Hacklet 126 – Teensy Projects

September 24, 2016 by Adam Fabio 9 Comments

The Arduino has proved to be a great platform for electronics projects. The same goes for the Raspberry Pi. However, there are some projects that fall in the gap between these two options. Projects that need more memory or processing power than the ATmega microcontrollers have to offer, but not so much as to require a full Linux/ARM powerhouse. For those projects, there is the Teensy series. [Paul Stoffregen] created these lilliputian boards, and he’s been adding features ever since. The thousands of Teensy projects out there stand as proof that these little boards have been well received by the hacker community. This week’s Hacklet is about some of the best Teensy projects on Hackaday.io!

We start with [Jonathan Payne] and Beats by Teensy. Beats is an all in one music machine. A sampler, sequencer, and MIDI control surface; all powered by the Teensy 3.1 and the Teensy Audio Board. The audio board gives Beats the ability to record and playback 16 bit audio at a sampling rate of up to 44.1 kHz. [Jonathan’s] inspiration came from devices such as the Akai MPC, and the MIDI Fighter. He utilized the incredible Teensy audio library on the software side. A project like this needs a serious case. [Jonathan] designed and built the perfect panel and case utilizing arcade buttons and a 128×64 LCD from Adafruit.

Next we have [RF William Hollender] and Teensy Super Audio Board. Not satisfied with CD quality 44.1 kHz audio, [William] decided to add a high quality audio codec to Teensy’s bag of tricks. He picked the CS4272 codec from Cirrus Logic. Capable of sampling rates up to 192 kHz, with a THD+N of -100 db, this codec should please all but the most discerning audiophiles. The high noise immune design doesn’t stop there though. [William’s] design isolated the Teensy and the rest of the interfaces from the codec to prevent ground loops. Connectivity is via standard I2S for the audio stream and I2C for control. This means the super audio board can be used with Raspberry Pi’s and the like.

Next up is [Spino] with Spino. Teensy boards can do a lot more than just audio. Spino is a POV display with 32 spinning RGB LEDs. Spino can do more than just show pretty pictures though. With a Teensy 3.2 and bluetooth radio on board, the spino team is able to play games on their display. LEDs don’t work exactly like CRTs and LCDs though, so some color changes were necessary. The team utilized cell shading with a sobel filter to make Doom look even better than ever. The Teensy is even powerful enough to handle live webcam video sent over USB. The video is rendered and displayed on the spinning LEDs.

Finally we have [Tim Trzepacz] with Megsy? A homebrew Teensy 3++. [Tim] is working on Megsy as part of his residency at the Supplyframe Design Lab. Teensy’s have lots of edge mounted IO pins. There isn’t enough real estate for all the pins though, so some are routed to pads on the bottom. Megsy is a Teensy carrier board that breaks these pads out to pins. The idea is to solder the Teensy directly do the Megsy. As [Tim] calls it, “a poor man’s BGA”. The problem is getting the solder hot enough to melt while sandwiched between two insulating PCBs. [Tim’s] first attempt netted him a rather scorched Megsy board. Blacked as it may have been, the board did work!

If you want to see more Teensy projects, check out our new Teensy projects list. Notice a project I might have missed? Don’t be shy, just drop me a message on Hackaday.io. That’s it for this week’s Hacklet, As always, see you next week. Same hack time, same hack channel, bringing you the best of Hackaday.io!

Creating A PCB In Everything: Eagle, Part 2

September 23, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 31 Comments

In the last (and first) post in this series, we took a look at Eagle. Specifically, we learned how to create a custom part in Eagle. Our goal isn’t just to make our own parts in Eagle, we want to make schematics, boards, and eventually solder a few PCBs.

The board we’ll be making, like all of the boards made in this Creating A PCB In Everything series, is the Nanite Wesley, a small USB development platform based on the ATtiny85. This board has less than a dozen parts, most of which are through-hole. This is the simplest PCB I can imagine that has sufficient complexity to demonstrate how to make a board.

With that said, let’s get onto the second part of our Eagle tutorial and lay out our circuit board.

