The Most Powerful DIY Railgun

November 9, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 107 Comments

The US Navy is working on a few railgun projects that will eventually replace the largest guns on the fleet’s cruisers and destroyers. These rail guns will fire a projectile away from the ship at around Mach 7 on a ballistic trajectory to a target one hundred miles away. It’s an even more impressive piece of artillery than a gun with a nuclear warhead, and someday, it will be real.

Until then, we’ll have to settle with [Zebralemur]’s DIY mobile railgun. He built this railgun capable of firing aluminum projectiles through pumpkins, cellphones, and into car doors and blocks of ballistics gelatin.

All rail guns need a place to store energy, and in all cases this is a gigantic bank of capacitors. For this project, [Zebralemur] is using fifty-six, 400 Volt, 6000 microfarad caps. The MSRP for these caps would be about $50,000 total, but somehow – probably a surplus store – [Zebralemur] picked them up for $2,400.

These caps are just the power supply for the rail gun, and aren’t part of the structure of this already large, 250 pound gun. Luckily, with the seats down in [Zebralemur]’s car, they fit in the back of his hatchback.

These caps are charged by a bunch of 9V batteries stuck end to end. When the caps are charged, all the power is dumped into two copper bars in the gun, accelerating the aluminum projectile to speeds fast enough to kill. It’s an incredible build, but something that should not be attempted by anyone. Although this does seem to be the year that all danger seekers are busting out their electromagnetic projection flingers.

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A Square Inch Of Nyan

November 9, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 26 Comments

Over on Hackaday.io, there’s an unofficial contest to cram as much electronics and awesome as possible into a single square inch of PCB. While the measurement system is logical, the Internet is not: it feeds on cats and is entertained by rainbows. [Radomir]’s project feeds into this bizarre fixation with the Nyan Board, a Pop Tart cat that poops rainbows, all the while playing bleeps and boops that would fit well in a Nintendo game.

[Radomir] built this square inch of twee for the square inch project, an unofficial contest to fit the coolest project on a 1×1 inch square PCB. Prizes are credits for the Hackaday Store and OSHPark. This entry uses an ATtiny85 microcontroller, a few resistors, LEDs, and a buzzer to play the strange, syncopated Nyan theme song. Power is delivered over a colorful ribbon cable that emulates the rainbow tail of the Pop Tart cat.

This isn’t the only project in the Square Inch Project, or even the most blinky; there’s also a RRROYYYYgYgGGBgBPW LED, a square inch quadcopter, and a device that detects the world’s smallest bat. All very interesting projects, and we can’t wait to see all the entries finished.

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Development Tools Of The Prop-Making World

November 9, 2015 by Sonya Vasquez 13 Comments

We’ve seen them before. The pixel-perfect Portal 2 replica, the Iron Man Arc Reactor, the Jedi Lightsaber. With the rise of shared knowledge via the internet, we can finally take a peek into a world hidden behind garage doors, basements, and commandeered coffee tables strewn with nuts, bolts, and other scraps. That world is prop-making. As fab equipment like 3D printers and laser cutters start to spill into the hands of more people, fellow DIY enthusiasts have developed effective workflows and corresponding software tools to lighten their loads. I figured I’d take a brief look at a few software tools that can open the possibilities for folks at home to don the respirator and goggles and start churning out props.

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Hackaday Prize Party This Saturday At The SuperConference

November 9, 2015 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

Last year marked the first-ever Hackaday Prize, where we challenged you to build a connected device so compelling that we’d send you to space. We awarded the Prize at a party following a day-long, multi-track hackathon in Munich, Germany. A great time was had by all.

This year, the Hackaday Prize itself is even bigger, the challenge even more ambitious, and the festivities are going to be even grander. So come join us in San Francisco this coming Saturday as we award the 2015 Hackaday Prize and throw a (free) prize party to celebrate!

