Magnus-Effect RC Aircraft Is A Lot Harder Than It Looks

August 5, 2021 by Danie Conradie 13 Comments

Conventional airfoil wings have come out on top for getting flying machines airborne over the last century, but there were a few other interesting designs that have come and gone. One of these is the Magnus effect plane, which makes use of the lift produced by a spinning cylinder. [James Whomsley] from [Project Air] decided to build one as a side project, but it ended up being a lot more challenging than what he initially suspected. (Video, embedded below.)

The Magnus effect achieved a bit of viral fame a few years when [How Ridiculous] dropped a basketball down a dam wall with some backspin. [James] T-shaped Magnus effect plane has a pair of spinning cylinders at the top to create lift, driven by a brushless motor using a belt. A second brushless motor with a propeller is on the center carbon fiber tube provides forward thrust, and a rudder provides yaw control. The battery is attached to the bottom of the tub for stability.

The very first flight looked very promising, but [James] quickly ran into a series of problems related to center of gravity, power, pitch control, and drag. After iterations of the build-crash-rebuild cycle, he ended up with larger motors and rudder, shorter “wings”, and a higher thrust motor position. This resulted in a craft still only marginally controllable, but stayed in the air for quite a while. Since the intention was never to turn it into a long-term project, James] called it a success to avoid more yak shaving, and continue work on his airboat and rocketplane.

If you are interested in building one of your own, he put all the findings of his experimentation in a short report. For more inspiration, check out the other Magnus effect plane we covered that used KFC buckets for the wings.

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Vintage Computer Festival West Is This Weekend

August 5, 2021 by Kristina Panos 4 Comments

This weekend is the Vintage Computer Festival (VCF) West, which will be held in-person at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Here is the complete schedule of events.

If you’re in the area, go get your retrocomputing on at this two-day event that Hackaday are proud to sponsor. Who knows? You may end up hobnobbing with original system developers who are finally at liberty to spill the tea about the old days.

Case in point: Hackaday’s own Bil Herd will be there virtually to talk about the new Commodore inside history book he wrote with Margaret Moribito. Other speakers include Bob Purvy, who will discuss his novel about the Xerox Star. This isn’t your average history book — it uses fictional characters to play out actual events. Another talk delves into the history of computerized tic-tac-toe, and yet another will cover recovering lost floppy disks with an oscilloscope. Finally, Liza Loop will speak about the history of computing in education to close out the weekend’s talks.

There are also plenty of exhibitions on the schedule, too, including Rare Computers from Japan and Analog Computing in the 1960s. And don’t forget, you’re at the Computer History Museum, so there should never be anything approaching a dull moment. Have fun!

Murata To Deliver Solid State Batteries To Market In The Fall

August 3, 2021 by Lewin Day 43 Comments

Solid state batteries have long been promised to us as the solution to our energy storage needs. Theoretically capable of greater storage densities than existing lithium-ion and lithium-polymer cells, while being far safer to boot, they would offer a huge performance boost in all manner of applications.

For those of us dreaming of a 1,000-mile range electric car or a 14-kilowatt power drill, the simple fact remains that the technology just isn’t quite there yet. However, Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd. has just announced that it plans to ship solid state batteries in the fall, which from a glance at the calendar is just weeks away.

It’s exciting news, and we’re sure you’re dying to know – just what are they planning to ship, and how capable are the batteries? Let’s dive in.

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Build That Catan Board You Designed

July 30, 2021 by Rich Hawkes 5 Comments

A couple of months ago, we posted about the one day design [Sam March] did of an electronic Settlers of Catan board. Now he’s released a video with the second half. His first video was about the design of the game, specifically the electronic components. In this video, [Sam] takes us through the physical build of the board.

A couple of visits to his local maker space allows him to cut both the wooden parts of the board, as well as the acrylic hexes that go on top of each piece. Even with a CNC machine, there’s still some clean-up that needs to be done. After cleaning up the edges of the wood with a chisel and staining it, it’s time to put the circuit boards in, wire them up and program them. The build includes a dice roller – pushing a button shows the number rolled by lighting up the tiles in the form of the rolled number. The final touch is having some friends over to actually play the game.

Between the design process in the last article and the build process in this one, we get a good look at the way [Sam] designs things from beginning to finished product. Take a look at our previous article on [Sam]’s design as well as some other Catan articles.

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This Week In Security: Fail2RCE, TPM Sniffing, Fishy Leaks, And Decompiling

July 30, 2021 by Jonathan Bennett 10 Comments

Fail2ban is a great tool for dynamically blocking IP addresses that show bad behavior, like making repeated login attempts. It was just announced that a vulnerability could allow an attacker to take over a machine by being blocked by Fail2ban. The problem is in the mail-whois action, where an email is sent to the administrator containing the whois information. Whois information is potentially attacker controlled data, and Fail2ban doesn’t properly sterilize the input before piping it into the mail binary. Mailutils has a feature that uses the tilde key as an escape sequence, allowing commands to be run while composing a message. Fail2ban doesn’t sanitize those tilde commands, so malicious whois data can trivially run commands on the system. Whois is one of the old-school unix protocols that runs in the clear, so a MItM attack makes this particularly easy. If you use Fail2ban, make sure to update to 0.10.7 or 0.11.3, or purge any use of mail-whois from your active configs. Continue reading “This Week In Security: Fail2RCE, TPM Sniffing, Fishy Leaks, And Decompiling” →

Orbiter Is Now Open Source

July 29, 2021 by Al Williams 30 Comments

We always have it on our list to learn more about Orbiter. If you haven’t seen it, it is a hyperrealistic space simulator. Granted, you can put it in an easy mode, but its real strength is you can very accurately model spacecraft like the Space Shuttle and have very realistic controls. In order to spur development, the program is now open source.

We think this is interesting for two reasons. First, if you ever wanted to contribute into a project of this scope, here’s your chance. You might not want to write a full-blow space simulator but you might have something to add. However, open source also means you can see how the program works and either reuse it in your own open source projects or just simply learn from the techniques.

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FTC Rules On Right To Repair

July 27, 2021 by Elliot Williams 59 Comments

A few days ago, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) came out with a 5-0 unanimous vote on its position on right to repair. (PDF) It’s great news, in that they basically agree with us all:

Restricting consumers and businesses from choosing how they repair products can substantially increase the total cost of repairs, generate harmful electronic waste, and unnecessarily increase wait times for repairs. In contrast, providing more choice in repairs can lead to lower costs, reduce e-waste by extending the useful lifespan of products, enable more timely repairs, and provide economic opportunities for entrepreneurs and local businesses.

The long version of the “Nixing the Fix” report goes on to list ways that the FTC found firms were impeding repair: ranging from poor initial design, through restrictive firmware and digital rights management (DRM), all the way down to “disparagement of non-OEM parts and independent repair services”.

While the FTC isn’t making any new laws here, they’re conveying a willingness to use the consumer-protection laws that are already on the books: the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair competitive practices.

Only time will tell if this dog really has teeth, but it’s a good sign that it’s barking. And given that the European Union is heading in a similar direction, we’d be betting that repairability increases in the future.

Thanks [deshipu] for tipping us off on this one!