Hackaday Links: December 27th, 2015

December 27, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

PCBs can be art – we’ve known this for a while, but we’re still constantly impressed with what people can do with layers of copper, fiberglass, soldermask, and silkscreen. [Sandy Noble] is taking this idea one step further. He took C64, Spectrum, and Sinclair PCBs and turned them into art. The results are incredible. These PCBs were reverse engineered, traced, and eventually turned into massive screen prints. They look awesome, and they’re available on Etsy.

$100k to bring down drones. That’s the tagline of the MITRE Challenge, although it’s really being sold as, “safe interdiction of small UAS that pose a safety or security threat in urban areas”. You can buy a slingshot for $20…

[styropyro] mas made a name for himself on Youtube for playing with very dangerous lasers and not burning his parent’s house down. Star Wars is out, and that means it’s time to build a handheld 7W laser. It’s powered by two 18650 cells, and is responsible for more than a few scorch marks on the walls of [styropyro]’s garage.

Everybody is trying to figure out how to put Ethernet and a USB hub on the Pi Zero. This means a lot of people will be launching crowdfunding campaigns for Pi Zero add-on boards that add Ethernet and USB. The first one we’ve seen is the Cube Infinity. Here’s the thing, though: they’re using through-hole parts for their board, which means this won’t connect directly to the D+ and D- USB signals on the Pi Zero. They do have a power/battery board that may be a little more useful, but I can’t figure out how they’re doing the USB.

[Keith O] found a fascinating video on YouTube and sent it into the tips line. It’s a machine that uses a water jet on pastries. These cakes start out frozen, and come out with puzzle piece and hexagon-shaped slices. Even the solution for moving cakes around is ingenious; it uses a circular platform that rotates and translates by two toothed belts. Who would have thought the latest advancements in cutting cakes and pies would be so fascinating?

It’s time to start a tradition. In the last links post of last year, we took a look at the number of views from North Korea in 2014. Fifty-four views, and we deeply appreciate all our readers in Best Korea. This year? For 2015, we’ve logged a total of thirty-six views from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. That’s a precipitous drop that deserves an investigation. Pyongyang meetup anyone?

The Most Brilliant Use Of Crowdfunding Yet: Medical Research

December 17, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 55 Comments

Since the rise of Kickstarter and Indiegogo, the world has been blessed with $100 resin-based 3D printers, Video game consoles built on Android, quadcopters that follow you around, and thousands of other projects that either haven’t lived up to expectations or simply disappeared into the ether. The idea of crowdfunding is a very powerful one: it’s the ability for thousands of people to chip in a few bucks for something they think is valuable. It’s a direct democracy for scientific funding. It’s the potential for people to pool their money, give it to someone capable, and create something really great. The reality of crowdfunding isn’t producing the best humanity has to offer. Right now, the top five crowdfunding campaigns ever are two video games, a beer cooler, a wristwatch with an e-ink screen, and something to do with Bitcoin. You will never go broke underestimating people.

[Dr. Todd Rider] wants to change this. He might have developed a way to cure nearly all viral diseases in humans, but he can’t find the funding for the research to back up his claims. He’s turned to IndieGoGo with an audacious plan: get normal people, and not NIH grants, to pay for the research.

The research [Dr. Rider] has developed is called the DRACO, the Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizer. It works by relying on the singular difference between healthy cells and infected cells. Infected cells contain long chains viral double-stranded RNA. The DRACOs attach themselves to these long strands of RNA and cause those cells to commit suicide. The research behind the DRACO was published in 2011, and since then [Dr. Rider] has already received funding from more traditional sources, but right now the project is stuck in the ‘funding valley of death’. It’s easy to get funding for early research, but to get the millions of dollars for clinical trials it takes real results – showing efficacy, and proving to pharmaceutical companies or VCs that the drug will make money.

