This Is A Kickstarter For None More Black

January 31, 2019 by Brian Benchoff 103 Comments

Vantablack is the darkest pigment ever created, capable of absorbing 99.96% of visible light. If you cover something in Vantablack, it turns into a black hole. No detail is presented, and physical objects become silhouettes. Objects covered in Vantablack are outside the human experience. The mammalian mind cannot comprehend a Vantablack object.

Vantablack is cool, but it’s also expensive. It’s also exclusively licensed by [Anish Kapoor]’s studio for artistic use. Understandably, artists have rebelled, and they’re making their own Vantablack-like pigments. Now, the World’s Blackest Black is on Kickstarter. You can get a 150 ml bottle of Black 3.0, something that’s almost black as Vantablack, for £10.

The pigment for Black 3.0 is called Black Magick, and yes, there was a version 2.0 The problem with the earlier version is that although the pigment was blacker than almost anything else, paint isn’t just pigment. You need binders. The new formulation uses a new acrylic polymer to hold the pigment, and ‘nano-mattifiers’ to make the paint none more matte.

What can you do with the blackest black paint you’ve ever seen? Well, taking pictures of an object covered in the blackest black is a tiny bit dumb. This is something that must be experienced in person. You could paint a car with it, which is something I really want to see. You could follow [Anish Kapoor] around in the shadows. Use it as a calibration target. Who knows what we’ll do with the almost-Vantablack when everyone has it.

This Raspberry Pi Is A Stereo Camera And So Much More

December 30, 2018 by Jenny List 27 Comments

Over the years we have featured a huge array of projects featuring the Raspberry Pi, but among them there is something that has been missing in all but a few examples. The Raspberry P Compute Module is the essentials of a Pi on a form factor close to that of a SODIMM module, and it is intended as a way to embed a Pi inside a commercial product. It’s refreshing then to see [Eugene]’s StereoPi project, a PCB that accepts a Compute Module and provides interfaces for two Raspberry Pi cameras.

What makes this board a bit special is that as well as the two camera connectors at the required spacing for stereophotography it also brings out all the interfaces you’d expect on a regular Pi, so there is the familiar 40-pin expansion header as well as USB and Ethernet ports. It has a few extras such as a pin-based power connector, and an on-off switch.

Where are they going with this one? So far we’ve seen demonstrations of the rig used to create depth maps with ROS (Robot Operating System). But even more fun is seeing the 3rd-person-view rig shown in the video below. You strap on a backpack that holds the stereo camera above your head, then watch yourself through VR goggles. Essentially you become the video game. We’ve seen this demonstrated before and now it looks like it will be easy to give it a try yourself as StereoPi has announced they’re preparing to crowdfund.

So aside from the stereophotography why is this special? The answer comes in that it is as close as possible to a fresh interpretation of a Raspberry Pi board without being from the Pi Foundation themselves. The Pi processors are not available to third party manufacturers, so aside from the Odroid W (which was made in very limited numbers) we have never seen a significant alternative take on a compatible Raspberry Pi. The idea that this could be achieved through the Compute Module is one that we hope might be taken up by other designers, potentially opening a fresh avenue in the Raspberry Pi story.

The Raspberry Pi Compute Module has passed through two iterations since its launch in 2014, but probably due to the lower cost of a retail Raspberry Pi we haven’t seen it in many projects save for a few game consoles. If the advent of boards like this means we see more of it, that can be no bad thing.

Continue reading “This Raspberry Pi Is A Stereo Camera And So Much More” →

Improving Router-Based Dev Boards With The Onion Omega2 Pro

December 27, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 24 Comments

Before we had Raspberry Pis and Beaglebones, the art of putting a Linux system in a small, portable project was limited to router hacking. The venerable WRT54G controlled Internet-connected robots with a careful application of a Unix-ey firmware. Now, things are different but there’s still a need for a cheap, portable Linux system that’s just good enough to get the job done. Now, there’s an upgrade to the board that follows in the footsteps of that router hacking The Onion Omega2 Pro is up on Crowd Supply, and it’s got more buttons, more switches, and it’s still smaller than a breadboard.

The Onion Omega2 Pro is a slight upgrade over the breadboard-friendly SoM launched a few years ago. The Pro version features a 580 MHz MIPS CPU, 512 MB of RAM (Update: this is 128 MB physical RAM and 384 MB flash swap file), 8 GB of storage, and connectivity with b/g/n WiFi. Unlike the previous version, this is a far more functional system with a 30-pin expansion header, support for battery charging, a micro USB for charging and serial, and a USB host port. Because this is at its heart the guts of a router on a development board, you also get all the fun of WiFi networking. The expansion header connects to various add-ons including a GPS module, OLED display, and an Ethernet port.

Now we have Raspberry Pis and other various boards based on smartphone Systems on Chip, but sometimes you don’t need that much overhead. You don’t need weird Linux distributions dealing with ARM bootloaders. Sometimes you just need something simple, and the Onion Omega2 Pro does just that.

That’s A Lisp Machine In Your Pocket

December 19, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 43 Comments

Computer languages have always advanced faster than computer hardware. Case in point: we’re just now getting CPU instructions for JavaScript floating point numbers. The 1970s and 80s wasn’t the garbage fire of JavaScript instructions in silicon, instead they were all about garbage collection. Lisp machines were CPUs designed to run Lisp efficiently. They were great, until the companies responsible realized you had to sell a product to stay in business. Combine an interesting architecture with rarity and historical interest, and you have a centerpiece of any retrocomputing enthusiasts collection. Yes, we all want a Lisp machine.

