A grey keyboard with orange and dark grey accents is angled away from the camera. The keys nearby are clearly distinguishable in the foreground but blurry toward the back/right. The keyboard is quite thick as it also contains a computer motherboard.

Mechanical Keyboard With A Framework Inside

November 30, 2022 by 31 Comments

Like the Commodore 64 and other keyboard computers of yore, the [Elevated Systems]’s CJ64 fits all of its processing and I/O into a single keyboard-shaped package.

This iteration of the project takes it to the next level with an enclosure milled out of aluminum instead of the mere 3D printed enclosure of the previous versions. With a Framework mainboard, the ports are configurable via the Framework expansion card system giving you even more options to customize this build. To round it out, this keyboard PC doesn’t scrimp on the keyboard part either with mechanical switches and MT3 profile keycaps.

If you’d like to build one of these for yourself, [Elevated Systems] has uploaded the 3D printed enclosure files to his GitHub repository. The files for machining are available as well, but only to patrons.

For some more Framework-based mods, check out this Framework Tablet, the Framedeck, or this other retro-inspired Framework build. If you want an all-in-keyboard slabtop, then maybe check out Are Slabtops the Future of Computing?

Continue reading “Mechanical Keyboard With A Framework Inside” →

A Hacker Walks Into A Trade Show: Electronica 2022

November 22, 2022 by 24 Comments

Last week, the world’s largest electronics trade fair took place in Munich, so I had to attend. Electronica is so big that it happens only once every two years and fills up 14 airplane hangars. As the fairly generic name suggests, it covers anything and everything having to do with electronics. From the producers of your favorite MLCC capacitors to the firms that deliver them to your doorstep, from suppliers of ASIC test equipment to the little shop that’ll custom wind toroids for you, that’s a pretty wide scope. Walking around, I saw tomorrow’s technology today from the big players, but I also picked up some ideas that would be useful for the home gamer.

When I first walked in, for instance, I ran into the Elantas booth. They’re a company that makes flexible insulation and specialty industrial coatings. But what caught my eye was a thermoformed plastic sheet with circuit traces on it. To manufacture them, they cut out copper foil, glue it to a flat plastic sheet with a glue that has a little give, and then put it all together into a vacuum former. The result is a 3D circuit and organically formed substrate in one shot. Very cool, and none of the tech for doing that is outside of the reach of the determined hacker.

The Cool Stuff

All of the stands, big or small, try to lure you in with some gimmick. The big fish, firms with deep pockets, put up huge signs and open bars, and are staffed by no shortage of salespeople in suits. The little fish, on the other hand, have to resort to showing you the cool stuff that they do, and it’s more often the application engineers sitting there, ready to talk tech. You can guess which I found more interesting.

For instance when I walked up to an obviously DIY popcorn popper that was also showing 5000 FPS footage of kernels in mid-pop, I had to ask. The company in question was a small UK outfit that made custom programmable power supplies and digital acquisition gear that interfaced with it. You could plug in their box to some temperature probes, fire off the high-speed video camera, and control the heating and cooling profile without writing any code. Very sweet. Continue reading “A Hacker Walks Into A Trade Show: Electronica 2022” →

showing the connector after its torn down from the side of the wire solder points, showing how thin are the metal pads, and also that one wire has already broken off

NVIDIA Power Cables Are Melting, This May Be Why

October 28, 2022 by 57 Comments

NVIDIA has recently released their lineup of 40-series graphics cards, with a novel generation of power connectors called 12VHPWR. See, the previous-generation 8-pin connectors were no longer enough to satiate the GPU’s hunger. Once cards started getting into the hands of users, surprisingly, we began seeing pictures of melted 12VHPWR plugs and sockets online — specifically, involving ATX 8-pin GPU power to 12VHPWR adapters that NVIDIA provided with their cards.

Now, [Igor Wallossek] of igor’sLAB proposes a theory about what’s going on, with convincing teardown pictures to back it up. After an unscheduled release of plastic-scented magic smoke, one of the NVIDIA-provided connectors was destructively disassembled. Turned out that these connectors weren’t crimped like we’re used to, but instead, the connectors had flat metal pads meant for wires to solder on. For power-carrying connectors, there are good reasons this isn’t the norm. That said, you can make it work, but chances are not in favor of this specific one.

