Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Folding Keyboard Mod

December 5, 2024 by Kristina Panos 3 Comments

Let’s face it, failed Kickstarters are no good. But they can spark good things, like real versions of technologies that might have actually been faked for the platform. A touchscreen mouse, for instance, with shortcuts that can be programmed for various applications.

A DIY mouse with a large touch screen. — Image by [Sam Baker] via Hackaday.IO

This story is one of scope creep, as [Sam Baker] says in the project details. At first, he thought he could just basically duct tape a touchscreen with shortcuts to an existing mouse. A couple of mouse teardowns later, [Sam] arrived at the conclusion that things would not be so simple.

After some digging around, [Sam] found a repository where someone created a way to communicate with the ADNS-5050 optical sensor, so [Sam] started by creating a breakout board for this sensor. By combining that with an ESP32 dev board and a touchscreen, [Sam] had his shortcut mouse.

Does it work? Yes. Is it useful? Well, yes. And also no. The beauty part of using a regular mouse is that you don’t have to look down at it to know where the buttons are. In the future, [Sam] would like to implement some kind of buttons for tactility. In the meantime, haptic feedback could be nice.

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Bluetooth Dongle Gives Up Its Secrets With Quick Snooping Hack

November 14, 2024 by Dan Maloney 5 Comments

There’s a lot going on in our wireless world, and the number of packets whizzing back and forth between our devices is staggering. All this information can be a rich vein to mine for IoT hackers, but how do you zero in on the information that matters? That depends, of course, but if your application involves Bluetooth, you might be able to snoop in on the conversation relatively easily.

By way of explanation, we turn to [Mark Hughes] and his Boondock Echo, a device we’ve featured in these pages before. [Mark] needed to know how long the Echo would operate when powered by a battery bank, as well as specifics about the power draw over time. He had one of those Fnirsi USB power meter dongles, the kind that talks to a smartphone app over Bluetooth. To tap into the conversation, he enabled Host Control Interface logging on his phone and let the dongle and the app talk for a bit. The captured log file was then filtered through WireShark, leaving behind a list of all the Bluetooth packets to and from the dongle’s address.

That’s when the fun began. Using a little wetware pattern recognition, [Mark] was able to figure out the basic structure of each frame. Knowing the voltage range of USB power delivery helped him find the bytes representing voltage and current, which allowed him to throw together a Python program to talk to the dongle in real-time and get the critical numbers.

It’s not likely that all BLE-connected devices will be as amenable to reverse engineering as this dongle was, but this is still a great technique to keep in mind. We’ve got a couple of applications for this in mind already, in fact.

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[miko_tarik] wearing diy AR goggles in futuristic setting

Pi Zero To AR: Building DIY Augmented Reality Glasses

November 4, 2024 by Heidi Ulrich 37 Comments

If you’re into pushing tech boundaries from home, this one’s for you. Redditor [mi_kotalik] has crafted ‘Zero’, a custom pair of DIY augmented reality (AR) glasses using a Raspberry Pi Zero. Designed as an affordable, self-contained device for displaying simple AR functions, Zero allows him to experiment without breaking the bank. With features like video playback, Bluetooth audio, a teleprompter, and an image viewer, Zero is a testament to what can be done with determination and creativity on a budget. The original Reddit thread includes videos, a build log, and links to documentation on X, giving you an in-depth look into [mi_kotalik]’s journey. Take a sneak peek through the lens here.

Creating Zero wasn’t simple. From designing the frame in Tinkercad to experimenting with transparent PETG to print lenses (ultimately switching to resin-cast lenses), [mi_kotalik] faced plenty of challenges. By customizing SPI displays and optimizing them to 60 FPS, he achieved an impressive level of real-time responsiveness, allowing him to explore AR interactions like never before. While the Raspberry Pi Zero’s power is limited, [mi_kotalik] is already planning a V2 with a Compute Module 4 to enable 3D rendering, GPS, and spatial tracking.

Zero is an inspiring example for tinkerers hoping to make AR tech more accessible, especially after the fresh news of both Meta and Apple cancelling their attempts to venture in the world of AR. If you are into AR and eager to learn from an original project like this one, check out the full Reddit thread and explore Hackaday’s past coverage on augmented reality experiments.

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The Design Process For A Tiny Robot Brain

October 20, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 13 Comments

As things get smaller, we can fit more processing power into devices like robots to allow them to do more things or interact with their environment in new ways. If not, we can at least build them for less cost. But the design process can get exponentially more complicated when miniaturizing things. [Carl] wanted to build the smallest 9-axis robotic microcontroller with as many features as possible, and went through a number of design iterations to finally get to this extremely small robotics platform.

Although there are smaller wireless-enabled microcontrollers, [Carl] based this project around the popular ESP32 platform to allow it to be usable by a wider range of people. With that module taking up most of the top side of the PCB, he turned to the bottom to add the rest of the components for the platform. The first thing to add was a power management circuit, and after one iteration he settled on a circuit which can provide the board power from a battery or a USB cable, while also managing the battery’s charge. As for sensors, it has a light sensor and an optional 9-axis motion sensor, allowing for gesture sensing, proximity detection, and motion tracking.

Of course there were some compromises in this design to minimize the footprint, like placing the antenna near the USB-C charger and sacrificing some processing power compared to other development boards like the STM-32. But for the size and cost of components it’s hard to get so many features in such a small package. [Carl] is using it to build some pretty tiny robots so it suits his needs perfectly. In fact, it’s hard to find anything smaller that isn’t a bristlebot.

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DIY 3D-Printed Arduino Self-Balancing Cube

October 13, 2024 by Heidi Ulrich 16 Comments

Self-balancing devices present a unique blend of challenge and innovation. That’s how [mircemk]’s project caught our eye. While balancing cubes isn’t a new concept — Hackaday has published several over the years — [mircemk] didn’t fail to impress. This design features a 3D-printed cube that balances using reaction wheels. Utilizing gyroscopic sensors and accelerometers, the device adapts to shifts in weight, enabling it to maintain stability.

At its core, the project employs an Arduino Nano microcontroller and an MPU6050 gyroscope/accelerometer to ensure precise control. Adding nuts and bolts to the reaction wheels increases their weight, enhancing their impact on the cube’s balance. They don’t hold anything. They simply add weight. The construction involves multiple 3D printed components, each requiring several hours to produce, including the reaction wheels and various mount plates. After assembly, users can fine-tune the device via Bluetooth, allowing for a straightforward calibration process to set the balancing points.

If you want to see some earlier incarnations of this sort of thing, we covered other designs in 2010, 2013, and 2016. These always remind us of Stewart platforms, which are almost the same thing turned inside out.

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Two hands hold a rounded rectangular case with a small lollipop-shaped cutout. The case is dark grey with a bit of white protruding between the two halves in the middle.

Add USB-C To Your AirPods The Easy Way

October 3, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 8 Comments

While the death of Apple’s Lightning Connector can’t come soon enough, swapping the ports on their products as “category-defining innovations” seems a bit of a stretch. [Ken Pillonel] has designed a set of streamlined, repairable, USB-C adapters for the AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max that show Apple what innovation really means.

If you’ve followed [Pillonel]’s work in the past, you’ll know he’s as a big a fan of repairability as we are here, so this isn’t just a cheap knockoff dongle that’ll be in the trash as fast as your counterfeit wireless earbuds. In the video below, he walks us through his quest start-to-finish to design something compact that gives you all the joys of USB-C without the pain of buying a whole new set of headphones.

We like the iteration on the connector, showing that flexible circuits can do some amazing things, but are still subject to failure at extreme angles. Using a combination of 3D printing, a cool robot sandblasting machine, a pick-and-place, and some old fashioned hand soldering, [Pillonel] treats us to a polished final product that’s put together with actual screws and not adhesive. His designs are all open source, so you can DIY, or he sells finished copies in his shop if you want to give one to your less-than-techy relatives.

[Pillonel] may seem familiar as he’s the guy who added USB-C to the iPhone before Apple and redesigned the AirPods Pro case for repairability. Apple is getting better about repair in some of its devices, for sure, but unsurprisingly, hackers do it better.

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Cyberpack Puts All The Radios Right On Your Back

September 25, 2024 by Dan Maloney 28 Comments

A disclaimer: Not a single cable tie was harmed in the making of this backpack cyberdeck, and considering that we lost count of the number of USB cables [Bag-Builds] used to connect everything in it, that’s a minor miracle.

The onboard hardware is substantial, starting with a Lattepanda Sigma SBC, a small WiFi travel router, a Samsung SSD, a pair of seven-port USB hubs, and a quartet of Anker USB battery banks. The software defined radio (SDR) gear includes a HackRF One, an Airspy Mini, a USRP B205mini, and a Nooelec NESDR with an active antenna. There are also three USB WiFi adapters, an AX210 WiFi/Bluetooth combo adapter, a uBlox GPS receiver, and a GPS-disciplined oscillator, both with QFH antennas. There’s also a CatSniffer multi-protocol IoT dongle and a Flipper Zero for good measure, and probably a bunch of other stuff we missed. Phew!

As for mounting all this stuff, [Bag-Builds] went the distance with a nicely designed internal frame system. Much of it is 3D printed, but the basic frame and a few rails are made from aluminum. The real hack here, though, is getting the proper USB cables for each connection. The cable lengths are just right so that nothing needs to get bundled up and cable-tied. The correct selection of adapters is a thing of beauty, too, with very little interference between the cables despite some pretty tightly packed gear.

What exactly you’d do with this cyberpack, other than stay the hell away from airports, police stations, and government buildings, isn’t exactly clear. But it sure seems like you’ve got plenty of options. And yes, we’re aware that this is a commercial product for which no build files are provided, but if you’re sufficiently inspired, we’re sure you could roll your own.

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