Ask Hackaday

183 Articles

Ask Hackaday: We Might Have Some FPGAs To Hack

January 11, 2013 by 79 Comments

rear

[Chris] is an IT guy for a medical clinic up in Alaska, and until very recently the systems he monitored, fixed, and beat with a wrench included over 100 Pano Logic “Zero Client” thin clients. Pano Logic just went out of business and all support for these little boxes have been cut off, leaving [Chris] with a hundred or so very interesting pieces of hardware.

The idea behind these “zero clients” is the ideal of a thin client – take all the storage, processing, RAM, and other goodies and move them to a server. Pano Logic took this one step further than other thin clients, removing the CPU, memory, and basically everything you’d find in a thin client. What was left was a Spartan-6 FPGA, a few chips to drive the USB ports, a pair of HDMI chips, and a few DDR2 modules. Basically, [Chris] has about 150 FPGA dev boards just sitting in a storage room. The only thing that is needed is a bunch of software and an extreme amount of cleverness.

After opening one of these zero clients, [Chris] found a Spartan-6 FPGA right next to what he thinks is a 6-pin programming port. Along with the FPGA are a few other chips that would make any FPGA dev board a very neat tool:

We’re going to agree with [Chris] these Pano Logic zero clients show a lot of potential. If you’re up to the challenge of creating a very, very cheap FPGA dev board out of some discarded hardware, head on over to ebay or chat up your local IT guy.

Ask Hackaday: How Do You Give A Project Away?

December 28, 2012 by 66 Comments

lcr

A few weeks ago, we caught wind of a DIY version of ‘smart tweezers’ from [Kai]’s workbench that are able to measure SMD resistors, caps, and inductors. At that time, [Kai] hadn’t quite finished the software portion of his build, leaving him with a pile of parts and non-working PCBs. The code is finished now, meaning [Kai] has a very capable and very inexpensive version of LCR meter tweezers. He’d like to give back to the open source community and figure out a way to get his tweezers into the hands of makers the world over now. The only problem is he doesn’t know quite how to do that.

We’ve seen smart tweezers before, and they’re still available commercially for about $300. [Kai]’s version brings down the price significantly, so there is a market for these LCR tweezers. The problem, it seems, is getting these tweezers manufactured.

We’re assuming that soldering hundreds of thousand of SMD parts isn’t what [Kai] thinks is a good time; this leaves a Kickstarter as a non-starter, unless he can contract out the manufacturing. Seeed Studio might be a good place for [Kai] to sell his wares, but we’re wondering what Hackaday readers would do in [Kai]’s situation. Obviously he deserves to compensated for his work either through licensing or royalties, but as far as actual advice and recommendations we’re turning to Hackaday readers.

Hackaday’s Official Kickstarter Policy

November 1, 2012 by 217 Comments

we don’t have one… yet.

We’re getting inundated with campaigns on crowdfunding sites like kickstarter and indiegogo. Sometimes they’re really cool projects, sometimes they’re not. Unfortunately, they are all basically appeals for coverage on hackaday so they can get money. That immediately puts a negative taste in our mouths. Then again, if a hacker legitimately makes something really awesome, why wouldn’t we want to help spread the word?

We don’t want to stop a really cool project from being shared with you just because it is on kickstarter, but we also don’t want to serve as a crowdfunding advertising platform. It ends up being complicated, especially if the idea is really cool, but the details are sparse.

So, what do you think? Share your thoughts on how hackaday should handle crowdfunding in projects.

p.s. This started as a rant about how sick of the constant pleas for kickstarter coverage we’re getting. We’re trying to stay positive and constructive here, please do the same in the comments.

 

Hacking A Floating RGB LED Decorative Ball

September 8, 2012 by 36 Comments

Knowing that I’m always happy to get something new and glowy, my wife brought home a cheap “floating pool light” that she found on sale for roughly $10. This is a large white floating ball that has LEDs inside and cycles through different colors. Meant to be put into a pool for neat effects, we found it to be much more interesting just used around the house.

However, it was a bit too bright and cycled colors too quickly for our taste. It was actually somewhat distracting when we were just trying to sit and have a few beers late at night on our patio. This gave me a perfect excuse to tear it apart and start hacking… like I wasn’t going to do that anyway.

What I found inside was extremely simple. There’s a single un-marked chip that holds the different display modes (there were 3 display modes: warm, cool, and white). The LEDs were arranged in an array of Reds, Blues, Greens, and Whites (half marked yellow).

Continue reading “Hacking A Floating RGB LED Decorative Ball” →

Ask Hackaday: What’s Your Backup Solution?

August 4, 2012 by 118 Comments

Here’s some very, very sad news from [Charles] over at The Maker’s Workbench: on July 16th, his house was hit by lightning causing his workshop to catch fire. His family is safe, but unfortunately thousands of dollars in gear has gone up in smoke. [Charles] lost a Reprap, a ton of dev boards, a huge amount of tools including an awesome soldering setup, and his laptop and file server.

Short of taking up residence inside Yucca Mountain, there’s little that can be done to prevent random, disastrous acts of Thor. The only bright side to [Charles]’ ordeal (if there is one) is that most of his file server – including all the code he’s written over the years – was backed up on the cloud.

Hackaday readers aren’t much for marketing buzzwords like ‘the cloud,’ so we’re wondering what your backup solutions are. If the cloud isn’t for you, is a NAS at home a good idea? rsync will do wonders, but even hard drives at an off-site location fail; maybe tape is the best choice. Of course if you have a laser cutter, there’s always the option of cutting patterns of holes in stainless steel plates and preserving your data for thousands of years.

If [Charles]’ story doesn’t inspire you to backup often and preserve your data, consider this: the greek poet [Sophocles] wrote 123 plays, seven of which still survive. Put in perspective, that’s like the only songs in The Beatles’ catalog surviving 2,500 years coming from the Yellow Submarine soundtrack.

Ask Hackaday: How About Some Model Rocket Hacks?

July 9, 2012 by 35 Comments

There’s nothing like the smell of black powder in the morning, along with the excitement and burnt propellant in the air that comes after launching a model rocket. All those 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s kids out there may remember the classes of model rocket engines – generally A, B, C, and D sized engines used to push your cardboard tube with balsa fins skyward.

A lot has changed in the world of model and amateur rocketry in the last few years. In 2009, the Tripoli Rocketry Association won a lawsuit against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to allow the sale of Ammonium perchlorate rocket engines to anyone. This lawsuit took almost 10 years to come to a head, but finally anyone can walk into Hobby Lobby and come out with D, E, F, and G engines in hand. Even our old favorite, Estes rockets, has gotten into the game by putting out a few awesome G-powered kits. With these off-the-shelf motors, anyone (in the US, at least) can launch a G-powered model rocket weighing under 1500 grams (3.3 lbs) without the need for a certification.

With that in mind, we’re putting out a call for model rocket hacks. If you put together an microcontroller-powered altimeter project, awesome. Send it in. On board video camera? Great! Even if you built a huge replica of the Titan IIIe (or the Estes Star Rider, a personal favorite), send that thing in. If you’re going for a huge Saturn V, the record to beat is a 1/10 scale model, so get on it.