Barcodes Enter The Matrix In 2027

May 3, 2023 by Kristina Panos 80 Comments

Beep. We’ve come a long way since June 26, 1974 when the first bar code was scanned at a grocery store in Troy, Ohio. That legendary pack of Juicy Fruit proved that even the smallest of items could now carry numbers associated with inventory and price.

By now, we’re all too familiar with this sound as self-checkouts have become the norm. Whereas you yourself could at one time literally check out during the transaction, you must now be on your toes and play find the bar code on every item.

What does the consumer gain from the bar code today? Practically nothing, except the chance to purchase, and potentially return, the item without too much hassle. Well, the non-profit outfit that runs the bar code world — GS1 US — wants to change all that. By 2027, they are confident that all 1D bar codes will be replaced with 2D bar codes similar to QR codes. Why?

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China's Chang'e-4 mission made the first-ever landing on the far side of the Moon in 2019. (Credit: Xinhua/Alamy)

Moon Mission Failures, Or Why Are Lunar Landings So Hard?

May 3, 2023 by Maya Posch 41 Comments

Given the number of spacecraft (both crewed and uncrewed) that touched down on the Moon during the Space Race it’s sometimes hard to imagine why today, with all our modern technology, our remotely operated vehicles seem to have so much trouble not smashing themselves to bits on the regolith surface.

This is the focus of a recent article in Nature that explores the aspects which still make soft landings on our closest space body so much harder than the tragic lithobraking as most recently demonstrated by ispace’s M1 lander.

So far only three entities have successfully landed a craft on the Moon’s surface: the government-funded space agencies of the US, USSR, and China. Of them, only China managed to do so on their first try in 2013 (Chang’e-3), and again in 2019 on the far side of the Moon (Chang’e-4). What is the toughest part about a Moon landing is not to get near the Moon, but it’s about getting close to the surface without getting lost. Since there are no navigation satellites beyond those you put up before the landing, and a lot of Moon dust that will be kicked up by any landing rocket engines, it can be tough to gauge one’s exact location and distance to the surface.

In the case of the ispace lander it would appear that it tragically ran out of propellant before it could safely touch down, which is another major concern. Both the US and USSR would smash Moon landers into its surface until the first successful landing in 1966, which makes the manned touchdown by Apollo 11 in 1969 even more impressive.

Kerfmeter Measures Laser Cutter Kerf Allowances On The Fly

May 3, 2023 by Dan Maloney 21 Comments

Nothing beats a laser cutter and a sheet of Baltic birch plywood or MDF when it comes to making quick, attractive enclosures. Burning out all the pieces and fitting them together with finger joints is super satisfying — right up until you realize that you didn’t quite get the kerf allowance right, and your pieces don’t fit together very nicely. If only there was a way to automate kerf measurement.

There is, in the form of Kerfmeter. It comes to us by way of the lab of [Patrick Baudisch] at the University of Potsdam, where they’ve come up with a clever way to measure the kerf of a laser cutter right during the cutting session. With the Kerfmeter mounted directly to the laser cutter head, a small test artifact based on an Archimedean spiral is cut into a corner of the workpiece. Pins on a small motor engage with the object and turn it until it jams in its hole; the wider the kerf, the greater the angle. Once the kerf is calculated, the rest of the design can be dilated by the proper amount to achieve a perfect fit. The video below shows it better than words can explain it.

What we like about this is its simplicity — all it involves is a motor and a microcontroller, plus a little software. It seems much faster than using a traditional kerf gauge, not to mention more precise. And while it does use up a little bit of material, the test pattern is really pretty small, all things considered. Seems like a reasonable trade-off to us. Still, if you want to figure out your kerfs the old-fashioned way, we’ve got you covered.

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An IBM PC showing "68000 IBM PC" on its monitor

IBM PC Runs BASIC With Motorola 68000 CPU Upgrade

May 2, 2023 by Robin Kearey 13 Comments

Although ARM CPUs have been making headway in several areas of computing over the last decade or so, the vast majority of desktop, laptop and server CPUs are still based on the x86 architecture. How that came to be is no secret, of course: IBM chose the Intel 8088 to power its model 5150 PC back in the early 1980s, and since it became the dominant PC platform, everyone else followed suit. But what if IBM’s purchasing department had got a good deal at Motorola instead? [Ted Fried] has been experimenting with that scenario, by equipping an IBM PC with a 68000 CPU.

To be fair, he didn’t use an actual Motorola chip; instead, he emulated a 68k core on a Teensy 4.1 and implemented the 8088’s bus interface on its pins. The emulated core does exactly the same thing an actual CPU would do, while the rest of the computer works the same way it always did – data is stored in the motherboard’s DRAM chips, keystrokes are processed by the standard 8255 chip and progam output is displayed on the monitor through the MDA video card. Continue reading “IBM PC Runs BASIC With Motorola 68000 CPU Upgrade” →

E-Bike Battery Tapped For Off-Grid Laptop Power

May 2, 2023 by Tom Nardi 12 Comments

If you’ve travelling via bike, you’ll know there’s a certain advantage to packing light. But what if you need to take your beefy desktop-replacement laptop with you on one of these trips? These power hungry machines can’t go far without their chargers (or a place to plug them in), which generally makes them poor traveling companions.

Luckily, [transistor-man] came up with a solution to this particular problem by reusing his e-bike’s battery pack as a mobile power source for his Lenovo laptop. The energy demands of this particular computer are too high for USB-C Power Delivery, and as such, he had to hack up a way to feed it 20 volts DC via its proprietary square power connector. His bike’s battery puts out between 30 and 42 VDC depending on charge, so at least on paper, it should work out fine. Continue reading “E-Bike Battery Tapped For Off-Grid Laptop Power” →

NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Gets A Major Software Upgrade

May 2, 2023 by Maya Posch 21 Comments

Although the Curiosity rover has been well out of the reach of human hands since it touched down on Mars’ surface in 2012, this doesn’t mean that it isn’t getting constant upgrades. Via its communication link with Earth it receives regular firmware updates, with the most recent one being the largest one since 2016. In addition to code clean-up and small tweaks to message formats, this new change should make Curiosity both smarter and have its wheels last longer.

The former helps to avoid the long idle times between navigating, as unlike its younger sibling, Curiosity does not have the dedicated navigation computer for more autonomous driving. Although it won’t make the 11-year old rover as nimble as its sibling, it should shorten these pauses and allow for more navigating and science to be done. Finally, the change to reduce wear on the wheels is fairly simple, but should be rather effective: this affects the amount of steering that Curiosity needs to do while driving in an arc.

With these changes in place, Curiosity should be all ready to receive its newest sibling as it arrives in a few years along with even more Mars helicopters.

Electroosmotic Haptics For More Tactile Touch Devices

May 2, 2023 by Navarre Bartz 18 Comments

If you’re like us, one of the appeals of retro tech is the tactile feedback you get from real buttons. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have developed a new method for bringing haptic feedback to touchscreen devices.

Using an array of miniaturized electroosmotic pumps, the current prototype devices offer 5 mm of displacement from a 5 mm stackup which is a significant improvement over previous technologies which required a lot more hardware than the displacement provided. When placed under a flexible screen, notifications and other user interactions like the keyboard can raise and lower as desired.

Each layer is processed by laser before assembly and the finished device is self-contained, needing only electrical connections. No need for a series of tubes carrying fluid to make it work. Interaction surfaces have been able to scale from 2-10 mm in diameter with the current work, but do appear to be fixed based on the video (below the break).

You might find applications for haptics in VR or want to build your own Haptic Smart Knob.

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