Using The FCC EAS For Fun And Profit

October 10, 2016 by Bob Baddeley 12 Comments

When a consumer electronics device is sold in the US, especially if it has a wireless aspect, it must be tested for compliance with FCC regulations and the test results filed with the FCC (see preparing your product for FCC testing). These documents are then made available online for all to see in the Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) Laboratory Equipment Authorization System (EAS). In fact, it’s this publishing in this and other FCC databases that has led to many leaks about new product releases, some of which we’ve covered, and others we’ve been privileged enough to know about before the filings but whose breaking was forced when the documents were filed, like the Raspberry Pi 3. It turns out that there are a lot of useful things that can be accomplished by poring over FCC filings, and we’ll explore some of them.

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The Collatz-O-Matic: A State Machine With Style!

October 10, 2016 by Donald Papp 2 Comments

If you have ever thought that working out a Collatz sequence by hand was alright but lacked buttons and lights, the Collatz-o-matic by [mechatronicsguy] has you covered!

The device is a type of Tag system calculator. [mechatronicsguy] explains that a Tag system is a method of computing similar to a Turing machine; it consists of a read & write FIFO array (or tape or queue) of indeterminate length, and at every step the system reads the symbol at the “head”, deletes a fixed number of symbols from the “head”, and depending on what that first symbol was, appends one or more symbols to the “tail”. Then the process repeats with whatever new symbol is at the head.

The Collatz-o-Matic uses an RGB LED string to represent the queue, and is set up in the following way:

Delete two symbols (tags) from the front of the queue.
If the first symbol deleted was:
1. A – then write BC to the rear of the queue
2. B – then write A to the rear of the queue
3. C – then write AAA to the rear of the queue

Numbers are as easily represented as any other symbol, and the Collatz conjecture is that no matter what integer you start with, the system (probably) always eventually reaches state 1. There is video of the device demonstrating exactly that embedded below. Continue reading “The Collatz-O-Matic: A State Machine With Style!” →

A Completely Open Microcontroller

October 10, 2016 by Nava Whiteford 58 Comments

We don’t know about you, but the idea of an Arduino-class microprocessor board which uses completely open silicon is a pretty attractive prospect to us. That’s exactly [onchipUIS]’s stated goal. They’re part of a research group at the Universidad Industrial de Santander and have designed and taped out a RISCV implementation with Cortex M0-like characteristics.

The RISCV project has developed an open ISA (instruction set architecture) for modern 32-bit CPUs. More than 40 research groups and companies have now jumped on the project and are putting implementations together.

[onchipUIS] is one such project. And their twitter timeline shows the rapid progress they’ve been making recently.

mriscv_bonding — Die directly bonded to an OSHPark PCB

After tapeout, they started experimenting with their new wirebonding machine. Wirebonding, particularly manual bonding, on a novel platform is a process fraught with problems. Not only have [onchipUIS] successfully bonded their chip, but they’ve done so using a chip on board process where the die is directly bonded to a PCB. They used OSHPark boards and described the process on Twitter.

The board they’ve built breaks out all the chip’s peripherals, and is a convenient test setup to help them validate the platform. Check it, and some high resolution die images, out below. They’re also sending us a die to image using our electron microscope down at hackerfarm, and we look forward to the results!

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TensorFlow Robot Recognizes Objects

October 9, 2016 by Al Williams 7 Comments

Children can do lots of things that robots and computers have trouble with. Climbing stairs, for example, is a tough thing for a robot. Recognizing objects is another area where humans are generally much better than robots. Kids can recognize blocks, shapes, colors, and extrapolate combinations and transformations.

Google’s open-source TensorFlow software can help. It is a machine learning system used in Google’s own speech recognition, search, and other products. It is also used in quite a few non-Google projects. [Lukas Biewald] recently built a robot around some stock pieces (including a Raspberry Pi) and enlisted TensorFlow to allow the robot to recognize objects. You can see a video of the device, below.

