Hacklet 120 – Coffee Hacks

August 13, 2016 by Adam Fabio 31 Comments

Hackers need fuel to hack. In general that fuel comes in the form of food, water, and caffeine. Not necessarily in that order. While soda or energy drinks will do in a pinch, the best hackers know that the purest form of caffeine comes from coffee. This of course means that there have been decades of coffee hacks. The first Internet-connected coffee pot dates all way back to 1991, before the web even had pictures. We’ve come a long way since then. This week on the Hacklet we’re checking out some of the best coffee hacks on Hackaday.io!

We start with [opeRaptor] and CoffeeOfThings. [OpeRaptor] has created a wireless, internet connected coffee carafe. The carafe has three CdS cells which enable it to detect how much black gold is left in the pot. A TMP36 sensor reports the current coffee temperature. Data is sent out via a NRF24l01 radio. The brains of the coffee pot is an MSP430 microcontroller. All this runs from a simple CR2032 coin cell. A base station receives the coffee data, displays it on a very nice Vacuum fluorescent Display (VFD). An ESP8266 then passes the data on to the internet.

Next up is [magnustron] with quad-386 coffee heater. No one likes a cold cup of coffee. Everyone loves old CPUs. [Magnustron] turned these two shower thoughts into a the world’s first USB powered quad CPU coffee warmer with data logging capabilities. A simple ATtiny461 micro runs the show. PC connectivity is via USB using the V-USB library. [Magnustron] has gotten the CPUs to warm up, but is having some issues with switching. them on. Turning all four heaters on too quickly causes the rail to droop, leading to dropped USB connections. Those power-hungry 386 chips may be a bit too much for a single USB connection. It might be time to add an external power supply.

Next is [kesh1030] with Using Waste Coffee As A Biodiesel Source. Coffee isn’t just liquid energy. There’s oil in them there grounds. Millions of pounds of used coffee grounds produced every year can be converted to biodiesel fuel. [Kesh1030] experimented with different coffee grounds, and different ways to prepare them. The oil was extracted from the coffee using hexane, which is a bit of a nasty solvent. [Kesh1030] used a fume hood to stay safe. He found that homogenized coffee grounds had an 11.87% oil yield. Used homogenized coffee grounds weren’t far behind, with 9.82% yield of oil. Nearly 10% per weight yield isn’t too shabby, considering this is all going into the trash.

Finally, we have [saadcaffeine] with Caffeinator: gravity powered geek fuel dripper. This is a project of few words, but the images tell much of the story. [Saadcaffeine] created his own cold drip iced coffee maker using upcycled and found components. Three clothes hangers form an ingenious tripod. The tripod holds two soda bottles – the water reservoir and the brew pot. Water is restricted by small holes in the soda bottle caps. This allows it to drop slowly though the machine, giving it time to soak up all the caffeinated goodness. The result is a fresh cup of cold drip. Just add ice and enjoy a quick power up!

If you want to see more coffee hacks, check out our new coffee projects list. See 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!

Tearing Into Delta Sigma ADCs Part 2

August 11, 2016 by Bil Herd 21 Comments

In part one, I compared the different Analog to Digital Converters (ADC) and the roles and properties of Delta Sigma ADC’s. I covered a lot of the theory behind these devices, so in this installment, I set out to find a design or two that would help me demonstrate the important points like oversampling, noise shaping and the relationship between the signal-to-noise ratio and resolution.

Modulator Implementation

Check out part one to see the block diagrams of what what got us to here. The schematics shown below are of a couple of implementations that I played with depicting a single-order and a dual-order Delta Sigma modulators.

Basically I used a clock enabled, high speed comparator, with two polarities in case I got it the logic backwards in my current state of burn out to grey matter ratio. The video includes the actual schematic used.

Since I wasn’t designing for production I accepted the need for three voltages since my bench supply was capable of providing them and this widget is destined for the drawer with the other widgets made for just a few minutes of video time anyway. Continue reading “Tearing Into Delta Sigma ADCs Part 2” →

Hot Wire Strippers Are Probably The Best Tool You Aren’t Using

August 9, 2016 by Al Williams 126 Comments

I wanted to point out a tool that I often use, but rarely see on other people’s workbenches: thermal strippers. They aren’t cheap, but once you’ve used them, it is hard to go back to stripping wires with an ordinary tool.

