High Speed Flight In A Homebrew FPV Cockpit

March 19, 2021 by Lewin Day 13 Comments

First-person view, or FPV, has become hugely popular in RC flying circles. A pair of video goggles lets the pilot fly with vision from the plane itself. To make things even more realistic, the team at [FliteTest] built a replica cockpit with working controls and took it down to the field for testing. (Video, embedded below.)

Since the pilot is wearing video goggles, aesthetics aren’t the key here. A RC transmitter was gutted for its gimbal and potentiometers. The former fitted with a long stick for aileron and elevator control, and the latter hooked up to pedals for the rudder. There’s even a proper throttle handle. It’s a low-budget build, with PVC pipe and bungee straps doing much of the work, but that doesn’t detract from the fun factor one bit. The team later upped the stakes, flying a faster model with the rig at speeds up to 120 mph.

Interesting to note is the somewhat visceral reaction by the pilot when crashing, as the combination of first-person view video and realistic controls gives a powerful sense that one is actually in a real plane. FPV flying actually has a longer history than you might expect, with roots as far back as the 1980s. Continue reading “High Speed Flight In A Homebrew FPV Cockpit” →

Mini Hygrometer Packs E-Paper Display

March 16, 2021 by Lewin Day 9 Comments

Historically, display technologies have always been power thirsty things. In the past, CRTs and incandescent bulbs sucked down electrons like they were free beer. Eventually, LEDs and LCDs came along and lowered this significantly, but the king of low power display technologies remains ePaper and eInk displays. Only requiring power when refreshing the display, they can be left off indefinitely, drawing little to no current. This is great for low-power builds such as [Andrew Lamchenko’s] miniature hygrometer. (Video, embedded below.)

The build runs on an nRF52811 microcontroller, hooked up to a 1.02″ ePaper display sourced for just $7. A SHT20 temperature and humidity sensor is then queried to sample the ambient conditions, and the results displayed on the screen. The benefit of this is that the device can be powered from a coin cell, and set to update at infrequent intervals – say, once per hour. It can then be checked by the user without having to turn on.

The low-power design means it would be the perfect device for leaving in a guitar case or humidor for months at a time. As a bonus, it’s also capable of Smart Home integration thanks to the Bluetooth capabilities onboard. It would likely be trivial to upgrade this into a tweeting humidor, the likes of which we haven’t seen since 2009!

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Amazing STARGᐰTE With DHD And Infinity Mirror Wormhole

March 9, 2021 by Anool Mahidharia 49 Comments

The Stargate Universe franchise has spawned numerous movies, serials, books, comics and games since 1994, and has been a favorite among science fiction fans. Prop makers and hackers often try building their own Stargate replica – the Einstein–Rosen bridge portal that allows almost instantaneous travel between two distant locations. Building an authentic looking prop requires a lot of attention to detail, and [Kristian]’s The Stargate Project is an amazingly well built rendition of the portal.

[Kristian]’s Stargate is mostly 3D printed and features a symbol ring, with chevrons that lock and light up when engaged. When the correct address has been dialled in, the wormhole is established, via an infinity mirror effect that uses 122 RGB LEDs. The Dial Home Device (DHD) is a replica of the original pedestal shaped computer, with two concentric sets of 19 buttons and a central activation button.

The Stargate ring is assembled from multiple 3D printed in sections, and measures 390 mm across. The seven Chevrons move along 3D printed rack-and-pinion gears, driven by geared micro-motors. The symbol ring is driven by a separate NEMA14 stepper motor. A Raspberry Pi with three piggy backed motor hats controls the various motors and LEDs. A USB sound card and a powered speaker provide audio effects while dialling. Once a worm hole is established, random audio snippets are played. The wormhole is maintained for 38 minutes, after which the Stargate powers down.

The Dial Home Device is built around a custom, circular PCB which holds the keypad buttons, LEDs and an ATmega 32u4 micro-controller which connects to the Raspberry Pi via USB. The 39 LEDs are APA102C’s so they only need two GPIO pins. For the keyboard, four banks of nine buttons and another bank of three are connected via a resistive ladder to the analog GPIO’s. This allows all 39 buttons to be connected via five analog inputs and was probably done to simplify PCB track layout. The back lit button key caps were printed in two parts. The translucent bases are covered with the opaque symbol caps.

Making a prop like this look like the real deal requires a lot of effort in painting the various parts, and this shows in [Kristian]’s final result, right down to the stone platform on which the Stargate sits. The one improvement we would like to see is a wireless DHD, just like it’s supposed to be. Doing so shouldn’t be too difficult, and losing the USB tether between the Stargate and its DHD would be a great upgrade to this amazing project. Check out the videos after the break, and there are many more on [Kristian]’s project page.

And if you are a fan of the franchise, then the amazingly Droolworthy Animatronic Stargate Horus Helmet is an excellent companion project to this Stargate.

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Open-DIP Surgery Cuts Retro Chips Down To Size

March 5, 2021 by Dan Maloney 34 Comments

At least by today’s standards, some of the early chips were really, really big. They may have been revolutionary and they certainly did shrink the size of electronic devices, but integrating a 40-pin DIP into a modern design can be problematic. The solution: cut off all the extra plastic and just work with the die within.

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Magnetic Angle Sensor Mods Make Encoder Better For Blasting

March 5, 2021 by Dan Maloney 12 Comments

Most of the hacks we see around these parts have to do with taking existing components and cobbling them together in interesting new ways. It’s less often that we see existing components gutted and repurposed, but when it happens, like with this reimagined rotary encoder, it certainly grabs our attention.

You may recall [Chris G] from his recent laser-based Asteroids game. If not you should really check it out — the build was pretty sweet. One small problem with the build was in the controls, where the off-the-shelf rotary encoder he was using didn’t have nearly enough resolution for the job. Rather than choosing a commodity replacement part, [Chris] rolled his own from the mechanical parts of the original encoder, like the shaft and panel bushing, and an AS5048A sensor board. The magnetic angle sensor has 14 bits of resolution, and with a small neodymium ring magnet glued to the bottom of the original shaft, the modified encoder offers far greater resolution than the original contact-based encoder.

The sensor breakout board is just the right size for this job; all that [Chris] needed to do to get the two pieces together was to 3D-print a small adapter. We have to admit that when we first saw this on Hackaday.io, we failed to see what the hack was — the modified part looks pretty much like a run-of-the-mill encoder. The video below shows the design and build process with a little precision rock blasting.

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Don’t Tase Me, Keeb!

March 2, 2021 by Kristina Panos 12 Comments

Okay, so this doesn’t really use a taser — that’s just click bait and we apologize. An actual taser would be a terrible way to train yourself to be a better typist, because depending on where you choose to deliver the shock, you could damage your typing nerves pretty quickly with a few milliamps at 50,000 volts.

Instead of a taser, [nobody6502] got a pack of prank gum off of Amazon that delivers a much more doable shock that is painful enough to get the user to type more carefully. [nobody6502] set up a simple no-pain, no-train website that presents random English words one at a time and checks for typos against an open-source list of nearly half a million entries. Misspell a word, and a get a relay-driven shock from the gum circuit.

The main brain of this pain trainer is a Particle Argon board which has I/O pins that can be controlled from the web. When the website detects a typo, it sends a signal to the Argon, which turns on a relay that activates the shock mechanism. What’s most impressive is that [nobody6502] doesn’t have a full-blown computer and programmed everything on an iPad. Check out the build video after the break.

Are you a hunt and peck typist? There’s a negative reinforcement keyboard for that.

Continue reading “Don’t Tase Me, Keeb!” →