Hacking Digital Scales For The Disabled

December 18, 2013 by Marsh 4 Comments

analphabeticscale

[Jan] works with both physically and mentally disabled individuals, some of whom cannot read, making many of their tasks more difficult. Although [Jan] is not in a position to teach reading or writing skills, he was able to build an add-on device for the scales used in repackaging sweets to provide simple feedback that the user can interpret.

The device has three LEDs—red, green, and yellow—to indicate the package does not weigh enough (red), weighs too much (yellow), or lies within an acceptable range (green). The industrial scales at [Jan’s] workplace each have a serial output to connect to a printer, which he used to send data to the device. An ATMega8 controls the lights and an attached LCD, with the usual trimpot to change the display’s contrast and a rotary encoder to adjust the device’s settings. Everything fits snugly into a custom-made frosted acrylic enclosure, laser-cut at a local hackerspace.

[Jan] provides a rigorous guide to approaching each step on his Instructables page, along with source code and several pictures. See a video overview below, then enjoy another scale hack: building one from scratch.

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UsbXlater For PS4 Keyboard And Mouse Action

December 13, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

USB

[Frank Zhao]—an awesome guy, an inadvertent Hackaday contributor, and an Adafrut fellow—has come up with a device to use a keyboard and mouse with Playstation 4 games. He calls it the UsbXlater, and even if [Frank] can’t get it working with his PS4, it’s still going to be an awesome tool.

On the board are two USB ports and an STM32F2 microcontroller. The micro provides a USB host interface and a USB device interface, enabling it to translate mouse movements and keystrokes into something a PS4 can understand. While this project was originally designed to use a keyboard and mouse on [Frank]’s shiny new PS4, it’s not quite working just yet. He’s looking for a few gamer/dev folks to help him suss out the communication between a keyboard/mouse, the UsbXlater, and a PS4.

Of course, even if this device is never used for what it’s designed for, it’s still a very, very interesting tool. With two USB ports, the UsbXlater could act as a signal generator for USB devices and hosts, analyze USB traffic, or provide other applications that haven’t even been thought of yet.

[Frank] is hitting his head against the wall trying to figure out the PS4 protocol, so if you have some USB skills, feel free to hit him up for a blank PCB, though preference falls to people who will game with it and to those with a USB traffic analyzer. If you lack the skills for USB development, [Frank] is still looking for a better name for his device.

[Ben Heck] Builds The Ultimate Glue Gun

December 11, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 42 Comments

glue

For how many can be found on the workbenches and in the toolboxes of makers and hackers the world over, finding a glue gun that does more than just heat up and drip glue everywhere can be a challenge. [Ben Heck] finally solved this problem with a hot glue gun that’s more like an extruder from a 3D printer than a piece of junk you can pick up at Walmart for a few dollars.

By far, the most difficult part of this project was the glue stick extruder. For this, [Ben] used a DC motor with a two-stage planetary gear system. This drives a homemade hobbed bolt, just like the extruder in 99% of 3D printers. The glue stick is wedged up against the hobbed bolt with a few 3D printed parts and a spring making for a very compact glue stick extruder.

The electronics are a small AVR board [Ben] made for a previous episode, a thermistor attached to the hot end of the glue gun, a solid state relay for the heater, and analog controls for speed and temperature settings. After finishing the mechanics and electronics, [Ben] took everything apart and put it back together in a glue gun-shaped object.

The finished product is actually pretty nice. It lays down constistant beads of hot glue and thanks to a little bit of motor retraction won’t drip.

You can check out both parts of [Ben]’s build below.

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Digitally Controlled Dual Power Supply

December 11, 2013 by Eric Evenchick 7 Comments

[Kerry] set out to build a digitally controlled dual supply for his bench. He’s already built a supply based on the LM338 linear regulator, but the goal this time was to build it without a linear regulator IC, and add digital control over both the current and voltage.

In part one of the build, [Kerry] explains the analog design of the device. He had an extra heatsink kicking around, which can dissipate enough heat from this linear supply to let it run at 10 A. A NE5532 opamp is used to track a reference voltage, which can be provided by a DAC. The current is measured by a LT6105 shunt sense amplifier, then compared to a reference provided by another DAC.

Part two focuses on the digital components. To interface with the analog circuitry, two MCP4821 DACs are used. These are controlled over SPI by an ATmega328P.

Fortunately, [Kerry] also has his own DC load project to test the supply with.

