A light grey background with white and black line drawings of three different bicycles on one page and three different tire levers and three different valve covers for bikes on the other.

A Beautifully Illustrated Guide To Making

November 10, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 12 Comments

If you’ve ever been wondering what you should make next, it can be a daunting task to decide with the firehose of inspiration coming straight from the series of tubes that makeup the World Wide Web. Perhaps a more curated digital catalog of projects would help?

Featuring “1000 Useful Things to Make,” [NODE]’s Make it Yourself is a beautifully-illustrated catalog of open source and DIY projects spanning a number of domains including camping gear, furniture, music, and maker tools. Each image is a link to the original project and there’s a handy icon by each denoting what skills are needed, such as sewing or 3D printing.

If you haven’t seen [NODE]’s work before, he uses line art to illustrate his projects and has given all of these projects the same treatment on the (virtual) page with credits to the original creators in the footnotes. We hope a future edition will include tractors and houses to truly rival the Sears catalog of yore, but it’s hard to complain when we already have so many projects we could choose to build.

Many of the projects may seem familiar, if slightly fancier when illustrated in line art, like the Ploopy headphones, this retro audio player, or the Keybon adaptive macro pad.

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A set of brass safety glasses sit on a marred black workbench. The top and earpiece sections of the frames are in squarish brass plate and have ruler marks on them.

Combination Safety Glasses And Measurement Tool

November 8, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 20 Comments

While rulers and tape measures are ubiquitous, they always seem to disappear when you need them. We know you’d never forget your safety glasses (safety first!), so what if they were also a measuring tool?

Starting by snapping pieces from a folding yardstick, [Simone Giertz] and [Laura Kampf] worked out a rough prototype before letting [Giertz] complete the project in brass. Some initial issues with the weight of the frames were alleviated by switching to a lighter weight plate material and using thinner frames and weight-saving holes near the ear pieces.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so we’ll let somebody else decide whether or not these will be the newest fashion craze. But it’s hard to argue with the timelessness of brass unless you have a copper allergy. We could definitely see a less expensive plastic version catching on in makerspaces for the PPE bin.

Want some other cool wearable gear? How about [Giertz]’s grocery bag hat, an evening gown with servo-driven flowers, or a shirt that reflects heat out the atmospheric window?

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Reviewing The World’s 2nd Smallest Thermal Camera

November 7, 2024 by Al Williams 27 Comments

A thermal camera is a very handy tool to have, and [Learn Electronics Repair] wanted to try out the Thermal Master P2 for electronic repair, especially since it claims to have a 15 X digital zoom and 1.5 degree accuracy. The package proudly states the device is the “World 2nd Smallest Thermal Camera” — when only the second best will do.

The camera is tiny and connects to a PC or directly to a tablet or phone via USB C. However, it did look easier to use on the end of a cable for probing things like a PC motherboard. The focus was fairly long, so you couldn’t get extremely close to components with the camera. The zoom somewhat makes up for that, but of course, as you might expect, zooming in doesn’t give you any additional resolution.

He also compares the output with that of a multimeter he uses that includes an IR camera (added to our holiday gift list). That multimeter/camera combo focuses quite closely, which is handy when picking out a specific component. It also has a macro lens, which can zoom up even more.

We’ve looked at — or, more accurately, through — IR cameras in the past. If you are on a tight budget and you have a 3D printer, you might try this method for thermal imaging, but it doesn’t use the printer the way you probably think.

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Rapid Prototyping PCBs With The Circuit Graver

November 6, 2024 by Dave Rowntree 27 Comments

Walking around the alley at Hackaday Supercon 2024, we noticed an interesting project was getting quite a bit of attention, so we got nearer for a close-up. The ‘Circuit Graver’ by [Zach Fredin] is an unconventional PCB milling machine, utilizing many 3D printed parts, the familiar bed-slinger style Cartesian bot layout and a unique cutting head. The cutting tool, which started life as a tungsten carbide lathe tool, is held on a rotary (‘R’) axis but can also move vertically via a flexure-loaded carriage driven by a 13 kg servo motor.

The stocky flexure took a lot of iteration, as the build logs will show. Despite a wild goose chase attempting to measure the cutting force, a complete machine solution was found by simply making everything stiff enough to prevent the tool from chattering across the surface of the FR4 blank. Controlling and maintaining the rake angle was a critical parameter here. [Zach] actually took an additional step, which we likely wouldn’t have thought of, to have some copper blanks pre-fabricated to the required size and finished with an ENIG coating. It’s definitely a smart move!

To allow the production of PCB-class feature sizes compatible with a traditional PCB router, the cutting tool was sharpened to a much smaller point than would be used in a lathe using a stone. This reduced the point size sufficiently to allow feature sizes down to 4 mils, or at least that’s what initial characterization implied was viable. As you can see from the build logs, [Zach] has achieved a repeatable enough process to allow building a simple circuit using an SMT 74HC595 and some 0402 LEDs to create an SAO for this year’s Supercon badge. Neat stuff!

We see a fair few PCB mills, some 3D printed, and some not. Here’s a nice one that fits in that former category. Milling PCBs is quite a good solution for the rapid prototyping of electronics. Here’s a guide about that.