The metal pads in question seem to be far too thin and structurally unsound, as one can readily spot, their cross-section is dwarfed by the cross-section of cables soldered to them. This would create a segment of increased resistance and heat loss, exacerbated by any flexing of the thick and unwieldy cabling. Due to the metal being so thin, the stress points seem quite flimsy, as one of the metal pads straight up broke off during disassembly of the connector.

If this theory is true, the situation is a blunder to blame on NVIDIA. On the upside, the 12VHPWR standard itself seems to be viable, as there are examples of PSUs with native 12HPWR connections that don’t exhibit this problem. It seems, gamers with top-of-the-line GPUs can now empathize with the problems that we hackers have been seeing in very cheap 3D printers.

Lithium-Ion Batteries Are Easy To Find

October 3, 2022 by 43 Comments

In the first article, I’ve given you an overview of Lithium-Ion batteries and cells as building blocks for our projects, and described how hackers should treat their Lithium-Ion cells. But what if you don’t have any LiIon cells yet? Where do you get LiIon cells for your project?

Taking laptop batteries apart,  whether the regular 18650 or the modern pouch cell-based ones, remains a good avenue – many hackers take this road and the topic is extensively covered by a number of people. However, a 18650 cell might not fit your project size-wise, and thin batteries haven’t quite flooded the market yet. Let’s see what your options are beyond laptops. Continue reading “Lithium-Ion Batteries Are Easy To Find” →

Upcycling Flat Scraps With Open Source Tools

September 9, 2022 by 6 Comments

If you have any sort of device that cuts like a CNC mill or a laser cutter, you probably generate a lot of strange-looking scrap material. Most of us hate to throw anything away, but how do you plan to use all these odd shapes? [Caddzeus] has an answer.  Using a camera and some software he digitizes the shapes accurately into a form usable in his CAD package of choice.

The process involves setting up some targets with known dimensions that will appear in the photograph. This allows the picture to be taken without being overly concerned about the distance to the camera or the angle.

Using GIMP, he adjusts the images to remove the perspective. He then brings the image into Inkscape where he can accurately scale and trace the shape.

There are detailed instructions — including videos — but if you know how to use these tools, you can probably figure it out for yourself. This technique would be useful, too, if you wanted to get an outline of something you intend to mill or cut into your CAD program as a reference. We like to do this with a laser cutter so you can burn the outline of something you are engraving or cutting on a piece of paper before you start and easily align the workpiece to the laser.

Of course, a small part could surrender its image to a conventional scanner and you can use a similar technique to adjust the scale. If you start using Inkscape a lot, you’ll want more plugins. You never know what you might build from some scrap odds and ends.

Continue reading “Upcycling Flat Scraps With Open Source Tools” →

Fix Old Caps, But Keep That “Can Capacitor” Look

July 30, 2022 by 21 Comments

Vintage electronics and capacitor replacements tend to go hand-in-hand. Why? Because electrolytic capacitors just don’t last, not the way most other components do, anyway.

The metal terminal ring and the central plate are kept for re-use, and the metal case re-crimped after the internals of the capacitor are replaced with a modern equivalent.

It’s one thing to swap old caps with modern replacements, but what about electronics where the components are not hidden away, and are an important part of the equipment’s look? [lens42] shares a method for replacing antique can-style capacitors in a way that leaves them looking completely original. All it takes is some careful application of technique.

The first thing to do is carefully file away the crimp of the metal can until one can release the ring and plate that hold the terminals. Once that is off, the internals can be pulled from the metal can for disposal. Since the insides of the old cap won’t be re-used, [lens42] recommends simply drilling a hole, screwing in a lag bolt to use as a handle, and pulling everything out. There’s now plenty of space inside the old can to hold modern replacements for the capacitor, and one can even re-use the original terminals.

