Swap Your Microwave For A High Voltage Stereo

May 30, 2020 by Bryan Cockfield 31 Comments

When building a new project, common wisdom suggests to avoid “reinventing the wheel”, or doing something simple from scratch that’s easily available already. However, if you can build a high-voltage wheel, so to speak, it might be fun just to see what happens. [Dan] decided to reinvent not the wheel, but the speaker, and instead of any conventional build he decided to make one with parts from a microwave and over 6,000 volts.

The circuit he constructed works essentially like a Tesla coil with a modulated audio signal as an input. The build uses the high voltage transformer from the microwave too, which steps the 240 V input up to around 6 kV. To modulate that kind of voltage, [Dan] sends the audio signal through a GU81M vacuum tube with the support of a fleet of high voltage capacitors. The antenna connected to the magnetron does tend to catch on fire somewhere in the middle of each song, so it’s not the safest device around even if the high voltage can be handled properly, but it does work better than expected as a speaker.

If you want a high-voltage speaker that (probably) won’t burn your house down, though, it might be best to stick to a typical Tesla coil. No promises though, since working with high voltages typically doesn’t come with safety guarantees.

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Coronavirus Testing: CRISPR Technology Set To Streamline Viral Testing

May 27, 2020 by Dan Maloney 3 Comments

If we could run back 2020 to its beginning and get a do-over, chances are pretty good that we’d do a lot of things differently. There’s a ton of blame to go around on COVID-19, but it’s safe to say that one of the biggest failures of this whole episode has been the lack of cheap, quick, accurate testing for SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the current pandemic. It’s not for lack of information; after all, Chinese scientists published the sequence of the viral genome very early in the pandemic, and researchers the world over did the same for all the information they gleaned from the virus as it rampaged around the planet.

But leveraging that information into usable diagnostics has been anything but a smooth process. Initially, the only method of detecting the virus was with reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests, a fussy process that requires trained technicians and a well-equipped lab, takes days to weeks to return results, and can only tell if the patient has a current infection. Antibody testing has the potential for a quick and easy, no-lab-required test, but can only be used to see if a patient has had an infection at some time in the past.

What’s needed as the COVID-19 crisis continues is a test with the specificity and sensitivity of PCR combined with the rapidity and simplicity of an antibody test. That’s where a new assay, based on the latest in molecular biology methods and dubbed “STOPCovid” comes in, and it could play a major role in diagnostics now and in the future.

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Piddler Illustrates Aliasing And The Z-Transform

May 18, 2020 by Al Williams 1 Comment

One of the problems about learning too much control system theory is that you start to realize almost everything is some sort of control system. That’s the case with [Fernando Zigunov]. After observing a Rayleigh-Plateau instability in his kitchen sink, he decided to build a little display piece that shows water apparently defying gravity that he calls The Piddler.

We’ve seen things like this before, of course. A coffee pump, a check valve, and a strobe lamp with a controller is all that it takes. What makes this project interesting is the over hour-long video lecture on the theory behind why this works and how it relates to aliasing and the z-transform. You can check out the video, below.

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High Voltage Experiment Pipes Power With Water

May 15, 2020 by Tom Nardi 27 Comments

The idea of transferring energy with water isn’t exactly new. In fact, it’s downright ancient. Running water has been tapped to power our contrivances since folks were getting excited about that new library they were opening up over in Alexandria. But what if there was a way to deliver power with water that wasn’t kinetic, and instead relied on the electrical properties of the planet’s favorite libation?

That’s exactly what [Jay Bowles] set out to explore with his latest experiment. Since water (we know, not pure water) conducts electricity, it stands to reason that it could be used as a stand-in for traditional copper wiring. Why would you want to do such a thing? Because unlike wires, water can easily morph into whatever shape may be required, and can be moved around and controlled with nothing more complex than ball valves.

To test this concept, [Jay] put together a water distribution system out of simple acrylic tubing. A reservoir was attached to one of his high voltage generators, and copper caps were placed at the end of the tubes to serve as direct attachment points for devices.

But thanks to capacitive coupling, the fluorescent lights he uses don’t actually need to be physically connected to light up. As demonstrated in the video after the break, the lights surrounding the system can be independently controlled just by turning their respective valves on and off; all without any physical contact being made.

Of course, compared to traditional wiring there are plenty of downsides to this idea. Copper wires don’t tend to freeze in the winter and spring a leak, nor do they build up bubbles of explosive hydrogen gas. So it’s safe to say the wiring in your house probably won’t ever be replaced with a tube of charged water. But [Jay] does have some interesting ideas of how this technique could be used in non-traditional ways. For example, he describes how outdoor lighting could be powered by the energy radiating from a small stream.