Continue reading “Creating A PCB In Everything: Eagle, Part 2” →

Join Hackaday For An NYC Meetup

September 23, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 7 Comments

On the eve of the New York Maker Faire, Hackaday is throwing a meetup in the heart of Manhattan. Join us next Thursday for a low-key get-together, a few talks on assistive technologies, and a demo of the coolest new tool in recent memory.

Although these meetups are highly informal (and bringing some of the cool stuff you’ve built is encouraged), we do have a few speakers lined up. Holly Cohen and John Schimmel of DIYAbility are speaking about using homebrew devices for making everyone’s life easier. Johnny Falla of the Enable Community Foundation will give a talk about using 3D printing technology to make hyper-affordable prosthetic devices for underserved populations. Chad Leaman will be representing the Neil Squire Society and will speak about using technology to empower people with disabilities.

As always, snacks and drinks will be provided, and like all Hackaday meetups, bring some cool gear or whatever project you’re working on along with you. This bring-a-hack isn’t a competition, but if it was, we know who would win. Nisan Larea will be attending the meetup, demoing the Wazer desktop waterjet cutter. We caught a glimpse of this machine in San Francisco, and it’s amazing. If you want to see the Wazer waterjet before Maker Faire, this is your chance.

This month’s Hackaday NYC meetup will be at Pivotal Labs, 625 Avenue of the Americas, on Thursday, September 29. It would be really, really cool if you could RSVP beforehand.

This is Hackaday’s pre-game for the World Maker Faire. We’ll be attending, scoping out all the coolest projects and products from this year’s NYC Maker Faire. Find one of the Hackaday crew at the faire, and we’ll hook you up with some swag.

Creating A PCB In Everything: Eagle, Part 1

September 22, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 57 Comments

For the first in a series of posts describing how to make a PCB, we’re going with Eagle. Eagle CAD has been around since the days of DOS, and has received numerous updates over the years. Until KiCad started getting good a few years ago, Eagle CAD was the de facto standard PCB design software for hobbyist projects. Sparkfun uses it, Adafruit uses it, and Dangerous Prototypes uses it. The reason for Eagle’s dominance in a market where people don’t want to pay for software is the free, non-commercial and educational licenses. These free licenses give you the ability to build a board big enough and complex enough for 90% of hobbyist projects.

Of course, it should be mentioned that Eagle was recently acquired by Autodesk. The free licenses will remain, and right now, it seems obvious Eagle will become Autodesk’s pro-level circuit and board design software.

Personally, I learned PCB design on Eagle. After a few years, I quickly learned how limited even the professional version of Eagle was. At that point, the only option was to learn KiCad. Now that Eagle is in the hands of Autodesk, and I am very confident Eagle is about to get really, really good, I no longer have the desire to learn KiCad.

With the introduction out of the way, let’s get down to making a PCB in Eagle.

Continue reading “Creating A PCB In Everything: Eagle, Part 1” →

My Take On Assistive Tech For The Hackaday Prize

September 22, 2016 by Mike Szczys 39 Comments

We’re in the last few weeks for entries in the 2016 Hackaday Prize — specifically the challenge is to show off your take on assisstive technology. This is a hugely broad category and I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I’m sure there’s a ton of low-hanging fruit that’s not obvious to everyone. This would be a great time to hit up the comments below and leave your “hey, I always thought someone should make…” ideas. I’m looking forward to reading them and it might just inspire someone to spend the next couple weeks hammering out a prototype to enter.

For me, it’s medication. I knew this can be a challenging problem having gone through a few cycles of prescription medicines in my life. But recently I helped out a family member who was suddenly on many medications taken on eight different times a day — including once, twice, three, and six times per day. This was further compounded by sleep deprivation (having to set alarms at night to take the medicine) and drowsy/woozy effects from the medicine. I can tell you first hand that this is really tough for anyone to deal with and it’s incredibly easy to make a mistake or not be able to remember if you took a dose.

