Life-Sized Pinball Drop Targets

June 19, 2017 by John Baichtal 19 Comments

[Bob] wanted to build a pinball-drop-style resetting target that he could use while practicing with his pistol. His first idea was to make the targets sturdy enough for use with 9 mm ammunition, and he planned to use 1/2” thick steel for the targets and 11-gauge steel tubing for the frame. However, the targets weighed 50 pounds together and that was more weight than the pneumatic actuators could lift. He ended up using 1/4” steel and thereby halving weight. The downside was that [Bob] had to switch out the nine for a .22.

Controlling everything is a 555 circuit. When triggered, it opens up a relay for one second, which trips the solenoid valve controlling the pneumatic actuators. Originally he wanted to have switches under each target, and only by dropping all four would the reset circuit be triggered. However, he built a simpler solution: a bulletproof button off to one side–effectively a fifth target–that when triggered resets the targets.

HaD have some pretty good shots in our number but we’d probably end up hitting the pneumatic actuators at least once. [Bob] did add 16-gauge steel sheeting to protect the air lines and wires from bullet splatter, which in his experience is more of a threat than a direct hit.

Hackaday Prize Entry: A Modular Open-Source AV Receiver

May 30, 2017 by Jenny List 24 Comments

Hi-Fi hasn’t changed much in decades. OK, we’ll concede that’s something of a controversial statement to make in that of course your home hi-fi has changed immensely over the years. Where once you might have had a turntable and a cassette deck you probably now have a streaming media player, and a surround sound processor, for example.

But it’s still safe to say that hi-fi reproduction hasn’t changed much in decades. You can still hook up the latest audio source to an amplifier and speakers made decades ago, and you’ll still enjoy great sound.

Not so though, if instead of a traditional amplifier you bought an AV receiver with built-in amplifier and processing. This is a fast-moving corner of the consumer electronics world, and the lifetime of a device before its interfaces and functionality becomes obsolete can often be measured in only a few years.

To [Andrew Bolin], this makes little sense. His solution has some merit, he’s produced a modular open-source AV processor in which the emphasis is on upgradeability to keep up with future developments rather than on presenting a black box to the user which will one day be rendered useless by the passage of time.

His design revolves around a backplane which accepts daughter cards for individual functions, and a Raspberry Pi to do the computational heavy lifting. So far he has made a proof-of-concept which takes in HDMI audio and outputs S/PDIF audio to his DAC, but plans are in hand for further modules. We can see that this could become the hub of a very useful open-source home entertainment system.

If you make one, please remember to enhance it with our own sound-improving accessory.

A Smart Table For Gamers

May 5, 2017 by James Hobson 9 Comments

When makers take to designing furniture for their own home, the results are spectacular. For their senior design project, [Phillip Murphy] and his teammates set about building a smart table from the ground up. Oh, and you can also use it to play games, demonstrated in the video below.

The table uses 512 WS2812 pixels in a 32 x 16 array which has enough resolution to play a selection of integrated games — Go, 2-player Tetris, and Tron light cycle combat — as well as some other features like a dancing bird party mode — because what’s the point of having a smart table if it can’t also double as rave lighting?

A C2000-family microcontroller on a custom board is the brains, and is controlled by an Android app via Bluetooth RN-42 modules. The table frame was designed in Sketchup, laser-cut, and painstakingly stained. [Murphy] and company used aluminum ducting tape in each of the ‘pixels’, and the table’s frame actually forms the pixel grid. Check out the overview and some of the games in action after the break.

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The Raspberry Pi As An IR To WiFi Bridge

April 23, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 28 Comments

[Jason] has a Sonos home sound system, with a bunch of speakers connected via WiFi. [Jason] also has a universal remote designed and manufactured in a universe where WiFi doesn’t exist. The Sonos can not be controlled via infrared. There’s an obvious problem here, but luckily tiny Linux computers with WiFi cost $10, and IR receivers cost $2. The result is an IR to WiFi bridge to control all those ‘smart’ home audio solutions.

The only thing [Jason] needed to control his Sonos from a universal remote is an IR receiver and a Raspberry Pi Zero W. The circuit is simple – just connect the power and ground of the IR receiver to the Pi, and plug the third pin of the receiver into a GPIO pin. The new, fancy official Raspberry Pi Zero enclosure is perfect for this build, allowing a little IR-transparent piece of epoxy poking out of a hole designed for the Pi camera.

For the software, [Jason] turned to Node JS, and LIRC, a piece of software that decodes IR signals. With the GPIO pin defined, [Jason] set up the driver and used the Sonos HTTP API to send commands to his audio unit. There’s a lot of futzing about with text files for this build, but the results speak for themselves: [Jason] can now use a universal remote with everything in his home stereo now.

