Back To The Future We Go With This Flux Capacitor PCB Badge

December 5, 2021 by Orlando Hoilett 8 Comments

[Arnov] is a huge fan of the Back to the Future franchise, so he wanted some memorabilia from the movie to decorate his work area. Official memorabilia from successful movie franchises can be pretty expensive, so [Arnov] opted to make something himself instead, creating his own flux capacitor PCB badge.

Fortunately, [Arnov’s] design isn’t as complicated as Doc’s was from the movie (pictured on the right), so it should be a lot easier to replicate. We have a simple LED circuit driven by an 8205S MOSFET and controlled by an ATtiny microcontroller. There’s a small diode for auto-switching between USB and battery power as well as a few current limiting resistors for the LEDs. Fortunately, [Arnov’s] project only requires 0.017 W to power, so no plutonium nuclear reactor is necessary and you can easily power it with a standard coin cell battery or with a USB. That’s quite a relief.

As with many of [Arnov’s] projects, the beauty in its design lies in the detail he places on the PCB layout. In this case, the layout is a bit easier than some of his other work needing only to arrange the blinking LEDs in a “Y” shape to mirror the flux capacitor seen in the movies. He also adds a bit of detail to the silkscreen to help complete the aesthetic.

We think this is worth adding to your PCB badge collection.

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Is It Finally Time For Christmas Decorations?

December 3, 2021 by Orlando Hoilett 14 Comments

[Arnov] is trying to get into the holiday spirit and is doing so the way he knows how. He was thinking of some cool decorations for his Christmas tree and decided the best decorations are the ones you make yourself, so he made his own blinky Christmas tree ornament.

The famed “blinky circuit” is certainly one that we are no strangers to here at Hackaday. Some of our readers will be very pleased to see that he did in fact use a 555 timer and not an Arduino. The 555 timer is wired to drive the clock pin of the CD4017 decade counter and the outputs of the decade counter are wired to the LEDs. The LEDs are lit up sequentially upon each low to high transition of the clock pulse though you may try getting creative with your LED wiring scheme to achieve different blinking effects.

What readers might really take away from this build is [Arnov] detailing how to import images into his CAD tool of choice, OrCAD in his case. We know that can be a bit tricky sometimes. Finally, we love that this project doubles as PCB art and a soldering challenge. It would definitely make for a good demo project at your next beginner soldering workshop.

Cool project [Arnov!]

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Mechanical Musical Sculpture Recalls The Four Muses

November 24, 2021 by Zoe Skyforest 8 Comments

Music was created by humans, but often we find ourselves creating performances with machines. [Alana Balagot] and [Federico Tobon] did just that, constructing the stunning 4 Muses musical sculpture with their combined talents.

4 Muses is made up of four individual instruments, under the command of a single keyboard controller. The keyboard can be used to play the instruments live, or alternatively, can learn from the player or be used as a sequencer. It can also act as a simple device to play back music using the four instruments.

The pipe instrument uses servo-controlled valves, which allow air from a blower fan to reach several wood pipes. The xylophone instead uses solenoids to play its 13 tines. Percussion is provided by a mechanized cajón drum, using motors to actuate mallets that strike the various sections of the box. Meanwhile, hackers will be familiar with the concept of the motor-noise instrument, which drives stepper motors at different frequencies to generate tones.

Inside, a cavalcade of microcontrollers make everything work, from Arduino Megas and Teensys to NRF24s sending wireless packets from the controller to the instruments. [Alana] and [Federico] go in-depth with their documentation, highlighting the challenges they faced putting together the various instruments and showing how the final build came together.

Built with and brass hardware and sporting a variety of exquisite wood finishes, the final result is a quartet of machines that play beautiful music composed by [Alana] herself. Musical sculptures are often a great example of the artistry possible when putting electrons to work. Video after the break.

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This beaded QR code tells a story when scanned.

Beaded QR Code Bracelets Weave A Storytelling Interface

November 21, 2021 by Kristina Panos 14 Comments

For centuries, people have been using patterns to communicate information in an eye-catching way. QR codes are no different, although they require a barcode scanner to decode rather than a knowledge of Navajo Native American history.

November is National Native American Heritage Month, and as part of their celebration, [ngaskins] and their students are making seed bead bracelets with QR codes. When scanned, each QR triggers a story written by the student in the form of an audio file, a video clip, or an animation. [ngaskins] says that this project was inspired by eyeDazzler, a beadwork tapestry made with software that generates Navajo weaving patterns.

The students started by designing their bracelets on graph paper, software, or a virtual loom before getting the seed beads and the tweezers out, and decided whether they would use a static or dynamic QR code. Aside from the aesthetics of beadwork, the bead loom is good for teaching math and computational ideas because the beads are laid out in rows and columns. It’s also a good tool for teaching lines of symmetry.

