Is Baking A Raspberry Pi The Recipe For Magic Smoke?

January 10, 2019 by Tom Nardi 35 Comments

No, Hackaday hasn’t become a baking blog. We’re just here to give you a bit of advice: if [MickMake] ever offers you one of his fresh-baked Pis, proceed with caution. While we have no doubt that there will be some interesting smells wafting out of his kitchen, these aren’t the tasty pies you’re looking for. There’s no delicious home-baked treat when that timer dings, just a handful of Raspberry Pis that have had an exceptionally hard day.

To properly explain the odd sight of some Raspberry Pis laid out on a cookie sheet, we need to take a step back. [MickMake] originally set out to see how everyone’s favorite Linux SBC would handle the harsh Australian heat, and thought that setting them up on his car’s dashboard would be a suitable torture test. But as luck would have it, a storm rolled in while he was making the video which brought temperatures down to a “cool” 30 C (86 F); basically jacket weather at the bottom of the world. So naturally, he decided to put them in his oven instead.

Placed on an insulating sheet and with a thermocouple between them to get an accurate idea of the temperature they were experiencing, an original Pi, a Pi 2, and a pair of Pi 3s were sent on the ride of their lives. In addition to monitoring them over the network, he also added a “heartbeat” LED to each Pi so he’d be able to tell at a glance if any of them had given up the ghost. As if these poor little Pis didn’t have it bad enough already, [MickMake] decided to take things a step farther and run sysbench on them while they took their trip through Hades.

The Pis are actually rated for temperatures up to 85C, and all the participants of the experiment hit that point without any issues. At 87.3 C (~190 F) the original Pi dropped off the network, but its LED was seen bravely blinking on. At 105.7 C (~222 F) it finally breathed its last, followed by the pair of Pi 3s tapping out at 112 C (233 F). The Pi 2 fought on, but it fell right at the 119 C (246 F) mark.

But what about when they cooled off? Somewhat surprisingly, [MickMake] successfully powered all four back up and was unable to find any damage to the Pis, either physically or operationally. Even the SD cards survived, and the Pis popped right back onto the network and were ready for another round of Silicon Chef. Not bad considering they were subjected to temperatures three times higher than the official limit.

Testing electronics in your home oven might seem a bit suspect, and admittedly we’d probably turn down a slice of the next few frozen pizza’s [MickMake] runs through it, but it’s not really so far removed from how proper reliability testing is performed.

Continue reading “Is Baking A Raspberry Pi The Recipe For Magic Smoke?” →

Portable Pi Teensy Thumboard

January 7, 2019 by Brian McEvoy 12 Comments

Even on the go, there is no substitute for a physical keyboard with buttons that move and click. Sure, you could solder a bunch of tactile switches to some perfboard, but how about going all out and making something robust as [Anthony DiGirolamo] did for his Teensy Thumboard. Everything is insertion-mount so it is an approachable project for anyone who knows the dangerous end of a soldering iron, and that also makes it easy to hack on.

Each pin of the Teensy has an adjacent empty hole tied to it for easy access, and the serial data pins are exposed at the top of the board. All the holes use standard 0.1″ (2.54mm) spacing. The I/O points used by the keyboard are labeled, and the rest of them can use the space under the controller where proto-board style holes add some extra space for an IMU or whatever sensors suit your slant.

Most impressive is the shell, which is freely available on Thingiverse, where you can also find a bill of materials with links to everything you will need in case you don’t have drawers full of those tactile switches.

If this looks familiar, you have probably seen the PocketCHIP, and it is no secret that this project is an homage to that versatile pocket computer. We appreciate this kind of love for PocketCHIP, especially since they are now a limited commodity.

The Jookbox Is A Post-Modern Jukebox

January 6, 2019 by Richard Baguley 21 Comments

The family of [Chris Patty] decided that their holiday gifts would have to be handmade. So, he decided to make something new for his father: a jukebox with a twist. Instead of a touchscreen or web interface, his jukebox uses swipe cards. To play a track, you find the card for the song you want to hear, swipe it, and the jukebox plays the requested track. The whole thing is built into a wooden box that hides its digital nature, which is built using a Raspberry Pi and a credit card stripe reader.

Continue reading “The Jookbox Is A Post-Modern Jukebox” →

Raspberry Pi Powers This Retro Chess Computer

January 6, 2019 by Tom Nardi 15 Comments

If you imagine somebody playing chess against the computer, you’ll likely be visualizing them staring at their monitor in deep thought, mouse in hand, ready to drag their digital pawn into play. That might be accurate for the folks who dabble in the occasional match during their break, but for the real chess aficionados nothing beats playing on a real board with real pieces. Of course, the tricky part is explaining the whole corporeal thing to a piece of software on your computer.