I know, I know. When I first heard of such a thing, I thought what you are probably thinking now: maybe for some exotic coated wire, but for regular wire, I just use a pair of diagonal cutters or a mechanical stripper or a razor blade. You can do that, of course, and for large solid wires, you can even get good results. But for handling any kind of wire, regardless of size, you just can’t beat a thermal stripper.

Continue reading “Hot Wire Strippers Are Probably The Best Tool You Aren’t Using” →

Editor Wars: The Revenge Of Vim

August 8, 2016 by Elliot Williams 124 Comments

Rarely on these pages have I read such a fluff piece! Al Williams’ coverage of Emacs versus Vim was an affront to the type of in-depth coverage our Hackaday readers deserve. While attempting to be “impartial” he gave a seven-sentence summary of Vim, the Ultimate Editor. Seven sentences! Steam is pouring out of my ears like Yosemite Sam.

Al, like a lot of you out there, thinks that he “knows how to use vi”. I’m here to tell you that he doesn’t. And unless you’ve spent the last few years alone in a cave high in the Himalayas, with only food, drink, a laptop, and Vim Golf, you probably don’t either. Heck, I don’t consider myself a Vim master, but I’m going to write this overwrought essay praising it (using Vim, naturally).

The reason I’m writing this is not to perpetuate the vi-versus-Emacs war. That idea is silly anyway, and was probably invented by Emacs folks to steal some of vi’s limelight. You see, vi-versus-Emacs is a red herring. Vi and Vim are so strange, so different from any other editor you might use, that it makes Emacs look simply boring in comparison: it’s just a normal editor with decent extensibility (if you can stand Lisp), horrible key combinations that may or may not cause carpal tunnel syndrome, and code bloat that rivals Microsoft Word. If you’re comfortable using Pico or Nano or Joe or Notepad++ or Gedit or Kate, or anything else for that matter, you can be comfortable using Emacs in a month or so. It’s really just another editor. Yawn.

Vi is something else. It’s a programming language for editing text that’s disguised as an editor. If you try to use it like a normal text editor, you will suffer. If you approach your text editing chores like factoring code into functions, you’re starting to understand Vi.

Continue reading “Editor Wars: The Revenge Of Vim” →

In Paris Buying A 3D Printer Is Cheaper Than Renting Machine Time

August 8, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 82 Comments

As many of the members of the Brian Benchoff hate/fan club know, the life of a Hackaday writer is nomadic and filled with exciting adventures. Jenny List is actually crime fighting cyborg (think Bond); it’s why she knows so much about electronics. James Hobson is Iron Man. The list goes on. There are lots of unnecessary details, but to summarize: Last month I was living in Washington State, this month I am in Paris, France. It’s really nice here, the buildings are beautiful, the cathedrals stunning, and the food significantly tastier.

However, as a contracting engineer with a project involving a deadline; I found myself in dire need of a significant amount of quick turn-around 3D printing during my working vacation to France. Through a lot of trial and tribulation, I eventually discovered that the most cost-effective way to get the prints done… was to just buy a cheap 3D printer and run it into the ground.

Appropriately, LVL1 is also home to the world's largest 3D printed trashcan (full of failed 3D prints). — Appropriately, LVL1 is also home to the world’s largest 3D printed trashcan (full of failed 3D prints).

I was spoiled by my hackerspace in Louisville, KY. They had enough 3D printers to go around and the pricing was fixed at 10 cents a gram. For the amount of printing I needed, this would be a perfectly economical arrangement. So, I set out to find a hackerspace in Paris. Whereupon I reached my first and obvious problem; I speak very little French.

Most of the hackerspaces listed in Paris are, as far as I can tell, illegally squatting in a scary part of town, exclusive to a university, exclusive to a business, or closed down.

So, I googled a bit harder. Wow! Apparently a Techshop opened up in Paris. It’s about an hour away from where I live, but having toured a Techshop before, I knew they would have the nice version of the tool I need. So, one morning bright and early I got on the metro and headed over to get a tour of the place.

