Berlin Clock Takes Inspiration From Sci-Fi Sources, Looks Incredible

July 7, 2022 by Ryan Flowers 6 Comments

What would a HAL9000 look like if it eye were yellow and sat atop a front panel inspired by an Altair 8800? You’d have today’s feature, [Stephan]’s BerlinUhr, a gorgeous little take on a Berlin Clock.

At Hackaday, we have a soft spot for clock builds. They’ve graced our pages from early times. When we saw this ultra cool Berlin Clock, we couldn’t resist the urge to share it with all of our readers. For those of you not familiar with a Berlin Clock, it’s a clock that consists of 24 lights, and was the first of its kind back in 1975.

[Stephan]’s build is notable because not only is it a beautiful design, but the work that went into the design and build. At several inches tall, the BerlinUhr is supported solely by a USB-C connection, although it can also be hung on a wall. The RTC is backed up by a CR1216, and an ATtiny167 provides the brains for the operation.

A neat part of the build comes with the KPS-3227 light sensor, used to adjust the LED brightness according to ambient lighting. Rather than being a straightforward part to insert into the PCB, KiCad’s footprint had some pins reversed, causing [Stephan] to learn how to correct it and contribute the fix to KiCad. Well done!

We weren’t kidding about clocks, by the way- check out the link to the Atomic Wrist Watch on this post from 2005, and this Russian VFD based clock from 2006- with video!

Do you have your own favorite clock build you’d love to see grace our pages? Be sure to submit a tip!

Hack My Wired Heart

June 12, 2019 by Helen Leigh 3 Comments

Liner notes? Passé. In Berlin, the release of a special edition synth-wave record came with an accompanying experimental synthesizer called Wired Heart.

At the core of this adorable heart-shaped synth, designed by music technology enthusiast [tobi tubbutec], is the classic 74HCT14 chip with six Schmitt trigger oscillators. The bright red PCB has eight gold touch and humidity sensing pads that activate and modulate these oscillators. As well as changing the sounds by playing with pressure and conductive liquids you can use the six sets of header pins on board to plug in your own components for noisy experimentation. Wired Heart ships with LEDs, photoresistors and a potentiometer, but we’ve also plugged our own DIY fabric pressure sensors into this synth to make some excellent electronic sounds.

In the Hackaday.io post linked above, [tobi tubbutec] walks us through a number of the circuit design decisions he made while prototyping his “cardiotronic human-touch hexoscillatric stereo esoteric snythespacer”. We enjoyed his creative and sometimes unconventional designs, from his inclusion of non-functioning traces for aesthetic reasons to his chosen method of hard syncing — injecting a small pulse of one oscillator into the other. If you want to examine his layout in more detail, [tobi tubbutec] has helpfully included the KiCad schematic file in his write up.

This adorable, hackable synth caught our eye at this year’s SuperBooth — an annual indie electronic music conference in Berlin that’s well worth checking out if odd noises and handmade electronics are your thing — but it’s recently been listed on Tindie too. To listen to the upbeat synth-wave record Wired Heart originally shipped with, visit the artist Hyboid’s bandcamp.

If you’re interested in experimental musical instruments and synthy chip tune you’ll also love [jarek319]’s Sega Genesis synthesiser.

Check out a demo of the Wired Heart synth in the video after the break.

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ASCII Games, Chiptunes, Hacker Celebrities At Hackaday Prize Worldwide Berlin

October 14, 2015 by Sophi Kravitz 4 Comments

Hackaday teamed up with the Vintage Computer Festival to have a Meetup last week. It was quite a party, with Berlin based chiptunes band Thunder.Bird and TheRyk using Commodore 64s and SID sound chip. The age of this equipment and relatively small volume original production runs makes it hard to find these days, but there is an underground group making music with these who trade among themselves. TheRyk created PlayEm64 (pictured above) to organize and play the music using the SID hardware and says that an advantage of this software is that it includes the play time (not in the fileheader), which is really useful for party entertainment! These chips sounded fantastic and added to the energy of the packed house.

A Hackaday party means that people bring their projects to show off and entertain the crowd with. [Nils Dagsson Moskopp] brought a game called Zoo Tycoon Roguelike that he built for a 7 day long competition. This is a text based roguelike game based on the 2011 Microsoft game Zoo Tycoon. As with the original game, Nils’ game aimed to keep animals happy within a thriving zoo. What’s neat about Nils’ version is that all the actions are displayed in words on the right side of the screen and he custom developed the characters in bitmap form.

