Retrotechtacular: Car Navigation Like It’s 1971

June 17, 2018 by Dan Maloney 63 Comments

Anyone old enough to have driven before the GPS era probably wonders, as we do, how anyone ever found anything. Navigation back then meant outdated paper maps, long detours because of missed turns, and the far too frequent stops at dingy gas stations for the humiliation of asking for directions. It took forever sometimes, and though we got where we were going, it always seemed like there had to be a better way.

Indeed there was, but instead of waiting for the future and a constellation of satellites to guide the way, some clever folks in the early 1970s had a go at dead reckoning systems for car navigation. The video below shows one, called Cassette Navigation, in action. It consisted of a controller mounted under the dash and a modified cassette player. Special tapes, with spoken turn-by-turn instructions recorded for a specific route, were used. Each step was separated from the next by a tone, the length of which encoded the distance the car would cover before the next step needed to be played. The controller was hooked to the speedometer cable, and when the distance traveled corresponded to the tone length, the next instruction was played. There’s a long list of problems with this method, not least of which is no choice in road tunes while using it, but given the limitations at the time, it was pretty ingenious.

Dead reckoning is better than nothing, but it’s a far cry from GPS navigation. If you’re still baffled by how that cloud of satellites points you to the nearest Waffle House at 3:00 AM, check out our GPS primer for the details.

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Retrotechtacular: Voice Controlled Robot From 1961

June 15, 2018 by Al Williams 18 Comments

We like to think that all these new voice-controlled gadgets like our cell phones, Google Home, Amazon Echo, and all that is the pinnacle of new technology. Enabled by the latest deep learning algorithms, voice-controlled hardware was the stuff of science fiction back in the 1961s, right? Not really. Turns out in around 1960, Ideal sold Robot Commando, a kid’s toy robot that featured voice control.

Well, sort of. If you look at the ad in the video below, you’ll see that a kid is causing the robot to move and fire missiles by issuing commands into a microphone. How did some toy company pull this off in 1961?

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Field Trip! Hackaday Visits Pimoroni

June 14, 2018 by Jenny List 31 Comments

If you have a Raspberry Pi and have any interest in its peripherals, you may be familiar with the grinning pirate logo of the British company, Pimoroni. The Sheffield, UK based outfit first established a niche for itself as one of the go-to places for much of the essentials of Pi ownership, and has extended its portfolio beyond the Pi into parts, boards, and components across the spectrum of electronic experimentation. Their products are notable for their distinctive and colourful design language as well as their constant exploration of new ideas, and they have rapidly become one of those companies to watch in our sphere. On our way up to Newcastle for Maker Faire UK, we passed close enough to the Pimoroni HQ to be able to ask nicely if we could drop in and have a tour.

[Paul] showing off some of the Pimoroni attention to design detail. This artwork is hidden behind a display panel on the finished product. — Paul showing off some of the Pimoroni attention to design detail. This artwork is hidden behind a display panel on the finished product.

The Pimoroni HQ can be found in a nondescript unit with a discreetly placed sign on an industrial estate after a short drive through the city from the motorway. Inside it’s the same as thousands of other units, a set of offices at the front and a cavernous warehouse behind, except this one is filled with the kinds of goodies that get our blood pumping! And we’re told this ~~toybox~~ warehouse is soon to be joined by another nearby unit, as the Pimoroni business is expanding.

Our guide was the company co-founder Paul Beech, whose work you will be familiar with even if this is the first time you’ve heard his name; Paul was the designer of the Raspberry Pi logo! The company is not exclusive to that platform but it’s fair to say they have a strong connection with the Pi, starting in 2012 with as their website puts it: “One laser cutter and a kettle” on which they produced the first of their iconic PiBow laser-cut sandwich Raspberry Pi cases.

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VCF East 2018: Cactus, Retro Because It Wants To Be

June 13, 2018 by Tom Nardi 19 Comments

Among the rows of digital dinosaurs, one blinking front panel stood out. It certainly looked the part of a retro computer; with banks of blinking LEDs and multicolored paddle switches. But upon closer inspection, the laser cut wooden front panel betrays the fact that this machine is an impostor. It may have the appearance of a machine from the heady days where home computers looked like they could have doubled as a prop on the bridge of Kirk’s Enterprise, but it’s actually a product of much more modern provenance.

It’s called the Cactus, a love letter to the homebrew microcomputers of the 1970’s, designed and built by somebody at least 20 years too young to have experienced them the first time around. Alexander Pierson created the Cactus not because he had fond memories of putting together an Altair 8800 in 1975, but because he’s fascinated with the retro computer experience: the look of the front panel, the satisfying clunk of era-appropriate switches, and the idea that the computer’s inner workings aren’t an abstract black box but rather something you can interact with and study. Judging by all the attention the Cactus got at VCF East XIII, he’s not the only one.

