary tool attachment for your shop vac?

Another serious shortcoming of the electric Dremels that is addressed by [johnnyq90]’s 3D-printed turbine is the lack of that dentist’s office whine. His tool provides enough of that sound to trigger an attack of odontophobia as it tops out at 43,000 rpm. The turbine’s stator and rotors are 3D-printed, as is the body, inlet scoop, and adapter for the vacuum line. A shaft from an old rotary tool is reused, but a new one could be turned pretty easily. The video below shows the finished tool in action; there’ll no doubt be objections in the comments to ingesting dust, chips, and incandescent bits of metal, but our feeling is that the turbine will hold up to these challenges pretty well. Until it doesn’t, that is.

We like [johnnyq90]’s design style, which you may recall from his micro Tesla turbine or nitro-powered rotary tool. He sure likes things that spin fast.

Continue reading “3D-Printed Turbine Rotary Tool Tops 40,000 RPM” →

A Beverage Cooler That Comes To You!

July 2, 2017 by James Hobson 28 Comments

Feel like taking a long walk, but can’t be bothered with carrying your drinks? Have no fear, this “Follow Me” Cooler Bot is here!

Really just a mobile platform with a cooler on top, the robot connects to smartphone via Bluetooth, following it using GPS. Making the platform involves a little woodworking skill, and an aluminium hub with a 3D-printed hub adapter connects the motors to a pair 6″ rubber wheels with a swivel caster mounted at the rear. A pocket in the platform’s base houses the electronics.

The Arduino Uno — via an L298n motor driver — controls two 12V DC, brushed and geared motors mounted with 3D printed brackets, while a Parallax PAM-7Q GPS Module in conjunction with an HMC 5883L compass help the robot keep its bearing. A duo of batteries power the motors and the electronics separately to prevent any malfunctions.

Continue reading “A Beverage Cooler That Comes To You!” →

Australian Raspberry Pi Tutorials

July 2, 2017 by Al Williams 20 Comments

There’s a new and very detailed video tutorial about the Raspberry Pi available from the Australian firm Core Electronics. There are 30 videos and 5 chapters in total. A few of the introduction videos are short, but the detail videos range from 3 to 16 minutes.

The instructor [Michael] starts out at the very beginning — loading NOOBS on the Pi — and then moves on to Python, shell scripting, and building GUI applications with TkInter. It also covers using Particle Pi for IoT applications that integrate with IFTTT.

We do realize that most people reading Hackaday have probably used a Raspberry Pi at least once or twice. However, we also know that we all get asked to recommend material for beginners, or — in some cases — we are using material to teach classes in schools or hackerspaces.

Continue reading “Australian Raspberry Pi Tutorials” →

Hackaday Links: July 2, 2017

July 2, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 55 Comments

A few months ago, we had a Hack Chat with Chip Gracey, the guy behind Parallax, the Basic Stamp, the Propeller, and the upcoming Propeller II. Now we’ve finally got around to editing that transcript. There’s a lot of awesome stuff in here, from learning a Hardware Design Language to the actual costs of fabbing silicon.

Rigol, the manufacturers of every hackerspace’s favorite oscilloscope, announced a new chipset. The current lineup of Rigol scopes top out at around 1GHz. In a prototype scope based on this chipset, Rigol demonstrated 4GHz bandwidth and 20GS/s with one Billion point memory depth. What this means: Rigol will be making very powerful scopes in the near future.

Hackaday had a meetup this week in New York City. The June workshop at Fat Cat Fab Lab featured speakers involved with twitter bots, 8-bit art, one of the guys behind Beautiful Soup, and a talk on a completely self-sustainable record label. Want to attend one of these meetups? Check out the calendar.

Repairs of retrocomputers are always interesting, but usually the same. Wipe off some dust, possibly replace a cap or two, retrobrite the case, and you’re done. This is not the usual retrocomputer repair. [Drygol] found a C64 that was apparently stored in a swamp for several years. The power switch fell off when he touched it. Somehow, miraculously, the circuit worked and [Drygol] rewarded the board with a new enclosure, dyed keycaps, an SD2IEC mod, and a kernel switch mod.

Guess what’s back? A pen computer with a color sensor on one end, and an ink mixer in the other. The Scribble Pen is the Internet’s infamous crowdfunded color-sensing pen, and the scammer behind it is looking for another funding round. Has anything changed since we tore this thing apart three years ago? No, it’s still a scam. I’ve been keeping tabs on the guy behind it, he’s still not in prison, and there are still idiots on this planet.

The ‘A’ stands for ‘Arts’.

The Benchy is everyone’s favorite tugboat and 3D printer benchmarking tool. They usually float, sideways. However, [MakeShift] somehow figured out how to add weight to the keel and turn the cutest little tugboat into a real, remote controlled boat. You could probably model a proper hull for the bottom of this boat, and it would be one of the few 3D prints where the actual design would be subject to US Copyright.

Is the fidget spinner fad dying? Square, the startup built around turning old AUX to cassette adapters into POS terminals seems to think so. They’ve been graphing their sales figures for fidget spinners, and there has been a marked decline since school let out for the summer. Will the trend pick back up in September? Who cares.