A Power Button For Raspberry Pi, Courtesy Of Device Tree Overlays

April 4, 2022 by Maya Posch 11 Comments

As a standard feature of the Linux kernel, device tree overlays (DTOs) allow for easy enabling and configuration of features and drivers, such as those contained within the standard firmware of a Raspberry Pi system. Using these DTOs it’s trivial to set up features like as a soft power-off button, triggering an external power supply and enable drivers for everything from an external real-time clock (RTC) to various displays, sensors and audio devices, all without modifying the operating system or using custom scripts.

It’s also possible to add your own DTOs to create a custom overlay that combines multiple DTO commands into a single one, or create a custom device tree binary (DTB) for the target hardware. Essentially this DTB is loaded by the Linux kernel on boot to let it know which devices are connected and their configuration settings, very similar to what the BIOS component with x86-based architectures handles automatically.

Ultimately, the DTB concept and the use of overlays allow for easy configuration of such optional devices and GPIO pin settings, especially when made configurable through a simple text file as on the Raspberry Pi SBC platform.

Continue reading “A Power Button For Raspberry Pi, Courtesy Of Device Tree Overlays” →

Hackaday Links: April 3, 2022

April 3, 2022 by Dan Maloney 7 Comments

It’s that time of year again — the 2022 Hackaday Prize has officially launched, and we’re excited to see what it turns out. This year’s theme is “Sustainability, Resilience, and Circularity,” and just in time, too; if the last couple of years has taught us anything, it’s that we’ve got a lot of failure points built into the systems that run our world. As broken as things are, it’s tempting to just curl up in a ball and pretend everything’s fine, but that’s not how hackers respond to adversity. We need to control what we can control, and there’s plenty of work to be done. From sustainable energy ideas to ways to reduce the amount of stuff we throw away, from breathing new life into old equipment to building communities that can take care of themselves, there’s plenty of work to be done. So get over to the Hackaday Prize page, check out the launch summit video if you need some inspiration, and get hacking. And hurry up — things are only going to get better if people like us make it happen.

Continue reading “Hackaday Links: April 3, 2022” →

REMOTICON 2021 // Hal Rodriguez And Sahrye Cohen Combine Couture And Circuitry

March 31, 2022 by Kristina Panos 3 Comments

[Hal Rodriguez] and [Sahrye Cohen] of Amped Atelier focus on creating interactive wearable garments with some fairly high standards. Every garment must be pretty, and has to either be controllable by the wearer, through a set of sensors, or even by the audience via Bluetooth. Among their past creations are a dress with color sensors and 3D-printed scales on the front that change color, and a flowing pantsuit designed for a dancer using an accelerometer to make light patterns based on her movements.

Conductive Melody — a wearable musical instrument that is the focus of [Sahrye] and [Hal]’s Remoticon 2021 talk — was created for a presentation at Beakerhead Festival, a multi-day STEAM-based gathering in Calgary. [Sahrye] and [Hal] truly joined forces for this one, because [Sahrye] is all about electronics and costuming, and [Hal] is into synths and electronic music. You can see the demo in the video after the break.

The dress’s form is inspired by classical instruments and the types of clothing that they in turn inspired, such as long, generous sleeves for harp players and pianists. So [Hal] and [Sahrye] dreamed up a dress with a single large playable sleeve that hangs down from the mid- and upper arm. The sleeve is covered with laser-cut conductive fabric curlicues that look like a baroque interpretation of harp strings. Play a note by touching one of these traces, and the lights on the front of the dress will move in sync with the music.

[Sahrye] started the dress portion of Conductive Melody with a sketch of the garment’s broad strokes, then painted a more final drawing with lots of detail. Then she made a muslin, which is kind of the breadboard version of a project in garment-making where thin cotton fabric is used to help visualize the end result. Once satisfied with the fit, [Sahrye] then made the final dress out of good fabric. And we mean really good fabric — silk, in this case. Because as [Sahrye] says, if you’re going to make a one-off, why not make as nicely as possible? We can totally get behind that.

