A Look At The “Risky” Tech In NASA’s Martian Helicopter

February 20, 2021 by Tom Nardi 35 Comments

On February 18th, the Perseverance rover safely touched down on the Martian surface. In the coming days and weeks, the wide array of instruments and scientific payloads tucked aboard the robotic explorer will spring to life; allowing us to learn more about the Red Planet. With a little luck, it may even bring us closer to determining if Mars once harbored life as we know it.

Among all of the pieces of equipment aboard the rover, one of the most intriguing must certainly be Ingenuity. This small helicopter will become the first true aircraft to take off and fly on another planet, and in a recent interview with IEEE Spectrum, operations lead [Tim Canham] shared some fascinating details about the vehicle and some of the unorthodox decisions that went into its design.

[Tim] explains that, as a technology demonstrator, the team was allowed to take far more risks in developing Ingenuity than they would have been able to otherwise. Rather than sticking with legacy hardware and software, they were free to explore newer and less proven technology.

That included off-the-shelf consumer components, such as a laser altimeter purchased from SparkFun. It also means that the computational power packed into Ingenuity far exceeds that of Perseverance itself, though how well the helicopter’s smartphone-class Snapdragon 801 processor will handle the harsh Martian environment is yet to be seen.

On the software side, we also learn that Ingenuity is making extensive use of open source code. Not only is the onboard computer running Linux, but the vehicle is being controlled by an Apache 2.0 licensed framework developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for CubeSats and other small spacecraft. The project is available on GitHub for anyone who wants it, and according to the changelog, the fixes and improvements required for the “Mars Helicopter Project” were merged in a few releases ago.

The fact that code currently ticking away on the surface of Mars can be downloaded and implemented into your own DIY project is a revelation that’s not lost on [Tim]. “It’s kind of an open-source victory because we’re flying an open-source operating system and an open-source flight software framework and flying commercial parts that you can buy off the shelf if you wanted to do this yourself someday.”

Of course, it took a whole lot more than some Python libraries and a handful of sensors from SparkFun to design and build the first space-going helicopter. But the fact that even a small slice of the technology inside of a project like Ingenuity is now available to the average hacker and maker is a huge step towards democratizing scientific research here on Earth.

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A Brief History Of Optical Communication

February 18, 2021 by Moritz v. Sivers 44 Comments

We live in the information age where access to the internet is considered a fundamental human right. Exercising this right does largely rely on the technological advances made in optical communication. Using light to send information has a long history: from ancient Greece, through Claude Chappe’s semaphore towers and Alexander Graham Bell’s photophone, to fiber optic networks and future satellite internet constellations currently developed by tech giants.

Let’s dive a little bit deeper into the technologies that were used to spread information with the help of light throughout history. Continue reading “A Brief History Of Optical Communication” →

Listening In On Muscles With The BioAmp EMG Pill

February 15, 2021 by Maya Posch 49 Comments

Ever felt like what your MCU of choice misses is a way to read the electrical signals from your muscles? In that case [Deepak Khatri] over at Upside Down Labs has got your back with the BioAmp EMG Pill. Described as an affordable, open source electromyography (EMG) module, based around a TL074 quad low-noise JFET-input opamp. At just over 32×10 millimeters, it’s pretty compact as well.

The onboard opamp ensures that the weak electrical signals captured from the muscles when they move are amplified sufficiently that the ADC of any microcontroller or similar can capture the signal for further processing. Some knowledge of how to set up an EMG is required to use the module, of course, and the TL074 opamp prefers an input voltage between 7-30 V. Even so, it has all the basics onboard, and the KiCad project is freely available via the above linked GitHub project.

In addition, [Deepak] also tweeted about working on an affordable, open source active prosthetics controller (and human augmentation device), which has us very much interested in what other projects may come out of Upside Down Labs before long. After, all we’re no strangers to hacking with biosignals.

