World Standard Organizations To Release Entirely Reworked Standards

April 1, 2016 by 28 Comments

After months of cross-disciplinary meetings, some of the largest professional associations just announced their plans to submit an entire standard set for engineers with egos too fragile to accept design criticism. The Special Snowflake Standard or S2 (in compliance with Godwin’s law) ensures compromised mechanical and electrical integrity by ignoring proper design methodologies for more fluid definitions of success. The Special Snowflake Standard allows the modern engineer greater flexibility in avoiding self-improvement in their field while maintaining an advanced level of apparent competency.

The Standard follows an ingenious randomly generated naming scheme to hinder cross-checking and look-up. The honesty being the only change from the current system. It took us a while to navigate the websites built to serve the standards, as they themselves were built to the W3C.S2.01.d.f4r.7 Special Snowflake Standard For Geriatric Exclusion From The Study of Modern Web Development and therefore were only accessible through the Gopher protocol running specifically on SPARC workstations.

Nonetheless, after working through multiple W3C.S2.u.r.f4.u17 Probably PEBKAC Self Exclusion Of Responsibility Standard errors, we found a few standards we’re really excited about. Let’s take a look at a the highlights:

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Tiny Hotplate Isn’t Overkill

April 1, 2016 by 31 Comments

When working on a new project, it’s common to let feature creep set in and bloat the project. Or to over-design a project well beyond what it would need to accomplish its task. Over at Black Mesa Labs, their problem wasn’t with one of their projects, it was with one of their tools: their hot plate. For smaller projects, an 800W hot plate was wasteful in many ways: energy, space, and safety. Since a lot of their reflow solder jobs are on boards that are one square inch, they set out to solve this problem with a tiny hot plate.

The new hot plate is perfectly sized for the job. Including control circuitry, it’s around the size of a credit card. The hot plate is powered from a small surplus 20V 5A laptop power supply and does a nice 4 minute reflow profile and cools off completely in under a minute. Compared to their full-sized hot plate, this is approximately 29 minutes faster, not to mention the smaller workspace footprint that this provides. The entire setup cost about $20 from the heating element to the transistors and small circuit board, and assuming that you have an Arduino Pro sitting in your junk bin.

It’s a good idea to have a reflow oven or a hot plate at your disposal, especially if you plan to do any surface mount work. There are lots of options available, from re-purposed toaster ovens to other custom hot plates of a more standard size. Overkill isn’t always a bad thing!

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Ethernet Controller Discovered In The ESP8266

April 1, 2016 by 54 Comments

The venerable ESP8266 has rocked the Internet of Things world. Originally little more than a curious $3 WiFi-to-serial bridge, bit by bit, the true power of the ESP has become known, fully programmable, with a treasure trove of peripherals it seemed that the list of things the ESP couldn’t do was short. On that list, at least until today was Ethernet.

No, despite the misleading title, the ESP does not have a MAC and/or PHY, but what it does have is an incredible 80 MHz DMA-able shift register which can be used to communicate 10BASE-T Ethernet using a new project, espthernet. Join me after the break for video proof, and a deep dive into how this is possible.

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Apple Introduces Their Answer To The Raspberry Pi

April 1, 2016 by 157 Comments

Today, Apple has announced their latest bit of hardware. Following in the tradition of the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, and the Intel Edison, Apple have released a single board computer meant for embedded and Internet of Things applications. It’s called the Apple Device, and is sure to be a game changer in the field of low-power, Internet-enabled computing.

First off, some specs. The Apple Device uses Apple’s own A8 chip, the same dual-core 64-bit CPU found in the iPhone 6. This CPU is clocked at 1.1 GHz, and comes equipped with 1GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 4GB of eMMC Flash. I/O includes a Mini DisplayPort capable of driving a 4k display, 802.11ac, Bluetooth, and USB. In a massive break from the Apple zeitgeist of the last decade or so, the Apple Device also includes a forty pin header for expansion, much like the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, and Edison.

Although Apple’s first foray into the embedded computing market is a shocker, in retrospect it should come as no surprise; the introduction of HomeKit in iOS 9 laid the groundwork for an Internet of Apple Devices, embedded into toasters, refrigerators, smart homes, and cars. The Apple Device lives up to all these expectations, but what is the hands-on experience like?

See our review of the Apple Device after the break.

