Hacking And Philosophy: Hacker Crackdown Part I

November 11, 2013 by 6 Comments

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This week’s installment of Hacking & Philosophy hits the books with [Bruce Sterling’s] Hacker Crackdown. If you’re joining us for the first time, you should check out last week’s conversation over The Mentor’s “Hacker Manifesto.” Don’t stop with the article, though, or you’ll miss out on the best part!

The contributions from our community are phenomenal, and it’s worth the effort to work through the comments. There are even a few replies from [The Mentor] himself.

Unfortunately, I can’t feature all of the excellent responses for lack of room, but I will recommend a handful that I feel are uniquely important after the break. Onward for more!

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DIY CNC Rotary 4th Axis

November 11, 2013 by 31 Comments

Here’s a great CNC hack that adds a ton of functionality, a DIY rotary 4th axis!

[Jim] had started this project over a year ago when he originally ordered the gearhead off eBay, but like many good intentions, sometimes projects just get pushed to the back burner until necessity forces action. That necessity was entering our Trinket Contest, and he decided to finish it off just so he could put a HaD logo on a piece of PVC for us!

Unfortunately it took him a bit too long, and he only finished it last week — but luckily he had a fallback plan, and submitted his CNC Etch a Sketch project instead, which won him a Trinket anyway!

The 4th axis uses a 276oz-in stepper motor which is directly coupled to a Harmonic Drive Systems 11:1 planetary gearhead. It’s extremely accurate, has minimal backlash, and by using a 10 microstepping Gecko stepper drive, [Jim] is getting about 61 steps per degree of rotation. Not bad for a home-made setup!

Check out his blog for a great write up on the project, and stick around after the break to see the 4th axis in action.

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Robotic Sloth Haunts Your Dreams

November 11, 2013 by 52 Comments

robotic sloth

Have you ever seen a wet sloth? They’re pretty scary. If that’s not bad enough, how do you feel about a robotic one?

Named the X-4 “Sloth”, this is one of [222Doc’s] hardest projects to date — a highly experimental quadra-ped that can climb up and across ladders. It makes use of a Lego Mindstorms NXT controller, 8 servo motors for the joints, 4 Power Function Motors for the hands, and a whole lot of Lego. Due to the number of motors, he also had to multiplex the Power Function servos to make it all work!

Sure, it’s Lego, but it was far from an easy project, as [222Doc] estimates he spent well over a hundred hours on it, and it still isn’t complete. He says he’ll never say to himself “this will be easy…” ever again.

Stick around after the break to see it scale this ladder — we wish they sped up the video though, it appears the movement speed is modeled after a real sloth…

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Bluetooth Audio Adapter Hacked To Switch Off Amplified Speakers

November 11, 2013 by 21 Comments

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This Bluetooth Audio Adapter is meant to connect a Bluetooth audio source (like a smartphone or tablet) to a speaker system with a plain old line-in connection. It has the ability to automatically connection when the Bluetooth device comes into range. Sounds convenient until [Andreas Pösch] points out that he still has to switch the speakers on and off manually. This hack automates the entire thing using a bit of additional hardware.

If you look closely you’ll see that the black cables have barrel jacks. This is a power pass-through rig that he whipped up. The protoboard includes a 7805 linear regulator which feeds power to the green circuit board in lieu of it’s original power adapter. A MOSFET switches outbound power headed for the speakers. All of it fits inside of the original enclosure, and he only had to add one port for the AC adapter.

This would be absolutely perfect for an antique radio retrofit. One of these adapters can be had for just over thirty bucks!

Self-Balancing Robot Keeps Getting More Features

November 10, 2013 by 18 Comments

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It’s a lot of fun to see a self-balancing robot project. Rarely do they go much further than being able to keep themselves upright while being piloted remotely and annoyingly shoved by their creator as proof of their ability to remain standing on two wheels. This little anthropomorphic guy is the exception to the rule. It’s the product of [Samuel Matos] who says he didn’t have a specific purpose in mind, but just kept adding features as they came to him.

Starting with a couple of carbon fiber plates [Samuel] cut the design by hand, using stand-offs to mount the NEMA 17 stepper motors and to connect the two halves of the chassis. It looks like he used some leftover material to make a nice little stand which is nice when coding at his desk as seen above. There’s also a carbon-fiber mask which makes up the face atop an articulated neck. It has two ultrasonic range-finding sensors as eyes, and the Raspberry Pi camera module as the nose. The RPi board powerful enough to run OpenCV which has kept [Samuel] busy. He set up a course in his living room containing tags directing where the little guy should go. It can also follow a tennis ball as it rolls around the room. What we found most impressive in the clip after the break is its ability to locate the next tag after making a turn.

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RFID Door Access Robot

November 10, 2013 by 6 Comments

RFID Door orbot

We love hackerspaces. Some of the most innovative solutions come from them thanks to having like-minded people all hanging out in the same place. Just take a look at this awesome RFID door system from the Lansing Makers Network that doesn’t require any modification of the door.

The majority of the mechanism was previously a model draw bridge that the space purchased from a surplus store — it just needed a bit of hacking. Almost all members of the space had some part in the project, whenever the build hit a snag, another member always had the right solution. It works by using a windshield motor that tightens a seatbelt around the push-bar latch of the door — the beauty of the system is it is completely non-damaging to the door, and the door works exactly the same as before. The whole system is controlled by RFID tags, which the members have as keys to the space.

It’s an awesome project and [Brian] has written a really great write-up on it, which also happens to segue nicely into the topic of hackerspaces. He describes hackerspaces as

the Wikipedia of real life, and everything else here [tools, equipment, resources] is just the lure that pulls us all together.

Stick around after the break to see the mechanism in action!

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Hackaday Links: November 10, 2013

November 10, 2013 by 18 Comments

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[Henryk Gasperowicz], the wizard of electrons who makes LEDs glow for no apparent reason, has put up another one of his troll physics circuits. We have no idea how he does it (he does say he’s using wireless energy transmission) so a few solution videos would be cool, [Henryk].

Altoids tins make great electronic enclosures, but how about designing your PCBs to fit mint and gum containers? Here’s a Trident USBASP, a tiny Tic Tac ISP thingy, and a Mentos USB to JTAG interface.

By the end of this week, the PS4 will be out, along with the new PS4 camera. It’s a great camera – 1280×800 at 60Hz – but unless someone develops a driver for it, it shall forever remain tethered to a PS4. Luckily, there’s a project to develop a PS4 camera driver, so if you have some USB 3.0 experience, give it a shot.

Multimeter teardowns? [David]’s got multimeter teardowns. It’s an HP 3455A, a huge bench top unit from the 80s. This is, or was, pro equipment and strange esoteric components definitely make a showing. ±0.01% resistors? Yep. Part two has some pics of the guts and a whole ton of logic.

The US Air Force Academy just moved their embedded systems course over to the MSP430. Course director [Capt Todd Branchflower] just put all the course materials online, with the notes, datasheets, and labs available on Github.