Pill Organizers Do No More or Less

We’ve seen a number of pill organizers before and that’s what I reached for in this case. However, that organizer only had four slots for each day. I didn’t hack it (other than writing on the doors with a Sharpie for when to take each) but even if there were added buttons or LEDs I’m not convinced this would be a marked improvement.

What you see above is my proposal for the medicine problem. Smartphones have become ubiquitous and the processing power and cameras of even budget phones are mind blowing. I think it is entirely possible to write an app that uses computer vision to recognize pills and sync them with the schedule. This may mean whipping the phone out of your pocket, or designing a pill box that has a phone stand next to it (saying that makes me think of using RPi and a Pi camera). Grab your pills and validate them under the camera.

Useful Augmented Reality

The screen of the phone would use augmented reality to overlay information about the pills it sees — you know, like Pokemon Go but in a way that enriches your life. ‘pills, catch ’em all!’ — new pills can be learned of the fly, delivering the user to a screen to identify the pill and the dosing schedule. Taking the validation picture will record when the medicine was taken, and the natural extension of this systems is a pharmacy’s ability to push your dose schedule to your account when you pick up the prescription. A stretch goal would be keeping an eye out for interactions.

This is all very much like how hospitals do it — they’re scanning bar codes on the packaging and the patient bracelet and recording it. This would be an easier user experience and quite frankly I think companies already in this space (like Snapchat and Niantic) could whip this up in a single-day hackathon no problem.

Is it the perfect system? Maybe not. But there is no perfect system or we’d be using it by now. We need you, the world’s talent pool, to step up and make life a little better. Do it in prototype form by October 3rd and you’ll be eligible for one of twenty $1000 cash prizes and a chance at winning the Hackaday Prize. But even if you don’t build a single thing, one idea could be the spark that lets others change the world for the better. So let’s hear it!

Hacker Places To Visit: Musée Des Arts Et Métiers In Paris

September 22, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 16 Comments

I think the restaurant is really close now... — I think the restaurant is really close now… *CC: E. Broeks*

The best way to pull off this deception: tell your significant other that you’d want nothing more than a romantic week in Paris. Arrive in Paris, stash your bags, and then take either the number three or eleven Metro. When you get to the station that looks like the inside of a giant steam engine, Arts et Métiers, get out. You’re now ten Euros away from one of the coolest museums a hacker could visit.

A significant portion of modern science’s beginnings is sitting in the Musée, polished and beautiful. Most of them are housed in cabinets so old they’re part of the exhibit. Now, the Henry Ford museum in Detroit Michigan is a monument to industrialization, and cool in its own right, but it leaves some questions unanswered. We’re all spoiled by desktop CNCs, precision measurement tools for pennies, and more. How did we get here? How did they measure a shaft or turn a screw before precision digital micrometers? What did early automation look like? Early construction?

Also did I mention it has Foucault’s Pendulum? You know, the one that finally convinced everyone that the Earth rotated around an axis? No big deal.

The museum has a few permanent exhibits: instruments scientifique, matériaux, construction, communication, énergie, mécanique et transports.

What kind of basic museum would have just one example of Pascal's work? — What kind of basic museum would have just one example of Pascal’s work? *CC: Anton Lefterov*

Instruments Scientifiques was one of my favorites. Not only did it include old scientific instruments, it had sections containing some of the original experiments in optics, computation, and more. For example you can see not just one but a few original examples of Pascal’s Pascaline, arguably the first mechanical calculators in the modern era to be used by the layman for every day calculation, signed by Pascal. It’s also worth noting just how incredible the workmanship of these tools are. They’re beautiful.

Matériaux was initially a disappointment as I entered it from the wrong end. For me it started of with a tragically boring and simplistic display on recycling materials designed primarily to torture children on field trips. Luckily it quickly ramped into a fascinating display on materials manufacturing technology. How did we go from hand looms to fully automated Jacquard looms (of which you can see some of the first examples) to our modern day robotic looms? How did ceramic evolve? What was early steelmaking like? It’s very cool and models are all in beautiful condition.