Now there’s an interesting project on CrowdSupply that will make that possible. It’s the MakerLisp Machine, a credit card-sized computer that runs bare-metal Lisp.

We first saw the MakerLisp Machine in its raw prototype form at VCF West last August, and it was in a very, very raw state. That was just a prototype, though, but the MakerLisp business card-sized computer still features the Zilog eZ80 running at 50MHz. The basic board includes a USB port for a serial connection and a microSD card slot for storage. It boots into a Lisp environment, and you don’t even have to use a NuBus card. We’re living in the future here.

Because this is a credit card-sized computer, there is of course an expansion board that breaks everything out, including the GPIOs. Being a Z80, you’re also going to get CP/M support, but the real story here is Lisp, in your pocket.

ICEBreaker, The Open Source Development Board For FPGAs

December 13, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 40 Comments

The Hackaday Superconference is over, which is a shame, but one of the great things about our conference is the people who manage to trek out to Pasadena every year to show us all the cool stuff they’re working on. One of those people was [Piotr Esden-Tempski], founder of 1 Bit Squared, and he brought some goodies that would soon be launched on a few crowdfunding platforms. The coolest of these was the iCEBreaker, an FPGA development kit that makes it easy to learn FPGAs with an Open Source toolchain.

The hardware for the iCEBreaker includes the iCE40UP5K fpga with 5280 logic cells,, 120 kbit of dual-port RAM, 1 Mbit of single-port RAM, and a PLL, two SPIs and two I2Cs. Because the most interesting FPGA applications include sending bits out over pins really, really fast, there’s also 16 Megabytes of SPI Flash that allows you to stream video to a LED matrix. There are enough logic cells here to synthesize a CPU, too, and already the iCEBreaker can handle the PicoRV32, and some of the RISC-V cores. Extensibility is through PMOD connectors, and yes, there’s also an HDMI output for your vintage computing projects.

If you’re looking to get into FPGA development, there’s no better time. Joe Fitz‘s WTFpga workshop from the 2018 Hackaday Superconference has already been converted to this iCEBreaker board, and yes, the seven-segment display and DIP switches are available. Between this and the Open Source iCE toolchain, you’ve got a complete development system that’s ready to go, fun to play with, and extremely capable.

The Tiniest Computer Vision Platform Just Got Better

September 23, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

The future, if you believe the ad copy, is a world filled with cameras backed by intelligence, neural nets, and computer vision. Despite the hype, this may actually turn out to be true: drones are getting intelligent cameras, self-driving cars are loaded with them, and in any event it makes a great toy.

That’s what makes this Kickstarter so exciting. It’s a camera module, yes, but there are also some smarts behind it. The OpenMV is a MicroPython-powered machine vision camera that gives your project the power of computer vision without the need to haul a laptop or GPU along for the ride.

The OpenMV actually got its start as a Hackaday Prize entry focused on one simple idea. There are cheap camera modules everywhere, so why not attach a processor to that camera that allows for on-board image processing? The first version of the OpenMV could do face detection at 25 fps, color detection at more than 30 fps, and became the basis for hundreds of different robots loaded up with computer vision.

This crowdfunding campaign is financing the latest version of the OpenMV camera, and there are a lot of changes. The camera module is now removable, meaning the OpenMV now supports global shutter and thermal vision in addition to the usual color/rolling shutter sensor. Since this camera has a faster microcontroller, this latest version can support multi-blob color tracking at 80 fps. With the addition of a FLIR Lepton sensor, this camera does thermal sensing, and thanks to a new library, the OpenMV also does number detection with the help of neural networks.

We’ve seen a lot of builds using the OpenMV camera, and it’s getting ot the point where you can’t compete in an autonomous car race without this hardware. This new version has all the bells and whistles, making it one of the best ways we’ve seen to add computer vision to any hardware project.

The Desktop Computer Returns As Amiga-Infused Retro Case

September 17, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 24 Comments

The desktop computer is dead. No, I don’t mean computers that are meant to sit either on or underneath a desk. I’m talking about computer cases that are placed on a desk horizontally, probably with a monitor on top. The ‘monitor stand case’ was a mainstay for most of the 80s and 90s, but died out when CRTs became too heavy.

Now, though, there’s an interesting Kickstarter project that aims to bring the desktop computer case back, and it’s doing it as an upgrade to the classic Amiga 500, Amiga 1200, and Amiga 600 computers.

The idea for this project began all the way back in the 80s, with the Checkmate A1500 computer case. This case was designed to add expansion capabilities to the low-end Amiga 500 computer, transforming it into a desktop system with extra floppies, a hard drive, and an expansion port. In effect, you could have a ‘professional’ Amiga system for half the price of Commodore’s product offerings.

Now the Checkmate is back, this time with a case upgrade that will transform an A500, A600, A1200, or even the PPC Aeon Tabor A1222 motherboard. There’s another trick this case has to offer: it’s also compatible with MicroATX and Mini-ITX motherboards, meaning yes, there is now going to be a real desktop case that you can throw a motherboard in and a monitor on top.

The death of the desktop computer is an absolutely tragic tale that has resulted in people dropping towers on a floor and propping up their LCDs on piles of books. The reason why we do this is understandable — when CRTs got too heavy for plastic enclosures, computers became towers. Now, though, we’re all using featherweight LCDs, and computers could easily return to the desktop.