Caption CERN Contest Week 13

April 30, 2015 by 9 Comments

Week 12 of the Caption CERN Contest and the strange stringed scientific instrument it brought along are both history. As always, thank you for your captions! They provided quite a few chuckles in the busy week gearing up for our Hackathon. We’re still not sure exactly what is being built here – Our best guess is it’s some sort of detector for emissions. But what sort of emissions? Was CERN looking for electric fields, magnetic fields, or something else entirely? It’s interesting to note that just as the photographer’s flash reflected in all 5 layers of wire, an RF signal would bounce off the rear reflector and strike the wires.

The Funnies:

  • “Ooh, it’s so beautiful, is this a harp?”
    “Close, it is for HAARP” – [Federico Churca-Torrusio]
  • “Bones was right this thing will scatter your molecules across space.”- [scott galvin]
  • “Eight years of schooling and two post doctoral fellowships just so I can make quilts. I should have been a dentist.” – [Narfnezzle Nickerbots]

The winner for this week is [THX1082] with “CERN’s early attempts at developing “String theory”. They’re doing it wrong. [THX1082] will be at his next hackerspace meeting wearing a CRT Android T-Shirt From The Hackaday Store!

Week 13: Coffee time at CERN!

cern-13-smEvery week we get at least one caption explaining that the strange piece of equipment included in that week’s image is a coffee maker. I thought it would only be right to include this shot of CERN’s real coffee nook, and a scientist about to enjoy a fresh cup of liquid “get ‘er done”. I have to thank CERN’s photographer for grabbing this slice of life shot!

It’s worth taking the time to check out the high res JPEG direct from CERN, as you can really zoom in on the post cards and photographs in the background. One even says “Tout va tres bien” – which Google translates to “Everything is going very well”. Some jokes never get old!

Add your humorous caption as a comment to this project log. Make sure you’re commenting on the contest log, not on the contest itself.

As always, if you actually have information about the image or the people in it, let CERN know on the original image discussion page.

Good Luck!

Your Body Is Your PIN With Bodyprint

April 30, 2015 by 29 Comments

[Christian Holz, Senaka Buthpitiya, and Marius Knaust] are researchers at Yahoo that have created a biometric solution for those unlucky folks that always forget their smartphone PIN codes. Bodyprint is an authentication system that allows a variety of body parts to act as the password.  These range from ears to fists.

Bodyprint uses the phone’s touchscreen as an image scanner. In order to do so, the researchers rooted an LG Nexus 5 and modified the touchscreen module. When a user sets up Bodyprint, they hold the desired body part to the touchscreen. A series of images are taken, sorted into various intensity categories. These files are stored in a database that identifies them by body type and associates the user authentication with them. When the user wants to access their phone, they simply hold that body part on the touchscreen, and Bodyprint will do the rest. There is an interesting security option: the two person authentication process. In the example shown in the video below, two users can restrict file access on a phone. Both users must be present to unlock the files on the phone.

How does Bodyprint compare to capacitive fingerprint scanners? These scanners are available on the more expensive phone models, as they require a higher touchscreen resolution and quality sensor. Bodyprint makes do with a much lower resolution of approximately 6dpi while increasing the false rejection rate to help compensate.  In a 12 participant study using the ears to authenticate, accuracy was over 99% with a false rejection rate of 1 out of 13.

Continue reading “Your Body Is Your PIN With Bodyprint” →

Massive Microsoft Machinations For Makers

April 30, 2015 by 89 Comments

If you’re not stuck in the tech news filter bubble, you may not have heard the Microsoft Build Developers Conference is going on right now. Among the topics covered in the keynotes are a new Office API and a goal to have Windows 10 running on a Billion devices in a few years.

There are, however, some interesting things coming out of the Build conference. Windows 10 is designed for hackers, with everything from virtual Arduino shields running on phones, Windows 10 running on Raspberry Pis, and Visual Code Studio running on OS X and Linux.

This is not the first time in recent memory Microsoft has courted the maker market. Microsoft begrudgingly supported the hardware dev scene with the PC version of the Microsoft Kinect, and a year or two ago, Microsoft rolled out drivers for 3D printers that were much more capable than the usual serial interface (read: the ability for printer manufacturers to add DRM). To the true, tie-die wearing, rollerblade-skating, acoustic coupler-sporting, Superman III-watching hackers out there, these efforts appear laughable – the product of managers completely out of touch with their audience.

Depending on your perspective, the new releases for the Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and other ‘maker-themed’ hardware could go one way or the other.

As far as educational efforts go, the Windows Remote Arduino and Windows Virtual Shields for Arduino are especially interesting. Instead of filling a computer lab up with dozens of Arduinos and the related shields, the WVSA uses the sensors on a Windows 10 smartphone with an Arduino. Windows Remote Arduino allows makers to control an Arduino not through the standard USB port, but a Bluetooth module.

If Arduinos aren’t your thing, the Windows 10 IoT preview for the Raspberry Pi 2 and Minnowboard Max is out now. The Win10 IoT distribution does not yet have working WiFi or Bluetooth, making it the single most useless operating system for Internet of Things devices. It was, however, released at the Build conference.