Retro Teardown: Inside An 8-Track Stereo Player

April 12, 2017 by Jenny List 43 Comments

If you are a connoisseur of analogue audio, it’s probable you might have a turntable and a stack of records at home somewhere. If you are of a certain age you may even have a cassette deck, though you’re more likely to have abandoned that format some time in the 1990s. If you are old enough to have been around in the 1960s or 1970s though, you may have owned another analogue audio format. One of several that you might have found in a well-equipped home of that period was the 8-track stereo cartridge, a self-contained tape cassette format that fit four stereo tracks onto a single quarter-inch tape loop as eight parallel tracks, four each of left and right. A triumph of marketing, really, it should more accurately have been called 4-track stereo.

An 8-track stereo cartridge. Government & Heritage Library, State Library of NC (CC BY 2.0).

8-track cartridges were developed from earlier tape cartridge formats, largely to satisfy the demands of the automotive industry for interchangeable in-car entertainment. Thus if you owned an 8-track player it was most likely to have been found in your car, but it was not uncommon to find them also incorporated into home hi-fi systems. Thus we come to our subject today. Our retrotechtacular series usually highlights a video showing a bygone technology, but today we’re going to get a little more hands-on.

Some time in the early 1990s, I acquired an 8-track player, a BSR McDonald unit manufactured in the UK and dating from the early 1970s. BSR were much more well-known for their turntables, so this is something of an oddity. Where I found it has disappeared into the mists of time, but it was probably at a radio rally or junk sale. I certainly didn’t buy it because I wanted it to play 8-track tapes, instead I wanted a talking point for my hi-fi, something quirky to set it apart from everyone else’s. So every incarnation of listening enjoyment chez List for the last quarter century has had an 8-track player nestling within it, even if it has never played a tape while in my ownership. Thus we have a unique opportunity for this retro teardown.

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Scratchy Brings Digital Clarity To The Vinyl World

April 1, 2017 by Jenny List 18 Comments

If you walk the halls of audiophilia, you may be aware that there has been a huge amount of work put in to software designed to clean up older audio recordings without compromising the quality of the recording itself. Sometimes the results can be amazing, such as when a stereo image is created from parallel mono recordings made before stereo was even a glint in the eye of a 1930s EMI engineer.

Bob Widlar on analogue versus digital. Original: EDN — [Bob Widlar] on analogue versus digital. Original: EDN.

But what if you are at home, without the benefit of a state-of-the-art studio or high-end digital signal processing? How can you then have pop and crackle free sound from your hi-fi when you put on a piece of vinyl? [Paul Wallace] may just have the answer, he’s made a smartphone app called Scratchy which listens to the output of a turntable, identifies the track being played, and plays the appropriate MP3 file for a digital experience from vinyl. It uses the algorithm published by Shazam to recognize tunes. The software also has a learn mode during which it can be taught about new records in the collection. The app itself is written using the Xamarin framework and has its source code in his GitHup repository, so it’s possible it could be produced for other platforms as well as Android.

Now vinyl purists will be speechless with horror at this wanton desecration of their format while audiophiles will be fuming at the smeary-in-the-midrange MP3s, but we can see its appeal if your vinyl is on the grubby side. It’s fair to say though that the stereo here won’t be sporting it, you’ll tear our analogue signal path from our cold dead hands. Take a look for yourselves, he’s put up a video showing it in operation.

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Introducing The Hackaday Passive Aligned Ferrite Active Quantum Crystal Nanoparticle Reference Sticker

April 1, 2017 by Jenny List 60 Comments

As you know, here at Hackaday we take our audio equipment very seriously indeed. We’ve seen it all over the years and have a pretty jaded view of a lot of the audiophile products that come past our door, but once in a while along comes something that’s a bit special. That’s why today we’d like to introduce you to a new product, The Hackaday Passive Aligned Ferrite Active Quantum Crystal Nanoparticle Reference Sticker.

Here’s the problem: we’re surrounded by electrical noise. You can’t see it, you can’t touch it, and you can’t hear it, but your audio equipment can, and when that happens it will degrade your listening experience without your realising it. You might have shelled out your life savings on a top-end Hinari amp, Marc Vincent surround sound processor, Friedland carillon wire cables and a set of Saisho floor-standing speakers, but if you haven’t dealt with your system’s magnetic compatibility they’re never quite going to reach their potential and you’ll always be left wondering why your broader soundstage just doesn’t zing. You need an HPAFAQCNRS.

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