Sci-Fi Contest: Source Universe Roundup

April 4, 2014 by 8 Comments

sci-fi-contest-universe-roundup

The Hackaday Sci-Fi contest has 36 entries so far. Since there are fifteen prizes available, you stand an excellent chance of winning; but you can’t win if you don’t play. It’s pretty easy to be considered for the contest. You simply need to hack together something Sci-Fi related and show off your work. Head over to the contest page and check out the details. Ten of the prizes are popularity-based, so posting early is the best bet! For those that were put-off by the team requirement, there’s a hack to get around that.

Since this is a themed contest we thought we’d give you an update on where inspiration is coming from. Below is the break-down of each Sci-Fi universe that has been so-far adopted by the entrants. We’d like to point out that this isn’t limited to movies, as the bulk of inspiration is to be found in literature. Why don’t we get a comment thread going here to help brain-storm for people who want help locking onto an idea?

Oh, and if you’re wondering about the banner images. These were taken from three of the contest projects. The upper left is a GLaDOS replica controlled by Google Glass (complete with Nerf dart gun) inspired by Portal. Bottom left is a pair of Peril-Sensitive sunglasses inspired by A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And the bottom right is a life-sign scanner inpired by Stargate Atlantis.

  • Unknown (genre or misc themes) 9
  • A Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy 4
  • Back to the Future 3
  • Star Wars 3
  • 2001 A Space Odyssey 2
  • Doctor Who 2
  • Stargate 2
  • Thor 2
  • Blade Runner 1
  • Demolition Man 1
  • ET: The Extra Terrestrial 1
  • Futurama 1
  • Harry Potter 1
  • Knight Rider 1
  • Portal 1
  • Prometheus 1
  • Start Trek 1

Tube Headphones Rock Out While Keeping The Family Peace

April 4, 2014 by 22 Comments

tubeHeadphones

It’s hard being a kid sometimes. [Young] likes his music, but his dad is an overnight trucker. With his dad sleeping during the day, [Young] has to keep the volume down to a reasonable level. He could have bought some commercial headphones, but he wanted something a bit more customized. Rather than give up on his tunes, he built a pair of headphones with an internal tube preamp amplifier. [German language link — Google translate doesn’t want to work with this one but Chrome’s translate feature works].

Two 1SH24B preamp tubes feed two LM386 amplifier chips, creating a hybrid amplifier. The 1SH24B tubes are designed to work on battery voltage, so a step up circuit wasn’t necessary. However, [Young] still needed to provide an 8 cell battery pack to run his amp. Speakers were a 3 way coaxial of [Young’s] own design. He built the headphone frame using candy tins and cups from commercial headphones. A final touch was a window so everyone can see all that vacuum state goodness.  Considering that [Young] is only 16, we’re looking for some great things from him in the future.

If you don’t want to strap the tubes to your skull there are other options. But you have to admit it makes for a cool look. Starbucks here we come.

[Thanks Patrick]

We’re At The Vintage Computer Festival This Weekend!

April 4, 2014 by 14 Comments

VCF

This weekend takes some of the Hackaday crew to the Vintage Computer Festival East in Wall, New Jersey. There’s going to be lots of cool stuff, some dork walking around handing out Hackaday t-shirts and stickers, and more awesome retro computation devices than you can shake several sticks of RAM at.

On the agenda for Friday are a host of talks that include bootstrapping CP/M, assembly programming, disk imaging, and a talk from our very own [Bil Herd] on how to not kill yourself with a CRT monitor.

Saturday is when things really heat up with exhibits including a PDP-8, a 1960s UNIVAC, Chromeco Dazzlers, VAXxen, and a whole slew of computers that weigh less than several hundred pounds. There’s even a real Apple I. Seriously. There are also workshops that include some really obscure work from the late, great [Jef Raskin], and more talks, including [Dave Haynie]’s recollections of Commodore’s circling the drain.

The VCF is hosted at InfoAge, an exceptionally cool vintage technology treasure trove that’s more than worth the visit, even if there weren’t a vintage computer festival going on this weekend. We caught up with the InfoAge guys a while back, and needless to say, if you come, you’ll have fun.

If you see somebody walking around with a Hackaday t-shirt on, be sure to tell them you’re a fan. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, ask them who they got the shirt from. Regular updates to follow, including a video of someone loading the Hackaday Retro site with an Intel 4004 microprocessor. I didn’t think that was possible either.

