design

169 Articles

Weather Station With Distributed Sensors

August 11, 2023 by 2 Comments

Building a weather station is a fairly common project that plenty of us have taken on, and for good reason. They can be built around virtually any microcontroller or full-scale computer, can have as many or few sensors as needed, and range from simple, straightforward projects to more complex systems capable of doing things like sending data off to weather services like Weather Underground. This weather station features a few innovations we don’t often see, though, with a modular and wireless design that makes it versatile and easy to scale up or down as needed.

Each of the modules in this build use the ESP32 platform, which simplifies design and also takes care of the wireless capability needed. The base station gets a few extra sensors including those for carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds, and nitrogen oxides. It also includes a screen which can be used to display a wide variety of data gathered locally but also includes forecast information fetched from the free OpenWeatherMap API. For the sensor modules, BME280 sensors are used for temperature, pressure, and humidity and each module includes its own solar panel and battery with the ESP32 chips set to operate using as little energy as possible.

One of the things that helps easily integrate all of the sensor modules is the use of ESP-NOW, which we have seen a few times before. It essentially eliminates the need for a router and allows ESP modules to connect directly with one another. The build also goes into detail about most of the aspects of this project including the programming of the GUI that the ESP32 base station displays on its screen, so for anyone looking to start their own weather station project this should be an excellent guide. Make sure to check out this one as well if you want to send all of your weather data to Weather Underground.

Better 3D Prints, Courtesy Of A Simple Mass-Produced Bracket

August 3, 2023 by 34 Comments

On the “hack/not-a-hack” scale, a 3D printed bracket for aluminum extrusions is — well, a little boring. Such connectors are nothing you couldn’t buy, and even if you insisted on printing them instead, Printables and Thingiverse are full of ready-to-use designs. So why would you waste your precious time and effort rolling your own?

According to production 3D printing company [Slant 3D], a lot of times, we forget to take advantage of the special capabilities of 3D printing. The design progression of the L-bracket shown is a perfect example; it starts as a simple L, moves on to a more elaborate gusseted design, and eventually into a sturdy sold block design that would be difficult to make with injection molding thanks to shrinkage but is no problem for a 3D printer. Taking that a step further, the bracket morphs into a socketed design, taking advantage of what 3D printers can do by coming up with a part that reduces assembly time and fastener count while making a more finished, professional look.

Again, this isn’t really about the bracket. Rather, it’s about a different way of thinking about your designs and leveraging the unique capabilities of 3D printers relative to other mass-production methods, like injection molding. We’ve covered some of [Slant 3D]’s high-volume design insights before, such as including living hinges and alternatives of pins and holes for assembling printed parts. Continue reading “Better 3D Prints, Courtesy Of A Simple Mass-Produced Bracket” →

Trebuchet Sends Eggs Flying

July 14, 2023 by 7 Comments

Without any sort of restrictions on designs for trebuchets, these medieval siege weapons are known to send 90 kilogram projectiles over 300 meters. The egg-launching trebuchet contest that [AndysMachines] is entering, on the other hand, has a few limitations that dramatically decreased the size of the machines involved. The weight of the entire device is limited to no more than 3 kg, with any physical dimension no more than 300 mm, but that’s more than enough to send an egg flying across a yard with the proper design and tuning for maximum distance.

Trebuchets distinguish themselves amongst other siege weapons by using a falling weight to launch the projectile. The rules of this contest allow for the use of springs, so [AndysMachines] is adding a spring in between the trebuchet arm and the weight in order to more efficiently deliver the energy from the falling weight. More fine tuning of the trebuchet was needed before the competition, though, specifically regarding the stall point for the trebuchet. This is the point where the forces acting on the arm from the projectile and the weight are balanced, and moving this point to allow the projectile to release at a 45-degree angle was needed for maximum distance.

The video goes into a lot of detail about other fine-tuning of a trebuchet like this, aided by some slow-motion video analysis. In the end, [AndysMachines] was able to launch the egg over ten meters with this design. Of course, if you want to throw out the rule book and replace the eggs with ball bearings and the aluminum and steel with titanium, it’s possible to build a trebuchet that breaks the sound barrier.

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Using FreeCAD To Replace OEM Parts

June 10, 2023 by 46 Comments

As much as we might all like it if manufacturers supported their products indefinitely with software updates or replacement parts, this just isn’t feasible. Companies fail or get traded, technologies evolve, and there’s also an economic argument against creating parts for things that are extremely old or weren’t popular in the first place. So, for something like restoring an old car, you might have to resort to fabricating replacement parts for your build on your own. [MangoJelly] shows us how to build our own replacement parts in FreeCAD in this series of videos.