[Sahrye] says she is always thinking about how a wearable will be worn, and how it will be washed or otherwise cared for. That sequined and semi-sheer section of the bodice hides the LEDs and their wiring quite well, while still being comfortable for the wearer.

Inside the sleeve is an MPRP121 capacitive touch sensor and an Arduino that controls the LEDs and sends the signals to a Raspberry Pi hidden among the ruffles in the back of the dress.

The Pi is running Piano Genie, which can turn eight inputs into an 88-key piano in real time. When no one is playing the sleeve, the lights have a standby mode of mellow yellows and whites that fade in and out slowly compared to the more upbeat rainbow of musical mode.

We love to see wearable projects — especially such fancy creations! — but we know how finicky they can be. Among the lessons learned by [Sahrye] and [Hal]: don’t make your conductive fabric traces too thin, and silver conductive materials may tarnish irreparably. We just hope they didn’t have to waste too much conductive fabric or that nice blue silk to find this out.

Continue reading “REMOTICON 2021 // Hal Rodriguez And Sahrye Cohen Combine Couture And Circuitry” →

The Heinz Nixdorf Museumsforum building in Paderborn

Visit The World’s Largest Computer Museum: The Heinz Nixdorf

March 30, 2022 by Robin Kearey 21 Comments

Most stories in the history of computing took place in one of a small number of places. The wartime code-breaking effort in Bletchley Park led to Colossus, the first programmable electronic computer. Various university campuses in Britain and the US were home to first-generation computers like ENIAC, EDVAC and the Manchester Baby in the late 1940s. Silicon Valley then stole the limelight with the home computer revolution in the 1970s. Naturally, all of these places have their museums celebrating their local achievements, but the world’s largest computer museum is not found in Silicon Valley or on the campus of a famous university. Instead, you have to travel to a small German town called Paderborn, which houses the Heinz Nixdorf Museumsforum, or HNF.

Heinz Nixdorf might not be a household name in America like Jack Tramiel or Steve Jobs, but he was one of Europe’s great computer pioneers. Starting with vacuum tube based machines in 1952, Nixdorf gradually expanded his company into one of the largest computer manufacturers of the 1970s. His products were especially popular among large businesses in the financial sector, such as banks and insurance companies. By the late 1980s however, sales went downhill and the company was eventually acquired by Siemens. Today, the Nixdorf name lives on as part of Diebold-Nixdorf, a major producer of ATMs and checkout machines, reflecting the original company’s focus on the financial industry.

The museum’s roots lie in Heinz Nixdorf’s personal collection of typewriters and other office equipment. Although he already envisioned starting a museum dedicated to computing, his sudden death in 1986 put a stop to that. A few of his employees kept the plan alive however, and in 1996 the HNF was opened in Paderborn. Today the museum is run by a non-profit foundation that aims to provide education in information and communication technology to a wide audience.

The collection is housed in the former worldwide headquarters of Nixdorf Computer AG, a rather imposing 1970s office building covered in gold-tinted windows. Inside,]] you’re reminded of its former life as an office building through its compact layout and low ceilings. It does give the museum a bit of a cosy feel, unlike, say, the cavernous halls of London’s Science Museum, but don’t let this fool you: at 6,000 m², the main exhibition area is about twice as large as that of Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum. Continue reading “Visit The World’s Largest Computer Museum: The Heinz Nixdorf” →

Replaceable Batteries Are Coming Back To Phones If The EU Gets Its Way

March 30, 2022 by Zoe Skyforest 150 Comments

Back in the day, just about everything that used a battery had a hatch or a hutch that you could open to pull it out and replace it if need be. Whether it was a radio, a cordless phone, or a cellphone, it was a cinch to swap out a battery.

These days, many devices hide their batteries, deep beneath tamper-proof stickers and warnings that state there are “no user serviceable components inside.” The EU wants to change all that, though, and has voted to mandate that everything from cellphones to e-bikes must have easily replaceable batteries, with the legislation coming into effect as soon as 2024.

