Hackaday Prize 2023: Tiny RC Aircraft Built Using Foam And ESP12

April 29, 2023 by Lewin Day 13 Comments

Once upon a time, a radio controlled plane was a hefty and complex thing. They required small nitro engines, support equipment, and relatively heavy RC electronics. Times have changed since then, as this lightweight RC build from [Ravi Butani] demonstrates.

The body of the plane is lightweight foam, and can be assembled in two ways. There’s a relatively conventional layout, using a main wing, tailplane, and rudder, or a pusher model with the main wing at the rear and a canard up front. The open hardware electronics package, which [Ravi] calls VIMANA, consists of an ESP12 module with a pair of MOSFETs to act as two independent motor drivers — allowing the plane to be flown and steered with differential thrust.

For more advanced flight control, it can also command a pair of servos to control ailerons, a rudder, canards, or elevons, depending on configuration. There’s also potential to install an IMU to set the plane up with flight stabilization routines.

Thanks to the low-cost of the VIMANA board, [Ravi] hopes it can be used in STEM education programs. He notes that it’s not limited just to aircraft, and could be used for other motorized projects such as boats and cars. We’ve featured an early version of his work before, but the project has come a long way since then.

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Miniature Concrete Hoover Dam Is Tiny Engineering Done Right

April 21, 2023 by Lewin Day 13 Comments

Growing up, we got to play with all kinds of things in miniature. Cars, horses, little LEGO houses, the lot. What we didn’t get is a serious education with miniature-sized dams. This recreation of the glorious Hoover Dam from the [Creative Construction Channel] could change all that for the next generation.

The build starts with the excavation of a two-foot long curve in a replica riverbed. A cardboard base is installed in the ditch, and used as a base for vertical steel wires. Next, the arch of the dam is roughed out with more steel wires installed horizontally to create a basic structure. The cardboard is then be removed from the riverbed, with the steel structure remaining. It’s finally time to pour real concrete, with a foundation followed by the main pour into foam formwork. The dam is also given 3D printed outlets that can be opened to allow water to pass through — complete with small gear motors to control them. The structure even gets a little roadway on top for good measure.

The finished product is quite impressive, and even more so when the outlets open up to spill water through. Such a project would be great fun for high school science students, or even engineering undergrads. Who doesn’t want to play with a miniature scale dam, after all? Bonus points if you build an entire LEGO city downstream, only to see it destroyed in a flood.

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Rubik’s Cube Solver Does It In 4.56 Seconds

April 2, 2023 by Lewin Day 14 Comments

Solving Rubik’s Cubes is a learnable skill. However, to compete at the top level, you’ll have to train hard. Speed cubers can solve a 3×3 cube in under ten seconds these days, after all. [aaedmusa] was a long way off that speed, but his robot is an absolute demon that solves at a rapid pace.

The robot relies on a Teensy 4.1 microcontroller to run the show, paired with its Ethernet kit for connectivity. It runs six stepper motors via TMC2208 drivers, enabling it to directly actuate each face of the cube. Purists will note, however, that the steppers are fitted with adapters that slot directly into modified center squares on the cube. A regulation Rubik’s, this is not.

The design doesn’t feature a machine vision system to capture the state of the cube. Instead, the cube’s status must be input to a web app on an attached computer. Once the cube’s state is loaded into the program, though, the mechanical job of solving the cube can be achieved in under five seconds. Even with six actuators, that’s not fast enough to beat the human world record of 3.47 seconds, but it’s still pretty darn good.

It’s funny to think that way back in 2011, both robots and humans were so much slower at solving cubes. If only all the world’s problems were as simple as a jumbled up toy from the 1970s.

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Magic 8 Ball Provides Tech Support

March 28, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 15 Comments

ChatGPT might be making the news these days for being able to answer basically any question it’s asked, those of us who are a little older remember a much simpler technology that did about the same thing. The humble “Magic 8 Ball” could take nearly the same inputs, provided they were parsed in simple yes/no form, and provide marginal help similar to the AI tools of today. For a toy with no battery or screen, this was quite an accomplishment. But the small toy couldn’t give specific technical support help, so [kodi] made one that can.

The new 8 Ball foregoes the central fluid-filled chamber for an STM32 Blue Pill board with a few lithium batteries to power it. The original plastic shell was split in two with a hacksaw and fitted with a 3D printed ring which allows the two halves to be reconnected and separated again when it needs to charge. It uses a circular OLED to display the various messages of tech support, which are displayed when an accelerometer detects that the toy has been shaken.