Also announced was a partnership with a fabulous hardware project hosting site, Hackster.io. Microsoft and Hackster.io will be collaborating with hackathons and other events focused on Windows technology. I get why they wouldn’t want another, vastly more popular project hosting site doing this, but I’m a little confused at why Instructables wasn’t the top Microsoft pick.

As always, you may express your infinite derision in the comments below. Spelling Microsoft with a dollar sign will result in a ban.

More Hackathon Tickets Just Made Available

April 30, 2015 by 2 Comments

We had a number of people tell us they weren’t able to get tickets to our Hackathon in New York on Saturday. A block of tickets was just made available. Head on over and grab yours right now!

We’re bringing a mini-van-load of hardware along with us for this one. Our hope is to see a hardware hacker claim the top prize of $5000, but we do have other prizes just for the teams that create something with hardware. You can team up with other creative hackers from the area, all while being wined and dined (well, fed and hydrated anyway) through the entire thing. We can’t wait to see what you can get working with just twenty-hours of build time! You can find out a bit more about the hardware we’re supplying and what we have planned over on our event page.

That’s on Saturday, but the fun actually starts this evening. Join us at 7pm this evening at Antler Wine & Beer Dispensary. We’d appreciate a quick RSVP if you’re coming, and don’t forget to bring some hardware you been working on lately. See you there!

$50k In Play: Giving Away 50 LightBlue Bean This Week

April 30, 2015 by 9 Comments

This week we’re awarding a LightBlue Bean board to 50 projects entered in The Hackaday Prize.

We love this little board so much we put it in our store. It brings a microcontroller that has plenty of room and peripherals (and is quite well-known… the ATmega328) with the connectivity of Bluetooth Low Energy. If you’re planning on building something that needs processing power and connectivity with smartphones this is a good place to start. And this week you might just score one as part of the 2015 Hackaday Prize.

We’ll be looking for entries that are getting ready for the physical build and need connectivity. The best way to let us know your project should be one of the fifty winners is to post a new project log with your construction plans and how the Bean (or BTLE) would fit into that plan. Submit your build by next Wednesday (5/6) and you’re in the running!

We’re giving away $50,000 in prizes, 1/10 of the total Hackaday Prize pool during the build phase going on right now.

Last Week’s 30 Winners

OSHpark-coupon-prize

Last week we were looking for great entries in need of circuit boards and boy, did we find a lot of them. Judging is super hard. We looked at all the entries and ended up with these 30 winners. Each will receive $50 to use for custom PCB manufacturing from OSH Park. We expect to see a lot more purple boards popping up on entry pages in the coming weeks! Congratulations to all winners. Each project creator will find prize info as a message on Hackaday.io.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

3D Printering: Laser Cutting 3D Objects

April 30, 2015 by 21 Comments

3D printing can create just about any shape imaginable, but ask anyone who has babysat a printer for several hours, and they’ll tell you 3D printing’s biggest problem: it takes forever to produce a print. The HCI lab at Potsdam University has some up with a solution to this problem using the second most common tool found in a hackerspace. They’re using a laser cutter to speed up part production by a factor of twenty or more.

Instead of printing a 3D file directly, this system, Platener, breaks a model down into its component parts. These parts can then be laser cut out of acrylic or plywood, assembled, and iterated on much more quickly.

You might think laser-cut parts would only be good for flat surfaces, but with techniques like kerf bending, and stacking layer upon layer of material on top of each other, just about anything that can be produced with a 3D printer is also possible with Platener.

To test their theory that Platener is faster than 3D printing, the team behind Platener downloaded over two thousand objects from Thingiverse. The print time for these objects can be easily calculated for both traditional 3D printing and the Platener system, and it turns out Platener is more than 20 times faster than printing more than thirty percent of the time.

You can check out the team’s video presentation below, with links to a PDF and slides on the project’s site.

Thanks [Olivier] for the tip.

Continue reading “3D Printering: Laser Cutting 3D Objects” →

Hackaday Prize Entry: Building A Car, From Scratch, Out Of Foam

April 30, 2015 by 20 Comments

Want an impressive example of what a few people can do in a garage? How about building an electric car, from scratch, starting with a gigantic chunk of foam?

The Luka EV from [MW Motors] had a few project aims: it should be all-electric, naturally, with a top speed of 130km/h or 80mph. It should have a range of over 300km, and it should look good. That last line item is tricky; it’s not too hard to build an electric car, but to make one look good is a challenge.

The design of the car actually started out as a digital file. A large block of foam was acquired and carefully carved into the desired shape. This foam is covered fiberglass, and parts are pulled off this fiberglass mold. This is a great way to do low-volume production – once the molds are complete, it’s a relatively simple matter to build another body for a second Luka EV.

With all the lights, accessories, windows, and trim installed, it’s time to put this body on a chassis. This was welded out of square tube and serves as a test rig that can be independent of the mess of fiberglass. In the chassis are batteries, suspension, motor controllers, and wheels loaded up with hub motors. It works well, even with one motor.

There’s a lot more to this project, including a great guide on building a road legal car in the UK. The team isn’t based in the UK, but it’s a much more friendly environment for ‘small series’ vehicles. The requirements are easy to meet – “have a horn”, for example – but there are a lot of them.

Already the car is beautiful, and that’s just with it sitting on a trailer. We can’t wait to see this thing hit the road.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by: