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.

Hacklet 46 – ODROID Projects

May 8, 2015 by 11 Comments

It seems you can’t mention the Raspberry Pi these days without someone bringing up the Odroid. Named after the combination of Open and Android, the current Odroid brand covers several boards – the U3, the UX3 with its 2 Ghz Samsung quad-core processor, and the C1, which is directly aimed at our favorite fruit pie computer. With all this popularity, one would expect a few awesome projects based around the Odroid machines, and you’d be right! This week’s Hacklet is all about projects using the Odroid on Hackaday.io!

Robbie jrWe start with [herrkami] and CRONUS. Cronus started life as a Robbie Junior, Radio Shack’s re-branded version of Takara Tomy’s Omnibot Jr.  [herrkami] has upgraded Cronus’ brain with an Odroid U3. Cronus can now reliably respond to voice commands thanks to a little help from Google’s speech recognition engine and the accompanying Python API. Cronus is rather conversational as well, all due to the AIML framework. [herrkami] hopes to cut the cord (or WiFi link) once he gets CMU sphinx up and running. Some of [herrkami’s] best work is in his cardboard templates to create a mechanism for turning Cronus’ head. These are some pretty sweet updates for a 1986 vintage robot!

 

serverNext up is [tlankford01] with Linux Tutorial: Odroid U3 Server w/ Seafile Cloud. [tlankford01] walks us through setting up a file server using the Odroid, a 16 Gigabyte EMMC card, and a hard drive to hold the files. As one might expect, this tutorial covers a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server stack. The 9 project logs take us from a bare microSD card to a full server. The Odroid’s 2 Gigabytes of ram are put to good use running the open source Seafile cloud server package. Tutorials like this deserve lots of love from the Hackaday.io community. Sometimes you just need to get a solid file server up and running. When that happens, this type of project is often just what the doctor ordered! So don’t be a lurker, head over to [tlankford01]’s page and give him a skull!

 

touch[Victor] gets us one step closer to an Odroid tablet with the HDMI touchscreen. HDMI touchscreen is a project to connect a 7″ 1024 x 600 LCD with a capacitive touchscreen to HDMI based computers. The heart of the project is Texas Instrument’s TFP401 panelbus DVI receiver chip. This chip makes interfacing LCD screens to HDMI or DVI video cards (almost) painless. There still is a bit of X configuration to do to get things running. [Victor] even got his Odroid running in Android with his custom screen setup. Those of us who have spent time in display an input configuration file limbo know that this is no small feat!

htpcFinally we have [darth_llamah] with Odroid-U3 HTPC. [Darth] raided his junkbox and parts drawers to build a solid home theater PC using the Odroid-U2. The U2 is a bit older than the current U3 models, but all [Darth’s] work should apply to any of the Odroid series. An old Itona case provided the frame for this hack, but it took a lot of custom work with plastic and epoxy to make everything fit. [Darth’s] software stack is the popular OpenELEC Linux build. [Darth] even setup a real “soft” power button using an ATtiny85 connected to USB and s Adafruit’s TrinketHidCombo library.

If you want to see all the Odroid projects in one place, check out our new Odroid projects list!

That’s it for this Hacklet, As always, see you next week. Same hack time, same hack channel, bringing you the best of Hackaday.io!

Caption CERN Contest — Prize Upgrade This Week

May 8, 2015 by 8 Comments

Week 13 of the Caption CERN Contest might be gone, but our intrepid scientist is still rocking his caffeine rush. Thanks for the captions! We’re still trying to figure out if the faces in on the wall are anyone famous – and who exactly are in the cartoon postcards toward the top of the wall. A few readers picked up on what looks to be a compressed air hose in the background. Every office has their coffee station, but we’re betting this particular CERN lab had some seriously frothy milk!

The Funnies:

  • “Schroedinger’s fist-bump” – [Jarrett]
  • “Even though the other scientists had rejected John’s idea to control the accelerator with a six speed manual transmission, he would often close his eyes and imagine shifting through the gears of a machine with a few trillion electron volts under the hood.”- [MechaTweak]
  • “At CERN the coffee doesn’t have a lot of kick, but it does have some punch..” – [THX1082]

The winner for this week is [Matt] with ‘”this is going to make one gooood coffee rush selfie. All my friends are doing it. We post them on the wall.” – CERN staff really were ahead of their time.’ [Matt] won a sweet Robot Head T-Shirt From The Hackaday Store!