QR codes can hold quite a bit of information. In fact, there’s enough room in a version 40 QR for an executable version of Snake.

Zac shows off his sound diffusion panels

Taking The Bark Out Of Reverb With Wood Scraps

November 21, 2021 by Matthew Carlson 49 Comments

For the past few years, many have become used to having virtual meetings in their homes. Spaces like kitchen tables, couches, spare bedrooms, and hammocks in the yard have all become “offices”. As you can imagine, many of these spaces aren’t well known for their acoustic qualities. [Zac] built a sound diffusion art piece out of scrap pieces of wood to help his office sound better when recording.

Reverb is caused by sound bouncing off hard, flat surfaces like drywall. These reflections are picked up by the microphone and lead to a noticeable drop in perceived sound quality. There are generally two ways to kill reverb in a space: diffusion and absorption. Diffusion is the technique that [Zac] is going for, with thousands of faces at different angles and locations, it breaks up the harsh reflections into millions of tiny reflections. Absorption is usually accomplished with foam and other typically soft substances.

[Zac] happened to have a large pile of offcuts and extra material from past projects of various wood species, making it easy to make a visually interesting piece. He used a table saw to rip them to a consistent width and a drum sander reduced them all to the same depth. Next, the long sticks were cut with a miter saw into 5 different lengths, leaving him with thousands of little pieces of wood. The hard part began when he had to glue several thousand pieces to a plywood backer board with CA glue. Sanding, finishing with poly, and a french cleat made the three pieces ready to hang on the wall.

Overall, the effect is stunning. While we’d love more hard data on the improvement, it certainly does sound better anecdotally. If you’re interested in more woodworking, take a look into making an inlay without a CNC. Video after the break.

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Light-Tracking BEAM Robot Can See The Light

November 21, 2021 by Zoe Skyforest 14 Comments

BEAM robotics, which stands for Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, and Mechanics, is an ethos that focuses on building robots with simple analog circuits. [NanoRobotGeek] built a great example of the form, creating a light-tracking robot that uses no batteries and no microcontrollers.

The robot aims to track the brightest source of light it can see. This is achieved by feeding signals from four photodiodes into some analog logic, which then spits out voltages to the two motors that aim the robot, guiding it towards the light. There’s also a sound-detection circuit, which prompts the robot to wiggle when it detects a whistle via an attached microphone.

The entire circuitry is free-formed using brass wire, and the result is an incredibly artful build. Displayed in a bell jar, the build looks like some delicate artifact blending the past and future. Neither steampunk nor cyberpunk, it draws from both with its combination of vintage brass and modern LEDs.

It’s a great build that reminds us of some of the great circuit sculptures we’ve seen lately. Video after the break.

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The Silent Dripper Dispenses Water Without Making Any Sound

November 19, 2021 by Robin Kearey 6 Comments

Engineering is all about making a design that conforms to a set of requirements. Usually those are boring things like cost, power consumption, volume, mass or compatibility with existing systems. But sometimes, you have to design something with restrictions you might have never considered. [Devon Bray] was tasked with designing a system that could dispense single drops of water, while making absolutely no noise. [Devon]’s blog describes in detail the process of making The Silent Dripper, which was needed for an art installation called The Tender Interval by [Sara Dittrich].

The design process started with picking a proper pump. Centrifugal pumps can be very quiet due to their smooth, continuous motion, but are not suitable for moving small quantities of liquid. Peristaltic pumps on the other hand can generate single drops of liquid very accurately, but their gripping-and-squeezing motion creates far more sound. [Devon] still went for the latter type, and eventually discovered that filling up the pumping mechanism with lithium grease made it quiet enough for his purpose.

The pump was then mounted on a 3D-printed bracket that also contained the water feeding tube and electrical connections to the outside world. The tubing was fastened with zip ties to stop it from moving when the pump was running, and the pump itself was isolated from the bracket with rubber dampening mounts.

Another trick to silence the pump was the motor driver circuit: standard PWM drivers often cause audible whine from the motor coils because of their abrupt switching, so [Devon] went for a Trinamic SilentStepStick that regulates the current much more smoothly. The end result is a water dripper that makes less noise than a piece of tissue paper being crumpled, as you can observe in the video (embedded below) which also demonstrates the complete art installation.

We really like the mechanical design of the Dripper; as far as we’re concerned it would merit a spot in a gallery on its own. It would not be the first water dripping art project either; we’ve already seen a sculpture that apparently suspends droplets in mid-air. Continue reading “The Silent Dripper Dispenses Water Without Making Any Sound” →