Hackaday Links: November 25, 2018

November 25, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

Bad Obsession Motorsport have been stuffing the engine and suspension from a 4WD Celica into an old Mini since forever. It is a wonderful homage to Police Squad and some of the best machining and fabrication you’ll see on YouTube. The latest episode tackled the electrical system and how to drive an alternator in an extremely cramped engine bay. The solution was a strange flex-shaft confabulation, and now the Bad Obsession Motorsport guys have a video on how they attached an alternator to a car where no alternator should go. It’s forty minutes of machining, go watch it.

Last Friday was Black Friday, and that means it’s time to CONSUME CONSUME CONSUME. Tindie’s having a sale right now, so check that out.

I’m the future of autonomous flight! This week, I got a market research survey in my email from Uber, wanting me to give my thoughts on autonomous ridesharing VTOL aircraft. Uber’s current plan for ridesharing small aircraft involves buying whatever Embraer comes up with (Uber is not developing their own aircraft), not having pilots (this will never get past the FAA), and turning a random parking lot in LA into the busiest airport in the world (by aircraft movements, which again is something that will never get past the FAA). Needless to say, this is criminally dumb, and I’m more than happy to give my thoughts. Below are the relevant screencaps of the survey:

The crux of this survey is basic market research; how much would I pay for a VTOL ride sharing service versus buying a new (autonomous) car versus using an autonomous Uber. You’ve also got a Likert scale thingy asking me if I’m comfortable flying in a battery-powered aircraft. Protip: I highly doubt anyone given this survey has flown in a battery-powered aircraft. Proprotip: the easiest way to screw up the scoring for a Likert scale is to answer ‘1’ for the first question, ‘2’ for the second, etc., and wrap back around to ‘1’ for the sixth question.

Don’t worry, though: I answered all the questions truthfully, but Uber Air will never happen. The FAA won’t let this one fly, and no company will ever carry passengers without a licensed pilot on board.

Hackaday Links: November 18, 2018

November 18, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

The greatest bit of consumer electronics is shipping and the reviews are out: Amazon’s Alexa-enabled microwave is a capable microwave, but befuddling to the voice-controlled-everything neophyte. Voice controlled everything is the last hope we have for technological innovation; it’s the last gasp of the consumer electronics industry. This is Amazon’s first thing with a built-in voice assistant, and while this is a marginally capable microwave at only 700 Watts — fine for a college dorm, but it’s generally worth shelling out a bit more cash for a 1000 Watt unit — the controls are befuddling. The first iteration is always hard, and we’re looking forward to the Amazon Alexa-enabled toaster, toothbrush, vacuum cleaner, and Bezos shrine.

Need a laser cutter, like crowdfunding campaigns, and know literally nothing about laser cutters? Have we got something for you. The Etcher Laser crowdfunding campaign has been pinging my email non-stop, and they’ve got something remarkable: a diode laser ~~cutter~~ engraver for $500. It comes in a neat-looking enclosure, so it’s sure to raise a lot of money.

A while back [Paulusjacobus] released an Arduino-based CNC controller for K40 laser cutters. There were a few suggestions to upgrade this to the STM32, so now this CNC controller is running on a Blue Pill. Yes, it’s great and there’s more floating points and such and such, so now this project is a Kickstarter project. Need a CNC controller based on the STM32? Boom, you’re done. It’s also named the ‘Super Gerbil’, which is an awesome name for something that is effectively a GRBL controller. Naming things is the hardest problem in computer science, after all.

The Gigatron computer is a ‘home computer’ without a microprocessor or microcontroller. How does it do this? A metric butt-load of ROM and look-up tables. This is cool and all, but now the Gigatron logo is huge. we’re talking 18 μm by 24 μm. This was done by etching a silicon test wafer with electron beam lithography.

Hackaday Links: The Eleventh Day Of The Eleventh Month, 2018

November 11, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 23 Comments

For the better part of the last five years, the Great War Channel on YouTube has been covering the events of the Great War, week by week, exactly 100 years later. It’s hundreds of episodes designed for history buffs, and quite literally one of the most educational channels on YouTube. It’s the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eighteenth year, which means the folks behind the Great War Channel are probably taking a well-deserved vacation. If you haven’t heard of this channel, it might be a good time to check it out.

Ikea is now selling NFC locks. [Mike] wrote in to tell us he found the new ROTHULT drawer deadbolts for $18 at Ikea. No, these aren’t meant for your front door, they’re meant for file cabinets. That’s a different threat model, and no lock is ever completely secure. However, there are some interesting electronics. You get a lock powered by three AAA batteries and two NFC cards for $18. Can’t wait for the teardown.

