Joe Grand Talks Deconstructing Circuit Boards

August 12, 2014 by 10 Comments

With the exception of [Eric Evenchick], the Hackaday crew are safely back from Defcon and not missing in the desert. This means we can really start rolling out all the stuff we saw this weekend, beginning with an interview with [Joe Grand], creator of the JTAGulator, early member of l0pht, and generally awesome dude.

The focus of [Joe]’s many talks this year was reverse engineering circuit boards. Most of these techniques involved fairly low-tech methods to peel apart circuit boards one layer at a time: sandpaper and milling machines are the simplest techniques, but [Joe] is also using some significantly more uncommon methods. Lapping machines get a mention, as do acoustic microscopy, CAT scans, and x-rays. [Joe]’s Defcon talk isn’t up on the intertubes yet, but his BSides talk about techniques that didn’t work is available.

In case you forgot, [Joe] is also a judge for a little contest we’re running, and we asked what he’s looking for in a truly spaceworthy entry. [Joe]’s looking for projects with a lot of effort put into them. Don’t get us wrong, project that require no effort can be extremely popular, but documentation is king. [Joe] thinks well documented projects are evidence project creators are building something because they want to build it, and not because they want to win a prize. That’s intrinsic motivation, kiddies. Learn it.

And So Castings Made Of (Kinetic) Sand . . . Turn Out Pretty Well, Actually

August 12, 2014 by 35 Comments

That kinetic sand stuff is pretty cool. It’s soft, it builds motor skills, and outside of sprinkling it on carpet, it’s not messy. If you don’t know, it’s 98% sand and 2% polydimethylsiloxane, which is a major component of Silly Putty, and according to a certain yellow and red clown, it’s safe enough to put in chicken nuggets. [Chris]’s wife bought him some, probably because she wanted to see him play around with something that isn’t potentially deadly for a change. In the course of researching its magical properties, he found out that it doesn’t really have a thermal breakdown point, per se. At high enough temperatures, It vitrifies like a sand castle in a mushroom cloud. Between this property and its malleability, [Chris] thought he’d have a reasonable substitute for founding sand. As you can see in his latest experiment, he was right. As a bonus, he managed to turn the benign into the dangerous.

[Chris] had never cast aluminium before, so he decided to start small by making an offset cam for a rotary broach. He packed some magic sand in a wax paper cup and shoved the cam in to make the negative. Then he cut down some aluminium rod and put it in a graphite crucible. He stuck his DC arc welder’s electrode down into the crucible and cranked it up to 50A. That wasn’t enough, so he went to 110. The crucible was soon glowing orange. He carefully poured the molten aluminium into the mold. Make the jump to see how it panned out.

Spoiler alert: there’s no cussin’ this time!

Continue reading “And So Castings Made Of (Kinetic) Sand . . . Turn Out Pretty Well, Actually” →

Retrotechtacular: The Voder From Bell Labs

August 12, 2014 by 36 Comments

This is the under-the-hood view of the keyboard for the Voder (Voice Operating Demonstrator), the first electronic device capable of generating continuous human speech. It accomplishes this feat through a series of keys that generate the syllables, plosives, and affricatives normally produced by the human larynx and shaped by the throat and tongue. This week’s film is a picture montage paired with the audio from the demonstration of the Voder at the 1939 World’s Fair.

The Voder was created by one [Homer Dudley] at Bell Laboratories. He did so in conjunction with the Vocoder, which analyzes human-generated speech for encrypted transfer and re-synthesizes it on the other end. [Dudley] spent over 40 years researching speech at Bell Laboratories. His development of both the Voder and the Vocoder were instrumental in the SIGSALY project which aimed to deliver encrypted voice communication to the theatres of WWII.

Continue reading “Retrotechtacular: The Voder From Bell Labs” →

Cutting Records Out Of CDs

August 12, 2014 by 38 Comments

3D Printed Record Lathe

Lovers of records rejoice! Did you know you can cut your own vinyl using something called a record lathe? [Beau Walker] just put the finishing touches on his 3D printed record lathe, and the results speak for themselves!

A Recording Lathe was once used for cutting records, and previously, wax cylinders – if you want to get really old school. [Beau], being an analog lover, decided he had to try making his own. He designed the whole thing in FreeCAD and got 3D printing. A single stepper motor drives the lead screw which moves the writing head back and forth as the record spins in place. As to not waste materials, he’s reusing old CD’s for his newly created vinyls. Two 25W speakers cause vibrations in the needle to cut into the disc, via a clever little mechanism.

