Bil Herd Asks OBD “How Fast Am I Going?”

February 15, 2017 by 87 Comments

Whenever I end up with a new vehicle I ultimately end up sticking in a new GPS/Receiver combination for better sound quality and a better GPS.

I am quite at home tearing into a dashboard as I was licensed to install CB radios in my teens as well as being the local go-to guy for 8-track stereo upgrades in the 70’s. I have spent a portion of my life laying upside down in a puddle on the car floor peering up into the mess of wires and brackets trying to keep things from dropping on my face. If you remember my post on my Datsun 280ZXT, I laid in that same position while welding in a clutch pedal bracket while getting very little welding slag on my face. I did make a note that the next time I convert a car from an automatic to a manual to do so while things are still disassembled.image15

Swapping out a factory radio usually involves choosing whether to hack into the existing factory wiring wire-by-wire, or my preference, getting a cable harness that mates with the factory plug and making an adapter out of it by splicing it to the connector that comes with the new radio.

Usually I still have to hunt down a few signals such as reverse indicator, parking brake indicator, vehicle speed sensor and the like. In my last vehicle the Vehicle Speed Sensor (VSS) wire was supposed to be in the factory harness, but driving experience showed it must not be as the GPS would show me driving 30 feet to the right of the highway. That and the calibration screen on the GPS verified that it was not receiving speed pulses.

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Chronio DIY Watch: Slick And Low Power

February 15, 2017 by 19 Comments

[Max K] has been testing the battery life of his self-designed watch under real-world conditions. Six months later, the nominally 3 V, 160 mAh CR2025 cell is reading 2.85 V, so the end is near, but that’s quite a feat for a home-engineered smart watch.

We’ve tipped our hats to the Chronio before in this Hacklet, but now that the code is available, as well as the sweet 3D-printed case files, it’s time to make your own. Why? It looks sweet, it plays a limited version of Flappy Bird (embedded below), and six month’s on a button cell is a pretty great accomplishment, considering that it’s driving a 96×96 pixel LCD display.

The Chronio is more than inspired by the Pebble watch — he based his 3D model directly on theirs — so that’s bound to draw comparisons. The Pebble is color, and has Bluetooth and everything else under the sun. But after a few weeks away from a power socket, ask a Pebble wearer what time it is. Bazinga!

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Review: The Asus Tinker Board (Updated)

February 15, 2017 by 143 Comments

In the years since the launch of the original Raspberry Pi we have seen the little British ARM-based board become one of the more popular single board computers in the hobbyist, maker, and hacker communities. It has retained that position despite the best efforts of other manufacturers, and we have seen a succession of competitor boards directly copying it by imitating its form factor. None of them have made a significant dent in the sales figures enjoyed by the Pi, yet they continue to appear on a regular basis.

We recently brought you news of the latest challenger in this arena, in the form of the Asus Tinker Board. This is a board that has made us sit up and take notice because unlike previous players this time we have a product from a giant of the industry. Most of us are likely to own at least one Asus product, indeed there is a good chance that you might be reading this on an Asus computer or monitor. Asus have made some very high quality hardware in their time, so perhaps this product will inherit some of that heritage. Thus it was with a sense of expectation that we ordered one of the first batch of Tinker Boards, and waited eagerly for the postman.

Update:

A member of the Asus Marketing team read this review and contacted Hackaday with some updated information. According to our discussion, the Tinker Board has not officially launched. This explains a lot about the current state of the Tinker Board. As Jenny mentions in her review below, the software support for the board is not yet in place, and as comments on this review have mentioned, you can’t source it in the US and most other markets. An internal slide deck was leaked on SlideShare shortly after CES (which explains our earlier coverage), followed by one retailer in the UK market selling the boards ahead of Asus’ launch date (which is how we got our hands on this unit).

Asus tells us that they are aiming for an end of February launch date, perhaps as soon as the 26th for the United States, UK, and Taiwan. Other markets might have some variation, all of this contingent on agreements with and getting stock to regional distributors. With the launch will come the final OS Distribution (TinkerOS based on Debian), schematics, mechanical block diagrams, etc. Asus tells Hackaday it is a top priority to deliver hardware video acceleration for the Rockchip on the Tinker Board. The Board Support Package which hooks the feature into Linux is not yet finished but will come either on launch day or soon after. This is the end of the update, please enjoy Jenny List’s full review below.