The biggest news from the United States this week is big. People gathered in the streets. Millions made sure their voices were heard. Journalists were cut down for asking questions. This is a week that will go down in history. The McRib is back for a limited time. It’s just a reconstituted pork patty, pickles, onions, and sauce on a hoagie roll, but there’s more to the McRib than you would think. McDonalds only releases the McRib when the price of pork is low, and in late October, pork belly futures hit their lowest price since the last time the McRib came to town. This has led some to claim the McRib is just a second lever for McDonalds in an arbitrage play on the price of pork. McDonalds is always buying pork futures, the theory goes, and when it looks like they’re going to lose money, McDonalds simply turns on the McRib production line, pushing pork consumption up, and netting McDonalds a tidy profit. With the volume you’re looking at, McDonalds will never lose money by betting on pork.

You can turn anything into a quadcopter. A dead cat? Yes, it’s been done. How about a quartet of box fans? That’s what the folks at Flite Test did, and while the completed article was wobbly and didn’t survive its first crash, it was a quadcopter made out of box fans.

Hackaday Links: October 28, 2018

October 28, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 11 Comments

Steve Jobs was actually a good designer and CEO. This is a statement that would have been met with derision in 2010, with stories of a ‘reality distortion field’. We’re coming up on a decade in the post-Jobs era, and if there’s one thing the last seven or eight years can tell us, it’s that Jobs really, really knew how to make stuff people wanted. Apart from the iPhone, OS X, and the late 90s redesign of their desktops, the most impressive thing Jobs ever did was NeXT. Now there’s book that describes the minutia of all NeXT hardware. Thanks to the Adafruit blog for pointing this one out.

Speaking of Apple, here’s something else that’s probably not worth your time. It’s a highly exclusive leak of upcoming Apple hardware that’s sure to change everything you know about tech. Really, it’s a floating hockey puck branded with the Apple logo. No idea what this is, but somebody is getting some sweet, sweet YouTube ad revenue from this.

A few years ago, [Tom Stanton] built an electric VTOL plane. It looked pretty much like any other foam board airplane you’d find, except there were motors on the wingtips a lá an Osprey. Now, he’s massively improving this VTOL plane. The new build features a 3D printed fuselage and 3D printed wing ribs to give this plane a proper airfoil. Despite being mostly 3D printed, this VTOL plane weighs less than half of the first version. Also, a reminder: VTOL planes (or really anything that generates lift from going forward) are the future of small unmanned aerial craft. Better get hip to this now.

Next weekend is the Hackaday Superconference, and you know we’re going to have an awesome hardware badge. It’s a badge, that’s a computer, and has a keyboard. What more could you want? How about an expansion header? Yeah, we’ve got a way to add a shift register and 8 LEDs to the badge. From there, you can do just about everything. Who’s going to bring an old parallel port printer?

Hackaday Links: October 21, 2018

October 21, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 31 Comments

A few weeks ago, we got word [Fran] was being kicked out of her workshop. You might remember [Fran] from her exploits in reverse engineering the launch computer for the Saturn V, her work on replicating the DSKY from an AGC, her visit to the Air & Space Museum annex (so jealous), and her other musical adventures. Why is she getting kicked out? Philly’s getting gentrified, ya jabroinis. Now, there’s a GoFundMe for a new Fran Lab. Go on and ring that bell.

Everyone needs a Sharpie sitting around, so how about one that weighs a pound or so? [MakingStuff] created a new body for a big ‘ol Sharpie marker, complete with knurling. Oh, man, the knurling.

A Powerball ticket costs $2. Last Friday, the expected return on a single Powerball ticket was more than $2. This doesn’t happen often, but last Friday the most logical course of action for everyone was to buy all the Powerball tickets they could.

Boston Dynamics built another dog robot and made it dance to Uptown Funk because we haven’t heard that song enough. No one has listened to Uptown Funk enough times in their life. It’s a great song that never gets old or overplayed.

[Wintergatan] is building a drum machine. You might remember this artisan of plywood from various marble machine builds that also play music. This build goes deep into the techniques of building gigantic mechanical contraptions out of plywood and steel.

