A Win For The Raspberry Pi Compute Module

October 19, 2016 by Jenny List 40 Comments

News comes from the Raspberry Pi Foundation, of something of a coup for their Compute Module product. Support for it is to be integrated into NEC’s line of commercial displays, and the electronics giant has lined up a list of software partners to provide integrated signage solutions for the platform.

It is interesting to note how NEC have done this, while it’s being spun by the Foundation as a coup for them the compute module sits on a daughter board in a slot on the back of the display rather than on the display PCB itself. They are likely hedging their bets with this move, future daughter boards could be created to provide support for other platforms should the Compute Module board fail to gain traction.

Given that this relates to a high-end commercial product from just one manufacturer, what’s in it for us in the hardware community? After all, it’s not as if you’ll be seeing Compute Module slots in the back of domestic TVs or monitors from NEC or any other manufacturer in the near future. The answer is that such a high-profile customer lends the module platform a commercial credibility that it may not yet have achieved. Until now, it has found a home mainly in more niche or boutique products, this appearance in something from a global manufacturer takes it to a new level. And as the module finds its way into more devices the chances of them coming within the reach of our community and providing us with opportunities for adapting them for our purposes through the Pi platform become ever greater.

The use of the Compute Module in displays made for public signage is oddly a continuation of an unseen tradition for ARM-based machines from Cambridge. Aside from British schools a significant market for the Acorn Archimedes platform that spawned ARM was the embedded signage market, and even today there are still plenty of signs concealing RiscOS machines out there in the wild.

We covered the launch of the Compute Module in 2014, but it’s fair to say it’s not appeared much since in the world of Raspberry Pi projects from hardware hackers. This is not because it’s not a good platform; more likely that the Raspberry Pi models A, B, and particularly the Zero are so much cheaper when you consider the significant cost of the Compute Module development board. At the Raspberry Pi 4th birthday party earlier this year, while covering the event as your Hackaday scribe but also wearing my metaphorical Pi kit supplier and Pi Jam organizer hats I stood up in the Q&A session and asked the Foundation CEO Phil Colligan to consider a hardware developer program for the platform. Perhaps a cut-down Compute Module developer board would be an asset to such a program, as well as driving more adoption of that particular board.

Germans React To UK’s Micro:bit

October 18, 2016 by Elliot Williams 74 Comments

Getting kids interested in programming is all the rage right now, and the UK is certainly taking pole position with its BBC micro:bit, just recently distributed to every seventh-grader in the land. Germany, proud of its education system and technological prowess, is caught playing catch-up. Until now.

The Calliope Mini (translated here) is essentially a micro:bit clone, but one that has learned from the experience of its spiritual forefather — the connection points are spread around the outside of the board where the crocodile clips won’t accidentally touch each other.

Not content to simply copy, the Calliope also adds additional functionality. A microphone and speaker are integrated onboard, as is a Grove-style I2C connector. They’ve even added a TI DRV8837 H-bridge motor driver, so students could make a rolling robot straight out of the box.

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Electromagnetic Pulse: Pure Hollywood?

October 18, 2016 by Bryan Cockfield 61 Comments

Imagine you’re in charge of a major heist. Right as your crew is about to rob the main vault, you need all of the electronics in the building to fail at exactly the right moment with no other collateral damage (except, maybe, to your raggedy panel van). Obviously you will turn to one of the entertainment industry’s tired tropes, the electromagnetic pulse! The only problem is that if you were to use a real one rather than a Hollywood prop either there would be practically no effect, a large crater where the vault used to be, or most of humanity would be in deep trouble. After all, the real world isn’t quite as convenient as the movies make it seem.

Our curiosity into this phenomenon was piqued when we featured an “EMP generator” from [FPS Weapons]. The device doesn’t create an enrapturing movie-esque EMP pulse suitable for taking down a casino or two, but it does spew a healthy amount of broadband electromagnetic interference (EMI) in every direction. It probably also doesn’t send the EMI very far; as we’ve seen in many other projects, it’s hard to transfer energy through the air. It got us wondering, though: what is the difference between being annoying and creating a weapon? And, is there any practical use for a device like this?

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Microwave Ovens Turn You Into Spiderman

October 14, 2016 by Dan Maloney 43 Comments

Want to climb a wall like Spiderman? No problem – just whip up a climbing rig with microwave oven transformers. And find a steel building. And rewrite the canon so that Peter Parker is bitten by an electromagnetic spider instead of a radioactive one.

Back in the reality-based world, you’d probably be taking you life in your hands if you use [Make It Extreme]’s rig to get more than a dozen feet above the ground. The basics are pretty sound, but the devil is in the details. Four MOTs are cut and stripped of their secondary coils and attached to fixtures for the feet and hands. A backpack full of gel cell batteries powers the rig, and simple normally closed switches in the handholds control both the foot and hand magnets on a side. A click of a switch releases the magnets on one side, allowing the climber to reach up.