The build does assume that the original drawings or specifications for the part are still available, but with those in hand FreeCAD is capable of importing them and then the model scaling to match the original specs shown. This video goes about recreating a hinge on an old truck, so with the drawings in hand the part is essentially traced out using the software, eventually expanding it into all three dimensions using all of the tools available in FreeCAD. One of the keys to FreeCAD is the various workbenches available that all have their own sets of tools, and being able to navigate between them is key to a build like this.

FreeCAD itself is an excellent tool for anyone repairing old vehicles like this or those making 3D prints, designing floorplans for houses, or really anything you might need to model in a computer before bringing the idea into reality. It does have a steep learning curve (not unlike other CAD software) so it helps to have a video series like this if you’re only just getting started or looking to further hone your design skills, but the fact that it’s free and open-source make it extremely attractive compared to its competitors.

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SMA Connector Footprint Design For Open Source RF Projects

June 2, 2023 by 10 Comments

When you first start out in the PCB layout game and know just enough to be dangerous, you simply plop down a connector, run a trace or two, and call it a hack. As you learn more about the finer points of inconveniencing electrons, dipping toes into the waters of higher performance, little details like via size, count, ground plane cutouts, and all that jazz start to matter, and it’s very easy to get yourself in quite a pickle trying to decide what is needed to just exceed the specifications (or worse, how to make it ‘the best.’) Connector terminations are one of those things that get overlooked until the MHz become GHz. Luckily for us, [Rob Ruark] is on hand to give us a leg-up on how to get decent performance from edge-launch SMA connections for RF applications. These principles should also hold up for high-speed digital connections, so it’s not just an analog game.

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Remote-Controlled Hypercar Slices Through Air

May 23, 2023 by 17 Comments

Almost all entry-level physics courses, and even some well into a degree program, will have the student make some assumptions in order to avoid some complex topics later on. Most commonly this is something to the effect of “ignore the effects of wind resistance” which can make an otherwise simple question in math several orders of magnitude more difficult. At some point, though, wind resistance can’t be ignored any more like when building this remote-controlled car designed for extremely high speeds.

[Indeterminate Design] has been working on this project for a while now, and it’s quite a bit beyond the design of most other RC cars we’ve seen before. The design took into account extreme aerodynamics to help the car generate not only the downforce needed to keep the tires in contact with the ground, but to keep the car stable in high-speed turns thanks to its custom 3D printed body. There is a suite of high-speed sensors on board as well which help control the vehicle including four-wheel independent torque vectoring, allowing for precise control of each wheel. During initial tests the car has demonstrated its ability to  corner at 2.6 lateral G, a 250% increase in corning speed over the same car without the aid of aerodynamics.

We’ve linked the playlist to the entire build log above, but be sure to take a look at the video linked after the break which goes into detail about the car’s aerodynamic design specifically. [Indeterminate Design] notes that it’s still very early in the car’s development, but has already exceeded the original expectations for the build. There are also some scaled-up vehicles capable of transporting people which have gone to extremes in aerodynamic design to take a look at as well.

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Share Your Projects: Making Helpful PCBs

May 9, 2023 by 38 Comments

When it comes to things that hackers build, PCBs are a sizeable portion of our creative output. It’s no wonder – PCB design is a powerful way to participate in the hardware world, making your ideas all that more tangible with help of a friendly PCB fab. It’s often even more lovely when the PCB has been designed for you, and all you have to do is press “send” – bonus points if you can make a few changes for your own liking!

A lot of the time, our projects are untrodden ground, however, and a new design needs to be born. We pick out connectors, work through mechanical dimensions, figure out a schematic and check it with others, get the layout done, and look at it a few more times before sending it out for production. For a basic PCB, that is enough – but of course, it’s no fun to stop at ‘basic’, when there’s so many things you can do at hardly any cost.

Let’s step back a bit – you’ve just designed a board, and it’s great! It has all the chips and the connectors you could need, and theoretically, it’s even supposed to work first try. Now, let’s be fair, there’s an undeniable tendency – the more PCBs you design, the better each next one turns out, and you learn to spend less time on each board too. As someone with over two hundred PCBs under her belt, I’d like to show you a bunch of shortcuts that make your PCB more helpful, to yourself and others.

There’s a few ways that you can share your PCB projects in a more powerful way – I’d like to point out a few low-hanging fruits, whether README.md files or markings on the PCB itself. I’ve been experimenting quite a bit with external and embedded documentation of PCBs, as well as PCB sharing methods, got some fun results, and I’d like to share my toolkit through a few punchy examples and simple tricks. I’d also like to hear about yours – let’s chat! Continue reading “Share Your Projects: Making Helpful PCBs” →