Speaking of plywood, Rockler had a contest a while back to build something out of a single sheet of plywood. [OSO DIY] came up with the most interesting table I’ve ever seen. A lot of the entries into this plywood contest turned the plywood on its end, resulting in something that looks like it’s made out of skateboard decks. [OSO DIY]’s coffee table is no exception; it’s basically just a panel of edge-grain plywood made into a table. Where this gets really good is the actual design of the table. It’s clearly a mid-century modern piece, with threaded inserts holding the legs on. However, instead of something that was pressed out of a factory, this table just exudes an immense amount of manual labor. It’s a counterpoint between craftsmanship and minimalist design rendered in plywood and by far one of the most interesting pieces of furniture made in the last few years. Here are some more entries that also capitalize on edge-grain plywood

Hackaday Links: October 14, 2018

October 14, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 14 Comments

Here’s something of interest of 3D printing enthusiasts. How do you print lightweight 3D objects? [Tom Stanton] does a lot of stuff with 3D printing and RC airplanes, so yeah, he’s probably the guy you want to talk to. His solution is Simplify3D, printing two layers for whatever nozzle diameter you have, some skills with Fusion360, and some interesting design features that include integrated ribs.

Moog released their first polyphonic analog synth in 35 years. It’s massive, and it costs eight thousand dollars.

There’s a RISC-V contest, sponsored by Google, Antmicro, and Microchip. The goal is to encourage designers to create innovative FPGA and soft CPU implementations with the RISC-V ISA. There are four categories, the smallest implementation for SpartFusion2 or IGLOO2 boards, and the smallest implementation that fits on an iCE40 UltraPlus board. The two additional categories are the highest performance implementation for these boards. The prize is $6k.

” I heard about polarization filters and now I’m getting a hundred thousand dollars” — some moron. IRL Glasses are glasses that block screens. When you wear them, you can’t watch TV. This is great, as now all advertising is on TVs for some inexplicable reason, and gives these people an excuse to use frames from John Carpenter’s masterpiece They Live in their Kickstarter campaign. Question time: why don’t all polarized sunglasses do this. Because there’s a difference between linear and circular polarized lenses. Question: there have been linear polarized sunglasses sitting in the trash since the release of James Cameron’s Avatar. Why now? No idea.

Alexa is on the ESP32. Espressif released their Alexa SDK that supports conversations, music and audio serivces (Alexa, play Despacito), and alarms. The supported hardware is physically quite large, but it can be extended to other ESP32-based platforms that have SPI RAM.

Hackaday Links: October 7, 2018

October 7, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 14 Comments

Ah, crap. We lost a good one, people. [Samm Sheperd] passed away last month. We’ve seen his stuff before, from a plane with a squirrel cage fan, to completely owning a bunch of engineering students by auditing a class. The obit is available as a Google Doc, and there’s a Samm Sheperd Memorial Fund for the Big Lake Youth Camp in Gladstone, Oregon.

FranLab is closing down! Fran is one of the hardware greats, and she’s being evicted. If you’ve got 2000sqft of workshop space in Philly you’d like to spare, you know who to talk to. There will, probably, be a crowdfunding thing going up shortly, and we’ll post a link when it’s up.

The Parallax Propeller is probably one of the most architecturally interesting microcontrollers out there. It’s somewhat famous for being a multi-core chip, and is commonly used in VGA generation, reading keyboards, and other tasks where you need to do multiple real-time operations simultaneously. The Parallax Propeller 2, the next version of this chip, is in the works, and now there’s real silicon. Everything is working as expected, and we might see this out in the wild real soon.

Thought artistic PCBs were just a con thing? Not anymore, I guess. There has been a lot of activity on Tindie with the Shitty Add-Ons with [TwinkleTwinkie] and [Potato Nightmare] releasing a host of very cool badges for your badges. Most of these are Shitty Add-Ons, and there will be an update to the Shitty Add-On spec shortly. It’s going to be backwards-comparable, so don’t worry.

Unnecessary drama!?! In my 3D printing community?!? Yes, it’s true, there was a small tiff over the Midwest RepRap Festival this week. Here’s what went down. You got three guys. John, Sonny, and Steve. Steve owns SeeMeCNC, based in Goshen, Indiana. John worked for SeeMeCNC until this year, and has been the ‘community manager’ for MRRF along with Sonny. Seeing as how the RepRap Festival is the only thing that ever happens in Goshen, Steve wanted to get the ball rolling for next year’s MRRF, so he sent out an email, sending the community into chaos. No, there’s not some gigantic fracture in the 3D printing community, John and Sonny, ‘were just slacking’ (it’s five months out, dudes. plenty of time.), and Steve wanted to get everything rolling. No problem here, just a bunch of unnecessary drama in the 3D printing community. As usual.