It reeked of copper, machine oil, and phenolics. They just don't make computers like they used to. — It reeked of copper, machine oil, and phenolics. They just don’t make computers like they used to.

By the time I got to Communication I was reaching the limit of my endurance and also what you can fit into a single day of the museum. It’s a large building. It was packed through many of the early examples of computing, television, and space. There was quite a display of early camera equipment. You could get close enough to some truly massive old computers to smell the still off-gassing phenolics.

Construction held my interest for a long time. It’s not my usual interest, but after living in Paris for a month or so I was absolutely burning with curiosity. How did anyone without a single powered crane or vehicle build so many buildings out of stone? It’s packed for four rooms and two stores from floor to ceiling of beautiful little wood models explaining exactly how.

Énergie was quite cool. It followed the development of steam power for the most part. It started with primitive waterwheels. Moved on to turbines. Then showed the gradual increase in complexity until the the modern day. It had some internal combustion too, but much of that was reserved for the transports section of the museum. It also had some interactive displays to entertain children and Hackaday writers. However they were in desperate need of an oiling and this is by far the most ear-piercingly squeaky exhibit in the whole building.

Mécanique is competing with instruments scientifique as my favorite exhibit. Have you ever wanted to see hundreds of examples of screw machines, old lathes, and the evolution of the milling machine? What about models of the factories that built steam engines or massive wagon wheels. They even had a lathe that belonged to a French king. Apparently he thought metalworking was the way to get in touch with the common people.

Transports was a nice exhibit, but it fell a little short for me since I’d been to the aforementioned Henry Ford museum. However, it covered the history of some of the European automobile manufacturers pretty well. Had a nice section on trains and subways. And even had some models of the ships used in the European Space Agency.

Musée_des_Arts_et_Métiers_-_Avion_III_de_Clément_Ader — The entrance of the school. Has some original, “flying,” machines. *CC: King Boshi*

The last exhibit is the museum itself. It’s an historic building. It was originally built as a school for training engineers in 1794 but as the school grew out of it, it slowly transformed into the museum it is today. The architecture is beautiful. It’s adorned in stone and statue like all the French museums. It also has sections cut out in some of the higher storeys of the building so you can see how it was constructed.

Part of its beauty is also related to the school swallowing up the Priory of Saint Martin des Champs (Google translate does a great job if you don’t read French). The Priory is a beautiful old church, founded in 1079. It was home to the last trial by combat the country would see. You can piece together the story between the two pages dedicated to the combatants Jean de Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris.

The muses of agriculture and industry now look over the sanctuary.

The final display in the museum is in the church. It holds Foucault’s pendulum, dangling from the center of the sanctuary. If you get there early enough in the day you may get to watch it knock over a peg or two and prove the rotation for yourself.

Rather than the statues of the saints there are statues of the muses of Industrie and Agriculture. The hall is filled with more exhibits. There are cutaway original automobiles. A model of the Statue of Liberty. A catwalk lets you take a high view of the surroundings. It is also beautiful in and of itself. The church is well maintained and painted in the style original to them.

If you find yourself in Paris with a few hours (or days) to spare I highly recommend this museum. Any technical person would be hard pressed to leave uninspired and unawed by the display. It’s good to get a perspective on the past.

Featured Photo CC: Roi Boshi

How To Run A Pagekite Server To Expose Your Raspberry Pi

September 21, 2016 by Al Williams 9 Comments

Last time I showed you how to expose a web service on a Raspberry Pi (or, actually, any kind of device) by using a reverse proxy from Pagekite. On your Pi, you just need a simple Python script. However, it also depends on the Pagekite server, which isn’t always convenient. There are limits to the free service, and you don’t control the entire thing. The good news is twofold: the same Python script you use to set up the client-side can also set up a server. The other good news is the entire thing is open source.

In practical terms, then, if you have a computer that is always on and has an IP address that can be found on the public internet, you can run your own Pagekite server (they call it a front end) and service your own backends.

Continue reading “How To Run A Pagekite Server To Expose Your Raspberry Pi” →