Hackaday Podcast 082: DJ CNC, NFC Black Box, Sound Of Keys, And Payin’ For 3D Prints

August 28, 2020 by Mike Szczys 2 Comments

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys check in on the best hacks from the past week. All the buzz is the algorithm that can reverse engineer your house keys from the way they sound going into the lock. Cardboard construction goes extreme with an RC car build that’s beyond wizard-level. Speaking of junk builds, there’s a CNC mill tipped on its side grinding out results worlds better than you expect from something made with salvaged CD-ROM drives. And a starburst character display is a clever combination of laser cutting and alternative using UV-cured resin as a diffuser.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (60 MB or so.)

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast 082: DJ CNC, NFC Black Box, Sound Of Keys, And Payin’ For 3D Prints” →

GridSound – An Audio Workstation In Your Browser

August 17, 2020 by Sven Gregori 10 Comments

If you’re into creating music, you’ll have a surprisingly large variety of open source options at your disposal, ranging from Audacity as rather simple audio editor to Ardour as a full-blown, studio-worthy DAW — and LMMS, Rosegarden, MusE etc. for anything in between. With [Thomas Tortorini]’s GridSound project, you’ll have one additional choice on your list now, except this one runs in your browser. So if you find yourself in a sudden moment of inspiration, all you’ll need is a browser and off you go.

From the feature set’s point of view, GridSound leans towards LMMS and offers a drum kit, piano roll, and synthesizer. It appears that you won’t be able to record real world instruments at this point, but it’s also a work in progress, so who knows what the future will bring. The code is available on GitHub and you can explore GridSound itself here — no login required, unless you want to save your work. Running in a browser, GridSound is naturally written in JavaScript and uses the Web Audio API to perform the actual audio tasks.

What’s impressive is that [Thomas] opted against any UI framework-of-the-week, but instead implemented everything from scratch in pure vanilla JavaScript. In fact, the entire code base seems to be self-contained without any third party dependencies, and that alone deserves some respect. Sure, JavaScript isn’t everybody’s cup of tea — “real developers use assembly” — so if you prefer something more physical, how about some cardboard music?

Swimming Pool Lap Counter Relies On Ultrasound

August 2, 2020 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

Swimming is a great way to exercise, both for the cardiovascular benefits and the improved muscle tone. However, while he’s a fan, [Peter Quinn] sometimes finds it hard to keep track of how far he’s gone when he gets in the zone. Obviously, the solution is an electronic lap counter, which [Peter] promptly set about creating.

The build is based around an ultrasonic distance sensor, which is triggered when it detects a swimmer approaching the end of the lane. It’s run by an Arduino Nano, which is also set up to announce the accumulated distance with a speech synth library. [Peter] notes there have been some stumbling blocks thus far, necessitating modifications along the way. Water ingress into the ultrasonic sensor has required the installation of a protective shroud, while battery operation has required a module to properly handle the lithium-polymer battery.

While we might hesitate to bring a takeaway container full of wires, circuit boards and an LED display to a public pool for fear of being deemed a bomber, the basic bones of the project are a great way to approach the problem. There’s plenty of scope to implement laptiming too, as we’ve seen in other sporting builds!

ESP8266 Makes A Wireless Card Reader

July 25, 2020 by Al Williams 19 Comments

You can find commercial USB sticks that can also connect via WiFi. But [Neutrino] made his own using an ESP8266 married to a card reader. It all starts with the old trick of soldering a header to an SD card adapter. The USB port is still there, but it is only for power. A 3.3 V regulator and an ESP12E board round out the hardware.

Of course, the trick is the software. Starting from a few examples, he wound up providing an FTP server that you can connect to and send or receive files using that protocol.

Continue reading “ESP8266 Makes A Wireless Card Reader” →

Adapter Brings M.2 WiFi Cards To The Pinebook Pro

April 27, 2020 by Tom Nardi 14 Comments

The Pinebook Pro is a considerably more capable machine than the $99 Pinebook released in 2017, but the open source laptop still isn’t exactly a powerhouse by modern standards. The system is intended to compete with mid-range Chromebooks, and to that end, few would argue it’s not worth the $199 price tag. But there’s still room for improvement, and at this price point that makes it a hardware hacker’s delight.