Continue reading “Replaceable Batteries Are Coming Back To Phones If The EU Gets Its Way” →

Converting Your Bike To Electric: Why You Should, And When You Shouldn’t

March 29, 2022 by Jenny List 96 Comments

A decade ago I was lucky enough to work for an employer that offered a bicycle loan scheme to its employees, and I took the opportunity to spend on a Brompton folding bike. This London-made machine is probably one of the more efficiently folding cycles on the market, and has the useful feature of being practical for longer journeys rather than just a quick run from the train. A 3-speed hub gearbox is fine for unhurried touring, but sadly my little folder has always been a bit of a pain on the hills. Thus around the start of the pandemic I splashed out again and bought a Swytch electric upgrade kit for it, and after a few logistical and life upheavals I’ve finally fitted it to the bike. I’ve ridden a few electric bikes but never had my own, so it’s time to sit down and analyse the experience. Is an electric bike something you should have, or not?

A Box Of Bits Becomes An Electric Bike

All the parts of a Swytch kit. From the Swytch assembly manual.

Swytch sell their kits via crowdfunding rounds, so I’d been on a waiting list for a while and got an early-bird price on my kit. It took quite a while to arrive, much longer than the expected time in mid-2020 because of the pandemic, finally being delivered some time in February last year. It came in a modestly-sized cardboard carton which would be an easy carry on the Brompton’s luggage rack, containing neatly packed a new front wheel with motor, as well as the battery and all sundry parts.

Fitting the kit shouldn’t stretch the capabilities of a Hackaday reader, with probably the trickiest part being the positioning of a Hall-effect sensor near the crank. The kit works by providing a motor assist when you pedal, so part of it is a set of magnets on a plastic disk with various attachments for different cranks and pedal sets. The Brompton front wheel is removed and its tyre and tube transferred to the Swytch one, which is then put on the bike. Once the magnet disk and Hall sensor are attached, the cables follow the existing ones and emerge at the handlebars where a sturdy bracket for the battery box is fitted. Continue reading “Converting Your Bike To Electric: Why You Should, And When You Shouldn’t” →

Enter The 2022 Hackaday Prize And Help Save The World

March 29, 2022 by Elliot Williams 7 Comments

The biggest challenge facing humanity over the next century is how to do as much or more, with less environmental impact. Reducing our collective footprint on the planet is of course not any one person’s responsibility alone, and if it’s going to require a million clever solutions to create a sustainable future, then we know just the group of hackers to get to work.

This year’s 2022 Hackaday Prize challenges you to think of big or small ways to create greener energy sources, make recycling easier, hack old devices to save them from the landfill, or build out the networks that keep our local communities together and conscious of our group effort. If you’ve got a super solar harvester, a recycling robot, or even reverse engineering tools to help combat forced technological obsolescence, we want to see your hacks. Or if you’d like, you can simply save the world in the wildcard round.

As always, courtesy of our overlords at Supplyframe and the generous sponsorship of Digikey, we’ve got tons of prize money to give out to the best projects. The top ten projects in each of five challenge rounds will receive a $500 cash prize, and five winning projects will bag from $5,000 to $50,000 in the finals in November. But you shouldn’t wait — the first round, Planet-Friendly Power, starts right now!

Get your team together, start brainstorming an idea, post it up on Hackaday.io to enter in the Prize, and you’re on your way. Independent of the judging, we’ll be looking through the field and writing up awesome projects as we find them. This is your chance to be seen, to help create a better world, and maybe even to win big.

Challenge	Date	The Details
Planet-Friendly Power	Mar 29 – May 1	Your solution should lower the cost of clean energy, through energy harvesting and/or storage efficiency improvements.
Reuse, Recycle, Revamp	May 1 – June 12	Your project facilitates recycling of material that would otherwise end up in the waste stream.
Hack it Back	June 12th – July 24	Your project adds new capabilities to older electrical gear to keep it useful.
Climate Resilient Communities	July 24 – Sept 4	Design devices that help communities be more resilient to weather and climate disasters and/or collect data from their environments so that they may advocate for changes in local infrastructure.
Save the World Wildcard	Sept 4 – Oct 16th	This is where anything goes, your designs should stand apart from the other challenges but still create a more promising future for all.