CAPTION CERN CONTEST – Saying Goodbye To An Old Friend

July 9, 2015 by 4 Comments

The tangled web woven by Week 22 of the Caption CERN Contest has come to a close. It’s been another bumper week with 112 comments. Thank you to everyone who submitted a caption! We realize it may have been hard for some of the network engineers out there to type through their tears, but thank you for persevering! While we don’t know exactly what these two CERN scientists were wiring up, [rwells97] did figure out that the scope in the image is most likely a Tektronix 545/A, which was a popular scope back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The weight on a beast like that was around 70 lbs!

The Funnies:

  • “Dude, this one’s full of wires too! Every single one of these is full of wires! Why would anyone need so many wires? What in the name of God were they DOING down here?” – [The Green Gentleman]
  • “Getting to blinky” required a whole lot more work then the engineers realized…” – [Kieran Paulger]
  • “I think I lost an electron back here, Bob. I’m positive.” – [Christine Hampton]

This week’s winner is [alan] with “Daft Punk was actually two of CERN’s best acoustics researchers prior to forming the band. Here they are after hours working on the track that would later be named ‘Da Funk'”. [Alan] is a Computer Science PhD candidate with focus on computational biology, specifically population genomics. Hopefully he has some hardware in the mix somewhere, because we’re sending him a Stickvise from The Hackaday Store!

Week 23

cern-23-smSomething a bit different this week. CERN is probably best known for the various particle accelerators they’ve had over the years. One of the first units was synchrocyclotron SC-1, which operated from 1957 to 1974. According to the album page on CERN’s servers, SC-1’s last day of operation was celebrated with a funeral procession. Scientists, and staff walked the grounds with flowers, top hats, and even a shrouded coffin. We can all related to decommissioning a well-worn piece of equipment. Be it a computer, a machine tool, or even a synchrocyclotron, there are always the mixed feelings of thanks that it did a good job, and relief that it will no longer need to be maintained.

Even though we have a pretty good idea of what’s going on in this image, we’re going to caption it anyway! Give us your best captions of what you think is really going on here! This week’s prize is a LightBlue Bean from The Hackaday Store. Add your humorous caption as a comment to this project log. Make sure you’re commenting on the contest log, not on the this post. As always, if you actually have information about the image or the people in it, let CERN know on the original image discussion page.

Show Us Your Human Interface; Win Laser Cutting Time

July 9, 2015 by 19 Comments

Our newest Hot List is Human Interfaces. This is anything you’ve designed into your project to interact with people. And we want to see it all! Do you have something bristling with buttons, boasting many LCD screens, hosting controls organized with the principles of Feng Shui, or intuitively voice activated? Show us the user interface you’re proud of and you could win one of thirty $100 gift cards for Ponoko laser cutting service.

We’re in the thick of judging the Wheels, Wings, and Propellers hot list from this week. We’ll be announcing the rankings in the coming days, but for now you need to get your project onto the Your Human Interface hot list. Here’s what you need to do before Thursday, 7/16/15:

Good luck, and per usually we’d like to encourage you to Vote this week. It’s a great way to explore the entries in this year’s 2015 Hackaday Prize, and you just might win $1000 from the Hackaday Store just for voting!

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

50 Winners Using Atmel Parts

July 9, 2015 by 6 Comments

For the last few weeks we’ve been celebrating builds that use parts from our manufacturer sponsors of the 2015 Hackaday Prize. Today we are happy to announce 50 winners who used Atmel parts in their builds. Making the cut is one thing, but rising to the top is another. These builds show off some amazing work from those who entered them. In addition to the prizes which we’ll be sending out, we’d like these projects to receive the recognition they deserve. Please take the time to click through to the projects, explore what has been accomplished, and leave congratulations a comment on the project page.

Still Time to Win!

We’re far from the end of the line. We’ll be giving roughly $17,000 more in prizes before the entry round closes in the middle of August. Enter your build now for a chance in these weekly contests!

Continue reading “50 Winners Using Atmel Parts” →

nintendo

Nin10do Retro Game Console Stands Above All Others

July 9, 2015 by 22 Comments

If your living room entertainment area is not home to a Raspberry Pi based retro game console, you no longer have any excuses. Break out your soldering iron and volt/ohm meter and preheat the 3d printer, because you will not be able to resist making one of the best retro game consoles we’ve ever seen – The Nin10do.

