Ion Trap Makes Programmable Quantum Computer

August 14, 2016 by 10 Comments

The Joint Quantum Institute published a recent paper detailing a quantum computer constructed with five qubits formed from trapped ions. The novel architecture allows the computer to accept programs for multiple algorithms.

Quantum computers make use of qubits and trapped ions–ions confined with an electromagnetic field–are one way to create them. In particular, a linear radio frequency trap and laser cooling traps five ytterbium ions with a separation of about 5 microns. To entangle the qubits, the device uses 50 to 100 laser pulses on individual or pairs of ions. The pulse shape determines the actual function performed, which is how the device is programmable. The operations depend on the sequence of laser pulses that activate it. Continue reading “Ion Trap Makes Programmable Quantum Computer” →

Alternator Becomes Motor For This Electric Go-kart

August 14, 2016 by 49 Comments

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, a go-kart was a quick ticket to coolness, second maybe to a mini-bike. In both cases, a welded steel tube frame and a cast-off lawnmower engine were all that stood between you and neighborhood glory. Looks like a couple of engineering students caught the retro juvenile delinquent bug and built this electric go-kart for their final project.

While the frame for [Adrian Georgescu] and [Masoud Johnson]’s build was a second-hand find, the powertrain is all custom. They targeted a power output of 3 kW but found no affordable motors in that range. So, in true hacker fashion, they rolled their own motor from a used Subaru alternator. The three-phase motor controller came from an electric scooter, three LiPo packs provide the juice, and a pair of Arduinos takes care of throttle control, speed sensing, and sending data to the virtual dashboard on an Android phone. Some lights and a snappy red and black paint job finished off the build. While the video below shows that the acceleration isn’t exactly neck-snapping in the Tesla style, the e-kart can build up to a good speed – 53 km/h. Not too shabby, and no deafening engine right behind your head.

If you’ve got the e-kart bug, best check out some of our previous posts, like this kart built from off-the-shelf components, or this four-wheel-drive mini-kart. Any way you build it, you’ll rule the cul-de-sac.

Continue reading “Alternator Becomes Motor For This Electric Go-kart” →

Easy Toy Hack Makes Floating Death Star

August 14, 2016 by 2 Comments

It always seems odd to us that magnetic levitation seems to only find use in big projects (like trains) and in toys. Surely there’s a practical application that fits on our desktop. This isn’t it, but it is a cool way to turn a cheesy-looking levitating globe into a pretty cool Star Wars desk toy.

As projects go, this isn’t especially technically challenging, but it is a great example of taking something off the shelf and hacking it into something else. The globe covering came off, revealing two hemispheres. A circular hole cut out and inverted provides the main weapon. Some internal lighting and small holes provide light. Some fiber optic sanded and tinted green make the weapon fire. The rest is all in the painting.

There’s even a tiny imperial ship orbiting the killer man-made (or is that Sith-made) moon. If you want a bigger challenge, you might try bamboo. Or you can go minimalist and let your eyes and brain do most of the work.

Continue reading “Easy Toy Hack Makes Floating Death Star” →

3.3V Is Not Enough For This Raspberry Pi Zero

August 14, 2016 by 27 Comments

A Raspberry Pi Zero is down to a price and size where it’s just begging to be integrated into your projects. Unless, that is, if your project involves a lot of 5 V equipment. Then it’s just begging to be fried.

[David Brown] solved this problem by breaking out pins with level converters. He used flat-flex cable and some pin-headers. While he was at it, he added a full-sized USB port and power headers. (Extra hack points are awarded for connecting the USB to the board through pogo pins.)

Continue reading “3.3V Is Not Enough For This Raspberry Pi Zero” →

Hackaday Prize Entry: An Oven Of Raspberry Pis

August 13, 2016 by 49 Comments

When the Raspberry Pi was introduced, the world was given a very cheap, usable Linux computer. Cheap is good, and it enables one kind of project that was previously fairly expensive. This, of course, is cluster computing, and now we can imagine an Aronofsky-esque Beowulf cluster in our apartment.

This Hackaday Prize entry is for a 100-board cluster of Raspberry Pis running Hadoop. Has something like this been done before? Most certainly. The trick is getting it right, being able to physically scale the cluster, and putting the right software on it.

