Virtually Free Rapsberry Pis

May 20, 2016 by Al Williams 54 Comments

One of the nice things about the Raspberry Pi is that it runs Linux and you can do a lot of development right on the board. The converse of that is you can do a lot of development on a Linux desktop and then move things over to the Pi once you get the biggest bugs out. However, sometimes you really need to run code on the actual platform.

There is, however, an in-between solution that has the added benefit of upping your skills: emulate a Pi on your desktop. If you use Linux or Windows on your desktop, you can use QEMU to execute Raspberry Pi software virtually. This might be useful if you don’t have a Pi (or, at least, don’t have it with you). Or you just want to leverage your large computer to simplify development. Of course we would be delighted to see you build the Pi equivalent of the Tamagotchi Singularity but that’s a bit beyond the scope of this article.

Since I use Linux, I’m going to focus on that. If you insist on using Windows, you can find a ready-to-go project on Sourceforge. For the most part, you should find the process similar. The method I’ll talk about works on Kubuntu, but should also work on most other Debian-based systems, including Ubuntu.

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Shaper Tools Will Blow Your Mind

May 20, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 73 Comments

Have you ever wanted to own a full-sized ShopBot? What if some geniuses somewhere made a tool the size of a coffee maker that had the same capabilities? Does an augmented reality, real-time feedback, interactive, handheld CNC router that can make objects ranging in size from a pillbox to an entire conference room table sound like a thing that even exists? It didn’t to me at first, but then I visited the Shaper Tools office in San Francisco and they blew my mind with their flagship tool, Shaper Origin.

This table and the spool holder sitting on it was made with a machine the size of a coffee maker.

It’s impossible for me not to sound like a fan boy. Using Shaper Origin was one of those experiences where you just don’t know what to say afterwards. This is what the future looks like.

I’ve used a lot of CNC tools in my life, from my first home-built CNC conversion, to 1980s monstrosities that ran off the floppy kind of floppy disks, and all the way over to brand new state-of-the-art vertical machining centers. I had to shake a lot of that knowledge off when they demoed the device to me.

Origin is a CNC router built into the form factor of a normal wood router. The router knows where it is on the work piece. You tell it where on the piece you would like to cut out a shape, drill a hole, or make a pocket. It tells you where to go, but as you move it keeps the cutting bit precisely on the path with its three axes of control.

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Navid Gornall Eats His Own Face

May 18, 2016 by Elliot Williams 27 Comments

Navid Gornall is a creative technologist at a London advertising agency, which means that he gets to play with cool toys and make movies. That also means that he spends his every working hour trying to explain tech to non-technical audiences. Which is why he was so clearly happy to give a talk to the audience of hardware nerds at the Hackaday Belgrade conference.

After a whirlwind pastiche of the projects he’s been working on for the last year and a half, with tantalizing views of delta printers, dancing-flame grills, and strange juxtapositions of heat sinks and food products, he got down to details. What followed was half tech show-and-tell, and half peering behind the curtain at the naked advertising industry. You can read our writeup of the highlights after the video below.

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Flying With Proportional – Integral – Derivative Control

May 18, 2016 by Rud Merriam 24 Comments

Your quad-copter is hovering nicely 100 feet north of you, its camera pointed exactly on target. The hover is doing so well all the RC transmitter controls are in the neutral position. The wind picks up a bit and now the ‘copter is 110 feet north. You adjust its position with your control stick but as you do the wind dies and you overshoot the correction. Another gust pushed it away from target in more than one direction as frustration passes your lips: ARGGGHH!! You promise yourself to get a new flight computer with position hold capability.

How do multicopters with smart controllers hold their position? They use a technique called Proportional – Integral – Derivative (PID) control. It’s a concept found in control systems of just about everything imaginable. To use PID your copter needs sensors that measure the current position and movement.

