Android Head Unit Gets Volume Knob Upgrade

January 17, 2025 by 21 Comments

Touch screen head units are pretty much the norm these days. Many compromise with annoying on-screen volume controls or tiny buttons. If you find yourself with such a unit, you  might like to hack in a real volume knob. [Daniel Ross] shows us how to do just that.

The build uses an ATMega328 as the heart of the operation, though [Daniel] notes an Arduino Uno or Mini would have done just fine. It’s set up with a 74HC14 hex Schmitt trigger, and a CD4066 quad bilateral switch on a custom PCB. As for the volume knob itself, it’s not a real analog pot, instead it’s using a rotary encoder with a center push button. The way it works is that the Arduino reads the encoder, and figures out whether you’re trying to turn the volume up or down based on the direction you’re turning it. It then sends commands to the CD4066 to switch resistors in and out of circuit with lines going to the stereo to emulate the action of volume buttons on the steering wheel.

[Daniel’s] guide explains how everything works in greater detail, and how you can calibrate your head unit to accept these signals while preserving the function of your actual steering wheel volume buttons. Then you just have to find a neat way to integrate the knob into your existing dashboard.

We don’t see as many car stereo hacks in this era when infotainment systems rule all, but we’ve seen some great stuff from older vehicles over the years. Video after the break.

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An homemade automated air freshener dispenser

GPS Enabled Pumpkin Spice Sprayer Knows When It’s PSL Season

November 29, 2024 by 9 Comments

Pumpkin spice, also known as allspice with better marketing, has found its way into a seemingly endless amount of products over the years. It goes beyond the obvious foodstuffs of pies and cakes; because there are plenty of candles, deodorants, and air fresheners ready to add a little more spice to your world. One such autumnal smell enthusiast, YouTube user [J-Knows], sought to automate the delivery mechanism with his 3D printed pumpkin spice aerosol sprayer.

The sprayer device uses an Arduino to rotate a small 3D printed arm that depresses the button on an air freshener cap. This design came as a result of multiple attempts to create a clip that would securely attach to a standard canister. When problems arose with the clip slipping out of place after the motor rotated, a pinch of sticky tack ended up being just the solution. With the proper amount of adhesion, the automated sprayer could now “pollute” any space it is in, as [J-Knows] described.

What took this project to another level is the addition of an Adafruit GPS module. It was coded to respond when it was within one mile of a Starbucks — arguably the organization responsible for the pumpkin spice craze. For some the company’s pumpkin spice latte (PSL) is synonymous with all things fall, and marks the beginning of the season when it is brought back to the coffee menu. Though not being a regular coffee drinker himself, [J-Knows] fully committed to the bit by taking his creation on a test trip to his local Starbucks for a PSL. Judging by the amount of pumpkin spice aerosol solution that ended up on his car dash, he is going to be smelling it into the next year.

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A Teletype By Any Other Name: The Early E-mail And Wordprocessor

November 13, 2024 by 42 Comments

Some brand names become the de facto name for the generic product. Xerox, for example. Or Velcro. Teletype was a trademark, but it has come to mean just about any teleprinter communicating with another teleprinter or a computer. The actual trademark belonged to The Teletype Corporation, part of Western Electric, which was, of course, part of AT&T. But there were many other companies that made teleprinters, some of which were very influential.

The teleprinter predates the computer by quite a bit. The original impetus for their development was to reduce the need for skilled telegraph operators. In addition, they found use as crude wordprocessors, although that term wouldn’t be used for quite some time.

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Hands On: AD409-Max Microscope

May 22, 2024 by 18 Comments

It used to be that only the most well-equipped home electronics lab had a microscope. However, with SMD parts getting smaller and smaller, some kind of microscope is almost a necessity.

Luckily, you can get USB microscopes for a song now. If you’re willing to spend a little more, you can get even get microscopes that have little LCD screens. However, there are some problems with the cheaper end of these microscopes.

Many of them have small and wobbly stands that aren’t very practical. Some don’t leave you much room to get a soldering iron in between the lens and the part. Worse still, many cheap microscopes have trouble staying still when you have to push buttons or otherwise make adjustments to the device.

It seems like every time a new generation of microscopes aimed at the electronics market arrives on the scene, many of the earlier flaws get taken care of. That’s certainly the case with the Andonstar AD409-Max.

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Our Home Automation Contest Starts Now!

February 20, 2024 by 32 Comments

Your home is your castle, and what’s better than a fully automatic castle? Nothing! That’s why we’re inviting you to submit your sweetest home automation hacks for a chance to win one of three $150 DigiKey gift certificates. The contest starts now and runs until April 16th.

Home buttons project, simple home automation display
[Matej]’s Home Buttons gets the job done in open-source style.
We love to play around with home automation setups and have seen our fair share, ranging from the simple “turn some lights on” to full-blown cyber-brains that learn your habits and adapt to them. Where is your project on this continuum?

Whether you’re focused on making your life easier, saving energy, gathering up all the data about your usage patterns, or simply stringing some random functions together and calling it a “system,” we’d like to see it. Nothing is too big or too small if it makes your home life easier.

Home is where the home automation is!

To enter, head over to Hackaday IO and start documenting your project there. We are, of course, interested in learning from what you’ve done, so the better the docs, the better your chances of winning. And if you need some inspiration, check out these honorable mention categories.

Honorable Mention Categories

Thanks again to DigiKey for sponsoring this with three gift certificates!

2024 Home Sweet Home Automation Contest
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Hackaday Links: February 11, 2024

February 11, 2024 by 4 Comments

Apple’s Vision Pro augmented reality goggles made a big splash in the news this week, and try as we might to resist the urge to dunk on them, early adopters spotted in the wild are making it way too easy. Granted, we’re not sure how many of these people are actually early adopters as opposed to paid influencers, but there was still quite a bit of silliness to be had, most of it on X/Twitter. We’d love to say that peak idiocy was achieved by those who showed themselves behind the wheels of their Teslas while wearing their goggles, with one aiming for an early adopter perfecta, but alas, most of these stories appear to be at least partially contrived. Some people were spotted doing their best to get themselves killed, others were content to just look foolish, especially since we’ve heard that the virtual keyboard is currently too slow for anything but hunt-and-peck typing, which Casey Niestat seemed to confirm with his field testing. After seeing all this, we’re still unsure why someone would strap $4,000 worth of peripheral-vision-restricting and easily fenced hardware to their heads, but hey — different strokes. And for those of you wondering why these things are so expensive, we’ve got you covered.

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Hands On With Boondock Echo

November 10, 2023 by 23 Comments

Perhaps no words fill me with more dread than, “I hear there’s something going around.” In my experience, you hear this when some nasty bug has worked its way into the community and people start getting whatever it is. I’m always on my guard when I hear about something like this, especially when it’s something really unpleasant like norovirus. Forewarned is forearmed, after all.

Since I work from home and rarely get out, one of the principal ways I keep apprised of what’s going on with public health in my community is by listening to my scanner radio. I have the local fire rescue frequencies programmed in, and if “there’s something going around,” I usually find out about it there first; after a half-dozen or so calls for people complaining of nausea and vomiting, you get the idea it’s best to hunker down for a while.

I manage to stay reasonably well-informed in this way, but it’s not like I can listen to my scanner every minute of the day. That’s why I was really excited when my friend Mark Hughes started a project he called Boondock Echo, which aims to change the two-way radio communications user experience by enabling internet-backed recording and playback. It sounded like the perfect system for me — something that would let my scanner work for me, instead of the other way around. And so when Mark asked me to participate in the beta test, I jumped at the chance.

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