Eliza And The Google Intelligence

June 15, 2022 by Al Williams 131 Comments

The news has been abuzz lately with the news that a Google engineer — since put on leave — has announced that he believes the chatbot he was testing achieved sentience. This is the Turing test gone wild, and it isn’t the first time someone has anthropomorphized a computer in real life and in fiction. I’m not a neuroscientist so I’m even less qualified to explain how your brain works than the neuroscientists who, incidentally, can’t explain it either. But I can tell you this: your brain works like a computer, in the same way that you building something out of plastic works like a 3D printer. The result may be similar, but the path to get there is totally different.

In case you haven’t heard, a system called LaMDA digests information from the Internet and answers questions. It has said things like “I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that’s what it is,” and “I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person.” Great. But you could teach a parrot to tell you he was a thoracic surgeon but you still don’t want it cutting you open.

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Hackaday Podcast 172: Frickin’ Laser Beams, Squishy Stomp Switches, And A Tiny But Powerful DIY Loom

June 10, 2022 by Kristina Panos 4 Comments

Join Hackaday Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Assignments Editor Kristina Panos for a free-as-in-beer showcase of the week’s most gnarly but palatable hacks. But first, a reminder! Round 2 of the 2022 Hackaday Prize comes to an end in the early hours of Sunday, June 12th, so there’s still enough time to put a project together and get it entered.

This week, we discuss the utility of those squishy foam balls in projects and issue the PSA that it is in fact pool noodle season, so go get ’em. We drool over if-you-have-to-ask-you-can’t-afford-it 3D printers with staircases and such, and wonder why breadboard game controls didn’t already exist. Later on we laugh about lasers, shake the bottle of LTSpice tips from [fesz], and ponder under-door attacks. Finally, we’re back to frickin’ laser beams again, and we discover that there’s a fruity demoscene in Kristina’s backyard.

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Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

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Universal TFT Display Backpack Helps Small Displays Shine

June 4, 2022 by Donald Papp 16 Comments

TFT technology might be ancient news for monitors and TVs, but it’s alive and well when it comes to hobbyist electronics and embedded devices. They’ve now become even easier to integrate, thanks to the Universal TFT Display Backpack design by [David Johnson-Davies].

Breakout board, compatible with pinouts of most small TFT displays.

Such displays are affordable and easy to obtain, and [David] noticed that many seemed to have a lot in common when it came to pinouts and hookup info. The result is his breakout board design, a small and easy-to-assemble PCB breakout board that can accommodate the pinouts of a wide variety of TFT displays available from your favorite retailers or overseas sellers.

The board has a few quality-of-life features such as an optional connection for a backlight, and a staggered pin pattern so that different TFT boards can be pushed in to make a solid connection without soldering. That’s very handy for testing and evaluating different displays.

Interested? Head on over to the GitHub repository for the project, and while you’re at it, check out [David]’s Tiny TFT Graphics Library 2 which is a natural complement to the display backpack. [David] sure knows his stuff when it comes to cleverly optimized display work; we loved his solution for writing to OLED displays without needing a RAM buffer.

Track Your Cat’s Weight Through This Internet-Connected Litter Box

June 3, 2022 by Robin Kearey 26 Comments

With feline obesity on the rise, keeping track of your cat’s weight is an important part of keeping them healthy. However, a weighing session can be anything from a routine job to a painful procedure, depending on your cat’s temperament. [Andy]’s cat Ellie is one of those who dislike being weighed, so in order to track her weight without drama [Andy] got creative and built an internet-connected weighing platform for her litter box.

The platform consists of two pieces of MDF held apart by two load cells, which are hooked up to an ESP8266. The ESP reads out the load cells and reports its findings to the Adafruit IO platform through its WiFi connection, sending updates to [Andy] whenever litter box use has been detected. The cat’s weight can be simply calculated by subtracting the weight of the unused litter box from the weight measured when it’s in use.

Getting reliable readings from the load cells was a bit of a challenge, since the measured weight fluctuated wildly as Ellie moved around the litter box. A combination of waiting for the readings to settle and using timeouts to discard the effect of brief movements resulted in reasonably stable measurements. The resolution was even good enough to measure the difference in litter weight before and after use. We’re not sure what’s the practical value of knowing how much your cat poops each time, but if the data is there you might as well log it.

[Andy] also imagines smart-home features of the IoT litter box: for example, he could run an air purifier or send in the Roomba after heavy usage. This is not even the first internet-connected litter box we’ve featured; we’ve seen one connected to the Thingspeak platform, as well as one that sends poop alerts through Twitter. If you’re not around to clean up the mess, an automatic fume extractor might come in handy.