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Pong On Industrial Controllers

April 1, 2016 by 14 Comments

Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are a staple of control automation. Sometime in the 60s or 70s, they replaced a box full of relays to implement the kind of “if-this-then-that” logic that turns thermostats on or directs machinery. Sometime in the 90s or 2000s, some more computing power was added, giving us the Programmable Automation Controller (PAC). And if reading Hackaday has taught us anything, it’s that if you give people a little bit of computing power, they’ll implement Pong (or Snake or Doom!).

We were sent a link where [AbsolutelyAutomation] does just that: implements a remotely-playable Pong on a bit of industrial control. Even if you don’t have a PAC sitting around, the details are interesting.

The first step is to get graphics out of the thing. The PAC in question is already able to speak Ethernet, so it’s “just” a matter of sending the right packets. Perhaps the simplest way to go is to implement the remote framebuffer (RFB) protocol from VNC, and then use a VNC client on the PC to send the graphics. (As they point out [CNLohr] has done this quite nicely on the ESP8266 (YouTube) as well.) So an RFB library was written. [AbsolutelyAutomation] points out that this could be used to make boring things like user-friendly configuration and monitoring screens. (Yawn!)

Graphics done, it’s easy to add a Pong layer over the top, using the flowchart-based programming interface that makes homage to the PLC/PAC’s usual function as an industrial controller. (Oddly enough, it seems to compile to a Forth dialect to run on the PAC.) And then you’re playing. There’s code and a (PDF) writeup available if you want more info. If you don’t have a PAC to run it on, the manufacturers have a simulator for you.

We’ve never worked with a PLC/PAC, but we know the hacker spirit when we see it. And making something that’s usually located in the boiler room play video games is aces in our book. This sparks a memory of an industrial control hacking room at DEF CON a few years back. Maybe this is the inspiration needed to spend some time in that venue this year.

We know we’ve got controls engineers out there. What’s the strangest thing you’ve programmed into a PLC?

EP Composes A New Chiptune Each Time

March 31, 2016 by 19 Comments

[Captain Credible] is a chiptune music artist. He wanted to release an EP, but a regular old em-pee-three was too lame for him, so he made a tiny board with a coin cell, an ATtiny85, and a 3.5mm socket on it.

Rather than just writing some code to generate the tones for a pre-composed song, his “Dead Cats” EP generates the music itself. Using the arduino-tiny library, which adds the tone() function to the ATtiny, he has the chip pick its own time signature, key, subdivisions, and tempo. The melody and drum beat is randomly generated into an array. In addition to that, there are some code “one-liners” which insert unique sounds. After that the code just loops through the music.

If you don’t like the song, simply unplug the audio cable and plug it back in. The 3.5mm jack he chose has a built-in micro-switch, so the board is only powered up if someone is listening. If you’d like to see the circuit diagram, purchase the EP, or take a look at the code, all of that is available on his site.

Impressive StarCraft 2 AI More Fair To Fleshy Opponents

March 31, 2016 by 18 Comments

There was a discussion in the comments when the Alpha Go results were released. Some commentors were postulating that AI researchers are discounting more fluid games such as the RTS StarCraft.

The comments then devolved into a discussion of what would make the AI fair to consider against a human player. Many times, AI in RTS games win because they have direct access to the variables in the game. Rather than physically looking at the small area of the screen where a unit is located and then moving their eye to take in strategic information like exact location, health, unit level, etc, the AI just knows that it’s at 120x,2000y,76%,lvl5, etc instantly. The AI also has no click lag as it gets direct access to the game’s API, it simply changes the variables and action queue of a unit directly.

So we were interested to see [Matt]’s Star Craft AI that required the computer to actually look at the game board and click. [Matt]’s AI doesn’t see using OpenCV, which in its own way is forcing the computer to look in a way that’s unnatural to it. He instead wrote some code to intercept the behind the scenes calls to the DirectX library.

The computer is then able to make determinations about what it is looking at using the texture information and other pieces sent to the library. Unlike AI’s that get a direct look at the variables, it has to then translate this and keep its own mental picture of the map and the situation. If a building is destroyed, for example, it has to go over and look at that part of the map, test what it’s seeing against a control, and then remove the building from its list.

The AI’s one big advantage are its robot fingers. Even though this AI has to click on the interface, it doesn’t do it with a weak articulated fleshy nub like the rest of us. This allows the AI to get crazy Actions Per Minute (APM) in the range of 500 to 2000.

The AI has only been tested against StarCraft’s built in cheater bots. So far it can win most games against the hard level bots. If you want to see a video of what the AI is looking at, check after the break.

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