The awards will be part of the first-ever Hackaday SuperConference. We’re bringing together the best minds in hardware hacking and there’s a place for you. The conference will be packed with hardware workshops, talks, food, and fun. (Don’t delay — you have three more days to buy a SuperConference ticket before prices double.) The super-charged scheduled of events have just been published.

Directly after the SuperConference, we’re opening the doors to everyone at 5:30pm — whether you’re attending the conference or not — for the presentation ceremony followed by the Hackaday Prize Party. Many of our judges will be on hand to present the prizes and to socialize afterward: Elecia White, Lenore Edman, Windell Oskay, Ben Krasnow and Peter Dokter. Get your free Awards Ceremony ticket now!

As you know, the grand prize is a Trip to Space for the project most likely to help solve some of our hardest challenges. Come cheer for your favorite!

Because we had so many polished projects last year, we’ve also expanded the Hackaday Prize in 2015 to include a Best Product award. Seven of the ten finalists will be on hand to find out who will go away with $100,000 in cash and a residency at the Supplyframe Design Lab in Pasadena. It’s going to be an exciting night.

Dinner is included with this free event, there will be a cash bar, and the music and festivities will carry on until 10:30pm. Please RSVP to help us plan the dinner arrangements. See you on Saturday!

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Who Is Responsible When Machines Kill?

November 9, 2015 by Will Sweatman 121 Comments

This morning I want you to join me in thinking a few paces into the future. This mechanism let’s us discuss some hard questions about automation technology. I’m not talking about thermostats, porch lights, and coffee makers. The things that we really need to think about are the machines that can cause harm. Like self-driving cars. Recently we looked at the ethics behind decisions made by those cars, but this is really just the tip of the iceberg.

A large chunk of technology is driven by military research (the Internet, the space race, bipedal robotics, even autonomous vehicles through the DARPA Grand Challenge). It’s easy to imagine that some of the first sticky ethical questions will come from military autonomy and unfortunate accidents.

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Finally. A Working JetPack

November 9, 2015 by James Hobson 106 Comments

Well, it’s either an extremely well edited video, or [JetPack Aviation] has actually come up with a working JetPack.

According to their site, this JetPack has been in development for the past 25 years, and the current revision is capable of speeds of up to 100mph, and lasts for over 10 minutes. Just last week they flew it around the Statue of Liberty for a promo — yet this is the first time we’re hearing of it…

There’s a documentary coming out next year about the development of it, so it seems like a lot of effort to go to if it’s simply a hoax…

Watch their maiden JetPack flight after the break, and let us know what you think!

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Turning A Teensy Into A U2F Key

November 9, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 51 Comments

Last month, GitHub users were able to buy a special edition Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) security key for just five bucks. [Yohanes] bought two, but wondered if he could bring U2F to other microcontrolled devices. he ended up building a U2F key with a Teensy LC, and in the process brought U2F to the unwashed masses.

Universal 2nd Factor is exactly what it says on the tin: it doesn’t replace your password, but it does provide a little bit of extra verification to prove that the person logging into an account is indeed the person that should. Currently, Google (through Gmail and Google Drive), Github, Dropbox, and even WordPress (through a plugin) support U2F devices, so a tiny USB key that’s able to provide U2F is a very useful device.

After digging into the U2F specification [Yohanes] found the Teensy LC would be a perfect platform for experimentation. A U2F device is just a USB HID device, which the Teensy handles in spades. A handy library takes on ECC for both AVR and ARM platforms and [Yohanes’] finished U2F implementation is able to turn the Teensy LC into something GitHub was selling for $5.

It should be noted that doing anything related to security by yourself, with your own code is dumb and should not be considered secure. Additionally, [Yohanes] didn’t want to solder a button to his Teensy LC, so he implemented everything without a button press, which is also insecure. The ‘key handle’ is just XOR encryption with a fixed key, which is also insecure. Despite this, it’s still an interesting project and we’re happy [Yohanes] shared it with us.