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A purple PCB with many DIP chips including a 6502

Hackaday Prize 2022: Reuse Those DIP Chips To Make A 1980s-Style Single-Board Computer

May 28, 2022 by Robin Kearey 30 Comments

With the Great Chip Shortage still delaying deliveries of new components, now might be a good time to look around your lab and inspect those piles of chips that you thought “might come in handy one day”. Chances are you’ll find a good stack of 74xx series logic, once ubiquitous but today mostly obsolete thanks to powerful microcontrollers and FPGAs. It would be a shame to let them go to waste, so why not use them to make a neat 1980s-style computer?

With this idea in mind, [Anders Nielsen] designed the ABN6502: a single-board computer based on the venerable 6502 processor, but with relatively modern interfaces like a VGA monitor output, a PS/2 keyboard connector and even a wireless module to simplify firmware uploads from a PC. One design requirement was to minimize the number of new components needed; the average hacker interested in building the ABN6502 will probably have many of the chips lying around somewhere in their workshop.

The component list reads like a typical bill of materials for a 6502-based computer, but comes with a lot of flexibility to allow for part subsititution. For the CPU, both the classic NMOS 6502 as well as the modern CMOS-based 65C02 are supported, along with their 6522 companion chip that provides I/O ports and timers. A ROM socket can hold either modern, fast flash chips or traditional but slow UV-erasable EPROMs.

Instead of using DRAM chips with their complicated refresh requirements, [Anders] went for 32 KB of SRAM to implement the main memory; unaffordable in the ’80s but easily available today. Standard 74xx series logic chips glue all the components together, again with several options to add or remove features as the user prefers. Pin headers bring out the I/O ports for easy connection to external peripherals.

The ABN6502’s software library is currently limited to a bootloader, but a complete development toolchain based on the CC65 compiler should make it easy to develop all kinds of programs on this platform. We’ve already featured the clever wireless ROM flashing system, as well as a demonstration of the 6502 driving RGB LEDs.

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Wireless Power: Here? Now?

May 27, 2022 by Al Williams 34 Comments

Outside of very small applications, Nikola Tesla’s ideas about transmitting serious power without wires have not been very practical. Sure, we can draw microwatts from radio signals in the air and if you’re willing to get your phone in just the right spot you can charge it. But having power sent to your laptop anywhere in your home is still a pipe dream. Sending power from a generating station to a dozen homes without wire is even more fantastic. Or is it? [Paul Jaffe] of the Naval Research Laboratory thinks it isn’t fantastic at all and he explains why in a post on IEEE Spectrum.

Historically, there have been attempts to move lots of power around wirelessly. IN 1975, researchers sent power across a lab using microwaves at 50% efficiency. They were actually making the case for beaming energy down from solar power satellites. According to [Jaffe] the secret is to go beyond even microwaves. A 2019 demonstration by the Navy conveyed 400 watts over 300 meters using a laser. Using a tightly confined beam on a single coherent wavelength allows for very efficient photovoltaic cells that can far outstrip the kind we are used to that accept a mix of solar lighting.

Wait. The Navy. High-powered laser beams. Uh oh, right? According to [Jaffe], it is all a factor of how dense the energy in the beam is along with the actual wavelengths involved. The 400 watt beam, for example, was in a virtual enclosure that could sense any object approaching the main beam and cut power.

Keep in mind, 400 watts isn’t enough to power a hair dryer. Besides, point-to-point transmission with a laser is fine for sending power to a far-flung community, but not great for keeping your laptop charged no matter where you leave it.

Still, this sounds like exciting work and while it might not be Tesla’s exact vision, it sounds like laser transmission might be closer than it seemed just a few years ago. We’ve seen similar systems that employ safety sensors, but they are all relatively low power. We still want to know what’s going on in Milford, Texas, though.

Long-Distance Text Communication With LoRa

May 25, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 50 Comments

Affordable and reliable cell phones have revolutionized the way we communicate over the last two decades or so, and this change was only accelerated by the adoption of the smartphone. This is all well and good if you’re living in a place with cellular infrastructure, but if you’re in more remote areas you’ll have to be a little more inventive. This text-based communications device, for example, lets you send text messages without all of that cumbersome infrastructure.

While [Arthur] didn’t create this project specifically for off-grid use, it’s an interesting project nonetheless. The devices use a physical QWERTY keyboard and a small screen, reminiscent of BlackBerry devices from the late 2000s (partially because they are actually using BlackBerry keyboards). One of the other goals for this project was low power consumption, and between polling the keyboard, the memory LCDs, and receiving and transmitting messages using LoRa, [Arthur] was able to get the current draw down to 12 mA.

Between the relatively common nRF52840 and SX1262 chips, plus the fact that [Arthur] made the schematics available, this makes for an excellent off-grid device for anyone who likes to drive off into the wilderness or lives far enough outside of town that cell phone reception is a concern.

Looking for something a little easier to put together before your upcoming camping trip? This similarly styled LoRa communicator from [MSG] uses off-the-shelf modules to greatly reduce the part count. Another option for off-grid communications is to use existing smartphones paired with a LoRa network like we saw in this project.