The Raspberry Pi doesn’t have connectors in all the right places. The Ethernet and USB is on one side, power input is on another, and god help you if you need a direct serial connection to a Pi in the middle of a stack. This is the physical problem of putting a cluster of Pis together. If you’re exceptionally clever and are using Pi Zeros, you’ll come up with something like this, but for normal Pis, you’ll need an enclosure, a beefy, efficient power supply, and a mess of network switches.

For the software, the team behind this box of Raspberries is turning to Hadoop. Yahoo recently built a Hadoop cluster with 32,000 nodes used for deep learning and other very computationally intensive tasks. This much smaller cluster won’t be used for very demanding work. Instead, this cluster will be used for education, training, and training those ever important STEAM students. It’s big data in a small package, and a great project for the Hackaday Prize.

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Retrofitted Retro Radio

August 13, 2016 by 22 Comments

In a world full of products that are only used for a brief time and then discarded, it gives a lot of us solace to know that there was a time when furniture was made out of solid wood and not particle board, or when coffee makers were made out of metal and not plastic. It’s hard to say exactly what precipitated the change to our one-time-use culture, but in the meantime there are projects that serve to re-purpose those old, durable products from another time so that they can stay relevant in today’s ever-changing world. [Jose]’s new old radio is a great example of this style of hack.

[Jose] had a 1970s-era single-speaker radio that he found in a thrift store. The first thought that he had to get the aesthetically pleasing radio working again was to install a Bluetooth receiver into the radio’s amplifier. This proved to be too time-consuming of a task, and [Jose] decided to drive the Bluetooth module off of the power circuit for the light bulb. He built a 6V AC to 4.2V DC circuit, swapped over the speaker cable, and started listening to his tunes. The modifications he made aren’t destructive, either. If he wants, he will be able to reconnect the original (and still functional) circuitry back to the speaker and pretend he’s back in 1970.

While this isn’t the most intricate hack we’ve ever featured, it’s always refreshing to see someone get use out of an old piece of technology rather than send it off to the landfill with all of our Pentium IIs or last year’s IKEA shelves that have already fallen apart. And even if the 70s aren’t your era of choice, perhaps something newer will inspire you to bust a move.

The Quest For Mice With Frickin’ Laser Beams (Pointed At Their Brains), Building A Laser Controller

August 13, 2016 by 16 Comments
The logo for the field is kind of cute though.
The logo for the field is kind of cute though.

[Scott Harden] is working on a research project involving optogenetics. From what we were able to piece together optogenetics is like this: someone genetically modifies a mouse to have cell behaviors which can activated by light sensitive proteins. The mice then have a frikin’ lasers mounted on their heads, but pointing inwards towards their brains not out towards Mr. Bond’s.

Naturally, to make any guesses about the resulting output behavior from the mouse the input light has to be very controlled and exact. [Scott] had a laser and he had a driver, but he didn’t have a controller to fire the pulses. To make things more difficult, the research was already underway and the controller had to be built

The expensive laser driver had a bizarre output of maybe positive 28 volts or, perhaps, negative 28 volts… at eight amps. It was an industry standard in a very small industry. He didn’t have a really good way to measure or verify this without either destroying his measuring equipment or the laser driver. So he decided to just build a voltage-agnostic input on his controller. As a bonus the opto-isolated input would protect the expensive controller.

The kind of travesty that can occur when [Stefan Kiese] doesn't have access to nice project boxes.
The kind of travesty that can occur when [Scott] doesn’t have access to nice project boxes.
The output is handled by an ATtiny85. He admits that a 555 circuit could generate the signal he needed, but to get a precision pulse it was easier to just hook up a microcontroller to a crystal and know that it’s 100% correct. Otherwise he’d have to spend all day with an oscilloscope fiddling with potentiometers. Only a few Hackaday readers relish the thought as a relaxing Sunday afternoon.

He packaged everything in a nice project box. He keeps them on hand to prevent him from building circuits on whatever he can find. Adding some tricks from the ham-radio hobby made the box look very professional. He was pleased and surprised to find that the box worked on his first try.