90s PowerBook Runs MacOS Monterey

May 22, 2024 by 12 Comments

Even though Apple isn’t known for making the most pro-consumer devices ever (at least not since the Apple II), the trope that Apples aren’t upgradable, customizable, or otherwise hackable doesn’t really hold much weight. It does take more work to modify them or change how Apple wants them to behave, but it’s not completely impossible. Take this example of a ’94 Apple PowerBook which runs macOS Moneterey thanks largely to new internals from a 2015 MacBook Pro.

[Billy] originally intended for a Raspberry Pi to go inside this old PowerBook, but at the time, prices for ARM single-board computer (SBC) were astronomical. For around the same price as the Pi was at the time, he was able to pick up a retina display from an iPad and the internals from a broken MacBook Pro to outfit this retro case. There’s also a Teensy installed to get the trackpad working and a driver board for the display from Adafruit, and a number of case mods were needed to get everything to fit including the screen which was slightly larger than the original 9.5″ display the laptop would have shipped with.

This project took both inspiration and some of the actual code needed to get everything working from another project we featured a while ago where a Mac Mini was installed inside of a PowerBook case from 1993. Unlike projects that use smaller SBCs for retrocomputing, these builds are notable because the hardware on the inside makes them usable as daily driver computers even today, and might even be an upgrade if you’re using the internals from a MacBook Pro that would have originally had a butterfly keyboard.

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Filming The Eclipse From 80,000 Feet

May 22, 2024 by 4 Comments

Watching an eclipse from the ground is pretty fun. Depending on where you live, you might even get a decent view. But what if you wanted a truly unique vantage point? You could replicate the work of [Tarik Agcayazi] and [kemfic], who set about filming the recent eclipse from an altitude of 80,000 feet.

That’s what the eclipse looks like from 80,000 feet.

The duo didn’t rent a high-performance aircraft from the US military. Instead, they relied on a high-altitude balloon carrying a glider with a camera payload. The idea was for the balloon to go up, and have the camera capture the eclipse. Then, it would be released so that it could glide back home in controlled flight. However, time constraints made that too hard. Instead, they simplified to a parachute recovery method.

The project video covers the development process, the balloon launch itself, and of course, the filming of the eclipse. High altitude balloon launches are stressful enough, but having a short eclipse as a target made everything even more difficult. But that just makes things more exciting!

The project builds on earlier work from the duo that we discussed back in 2017.

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Mechanical 7-Segment Display Looks Clean

May 21, 2024 by 3 Comments

[Jens] wanted a subscriber counter for his YouTube channel. He could have gone with a simple OLED, LCD, or LED display, but he wanted something more tactile and interesting. So he built a mechanical 7-segment display instead!

Currently, [Jens]’s channel is in the four-digit subscriber range, so he planned to build a four-digit display. He started by searching for existing projects in this space, and came across the designs of [shiura] on Thingiverse. [shiura] had a 3D printed cam-driven 7-segment digit that runs on a single servo motor. Once armed with four of the digits, he hooked them up to a Pi Pico W to drive them all with four servo outputs. The Pico W is responsible for querying the channel subscriber count online, and updating the display in turn.

It’s a neat build, and [Jens] learned some things along the way—like how Super Lube seemed to ruin filament for him. Ultimately, the build came good, and it looks great. We’ve seen some other mechanical 7-segment builds before, too!

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An image of an orange, translucent glowing quartz rod. Thermocouples can be seen at intervals along the rod looking in.

Industrial Solar Heat Hits 1000˚C

May 21, 2024 by 17 Comments

While electricity generation has been the star of the energy transition show, about half of the world’s energy consumption is to make heat. Many industrial processes rely on fossil fuels to reach high temps right now, but researchers at ETH Zurich have found a new way to crank up the heat with a solar thermal trap. [via SciTechDaily]

Heating water for showers or radiant floor systems in homes is old hat now, but industrial application of solar power has been few and far between. Part of the issue has been achieving high enough temperatures. Opaque absorbers can only ever get as hot as the incident surface where the sun hits them, but some translucent materials, like quartz can form thermal traps.