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Slide Viewer Upgrade Is A Bright Idea

October 9, 2016 by Kristina Panos 6 Comments

[cunningfellow] has been putting LEDs in everything lately. That’s understandable. Most recently, he used them to drastically upgrade his father’s super-cool mid-century slide viewer.

The slide viewer used to use a flashlight bulb, but it didn’t light evenly at all. Not only that, it produced a dim, orange-ish light. [cunningfellow] happened to have an old Nokia N93 lying around and decided to cannibalize that strange, beautiful, swiveling flip phone for its backlight circuitry. Unfortunately, the 4 LEDs aren’t going to run on a pair of C cells like the flashlight bulb did. [cunningfellow] needed some kind of boost converter.

He found one in the form of a Nokia E73 LCD driver board created by [Andy Brown]. The LEDs are way brighter than that old incandescent bulb, and they draw about 10mA less to boot. We think [cunningfellow]’s father will be happy with the result.

If you have an old slide viewer and no slides, try using it as a project case. If this post makes you miss your View-Master (also understandable), you can always turn your phone into a stereopticon.

Hackaday Links: October 9, 2016

October 9, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 22 Comments

Atari is back! That’s what some dude says. There are no real details in that post, other than ‘Atari is Back!’

The ESP32 is coming, and it’s going to be awesome. Espressif has just released an Arduino core for the ESP32 WiFi chip. The digitalRead, digitalWrite, SPI, Serial, Wire, and WiFi “should” work. If you’re looking for ESP32 hardware, they’re infrequently available and frequently out of stock. Thankfully, stock levels won’t be the Raspberry Pi Zero all over again until someone figures out how to run an NES emulator on the ESP32.

Tiny, cheap ARM boards would make for great home servers if they had SATA or multiple network interfaces. Here’s a Kickstarter for a board with both. It’s based on an ARM A53 with multiple Ethernets, mini PCIe, enough RAM, and SATA. It’s a board for niche use cases, but those uses could be really cool.

You’re not cool or ‘with it’ until you have a PCB ruler. That’s what all the hip kids are doing. For wizards and dark mages out there, a simple PCB ruler isn’t enough. These rare beasts demand RF rulers. There’s some weird stuff on these rulers, like Archemedian spiral antennas and spark gaps. Black magic stuff, here.

Some dude with a camera in the woods did something. Primitive Technology, the best example of experimental archaeology you’ve ever seen, built a spear thrower. You can throw a ball faster with a lacrosse stick than you can with just your hands, and this is the idea behind this device, commonly referred to as an atlatl. You can hunt with an atlatl in some states, but I have yet to see a video of anyone taking down a deer with one of these.

Think we’re done spamming the Hackaday Superconference yet? YOU’RE WRONG. The Hackaday Superconference is the greatest hardware conference of all time until we do this whole thing again next year. Get your tickets, look at the incredible list of speakers, book your flights, and be in Pasadena November 5-6.

Arcade Cabinet Build Takes Quarters, Dispenses Fun

October 9, 2016 by Richard Baguley 15 Comments

Building an arcade cabinet seems to be a rite of passage for many hackers and woodworkers. Not that there is anything wrong with that: as this series of posts from [Alessandro] at boxedcnc shows, there is an art to doing it well.

His final build is impressive, with quality buttons, a genuine-looking banner, and even a coin slot so he can charge people to play. His build log covers both the carpentry and electronic aspects of the build, from cutting the panels to his own code for running the coin acceptor that takes your quarter (or, as he is in Italy, Euro coins) and triggers the game to play.

To extract money from his family, he used the Sparkfun COM-1719 coin acceptor, which can be programmed to send different pulses for different coins, connected to an Arduino which is also connected to the joystick and buttons. The Arduino emulates a USB keyboard and is connected to an old PC running MAME with the Attract Mode front end. It’s a quality build, down to the Bubble Bobble banner, and the coin slot means that it might even make some money back eventually.