Translating And Broadcasting Spoken Morse Code

January 24, 2023 by 24 Comments

When the first radios and telegraph lines were put into service, essentially the only way to communicate was to use Morse code. The first transmitters had extremely inefficient designs by today’s standards, so this was more a practical limitation than a choice. As the technology evolved there became less and less reason to use Morse to communicate, but plenty of amateur radio operators still use this mode including [Kevin] aka [KB9RLW] who has built a circuit which can translate spoken Morse code into a broadcasted Morse radio signal.

The circuit works by feeding the signal from a microphone into an Arduino. The Arduino listens for a certain threshold and keys the radio when it detects a word being spoken. Radio operators use the words “dit” and “dah” for dots and dashes respectively, and the Arduino isn’t really translating the words so much as it is sending a signal for the duration of however long each word takes to say. The software for the Arduino is provided on the project’s GitHub page as well, and uses a number of approaches to make sure the keyed signal is as clean as possible.

[Kevin] mentions that this device could be used by anyone who wishes to operate a radio in this mode who might have difficulty using a traditional Morse key and who doesn’t want to retrain their brain to use other available equipment like a puff straw or a foot key. The circuit is remarkably straightforward for what it does, and in the video below it seems [Kevin] is having a blast using it. If you’re still looking to learn to “speak” Morse code, though, take a look at this guide which goes into detail about it.

Thanks to [Dragan] for the tip!

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Generating PAL Video With A Heavily Overclocked Pi Pico

January 24, 2023 by 19 Comments

Barely a week goes by without another hack blessing the RP2040 with a further interfacing superpower. This time it’s the turn of the humble PAL standard composite video interface. As many of us of at least a certain vintage will be familiar with, the Phase Alternate Line (PAL to friends) standard was used mainly in Europe (not France, they used SECAM like Russia, China, and co) and Australasia, and is a little different from the much earlier NTSC standard those in the US may fondly recollect. Anyway, [Fred] stresses that this hack isn’t for the faint-hearted, as the RP2040 needs one heck of an overclock (up to 312 MHz, some 241% over stock) to be able to pull off the needed amount of processing grunt. This is much more than yet another PIO hack.

The dual cores of the RP2040 are really being pushed here. The software is split into high and low-level functions, with the first core running rendering the various still images and video demos into a framebuffer. The second core runs in parallel and deals with all the nitty-gritty of formatting the frame buffer into a PAL-encoded signal, which is then sucked out by the DMA and pushed to the outside world via the PIO. There may be a few opportunities for speeding the code up even more, but [Fred] has clearly already done a huge amount of work there, just to get it working at all. The PIO code itself is very simple but is instructive as a good example of how to use multiple chained DMA channels to push data through the PIO at the fastest possible rate.

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A woman sits at a wooden table with a set of pedals attached. A large frame sits on top of the table with a lampshade form spinning in it and five strings run through an apparatus to the frame. A shelving unit with finished lampshades sits behind the woman.

Lanna Factory Makes You Work For Your Lampshade

January 24, 2023 by 6 Comments

While you could 3D print a lampshade, there’s something to be said for having a more active role in the process of creating an object. [THINKK Studio] has made custom lampshades as easy as riding a bike.

The Lanna Factory was inspired by the cotton ball string lamps sold by vendors in Thai flea markets. Bangkok-based [THINKK Studio] wanted to build a device to let anyone have a hand (and feet) in making a custom lampshade without any experience. Five spools of thread are routed through a “glue case” and onto a spindle holding a lampshade mold. Pedals control the wrapping speed and the location on the shade being wrapped is controlled with a hand wheel on the table.

Once the glue dries, the shade can be removed from the mold and fitted with the appropriate hardware. Giving the user control over the process means that each lampshade will be unique and the final product will mean that much more to the person who made it.

If you’re thinking this would be cooler in carbon fiber, than maybe you should checkout the X-Winder.

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Hackaday.io Low-Power Challenge Begins Today

January 24, 2023 by 23 Comments

How low can you go? The 2023 Hackaday.io Low-Power Challenge is about doing the most with the least juice – bang for the power-budget buck, if you get our drift. And with three $150 gift certificates from Digi-Key on the line, you’ll be able to keep your projects going forever. The Challenge runs until March 21st, but with low-power, the devil is often in the details, so get started today!