Even if the practical applications of this technique are somewhat limited, there’s no question that it’s a fascinating idea. Believing that he’s the first person to ever demonstrate power transmission under these specific circumstances, he’s decided to call the concept “Bowles Transmission”. We’d love to see somebody use this principle in one of their projects, and we’re willing to bet so would [Jay].

As with his recent ozone sterilization experiments, we imagine this idea is going to be met with some debate. But that’s sort of the point. [Jay] doesn’t claim to have all the answers, and hopes these videos get people thinking and talking. As they say, nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

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Crunching Giant Data From The Large Hadron Collider

May 14, 2020 by Moritz v. Sivers 19 Comments

Modern physics experiments are often complex, ambitious, and costly. The times where scientific progress could be made by conducting a small tabletop experiment in your lab are mostly over. Especially, in fields like astrophysics or particle physics, you need huge telescopes, expensive satellite missions, or giant colliders run by international collaborations with hundreds or thousands of participants. To drive this point home: the largest machine ever built by humankind is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). You won’t be surprised to hear that even just managing the data it produces is a super-sized task.

Since its start in 2008, the LHC at CERN has received several upgrades to stay at the cutting edge of technology. Currently, the machine is in its second long shutdown and being prepared to restart in May 2021. One of the improvements of Run 3 will be to deliver particle collisions at a higher rate, quantified by the so-called luminosity. This enables experiments to gather more statistics and to better study rare processes. At the end of 2024, the LHC will be upgraded to the High-Luminosity LHC which will deliver an increased luminosity by up to a factor of 10 beyond the LHC’s original design value.

Currently, the major experiments ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb are preparing themselves to cope with the expected data rates in the range of Terabytes per second. It is a perfect time to look into more detail at the data acquisition, storage, and analysis of modern high-energy physics experiments. Continue reading “Crunching Giant Data From The Large Hadron Collider” →

A Smart Bandage For Monitoring Chronic Wounds

May 12, 2020 by Orlando Hoilett 4 Comments

Here at Hackaday, we’re always enthralled by cool biohacks and sensor development that enable us to better study and analyze the human body. We often find ourselves perusing Google Scholar and PubMed to find the coolest projects even if it means going back in time a year or two. It was one of those scholarly excursions that brought us to this nifty smart bandage for monitoring wound healing by the engineers of FlexiLab at Purdue University. The device uses an omniphobic (hydrophobic and oleophobic) paper-based substrate coupled with an onboard impedance analyzer (AD5933), an electrochemical sensor (the same type of sensor in glucometers) for measuring uric acid and pH (LMP91000), and a 2.4 GHz antenna for wirelessly transmitting the data (nRF24L01). All this is programmed with an Arduino Nano. They even released their source code.

To detect uric acid, they used the enzyme uricase, which is very specific to uric acid and exhibits low cross-reactivity with other compounds. They drop cast uric acid onto a silver/silver chloride electrode printed on the omniphobic paper. Similarly, to detect pH, they drop cast a pH-responsive polymer called polyaniline emeraldine salt (PANI-ES) between two separate silver/silver chloride electrodes. All that was left was to attach the electrodes to the LMP91000, do a bit of programming, and there they were with their own electrochemical sensor. The impedance analyzer was a bit simpler to develop, simply attaching un-modified electrodes to the AD5933 and placing the electrodes on the wound.

The authors noted that the device uses a much simpler manufacturing process compared to smart bandages published by other academics, being compatible with large-scale manufacturing techniques such as roll-to-roll printing. Overcoming manufacturing hurdles is a critical step in getting your idea into the hands of consumers. Though they have a long way to go, FlexiLab appears to be on the right track. We’ll check back in every so often to see what they’re up to.

Until then, take a look at some other electric bandage projects on Hackaday or even make your own electrochemical sensor.

Open Source Raman Spectrometer Is Cheaper, But Not Cheap

May 12, 2020 by Al Williams 14 Comments

Raman spectrography uses the Raman scattering of photons from a laser or other coherent light beam to measure the vibrational state of molecules. In chemistry, this is useful for identifying molecules and studying chemical bonds. Don’t have a Raman spectroscope? Cheer up! Open Raman will give you the means to build one.

The “starter edition” replaces the initial breadboard version which used Lego construction, although the plans for that are still on the site, as well. [Luc] is planning a performance edition, soon, that will have better performance and, presumably, a greater cost.

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