Sleeper PlayStation Hides A Raspberry Pi 4

December 12, 2019 by Tom Nardi 30 Comments

[Andreas Wilcox] wanted to get his brother a birthday gift that reflected their shared love for the early days of 3D gaming, but just handing him a second-hand original PlayStation lacked a certain style. So he decided to gut the classic system and replace its dated internals with a shiny new Raspberry Pi 4. But rather than taking the easy way out, he put in the time and effort to integrate the new hardware so seamlessly that the nearly 25 year old console still looks stock from the outside.

The fact that the front ports are functional and work with the original controllers really helps sell the stock look. [Andreas] found a USB to PlayStation controller adapter, liberated the PCB, and soldered it to the back of the system’s ports. Even the memory card slots got in on the action, thanks to female USB connectors installed where the original connector went. It was a tight fit, but the final result was well worth it.

We also love the GPIO-controlled cooling fan complete with a duct designed to blow across the notoriously toasty Pi, and check out that carefully designed holder for the power and reset buttons. This entire project is really a fantastic example of how 3D printed parts can give your projects a far cleaner and more professional look than the hacker’s old standby of hot glue; though of course it demands a considerable time investment.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a Raspberry Pi shoehorned into a classic video game console, but it’s absolutely one of the cleanest examples we’ve ever seen. Though if we lump Raspberry Pi portables into the running, the competition is considerably fiercer.

The Open Makers Cube: Have Hack, Will Travel

December 3, 2019 by Tom Nardi 10 Comments

Don’t bother denying it, we know your workbench is a mess. A tangled pile of wires, tools, and half-completed projects is standard decor for any hardware hacker. In fact, if you’ve got a spotless work area, we might even be a bit skeptical about your credentials in this field. But that’s not to say we wouldn’t be interested in some way of keeping the electronic detritus in check, perhaps something like the Open Makers Cube created by [technoez].

This all-in-one hardware hacking station uses DIN rails and 3D-printed mounting hardware to allow the user to attach a wide array of tools, gadgets, and boards to the outside surface where they’re easily accessible. The OpenSCAD design includes mounts for the usual suspects like the Raspberry Pi, Arduino Uno, and general purpose breadboards. Of course, your own custom mounts are just a few lines of code away.

The Cube also includes a lighted magnifying glass on a flexible arm so you can zoom in on what you’re working on, a simple “helping hands” attachment, and provisions for internal USB power. It even features angled feet so the front side of the cube is held at a more comfortable viewing angle. All of which is held together by a lightweight and portable frame built from square aluminum tubing.

We can understand if you’ve got some doubts about the idea of mounting all of your tools and projects to the side of a jaunty little cube. But even if the jury is still out on the mobile workspace concept, one thing is for sure: the Open Makers Cube is easily one of the best documented projects we’ve seen in recent memory. Thanks to NopSCADlib, [technoez] was able to generate an exploded view and Bill of Materials for each sub-assembly of the project. If you’ve ever needed proof that NopSCADlib was worth checking out, this is it.

A Laser Aiming Module For First Person Hacking

May 25, 2019 by Tom Nardi 16 Comments

You’ve perhaps noticed that [Jeremy Cook] is rather prolific on YouTube, regularly putting out videos on his latest and greatest creations. He wanted to add a head-mounted GoPro to his video production bag of tricks, but found it was a little trickier than expected to get the camera to point where he was actually looking. The solution? A 3D printed laser “sight” for the GoPro that let’s him zero it in while creating videos.

The idea here is very simple: put a small laser module on the same mount as the GoPro itself so you’ll have a handy red dot showing more or less where the camera is looking. The position of the red dot relative to the center-point of the camera’s field of view is going to vary slightly with range, but with something like a GoPro that’s shooting a very wide area to begin with, it’s not really a problem in practice.

Sounds like a good idea, but won’t that leave a weird red dot in all the videos? [Jeremy] is already ahead of you there, and added a small push button switch to the front of the module so he can quickly and easily turn the laser on and off. The idea is that he turns the laser on, gets the dot roughly where he wants the camera pointed, and then turns it back off.

