Hackaday Columns

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This excellent content from the Hackaday writing crew highlights recurring topics and popular series like Linux-Fu, 3D-Printering, Hackaday Links, This Week in Security, Inputs of Interest, Profiles in Science, Retrotechtacular, Ask Hackaday, Teardowns, Reviews, and many more.

All About USB-C: Connector Mechanics

December 20, 2022 by 32 Comments

There’s two cases when hackers have to think about USB-C connector mechanics. The first is when a USB-C connector physically breaks, and the second is when we need to put a connector on our own board. Let’s go through both of them.

Clean That Connector

What if a socket on your phone or laptop fails? First off, it could be due to dust or debris. There’s swabs you can buy to clean a USB-C connector; perhaps adding some isopropyl alcohol or other cleaning-suitable liquids, you can get to a “good enough” state. You can also reflow pins on your connector, equipped with hot air or a sharp soldering iron tip, as well as some flux – when it comes to mechanical failures, this tends to remedy them, even for a short period of time.

How could a connector fail, exactly? Well, one of the pins could break off inside the plastic, or just get too dirty to make contact. Consider a device with a USB-C charging and data socket, with USB 2.0 but without high-speed pairs – which is to say, sadly, the majority of the phones out there. Try plugging it into a USB-A charger using a USB-A to USB-C cable. Does it charge, even if slowly? Then, your VBUS pins are okay.

Plug it into a Type-C charger using a Type-C cable, and now the CC pins are involved. Does it charge in both orientations? Then both of your CC pins are okay. Does it charge in only one orientation? One of the CC pins has to be busted. Then, you can check USB 2.0 pins, used for data transfer and legacy charging. Plug the phone into a computer using a USB-A to USB-C cable. Does it enumerate as a device? Does it enumerate in both orientations? If not, you might want to clean D- and D+ pins specifically, maybe even both sets. Continue reading “All About USB-C: Connector Mechanics” →

Laser Fusion Ignition: Putting Nuclear Fusion Breakthroughs Into Perspective

December 19, 2022 by 45 Comments

This month the media was abuzz with the announcement that the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) had accomplished a significant breakthrough in the quest to achieve commercial nuclear fusion. Specifically, the announcement was that a net fusion energy gain (Q) had been measured of about 1.5: for an input of 2.05 MJ, 3.15 MJ was produced.

What was remarkable about this event compared to last year’s 1.3 MJ production is that it demonstrates an optimized firing routine for the NIF’s lasers, and that changes to how the Hohlraum – containing the deuterium-tritium (D-T) fuel – is targeted result in more effective compression. Within this Hohlraum, X-rays are produced that serve to compress the fuel. With enough pressure, the Coulomb barrier that generally keeps nuclei from getting near each other can be overcome, and that’s fusion.

Based on the preliminary results, it would appear that a few percent of the D-T fuel did undergo fusion. So then the next question: does this really mean that we’re any closer to having commercial fusion reactors churning out plentiful of power?

Continue reading “Laser Fusion Ignition: Putting Nuclear Fusion Breakthroughs Into Perspective” →

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Hackaday Links: December 18, 2022

December 18, 2022 by 27 Comments

By now everyone has probably seen the devastation wrought by the structural failure of what was once the world’s largest free-standing cylindrical aquarium. The scale of the tank, which until about 5:50 AM Berlin time on Friday graced the lobby of the Raddison Blu hotel, was amazing — 16 meters tall, 12 meters in diameter, holding a million liters of saltwater and some 1,500 tropical fish. The tank sat atop a bar in the hotel lobby and was so big that it even had an elevator passing up through the middle of it.

But for some reason, the tank failed catastrophically, emptying its contents into the hotel lobby and spilling the hapless fish out into the freezing streets of Berlin. No humans were killed by the flood, which is miraculous when you consider the forces that were unleashed here. Given the level of destruction, the displaced hotel guests, and the fact that a €13 million structure just up and failed, we’re pretty sure there will be a thorough analysis of the incident. We’re pretty interested in why structures fail, so we’ll be looking forward to finding out the story here.

