A Better Way To Plug A CPLD Into A Breadboard

February 4, 2016 by 62 Comments

If you read my first post about a simple CPLD do-it-yourself project you may remember that I seriously wiffed when I made the footprint 1” wide, which was a bit too wide for common solderless breadboards. Since then I started over, having fixed the width problem, and ended up with a module that looks decidedly… cuter.

To back up a little bit, a Complex Programmable Logic Device (CPLD) is a cool piece of hardware to have in your repertoire and it can be used to learn logic or a high level design language or replace obsolete functions or chips. But a CPLD needs a little bit of support infrastructure to become usable, and that’s what I’ll be walking you through here. So if you’re interested in learning CPLDs, or just designing boards for them, read on!

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Handheld Nintendo 64 Only Plays Ocarina Of Time

February 4, 2016 by 22 Comments

Introducing the SG-N64 — the Single Game Nintendo 64 Portable Console. You can play any game you want, as long as it’s the Ocarina of Time.

You might be wondering, why would you go to the effort of making a totally awesome portable N64 player, and then limit it to but a single game? Well, the answer is actually quite simple. ocarina-of-time-handheld[Chris] wanted to immortalize his favorite game — the Ocarina of Time. As he puts it, making a SG-N64 “takes the greatness of a timeless classic and preserves it in a body designed solely for the purpose of playing it”.

Inside you’re going to find the motherboard from an original N64, as well as the game cartridge PCB which shed its enclosure and is now hardwired in place. Of course that’s just the start. The real challenge of the build is to add all of the peripherals that are needed: screen, audio, control, and power. He did it, and in a very respectable size considering this was meant to sit in your living room.

Now that is how you show your kids or grand-kids a classic video game. Heck, maybe you can even convince them that’s how all games were sold and played! What’s the fun in being a parent without a bit of trolling?

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This File Will Self-Destruct In 24 Hours

February 4, 2016 by 75 Comments

[menkveldj] built a service that encrypts files which self destruct in 24 hours. The download link can only be used once. If the wrong people were to get the link and download the file, they’d need many years on a pretty powerful computer to crack the 256AES encryption.

The sender shares a file that is encrypted client side using a password generated Pbkdf2 key to encrypt the data before uploading it to the s3 storage service. The sender is then provided the one-time-use link to share with the recipient. After the first download, or 24 hours, the link and the encrypted file are both deleted. The receiver must enter the same password to decrypt and recover the file. No one but the sharer and receiver know what the actual file is.

It’s still work in progress, so chime in with your comments and suggestions. To dig into the code, check out his repository on Github, which also has instructions to build and run it if you’d like to do your own version.

Oh, and you’ll like this. If want to thumb your nose at the powers that be, the site has a redirect for the whimsical domain: NSAfu.com.

Drone Racing Might Just Be The Next Big Thing

February 3, 2016 by 49 Comments

Arguably, drones are one of the next big things that will revolutionize many industries. We’ve already seen them portrayed in many movies and TV shows in not-so-distant futures, and what with Amazon planning drone deliveries, we can’t imagine it’ll be long before they are a common sight flying around cities.

While drone racing remains underground in many places, the Drone Racing League is hoping to change that — and turn it into a real sport. In the recent article by The New Stack, they compare drone racing to the beginning of skateboarding back in the 90’s;

With a small group of people pushing the envelope and inventing every day.

Not for long though. DRL is making a huge push to turn this into a mainstream sport, and we gotta admit — we don’t mind. After all, this is like pod-racing on crack. Just take a look at the following promo video for their course the Gates of Hell: the Dream Takes Form.

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Hard Drive Disassembly Is Easy And Rewarding

February 3, 2016 by 61 Comments

Have any dead hard drives kicking around? Hackaday alum [Jeremy Cook] shows how easy it is to disassemble a hard drive to scavenge its goodies. The hardest part is having the patience and the tools to get past all those screws that stand between you and the treasure inside.

The case screws are frequently of the Torx variety. Any self-respecting hacker probably has one or two of these already, but if you’re in the market, [Jeremy] recommends a nice set that looks way better than ours. Once the case is open, you can find rare earth magnets, bearings, and one or more platters.

Those terrifically strong magnets are good for all kinds of projects. Glue a couple of them to the back of an attractive piece of wood, mount it on the kitchen wall, and you have yourself a knife block. Keep a couple on the bench to temporarily magnetize tools. Use them to build a pickup to amplify a cigar box guitar or thumb piano. Or run the pickup into a small amplified speaker and wave it like a stethoscope near your electronics to hear them hum. As far as liberating the magnets goes, [Jeremy] resorted to clamping his in a vise and using a hammer and chisel to pry it away from the actuator hardware.

You’ve no doubt seen clocks made from old hard drives that were kept mostly intact. Many makers including [Jeremy] will extract the shiny platters to use as bases for clock faces and engrave the numbers, etch them, or glue them on. Those platters also make excellent chimes. Even if you just hang one platter off of a finger and tap it with a fingernail, it sounds really nice.

If simple chimes don’t really butter your muffin, there are all kinds of sonic projects for dead hard drives. How about making a microphone or speakers? Maybe an HDD MIDI controller or a synthesizer is more your speed. Speaking of synths, watch [Jeremy] take a hard drive apart to some sweet sounds after the break.

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Motorized Strandbeest Is Remote Controlled And Awesome

February 3, 2016 by 20 Comments

If you’ve never seen a Strandbeest before, you’re going to want to watch the video after the break. Invented by [Theo Jansen], a Strandbeest is a kinematic work of art. An eight legged structure that walks around under wind power — or if you’re clever, an Arduino and some motors.

For a weekend project, [Remet0n] decided to motorize a toy version of the Strandbeest, and make it remote-controlled. The toy is normally powered by a propeller spun by the wind — making it very easy to replace with motors. You can pick them up for under $10 on eBay.

Using an Arduino Nano, two small 3V motors , a wireless chip (NRF24L01) and a L9110 H-bridge, he was able to create this awesome little remote-controlled device:

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Devilishly Advocative: Microsoft Heats Ocean; Builds Skynet’s Safe Haven

February 3, 2016 by 79 Comments

Have you heard that Microsoft is testing underwater data centers? On the surface (well, actually on the ocean floor) it’s not a bad idea. Project Natick seals a node of servers in a steel pipe for an undersea adventure planned for at least 10 years. The primary reason is to utilize cold ocean temperatures to keep the machines cool as they crunch through your incessant Candy Crush Saga sessions.

microsoft-project-natick-squarePassive cooling is wonderful, and really drops the energy footprint of a data center, albeit a very small one which is being tested. Scaled up, I can think of another big impact: property taxes. Does anyone know what the law says about dropping a pod in the ocean? As far as I can tell, laying undersea cabling is expensive, but once installed there are no landlords holding out their hands for a monthly extraction. Rent aside, taking up space with windowless buildings sucking huge amounts of electricity isn’t going to win hearts and minds of the neighborhood. Undersea real estate make sense there too.

But it’s fun to play Devil’s Advocate, and this one immediately raised my eyebrow. I read as much Sci Fi as time allows, and am always interested to see which authors are registering the best technology predictions. This is the second time in short order that I turn to [William Hertling’s] work. Back in November, Google announced a project to add predictive responses to Gmail. This parallels the premise of [Hertling’s] Singularity Series which begins with Avogadro Corp. Another major point in that novel is the use of offshore data centers.

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