[Jeremy] has put the STL files for the single-piece 3D printed module up on his GitHub for anyone who might find them useful. Besides the printed part, you just need to provide a suitably sized 3.7 V LiPo battery and the laser diode itself. If you need to find a good supply of cheap lasers, you might want to check the clearance rack at the big box store.

Continue reading “A Laser Aiming Module For First Person Hacking” →

Dummy Security Camera Is Smarter Than It Looks

May 22, 2019 by Tom Nardi 13 Comments

The idea behind a dummy security camera is that people who are up to no good might think twice about doing anything to your property when they think they’re being recorded. Obviously a real security camera would be even better, but sometimes that’s just not economically or logistically possible. Admittedly they’re not always very convincing, but for a few bucks, hopefully it’s enough to make the bad guys think twice.

But what if that “fake” camera could do a little more than just look pretty up on the wall? [Chris Chimienti] thought he could improve the idea by adding some electronics that would notify him if motion was detected. As an added bonus, any would-be criminals who might be emboldened by the realization the camera itself is fake might find themselves in for a rude surprise when the notifications start firing off.

In the video after the break, [Chris] really takes his time walking the viewer through the disassembly of the dummy camera. As it turns out, these things look like they’d make excellent project enclosures; they come apart easily, have nothing but empty space inside, and even have an integrated battery compartment. That alone could be a useful tip to file away for the future.

He then goes on to explain how he added some smarts to this dummy camera. Up where the original “lens” was, he installed a PIR sensor, some white LEDs, a light sensor, and the original blinking red LED. All of this was mounted to a very slick 3D printed plate which integrates into the camera’s body perfectly. The new hardware is connected up to a similarly well mounted Wemos D1 Mini inside the camera. The rest of the video goes through every aspect of the software setup, which is sure to be of interest to anyone who’s ever thought of rolling their own IoT device.

This type of PIR sensor is hacker favorite, and we’ve seen a number of projects using them for all sorts of creative purposes. We’ve even seen them paired with the ESP8266 before for Internet-connected motion sensing, albeit without the tidy security camera enclosure.

Continue reading “Dummy Security Camera Is Smarter Than It Looks” →

Improving A Conference Badge With 3D Printing

May 10, 2019 by Tom Nardi 2 Comments

The obsession with over-the-top-hardware conference badges means that we as attendees get to enjoy a stream of weird and wonderful electronic gadgets. But for the folks putting these conferences on, getting a badge designed and manufactured in time for the event can be a stressful and expensive undertaking. To keep things on track, the designs will often cut corners and take liberties that you’d never see in commercial products. But of course, that’s part of their charm.

As a case in point, the OLED display on the 2019 KiCon badge is held on with just four soldered header pins, and can easily be bent or even snapped off. So [Jose Ignacio Romero] took it upon himself to develop a 3D printable mount which integrates with the PCB and gives the display some mechanical support. Any KiCon attendees who are looking to keep their badge in peak fighting condition for the long haul might want to start warming their extruders.

The design of this upgrade was made all the easier thanks to the fact that the KiCon badge is (naturally) open hardware. That meant [Jose] could import the PCB files directly into FreeCAD and have a virtual model of the badge to work with. This let him check the clearances and position of components without having to break out the calipers and measure the real thing.

Playing around with the virtual assembly, [Jose] quickly realized that the mounting holes in the OLED display don’t actually line up with the holes in the PCB; potentially why the screen didn’t get mounted on the final hardware. Once this misalignment was characterized, he was able to factor it into his design: the PCB side gets screwed down, and the screen snaps into printed “nubs” on the top of the mount.

Hackaday Editor-in-Chief [Mike Szczys] was on hand for KiCon 2019, and was kind enough to share the experience with those of us who couldn’t make it in person, including his own bout of hacking this very same badge.