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PicoROM, A DIP-32 8-Bit ROM Emulator

November 5, 2024 by Dave Rowntree 13 Comments

As we all know, when developing software for any platform or simply hacking a bit of code to probe how something works, the ability to deploy code rapidly is a huge help. [Martin Donlon], aka [wickerwaka], is well known in retro gaming and arcade hardware reverse engineering circles and had the usual issues figuring out how an arcade CPU board worked while developing a MiSTer core. Some interesting ASICs needed quite a bit of poking, and changing the contents of socketed ERPOMs is a labour-intensive process. The solution was PicoROM, a nicely designed ROM emulator in a handy DIP-32 form factor.

As the title suggests, PicoROM is based on the Raspberry Pi RP2040. It emulates an 8-bit ROM up to 2MBits in size with speeds up to 100ns. Since it uses the RP2040, USB connectivity is simple, enabling rapid uploading of new images to one (or more) PicoROMs in mere seconds. A vertically orientated USB-C connector allows multiple PicoROMs to be cabled to the host without interfering with neighbouring hardware. The firmware running on core 1 passes data from the internal 264K SRAM, using the PIO block as a bus interface to the target. A neat firmware feature is the addition of a mechanism to use a ROM region as a bidirectional control channel, which the software running on the target can use to communicate back to the host computer. This allows remote triggering of actions and the reporting of responses. Responses which may not be physically observable externally. [Martin] is using this feature extensively to help probe the functionality of some special function chips on the target boards, which is still a slow process but helped massively by reducing that critical software iteration time. The PCB was designed with KiCAD. The project files for which can be found here.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the RP2040 used for ROM emulation; here’s a pile of wires that does the same job. It just isn’t as pretty. Of course, if you really must use EPROMs, then you could give this sweet programmer a look over.

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Man holding brass bar stock with several polygons turned on end

Polygons On A Lathe

November 3, 2024 by Anne Ogborn 16 Comments

Most professionals would put a polygon on the end of a turned part using a milling machine. But many a hobbyist doesn’t have a mill. And if the polygon needs to be accurately centered, remounting the stock costs accuracy.

[Mehamozg] demonstrates you can turn a polygon on a lathe.

Polygons on shaft ends are surprisingly common, whether you are replacing a lost chuck key, need an angular index, or need a dismountable drive. As the video shows, you can definitely make them on the lathe.

But how the heck does this work? It seems like magic.

Lets start by imagining we disengage and lock the rotating cutter in [Mehamozg]’s setup and run the lathe. If the tool is pointed directly at the center we are just turning normally. If we angle the tool either side of center we still get a cylinder, but the radius increases by the sin of the angle.

Now, if we take a piece of stock with a flat on it and plot radius versus angle we get a flat line with a sin curve dip in it. So if we use [Mehamozg]s setup and run the cutter and chuck at the same speed, the cutter angle and the stock angle increase at the same time, and we end up with a flat on the part. If the cutter is rotating an even multiple of the chuck speed, we get a polygon.

The rub in all this is the cutter angle.. At first we were convinced it was varying enormously. But the surface at the contact point is not perpendicular to the radius from center to contact. So it cancels out, we think. But our brains are a bit fried by this one. Opinions in the comments welcomed.

We like this hack. It’s for a commonly needed operation, and versatile enough to be worth fiddling with the inevitable pain of doing it the first time. For a much more specialized machining hack, check out this tool that works much the same in the other axis.

Use PicoGlitcher For Voltage Glitching Attacks

October 30, 2024 by Dave Rowntree 5 Comments

We see a fair few glitcher projects, especially the simpler voltage glitchers. Still, quite often due to their relative simplicity, they’re little more than a microcontroller board and a few components hanging off some wires. PicoGlitcher by Hackaday.IO user [Matthias Kesenheimer] is a simple voltage glitcher which aims to make the hardware setup a little more robust without getting caught up in the complexities of other techniques. Based on the Raspberry Pico (obviously!), the board has sufficient niceties to simplify glitching attacks in various situations, providing controllable host power if required.

A pair of 74LVC8T245 (according to the provided BoM) level shifters allow connecting to targets at voltages from 1.8 V to 5 V if powered by PicoGlitcher or anything in spec for the ‘245 if target power is being used. In addition to the expected RESET and TRIGGER signals, spare GPIOs are brought out to a header for whatever purpose is needed to control a particular attack. If a programmed reset doesn’t get the job done, the target power is provided via a TPS2041 load switch to enable cold starts. The final part of the interface is an analog input provided by an SMA connector.

The glitching signal is also brought out to an SMA connector via a pair of transistors; an IRLML2502 NMOS performs ‘low power’ glitching by momentarily connecting the glitch output to ground. This ‘crowbarring’ causes a rapid dip in supply voltage and upsets the target, hopefully in a helpful way. An IRF7807 ‘NMOS device provides a higher power option, which can handle pulse loads of up to 66A. Which transistor you select in the Findus glitching toolchain depends on the type of load connected, particularly the amount of decoupling capacitance that needs to be discharged. For boards with heavier decoupling, use the beefy IRF7807 and accept the glitch won’t be as sharp as you’d like. For other hardware, the faster, smaller device is sufficient.

The software to drive PicoGlitcher and the hardware design files for KiCAD are provided on the project GitHub page. There also appears to be an Eagle project in there. You can’t have too much hardware documentation! For the software, check out the documentation for a quick overview of how it all works and some nice examples against some targets known to be susceptible to this type of attack.

For a cheap way to glitch an STM8, you can just use a pile of wires. But for something a bit more complicated, such as a Starlink user terminal, you need something a bit more robust. Finally, voltage glitching doesn’t always work, so the next tool you can reach for is a picoEMP.

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