Building The Cheapest MIDI Home Studio From 1988

July 19, 2023 by 7 Comments

These days, there is a plethora of cheap hardware and software which you can use to make digital music. Back in the 1980s, though, this was still a nascent field, with new gear changing the game for musicians. In his latest video, [cTrix] puts together a guide to building a budget MIDI home studio like it’s 1988.

The original Atari ST is the star of the show, which sold for around £300 back then. Unlike most contemporary computers, it came with MIDI ports built-in, and it quickly became a popular platform for music sequencing and controlling external synth hardware. It was often spotted in posh studios being used by big-time musicians, but [cTrix] wanted to look at how it was used by more humble users.

While the Atari ST could output some passable chiptunes, it was most powerful when paired with off-board gear. Industry magazines would readily talk up “DIY” setups worth thousands, but [cTrix] aimed for a budget in the low hundreds. In 1988, that might get you something like the 16-channel Yamaha PSS-580, which rocked full MIDI support and a ton of sounds and drumkits built in. It ran an OPL soundchip, and could play multiple instruments at once under MIDI control from software like Dr. T’s MIDI Recording Studio.

Of course, if you’ve ever played a keyboard like the PSS-580, you’ll have noted that the sound output can be more than a little chintzy. A cheap way to level up was to get yourself something like the Roland MT-32, which rocked a far higher-quality sound module. Everything from slap bass to solid electric pianos could be blasted out from the Roland, which also included a decent reverb unit, too. [cTrix] also dives into other budget heroes, like the rich and expansive Kawai K1 and the Yamaha EMT-10.

If you want to make music like it’s 1988 and you’re hunting for your first gold record, you’ll learn a lot here. We can’t wait for Part 2, that explores the next level of sophistication in this era. His previous lessons on how to make 90s dance bangers on the Amiga are a treat, too.

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Hackaday Prize 2023: Meet The Assistive Tech Finalists

July 19, 2023 by 8 Comments

If you’re still toiling away at your entry for the Gearing Up Challenge of the 2023 Hackaday Prize, don’t panic! No, you haven’t lost track of time — due to some technical difficulties we had to delay the final judging for the Assistive Tech Challenge that ended May 30th.

Today we’re pleased to announce that all the votes are in, and we’re ready to unveil the ten projects that our panel of judges felt best captured the spirit of this very important challenge. Each of these projects will take home $500 and move on to the final round of judging. There are few more noble pursuits than using your talents to help improve the lives of others, so although we could only pick ten finalists, we’d like to say a special thanks to everyone who entered this round.

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Shake, Rattle, Roll, With Your Own Seismograph

July 19, 2023 by 5 Comments

We always love to see projects where you can build your own lab equipment so [CompactDIY’s] homemade seismograph caught our eye. The design uses an Arduino with an accelerometer and builds on one of their earlier projects. You can see a video of the device below.

The principle is simple. A hobby servo controls a pen and a stepper motor rolls paper, creating a makeshift strip recorder. Its software uses the Visuino system, which is a flowchart-like system, but it outputs Arduino code. Honestly, we would probably have just plotted the data on a PC, but there’s a certain charm to the strip recorder and the idea would work for other types of data recording projects, too. We thought if you rearranged the stepper motor and cut a paper disk out, you could also have a circular chart recorder easily, which wouldn’t need to friction transport the paper. A clock motor would make it even less dependent on software, too.

If this project interests you, try a Raspberry shake, which isn’t as delicious as it sounds. Or, keep an eye on the entire globe, if you prefer.

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Smart Assistants Need To Get Smarter

July 19, 2023 by 81 Comments

Science fiction has regularly portrayed smart computer assistants in a fanciful way. HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey and J.A.R.V.I.S. from the contemporary Iron Man films are both great examples. They’re erudite, wise, and capable of doing just about any reasonable task that is asked of them, short of opening the pod bay doors.

Cut back to reality, and you’ll only be disappointed at how useless most voice assistants are. It’s been twelve long years since Siri burst onto the scene, with Alexa and Google Assistant following years later. Despite years on the market, their capabilities remain limited and uninspiring. It’s time for voice assistants to level up.