In a thermal trap, “it is possible to achieve temperatures that are higher in the bulk of the material than at the surface exposed to solar radiation.” In the study, the researchers were able to get a 450˚C surface to produce 1,050˚C interior temperature in the 300 mm long quartz rod. The system does rely on concentrated solar power, 135 suns-worth for this study, but mirror and lens systems for solar concentration already exist due to the aforementioned electrical power generation.

This isn’t the only time we’ve seen someone smelting on sunlight alone, and you can always do it less directly by using a hydrogen intermediary. If you’re wanting a more domestic-level of heat, why not try the wind if the sun doesn’t shine much in your neighborhood?

Ribbon Cable Repair Saves Touch ID

May 21, 2024 by 14 Comments

Some might consider a broken ribbon cable to be unsalvagable. They’re delicate and fragile as can be, and sometimes just fussing with them further is enough to cause additional damage. However, with the right set of skills, it’s sometimes possible to achieve the unthinkable. As [Master Liu] demonstrates, you can indeed repair a broken ribbon cable, even a tiny one.

The video concerns a ribbon cable linked to a Touch ID fingerprint sensor from an Apple device. It’s common to break these ribbon cables when repairing a phone, and doing so causes major problems. The Touch ID device is paired with the host phone, and cannot easily be replaced. Thus, repair is justified if at all possible.

The repair involves scraping back the outer coating on the two sections of ribbon cable to reveal the copper pads underneath. The copper is then coated with flux and solder to prepare them to be rejoined. Ultra-fine strands of wire are used to join the individual traces. Then, the repaired section is coated in some kind of sealant or epoxy to hold the joint together and protect it from failing again. The theory is easy, it’s just the execution that’s hard.

Ribbon cable repair is becoming one of our favorite topics of late. Sometimes you just need a steady hand and the guts to have a go. Video after the break.

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Home Automation Terminal Has Great Post-Apocalyptic Look

May 21, 2024 by 18 Comments

If you use home automation these days, you’re probably used to using smart speakers, your smartphone, or those tabletop touchscreen devices. If you wanted something cooler and more personal, you could try building something like [Rick] did.

A Raspberry Pi 400 is the basis for the machine, and it still uses the original keyboard. It’s paired with a 3D-printed shell with a 7″ Waveshare HDMI touch display in it. The LCD is placed behind a Fresnel lens which provides some magnification. It displays a glowing blue command line which accepts text commands. It’s hooked up to the OpenAI API, so it’s a little smarter than just any old regular terminal. It’s hooked up to [Rick’s] home automation system, so he can use natural language queries to control lighting, music, and all the rest. Think Alexa or Siri, but in text form.

The design of the case, with its rounded edges, vents, and thick bezels gives it a strong retro-futuristic look, reminiscent of something out of Fallout. [Rick’s] neat application of weathering techniques helped a lot, too.

It reminds us of some of the cooler Pip Boy builds we’ve seen. Meanwhile, if you’ve got your own creative terminal build in the works, don’t hesitate to drop us a line!

Tabletop Handybot Is Handy, And Powered By AI

May 21, 2024 by 15 Comments

Decently useful AI has been around for a little while now, and robotic arms have been around much longer. Yet somehow, we don’t have little robot helpers on our desks yet! Thankfully, [Yifei] is working towards that reality with Tabletop Handybot.

What [Yifei] has developed is a robotic arm that accepts voice commands. The robot relies on a Realsense D435 RGB-D camera, which provides color vision with depth information as well. Grounding DINO is used for object detection on the RGB images. Segment Anything and Open3D are used for further processing of the visual and depth data to help the robot understand what it’s looking at. Meanwhile, voice commands are interpreted via OpenAI Whisper, which can feed prompts to ChatGPT for further processing.

[Yifei] demonstrates his robot picking up markers on command, which is a pretty cool demo. With so many modern AI tools available, we’re getting closer to the ideal of robots that can understand and execute on general spoken instructions. This is a great example. We may not be all the way there yet, but perhaps soon. Video after the break.

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