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5121 Articles

Art of 3D printer in the middle of printing a Hackaday Jolly Wrencher logo

3D Printering: When Resin Printing Gets Smelly

April 7, 2020 by 20 Comments

Nowadays, resin printers are highly accessible and can do some great stuff. But between isopropyl alcohol for part rinsing and the fact that some resins have a definite smell to them, ventilation can get important fast. The manufacturers don’t talk much about this part of the resin printing experience, but it’s there nevertheless. So what can be done when smells become a problem?

I recently had to deal with this when I printed several liters of resin worth of parts. That’s a lot of resin, and a lot of alcohol for part washing. Smells — which had never been much of a problem in my work area — suddenly became an issue.

Where Odors Come From

Smells come from two sources: the resin itself, and the isopropyl alcohol used for cleanup and part washing. Continue reading “3D Printering: When Resin Printing Gets Smelly” →

Getting To Space Is Even Harder During A Pandemic

April 6, 2020 by 3 Comments

At this point, most of us are painfully aware of the restrictions that COVID-19 social distancing protocols have put on our daily lives. Anyone who can is working from home, major events are canceled, non-essential businesses are closed, and travel is either strongly discouraged or prohibited outright. In particularly hard hit areas, life and commerce has nearly ground to a halt with no clear end date in sight.

Naturally, there are far reaching consequences for this shutdown beyond what’s happening on the individual level. Large scale projects are also being slowed or halted entirely, as there’s only so much you can do remotely. That’s especially true when the assembly of hardware is concerned, which has put some industries in a particularly tight spot. One sector that’s really feeling the strain is aerospace. Around the world, space agencies are finding that their best laid plans are suddenly falling apart in the face of COVID-19.

In some cases it’s a minor annoyance, requiring nothing more than some tweaks to procedures. But when the movements of the planets are concerned, a delay of weeks or months changes everything. While things are still changing too rapidly to make an exhaustive list, we already know of a few missions that are being impacted in these uncertain times.

Continue reading “Getting To Space Is Even Harder During A Pandemic” →

Navigating Self-Driving Cars By Looking At What’s Underneath The Road

April 6, 2020 by 51 Comments

When you put a human driver behind the wheel, they will use primarily their eyes to navigate. Both to stay on the road and to use any navigation aids, such as maps and digital navigation assistants. For self-driving cars, tackling the latter is relatively easy, as the system would use the same information in a similar way: when to to change lanes, and when to take a left or right. The former task is a lot harder, with situational awareness even a challenge for human drivers.

In order to maintain this awareness, self-driving and driver-assistance systems use a combination of cameras, LIDAR, and other sensors. These can track stationary and moving objects and keep track of the lines and edges of the road. This allows the car to precisely follow the road and, at least in theory, not run into obstacles or other vehicles. But if the weather gets bad enough, such as when the road is covered with snow, these systems can have trouble coping.

Looking for ways to improve the performance of autonomous driving systems in poor visibility, engineers are currently experimenting with ground-penetrating radar. While it’s likely to be awhile before we start to see this hardware on production vehicles, the concept already shows promise. It turns out that if you can’t see whats on the road ahead of you, looking underneath it might be the next best thing. Continue reading “Navigating Self-Driving Cars By Looking At What’s Underneath The Road” →

Cellular Tracking Used During COVID-19 Pandemic

April 3, 2020 by 43 Comments

As most in the technology community know, nation states have a suite of powerful tools that can be used to trace and monitor mobile phones. By and large, this comes up in discussions of privacy and legislation now and then, before fading out of the public eye once more. In the face of a global pandemic, however, governments are now using these tools in the way many have long feared – for social control. Here’s what’s happening on the ground.

The Current Situation

With COVID-19 sweeping the globe, its high level of contagiousness and rate of hospitalizations has left authorities scrambling to contain the spread. Unprecedented lockdowns have been put in place in an attempt to flatten the curve of new cases to give medical systems the capacity to respond. A key part of this effort is making sure that confirmed cases respect quarantine rules, and isolate themselves to avoid spreading the disease. Rules have also been put in place in several countries where all overseas arrivals must quarantine, regardless of symptoms or status. Continue reading “Cellular Tracking Used During COVID-19 Pandemic” →

FDA Says PPE Can Be Reused After Trip Through Shipping Container Decontamination System

April 2, 2020 by 96 Comments

We are hearing so much in the news about shortages of personal protective equipment, or PPE, for healthcare workers. Factories are being asked to perform the impossible when it comes to production be the need is so real, so immediate, and so widespread.

The problem with rapid consumption of PPE is that once it has been exposed to infection, it’s contaminated and can’t be used again. Physically it may be fine, but it retains the capability to infect other people. If there were some way it could be effectively cleaned and decontaminated for re-use, it would reduce the strain on the supply chain and result in a greater availability of PPE for all those who require it.

This is the promise of Battelle’s Critical Care Decontamination System, a shipping-container-sized unit which has received approval from the FDA at break-neck speed.

Continue reading “FDA Says PPE Can Be Reused After Trip Through Shipping Container Decontamination System” →

Star Trackers: Telling Up From Down In Any Space

April 2, 2020 by 28 Comments

Keeping track of position is crucial in a lot of situations. On Earth, it’s usually relatively straight-forward, with systems having been developed over the centuries that would allow one to get at least a rough fix on one’s position on this planet. But for a satellite out in space, however, it’s harder. How do they keep their communications dishes pointed towards Earth?

The stars are an obvious orientation point. The Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem (AACS) on the Voyager 1 and 2 space probes has the non-enviable task of keeping the spacecraft’s communication dish aligned precisely with a communications dish back on Earth, which from deep space is an incomprehensibly tiny target.

Back on Earth, the star tracker concept has become quite popular among photographers who try to image the night skies. Even in your living room,  VR systems also rely on knowing the position of the user’s body and any peripherals in space. In this article we’ll take a look at the history and current applications of this type of position tracking. Continue reading “Star Trackers: Telling Up From Down In Any Space” →

Stay Smarter Than Your Smart Speaker

April 1, 2020 by 56 Comments

Smart speakers have always posed a risk to privacy and security — that’s just the price we pay for getting instant answers to life’s urgent and not-so-urgent questions the moment they arise. But it seems that many owners of the 76 million or so smart speakers on the active install list have yet to wake up to the reality that this particular trick of technology requires a microphone that’s always listening. Always. Listening.

With so much of the world’s workforce now working from home due to the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, smart speakers have suddenly become a big risk for business, too — especially those where confidential conversations are as common and crucial as coffee.

Imagine the legions of lawyers out there, suddenly thrust from behind their solid-wood doors and forced to set up ramshackle sub rosa sanctuaries in their homes to discuss private matters with their equally out-of-sorts clients. How many of them don’t realize that their smart speaker bristles with invisible thorns, and is even vulnerable to threats outside the house? Given the recent study showing that smart speakers can and do activate accidentally up to 19 times per day, the prevalence of the consumer-constructed surveillance state looms like a huge crisis of confidentiality.

So what are the best practices of confidential work in earshot of these audio-triggered gadgets?

Continue reading “Stay Smarter Than Your Smart Speaker” →