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Hackaday Links: June 7, 2015

June 7, 2015 by 22 Comments

I’ve said over and over again that Apple’s MagSafe port is the greatest advancement in laptop tech in the last 15 years. Those charger connectors break, though, so how do you fix it? With Lego, of course (Google translatrix). Use a light-colored 1×4 brick so the LED will shine through.

Want to learn Git commands? Here’s a great game that does just that. It’s a really well-designed game/tutorial that walks you through basic Git commands.

Lets say you’re just slightly paranoid about the Bad Guys™ getting into your computer with 0-days and roller blades. You’d like to connect this computer to the Internet, but you don’t want to leave it connected all the time. The solution? A timer for an Ethernet switch. It’s actually a better solution than doing the same thing with scripts: there’s a real, physical interface, and if the Bad Guys™ get in when you are connected, they could just enable the network adapter anyway. An extremely niche use case, but that’s 99% of the security hacks we see.

The DaVinci 3D printer is an okay printer if you’re cool with the Gilette model. The filament cartridges are chipped, and the software is proprietary. These problems have been solved, and now you can use a standard RepRap heated bed and glass with the DaVinci. At this point, people are buying the DaVinci just to tear it apart.

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Hackaday Links: May 31, 2015

May 31, 2015 by 21 Comments

Back in the mid-70s, [Paul Horowitz] (who has an incredible Wikipedia entry, by the way) started teaching Physics 123 at Harvard. Simple electronic circuits, solving problems with silicon; simple stuff like that. His lecture and lab notes started getting a following, and after Xeroxing a few dozen copies, he realized he had written a book. It was The Art of Electronics, and Ladyada interviewed this master of hand drawn schematics. A great interview and great camera work, too.

Like hackathons? How about one at CERN? It’s happening October 2 through October 4. The aim this year is to have a humanitarian and social impact thanks to technology. The projects last year were very good; everything from cosmic ray detectors to a $10 inflatable fridge for field operations.

You want viral advertising for your movie? This is how you do viral advertising for your movie. It’s Hackerman’s Hacking Tutorials, and we’d really like to know how they did the 80s graphics with modern computers. It’s not like you can just go out and buy a Video Toaster these days…

Previously available only through group buys, the Flir Lepton module is now available at Digikey.

We have hit the singularity. We have stared into the abyss, and the abyss has stared into us. There was a kickstarter to fund a trailer for another, bigger kickstarter. Relevant xkcd right here.

The Tymkrs had a lamb roast, and what better way to do that than with a huge lathe? Put some charcoal on the ways, turn it at a low RPM, and eventually you’ll have a meal. Bonus points for the leaf blower manifold, a gold star for carving it with a sawzall.

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Hackaday Links: May 24, 2015

May 24, 2015 by 11 Comments

A few months ago, we heard about a random guy finding injection molds for old Commodore computers. He did what the best of us would do and started a Kickstarter to remanufacture these cool old cases. It’s the best story on retrocomputing this year, and someone else figured out they could remanufacture Commodore 64 keycaps. If you got one of these remanufactured cases, give the keycaps a look.

Remember this Android app that will tell you the value of resistors by reading their color code. Another option for the iOS crowd was presented at Maker Faire last weekend. It’s called ResistorVision, and it’s perfect for the colorblind people out there. An Android version of ResistorVision will be released sometime in the near future.

A few folks at Langly Research Center have a very cool job. They built a hybrid electric tilt wing plane with eight motors on the wing and two on the tail. It’s ultimately powered by two 8 hp diesel engines that charge Liion batteries. When it comes to hydrocarbon-powered hovering behemoths, our heart is with Goliath.

A bottom-of-the-line avionics panel for a small private plane costs about $10,000. How do you reduce the cost? Getting rid of FAA certification? Yeah. And by putting a Raspberry Pi in it. It was expoed last month at the Sun ‘N Fun in Florida, and it’s exactly what the pilots out there would expect: a flight system running on a Raspberry Pi. It was installed in a Zenith 750, a 2-seat LSA, registered as an experimental. You can put just about anything in the cabin of one of these, and the FAA is okay with it. If it’ll ever be certified is anyone’s guess.

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Hackaday Links: May 17, 2015

May 17, 2015 by 17 Comments

Here’s a worthwhile Kickstarter for once: the Prishtina Hackerspace. Yes, that’s a Kickstarter for a hackerspace in Kosovo. Unlike most hackerspace Kickstarters, they’re already mostly funded, with 20 days to go. If we ever get around to doing the Istanbul to Kaliningrad hackerspace tour, we’ll drop by.