The system works pretty well, but he wants to replace the turntable with another stepper motor for finer control of the recording — sometimes the turntable slows down during recording under load which messes up the sound. There’s a video of it in action on his site that we can’t embed here, so you should definitely go check it out!

Of course you could skip the middleman and go straight to 3D printing your records…

Hyperlapse Makes Your HeadCam Videos Awesome

August 12, 2014 by 34 Comments

hyperlapse First person video – between Google Glass, GoPro, and other sports cameras, it seems like everyone has a camera on their head these days. If you’re a surfer or skydiver, that might make for some awesome footage. For the rest of us though, it means hours of boring video. The obvious way to fix this is time-lapse. Typically time-lapse throws frames away. Taking 1 of every 10 frames results in a 10x speed increase. Unfortunately, speeding up a head mounted camera often leads to a video so bouncy it can’t be watched without an air sickness bag handy. [Johannes Kopf], [Michael Cohen], and [Richard Szeliski] at Microsoft Research have come up with a novel solution to this problem with Hyperlapse.

Hyperlapse photography is not a new term. Typically, hyperlapse films require careful planning, camera rigs, and labor-intensive post-production to achieve a usable video. [Johannes] and team have thrown computer vision and graphics algorithms at the problem. The results are nothing short of amazing.

The full details are available in the team’s report (35MB PDF warning). To obtain usable data, the fisheye lenses often used on these cameras must be calibrated. The team accomplished that with the OCamCalib toolbox. Imported video is broken down frame by frame. Using structure from motion algorithms, hyperlapse creates a 3D models of the various scenes in the video. With the scenes in this virtual world, the camera can be moved and aimed at will. The team’s algorithms then pick a smooth path that follows the original cameras trajectory. Once the camera’s position is known, it’s simply a matter of rendering the final video.

The results aren’t perfect. The mountain climbing scenes show some artifacts caused by the camera frame rate and exposure changing due to the varied lighting conditions. People appear and disappear in the bicycling portion of the video.

One thing the team doesn’t mention is how long the process takes. We’re sure this kind of rendering must require some serious time and processing power. Still, the output video is stunning.

Continue reading “Hyperlapse Makes Your HeadCam Videos Awesome” →

PirateCade Is An Impressive Feat Of Woodworking And Design

August 12, 2014 by 17 Comments

Retro Arcade Machine Keeps the Classics

A six month journey of blood sweat and tears is finally over for [David Carver] and what he is left with is nothing short of beautiful. He calls it the PirateCade. We call it the perfect arcade cabinet.

This project is actually [David’s] very first Raspberry Pi project – at least it was, until his Pi crapped out on him. After running into too many problems with it and SD card corruptions, [David] decided against the RetroPie project platform and decided to upgrade to a full-blown PC, using an AtomicFE front-end and the Ultimark Ipac.

The entire cabinet is hand made out of solid wood; he didn’t have access to any fancy CNC routers or laser cutters. We gotta hand it to him, he’s quite the cabinet maker for an electronics guy. Continue reading “PirateCade Is An Impressive Feat Of Woodworking And Design” →

Adding Features To The DoorBot

August 11, 2014 by 5 Comments

network sniffing doorbell

There’s an interesting network-enabled doorbell on the market from Edison Junior called the DoorBot that boasts some useful features, notably that it can make calls to a phone when someone pushes the button for the doorbell. However, [MadBeggar] saw the potential in this device and couldn’t wait to get some more functionality out of it, so he has reverse engineered the communications protocol for the doorbell.

His goals for the project were to implement third-party notifications such as text messaging, VoIP/SIP integration, and maybe even a desktop client. So far he has only been able to analyze the communications protocol but he hopes that others will be able to build upon his work or even add features he hasn’t thought of yet. The makers of the device promise to eventually deliver on some of these features but so far haven’t delivered.

There are some other projects out there that integrate wireless connectivity with a doorbell. However, [MadBeggar] notes that the DoorBot really stands out among all of the internet-enabled doorbell, mostly because nothing else around is as clean or is as easy to install as the DoorBot. He just wishes that the software wasn’t so clunky and that it had its full potential unlocked with these extra features. We’d say he’s on the right track!