Building A Pi-Powered LED Chess Board

November 25, 2024 by 12 Comments

If you live near Central Park or some other local chess hub, you’re likely never short of opponents for a good game. If you find yourself looking for a computer opponent, or you just prefer playing online, you might like this LED chessboard from [DIY Machines] instead.

At heart, it’s basically a regular chessboard with addressable LEDs of the WS2812B variety under each square. The lights are under the command of an Arduino Nano, which is also tasked with reading button inputs from the board’s side panel. The Nano is interfaced with a Raspberry Pi, which is the true brains of the operation. The Pi handles chess tasks—checking the validity of moves, acting as a computer opponent, and connecting online for games against other humans if so desired. Everything is wrapped up with 3D printed parts, making this an easy project to build for the average DIY maker.

The video tutorial does a great job of covering the design. It’s a relatively simple project at heart, but the presentation is great and it looks awfully fun to play with. We’ve featured some other great builds from [DIY Machines] before, too. Video after the break. Continue reading “Building A Pi-Powered LED Chess Board” →

Bakelite To The Future – A 1950s Bluetooth Headset

October 31, 2024 by 16 Comments

A decade ago, [Jouke Waleson] bought a Dutch ‘model 1950’ PTT (The Dutch Postal Service) rotary-dial telephone of presumably 1950s vintage manufactured by a company called Standard Electric, and decided it would be neat to hack it to function as a Bluetooth hands-free device. Looking at the reverse, however, it is stamped “10.65” on the bottom, so maybe it was made as recently as 1965, but whatever, it’s still pretty old-tech now.

A well-specified transformer?

The plan was to utilise ESP32 hardware with the Espressif HFP stack to do all the Bluetooth heavy lifting. [Jouke] did find out the hard way that this is not a commonly-trodden path in hackerland, and working examples and documentation were sparse, but the fine folks from Espressif were on hand via GitHub to give him the help he needed. After ripping into the unit, it was surprisingly stuffed inside there. Obviously, all the switching, even the indication, was purely electromechanical, which should be no surprise. [Jouke] identified all the necessary major components, adding wires and interfacing components as required, but was a bit stumped at the function of one funky-looking component that we reckon must be a multi-tap audio transformer, oddly finished in baby pink! After renovating some interesting cross-shaped mechanical indicators and wiring up some driving transistors, it was time to get on to the audio interface. Continue reading “Bakelite To The Future – A 1950s Bluetooth Headset” →

2024 Supercon: Third Round Of Super Speakers

October 21, 2024 by 3 Comments

The third and final round of the 2024 Supercon talks announcements brings us to the end, and the full schedule is now up on Hackaday.io.

With Supercon just a couple weeks away, we hope you have your tickets already! Stay tuned tomorrow for a badge reveal.

Continue reading “2024 Supercon: Third Round Of Super Speakers” →

A Phone? A Ham Radio? Relax! It’s Both!

October 15, 2024 by 23 Comments

A lot of hams like to carry a VHF radio. Of course, nearly everyone wants to carry a phone. Now, thanks to the kv4p HT, you don’t have to carry both. The open-source device connects to your Android smartphone and turns it into a radio transceiver. You can build it yourself for about $35. Check out the video below.

The device uses an ESP32 and only transmits one watt, but it has lots of features like APRS and scanning.

Continue reading “A Phone? A Ham Radio? Relax! It’s Both!” →

An Open Source Mirrorless Camera You’d Want To Use

October 5, 2024 by 18 Comments

Making a digital camera is a project that appears easy enough, but it’s one whose complexity increases depending on the level to which a designer is prepared to go. At the simplest a Raspberry Pi and camera module can be stuck in a 3D printed case, but in that case, the difficult work of getting the drivers and electronics sorted out has already been done for you.

At the other end of the scale there’s [Wenting Zhang]’s open source mirrorless digital camera project, in which the design and construction of a full-frame CCD digital camera has been taken back to first principles. To understand the scale of this task, this process employs large teams of engineers when a camera company does it, and while it’s taken a few years and the software isn’t perhaps as polished as your Sony or Canon, the fact it’s been done at all is extremely impressive.

Inside is a Kodak full-frame sensor behind the Sony E-mount lens, for which all the complex CCD timing and acquisition circuitry has been implemented. The brains of the show lie in a Xilinx Zynq ARM-and-FPGA in a stack of boards with a power board and the CCD board. The controls and battery are in a grip, and a large display is on the back of the unit.

We featured an earlier version of this project last year, and this version is a much better development with something like the ergonomics, control, and interface you would expect from a modern consumer camera. The screen update is still a little slow and there are doubtless many tweaks to come, but this really feels close to being a camera you’d want to try. There’s an assembly video which we’ve placed below the break, feast your eyes on it.

Continue reading “An Open Source Mirrorless Camera You’d Want To Use” →

Java Ring: One Wearable To Rule All Authentications

October 1, 2024 by 30 Comments

Today, you likely often authenticate or pay for things with a tap, either using a chip in your card, or with your phone, or maybe even with your watch or a Yubikey. Now, imagine doing all these things way back in 1998 with a single wearable device that you could shower or swim with. Sound crazy?

These types of transactions and authentications were more than possible then. In fact, the Java ring and its iButton brethren were poised to take over all kinds of informational handshakes, from unlocking doors and computers to paying for things, sharing medical records, making coffee according to preference, and much more. So, what happened?

Continue reading “Java Ring: One Wearable To Rule All Authentications” →

An Ode To The SAO

September 26, 2024 by 23 Comments

There are a lot of fantastic things about Hackaday Supercon, but for me personally, the highlight is always seeing the dizzying array of electronic bits and bobs that folks bring with them. If you’ve never had the chance to join us in Pasadena, it’s a bit like a hardware show-and-tell, where half the people you meet are eager to pull some homemade gadget out of their bag for an impromptu demonstration. But what’s really cool is that they’ve often made enough of said device that they can hand them out to anyone who’s interested. Put simply, it’s very easy to leave Supercon with a whole lot more stuff than when you came in with.

Most people would look at this as a benefit of attending, which of course it is. But in a way, the experience bummed me out for the first couple of years. Sure, I got to take home a literal sack of incredible hardware created by members of our community, and I’ve cherished each piece. But I never had anything to give them in return, and that didn’t quite sit right with me.

So last year I decided to be a bit more proactive and make my own Simple Add-On (SAO) in time for Supercon 2023. With a stack of these in my bag, I’d have a personalized piece of hardware to hand out that attendees could plug right into their badge and enjoy. From previous years I also knew there was something of an underground SAO market at Supercon, and that I’d find plenty of people who would be happy to swap one for their own add-ons for mine.

To say that designing, building, and distributing my first SAO was a rewarding experience would be something of an understatement. It made such an impression on me that it ended up helping to guide our brainstorming sessions for what would become the 2024 Supercon badge and the ongoing SAO Contest. Put simply, making an SAO and swapping it with other attendees adds an exciting new element to a hacker con, and you should absolutely do it.

So while you’ve still got time to get PCBs ordered, let’s take a look at some of the unique aspects of creating your own Simple Add-On.

Continue reading “An Ode To The SAO” →