$40 Lens Hack Gives Your FLIR Higher Clarity

December 9, 2013 by Marsh 26 Comments

[Josh Oster-Morris’s] FLIR camera can see a bit more clearly now that he’s hacked it to have its own makeshift “macro” mode. You may remember [Josh] from his power distribution Motobrain project. He’s still improving the Motobrain, and he wanted to better understand the thermal characteristics of the high current draws (upwards of 100amps!)

After reading that the FLIR 4 could be hacked into a better version, [Josh] immediately purchased his own. The FLIR is, however, limited at close-range imaging, because the resolution of the FLIR’s microbolometer is relatively low. He had fortunately decided to stay tuned in to [Mike’s] YouTube channel and saw his follow-up video a few days later on refocusing the FLIR camera with an external lens. [Josh] hit up Amazon for a Gallium Arsenide lens normally used for CO2 lasers, and found one for around $40. He then mounted this lens into a simple paper frame held together by tape and staples, and fitted it onto the FLIR.

After you’ve checked out [Josh’s] blog for more examples of how astoundingly clear the images become, check out [Mike’s] video detailing the hack below.

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Solder Fume Extractor With Heat Recovery

December 8, 2013 by Phillip Ryals 49 Comments

When snow covers the landscape outside, you do your best to preserve the heat inside. [Tom] came up with a smart design for a solder fume extractor that includes a heat recovery ventilator. He created a housing which contains input and output sections. A fan is used to bring in outside air, passing it through a heat exchanger made of alternating panels of coroplast. (See diagrams of his setup after the break) This is really a simple design, and could be built in a couple of hours.

A little digging turns up some good information on making a heat exchanger like this one. [Tom] doesn’t mention the indoor temperature, so it’s difficult to calculate the efficiency he’s getting out of it. Apparently they can attain up to 70% heat transfer, depending on the size of the heat exchanger.

In the video, [Tom] mentions some obvious improvements that could be made, including more efficient fans, and a better housing that allows the core to be removed for cleaning. Still, this is a simple setup that provides a good proof of concept. Perhaps we’ll get to see a more permanent installation from [Tom] in the future.

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Hack Your Datasheets Using Datasheet.net

December 4, 2013 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

datasheet-dot-net-snippet-example

If you use datasheets (which is probably every reader of Hackaday) you need to check out this tool that seeks to add modern features to the decades-old component specification delivery system. That link takes you to the announcement of the launch of Datasheet.net.

What you see above is the biggest feature the service brings to the table, the ability to create “snippets” from datasheets by clicking and dragging the area you’d like to save (you can even get a public link to the snippet). Once you have selected a snippet there are a few tools that allow you to make annotations on it. We’ve used the rectangle tool to highlight the clock speed and divider settings in this snippet for an ATmega328 uC. The interface also offers the ability to draw arrows, freehand, or to add text to the snippet. At the bottom of this example we used the description area to notate the fuse settings (in hex) which we most often use with this chip. These snippets and annotations can then be shared with other users of the service, and there’s also a comments section below the snippet for your team to use. See examples of this in the video below.

This solves one of our biggest beefs with PDF datasheets — the ability to jump back and forth and to easily find commonly used sections. This datasheet is 567 pages long and not fun to paw through looking for the same info repeatedly. It also offers rudimentary “favorite” flagging to keep a list of your oft-used sheets — but we’d like to see more options for categorizing our collection. We also find it hard to get by without the Table of Contents functionality we’re used to in our normal document view (evince). We’ve already pestered the lead developer, [Ben Delarre], to add this feature. He’s the same guy who came up with the schematic sharing site CircuitBee. Now would be a great time to mention that this service is owned by Hackaday’s parent company SupplyFrame.

Datasheet.net has a mammoth source of datasheets available through the search, but the list of planned feature additions includes datasheet upload. Also on the list is a “Discussion” feature which sounds interesting to us. What if, through the discussion engine, searching for datasheets also turned up a list of open hardware projects that use this part? We are also drooling over the ability to embed these snippets directly in webpages. [Ben] tells us that’s already built but they didn’t have time to add it to the UI before launch. Gone will be the days of taking screenshots of PDFs for your blog writeup!

PDF delivery of datasheets revolutionized access to information about electronic components. We’re hoping that this marks the next evolution. In addition to better working features, wouldn’t it be nice if you could actually get notifications when new datasheet revisions or errata were published?

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