[Bunnie]’s Open Source Laptop Is Ready For Production

January 12, 2014 by 60 Comments

Just over a year ago, [Bunnie Huang] announced he was working on a very ambitious personal project: a completely open source laptop. Now, with help from his hardware hacker compatriot [xobs], this laptop named Novena is nearly complete.

Before setting out on this project, [Bunnie] had some must-have requirements for the design. Most importantly, all the components should be free of NDA encumbrances. This isn’t an easy task; an SoC vendor with documentation sitting around on their servers is rare as hen’s teeth, and Freescale was the only vendor that fit the bill. Secondly, the entire laptop should be entirely open source. [Bunnie] wasn’t able to find an open source GPU, so using hardware video decoding on his laptop requires a binary blob. Software decoding works just fine, though.

Furthermore, this laptop is designed for both security and hardware hacking. Two Ethernet ports (one 1Gbit and the second 100Mbit), a USB OTG port, and a Spartan 6 FPGA put this laptop in a class all by itself. The main board includes 8x analog inputs, 8x digital I/O ports, 8 PWM pins, and a Raspberry Pi-compatible header for some real hardware hackery.

As for the specs of the laptop, they’re respectable for a high-end tablet.  The CPU is a Freescale iMX6, a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 running at 1.2 GHz. The RAM is upgradeable to 4GB, an internal SATA-II port will easily accommodate a huge SSD, the ability to use an LCD adapter board to run the 13-inch 2560×1700 LED panel [Bunnie] is using. The power system is intended to be modular, with batteries provided by run-of-the-mill RC Lipo packs. For complete specs, check out the wiki.

Despite the high price and relatively low performance (compared to i7 laptop) of [Bunnie]’s laptop, there has been a lot of interest in spinning a few thousand boards and sending them off to be pick and placed. There’s going to be a crowd funding campaign for Novena sometime in late February or March based around an “all-in-one PC with a battery” form factor. There’s no exact figure on what the price of a Novena will be, but it goes without saying a lot will be sold regardless.

If you want the latest updates, the best place to go would be the official Novena twitter: @novenakosagi

Bicycle Powered Sander

January 12, 2014 by 23 Comments

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[Andy] does a lot of framing and needed a way to sand down pieces at proper angles. He goes by the moniker [Organikmechanic] on YouTube, and as such is trying to rely less and less on electricity — so he’s created this hand-powered sander using components from a bicycle.

His first iteration just used the spindle off of a bicycle wheel as the main axle, but he quickly found it wasn’t rigid enough for the sanding disk. Instead he decided to make use of the entire crankshaft assembly off of an old bicycle. He cut the frame down to size, removed one of the pedals, and shortened the other one to a more useful hand cranking length. The main gear of the bicycle provides a large and sturdy mounting surface for his home-made sanding disk which consists of a large piece of rounded chipboard.

It’s a pretty clever use of recycled parts — but what do you think? Are you environmentally inclined enough to give up your power tools? A full video explanation of the project is after the break.

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3kW Electric Scooter

January 11, 2014 by 23 Comments

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[Exco] had been playing around with the idea of building an electric scooter for a while now, and over the holidays he decided to just do it.

Similar to the motorized long board we shared last month, this scooter makes use of an RC hobby motor — in this case, a 63mm 3kW brushless outrunner (for a RC plane), coupled with a 100A ESC. He bought the scooter (“kick board”) off eBay for cheap, and spent a few days in the machine shop modifying it. It has better wheels now, and custom milled aluminum brackets for mounting the motor. The drive system uses a belt and pulley with a sliding rail to provide tensioning.

To power it, he bought a bunch of 2.5Ah, 18V LiPo packs on eBay originally from a Makita drill set. He then sorted out the cells, removed the dead ones, and soldered everything together for his own Frankenstein pack to balance them. The final configuration features twenty-one 18650 lithium cells. He even shrink wrapped it, which makes it look relatively professional!

It’s controlled by a push-button potentiometer hooked up to the ESC. Theoretical top speed is about 27km/h @ 1285RPM, and they managed to get it up to 25km/h in a real test. There’s more info over at the Endless Sphere forum, and we’ve got two test videos for you after the break.

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Custom Workbench Computer

January 11, 2014 by 28 Comments

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[Michael Solar] recently bought a house with his wife, and now with his first garage he’s started building his workshop man-cave. First order of business was a workbench — second, a computer built into it.

He started with an old Dell tower, but found it took too much space underneath the work bench — so he set to downsizing it. Using pine boards he created a stepped wooden enclosure that utilizes the space under the front lip of the work bench. He’s mounted the motherboard using standoff pins and created cutouts in the back for the power supply and outputs. It features three intake and two exhaust fans — currently without filters, although he plans on adding them soon, otherwise he’ll end up with a sawdust filled computer!

It’s a rather simple project, but it gives a great introduction into making your own custom computer case, and provides some handy lessons learned near the end. It might not be a flashy case mod like this heavy metal computer desk, but it is certainly functional and robust!

Giving A Roomba Internet Connectivity

January 11, 2014 by 33 Comments

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What was supposed to be a fun 1-day build ended up turning into a 3-day journey full of close calls when [Arthur] decided to give his Roomba Internet Connectivity.

The Roomba, whom [Arthur] calls Colin, has been in service for a couple of years, and once he got his hands on the Electric Imp, he had just the project in mind.  With embedded Wi-Fi and a 32-bit processor all in an SD Card form factor, the Electric Imp makes it very easy to add the “Internet of Things” to just about anything you can think of.  [Arthur] wanted to gain control of the Roomba, so he tapped into the SCI (Serial Command Interface).  Now he can read out the Roomba’s on-board sensor data including battery voltage, current draw, and even the temperature.

These are the kind of walk-through’s we love to see, because he did it in real-time, so you get to experience all of the “surprises” along the way.  For example, he removed an external charging port to make room for the added components, but that ended up disabling the dock charger.  Then he discovered that when the Roomba was charging, the input voltage to the Electric Imp breakout board was too high, so he had to introduce an intermediate voltage regulator.  But perhaps the biggest bump in the road was when he accidentally brushed the Electric Imp breakout board along the Roomba’s control board while power was on.  Luckily the damage was isolated to just one smoked — a simple FET.  The project turned out great, and (today) Colin’s data is actually visible through a public Xively feed.

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USB Charger Solves Mongolia Electricity Problem

January 11, 2014 by 47 Comments

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People living in remote areas of Mongolia do not have access to electricity or gas, and rely on traditional wood stoves for their homes, which are used almost all the time. Many use solar panels to generate some electricity for small tools, but unfortunately there are often times when it is cloudy for days on end. [Chingun Has] saw this problem and created his own clever solution — a small thermoelectric USB charger.

[Chingun’s] device features an array of peltier plates inside of an aluminum shroud. The device is designed to sit on top of a stove, or to be strapped onto a stove pipe. When there is a large enough temperature differential between the two sides of a peltier plate, a charge is induced. He’s using a small fan to help cool the other side of the peltier plates. A small control box houses a voltage regulator circuit that provides 5V over USB.

The cool thing about this project is that it is partially the result of [Tony Kim], an MIT professor who traveled to Mongolia to teach students an edX circuits course about a year ago. [Chingun] was one of his students, and this is a great example of a solution to a real-world problem.

An excellent video after the break gives a complete explanation of the project, as detailed by [Chingun] himself — it’s well worth the watch!

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I Am The Midnight Message Board What Messages At Midnight

January 11, 2014 by 15 Comments

Photoluminescent stars on your bedroom wall or ceiling are pretty cool, though the stationary shapes can become boring. [Adi] felt this way, too. While doodling with a bright white light on some glow in the dark vinyl, it occurred to him that this could make for an interesting display. He set about making GLO, the midnight message board and RSS display.

[Adi]’s light writer uses 12 UV LEDs on a linear axis powered by a stepper motor to write RSS headlines, Twitter trends, or custom text on his wall. He finds the slow fade of the text very soothing to fall asleep by, and it’s easy to see why. The LED array imprints a section of a character consisting of a 6×5 bit pattern. The 12 LEDs are split into two groups, so it can write two lines at 45-50 characters each. [Adi] designed his own pixel font for this project, and advises that only upper case letter forms be used.

[Adi]’s write-up is quite admirable and comprehensive. In the circuit build section, he advises that the LEDs must be very close to the vinyl for optimum results, but that they should protrude farther than the shift registers so the chips don’t rub the vinyl. Of course you could opt for more intense light sources, like laser. See it in action after the break.

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