So far, results are promising, but far from the cure for HIV and the common cold the DRACO promises to be. [Dr. Rider] has performed a few tests on cell cultures and mice, and the DRACOs have been effective in combating everything from the common cold, to the flu to dengue hemorrhagic fever.

The IndieGoGo campaign is flexible funding, meaning all the money raised will go towards research even if the funding goal is not met. Right now, just over $50,000 has been raised of a $100,000 goal. That $100k goal is just the first step; [Dr. Rider] thinks he’ll need about $2 Million to test DRACOs against more viruses and hopefully show enough progress to get additional traditional funding. That $2 Million is a little less than what Solar Roadways raised, meaning no matter what [Dr. Rider] will make one important medical discovery: people are very, very, very dumb.

Continue reading “The Most Brilliant Use Of Crowdfunding Yet: Medical Research” →

Hackaday Links: December 13, 2015

December 13, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 30 Comments

So you’ve been rocking a tin foil hat for years now, and people have finally gotten used to your attire and claims that fluoridated water is a government mind control experiment. This holiday, how about something a little more stylish? Yes, it’s a Kickstarter for the World’s First Signal Proof Headwear. This fashionable beanie or cap protects you from harmful electromagnetic rays. Next time you shoot an eighteen minute long YouTube video of a wheezing rant about chemtrails, look fashionable with Shield – the world’s first stylish signal proof hat.

That last tip came to us from a Crowdfunding marketing agency. That means money was exchanged for the purposes of marketing a modern tin foil hat.

[Mike] has an old IBM 5155, the ‘luggable’ computer with design cues taken from the first Compaq. With an Ethernet adapter and a little inspiration, He was able to get this old computer to load the Hackaday retro edition.

[gyrovague] has a Chromecast that’s a bit janky. When it comes to electronics, strangeness means heat. The solution? A heat sink for the Chromecast. You don’t even need a proper heat sink for this one – just epoxy a big ‘ol transformer to the aluminum plate in the Chromecast.

This year, Keysight gave away a pile of test and measurement gear to the i3Detroit hackerspace. Keysight is doing it again, with a grand prize of around $60,000. Entries close on the 15th. Protip: you, personally, don’t want to win this for tax reasons. A non-profit does.

The Internet recently caught wind of a satellite modem being sold by Sparkfun. It’s $250 for the module, with a $12/month line rental, and each 340 byte message costs $0.18 to receive. Yes, it’s cool, and yes, it’s expensive. If you ever need to send a message from the north pole, there you go.

Need to remove the waterproof coating from LED strips? Don’t use a knife, use a Dremel and a wire brush.

Hackaday Links: November 29, 2015

November 29, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 32 Comments

The Raspberry Pi Zero was announced this week, so you know what that means: someone is going to destroy a Game Boy Micro. If you’re interested in putting the Zero in a tiny handheld of your own design, here are the dimensions, courtesy of [Bert].

[Ahmed] – the kid with the clock – and his family are suing his school district and city for $15 Million. The family is also seeking written apologies from the city’s mayor and police chief.

There are a lot — a lot — of ‘intro to FPGA’ boards out there, and the huge variety is an example of how the ‘educational FPGA’ is a hard nut to crack. Here’s the latest one from a Kickstarter. It uses an ICE40, so an open source toolchain is available, and at only $50, it’s cheap enough to start digging around with LUTs and gates.

Over on Hackaday.io, [Joseph] is building a YAG laser. This laser will require a parabolic mirror with the YAG rod at the focus. There’s an interesting way to make one of these: cut out some acrylic and beat a copper pipe against a form. A little polish and nickel plating and you have a custom mirror for a laser.

You know those machines with wooden gears, tracks, and dozens of ball bearings? Cool, huh? Tiny magnetic balls exist, and the obvious extension to this line of thought is amazing.

[David Windestål] is awesome. Completely and totally awesome. Usually, he’s behind the controls of an RC plane or tricopter, but this time he’s behind a slo-mo camera, an RC heli, and a watermelon. That’s a 550-sized heli with carbon fiber blades spinning at 2500 RPM, shot at 1000 FPS.

