Upper Room UV-C Keeps Air Cleaner

December 18, 2024 by Lewin Day 59 Comments

2020 saw the world rocked by widespread turmoil, as a virulent new pathogen started claiming lives around the globe. The COVID-19 pandemic saw a rush on masks, air filtration systems, and hand sanitizer, as terrified populations sought to stave off the deadly virus by any means possible.

Despite the fresh attention given to indoor air quality and airborne disease transmission, there remains one technology that was largely overlooked. It’s the concept of upper-room UV sterilization—a remarkably simple way of tackling biological nastiness in the air.

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Tech In Plain Sight: Table Saw Safety

December 17, 2024 by Al Williams 76 Comments

If you ask around a wood shop, most people will agree that the table saw is the most dangerous tool around. There’s ample evidence that this is true. In 2015, over 30,000 ER visits happened because of table saws. However, it isn’t clear how many of those are from blade contact and how many are from other problems like kickback.

We’ve seen a hand contact a blade in a high school shop class, and the results are not pretty. We’ve heard of some people getting off lucky with stitches, reconstructive surgery, and lifelong pain. They are the lucky ones. Many people lose fingers, hands, or have permanent disfiguration and loss of function. Surgeons say that the speed and vigor of the blade means that some of the tissue around the cut vanishes, making reconstruction very difficult.

Modern Tech

These days, there are systems that can help prevent or mitigate these kinds of accidents. The most common in the United States is the patented SawStop system, which is proprietary — that is, to get it, you have to buy a saw from SawStop.

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Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Curvy Centerfold

December 16, 2024 by Kristina Panos 7 Comments

What do you get when you combine a Raspberry Pi 4B, a Kaypro keyboard, and a 9″ Apple ], you get the coolest AVR development workstation I’ve seen in a while.

A Raspberry Pi-based AVR workstation that uses a Kaypro keyboard and 9" monochrome Apple ][c display. — Image by [John Anderson] via Hackaday.IO

As you may have guessed, I really dig the looks of this thing. The paint job on the display is great, but the stripes on the keyboard and badging on are on another level. Be sure to check out the entire gallery on this one.

About that keyboard — [John] started this project with two incomplete keyboards that each had a couple of broken switches. Since the two keyboards were compliments of each other parts-wise, they made a great pair, and [John] only had to swap out three switches to get it up and clacking.

In order to make it work with the Pi, [John] wrote a user-mode serial driver that uses the uinput kernel module to inject key events to the kernel. But he didn’t stop there.

Although the Pi supports composite video out, the OS doesn’t provide any way to turn off the chroma color signal that’s modulated on top of the basic monochrome NTSC signal, which makes the picture look terrible. To fix that, he wrote a command-line app that sets up the video controller to properly display a monochrome NTSC signal. Happy AVRing on your amazing setup, [John]! Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Curvy Centerfold” →

Hackaday Links: December 15, 2024

December 15, 2024 by Dan Maloney 7 Comments

It looks like we won’t have Cruise to kick around in this space anymore with the news that General Motors is pulling the plug on its woe-beset robotaxi project. Cruise, which GM acquired in 2016, fielded autonomous vehicles in various test markets, but the fleet racked up enough high-profile mishaps (first item) for California regulators to shut down test programs in the state last year. The inevitable layoffs ensued, and GM is now killing off its efforts to build robotaxis to concentrate on incorporating the Cruise technology into its “Super Cruise” suite of driver-assistance features for its full line of cars and trucks. We feel like this might be a tacit admission that surmounting the problems of fully autonomous driving is just too hard a nut to crack profitably with current technology, since Super Cruise uses eye-tracking cameras to make sure the driver is paying attention to the road ahead when automation features are engaged. Basically, GM is admitting there still needs to be meat in the seat, at least for now.

