Gritz: An Open Source Speed Reading Tool

March 3, 2014 by 43 Comments

Here’s a hack to help you increase your reading speed. Gritz is an open source text file reader, which reduces the need to look around the screen. Words pop up one at a time, but at a configurable pace.

[Peter Feuerer] got the idea for Gritz from Spritz, a commercial product for speed reading. The creators of Spritz took three years to develop their software, and recently released a demo. They claim people can read at 1000 WPM using this technology. Spritz is taking applications for access to their APIs, which will allow developers to integrate the software into their own applications. However, a fully open source version with no restrictions would be even better.

Using Gritz, [Peter] claims to have read a book with a 75% improvement in his reading speed. He admits it’s not perfect, and there’s still much development to do. Gritz is written in Perl, uses Gtk2 for its GUI, and comes with instructions for running on Linux, OS X, and Windows. It’s released under the GPL, so you can clone the Github repo and start playing around with accelerated reading.

Searching For Makers In Washington DC

March 3, 2014 by 25 Comments

makeDC

Despite there being an inordinate amount of techies and tech companies in the Washington, DC/Northern Virginia area, there aren’t really that many hacker/makerspaces, or really anywhere else for tinkering, building, and generally futzing around with a soldering iron. [Zach] thought it was time for a change and is now organizing the second Make DC an informal get together to show off your latest projects and builds. Here’s the best part: Hackaday is coming, and we’re bringing some sweet swag.

Right now [Matt] has two talks lined up focused on bringing APIs into the physical world. There’s space for plenty more speakers, so if you have something to show off be sure to sign up.

The event is scheduled for Wednesday, March 19, 6:30 PM, half a block away from the Dupont Circle Metro station. Be there. You’ll get a sticker at least.

Hacking Dell Laptop Charger Identification

March 3, 2014 by 99 Comments

If you’ve ever had a laptop charger die, you know that they can be expensive to replace. Many laptops require you to use a ‘genuine’ charger, and refuse to boot when a knock off model is used. Genuine chargers communicate with the laptop and give information such as the power, current, and voltage ratings of the device. While this is a good safety measure, ensuring that a compatible charger is used, it also allows the manufacturers to increase the price of their chargers.

[Xuan] built a device that spoofs this identification information for Dell chargers. In the four-part series (1, 2, 3, 4), the details of reverse engineering the communications and building the spoofer are covered.

Dell uses the 1-Wire protocol to communicate with the charger, and [Xuan] sniffed the communication using a MSP430. After reading the data and verifying the CRC, it could be examined to find the fields that specify power, voltage, and current.

Next, a custom PCB was made with two Dell DC jacks and an MSP430. This passes power through the board, but uses the MSP430 to send fake data to the computer. The demo shows off a 90 W adapter pretending to run at 65 W. With this working, you could power the laptop from any supply that can meet the requirements for current and voltage.

USB Keyboard And Mouse For The PS4

March 2, 2014 by 27 Comments

If you’d like to play BattleCallSpaceMarine on the Playstation 4 with a keyboard and mouse – and have an unfair advantage over everyone else playing on a console – you’d normally be out of luck. Sony implemented a fair bit of software to make sure only officially licensed controllers are able to talk to the console. It took a while, but [Frank Zhao] has figured out why keyboard and mouse doesn’t work on PS4, and created a device to enable these superior input devices.

Sony engineers decided – or were told – that the PS4 shouldn’t be able to connect to any old USB device. To that end, they made the console issue challenges to a DualShock controller to make sure the official controller is always connected over Bluetooth.

[Frank]’s device solves this problem by taking the USB output from a keyboard and mouse, doing the CRC calculations, and sending them out over Bluetooth. Because the PS4 constantly issues challenges and responses of the authentication procedure, a real DualShock controller needs to be connected to the device at all times. Still, if you want a keyboard and mouse on the PS4, this is the way to do it.

All the sources and layouts are up on [Frank]’s github where you’re free to create your own. This isn’t a finished product quite yet; [Frank] still needs to do a redesign of the circuit. Judging from the response of his earlier attempt at keyboards and mice on the PS4, though, this may be a successful product in the works.

The Stepper Driver Driver

March 2, 2014 by 16 Comments

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

The Stepstick and Pololu motor drivers are the heart of just about every Reprap electronics board, but they can go bad. The usual way of testing these things is to rig up a microcontroller on a breadboard, grab some cables, and wire something up. [Ken]’s Easy Stepper Motor Controller is a much simpler solution to the problem of testing these drivers and could, with a bit of practice, be constructed on a single-sided homebrew PCB.

The Easy Stepper Motor Controller is a very simple board with connections to a motor, a power supply, and headers for a single Pololu or Stepstick motor driver. Two buttons and a pot control the rotation of the motor with the help of an ATtiny10, and jumpers for up to 16x microstepping are right there on the board.

There’s a video after the break showing what this stepper motor driver driver can do. It’s not much, but if you’re just testing a driver, it’s all you need.
Continue reading “The Stepper Driver Driver” →

Hackaday Links: March 3, 2014

March 2, 2014 by 5 Comments

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If you’re playing along with Twitch Plays Pokemon, you might as well do it the right way: with the smallest Game Boy ever, the Game Boy Micro. [Anton] needed a battery replacement for this awesome, discontinued, and still inexplicably expensive console and found one in a rechargeable 9V Lithium battery. You get two replacement cells out of each 9V battery, and a bit more capacity as well.

Every garden needs garden lights, right? What does every garden light need? A robot, of course. These quadruped “Toro-bots” react to passersby by brightening the light or moving out of the way. It’s supposed to be for a garden that takes care of itself, but we’re struggling to figure out how lights will do that.

Flexiable 3D prints are all the rage and now resin 3D printers are joining the fray. The folks at Maker Juice have introduced SubFlex, a flexible UV-curing resin. The usual resins, while very strong, are rock solid. The new SubFlex flexible resins are very bendable in thin sections and in thicker pieces something like hard rubber. We’re thinking custom tank treads.

Remember this post where car thieves were using a mysterious black box to unlock cars? Looks like those black boxes have moved from LA to Chicago, and there’s still no idea how they work.

Have a Google Glass? Can you get us on the list? [Noé] and [Pedro] made a 3D printed Google Glass adapter for those of us with four eyes.

Making OLEDs In The Kitchen Sink

March 2, 2014 by 27 Comments

When [Ian] first set out to create a homebrew OLED, he found chemical suppliers that wouldn’t take his money, manufacturers that wouldn’t talk to him, and researchers that would actively discourage him. Luckily for us, he powered through all these obstructions and created his own organic LED.

Since at least one conductor in an OLED must be transparent, [Ian] settled on ITO – indium tin oxide – for the anode. This clear coating is deposited on glass, allowing it to conduct electricity and you can buy it through a few interesting suppliers. For the cathode, [Ian] is using a gallium-indium-tin eutectic, an alloy with a very low melting point that allowed him to deposit a small puddle in his OLED stack.

With the anode and cathode taken care of, the only thing left was the actual LED. For this, [Ian] had some success with MEH-PPV, a polymer that is capable of electroluminescence. On top of this is a film of PEDOT:PPS, another polymer that serves to block electrons.

The resulting yellow-green blob of an OLED actually works, and is at least as good as some of the other homebrew semiconductor illumination projects we’ve seen around here. This is only a start, though, and [Ian] plans on putting a whole lot more time into his explorations of organic LEDs.