How do you label your cables? Apparently, you can use a label printer with heat shrink tubing. Nothing else, even: just put heat shrink through a label maker.

The USB Killer – Now A Crowdfunding Campaign

November 6, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 128 Comments

Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and every other crowdfunding site out there frequently have projects that should never be products. The latest promises to protect you from security breaches and identity theft by blowing up your computer. It’s the USB Killer, and for only $99 USD, you too can destroy the USB port in your computer and everything else attached to it.

The USB Killer is a device that plugs into the USB port on any computer, charges up several caps, and dumps all that voltage back into the computer. The process repeats until something breaks. We’ve seen it used on a poor Thinkpad X60, and from the video evidence it does exactly what it’s designed to do: kill a computer.

The Indiegogo campaign for the USB killer comes with a web page for the campaign that goes over the function of the device in much more detail. Inside the USB killer is a DC/DC converter that charges a few capacitors to -110V. When the caps are charged, that voltage is dumped back into the USB port where something will happen. Somewhat surprisingly, the folks behind the USB Killer have a video of a computer not dying when the USB Killer is plugged in. Only killing the USB port in a computer is not a guaranteed functionality, as the Indiegogo campaign has the following disclaimer: “Please be aware: USB Killer may cause damage to the motherboard, depending on your computer. By making a pre-order you acknowledge that you are aware of this fact.”

SEC Allows Crowdfunding

November 4, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 40 Comments

Kickstarter is not an investment, and no matter how many times this is repeated, you’ll find the phrase ‘my investment’ in the comments section of nearly every failed Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or other crowdfunding campaign. These campaigns are more closely related to group buys, and you’ll never find a Kickstarter offering equity or any sort of return beyond the latest electronic bauble, indie game, or graphic novel. Sure, you may bootstrap a business with that pledge, but don’t expect dividends from Ouya or Pebble.

Now, this may finally change. The US Securities and Exchange Commission approved new rules for crowdfunding, allowing startups to raise money from Jane and Joe Internet.

Previously, angel investments, venture capital, and hedge funds were not for the common man; these were high-risk investments, and only accredited investors could participate in these funding rounds. Accredited investors, at least in the US, are individuals with a net worth of at least $1 Million, or an income greater than $200,000 in each of the previous two years. The reason for only allowing accredited investors – depending on your interpretation – is to protect consumers or to maintain a perverse oligarchy by installing a glass ceiling over the middle class. Either way, normal people couldn’t invest in high-risk investments until now.

Congress has seen fit to create a new class of investor, and pursuant to Title III of the JOBS Act, the SEC recently released the complete rules for crowdfunded investment. In a massive, 600-page tome, all the regulations are laid bare, ready for the next serial entrepreneur who seeks at most $1 Million in investment for their next startup.

Investors and Startups

The rules issued by the SEC immediately place some limitations on what can be done under the new regulations. For startups, a maximum of $1 Million can be raised over a 12-month period.

For investors with an annual income or a net worth of less than $100,000, a maximum of $2,000 or 5% of annual income can be invested, whichever is greater. For investors with an annual income or net worth greater than $100,000, 10% of their income or net worth can be invested, whichever is smaller.

Brokers and Funding Portals

Investors and entrepreneurs are not allowed to keep their transactions to themselves; this is the SEC after all. Transactions will go through registered broker-dealers or something called a ‘funding portal’. These funding portals are forbidden from offering advice, making recommendations, advertising, paying employees a commission, holding securities themselves, and the regulation bars directors, officers, and partners of the funding portal from holding investments using that funding portal’s services.

It’s The Complete Opposite of Kickstarter

Kickstarter was never known for its transparency. While the basic premise of crowdfunding the manufacturing of a few baubles or 3D printers is sound – it’s cheaper per unit to build a hundred of something than to build just one – the reality of actually building something meant Kickstarters failed – it’s exponentially harder to build ten thousand of something than it is to build a hundred. Add to this Kickstarter’s investments in campaigns featured on their website, and you have the recipe for practices that aren’t illegal but certainly don’t pass the sniff test.

