Starfish Cat, Bowling Ball Bot, And Stargate All Claim Prizes

March 15, 2017 by 4 Comments

We saw a huge outpouring of builds for the the Hackaday Sci-Fi Contest and it’s now time to reveal the winners. With 84 great themed projects submitted, the judges had a tough task to pull out the most impressive both in terms of creativity and execution.

Here are our four winners. Two come from the Stargate universe. One is a cuddly yet horrifying character of unknown origin but unarguably Sci-Fi. The other is the best use of a bowling ball we’ve seen so far.

Grand Prize

The grand prize goes to [Jerome Kelty] with Animatronic Stargate Helmet. [Jerome] has built a replica prop that looks like it just came out of a Hollywood shop. It’s almost a shame that this helmet won’t be worn on film – though it certainly could be. If you remember the film and the television show, these helmets have quite a bit of articulation. The head can pan and tilt. The eyes glow, as well as have irises which expand and contract. The “wings” also open and close in a particular way.

[Jerome] built the mechanics for this helmet. He used radio control servos to move the head, with the help of some hardware from ServoCity. Most of the metalwork was built in his own shop. Everything is controlled from a standard R/C transmitter, much like the original show. [Jerome] is taking home a Rigol DS1054Z 4 Channel 50 MHz scope.

First Prize

First prize goes to [Christine] with
Starfish Cat: Your Lovecraftian Furby-like Friend. Starfish Cat is one of those odd projects that finds itself right on the edge of the uncanny valley. We are equal parts intrigued and creeped out by this… thing. The bottom is all starfish, with a rubber base poured into a 3D printed mold. The top though, is more cat-like, with soft fur and ears. 5 claws hide under the fur, ready to grab you.

Starfish Cat detects body heat with 5 bottom mounted PIR sensors. The sensors are read by the particle photon which acts as its brain. When heat is detected, Starfish Cat activates its claws, and also blows or sucks air through its… uh… mouth hole.  [Christine] is taking home a Monoprice Maker Select Mini 3D printer.

Click past the break to see the rest of the winners

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The BeagleBone Blue – Perfect For Robots

March 15, 2017 by 45 Comments

There’s a new BeagleBone on the block, and it’s Blue. The BeagleBone Blue is built for robots, and it’s available right now.

If a cerulean BeagleBone sounds familiar, you’re not wrong. About a year ago, the BeagleBone Blue was introduced in partnership with UCSD. This board was meant for robotics, and had the peripherals to match. Support for battery charging was included, as well as motor drivers, sensor inputs, and wireless. If you want to put Linux on a moving thingy, there are worse choices.

The newly introduced BeagleBone Blue is more or less the same. A 9-axis IMU, barometer, motor driver, quad encoder sensor, servo driver, and a balancing LiPo charger are all included. The difference in this revision is the processor. That big square of epoxy in the middle of the board is the Octavo Systems OSD3358, better known as a BeagleBone on a chip. This is the first actual product we’ve seen using this neat chip, but assuredly not the last – a few people are working on stuffing this chip onto a board that fits in mini Altoids tins.

Fire Hazard Testing

March 15, 2017 by 28 Comments

How do you know that new appliance you bought won’t burn your house down? Take a look at any electrical appliance, and you’ll find it marked with at least one, and most often, several safety certification marks such as UL, DIN, VDE, CSA or BSI. Practically every electrical product that plugs into utility supply needs to go through a mandatory certification process to ensure it meets these conformity test requirements. Some examples include domestic and industrial electrical appliances, tools, electrical accessories, consumer electronics and medical electronics.

When you look through a typical safety test standard, you’ll notice it breaks down the various tests in two categories. “Type” tests are conducted on prototypes and samples of the final product or its individual parts and components, and are not generally repeated unless there are changes in design or materials. “Acceptance” tests are routine verification tests conducted on 100% of the products produced. For example, a typical Type test would be used to check the fire retardant properties of the plastics used in the manufacture of the product during development, while a Routine test would be carried out to check for high voltage breakdown or leakage and touch currents on the production line.

Nowadays, a majority of countries around the world adopt standards created by international organizations such as IEC, ISO, and ITU, then fine tune them to suit local requirements. The IEC works by distributing its work across almost 170 Technical Committees and Subcommittees which are entrusted with the job of creating and maintaining standards. One of these committees is “TC89 Fire hazard testing” whose job is to provide “Guidance and test methods for assessing fire hazards of electro-technical equipment, their parts (including components) and electrical insulating materials”. These tests are why we feel safe enough to plug something in and still sleep at night.

Practically all electrical products need to confirm to this set of tests as part of their “Type” test routine. This committee produces fire hazard testing documents in the IEC 60695 series of standards. These documents range from general guidelines on several fire hazard topics to specific instructions on how to build the test equipment needed to perform the tests. It’s interesting to see how some of these tests are carried out and the equipment used. Join me after the break as we take a look at that process.

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Friday Hack Chat: ASIC Design

March 15, 2017 by 13 Comments

Join [Matt Martin], ASIC designer at Keysight, for this week’s Hack Chat.

Every week, we find a few interesting people making the things that make the things that make all the things, sit them down in front of a computer, and get them to spill the beans on how modern manufacturing and technology actually happens. This is the Hack Chat, and it’s happening this Friday, March 17, at noon PDT (20:00 UTC).

[Matt] has been working at Agilent / Keysight since 2007 as an ASIC designer. The work starts with code that is synthesized into logic gates. After that, [Matt] takes those gates and puts them into silicon. He’s worked with processes from 0.13um to 28nm. Turning code into silicon is still a dark art around here, and if you’ve ever wanted to know how all of this works, this is your chance to find out.