Continue reading “Hackaday Links: December 18, 2022” →

Battery Engineering Hack Chat Gets Charged Up

December 16, 2022 by 9 Comments

Turn the clock back a couple of decades, and the only time the average person would have given much thought to batteries was when the power would go out, and they suddenly needed to juice up their flashlight or portable radio.  But today, high-capacity batteries have become part and parcel to our increasingly digital lifestyle. In fact, there’s an excellent chance the device your reading this on is currently running on battery power, or at least, is capable of it.

So let’s get to know batteries better. What’s the chemical process that allows them to work? For that matter, what even is a battery in the first place?

It’s these questions, and more, that made up this week’s Battery Engineering Hack Chat with Dave Sopchak. Our last Hack Chat of 2022 ended up being one of the longest in recent memory, with the conversation starting over an hour before the scheduled kickoff and running another half hour beyond when emcee Dan Maloney officially made his closing remarks. Not bad for a topic that so often gets taken for granted.

Continue reading “Battery Engineering Hack Chat Gets Charged Up” →

Hackaday Podcast 197: Decoding VHS, Engineering The TV Guardian, And Gitting Code Into Your ESP32s

December 16, 2022 by No comments

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Assignments Editor Kristina Panos delighted in the aural qualities of Kristina’s brand new, real (read: XLR) microphone before embarking on creating a podcast highlighting the best of the previous week’s hacks.

This week in the news, NASA returned to the Moon with Artemis I, and this time, there are CubeSats involved. After that, it’s on to the What’s That Sound results show, marred by Kristina’s cheating scandal (listening ahead of time) and Elliot’s reading the filename aloud before we started recording. Finally, we move on to the hacks — they start with a trip to the 90s both sonically and visually, and end with a really nice alarm clock that’s decidedly 70s, and definitely Hackaday.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

And/or download it and listen offline.

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Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast 197: Decoding VHS, Engineering The TV Guardian, And Gitting Code Into Your ESP32s” →

Retrotechtacular: A 1960s Look At The 21st Century Home

December 15, 2022 by 29 Comments

If you only watch the first 60 seconds of 1967’s “At Home, 2001,” you’ll be forgiven for thinking that the film is riddled with missed predictions. And to be sure, the cold open is rife with them, from disposable paper furniture to seashell-shaped houses that look like they’re extruded from concrete. Really, the only clear winner from that first tranche of predictions is the rise of the microwave oven, which given the expense of magnetrons in 1967 and the complexity of the electronics needed to drive them was a non-obvious development.

But pushing beyond that opening to the meat of this film reveals a fair number of domestic trends that actually did manage to come true, at least partially, and if not by 2001 then shortly thereafter. The film is an educational piece hosted by iconic American newsman Walter Cronkite, who lends his gravitas to the proceedings. The film opens with “Uncle Walter” sonorously pontificating on the unsustainability of the “ticky tacky” spawl of the suburbs and how the situation simply must change.

Continue reading “Retrotechtacular: A 1960s Look At The 21st Century Home” →

Supercon 2022: Sam Mulvey Shows You How To FM Radio

December 15, 2022 by 19 Comments

Sam Mulvey built his own radio station in Tacoma, WA. Is there a better way to meld ham radio practice with a colossal number of DIY electrical and computer projects? Sam would say there isn’t one! This 45-minute talk is basically the lessons-learned review of setting up KTQA 95.3 – the radio station on the hill.

Sam starts out the talk by introducing you to LPFM. And maybe you didn’t know that there’s a special type of license issued by the US FCC allowing non-profit community radio stations up to 100 W, covering an radius of around 5 km. It’s like running a pirate radio station, but by jumping through a few legal hoops, made legal.

Trash on the Radio

Putting a radio station together on a budget requires a ton of clever choices, flexibility, and above all, luck. But if you’re willing to repair a busted CD player or turntable, scrounge up some used computers, and work on your own amplifiers, the budget doesn’t have to be the limiting factor.

Being cheap means a lot of DIY. For instance, Sam and friends made a custom console to support all the gear and hide all the wiring. Some hot tips from the physical build-out: painted cinderblocks make great studio monitor stands, and Cat-5 can carry two channels of balanced audio along with power, with sufficient isolation that it all sounds clean. Continue reading “Supercon 2022: Sam Mulvey Shows You How To FM Radio” →