Wearable Speeder Bikes Are Ready For A Night Out

December 7, 2018 by Tom Nardi 8 Comments

While Hackaday is about as far from a fashion blog as you can possibly get, we have to admit we’re absolutely loving the [bithead942] Winter 2018 Collection. His wife and daughter recently got to model his latest must have design: wearable Star Wars speeder bikes; and judging by the video after the break they were certainly some of the best dressed at the Thanksgiving parade.

[bithead942] started the build by taking careful measurements of a vintage speeder bike model kit his wife had, which allowed to accurately recreate the iconic look of the vehicles as they were seen in Return of the Jedi . But to do them justice, the final “bikes” would need to be around three meters (ten feet) long, which immediately posed a problem. What kind of material could support itself over that length while still being light enough to wear for extended periods of time?

The answer came, as it often does, from the local hardware store. He found that a combination of Schedule 80 and 40 PVC pipe was a perfect material: strong enough to support the desired dimensions without bending, light enough that the final bike wouldn’t be uncomfortable to wear, easy to bend with heat, and perhaps best of all, cheap and readily available. The PVC frame was then covered with chicken wire and thin flexible foam to give it a filled out look without weighing them down.

Even though he had a strict weight limit on the build, [bithead942] couldn’t help but add in some electronics to complete the effect. The LED festooned control panel allows the ladies to trigger different sound effects from the movie stored on a Adafruit Mini FX Sound Board, which is connected to a 20W Class D amplifier and a pair of 400 watt car stereo speakers. He says the resulting playback was loud enough to hear outside during the parade, and only added a few pounds to the overall build.

These may be the bikes you’re looking for, but they’re definitely not the first we’ve featured on Hackakday. Meanwhile you’d be wise not to underestimate the lowly PVC pipe when designing your next project. From a hacked together drill press for your Dremel to a planetarium for you and your closest dozen or so friends, there’s little you can’t build with this plentiful material.

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Collecting, Repairing, And Wearing Vintage Digital Watches

November 28, 2018 by Gregory L. Charvat 91 Comments

Electronics enthusiasts have the opportunity to be on the very cusp of a trend with vintage digital watches (VDW). Vintage digital watches are those watches that from the late 70’s and throughout the 80’s. They’re unlike any watch style today, and for anyone around when they made their debut these deliver a healthy dose of nostalgia.

Monetarily speaking, it is not worth the money to pay a watch maker to restore a digital watch but for those of us with basic electronics skills we can put the time and effort into making them run again and be one of the few in possession of functioning VDW. It’s a statement as well as a sign of your own aptitude.

Earlier this year, Steven Dufresne walked us through the history of the digital watch. In this article we will dive into the world of vintage digital watch repair.

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Corporate Badgelife: Oracle’s Code Card

October 31, 2018 by Tom Nardi 30 Comments

We tend to think of elaborate electronic conference badges as something limited to the hacker scene, but it looks like the badgelife movement is starting to hit the big time. Now even the “big boys” are getting into the act, and pretty soon you won’t be able to go to a stuffy professional conference without seeing a sea of RGB LEDs firing off. We’ll let the good readers of Hackaday determine if this means it’s officially post-cool or not.

[Noel Portugal] writes in to tell us about how he created the “Code Card” during his tenure with the Oracle Groundbreakers Team. Featuring an ESP8266 and an e-ink screen, the Code Card serves not only as swanky way of identifying yourself, but as a real-world demonstration of physical devices pulling content from Oracle’s Cloud. Gotta keep those corporate overlords happy.

The Code Card is a fairly simple piece of hardware as far as badges go these days, but then the goal was never to be flashy. It does feature dual four-pin Grove System connectors on the backside though, so you can plug in additional sensors and gadgets for the customary badge hacking sessions.

To maximize runtime on the rechargeable coin cell battery, the Code Card only turns on the ESP after the user has pressed one of the buttons on the front. Once the ESP has finished performing whatever task the user requested, its powered back off completely rather than put into standby. Combined with the e-ink screen, power consumption while the device isn’t actively updating the display or pulling down new content is negligible.

[Noel] really went all-out on the software side, going as far as developing a web application which let conference attendees configure their Code Cards from their smartphones. Different functions could be assigned to short and long presses on the badge’s two buttons, and users could even select icons for the various functions from a list of images included in the firmware. A feature where attendees could upload their own images didn’t make the cut, but that surely won’t stop people from hacking around in the published Arduino source code and figuring out how to do it manually.

If you think the Code Card looks a bit familiar, it’s perhaps because it was designed in conjunction with Squarofumi, creators of the Badgy. So even if you aren’t hitting up any of Oracle’s upcoming conferences, you’re not completely out of luck if you want an e-ink badge to play with.

A Multifunction ESP8266 Smartwatch

October 26, 2018 by Tom Nardi 11 Comments

Most of the DIY smartwatch projects we feature here on Hackaday aren’t exactly what most people would consider practical daily-use devices. Clunky designs, short battery life, limited functions: they’re more a wearable display of geek cred than they are functional timepieces. Oddly enough, the same could be said of many of the “real” smartwatches on the market, so perhaps the DIY versions are closer to the state-of-the-art than we thought.

