Jenkins Given An Industrial Stack Light For Build Reporting

September 5, 2017 by Lewin Day 11 Comments

When working on software development in a team environment, it’s important to know the status of your build at all times. Jenkins can display build automation info on a screen but where’s the fun in that? A popular office project is to build some kind of visual display of a project’s status, and [dkt01] has done just that with this stack light build monitor.

In this day and age of online shopping, random bits of industrial hardware are just an eBay away, so it’s easy to find some cool lamps or indicators for any project. [dkt01] sourced a standard 24V stack light off the shelf. With its green, red, and yellow indicators, its perfect for showing the current status of their build server.

The project uses an Arduino Pro Micro combined with an ENC28J60 Ethernet adapter. We used to see that chip all the time but in 2017 it’s somewhat of a classic setup with the great unwashed masses largely migrating to the ESP8266. However, for the purposes of this project, it was perfect for connecting to the wired office network (after all, you want to know the status of your build and not of your WiFi). [dkt01] even managed to get a web configuration to work despite the relatively meager resources of the ATmega32u4.

The build is cleanly executed, with the microcontroller and Ethernet hardware tucked into a 3D printed base for the stack light’s enclosure. It’s far more likely to become a permanent office fixture if it’s a tidy build without wires hanging out everywhere so a custom PCB ties everything together neatly. In another nice touch, the stack lights flash on initialization to indicate if the DHCP lease was successful, which makes troubleshooting easier. There’s an overview of all different light combinations and meanings in the video after the break.

Overall it’s a solid build with some off-the-shelf components that serves a genuine purpose. For a similar project built on a smaller scale, check out the Indictron. For something bigger, show us how you’ve learned to output your server status on the city’s traffic lights. Ask first, though.
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Balancing Robot Needs Innovative Controller And Motor

May 18, 2017 by Bryan Cockfield 20 Comments

A self-balancing robot is a great way to get introduced to control theory and robotics in general. The ability for a robot to sense its position and its current set of circumstances and then to make a proportional response to accomplish its goal is key to all robotics. While hobby robots might use cheap servos or brushed motors, for any more advanced balancing robot you might want to reach for a brushless DC motor and a new fully open-source controller.

The main problem with brushless DC motors is that they don’t perform very well at low velocities. To combat this downside, there are a large number of specialized controllers on the market that can help mitigate their behavior. Until now, all of these controllers have been locked down and proprietary. SmoothControl is looking to create a fully open source design for these motors, and they look like they have a pretty good start. The controller is designed to run on the ubiquitous ATmega32U4 with an open source 3-phase driver board. They are currently using these boards with two specific motors but plan to also support more motors as the project grows.

We’ve seen projects before that detail why brushless motors are difficult to deal with, so an open source driver for brushless DC motors that does the work for us seems appealing. There are lots of applications for brushless DC motors outside of robots where a controller like this could be useful as well, such as driving an airplane’s propeller.

Hacking The Thotcon 0x8 Badge

May 10, 2017 by John Baichtal 12 Comments

[Kenjo] attended Chicago’s Thotcon this past week and has started hacking the convention badge and detailing what he learned. Thotcon’s badge, designed by [Jedha] and programmed by [John Wallis] of Workshop 88, is packed with the requisite electronic hardware and cryptic clues. There are four NeoPixel LEDs, three pots, and a micro USB, all run by an ATmega32u4.

The stock firmware is a game called tesserHack, a maze game using the three pots for navigation. You can also connect via USB to play through the serial console, and this version includes a map view and help menu.

[Kenjo] who previously hacked the Thotcon 0x6 badge, accidentally deleted the stock firmware on this year’s badge, so he used a Bus Pirate as an ISP to burn the Arduino boot loader back on, and has started mapping out the pots and LEDs. If you’re interested in helping out, check out the project on Hackaday.io. [Thanks, gigawatts]

MalDuino — Open Source BadUSB

January 24, 2017 by Pedro Umbelino 28 Comments

MalDuino is an Arduino-powered USB device which emulates a keyboard and has keystroke injection capabilities. It’s still in crowdfunding stage, but has already been fully backed, so we anticipate full production soon. In essence, it implements BadUSB attacks much like the widely known, having appeared on Mr. Robot, USB Rubber Ducky.

It’s like an advanced version of HID tricks to drop malicious files which we previously reported. Once plugged in, MalDuino acts as a keyboard, executing previous configured key sequences at very fast speeds. This is mostly used by IT security professionals to hack into local computers, just by plugging in the unsuspicious USB ‘Pen’.

[Seytonic], the maker of MalDuino, says its objective is it to be a cheaper, fully open source alternative with the big advantage that it can be programmed straight from the Arduino IDE. It’s based on ATmega32u4 like the Arduino Leonardo and will come in two flavors, Lite and Elite. The Lite is quite small and it will fit into almost any generic USB case. There is a single switch used to enable/disable the device for programming.

The Elite version is where it gets exciting. In addition to the MicroSD slot that will be used to store scripts, there is an onboard set of dip switches that can be used to select the script to run. Since the whole platform is open sourced and based on Arduino, the MicroSD slot and dip switches are entirely modular, nothing is hardcoded, you can use them for whatever you want. The most skilled wielders of BadUSB attacks have shown feats like setting up a fake wired network connection that allows all web traffic to be siphoned off to an outside server. This should be possible with the microcontroller used here although not native to the MalDuino’s default firmware.

For most users, typical feature hacks might include repurposing the dip switches to modify the settings for a particular script. Instead of storing just scripts on the MicroSD card you could store word lists on it for use in password cracking. It will be interesting to see what people will come up with and the scripts they create since there is a lot of space to tinker and enhanced it. That’s the greatness of open source.