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Hacker Tools, Hacked Tools

December 14, 2024 by Elliot Williams 2 Comments

We just love a good DIY tool project, and more so when it’s something that we can actually use cobbled together from stuff in our closet, or hacked out of cheap “toys”. This week we saw both a superb Pi Pico-based logic analyzer and yet another software frontend for the RTL-SDR dongle, and they both had us thinking of how good we have it.

If you don’t already have a logic analyzer, or if you have one of those super-cheap 8-channel jobbies, it might be worth your while to check out the Pico firmware simply because it gets you 24 channels, which is more than you’ll ever need™. At the low price of $4, maybe a little more if you need to add level shifters to the circuit to allow for 5 V inputs, you could do a lot worse for less than the price of a fancy sweet coffee beverage.

And the RTL dongle; don’t get us started on this marvel of radio hacking. If you vaguely have interest in RF, it’s the most amazing bargain, and ever-improving software just keeps adding functionality. The post above adds HTML5 support for the RTL-SDR, allowing you to drive it with code you host on a web page, which makes the entire experience not only cheap, but painless. Talk about a gateway drug! If you don’t have an RTL-SDR, just go out and buy one. Trust me.

What both of these hacker tools have in common, of course, is good support by a bunch of free and open software that makes them do what they do. This software enables a very simple piece of hardware to carry out what used to be high-end lab equipment functions, for almost nothing. This has an amazing democratizing effect, and paves the way for the next generation of projects and hackers. I can’t think of a better way to spend $20.

Hack On Self: How’d My Day Go?

December 13, 2024 by Arya Voronova 4 Comments

Humans are well overdue for a technological revolution – not a profit-driven one like we’re having now, a human-centric one. Sci-fi is wonderful for having your brain run wild. Over the last century, we’ve had writers try and imagine what world would’ve had looked like if a new technology were to address different aspects of human condition, or, work to undercut us all in yet unseen ways, for a change.

Quite a few leading HaD projects have clear sci-fi inspiration, too, and same goes for a large number of Hackaday Prize entries. Over here, we live for fantasy made reality through skill, wit, and insights.

Ever got a sci-fi-esque dream that you’ve tried to implement with modern-day tech, only to fail because something fundamental was missing about how your phone/laptop/smartwatch functions? You’re not alone here, for sure – this describes a large chunk of my tech journey. In real life, you work with audience-tailored devices, the few fun usecases pre-cooked into the hardware-firmware blob.

Still, how much can you build on top of a consumer device? Alternative OSes that liberate you from the trend of enshittification, for instance, that one’s brilliant and a lifeline for preserving one’s sanity. Alternative platforms that bring a reprieve from a modern combative and ad-filled social media environment, sure. Still, feels limited

How about diary keeping? Personal diaries are really rad, aren’t they? Surely, that one’s a low-hanging fruit? Continue reading “Hack On Self: How’d My Day Go?” →

Hackaday Podcast Episode 300: The Dwingeloo 25 M Dish, A Dead-Tech Twofer, And Deconstructing PCBs

December 13, 2024 by Kristina Panos 6 Comments

This week on the big 300th episode, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos teamed up to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week. So basically, business as usual.

First up in the news: it’s time for the Hackaday Europe 2025 call for proposals! Do you have a tale of hardware, firmware, or software that must be shared with the Hackaday crowd? Then this is your chance to regale us with a 20- or 40-minute talk. You know we love to hear new voices, so be sure to consider proposing a talk.

On What’s That Sound, it’s a results show week. Congratulations to [Kelvin] who was one of many that correctly identified it as the Wii startup sound. Kristina will just be over here with her Pikachu64 with the light-up cheeks.

Then it’s on to the hacks and such beginning with a rather nice reverse-engineering of the PS1, which surprisingly did it with a two-sided board. Then it’s on to a smartphone home server, magic eye images in a spreadsheet, and the math behind the music of 80s. Finally, we talk about disc cameras, the hovercraft revolution, and a whole mess of keyboards.

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!

Download in DRM-free MP3 and savor at your leisure.