Here’s How To Take Part:

join-hack-chatOur Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging.

Log into Hackaday.io, visit that page, and look for the ‘Join this Project’ Button. Once you’re part of the project, the button will change to ‘Team Messaging’, which takes you directly to the Hack Chat.

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

Upcoming Hack Chats

We’ve got a lot on the table when it comes to our Hack Chats. On March 24th, we’re going to argue the merits of tube amplifiers in audio applications. In April, we have [Samy Kamkar], hacker extraordinaire, to talk reverse engineering.

Because I’ve never had the opportunity to do so, and because these Hack Chat announcement posts never get many comments anyway, I’m going to throw this one out there. What would it take to build out a silicon fabrication plant based on technology from 1972? I’m talking about a 10-micrometer process here, something that might be able to clone a 6502. Technology is on our side — a laser printer is cheaper than a few square feet of rubylith — and quartz tube heaters and wire bonding machines can be found on the surplus market. Is it possible to build a silicon fab in your garage without going broke? Leave your thoughts in the comments, and then bring them with you to the Hack Chat this Friday.

Surfing Like It’s 1998, The Dreamcast’s Still Got It!

March 15, 2017 by 52 Comments

If you were a keen console gamer at the end of the 1990s, the chances are you lusted after a Sega Dreamcast. Here was a console that promised to be like no other, a compact machine with built-in PowerVR 3D acceleration (heavy stuff back then!), the ability to run Windows CE in some form, and for the first time, built-in Internet connectivity. Games would no longer be plastic cartridges as they had been on previous Sega consoles, instead they would come on a proprietary DVD-like Sega disc format.

It was a shame then that the Dreamcast never really succeeded in capitalizing on its promise. Everyone was talking about the upcoming Sony Playstation 2, and disappointing Dreamcast sales led Sega to withdraw both the console, and themselves from the hardware market entirely.

There remains a hard core of Dreamcast enthusiasts though, and they continue to push the platform forward.The folks at the Dreamcast Junkyard decided to go backwards a little when they resurrected the console’s dial-up modem to see whether a platform from nearly twenty years ago could still cut it in 2017. This isn’t as easy a task as you’d imagine, because, well, who uses dial-up these days? Certainly in the UK where they’re based it’s almost unheard of. They were able to find a pay-as-you go dial-up provider though, and arming themselves with the most recent Dreamkey V3.0 browser disc were able to get online.

As you might expect, the results are hilariously awful for the most part. Modern web sites that rely on CSS fail to render or even indeed to load, but retro sites like those in the Dreamcast community appear as they should. There is a video we’ve put below the break showing the rather tortuous process, though sadly they didn’t think to load the Hackaday Retro Edition. It does however feature the rarely-seen keyboard and mouse accessories.

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How An Oscilloscope Probe Works, And Other Stories

March 15, 2017 by 29 Comments

The oscilloscope is probably the most versatile piece of test equipment you can have on your electronics bench, offering a multitude of possibilities for measuring timing, frequency and voltage as well as subtleties in your circuits revealed by the shape of the waveforms they produce.

On the front of a modern ‘scope is a BNC socket, into which you can feed your signal to be investigated. If however you simply hook up a co-axial BNC lead between source and ‘scope, you’ll immediately notice some problems. Your waveforms will be distorted. In the simplest terms your square waves will no longer be square.

Why is this? Crucial to the operation of an oscilloscope is a very high input impedance, to minimise current draw on the circuit it is investigating. Thus the first thing that you will find behind that BNC socket is a 1 megohm resistor to ground, or at least if not a physical resistor then other circuitry that presents its equivalent. This high resistance does its job of presenting a high impedance to the outside world, but comes with a penalty. Because of its high value, the effects of even a small external capacitance can be enough to create a surprisingly effective low or high pass filter, which in turn can distort the waveform you expect on the screen.

The answer to this problem is to be found in your oscilloscope probe. It might seem that the probe is simply a plug with a bit of wire to a rigid point with an earth clip, but in reality it contains a simple yet clever mitigation of the capacitance problem.

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Mechanical Music Maker Throws Stones

March 15, 2017 by 10 Comments

When we think of a xylophone we envision hitting the keys from above with mallets. But this robot instrument launches stones from below to play a tune. [Niel] calls the device a Pinger and it is part of a Rock Band — all instruments using rocks.

Although the original post has “xylophone” in it, this musical instrument is technically a glockenspiel because it uses metal keys instead of wood. Either way, it’s a work of art; the instrument’s creator ([Neil Mendoza]) was participating in Adobe’s Autodesk’s Pier 9 artist-in-residence program when he built it.

The keys were cut using a water jet, a process not easily in reach for most of us. But you could make do with a different process in a pinch. On the face of it, fabrication seems simple, but there’s software to calculate the right size for the keys depending on the material. The cuts need to be precise to yield an in-tune instrument.

The circular part is laser-cut acrylic, acting as a base for each key. Below the plate there is a cylinder positioned in the middle of the bar which keeps the stone from getting away. When the solenoid fires, the stone flies up and strikes the key, creating a ringing tone but also adding to the body of sound with a rattle when it falls back down to the base. The entire thing is driven by MIDI, so it can play a lot of tunes besides the biographical “Here Comes the Sun” (since, apparently, the pebbles are out in the sun). Check that out in the video below.

This couldn’t help but remind us of another solenoid-driven xylophone — whose keys were machined out of aluminum stock. There’s also the multixylophoniomnibus.

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