The regulations put forth by the SEC turn the most common trope of the Internet economy on their head; companies responsible for bringing startups and investors together are not financially dependant on these startups. Companies can not raise more money than they could handle, and hopefully individual investors won’t take to crowdfunded companies like online poker and day trading.

Traditional crowdfunding has started a lot of great companies so far; the Form1 printer began as a crowdfunding campaign, and Reading Rainbow still lives thanks to a successful Kickstarter. With these new regulations come new possibilities for the latest startups, and more paths to success than a traditional angel investor or VC tycoon.

Skarp Laser Razor Kickstarter Suspended, Jumps To Indiegogo

October 13, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 88 Comments

An irritation-free razor that gives a close shave has been a dream for thousands of years. [Gillette] came close, and with multiple blades came even closer, but all razors today are still just sharpened steel dragged across the skin. This is the 21st century, and of course there’s a concept for a laser razor pandering for your moola. We recently covered the Skarp laser razor and its Kickstarter campaign, and today the campaign has been shut down.

The email sent out to all contributors to the Skarp campaign follows:

Hello,

This is a message from Kickstarter’s Integrity team. We’re writing to notify you that the Skarp Laser Razor project has been suspended, and your pledge has been canceled.

After requesting and reviewing additional material from the creator of the project, we’ve concluded that it is in violation of our rule requiring working prototypes of physical products that are offered as rewards. Accordingly, all funding has been stopped and backers will not be charged for their pledges. No further action is required on your part. Suspensions cannot be undone.

We take the integrity of the Kickstarter system very seriously. We only suspend projects when we find evidence that our rules are being violated.

Regards, Kickstarter Integrity Team

It only took eight hours for the Skarp team to relaunch their crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. As of this writing, over 900 people (ostensibly from the 20,000 backers of the original Kickstarter campaign) have pledged to the new campaign.

Although we will never know exactly why Kickstarter suspended the original Skarp campaign, the reason given by the Kickstarter Integrity Team points to the lack of a working prototype, one of the requirements for technology campaigns on Kickstarter. Interestingly, Skarp did post a few videos of their razor working. These videos were white balanced poorly enough to look like they were filmed through green cellophane, a technique some have claimed was used to hide the actual mechanism behind the prototype’s method of cutting hair. A few commenters on the Skarp Kickstarter campaign – and here on Hackaday – have guessed the Skarp prototype does not use lasers, but instead a heated length of nichrome wire. While this would burn hair off, the color of the wire would be a dull red when filmed in any normal lighting conditions. It is assumed the poor quality of the Skarp prototype videos is an attempt to hide the fact they do not have a working prototype.

Skarp’s move to Indiegogo has been lauded by some – mostly in the comments section of the Indiegogo campaign – and has been derided on every other forum on the Internet. Indiegogo is commonly seen as the last refuge of crowdfunding scam artist, but there are a few legitimate reasons why a campaign would choose to go to Indiegogo. Kickstarter is not available for campaign founders in all countries, and for some, debiting a card immediately, instead of after the campaign end like Kickstarter does, is a legitimate crowdfunding strategy.

But for a crowdfunding campaign to be suspended on Kickstarter and immediately move to Indiegogo? This almost never ends well. One of the most famous examples, the Anonabox, had its Kickstarter campaign suspended after it was found the creator was simply rebadging an off-the-shelf router. The Anonabox then moved over to Indiegogo where it raised over $80,000. Already the campaign for the Skarp Laser Razor has raised $135,000 USD from Indiegogo, after having its Kickstarter campaign raised over $4 Million. No, Skarp won’t be one of the most successful technology Kickstarter campaigns of all time. We can only hope it won’t be one of Indiegogo’s most successful campaigns.