And therein lies our safety beef: what happens when you make a mistake and push both buttons at the same time? Seems like this build is screaming for some control circuitry that prevents this most obvious failure mode. We’re not ones to throw an Arduino at every problem, but in this case it may make sense, especially when it could monitor ~~your time left before cratering~~ the charge remaining in the battery pack.

Still, like most dangerous stunts, this looks really cool. If you’ve got any ideas for improvements in the controls, leave them in the comments below. And if you’re interested in transforming yourself into a superhero, learn from a guy who’s actually doing it – our own [James Hobson]. Check out some of his builds, like the Captain America shield or his car-lifting exoskeleton.

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Too Good To Throw Away: Dealing With An Out-Of-Control Junk Hoard

October 13, 2016 by Jenny List 193 Comments

There it was, after twenty minutes of turning the place over, looking through assorted storage boxes. A Thinwire Ethernet network. About the smallest possible Thinwire Ethernet network as it happens, a crimped BNC lead about 100mm long and capped at each end by a T-piece and a 50 ohm terminator. I’d been looking for a BNC T-piece on which to hook up another terminator to a piece of test equipment, and I’d found two of them.

As I hooked up the test I wanted to run I found myself considering the absurdity of the situation. I last worked somewhere with a Thinwire network in the mid 1990s, and fortunately I am likely to never see another one in my life. If you’ve never encountered Thinwire, be thankful. A single piece of co-ax connecting all computers on the network, on which the tiniest fault causes all to fail.

So why had I held on to all the parts to make one, albeit the smallest possible variant? Some kind of memento, to remind me of the Good Old Days of running round an office with a cable tester perhaps? Or was I just returning to my past as a hoarder, like a Tolkienic dragon perched atop a mountain of electronic junk, and not the good kind of junk?

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Blinking An LED – Extreme Edition

October 13, 2016 by Nava Whiteford 57 Comments

This hacker’s video on blinking LEDs never got the recognition it deserves. At the time of writing clocking in at just 61 views, but it is indeed a work of art. Just trust me, scroll to the bottom of the article and watch it, you wont be disappointed.

Not convinced? OK, let me tell you about it and the world it has opened up in the Japanese maker scene. We’ve all blinked an LED. Maybe it was just to test a microcontroller, like the simplest Arduino example.

Or we’ve been a tad more old school and used the classic 555 to do it. Or maybe like me, you went through a phase of hacking together Phase Shift and other oscillators because well… it’s fun!

But [Junichi AKITA] has more extreme tastes, deciding that a custom IC layout is the way to go. [Junichi] designed a ring oscillator composed of flip-flops, then hand laid out each MOSFET placing each layer exactly where it should be fabricated.

The resulting design was then fabricated by an academic shuttle service in Japan (a bit like the well known MOSIS service). The result is a tiny circuit in the top right corner of the IC. Which of course [Junichi] then had to wirebond (check the video for a cool 1980s style Westbond machine which are still hugely popular in Japan).

IC Layout… by hand!

Optical image of the fabricated circuit.

[Junichi] bonded the die directly to a PCB (COB). I assume, purely for irony, a 555, and ATtiny based oscillator were also laid out on the board.

I guess you might have a couple of lingering questions. First you’ll likely bemoan your lack of your own fabrication facility (I’m still eyeing those used 1 micron fab lines that crop up on eBay from time to time). And secondly you might be asking yourself… why?

Both these questions are somewhat answers by the MakeLSI project. This growing project in Japan seems to have opened up semiconductor fabrication to all kinds of projects.

While my Japanese isn’t good enough to fully understand what’s happening it’s clear there are many awesome projects going on. Including joys such as IC layouts designed in vector graphics packages (Inkscape) and die images packed with interesting layouts, anime characters and QR codes.

For more awesome images and information (unfortunately all in Japanese) you can check them out on Facebook or on their homepage.

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Become Very Unpopular Very Fast With This DIY EMP Generator

October 12, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 144 Comments

Taking a break from his book, “How to Gain Enemies and Encourage Hostility,” [FPS Weapons] shows us how to build our own handheld EMP generator which can be used to generate immediate dislike from anyone working on something electronic at the hackerspace.

The device is pretty simple. A DC source, in this case an 18650 lithium battery cell, sends power to an “Ultra High Voltage 1000kV Ignition Coil” (as the eBay listing calls it), when a button is pressed. A spark gap is used to dump a large amount of magic pixies into the coil all at once, which generates a strong enough magnetic pulse to induce an unexpected voltage inside of a piece of digital electronics. This usually manages to fire a reset pin or something equivalent, disrupting the device’s normal operation.

While you’re not likely to actually damage anything in a dramatic way with this little EMP, it can still interrupt an important memory write or radio signal and damage it that way. It’s a great way to get the absolute shock of your life if you’re not careful. Either from the HVDC converter or the FCC fines. Video after the break.

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