The typical sensors used for position control are a GPS receiver and an Inertial ~~Management~~ Measurement Unit (IMU) made up of an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and possibly a magnetometer (compass). Altitude control would require a barometer or some other means of measuring height above ground. Using sensor fusion techniques to combine the raw data, a computer can determine the position, movement, and altitude of the multicopter. But calculating corrections that will be just right, without over or undershooting the goal, is where PID comes into play. Continue reading “Flying With Proportional – Integral – Derivative Control” →

Minimal MQTT: Networked Nodes

May 17, 2016 by Elliot Williams 32 Comments

Last time on Minimal MQTT, we used a Raspberry Pi to set up an MQTT broker — the central hub of a home data network. Now it’s time to add some sensor and display nodes and get this thing running. So pull out your ESP-8266 module of choice, and let’s get going.

For hardware, we’re using a WeMos D1 Mini because they’re really cute, and absolutely dirt cheap, but basically any ESP module will do. For instance, you can do the same on the simplest ESP-01 module if you’ve got your own USB-serial adapter and are willing to jumper some pins to get it into bootloader mode. If you insist on a deluxe development board that bears the Jolly Wrencher, we know some people.

NodeMCU: Getting the Firmware

We’re using the NodeMCU firmware because it’s quick and easy to get running. But you’re not stuck with NodeMCU if you want to go it alone: MQTT has broad support. [TuanPM] ported over an MQTT library to the native ESP8266 SDK and of course there’s espduino, a port for an Arduino-plus-ESP combo. He also ported the MQTT module to NodeMCU that we’ll be using today. Thanks, [TuanPM]!

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Reinventing VHDL Badly

May 16, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

A few years ago, Philip Peter started a little pet project. He wanted to build his own processor. This really isn’t out of the ordinary – every few months you’ll find someone with a new project to build a CPU out of relays, logic chips, or bare transistors. Philip is a software developer, though, and while the techniques and theory of building hardware haven’t changed much in decades, software development has made leaps and bounds in just the past few years. He’s on a quest to build a CPU out of discrete components.

Search the Internet for some tips and tricks for schematic capture programs like KiCad and Eagle, and you’ll find some terrible design choices. If you want more than one copy of a very specific circuit on your board, you have to copy and paste. Circuit simulation is completely separate from schematic capture and PCB design, and unit testing – making sure the circuit you designed does what it’s supposed to do – is a completely foreign concept. Schematic capture and EDA suites are decades behind the curve compared to even the most minimal software IDE. That’s where Philip comes in. By his own admission, he reinvented VHDL badly, but he does have a few ideas that are worth listening to.

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Meet Up With Hackaday This Saturday In San Mateo

May 16, 2016 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

We’ll be at Bay Area Maker Faire and we want to have a beer with you on Saturday night.

Two years ago we headed off to the Bay Area Maker Faire and thought we’d invite friends and acquaintances to congregate at a bar on Saturday night. Anyone who’s been to the Faire (or been through a harrowing weekend of working a booth) knows that a bar stool and frothy beverage are a great way to recuperate. The turnout was amazing, we easily filled up O’Neill’s Irish Pub with that first meetup, and the Hackaday BAMF Meetup was born. Last year we packed it to the seams. This year we’re planning for an even bigger turnout that will go late into the evening.

I’ve only ever heard one complaint about this event; the band is too loud. This year O’Neill’s doesn’t have a band lined up so everything seems to be coming up roses. Come hang out with us! If you RSVP we’ll buy your first beer. Bring your stories, your easily transported hacks to show off, and have fun with the eclectic and enthralling community that turns out for this, the greatest meetup on earth.

Hackaday Letter from the Editors

If this is the first you’ve heard about this year’s meetup, you should subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Every week, a Hackaday Editor writes about what’s been going on that week, and shares a few of the most interesting posts from the past seven days. You can sign up for it in the sidebar to the right or with that signup link I just shared. If you’d like to know what you’re getting yourself into, here’s the most recent newsletter which we sent out on Friday. It’s a mini Hackaday delivered to your mailbox.