What I’ve discovered is this: If you need things like a water jet cutter, welding station, or a 50 grand CNC machine, Techshop is a really economical way to get access to and play with tools like that. However, if all you want is access to a laser cutter and a 3D printer, it will set you back five-hundred dollars and you’ll have to jump through some incredibly annoying hoops just to get access to them.

Only a small fee of 400 euros to used these badboys. — Only a small fee of 400 euros to used these bad boys.

See, most pieces of equipment at a Techshop need to be reserved. Only the 150 euro and 300 euro a month membership tiers can reserve equipment. The 150 tier can reserve something for two hours, the 300, four. If you’ve ever 3D printed you can immediately spot the problem with that. For small prints this could be workable, but if you have a lot of large prints four hours is just not enough. However, there is a work around. If you’re willing to take a metro ride late at night, arriving at the Techshop at 10:00pm, you can, of course, run a print overnight.

There were two more glitches in the Techshop plan. To be able to touch the printers required a two-hour course with a 100 euros fee. The filament also ran 65 euro per 500 g. My printing needs would easily cost me tens of hours in travel and had a starting fee of 400 euros to be workable.

The entrance to Usine.io is terrifying. It's this massive pitch black hallway. I had no idea if I was in the right place until I got to the desk. — The entrance to Usine.io is terrifying. It’s this massive pitch black hallway. I had no idea if I was in the right place until I got to the desk.

Now, I’m not saying Techshop isn’t absolutely wonderful when it comes to more advanced tools. It’s probably the only Hackerspace in the world where you’re entitled to expect that the CNC machine is in working order, properly trammed, and there are actually cutting bits for it. However, if all you need is a 3D printer, don’t bother.

Now, I asked around some more and found that there was a competing space in Paris called Usine.io. It had a flat fee of 180 euros a month and the training was free. I actually did end up getting a membership here for access to a CNC and basic tools, but for 3D printing it was a bust. They only had three printers serving a sizable membership base. This left the printers with a 48 hour line to get your print started and a maximum of 40 hours of printing a month. A die-hard user of 3D printing can easily use 40 hours in 3 days. Because I had to test many iterations for my project, my need the next month was easily triple that number.

However, the shop itself is really nicely outfitted.

The last avenue available to me aside from 3D printer ownership was contracting someone with a 3D printer to run my prints for me. However, after asking around I found the service to be quite expensive. Rent isn’t cheap in Paris after all. If I just needed a single small print it would be worth it, but if I needed lots of printing it would quickly add up to be more money than I had.

That left me with one option. Which, honestly, sounded absolutely insane for someone visiting a country for a few months. Buy a printer. It’s an indication of the state of 3D printing that the price has come down so far that buying a printer is more economical than having someone do it for you. Even a few years ago this was not possible. However, European Amazon Prime had a workable enough import printer to my doorstep faster than any commercially available service could even process my order. We’ve come a long way since the Darwin. That’s for sure.

Featured Photo From Famous Paris buildings by LeFabShop

Hackaday Links: August 7, 2016

August 7, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 12 Comments

The Starship Enterprise (no bloody A, B, C, or D) recently got a makeover. It was donated to the Smithsonian, and the workers at the Air and Space Museum took it apart and put it back together. Why? It’s the 50th anniversary of TOS. Hopefully the new show will be using some practical effects.

After years of trying, we’ve finally attained max buzzword. Here’s a pentesting hacker quadcopter drone, “a hacker’s laptop that can fly.” Why would anyone do this? Because, “You need to be close to the wireless signal to be able to read it. [Danger Drone] removes that barrier of physical access.” For just $500, you can do the same thing a coat hanger yagi can do. Amazing.

Q2 reports for 3D printer companies! Lulzbot is going gangbusters yet again. We’re looking at the greatest success of Open Source Hardware here. Stratasys, on the other hand, lost less money in Q2 2016. That’s their good news.

About a year ago, we heard about an LCD that was one inch high and ten inches long. That’s bizarre, but great for rackmount gear. The company behind this weird LCD is updating this weird and wonderful LCD and giving it touchscreen capability.