Granted, most of the messages are about as helpful to solving a tech support issue as the original magic 8 Ball’s would have been, but we appreciate the ingenuity and carefree nature of a project like this. It also did an excellent job at operating in a low-power state as well, to avoid needing to charge it often. There have been a few other digital conversions of these analog fortune tellers as well, like this one which adds GIFs to each of the original answers.

A LEGO Camera You Just Might Own Yourself

March 25, 2023 by Jenny List 6 Comments

A camera makes for an interesting build for anyone, because it’s an extremely accessible technology that can be made from materials as simple as cardboard. More robust cameras often require significant work, but what if you could make a usable camera from LEGO? It’s a project taken on by [Zung92], who hasn’t simply made a working 35 mm camera from everyone’s favorite construction toy — he’s also managed to make it exude retro style. Best of all, you can vote for it on the LEGO Ideas website, and you might even get the chance to have one for yourself.

Frustratingly there’s little in the way of in-depth technical detail on the Ideas website, but he does mention that it was a challenge to make it light proof. Even the lens is a LEGO part, and if diffraction-based photography isn’t for you there’s also a pinhole option. We look forward to seeing this camera progress, and we hope we’ll see it advance to becoming a LEGO Ideas kit.

This is an extremely polished design, but surprisingly, it’s not our first LEGO camera.

Thanks [Michael] for the tip.

Working Artificial Horizon Built Into A Single LEGO Brick

March 20, 2023 by Lewin Day 16 Comments

Back in the day, LEGO spaceship sets used to come with these little wedge blocks painted with fake gauges on them. [James “Ancient” Brown] decided that wasn’t good enough. Thus, he took everything he needed for a functional artificial horizon, and stuffed it inside a single LEGO brick. Yes, it’s real, and it’s spectacular.

We featured [James’] electronics-infused bricks some time ago when they first hit the Internet. The basic story is that he managed to cram an OLED screen and an RP2040 into a silicone mold for a LEGO-compatible brick. His first iterations stunned the world, as they ran pretty monochrome animations that brought life to formerly-inanimate chunk of plastic.

Since then, [James] has been busy. He’s managed to squeeze an accelerometer into the brick form factor as well. That allowed him to build a LEGO piece which displays an impressively-smooth artificial horizon display, as you might find in an aircraft. He demonstrates this by putting the instrument on a LEGO craft and zooming it around the room. All the while, the artificial horizon accurately tracks the motions of the craft.

It’s an impressive build, and something we’d love to see included in future LEGO vehicles…even if they’re just 3D renders. Continue reading “Working Artificial Horizon Built Into A Single LEGO Brick” →

DOOM Ported To A Single LEGO Brick

March 18, 2023 by Lewin Day 18 Comments

By now you’ve all seen the tiny LEGO brick with a working screen in it. The work of one [James “Ancient” Brown], it was truly a masterpiece of miniaturization and creativity. Since then, [James] hasn’t stopped innovating. Now, he’s demoing a playable version of DOOM running on a single plastic brick.

We’ve covered the construction of these astounding screen bricks before. Long story short, [James] designed a tiny PCB that hosts an RP2040 microcontroller which is then hooked up to a tiny OLED screen. The components are placed in a silicone mold, which is then filled with transparent resin to form the brick. The screen is then powered via contacts in the bottom, much like older-style LEGO motors.

Early experiments involved running various graphics to emulate a spaceship dashboard, but [James] has now gone much further. He’s implemented RP2040-doom to run the game. It uses tilt controls thanks to an accelerometer, combined with capacitive touch controls for shooting. The monochrome OLED is driven very fast with a special library of [James’] own creation to create three levels of grayscale to make the game actually visible and (just barely) playable.

It’s a hack, of course, and the controls are far from perfect. Nobody’s speed-running E1M1 on [James’s] LEGO brick, to be sure. Perchance. With that said, it’s still a glorious piece of work nonetheless. Just imagine, sitting with friends, and announcing you’re going to play some DOOM — only to pluck a piece of LEGO out of your pocket and start blasting away at demons.

Just because [James] doesn’t know when to quit, we’re going to lay down the gauntlet. Let’s get network play happening on these things, yeah?
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