[Sisam] brought Cube Tetris, a social gaming device with 4 sides, each individually controlled so that players must collaborate with each other to win. The new take on the already addictive game kept a crowd around this table the entire night.

[Dave Darko] and [Alex] brought a collaborative project that they’ve been developing on Hackaday.io together. The first, third and 4th board shown below are [Alex’s] boards, and the second one with the acrylic case is [Dave Darko’s]. They both started with 5x5cm breakout boards for the ESP8266 but they’ve been adding features off of each other’s boards like support for the ESP-07 / ESP-12 and an additional ESP-01 footprint. Someone wished for a USB micro port, and that is now on both of their boards. The next stage for [Alex] is adding 2 pin rows for GVS (ground-voltage-signal) to his boards, a feature which [Dave Darko] has already put in place on his offerings.

Alex and DaveDarko ESP8266 boards

We also saw an appearance by Captain Crunch (John Draper) – he’s pictured here with some friends from Lithuania. Our next event is in San Francisco in November, and we hope to see you at some point somewhere in the world.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Vintage Computer Fest: Berlin 2015

October 9, 2015 by Elliot Williams 19 Comments

Berlin was a good city to be a geek in last weekend. Alongside the Berlin Maker Faire, there was the 2015 meeting of the Vintage Computing Festival: Berlin (VCFB). Each VCFB has a special theme, and this year it was analogue computers, but there was no lack of old computers large and small, teletext machines, vintage video game consoles, and general nerdy nostalgia.

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Hackaday At Berlin Maker Faire

October 8, 2015 by Elliot Williams 5 Comments

The first-ever Berlin Maker Faire was last weekend, and Hackaday was there. Berlin’s a city with an incredible creative vibe, so it’s no surprise that there was good stuff on display. What was surprising, though, was how far many of the presenters traveled to be there. I wandered around with a camera and a notebook, and here’s what we saw.

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Hackaday Prize Worldwide: Berlin, Germany

September 30, 2015 by Sophi Kravitz 3 Comments

Join the Hackaday Crew in Berlin this Saturday for a meetup!

This weekend in Berlin, Germany, there are at least two events happening and [Sophi], [Elliot] and [Bilke] are going to check them all out. The Vintage Computing Festival is one of the big events, and it looks like there will be lots of geeky magic to play with. This weekend is also Maker Faire Berlin where we’re looking forward to hanging out with our friends from Hackaday.io and we’re excited about meeting new people and projects.

Hackaday often throws a party after Maker Faire to celebrate all of our community projects and we’re doing it again Saturday night. We are co-hosting a party with the Vintage Computing Festival, on the same site as the festival, and all are welcome. We’ll have drinks and snacks, and the VCF has live music planned for the evening. This event is free, but we’d like you to RSVP so we know how many refreshments are needed.

Your first drink is on us, and naturally, if you bring a project,your second one is on us too! Please help spread the word by telling your friends, sharing on social media, and mobilizing all the people at your Hackerspace. See you on Saturday!

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Hackaday Prize Worldwide: Zürich On Thursday

September 23, 2015 by Sophi Kravitz 2 Comments

Join us for a Meetup Thursday the 24th of September in Zürich, Switzerland. We’re co-hosting a meetup with FabLab Zürich and we are excited to see you!

Doors open at 18:00 on Thursday, 24 September. We’ll have some food and drink, project show and tell, and time to hang out and get to know each other. This is a free event but please RSVP to let us know you’re coming.

Bring the project you are working on to show off, everyone loves to see projects regardless of what stage they’re in. Many times, showing your project and talking about it pushes your project forward; “oh hey, I have an extra RN42 BT module you can have” or “I already wrote a driver for that chip and it’s on github”. Showing your project to others can also inspire someone else to make their own project based on your awesome idea. I’ve been motivated many times to start a project because of what I saw someone else make.

Germany Too!

This Zurich meetup isn’t the only chance to connect with Hackaday in Europe. Next week, we’ll be in Berlin! We’re co-hosting a Berlin Meetup with Vintage Computer Festival organizers in the evening after Berlin Maker Faire and the Vintage Computing Festival. VCF have planned food and drink, a live band or two… chip tunes! It will be on October 3rd, and [Elliot], [Sophi] and [Bilke] will all be there.