On this week’s edition of, ‘you’re going to cut your arm off with that thing’, here’s an angle grinder converted into a chainsaw.

A few weeks ago, we posted a link to this video, demonstrating an absurdly clever method for creating a mold for a fiberglass dome. You can just use a pendulum and a pile of dirt. Now, the mold for this fiberglass dome is complete. [J Mantzel] has already pulled 1/8th of his gigantic fiberglass sphere out of his mold, and there are only seven more to go. After that, he’ll find out if these sphere sections actually line up.

UK peeps! Hackaday and Tindie are doing a London Meetup! Details to come, but follow the event page on Hackaday.io.

I arrived in Vegas a day (or two) early for DEF CON. Instead of contemplating the banality of existence on the strip, I decided on a meetup at the grave of James T. Kirk. The meetup was a huge success. Walking two miles in 115° heat was not a great idea, but I didn’t die.

Hacklet 119 – Retrogaming Console Hacks

August 6, 2016 by Adam Fabio 10 Comments

If you haven’t heard, retrogaming is a thing. 40-somethings are playing the games of their youth alongside millennials who are just discovering these classic games. There are even folks developing new homebrew games for consoles as far back as the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Atari 2600. This week on the Hacklet, we’re highlighting some of the best retrogaming console hardware hacks on Hackaday.io. Note that I did say hardware hacks. The focus this week is on games played on the original hardware. Don’t worry though, I’ll give emulated projects some love in a future Hacklet.

We start with [danjovic] and Atari 2600 Bankswitch Cartridge. The Atari 2600 is a legendary system. Millions of hackers’ first exposure to gaming came through its one button joystick. To make the unit affordable, Atari used a MOS Technology 6507 processor. Essentially it’s a 6502 in a 28-pin package. This meant several features got nerfed, most notably the address space. The 6507 can only address 8KB of RAM. In the Atari, only 4KB is available to the cartridge. Games got around the 4KB limit by bank switching – write a value to a magic address, and the bank switching logic would swap in a whole different section of cartridge ROM. There were several different bank switching schemes used over the years. [Danjovic] has created his own version of this bank switching logic, using only classic 74 series logic chips.

Next up is [ThunderSqueak] with Top Loader NES composite mod. Toward the end of the NES’s life, Nintendo introduced a cost-reduced version known as the “top loader”. This version had a top loading cartridge and no DRM lock-out chip. Unfortunately it also did away with composite AV ports. The only way to hook this NES to your TV was through the RF modulated output. [ThunderSqueak] and a number of other intrepid hackers have fixed this problem. All it takes is a 2N3906 PNP transistor and a few jellybean parts. The video and audio outputs are pulled from the motherboard before they enter the RF modulator. One nice feature is the clean connectors. [ThunderSqueak] used connectors from modular in-wall AV boxes for a setup that looks as good as it works.

Next we have [makestuff] with USB MegaDrive DevKit. Sega’s MegaDrive, or Genesis as it was known here in the USA, was a groundbreaking console. It used a Motorola 68000 16-bit CPU while most other systems were still running a Z80 or a 6502. People loved this console, and there are plenty who still want to develop software for it. Enter [makestuff] with his development kit. On a card with a $40 USD bill of materials, he’s managed to fit SDRAM, an FPGA, and a USB interface. This is everything you need to load and debug software on an unmodified console. The FPGA had enough logic left over that [makestuff] was able to implement a continuous bus cycle tracer over USB. Nice work!

Finally, we have our own [Joshua Vasquez] with R.O.B. 2.0. The original NES came in a deluxe version with a special pack in – a robot. Robotic Operating Buddy, or ROB for short, would play games with the player. Unfortunately ROB was a bit of a flop. It only worked with two games, Gyromite and Stack-Up ~~Ice Climber~~. Most ROB units eventually found their way to the recycling bin. [Joshua] is building a new version of the ROB, with modern controls. He’s already modeled and 3D printed ROB’s head. I can’t wait to see this project come together!

If you want to see more retrogaming goodness, check out our new retrogaming hardware hacks list. See 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!