Week 14: Prize Upgrade!

cern-14-smWe’ve seen a lot of strange equipment here at Hackaday, but Week 14’s image left us at a loss for words, at least for a few minutes. What the heck is this thing? Pressure vessel? RF chamber? Looking at this image and another one depicting a strange device in CERN’s labs, we haven’t the foggiest idea. We do know it’s large, and these two CERN scientists are working hard to get it ready for… something. It also has fins. Fins make everything cooler. Beyond that – we’re leaving this one in the capable hands of our caption team on Hackaday.io.

buspirate2We’re sweetening the pot a bit this week. Up until now, our weekly prize has been a T-shirt. While clothing is important, we know that hackers love hacking tools, so this week’s prize will be a Bus Pirate from The Hackaday store. We’ll try to change it up each week with a different device.

Add your humorous caption as a comment to this project log. Make sure you’re commenting on the contest log, not on the contest itself. As always, if you actually have information about the image or the people in it, let CERN know on the original image discussion page.

Good Luck!

We’re Giving Out 125 Teensy-LC Boards This Week

May 7, 2015 by 49 Comments

This week we’re giving away 125 Teensy-LC Boards. You’ve sat on the sidelines long enough. Time to write down your Hackaday Prize idea and get it entered!

It isn’t just the big prize (a trip into space) on the line. Each week we’re giving away things to help your build. Below you can see the 50 projects which won a LightBlue Bean from last week’s giveaway. This week it’s a huge number of Teensy-LC boards going out to those who need them. These little wonders pack a real punch, with a 48 MHz ARM Cortex-M0+ that has 62K of flash, 8k of RAM, plenty of IO and a 12-bit analog module for both input and output! You’ll also be eligible for each of the future weekly giveaways… we’re distributing $50,000 in prizes to hundreds of projects over 17-weeks!

Entering is easy. Write down your idea to help solve a problem faced by a wide range of people. Start fleshing out your build plan. Pictures are a huge help, even if they’re just a hand-drawn sketch on some paper! Your best bet at getting recognized for a giveaway is to post a new project log which mentions how you would add this Teensy board to your creation.

Last Week’s 50 Winners of a LightBlue Bean

50k-in-play-lightblue-bean

Congratulations to these 50 projects who were selected as winners from last week. You will receive a LightBlue Bean which combines Bluetooth LE with an ATmega328 in a nice little package ready for prototyping. Don’t forget to post pictures and information about what you build with these little wonders!

Each project creator will find info on redeeming their prize as a message on Hackaday.io.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Retrotechtacular: The Spirit Of Radio

May 5, 2015 by 11 Comments

Many of us still tune in to terrestrial radio for one reason or another, be it baseball games, talk radio, or classic rock. But do you know how the sound is transmitted to your receiver? This week, our spotlight shines upon a short film produced by KYW Radio that serves as a cheerful introduction to the mysteries of amplitude modulation (AM) radio transmission as they were in 1940.

Sound vibrations enter a microphone and are converted to electrical current, or an audio waveform. The wave is amplified and sent several miles away to the transmitting station. During this trip, the signal loses power and so is amplified at the transmitting station in several stages. This audio wave can’t be transmitted by itself, though; it needs to catch a ride on a high-frequency carrier wave. This wave is generated on-site with a huge crystal oscillator, then subjected to its own series of amplifications prior to broadcast.

The final step is the amplitude modulation itself. Here, the changing amplitude of the original audio wave is used to modulate that of the high-frequency carrier wave. Now the signal is ready to be sent to the tower. Any receiver tuned in to the carrier frequency and in range of the signal will capture the carrier wave. Within the reciever, these currents are converted back to the vibrations that our ears know and love.

Continue reading “Retrotechtacular: The Spirit Of Radio” →

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Hackaday Links: May 3, 2015

May 3, 2015 by 10 Comments

Everybody loves How It’s Made, right? How about 3D printers? The third greatest thing to come out of Canada featured Lulzbot in their most recent episode. It’s eight minutes of fun, but shame the puns weren’t better. Robertson drives and the Avro Arrow, if you’re wondering.