Enter the “Chess Challenger” by [slash/byte]. Modeled after a commercial gadget of the same name from 1978, his retro-themed open hardware design utilizes the Raspberry Pi Zero and modern chess software to bring the vintage concept into the 21st century. With the Chess Challenger and a standard board, the player can face off in an epic battle of wits against the computer without risk of developing carpal tunnel. We can’t guarantee though that a few boards might not get flipped over in frustration.

The pocket sized chess computer uses a “sandwich” style construction which shows off the internals while still keeping things reasonably protected. All of the electronics are housed on the center custom PCB which features a HT16K33 driver for the dual LTP-3784E “starburst” LED displays, a MCP1642B voltage regulator, 16 TL3305 tactile switches for the keyboard, and a MCP73871 battery management chip for the 3.7 volt lithium-ion battery that powers the whole show. The Pi Zero itself connects to the board by way of the GPIO header, and is mechanically supported by the standoffs used to hold the device together.

On the software side of things, the Pi is running the mature Stockfish open source chess engine. In development now for over a decade, this GPL licensed package aims to deliver a world-class chess gameplay on everything from smartphones to desktop computers, and we’ve seen it pop up in a number of projects over the years. [slash/byte] has provided a ready to flash SD card image for the Raspberry Pi, and even provides detailed installation and setup instructions which guide you through some of the more thorny aspects of the setup such as getting the Pi running from a read-only operating system so that abrupt power cuts don’t clobber the filesystem.

Over the years, some of the most impressive projects we’ve seen revolved around playing chess, and this latest entry by [slash/byte] is no exception. Another example of the lengths the chess community will go to perfect the Game of Kings.

Continue reading “Raspberry Pi Powers This Retro Chess Computer” →

2600-Inspired Handheld Brings The Faux Woodgrain

January 3, 2019 by Lewin Day 4 Comments

The Atari 2600 is a console from a very different time, when home appliances, furniture, and even automobiles were all covered in fake vinyl woodgrain veneer. Somehow it was the in thing for a decade, and then immediately became tacky overnight. Regardless, if you want to evoke the era, that’s what you do – and that’s exactly what [Christian] did with this handheld RetroPie build.

An early concept sketch shows off [Christian]’s art skills.

The technical side of things is fairly routine in these parts – a Pi Zero runs RetroPie so you can play emulated games from the mid-90s and earlier. It’s the visual presentation that we particularly enjoy. The look of the early Atari is evoked through clever use of materials. The body is in black plastic, with blocky red buttons for controls. It’s finished with a vinyl woodgrain applique around the screen, and we think it’s a wonderful aesthetic.

The files to print your own are available on Thingiverse, and [Christian] has provided a basic guide to sourcing similar parts. It’s all common stuff, readily available on eBay or elsewhere.

We love seeing retro throwbacks like this – the tiny Macintosh Plus from the 2017 Superconference is a particular highlight.

Picovoice Puts Smarts Offline In 512K Of Memory

January 1, 2019 by Al Williams 36 Comments

We live in the future. You can ask your personal assistant to turn on the lights, plan your commute, or set your thermostat. If they ever give Alexa sudo, she might be able to make a sandwich. However, you almost always see these devices sending data to some remote server in the sky to do the analysis and processing. There are some advantages to that, but it isn’t great for privacy as several recent news stories have pointed out. It also doesn’t work well when the network or those remote servers crash — another recent news story. But what’s the alternative? If Picovoice has its way, you’ll just do all the speech recognition offline.

Have a look at the video below. There’s an ARM board not too different from several we have lying around in the Hackaday bunker. It is listening for a wake-up phrase and processing audio commands. All in about 512K of memory. The libraries are apparently quite portable and the Linux and Raspberry Pi versions are already open source. The company says they will make other platforms available in upcoming releases and claim to support ARM Cortex-M, Cortex-A, Android, Mac, Windows, and WebAssembly.

Continue reading “Picovoice Puts Smarts Offline In 512K Of Memory” →

Raspberry Pi Raccoon-proof Cat Feeder

January 1, 2019 by Richard Baguley 21 Comments

Feeding things in the outside world is difficult, especially when there are clever creatures like raccoons out there that will break in and steal everything given half a chance. [_ah6] wanted to build a feeder for feral cats that would dispense food, but without encouraging the local raccoons. So, they built a feeder that included a webcam that could see who was waiting for dinner, and dispense food remotely without spooking the cat.

The feeder is built around a modified cereal dispenser that is connected to a Raspberry Pi. This is also connected to a webcam and an IR light source. The camera view can be checked through a web browser, and the feeding can be triggered from a voice assistant. Cats are creatures of routine, so [_ah6] feeds them twice a day and the cats quickly figured out the routine. The feeder only dispenses small amounts of food, and the heavyweight construction of the feeder means that the local raccoons can’t get into the stored food. [_ah6] had originally planned to use a solar power source, but that remains a project for another day.

We’ve come a long way, but cat-facial recognition was en vogue eight years ago for guarding the cat door — keeping the dead mice out rather than the racoons.

Via [reddit]