Your Own 11.2 GHz Radio Telescope

February 12, 2021 by Al Williams 26 Comments

Modern life has its conveniences. Often, those conveniences lead to easier hacks. A great example of that is the rise of satellite television and the impact it has had on amateur radio telescopes. There was a time when building a dish and a suitable low noise amplifier was a big deal. Now they are commodity parts you can get anywhere.

The antenna in use is a 1.2-meter prime focus dish. Some TV dishes use an offset feed, but that makes it harder to aim for use in a radio telescope. In addition to off-the-shelf antenna and RF components, an AirSpy software-defined radio picks up the frequency-shifted output from the antenna. There is more about the software side of the build in a follow-up post. We liked that this was a pretty meaty example of using GNU Radio.

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Nanotube Yarn Makes Strong Bionic Muscles

February 11, 2021 by Al Williams 17 Comments

What’s just a bit thicker than a human hair and has ten times the capability of a human muscle? Polymer-coated carbon nanotube yarn. Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas created this yarn using carbon nanotubes coated with a polymer and coiled with a diameter of about 140 microns.

Passing a voltage through the fiber causes the muscle yarn to expand or contract. Previous similar fibers have to do both actions. That is, they expand and then contract in a bipolar movement. The polymer coating allows for unipolar fibers, critical to using the fibers as artificial muscles.

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Sequencing DNA For Metagenomics

February 5, 2021 by Al Williams 15 Comments

If someone brought you an odd piece of electronic hardware and you wanted to identify it, you’d probably look for markings on the outside first. If that didn’t work out, you might look under the cover and read some markings on the board or key components. However, in a tough case, you might dump the firmware and try to guess what the device is or what it does by examining the code that makes it run. That’s kind of what [Ciro] did. Wanting to determine the bacteria in a water sample led to using relatively inexpensive DNA sequencing hardware to look at the DNA present in the samples. This would have been a huge undertaking for a well-funded lab just a few short years ago. Now it just takes a USB device and some software.

Of course, inexpensive is in the eye of the beholder. The micropore sequencer costs about $500 and has a one-time use consumable cost of about $500, although that’s enough to process about 10 human genomes. The technology depends on using a small pore only large enough to pass one strand of DNA at a time. Blocks of nucelotides cause different amounts of electrical current to flow through the pore.

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Electric Candle Replaces Flame With Plasma

February 1, 2021 by Dan Maloney 32 Comments

Ah, the charm of candlelight! Nothing says “romance” — or “extended power outage” — like the warm, soft glow of a real candle. But if you’re not a fan of burning wax for whatever reason, this electric plasma candle may be just the thing to build for your next dinner for two.

This re-imagining of the humble candle comes to us by way of plasma super-fan [Jay Bowles], who has a lot of experience with plasmas and the high-voltage circuits that often go along with them. Even so, he had to enlist help with the circuit, with is essentially a 10-MHz Class-E oscillator, from [Leon] at the Teslaundmehr channel on YouTube. The most prominent feature of the build is the big resonator coil, surrounded by the shorter primary coil and sitting atop the heatsink for the MOSFET driver. [Jay]’s usual acrylic-rich style is well represented here, and the resulting build is quite lovely.

The tuning process, though, sounds like it was pure torture. It took a lot of tweaking — and a lot of MOSFETs — to get the candle to produce a stable flame. But once it did, the results were striking. The plasma coming off the breakout point on the resonator coil is pretty much the same size, shape, and — occasionally — the color as a candle flame. It’s also hot enough to do some damage, so do be careful if you build this. We’ve included both [Jay]’s and [Leon]’s videos below; [Leon]’s has great step-by-step build instructions.

We’ve been following [Jay]’s journey through the plasmaverse for a while now, from his cheap and simple Tesla coils to using corona discharge to clean his hands. He even hosted a Hack Chat on the subject last year.

Note: [Jay] reached out to us after publication about mitigating RF noise. He does his experiments inside a steel-reinforced concrete building with grounded metal screens over the windows. An RF-wizard friend has checked across the spectrum and detected no leaks to the outside. Sounds like the business to us.

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