That leaves the job of re-crimping the old can around the terminal ring to restore a factory-made appearance. To best do this, [lens42] created a tapered collar. Gently hammering the can forces the bottom into the taper, and the opening gradually crimps around the terminal ring. It’s also possible to carefully hammer the flange directly, but the finish won’t be as nice. This new crimp job may not look exactly the same as before, but once the cap is re-installed into the original equipment, it won’t be possible to tell it has been modified in any way.

If this sounds a bit intimidating, don’t worry. [lens42] provides plenty of pictures. And if this kind of thing is up your alley, you may want to check out the Caps Wiki, an effort to centralize and share details about tech repair, especially for vintage electronics.

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Hackaday Links: July 3, 2022

July 3, 2022 by 10 Comments

Looks like we might have been a bit premature in our dismissal last week of the Sun’s potential for throwing a temper tantrum, as that’s exactly what happened when a G1 geomagnetic storm hit the planet early last week. To be fair, the storm was very minor — aurora visible down to the latitude of Calgary isn’t terribly unusual — but the odd thing about this storm was that it sort of snuck up on us. Solar scientists first thought it was a coronal mass ejection (CME), possibly related to the “monster sunspot” that had rapidly tripled in size and was being hyped up as some kind of planet killer. But it appears this sneak attack came from another, less-studied phenomenon, a co-rotating interaction region, or CIR. These sound a bit like eddy currents in the solar wind, which can bunch up plasma that can suddenly burst forth from the sun, all without showing the usually telltale sunspots.

Then again, even people who study the Sun for a living don’t always seem to agree on what’s going on up there. Back at the beginning of Solar Cycle 25, NASA and NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were calling for a relatively weak showing during our star’s eleven-year cycle, as recorded by the number of sunspots observed. But another model, developed by heliophysicists at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, predicted that Solar Cycle 25 could be among the strongest ever recorded. And so far, it looks like the latter group might be right. Where the NASA/NOAA model called for 37 sunspots in May of 2022, for example, the Sun actually threw up 97 — much more in line with what the NCAR model predicted. If the trend holds, the peak of the eleven-year cycle in April of 2025 might see over 200 sunspots a month.

So, good news and bad news from the cryptocurrency world lately. The bad news is that cryptocurrency markets are crashing, with the flagship Bitcoin falling from its high of around $67,000 down to $20,000 or so, and looking like it might fall even further. But the good news is that’s put a bit of a crimp in the demand for NVIDIA graphics cards, as the economics of turning electricity into hashes starts to look a little less attractive. So if you’re trying to upgrade your gaming rig, that means there’ll soon be a glut of GPUs, right? Not so fast, maybe: at least one analyst has a different view, based mainly on the distribution of AMD and NVIDIA GPU chips in the market as well as how much revenue they each draw from crypto rather than from traditional uses of the chips. It’s important mainly for investors, so it doesn’t really matter to you if you’re just looking for a graphics card on the cheap.

Speaking of businesses, things are not looking too good for MakerGear. According to a banner announcement on their website, the supplier of 3D printers, parts, and accessories is scaling back operations, to the point where everything is being sold on an “as-is” basis with no returns. In a long post on “The Future of MakerGear,” founder and CEO Rick Pollack says the problem basically boils down to supply chain and COVID issues — they can’t get the parts they need to make printers. And so the company is looking for a buyer. We find this sad but understandable, and wish Rick and everyone at MakerGear the best of luck as they try to keep the lights on.

And finally, if there’s one thing Elon Musk is good at, it’s keeping his many businesses in the public eye. And so it is this week with SpaceX, which is recruiting Starlink customers to write nasty-grams to the Federal Communications Commission regarding Dish Network’s plan to gobble up a bunch of spectrum in the 12-GHz band for their 5G expansion plans. The 3,000 or so newly minted experts on spectrum allocation wrote to tell FCC commissioners how much Dish sucks, and how much they love and depend on Starlink. It looks like they may have a point — Starlink uses the lowest part of the Ku band (12 GHz – 18 GHz) for data downlinks to user terminals, along with big chunks of about half a dozen other bands. It’ll be interesting to watch this one play out.