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Lighting Up With Chemistry, 1823-Style

July 19, 2023 by 9 Comments

With our mass-produced butane lighters and matches made in the billions, fire is never more than a flick of the finger away these days. But starting a fire 200 years ago? That’s a different story.

One method we’d never heard of was Döbereiner’s lamp, an 1823 invention by German chemist Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner. At first glance, the device seems a little sketchy, what with a tank of sulfuric acid and a piece of zinc to create a stream of hydrogen gas ignited by a platinum catalyst. But as [Marb’s Lab] shows with the recreation in the video below, while it’s not exactly as pocket-friendly as a Zippo, the device actually has some inherent safety features.

[Marb]’s version is built mainly from laboratory glassware, with a beaker of dilute sulfuric acid — “Add acid to water, like you ought-er!” — bathing a chunk of zinc on a fixed support. An inverted glass funnel acts as a gas collector, which feeds the hydrogen gas to a nozzle through a pinch valve. The hydrogen gas never mixes with oxygen — that would be bad — and the production of gas stops once the gas displaces the sulfuric acid below the level of the zinc pellet. It’s a clever self-limiting feature that probably contributed to the commercial success of the invention back in the day.

To produce a flame, Döbereiner originally used a platinum sponge, which catalyzed the reaction between hydrogen and oxygen in the air; the heat produced by the reaction was enough to ignite the mixture and produce an open flame. [Marb] couldn’t come up with enough of the precious metal, so instead harvested the catalyst from a lighter fluid-fueled hand warmer. The catalyst wasn’t quite enough to generate an open flame, but it glowed pretty brightly, and would be more than enough to start a fire.

Hats off to [Marb] for the great lesson is chemical ingenuity and history. We’ve seen similar old-school catalytic lighters before, too.

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Digital Microscope With An On-Screen Multimeter

July 19, 2023 by 18 Comments

Some things go together, like chocolate and peanut butter. Others are more odd pairings, like bananas and bacon. We aren’t sure which category to put [IMSAI Guy]’s latest find in. He has a microscope with a built-in digital multimeter. You can see the video of the device in operation below.

The microscope itself is one of those unremarkable ten-inch LCD screens with some lights and a USB camera. But it also has jacks for test probes, and the display shows up in the corner of the screen. It is a normal enough digital meter except for the fact that its display is on the screen.

If you had to document test results, this might be just the ticket. If you are probing tiny little SMD parts under the scope, you may find it useful, too, so you don’t have to look away from what you are working on when you want to take a measurement. Although for that, you could probably just have a normal display in the bezel, and it would be just as useful.

At about $180 USD, it’s not exactly an impulse buy. We wonder if we’ll someday see an oscilloscope microscope. That might be something. These cheap microscopes are often just webcams with additional optics. You can do the same thing with your phone. If you don’t need the microscope, but you like the idea, can we interest you in a heads-up meter?

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Reverse Engineering Reveals Hidden API In Abandonware Trail Camera

July 18, 2023 by 12 Comments

It sometimes seems like there are two kinds of cheap hardware devices: those dependent on proprietary software that is no longer available and those that are equally dependent but haven’t been abandoned just quite yet. But rest assured, abandonment is always on the table, and until then, you get to deal with poorly written apps that often suffer from a crippling lack of essential functionality.

Such was the case for the wireless game camera that [Chris Jones] scored on the cheap, but rather than suffering with the original software, he decided to reverse engineer the camera and turn it into something more useful. The eBay description was promising — Bluetooth LE! WiFi! — but the reality proved less so. To save the batteries, WiFi is off by default and can only be turned on by connecting to the camera via BLE using a janky and crash-prone Android app.

[Chris]’ first step in reverse engineering the camera was to snoop into the BLE by capturing the Bluetooth packets to a file and running them through Wireshark. This revealed a write command with the text “BT_KEY_ON” — very promising. After verifying that this command turned on the camera’s access point, [Chris] got to work capturing WiFi packets using PCAPDroid and analyzing the results, again with Wireshark. Using every function available in the OEM app eventually revealed the full API on the camera, which gives file system control, access to individual images, and even putting the camera into live video mode.

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