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Friday Hack Chat: Designing RF Products

February 15, 2017 by 4 Comments

This Friday, we’re talking RF. Join us for a discussion on designing RF products with Hackaday’s very own Jenny List. It’s all happening in the Hack Chat on hackaday.io.

jennylisthackchattake1-01When Jenny isn’t busy writing for Hackaday, she sits on the board of the Oxford Hackspace. She’s the brains behind Language Spy, and sells electronic kits that include receivers, filters, and RF breakout boards. She’s extremely active on hackaday.io, and has used a Pi Zero to transmit across the Atlantic.

As usual, we’re starting this Hack Chat at Noon, Pacific time on Friday (or Friday 20:00 GMT). Here’s a handy countdown for the event.

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

The Hack Chats on hackaday.io are quickly becoming a thing. Already, we’ve had a pantheon of embedded systems gods including Lady Ada of Adafruit, Sprite_tm, and bunnie.

In March, we’re going to have a Hack Chat with Raspberry Pi engineer Roger Thornton, and a mechanical manufacturing Hack Chat with Fictiv. You can check out all the upcoming Hack Chats right here.

Drone-Drone

February 15, 2017 by 24 Comments

Yes, the pun was ripped off the article that got our attention . It was just too good not to share. A team of researchers in Japan created an artificial honeybee, a small drone that is meant to cross-pollinate flowers. The (still) manually controlled drone is 4 centimetres wide and weighs only 15 grams. At the bottom side of the drone, a mix of a special sticky gel and horse hair resides. The purpose of this gel is to collect the pollen particles as it bumps into the flowers and exchange it as it goes hopping around from plant to plant. In experiments, the drone was able to cross-pollinate Japanese lilies (Lilium japonicum) without damaging the plant, stamens or pistils when the drone flew into the flowers.

The gel used for the artificial pollinators was the result of a failed experiment back in 2007. While researching electrical conduction liquids, Eijiro Miyako, a chemist at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) Nanomaterial Research Institute, produced a sticky gel with no useful electrical characteristics and stored it away in a cabinet. After 8 years, when cleaning the cabinet, he found the gel still sitting there, unspoiled.

“This project is the result of serendipity. We were surprised that after 8 years, the ionic gel didn’t degrade and was still so viscous. Conventional gels are mainly made of water and can’t be used for a long time, so we decided to use this material for research.”

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PiMiniMint — Altoids RPi Zero Computer

February 15, 2017 by 24 Comments

We’ve seen our fair share of Altoids mint tin projects and it seems the tin… can always house another interesting project. This time [MWAGNER] managed to make his long time idea of having a computer inside an Altoids tin. He had the idea in 2012, after the original raspberry pi came out, but the size constraints kept the project from going forward. The RPi Zero is much smaller and its launch made the project possible.

[MWAGNER] made two versions, the first version of the PiMiniMint includes a screen, WiFi, Bluetooth, 32GB of storage, an infrared camera, and a full size USB port. All of this fit inside the Altoids tin. The second version has a battery — 2000mAh reportedly lasting for 6-8hrs. But there is only so much space to perform small miracles so in this version the camera had to go. This makes it a wireless standalone computer as you can control it with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse while connecting to the outside world over WiFi.

Back in 2015, in Hacklet 29, we covered a bunch of Altoids based projects, from AM/FM transmitters to OTP generators and now we have a fully working laptop PC on a tin, screen and all. The project blog has all the instructions you need to try it yourself. If you do, let us know how it went and how long did that battery lasted.

That is, if you can get your hands on a Zero…

 

[thanks Itay]

Knives Hewn From Brake Discs Past

February 14, 2017 by 54 Comments

Knives are tools that rely heavily on material quality to do their job right. A knife made of cheap steel won’t hold an edge well, and blunt knives are more likely to cause injury, or at the least, be more difficult to use. The trick to making a good knife is to start with good material. Disc brakes just so happen to be a great source of cast iron, and are readily available, so [Diesineveryfilm Customs] has machined a knife out of a brake disc.

The first step is to roughly cut out the knife’s form from the disc. It’s easy enough to cut out with an angle grinder, following up with a belt sander to finish up the grip. After sharpening, the sharp blade is taped off for safety while a wooden grip is added. Holes are drilled in the brake rotor, allowing the wooden parts to be pinned and glued together before a trip to the belt sander for shaping. A string and dye are added to the handle as finishing touches.

It’s a great use of high-quality scrap material to produce a useful tool. An earlier disc brake knife video shares some useful techniques of its own – we liked the shortcut of measuring the disc thickness, then using a matching drillbit to mark the centerline for sharpening.

Perhaps your own knives aren’t sharp enough – check out this home-built adjustable sharpening rig.