Misc Hacks

4025 Articles

Navigate Burning Man With Ease With This Custom Tool

February 1, 2024 by 6 Comments

When setting up a city in the desert, the team behind Burning Man does its best to lay things out in an ordered fashion. Even still, getting around at ground level can be a challenge at times, and it’s easy to get lost. To help get around easier, [Zach] developed a nifty GPS device built specifically for navigating the ephemeral clock-like city.

The device is built for a few simple purposes. It shows where you are, it helps you navigate somewhere you’ve been before, and it helps you navigate to portable toilets. It’s set up to be usable both on bike and on foot, the typical ways of getting around the playa. Since Black Rock City is fairly simple, it uses an arrow to point to a desired waypoint, and is capable of storing up to five points of interest. It’s built using a cheap GNSS receiver and transflective LCD screen, and a Pi Pico is the brains of the operation.

The value of the device is obvious, particularly when exploring deeper areas of the playa, or after the road signs have been removed or structures have been taken down or burnt to ashes. We’ve seen some other great projects from the desert festival before, too. If you’ve got your own playa-spec hacks, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Polynesian Wayfinding Traditions Let Humans Roam The Pacific Ocean

February 1, 2024 by 24 Comments

Polynesian cultures have a remarkable navigational tradition. It stands as a testament to human ingenuity and an intimate understanding of nature. Where Western cultures developed maps and tools to plot courses around the world, the Polynesian tradition is more about using human senses and pattern-finding skills to figure out where one is, and where one might be going.

Today, we’ll delve into the unique techniques of Polynesian navigation, exploring how keen observation of the natural world enabled pioneers to roam far and wide across the breadth of the Pacific.

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Check Out These Amazing Self-Soldering Sleeves From World War II

January 31, 2024 by 18 Comments

Imagine you’re a commando, doing some big secret mission on the continent in the midst of World War II. You need to hook up some wires to your explosive charges, and time is of the essence. Do you bust out the trusty Weller and see if those petulant Axis chaps will let you plug it in somewhere? No! You use a pyrotechnic self-soldering sleeve, as [Our Own Devices] explains.

Like so many British inventions during the war, the sleeves really are ingenious. They were developed by the Special Operation Executive, an organization charged with sabotage and subversion operations in then-occupied Europe.

The soldering sleeves were designed to make electrical connections between detonators and firing wires for explosives.  The sleeves consist of a copper tube through which wires to be joined are fed, with a lump of solder in the middle. The assembly is covered in pyrotechnic material with a safety match-style starter chemical dosed on top. Using the sleeves is simple. First, two stripped wires are fed into either end of the copper tube. The starter the sleeve is then ignited using the box, just like striking a match. The pyrotechnic material then gets red hot, melting the solder and making the connection.

It’s well worth watching the video to see how these field-expedient devices actually work. We’ve explored the use of more-typical solder sleeves before, too. Video after the break.

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Building A Mouse That’s Also A Computer

January 25, 2024 by 27 Comments

Once upon a time, a computer was a big metal brick of a thing that sat on or next to your desk. Now, it’s possible to fit decent computing power into a board the size of a stick of gum. [Electo] took advantage of this to build an entire computer into a mouse form factor.

[Electo] had tried this before years ago, and built something pretty sloppy. This time, he wanted to build a version that had an actually-legible screen and fit better in the hand. He whipped up a giant 3D-printed mouse housing, and fitted the sensor board from an optical mouse inside. That was hooked up to an Intel NUC PC that fits inside the housing. A small LCD screen was then installed on a rack system that lets it pop out the front of the mouse. Data entry is via a laser keyboard mounted in the side of the mouse.

Of course, being based on an Intel NUC means the thing was the size of a couple of phonebooks. That’s not really a mouse. Starting again, he reworked the build around a tiny palm-sized computer running Windows 11. It was stripped out of its case and wedged into a compact 3D-printed housing only slightly larger than a typical mouse. It has a keyboard of a sort – really it’s just an array of buttons covering W, A, S, D, and a couple others for playing simple games. Amazingly, it’ll even run Minecraft or Fortnight if you really want to try and squint at that tiny screen.

Having a computer with a screen that moves every time you move the mouse isn’t ideal. At the same time, it’s fun to see someone explore a fun (and silly) form factor. It’s interesting to see how the project works compared to the original version from a few years ago. Video after the break.

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A Paddle Wheel Ground Effect Vehicle

January 25, 2024 by 17 Comments

Who said paddle wheels were just for leisurely riverboat cruises? [rctestflight] is smashing that image with a high-speed twist on the concept, using paddle wheels to propel a ground effect vehicle across water. In the video after the break, witness this blend of old and new as he tests various designs.

Over the past few years he’s worked on a series of ground effect vehicles which exploits the increased lift and reduced drag when flying close to a surface. Unlike full-sized counterparts, smaller RC models struggle to stay in this sweet spot due to less pronounced self-stabilizing feedback loops. This means a small scale vehicle tends to touch the water rather often, and bleeding a lot of momentum in the process.

He wanted to convert these losses into gains by giving the vehicles a boost of speed whenever it touches the water. It’s a popular trick with RC cars which will hydroplane for long distances as long as they can maintain speed. All the designs still required air propellers for takeoff and to help maintain speed. The final design didn’t really need the paddle wheel when the air and water was calm, but it definitely helped when things got choppy. He is already experimenting with different paddle designs but also plans to test some other types of surface drives.

For covered a number off small scale ekranoplans, including a previous version by [rctestflight] that uses lidar for altitude control. He has also collaborated with [Think Flight] to build a autonomous small scale prototype for a maritime shipping startup.

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Steamboat Willie Never Sounded Better

January 24, 2024 by 13 Comments

Mickey Mouse’s introduction to the world was the 1928 cartoon, Steamboat Willie. Not only was it the first appearance of Mickey with sound, it was also one of the first cartoons to employ synchronized sound. The problem is, the sound is awful. Sure, after nearly a century, what do you expect? But [Oona Räisänen] thought it wasn’t just age, but flutter from the original recording. Could it be made better? What follows that question is a self-described geek’s journey into the depths of recorded sound.

The first step was to find a high quality source. The Internet Archive had a copy that was mostly clean. But it also has a lossless scan of the movie including the original optical soundtrack. A quick script played back the original soundtrack and — you guessed it — the flutter is already there. You can see the original 7-minute short from Disney’s channel, below.

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Read QR Codes Without A Computer

January 22, 2024 by 23 Comments

Did you ever watch Star Wars and wondered how people understood what R2D2 was saying? Maybe [Luke Skywalker] would enjoy learning to decode QR Codes by hand, too. While it might not be very practical, it would be a good party trick — assuming, like us, you party with nerds.

You can start by scanning a code, or the site will create one according to your specifications or generate one randomly. It then takes the selected code and shows you how it is put together. Fun fact: 21×21 “modules” (QR-speak for pixels) is the size of a version 1 QR code. Each version increases the size by four modules.

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