Oh, watch our Twitter or something. That’s a thing now.

SQL Injection Fools Speed Traps And Clears Your Record

April 4, 2014 by 111 Comments

Typical speed camera traps have built-in OCR software that is used to recognize license plates. A clever hacker decided to see if he could defeat the system by using SQL Injection…

The basic premise of this hack is that the hacker has created a simple SQL statement which will hopefully cause the database to delete any record of his license plate. Or so he (she?) hopes. Talk about getting off scot-free!

The reason this works (or could work?) is because while you would think a traffic camera is only taught to recognize the license plate characters, the developers of the third-party image recognition software simply digitize the entire thing — recognizing any and all of the characters present. While it’s certainly clever, we’re pretty sure you’ll still get pulled over and questioned — but at least it’s not as extreme as building a flashbulb array to blind traffic cameras…

What do you guys think? Did it work? This image has been floating around the net for a few years now — if anyone knows the original story let us know!

Fixing Misaligned PVC With Kerf Bends

April 4, 2014 by 18 Comments

misalignment-coupler

Our old pal [Jeremy Cook] is doing his own remix of [Theo Jansen]’s Strandbeest, and like the original, he’s using PVC pipe. Unlike the originals, he’s powering it with motors, not wind, and this has caused a few problems in transmitting mechanical power through a piece of PVC. Nothing is perfect, and in a few points in the legs movement the shaft shakes violently. One motor was lost and another nearly so before [Jeremy] came up with a flex coupler made from PVC.

The technique [Jeremy] is using has seen a lot of use with people building laser cut enclosures. It’s called kerf bending, and it works simply by cutting a few slits in a panel that allow it to bend slightly. This technique was replicated by [Jeremy] on a miter saw, cutting eight slots halfway through a one inch PVC pipe, with each successive cut offset 90 degrees.

The new design works well for transmitting power, and he’s not ruining motors any more. Check out the video below.

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Throwback Handheld Built With Modern Hobby Hardware

April 4, 2014 by 23 Comments

magpi-gaming-handheld

Remember all of those fantastically horrible handheld LCD games that hit the toy stores back in the ’90s. You know, the ones that had custom LCD screens to make for some fake animation. Here’s an example of what those should have been. It’s an LCD-based handheld with some soul.

The entire thing is roughly the size of a television remote, with a 3D printed case making it very presentable. But looking at the wiring which hides inside proves this is one-of-a-kind. The Arduino Pro Mini is probably the biggest difference in technology from back in the day compared to now. It has plenty of space for all of the different settings and games shown off in the clip below. The user interface itself is definitely a throw-back though. The Nokia 3310 screen boasts a whopping 84×48 pixel monochrome area. There are four buttons serving as a d-pad, and two as action buttons. Perhaps the greatest feature (besides the printed case we already mentioned) is the ability to recharge the internal battery via USB.

[Zippy314] built this with his son. What’s more fun: learning to program the games, or mastering them and discovering the bugs you missed along the way?

 

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Blinkenschild, The RGB LED Display For Every Occasion

April 3, 2014 by 33 Comments

turd

One morning [overflo] decided to protest the European Parliament’s stance on equine rights of defecation, a cherished liberty dating back to the time of Charlemagne. The best way to do this is, of course, blinking lights. He calls his project Blinkenschild, and it’s one of the best portable LED displays we’ve seen.

The display is based around fifteen RGB-123 LED panels, each containing an 8×8 matrix of WS2811 LEDs. That’s 960 pixels, all controlled with a Teensy 3.1. Power is supplied by fifteen LiPo cells wired together in parallel giving him 6 Ah of battery life. Clunky, yes, but it’s small enough to fit in a backpack and that’s what [overflo] had sitting around anyway.

The animations for the display are generated by Glediator, an unfortunately not open source control app for LED matrices. Glediator sends data out over a serial port but not over IP or directly into a file. Not wanting to carry a laptop around with him, [overflo] created a virtual serial port and dumped the output of Glediator into a file so it could be played back stored on an SD card and controlled with an Android app. Very clever, and just the thing to raise awareness of horse and Internet concerns.

Video below.

UPDATE: Check out [overflo’s] clarification in the comments below.

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