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3-Phase BLDC Motor Controller Will Run You $20 In Parts

July 29, 2016 by Sonya Vasquez 33 Comments

If you’re an active shopper on RC websites, you’ll find tiny motors spec’ed at hundreds of watts while weighing just a few grams, like this one. Sadly, their complementary motor controllers are designed to drive them at a high speed, which means we can only hit that “520-watt” power spec by operating in a max-speed-minimum-torque configuration. Sure, that configuration is just fine for rc plane and multicopter enthusiasts, but for roboticists looking to drive these bldc motors in a low-speed-high-torque configuration, the searches come up blank.

The days in the dust are coming to an end though! [Cameron] has been hard at work at a low cost, closed-loop controller for the robotics community that will take a conventional BLDC airplane motor and transform it into a high end servo motor. Best of all, the entire package will only run you about $20 in parts–including the position sensor!

“Another BLDC motor controller?” you might think. “Surely, I’ve seen this before“. Fear not, faithful readers; [Cameron’s] solution will get even the grumpiest of engineers to crack a smile. For starters, he’s closing the loop with a Melexis MLX90363 hall effect sensor to locate the rotor position. Simply glue a small magnet to the shaft, calibrate the magnetic field with one revolution, and–poof–a wild 14-bit encoder has appeared! Best of all, this solution costs a mere $5 to $10 in parts.

Next off, [Cameron] uncovered a little-known secret of the ATMEGA32u4, better known as the chip inside the Arduino Leonardo. It turns out that this chip’s TIMER4 peripheral contains a feature designed exclusively for 3-phase brushless motor control. Complementary PWM outputs are built into 3 pairs of pins with configurable dead time built into the chip hardware. Finally, [Cameron] is pulsing the FETs at a clean 32-Khz — well beyond the audible range, which means we won’t hear that piercing 8-Khz whine that’s so characteristic of cheap BLDC motor controllers.

Curious? Check out [Cameron’s] firmware and driver design on the Githubs.

Of course, there are caveats. [Cameron’s] magnetic encoder solution has a few milliseconds of lag that needs to be characterized. We also need to glue a magnet to the shaft of our motor, which won’t fly in all of our projects that have major space constraints. Finally, there’s just plain old physics. In the real world, motor torque is directly proportional to current, so stalling an off-the-shelf bldc motor at max torque will burn them out since no propeller is pushing air through them to cool them off. Nevertheless, [Cameron’s] closed loop controller, at long last, can give the homebrew robotics community the chance to explore these limits.

Vintage Apple Keyboard Revived As Standalone Computer

December 10, 2014 by Matt Freund 23 Comments

Many of our readers are familiar with the gold standard of classic PC keyboards – the bunker with switches known as the IBM Model M. The Model M’s Apple contemporary is the Apple Extended Keyboard and they are just as highly sought-after by their respective enthusiasts. Though discontinued almost 25 years ago and incompatible with anything made in the last 15, the codenamed “Saratoga” is widely considered the best keyboard Apple ever made.

[Ezra] has made a hobby of modernizing these vintage heartthrobs and rescuing them from their premature obsolescence. In a superbly documented tutorial he not only shows how to convert them to USB (a popular and trivial hack), but teaches you how and where to smuggle a Raspberry Pi in as well.

After disassembly, the project requires only a little bit of chisel and Dremel work before the soldering iron comes out. [Ezra] was fairly meticulous in removing or redirecting the Pi’s connectors and hardwiring the internals. Only 3 pins need to be traced from the original keyboard and [Ezra]’s ADB–>USB Rosetta Stone of choice is the Hasu Converter running on a Atmega 32u4 clone. Balancing cost, range, and power draw from the Pi, he settled on the TP-LINK WN722N for his WiFi solution which is also tucked away inside the case. A single pullup resistor to finish it off and [Ezra] was delighted to discover it worked the first time he plugged it in.

Keyboards from this era use actual momentary switches that audibly click twice per keypress. In our world of screens-as-keys celebrating the lack of tactile constraints, using beasts like the Model M or the AEK to force transistors to do your bidding is like racking a shotgun during a game of lasertag – comically obtuse but delightfully mechanical.

If you are looking to expand on [Ezra]’s tinkering, he has already made a wishlist of additions: a toggle switch to lobotomize the Pi back into a plain USB keyboard, an internal USB hub, and a power switch.

Hear the video of an AEK in action after the break (or loop it to sound productive while you nap).

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THP Quarterfinalist: WALLTECH Smartwatch

September 17, 2014 by Eric Evenchick 13 Comments

While there is lots of hype about a big company launching a new wearable product, we’re more interested in [Walltech]’s open source OLED Smartwatch. This entry into The Hackaday Prize merges a collection of sensors and an OLED screen into a wearable device that talks to your smartphone over Bluetooth Low Energy.

The device is based on the IMUduino BTLE development board. This tiny Arduino clone packs an inertial measurement unit (IMU), a Nordic nRF8001 Bluetooth radio, and an ATMEGA32u4 microcontroller.

The 1.5″ OLED display comes from [miker] who makes an OLED module based on the SSD1351. A STP200M 3D pedometer provides activity monitoring in a tiny package.

On the hardware side, packaging all these components into something that will fit on your wrist is quite difficult. The prototype hardware is built from mostly off the shelf components, but still manages to be watch sized.

At this point, it looks like the code is the main challenge remaining. There’s a lot of functionality that could be implemented, and [Walltech] even mentions that it’s designed to be very customizable. It even supports Android; the Apple Watch can’t do that.

The project featured in this post is a quarterfinalist in The Hackaday Prize.