Mastering OpenSCAD Workflow

November 14, 2018 by Tom Nardi 33 Comments

As you may have noticed in our coverage, we’re big fans of OpenSCAD around these parts. The fact that several of the Hackaday writers organically found and started using the parametric CAD package on their own is not only a testament to our carefully cultivated hive mind but also to the type of people it appeals to. Hackers love it because it allows you to model physical objects as if you were writing software: models are expressed in code, and its plain text source files can be managed with tools like git and make. If you’re a real Pinball Wizard you could design objects and export them to STL without ever using a graphical interface.

But as you might expect, with such power comes a considerable learning curve. OpenSCAD devotee [Uri Shaked] recently wrote in to share with us his workflow for designing complex interacting mechanisms, which serves as an excellent primer to the world of parametric design. From animating your models to recreating the “vitamins” of your build, his post contains plenty of tips that can help both new and veteran OpenSCAD users alike.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from his post is that you should be thinking of your projects as a whole, rather than as individual models. [Uri] recalls his early attempts at designing mechanisms: designing each component individually, printing it out, and only then finding out if it fits together with the other pieces. This method of trial and error is probably familiar to anyone who’s designed their own 3D printed parts — but it’s slow and wastes materials. The alternative, as he explains it, is to design all of the pieces at the same time and “assemble” them virtually. This will allow you to check clearances and fitment without dedicating the time and materials to test it in the real world.

In fact, as [Uri] explains, you’re better off spending your time bringing real-world parts into OpenSCAD. By carefully measuring the hardware components you want to interact with (servos, gears, switches, etc), you can create facsimiles of them to use as a reference in your OpenSCAD project. As time goes on, you can build up your own library of drop-in reference models which will accelerate future designs.

He also spends a little time talking about something that doesn’t seem to be terribly well known even among the OpenSCAD converts: you don’t have to use the built-in editor if you don’t want to. Since OpenSCAD source code files are plain text, you can write them in whatever editor you like. The OpenSCAD model viewer even has an option specifically for this scenario, which will cause it to update the rendered preview as soon as it detects the source has been updated. For [Uri] this means he can create his designs in Visual Studio Code with a constantly updating preview in another window.

If you’re looking for examples of what the parametric capabilities of OpenSCAD can do for you, we’ve got no shortage of excellent examples. From creating customized computer cases to saving time by using mathematically derived components. Our very own [Elliot Williams] even has a write up about that most glorious of OpenSCAD commands: hull().

Printed Parts Turn Ruler Into Marking Gauge

November 7, 2018 by Tom Nardi 19 Comments

For Hackaday readers who spend more time with a soldering iron than a saw, a marking gauge is a tool used to put parallel lines on a piece of wood (and occasionally metal or plastic) for cutting. The tool is run across the edge of the piece to be marked, and an adjustment allows the user to set how far in the line will be made. As an example, if you wanted to cut a board into smaller strips, a marking gauge would be an ideal choice for laying out your lines ahead of time.

But as with many niche tools, it’s not something you’re going to use every day. For [chaosbc], this meant he wanted to see if he could come up with a DIY solution on the cheap. Plus he could have it in hand now, rather than waiting for it to take the slow boat from overseas. With the addition of a few clever 3D printed components, he was able to turn his trusty aluminum ruler into a serviceable marking gauge for the cost of filament and a few bits of hardware.

The general design of a marking gauge is fairly simple: there’s a block that rides up and down a graduated shaft (known as the headstock) which allows you to set the depth of the line, and then a piece on the end which holds your marking tool. The marking tool could be a blade if you’re working with something soft enough, but for wood is usually going to be a pencil.

[chaosbc] provides all the STL files for his DIY marking gauge, though they might need adapting as they were created for his specific ruler. Luckily the parts aren’t that complex so it shouldn’t be too difficult to get it sorted out. He also has a useful hint for anyone looking to duplicate his work: a few drops of super glue on the bolt used to lock down the headstock is enough to create a non-marring surface so you don’t tear up your ruler.

We’ve got a few other tips for woodworking on a budget, as well as a primer about this whole making stuff with dead trees concept.

Continue reading “Printed Parts Turn Ruler Into Marking Gauge” →