The Scientific Implausibility Of Starkiller Base

December 22, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 112 Comments

This post contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. These spoilers won’t affect you if you haven’t seen the movie; they’re equivalent to saying, “in A New Hope there’s a moon sized battle station with a superlaser” and “someone gets a hand amputated with a lightsaber in a Star Wars movie”

A lot has happened in the Star Wars universe since the battle of Endor. The Empire is in ruins, and Yavin 5 and the forest moon of Endor both have new planetary ring systems. The Rebellion has given way to a new Galactic Republic, but there is a spectre of evil looming in the unknown areas of the galaxy: the First Order, a malevolent force that has built a planet-sized superweapon capable of destroying entire planetary systems from across the galaxy. The Starkiller gets its energy from harvesting entire suns, moving from one solar system to another to feed this massive weapon of terror.

We’ve had nearly forty years to argue the plausibility of the Death Star, lightsabers, parsecs as a unit of time, and hyperdrives. It’s time to pass the hallowed tradition of arguing over fictional spacecraft to a new generation. Starkiller Base is a cool idea, but does the science behind it hold up? No. It’s completely implausible. It makes for a great story, but it’s completely implausible.

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Muscle Wire Pen Dances To Duke Nukem

December 22, 2015 by Elliot Williams 2 Comments

[serdef] is clearly just having a little bit of fun here. One never needs a whiteboard pen that’s syncronized by MIDI to dance along with the theme from Duke Nukem.

But if you had all of the parts on hand (a highly liquid MIDI-driven relay board that connects straight up to a soundcard, some muscle wire, tape, and a whiteboard pen, naturally) we’re pretty sure that you would. You can watch the dancing pen in a video below the break.

The project is really about documenting the properties of [serdef]’s muscle wire, and he found that it doesn’t really contract enough with a short piece to get the desired effect. So he added more wire. We’ve always meant to get around to playing with muscle wire, and we were surprised by how quickly it reacted to changing the voltage in [serdef]’s second video.

Now the dancing pen isn’t the most sophisticated muscle wire project we’ve ever seen. And that award also doesn’t go to this Nitinol-powered inchworm. Did you know that there’s muscle wire inside Microsoft’s Surface?

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Netflix And Chill – And Socks?

December 19, 2015 by Dan Maloney 18 Comments

Waking up to spoilers in the last episode after falling asleep during the first episode of a Netflix binge-watching session ranks right up there on the list of first-world problems. Luckily there’s a solution in the form of a pair of Netflix enabled socks, which looks like a pretty neat wearable IoT project.

To be sure, calling these socks Netflix enabled is a bit of a stretch. Aside from the sock designs, which are based on popular Netflix original series, there’s nothing about the electronics that’s specific to the popular streaming service. These socks, with their Arduino Pro Trinket and accelerometer, detect when you stop moving and send an IR signal to do your bidding – pause the movie, kill the TV, or whatever. The electronic side of the build is pretty approachable – it’s just a couple of modules soldered together. The fiber arts side of the project might be a little outside the wheelhouse of the typical hardware hacker, but you can either team up with someone who knits – an experienced knitter, as socks are not a beginner’s pattern – or just slip the felt-clad hardware into your favorite comfy socks. We’d be a bit concerned about ESD protection for the hardware in the wooly environment, though.

“Netflix and chill” is the current version of last century’s “Watching the submarine races,” and as such the need for special socks or a custom Netflix switch for the occasion is a bit puzzling. Still, the underlying wearables idea is pretty good, with plenty of possibilities for expansion and repurposing.

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Gutted USB Power Packs Run Your TV

December 17, 2015 by Dan Maloney 30 Comments

With a computer in every pocket, being tethered to large mains-powered appliances is a bit passe. No longer must you be trapped before the boob tube when you can easily watch YouTube on your phone. But you might be jonesing for the big screen experience in the middle of a power outage, in which case learning to build a simple battery bank built from cheap cell-phone power packs might be a good life skill to practice.

Looking more for proof of concept than long-term off-grid usability from his battery bank, [Stephen] cobbled together a quick battery bank from 18650 lithium ion batteries and a small 300W inverter. All the hardware was had on the cheap from an outfit called Cd-r King, a Phillipines-based discount gadgetorium we’d like to see in the states. He got a handful of USB power packs and harvested the single 18650 battery from each, whipped up a quick battery holder from 1/2″ PVC pipe and some bolts to connect the inverter. With four batteries in series he was able to run a flat-screen TV with ease, as well as a large floor fan – say, is that a Mooltipass on [Stephen]’s shelf in the background? And what’s nice about the gutted USB power packs is that they can still be used to recharge the batteries.