Speaking of 3D printers, a lot of printers are made of aluminum extrusion. Has anyone tried something like this? It’s an idea that’s been around for a while but we can’t seem to find anyone actually using 3D printed extrusion.

CastARs are shipping out, and someone made a holodeck with retroreflective material. It’s an inflatable dome that’s attached to a regular ‘ol tent that works as a positive pressure airlock. If you’re looking to replicate this, try it with hexagons and pentagons. That should be easier than the orange-slice gores.

For some reason we can’t comprehend, USB ports are now power ports. There’s still a lot of stuff that uses 9 and 12V, and for that there’s the USB 912. It’ll work better with one of those USB battery packs.

Want to see what the Raspberry Pi 2 looks like with a Flir? NOQ2 has you covered.

Remember the Speccy? In the manual, there was an exercise left to the reader: reproduce [Mahler]’s first symphony with the BEEP command. It took a Raspberry Pi (only for synchronizing several Speccys), but it’s finally done.

Hackaday Events: NY, LA, SF, LA

May 2, 2015 by 2 Comments

We are doing a lot this spring to get people elbow-deep in hardware hacking. We have so many live events coming up that we’re going to be doing Saturday morning recaps to keep you informed. Here are the upcoming events should be planning to attend if you’re nearby.

nyc-hackationToday! NYC Hardware Hackathon

We hope you didn’t miss our announcements about the Hardware Hackathon we’re putting on in New York. It starts this afternoon and runs all night and into Sunday. If you really want to get in on the hacking we might be able to help you out (hit us up on Twitter). But you can also show up on Sunday to see the results live. Tickets for that are available here.

thp-worldwide-laMay 9 & 10 Hackaday Prize Worldwide: Los Angeles

Next weekend we open up the Hackaday Design Lab of Pasadena, California for a workshop, talks, and a day of hacking. This is the Hackaday Prize Worldwide: Los Angeles. Start out on Saturday with the Zero to Product workshop which will discuss getting from design to production. Interspersed with this are a set of talks from amazing presenters before a bit of social time at night. On Sunday we open our doors for Free Build and hope to see a ton of people working on their Hackaday Prize entries. RSVP now!

2015-05-01_BAMF-meetupSaturday, May 16 BAMF Meetup

Seeing everything at Bay Area Maker Faire means a lot of time on your feet. By the end of the day the Hackaday Crew is ready to take a load off and toss back a tasty beverage. We invite you to join us on Saturday, May 16th starting at 7pm. All the cool kids will be there so please RSVP now.

It’s not compulsory, but a lot of people bring hardware they’ve been working on to show off at this meetup and you should too!

layerone-logoMay 23 & 24 LayerOne Conference

Every year our friends from NullSpace Labs organize the LayerOne Conference in Los Angeles. This is LA’s premier hardware security conference. This year Supplyframe is sponsoring the badges and Hackaday will be camped out at the Hackaday Hardware Villiage.

[Brian Benchoff] and [Mike Szczys] will be hacking their own badges while looking for awesome hacks other people are pulling off. We’ll bring plenty of swag and want to get everyone there to try at least some level of badge hack.

Review: HUZZAH Is The ESP8266 WiFi Setup You Need

May 1, 2015 by 44 Comments

A little board that adds WiFi to any project for a few hundreds of pennies has been all the rage for at least half a year. I am referring to the ESP8266 and this product is a marrige of one of those WiFi modules with the support hardware required to get it running. This week I’m reviewing the HUZZAH ESP8266 Breakout by Adafruit Industries.

If you saw the article [cnlohr] woite for us about direct programming this board you will know that a good chunk of that post covered what you need to do just to get the module into programming mode. This required adding a regulated 3.3V source, and a way to pull one of the pins to ground when resetting the power rail. Not only does the HUZZAH take care of that for you, it turns the non-breadboard friendly module into a DIP form factor while breaking out way more pins than the most common module offers. All of this and the price tag is just $9.95. Join me after the break for the complete run-down.

Continue reading “Review: HUZZAH Is The ESP8266 WiFi Setup You Need” →