But this ESP8266 smartwatch created by [Shyam Ravi] is getting dangerously close to something you could unironically leave the house with. It’s still missing an enclosure that prevents you from receiving PCB acupuncture while wearing it, but beyond than that it has a more than respectable repertoire of functions. It even seems to be a fairly reasonable size (with the potential to be even smaller). All that with a total build cost of less than $20 USD, and we’re thinking this might be a project to keep an eye on.

Not content with a watch that simply tells the time, [Shyam] added in a weather function that pulls the current conditions for his corner of the globe from the Yahoo weather API and displays it above the time and date on the watch’s multi-color OLED display when the center button is pressed. Frankly, given the state of DIY watches, that would already have been impressive enough; but he didn’t stop there.

The left and right buttons control Internet-connected relays which [Shyam] uses to turn his lights and air conditioner on and off. When he presses the corresponding button, the watch will even display the status of the devices wherever his travels might take him.

A smattering of DIY watches pass by our careful gaze, though it’s been a while since we’ve seen an ESP8266 watch. More recently we’ve seen an Arduino watch, and some downright gorgeous analog creations.

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Flamethrower Gets Update, Retains Some Sketchiness

October 17, 2018 by Bryan Cockfield 16 Comments

Part of what makes flamethrowers fun is their inherent danger. This is what makes a lot of things fun, though, from snowboarding to skydiving to motorcycle riding. As with all of these sensible hobbies, though, it’s important to take as much unnecessary risk out of the activity as possible to make sure you’re around as long as possible to enjoy your chosen activity. With that in mind, [Stephen] decided to make some improvements on his classic wrist-mounted flamethrower.

To start, he ditched the heavy lead-acid battery that powered the contraption in favor of a smaller 5 V battery. In fact, the entire build is much more compact and efficient. He was also able to use the same battery to run a tiny taser that acts as an ignition source for the flamethrower’s fuel. The fuel itself is butane, and the modified flamethrower is able to launch flames much further than the original due to improvements in the fuel delivery system. These improvements also include “Finding a way to prevent butane droplets from lighting and landing on [his] hand” which seems like a necessary feature as well.

The entire build now is very well refined and professional-looking, which is also a major improvement from the first version. It’s also worth watching the video after the break as well, which includes a minor run-in with the New York City fire marshal. And, it still retains some of the danger and all of the fun of the original builds which is something we always like to see.

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Gaze Upon This Daft Punk Helmet’s Rows Of Utterly Perfect Hand-Soldered LEDs

September 28, 2018 by Donald Papp 9 Comments

The iconic robot helmets of Daft Punk feature prominently as challenging DIY hardware projects in their own right, and the results never disappoint. But [Nathaniel Stepp]’s photo gallery of his own version really sets the bar in both quality and attention to detail. The helmet uses a Teensy 3.2 as the main processor, and the visor consists of 328 hand soldered through-hole APA106 addressable RGB LEDs. A laser cut panel serves as the frame for the LEDs, and it was heat-formed to curve around the helmet and mate into the surrounding frame. Each LED is meticulously hand-soldered, complete with its own surface mount decoupling cap; there’s no wasted space or excess wire anywhere to be seen. It looks as if a small 3D printed jig was used to align and solder the LEDs one or two columns at a time, which were then transferred to the visor for final connections with the power bus and its neighboring LEDs.

After the whole array was assembled and working, the back of each LED appears to have then been carefully coated in what looks like Plasti-Dip in order to block light, probably to minimize the blinding of the wearer. A small amount of space between each LED allows the eyeballs inside the helmet to see past the light show in the visor.

The perfectly done array of LEDs in the visor is just one of the design elements showing the incredible workmanship and detail in [Nathaniel]’s helmet. His website promises more build details are coming, but in the meantime you can drink in the details shown in the aforementioned photo gallery.

With Halloween approaching, you might be interested in rolling your own Daft Punk inspired helmet. Not ready to do everything from scratch? No problem, because it’s never been easier to make your own with the help of a 3D printer and some LED strips.

[via SparkFun Blog]

Fallout Watch Build Triumphs In Adverse Conditions

September 27, 2018 by Lewin Day 3 Comments

Is it a badge? Is it a watch? Well, it’s [Sarif’s] take on a wrist-mounted computer from the Fallout series, so you’re free to choose your own designation! We think the Brotherhood of Steel would be proud to have this piece of kit.

[Sarif] commenced the build after first getting their feet wet with the pipman, a watch inspired by Metro 2033 and Steins;;gate as much as Bethesda’s popular post-apocalyptic RPG. It features all the fruit – GPS, compass, a TV-B-Gone – and perhaps the coolest feature, long-since-deprecated bubble LED displays and flippy switches for that Altair-esque charm.

The build log is full of details, from the components used and the debugging battles involved in the journey. [Sarif] learned about using transistors, burning up a few along the way – some say setting the lab on fire is the quickest way to learn important lessons, anyway. On top of that, there were some software niggles but in the end, the watchputer made it to DEFCON 26 anyway!

Builds like this that start from limited experience and go deep into the trials and tribulations involved are an excellent way to learn about what goes into the average DIY electronics project, particularly when talking about embedded systems. And if you’re keen to check out the work of [Sarif’s] contemporaries, we’ve got a collection of all the awesome badges from DEFCON 26. Enjoy!