It’s creator is [TheDanielSpies]. Not only did he make the thing from scratch, he’s done an extraordinary job documenting all the build details, making it easier than ever to follow in his footsteps and make one of your own. He designed the case in Autodesk and printed it out with XT Co-polyester filament. He uses a Raspi of course, along with an ATX Raspi board from Low Power Labs to make the power cycling easier. There’s even a little stepper that opens and closes a cover that hides the four USB ports for controllers. Everything is tied together with Python, making the project super easy to modify and customize to your liking.

All code, schematics and .stl files are available on his github. It even has its own Facebook page! Be sure to check out the vast array of videos to help you along with your build.

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Homebrew ECU Increases Mazda Zoom

July 9, 2015 by 59 Comments

A big problem with most modern cars is the sheer number of parts and systems that are not user serviceable. This is a big departure from cars of just decades ago that were designed to be easily worked on by the owner. To that end, [Anthony] aka [fuzzymonkey] has tackled what is normally the hardest thing to work on in modern cars: the Engine Control Unit. (Older posts on this project can be found at [Anthony]’s old project log.)

Every sensor in any modern car is monitored by a computer called the Engine Control Unit (ECU), and the computer is responsible for taking this data and making decisions on how the car should be running. In theory a custom ECU would be able to change any behavior of the car, but in practice this is extremely difficult due to the sheer number of operations required by the computer and the very specific tolerances of a modern engine.

The custom ECU that Anthony has created for his Mazda MX-5 (a Miata for those in North America) is based on the PIC18F46K80 microcontroller, and there are actually two units involved. The first handles time-sensitive operations like monitoring the engine cam position and engine timing, and the other generates a clock signal for the main unit and also monitors things like cooling temperature and controlling idle speed. The two units communicate over SPI.

[Anthony]’s custom ECU is exceptional in that he’s gotten his car running pretty well. There are some kinks, but hopefully he’ll have a product that’s better than the factory ECU by allowing him to change anything from throttle response and engine timing to the air-fuel ratio. There have been a few other attempts to tame the ECU beast in the past, but so far there isn’t much out there.

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Decapping The CC2630 And CC2650

July 9, 2015 by 18 Comments

[Jelmer] got curious about the TI CC26XX wireless MCUs and did a little decapping.

TI sells four different models of their CC26XX wireless MCUs. Three support one of the following: RF4CE, Zigbee/6LoWPAN, and Bluetooth and a further model which supports all protocols. Each IC has the same baseline specification: 128Kb Flash, 20Kb RAM and 15 GPIOs. cc26xx_nitric[Jelmer] was curious to know if the price difference was all in the software. And in order to verify this decided that decapping was the only thing to do!

We’ve covered decapping using Nitric acid before, as well as lower tech techniques. Luckily [Jelmer] had access to Nitric acid and a fume hood, not the easiest items to get hold of outside of a research lab (checkout the video of the IC bubbling away below). [Jelmer] got some great die shots under an optical microscope and was able to confirm that the die markings are identical. This opens the door to future hacks, which might allow the cheaper models to be re-flashed, expanding their capabilities.

Continue reading “Decapping The CC2630 And CC2650” →

Hackaday Prize Entry: EyeDrivOMatic

July 8, 2015 by 6 Comments

There are a lot of projects in the Hackaday Prize aimed at improving the lives of those of us who are disabled or otherwise handicapped. A good 3D printed prosthetic is a natural idea for the competition, as are projects for the blind and deaf. [Patrick Joyce], [Steve Evans] and [David Hopkinson] are helping a much more debilitating disease: Motor Neuron Disease, or ALS. [Steve] and [Patrick] both have ALS, and they’re working on a project that will use the movement of their eyes to move their wheelchair.

The project began as an idea [Patrick] had a few years ago – why not use commercial eye tracking technology to drive a wheelchair. Eye tracking technology is a reasonably well-solved problem but for some inexplicable reason there are no clear ways to connect this system to a wheelchair.

Over the last few years, [Patrick] taught himself Arduino and Processing to prototype a device that would connect to a computer running an eye tracking tool and to translate this into servo movements. A small 3D printed contraption is connected to the joystick of [Patrick]’s wheelchair, and with just a little bit more code, he can drive his wheelchair around just by looking at a screen. It’s a great use of 3D printing and the humble Arduino, but it’s absolutely impressive this technology hasn’t existed before.

Because [Patrick] can build pretty much whatever hardware he wants, he’s also added a few neat features. The ‘Brain Box’ for this build needs two outputs for servos, but [Patrick] added two more for other purposes. He’ll be mounting a Nerf blaster to the side of his chair, but he also has other ideas of adding a fan, a robot arm, or even IR or RF transmitters; he’ll be able to control his TV with just his eyes.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by: