Knock-Off AirPods Merged Into Bluetooth Receiver

August 31, 2018 by Tom Nardi 8 Comments

Whether or not you personally like the concept of the AirPod Bluetooth headphones is irrelevant, as an Apple product one thing is certain: all the cool kids want them. That also means that plenty of overseas manufacturers are pumping out janky clones for a fraction of the price for those who are more about the Apple look than the Apple price tag. Are they any good? No, of course not. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do something interesting with them.

[Igor Kromin] took apart a pair of fake AirPods and was predictably underwhelmed. So much so that he didn’t even bother putting the things back together. Instead, he took the two poor Bluetooth audio receivers and combined them into one slightly less poor Bluetooth audio receiver. It probably doesn’t meet the classical definition of a “good” use of time and/or money, but at least he got some entertainment out of a product that was otherwise destined for the trash.

As you might imagine, the left and right “AirPod” each has its own battery, Bluetooth receiver, and speaker. It has to, as they have no physical connection to each other. That also means that each receiver is only playing one channel, making them useless individually. What [Igor] realized was that he could put together a little PCB that combines the two audio channels back into a regular stereo 3.5 mm audio jack.

While he was at it, he also wired the individual buttons on each headphone to a center button on the PCB which would allow him to physically synchronize them. Even still, [Igor] mentions that occasionally they don’t come on at the same time. But what do you expect for something that’s nearly a 20th the price of the original?

The last time we saw a hack related to the Apple AirPod, it was when somebody threw them out the window, so one might presume most hackers prefer their iDevice tethered.

The Largest Aircraft Ever Built Will Soon Launch Rockets To Space

August 29, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 57 Comments

Deep in the mojave, the largest aircraft ever made will soon be making test flights. This is the Stratolaunch, and it’s measured the largest to ever fly based on wingspan. The Stratolaunch was constructed out of two 747s, and is designed for a single purpose: as a mobile launch platform for orbital rockets.

There are a couple of ways to measure the size of an aircraft. The AN-225 Mriya has the highest payload capacity, but only one of those was ever built (though that might change soon). The Spruce Goose was formerly the largest aircraft by wingspan, but it only flew once, and only in ground effect. The Stratolaunch is in another category entirely. This is an aircraft that contains some of the largest composite structures on the planet. Not only can you park a school bus between the fuselages of the Stratolaunch, you can strap that school bus to the plane and carry it up to 30,000 feet.

But why build this astonishing aircraft? The reasons go back more than a decade, and the end result is a spaceplane.

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Air Conditioner Remote Reverse Engineered Despite Esoteric Protocol

August 25, 2018 by Jenny List 23 Comments

Infra-red remote control is something of a Done Deal when it comes to hardware hacking, it has been comprehensively reverse engineered, and there exist libraries and software packages to seamlessly take care of all its quirks. Just occasionally though, along comes an IR remote whose protocol doesn’t follow that well-worn path

[William Dudley] found himself in this position with an air-conditioning unit remote control. He found it sent a stream of data with all settings of the machine rather than the single command codes you might expect from a familiar TV remote. The solution was to reverse engineer and reimplement the IR codes.

His reverse engineering relied on an Arduino and IR receiver which he used to sniff the packets coming out of the remote. Eventually he was able to recognise some of the functions from the remote, and create his own protocol that can recreate most of the remote’s functions. This was pushed over to a Raspberry Pi Zero which uses an IR LED to command the air conditioner, joining the ranks of his growing home automation setup.

The write-up makes for a fascinating primer on analysis of obscure IR protocols, and is well worth a read for anybody with an interest in the topic. Meanwhile if you want more IR reverse engineering stories, try this tale of a bathroom scale.

Marines 3D-Print Part To Repair Multi-Million Dollar Fighter

August 23, 2018 by Dan Maloney 71 Comments

The good news: all you need to complete the repair you’re working on is one small part. The bad news: it’s only available in a larger, expensive assembly. The worst news: shipping time is forever. We’ve all been there, and it’s a hard pill to swallow for the DIYer. Seems like a good use case for 3D-printing.

Now imagine you’re a US Marine, and instead of fixing a dishwasher or TV remote, you’ve got a $123 million F-35 fighter in the shop. The part you need is a small plastic bumper for the landing gear door, but it’s only available as part of the whole door assembly, which costs $70,000 taxpayer dollars. And lead time to get it shipped from the States is measured in weeks. Can you even entertain the notion of 3D-printing a replacement? It turns out you can, and it looks like there will be more additive manufacturing to come in Corps repair depots around the world.

Details of the printed part are not forthcoming for obvious reasons, but the part was modeled in Blender and printed in PETG on what appears to be a consumer-grade printer. The part was installed after a quick approval for airworthiness, and the grounded fighter was back in service within days. It’s encouraging that this is not a one-off; other parts have been approved for flight use by the Marines, and a whole catalog of printable parts for ground vehicles is available too. This is the reality that the 3D printing fiction of Lost in Space builds upon.

And who knows? Maybe there are field-printable parts in the disposable drones the Corps is using for standoff resupply missions.

[via 3D-Printing Industry]

Toil In Style With Salvaged Porsche Office Chairs

August 22, 2018 by Tom Nardi 22 Comments

It seems as if everyone has finally decided to stop pretending that standing in front of a desk for 8+ hours was something anyone actually wanted to do, and once again embrace the classic adjustable office chair. But whether you’re writing code in a cubicle or are one of those people who apparently makes a living by having people watch them play video games, one thing is certain: your chair needs to be cool enough to make up for the years shaved off your life by sitting in it all day.

Case in point, these chairs that were made out of seats salvaged from a Porsche 996 by [Colby Newman]. You might never be able to afford the car they came out of on your salary, but at least you can pretend you’re power shifting into fifth while doing your TPS reports.

The first step, and arguably the most important one, was getting the seats from a Porsche. [Colby] wisely cautions the reader that they should avoid seats with air bags, as the last thing you want is your chair to explode while you’re streaming Fortnite. This is especially true if you are looking to salvage the seats yourself from the junkyard, as special care needs to be taken on how you remove them from the vehicle.

Assuming you got the seat without blowing yourself up, the next step is to mate it to the adjustable base. This part is going to depend on the make and model of vehicle you got the seats out of, but in this case it was fairly easy to use some flat steel bars to adapt the tubular frame of the Porsche’s seat to the base from the donor office chair. [Colby] put everything together with nuts and bolts, but this could potentially be an excuse to drag out the welder.

We’ve previously seen the driver seat salvaged from a wrecked car for use in a simulator, and a standard office chair upgraded with force feedback. We wonder who will be the first to combine all these ideas into one ultimate office racing chair…

JB Weld – Strong Enough To Repair A Connecting Rod?

August 18, 2018 by Lewin Day 26 Comments

JB Weld is a particularly popular brand of epoxy, and features in many legends. “My cousin’s neighbour’s dog trainer’s grandpa once repaired a Sherman tank barrel in France with that stuff!” they’ll say. Thankfully, with the advent of new media, there’s a wealth of content out there of people putting these wild and interesting claims to the test. As the venerable Grace Hopper once said, “One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions“, so it’s great to see these experiments happening.

[Project Farm] is one of them, this time attempting to repair a connecting rod in a small engine with the sticky stuff. The connecting rod under test is from a typical Briggs and Stratton engine, and is very much the worse for wear, having broken into approximately 5 pieces. First, the pieces are cleaned with a solvent and allowed to properly dry, before they’re reassembled piece by piece with lashings of two-part epoxy. Proper technique is used, with the epoxy being given plenty of time to cure.

The result? Sadly, poor — the rod disintegrates in mere seconds, completely unable to hold together despite the JB Weld’s best efforts. It’s a fantastic material, yes – but it can’t do everything. Perhaps it could be used to cast a cylinder head instead?

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Rover V2 Handles Stairs As Easily As The Outdoors

August 15, 2018 by Donald Papp 10 Comments

Rover V2 is an open-source, 3D-printable robotic rover platform that has seen a lot of evolution and development from its creator, [tlalexander]. There are a number of interesting things about Rover V2’s design, such as the way the wheel hubs themselves contain motors and custom planetary gearboxes. This system is compact and keeps weight down low to the ground, which helps keep a rover stable. The platform is all wheel drive, and moving parts like the suspension are kept high up, as far away from the ground as possible. Software is a custom Python stack running on a Raspberry Pi that provides basic control.

The Rover V2 is a full mechanical redesign of the previous version, which caught our attention with its intricate planetary gearing inside the wheel hubs. [tlalexander]’s goal is to create a robust, reliable rover platform for development that, thanks to its design, can be mostly 3D printed and requires a minimum of specialized hardware.