Codebender is a web-based tool that allows you to code and program an Arduino. The Chromebook is a web-based laptop that is popular with a few schools. Now you can uses Codebender on a Chromebook. You might need to update your Chromebook to v42, and there’s a slight bug in the USB programmers, but that should be fixed in a month or so.

Here’s a great way to waste five minutes. It’s called agar.io. It’s a multiplayer online game where you’re a cell, you eat dots that are smaller than you, and bigger cells (other players) can eat you. [Morris] found the missing feature: being able to find the IP of a server so you can play with your friends. This feature is now implemented in a browser script. Here’s the repo.

The FAA currently deciding the fate of unmanned aerial vehicles and systems, and we’re going to live with any screwup they make for the next 50 years. It would be nice if all UAV operators, drone pilots, and everyone involved with flying robots could get together and hash out what the ideal rules would be. That’s happening in late July thanks to the Silicon Valley Chapter of AUVSI (Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International).

SOLAR ROADWAYS!! Al Jazeera is reporting a project in the Netherlands that puts solar cells in a road. It’s just a bike path, it’s only 70 meters long, and it can support at least 12 tonnes (in the form of a ‘fire brigade truck’). There’s no plans for the truly dumb solar roadways stuff – heating the roads, or having lanes with LEDs. We’re desperately seeking more information on this one.

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Hackaday Links: May 10, 2015

May 10, 2015 by 9 Comments

Here’s a cool crowdfunding campaign that somehow escaped the Hackaday Tip Line. It’s a remote control SpaceShipOne and White Knight. SpaceShipOne is a ducted fan that has the high-drag feathering mechanism, while White Knight is a glider. Very cool, and something we haven’t really seen in the scratchbuilding world.

[Sink] has a Makerbot Digitizer – the Makerbot 3D scanner – and a lot of time on his hands. He printed something, scanned it, printed that scan… you get the picture. It’s a project called Transcription Error.

Keurig has admitted they were wrong to force DRM on consumers for their pod coffee cups.

The Apple ][, The Commodore 64, and the Spectrum. The three kings. Apple will never license their name for retro computer hardware, and there will never be another computer sold under the Commodore label. The Spectrum, though… The Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega is a direct-to-TV console in the vein of [Jeri Ellisworth]’s C64 joystick doohickey.

Infinity mirrors are simple enough to make; they’re just one mirror, some LEDs, and another piece of glass. How about a 3D infinity mirror? They look really, really cool.

Here’s the six-day notice for some cool events: Hamvention in Dayton, OH. [Greg Charvat] will be there, and [Robert] is offering cold drinks to anyone who mentions Hackaday. If anyone feels like scavenging for me, here’s a thread I created on the Vintage Computer Forum.  Bay Area Maker Faire is next weekend. Most of the rest of the Hackaday crew will be there because we have a meetup on Saturday night

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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.

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Hackaday Links: April 26, 2015

April 26, 2015 by 11 Comments

In case you haven’t heard, we’re giving away a trip to space. We have $50,000 to promote giving away a trip to space too, and this week we’re giving away some OSH Park gift cards. If you have a project that’s held together with hot glue on a 40-year-old piece of perf board, add a project log describing how you need some free PCBs.

A few months ago, some guy in Texas found the original molds for the Commodore 64C, the Plus/4 and the 128. That discovery turned into one of the best examples of what Kickstarter can do. Now, new keycaps are being manufactured with an Indiegogo campaign. If you’re waiting on your C64c case to be pressed out of a mold, this is not the time to think about the sunk cost fallacy. They’re not Cherry MX compatible, but they will work with just about every version of the C64. Not bad for under €20.

The UK has a fabulously rich history of ancient melee weapons, ranging from the flail to the mace and a bunch of odd bladed weapons used by the Scots. This tradition was passed down to the UK mains plug, the single most painful plug to step on. Apple just released a USB charger with a folding UK mains plug and [oliver] did a teardown on it.

For St. George’s Day in Catalonia, there’s a tradition of giving roses to women, and books to men. [Nixieguy] has all the books he could want, and would prefer to receive a rose. Bucking tradition, he made himself a rose from a punch card. It’s the closest he’s going to get to ‘@}-\—’. A few years ago, he carved a rose out of a 10mm LED.

Finally, a decent tutorial on how to grow your own SMD components.

Need to take apart a cellphone? Use acetone! Need the phone to work after you take it apart? Ummmm….

The Dayton Hamvention is just three weeks away! Yes, the same weekend as the Bay Area Maker’s Faire, which means most of the Hackaday crew will be elsewhere, but I hear [Chris Gammell] will be there putting Parts.io stickers on everything. By the way, I’m looking for a Tek PM203 Personality Module for a 68000 64-pin PDIP.