[TobleMiner] has recently released the design files for a drop-in adapter that allows you to install M.2 wireless cards like the Intel AX200 in the Pinebook Pro. With the latest-and-greatest WiFi 6 technology onboard, transfer rates as high as 600 Mbps have been demonstrated on this relatively low-cost Linux laptop. It sounds like there’s a possibility the adapter will be offered officially through the Pine store at some point in the future, but in the meantime, you can always spin up your own copy if you feel the need for speed on your Pinebook Pro.

The adapter takes the place of the official M.2 SSD upgrade board, which means users will need to choose between expanded storage and an upgraded wireless card. But [TobleMiner] hints that a version of the adapter with a second M.2 slot should be possible in the future. The design also features pads to install an optional voltage regulator, as testing has shown that the Pinebook Pro’s 3.3 V line can fluctuate a bit depending on battery level.

We took a close look at the original Pinebook when it was released, and came away cautiously optimistic. The Pro model appears to be an improvement in every way imaginable, and upgrades like this show just what’s possible when users are free to explore their hardware.

Nifty Soundbender Built From EBay Modules

February 4, 2020 by Lewin Day 5 Comments

Custom audio greeting cards are a trifling gimmick, and a hefty investment compared to their paper-based colleagues. However, the technology inside can be twisted and hacked towards more interesting ends, as [lonesoulsurfer] demonstrates with his sound-bending build.

Rather then go to the trouble and expense of gutting a greeting card, [lonesoulsurfer] simply purchases the sound recording module off eBay which often turns out cheaper anyway. It’s hacked with a couple extra buttons and a speed control, and then wired up with a reverb module that itself gets tweaked to add an echo mode. It’s all bundled up with a speaker and microphone and installed in a case that formerly held an ignition tuning analyzer from the 1970s.

The final result is quite handsome, with a wooden panel holding the speaker and a smattering of knobs, buttons, and switches to play with. After recording an audio sample, it’s possible to speed it up, slow it down, and add echo and reverb until you’re left with something unrecognizable and weird. We’ve actually seen similar projects before, like this author’s first ever article for these hallowed pages. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Nifty Soundbender Built From EBay Modules” →

Old Cisco WAN Card Turned FPGA Playground

November 20, 2019 by Tom Nardi 33 Comments

Many of us think of FPGAs as some new cutting edge technology, but the fact of the matter is that they’ve been around for quite some time. They’ve just traditionally been used in hardware that’s too expensive for us lowly hackers. A case in point is the Cisco HWIC-3G-CDMA WAN card. A decade ago these would have been part of a router valued in the tens of thousands of dollars, but today they can be had for less than $10 USD on eBay. At that price, [Tom Verbeure] thought it would be worth finding out if they could be repurposed as generic FPGA experimentation devices.

So as not to keep you in suspense, the short answer is a resounding yes. In the end, all [Tom] had to do was figure out what voltages the HWIC-3G-CDMA was expecting on the edge connector, and solder a 2×5 connector onto the helpfully labeled JTAG header. Once powered up and connected to the computer, Intel’s Quartus Programmer software immediately picked up the board’s Cyclone II EP2C35F484C8 chip. The blinking LEDs seen in the video after the break serve as proof that these bargain bin gadgets are ripe for hacking.

Unfortunately, there’s a catch. After studying the rest of the components on the board, [Tom] eventually came to the conclusion that the HWIC-3G-CDMA has no means of actually storing the FPGA’s bitstream. Presumably it was provided by the router itself during startup. If you just want to keep the board tethered to your computer for experimenting, that’s not really a big deal. But if you want to use it in some kind of project, you’ll need to include a microcontroller capable of pushing the roughly 1 MB bitstream into the FPGA to kick things off.

It might not be as easy to get up and running as the 2019 Hackaday Superconference badge, but it’s certainly a lot easier to get your hands on.

Continue reading “Old Cisco WAN Card Turned FPGA Playground” →