As [Stephen] admits, this is a simple project and there’s plenty of room to experiment. More batteries in parallel for longer run times is an obvious first step. He might get some ideas from this laptop battery bank project, or even step up to Tesla Li-ion battery hacking – although we doubt Cd-r King will be of much help with the latter.

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Decypering The Hackaday.io Illuminati

December 16, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 34 Comments

A few months ago, a strange account popped up on hackaday.io. Whoever is behind this count is based in Bielefeld, Germany – a place that doesn’t exist. They are somehow related to the Berenstain / Berenstein Bears dimensional rift, and they may be responsible for giving Cap’n Crunch only three rank insignia on his uniform. There is something very, very strange about this account. Since August, a black and white image of static, 98 pixels wide and 518 pixels tall has sat on this account profile. The Illuminati has given us enough clues, but until now, no one has managed to crack the code.

The first person to make sense out of the patterns in static is [Moritz Walter]. What’s in the code? More codes. While that’s not really helpful, it is to be expected.

The hackaday illuminati included one additional piece of information with their encoded static image: a 12×12 pixel bitmap. When this bitmap was XORed with the main image, symbols appeared. In total, there are only seven unique symbols in the image. These symbols seem to be stolen from the Fez alphabet, but there are some significant differences. These symbols are rotated multiples of 90 degrees, and are surrounded by a one pixel border that is either black or white (we’re calling the border a ‘sign’ bit). In total, these seven symbols arranged in four different rotations with two different signs yields forty unique variations of a symbol in the decoded image. At this point, it should be noted 7*2*4 = 56.

As of now, cracking the illuminati’s cyphered machinations has hit a roadblock. There’s a dead image file on the illuminati’s profile. Until that image is rehosted, there is no way to progress any further. That’s not going to stop people from trying, though: the chat channels on hackaday.io have been buzzing about the newly decrypted images. Hopefully, with time, someone will figure out what it all means.

RC Mini Flame Thrower Brings The Burn

December 16, 2015 by Dan Maloney 17 Comments

It goes without saying that a radio controlled mini flame thrower can be nothing but a bad idea and you should never, ever build one. But once you watch the video below, you’ll be tempted to try. But don’t do it – you’ve been warned.

That said, the video below shows that [Make-log]’s remarkably compact build is chock full of safety interlocks and sports a thoughtful and informative user interface. It’s fueled by a small can of spray deodorant whose valve is actuated by a servo and ignited by a spark-gap igniter. Alas, this final critical component is no longer available from SparkFun, so if you choose to roll your own – which you shouldn’t – you’ll need to find a substitute.

We’ve featured an unreasonable number of flame thrower projects before, including a ton of wrist–mounted units. Of course if you’re a musically inclined pyromaniac, you’ll also want to check out this mini Doof Warrior setup too.

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Small-farm Automation Keeps Livestock Safe And Happy

December 15, 2015 by Dan Maloney 15 Comments

Life down on the farm isn’t easy, and a little technology can go a long way to making things easier for the farmer. It’ll be a while before any farmer can kick back on the beach and run his place from a smartphone, but that’s clearly the direction things are heading with this small farm automation project.

[Vince]’s livestock appears to consist of chickens and sheep at this point, and the fact that they share housing helped him to deploy some tech for both species. The chickens got an automated door that lets them out in the morning and shuts them in safely once they’ve returned to roost for the night – important protection against predators. The door is hoisted by a Somfy window-treatment motor, which seems a little on the overkill side to us; a thrift-store electric drill and a homebrew drum might have worked too. A Teensy with an RTC opens and closes the door according to sunrise and sunset times, and temperature and humidity sensors provide feedback on conditions inside the coop. The sheep benefit from a PTZ webcam to keep an eye on their mischief, and the whole thing is controlled by a custom web interface from [Vince]’s smartphone.

There’s just something about automating chicken coop doors that seems to inspire hackers; check out this nice self-locking design. As for [Vince]’s farm, it looks like his system has a lot of room for expansion – food and water status would be a great next step. We’re looking forward to seeing where he goes from here.