Let’s take a look at everything Alexander poured into this retrocomputer build.

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Friday Hack Chat: All About The Hackaday Prize

June 13, 2018 by Brian Benchoff No comments

Right now we’re neck deep in the Hackaday Prize. What’s the Hackaday Prize? It’s the Academy Awards of hardware creation, or at least that’s what we’re calling it until we get a cease and desist from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Already we’ve seen over eight hundred entries in the Hackaday Prize, and there are still months to go. We’re already through the Open Hardware Design Challenge, and twenty fantastic projects from that are moving onto the final round. Yesterday, we announced the winners of the Robotics Module challenge, and again we were blown away. These are the greatest bits of hardware anywhere, and we couldn’t have imagined anything more awesome.

For this week’s Hack Chat, we’re going to be talking all about The Hackaday Prize. This is your chance to be a hardware hero and finally get some recognition for what you’ve been working on. Right now, we’re in the Power Harvesting Challenge in this year’s Hackaday Prize, and we want to see what you can come up with that will get energy from solar, thermal, wind, or random electromagnetic energy. This is your time to shine, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Of course, you might have a few questions on what it takes to make a successful Hackaday Prize entry. For this week’s Hack Chat, we’re going to sit down with [Stephen Tranovich], the person coordinating this year’s Prize, to see what makes a successful entry. This is your chance to find out what it takes to become the next great hardware hacker, and it’s all going down this Friday in the Hack Chat.

Some of the things we’ll be talking about in this week’s Hack Chat:

What makes a winning entry?
How can you get publicity for your project?
Want to bounce your project ideas off the community?
What’s the story behind the seed funding confusion from this year?

You are, of course, encouraged to add your own questions to the discussion. You can do that by leaving a comment on the Hack Chat Event Page and we’ll put that in the queue for the Hack Chat discussion.

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week is just like any other, and we’ll be gathering ’round our video terminals at noon, Pacific, on Friday, June 15th. Here’s a clock counting down the time until the Hack Chat starts.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

These Twenty Amazing Projects Won The Robotics Module Challenge

June 12, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 4 Comments

Right now, we’re running the greatest hardware competition on the planet. The Hackaday Prize is the Academy Awards of Open Hardware, and we’re opening the gates to thousands of hardware hackers, makers, and artist to create the next big thing.

Last week, we wrapped up the second challenge in The Hackaday Prize, the Robotics Module challenge. Now we’re happy to announce twenty of those projects have been selected to move onto the final round and have been awarded a $1000 cash prize. Congratulations to the winners of the Robotics Module Challenge portion of the Hackaday Prize. Here are the winners, in no particular order:

Robotics Module Challenge Hackaday Prize Finalists:

These projects are fantastic

These are the best projects the Robotics Module Challenge in this year’s Hackaday Prize has to offer. These projects are simply fantastic. You answered the call with more than 200 entries for this challenge, and have created the best projects that can be turned into smarter, better robots. Need some proof? Just take a look at some of these projects. Continue reading “These Twenty Amazing Projects Won The Robotics Module Challenge” →

Fail Of The Week: Two Rotors Are Not Better Than Four

June 12, 2018 by Dan Maloney 20 Comments

Fair warning: [Paweł Spychalski]’s video is mostly him talking about how bad his “dualcopter” ended up. There are a few sequences of the ill-fated UAV undergoing flight tests, most of which seem to end with it doing a reasonable impression of a post-hole auger. We have to admit that it’s a pretty poor drone. But one can only truly fail if one fails to have some fun doing it, [Paweł] enjoyed considerable success, at least judging by the glee with which he repeatedly cratered the craft.

The overall idea seems to make sense, with coaxial props mounted in the middle of a circular 3D-printed frame. Mounted below the props are crossed vanes controlled by two servos. The vanes sit in the rotor wash and provide pitch and roll control, while yaw and thrust are controlled by varying the speeds of the counter-rotating props. [Paweł] knew going in that this was a sketchy aerodynamic design, and was surprised it performed as well as it did. But with ground effects limiting roll and pitch control close to the ground, the less-than-adequate thrust due to turbulence between the rotors, and the tendency for the center of mass and the center of gravity to get out whack with each other, all made for a joyously unstable and difficult to control aircraft.

Despite the poor performance, [Paweł] has plans for a Mark II dualrotor, a smaller craft with some changes based on what he learned. He’s no slouch at pushing the limits with multirotors, with 3D-printed racing quad frames and using LoRa for control beyond visual range. Still, we’re sure he’d appreciate constructive criticism in the comments, and we wish him luck with the next one.

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