More and more projects need to run on their own power, and more often than not, that means getting by without access to a wall plug. This contest is to encourage your designs that run on solar, small batteries, and generally energy harvested from wherever you can get it. But the power generation mechanism is taking the back seat here – we want to see what you can do with a few good electrons. Surprise us with your maximum minimalism!

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Old Ham Wisdom Leads To Better Aluminum Painting

January 24, 2023 by 50 Comments

When [bdk6] tried painting aluminum for electronic projects, he found it didn’t tend to stay painted. It would easily scratch off or, eventually, even flake off. The problem is the paint doesn’t want to adhere to the aluminum oxide coating around the metal. Research ensued, and he found an article in an old ham radio magazine about a technique that he could adapt to get good results painting aluminum.

Actually, paint apparently adheres poorly, even to non-oxidized aluminum. So the plan is to clean and remove as much aluminum oxide as possible. Then the process will convert the aluminum surface to something the paint sticks to better. Of course, you also need the right kind of paint.

The key ingredients are phosphoric acid and zinc phosphate. Phosphoric acid is found in soft drinks, but is also sold as a concrete and metal prep for painting. The zinc phosphate is part of a special paint known as a self-etching primer.

Cleaning takes soap, elbow grease, and sandpaper. The next step is a long soak in the phosphoric acid. Then you apply a few coats of self-etching primer and sand. Once it is all set, you can paint with your normal paint. That’s usually epoxy-based paint for [bdk6].

Of course, you can also dye aluminum while anodizing it. Soldering aluminum also has its challenges.

Broken Genes And Scrambled Proteins: How Radiation Causes Biological Damage

January 24, 2023 by 31 Comments

If decades of cheesy sci-fi and pop culture have taught us anything, it’s that radiation is a universally bad thing that invariably causes the genetic mutations that gifted us with everything from Godzilla to Blinky the Three-Eyed Fish. There’s a kernel of truth there, of course. One only needs to look at pictures of what happened to Hiroshima survivors or the first responders at Chernobyl to see extreme examples of what radiation can do to living tissues.

But as is usually the case, a closer look at examples a little further away from the extremes can be instructive, and tell us a little more about how radiation, both ionizing and non-ionizing, can cause damage to biochemical structures and processes. Doing so reveals that, while DNA is certainly in the crosshairs for damage by radiation, it’s not the only target — proteins, carbohydrates, and even the lipids that form the membranes within cells are subject to radiation damage, both directly and indirectly. And the mechanisms underlying all of this end up revealing a lot about how life evolved, as well as being interesting in their own right.

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A cartoon vehicle is connected to two wires. One is connected to an illustrated Li anode and the other to a γ-sulfur/carbon nanofiber electrode. Lithium ions and organic carbonate representations float between the two electrodes below the car. A red dotted line between the electrodes symbolizes the separator.

Lithium Sulfur Battery Cycle Life Gets A Boost

January 24, 2023 by 11 Comments

Lithium sulfur batteries are often touted as the next major chemistry for electric vehicle applications, if only their cycle life wasn’t so short. But that might be changing soon, as a group of researchers at Drexel University has developed a sulfur cathode capable of more than 4000 cycles.

Most research into the Li-S couple has used volatile ether electrolytes which severely limit the possible commercialization of the technology. The team at Drexel was able to use a carbonate electrolyte like those already well-explored for more traditional Li-ion cells by using a stabilized monoclinic γ-sulfur deposited on carbon nanofibers.

The process to create these cathodes appears less finicky than previous methods that required tight control of the porosity of the carbon host and also increases the amount of active material in the cathode by a significant margin. Analysis shows that this phase of sulfur avoids the formation of intermediate fouling polysulfides which accounts for it’s impressive cycle life. As the authors state, this is far from a commercial-ready system, but it is a major step toward the next generation of batteries.

We’ve covered the elements lithium and sulfur in depth before as well as an aluminum sulfur battery that could be big for grid storage.