A DIY CAD Mouse You Can Actually Build

January 18, 2022 by Dave Rowntree 50 Comments

When you spend a lot of time on the computer doing certain more specialised tasks (no, we’re not talking about browsing cat memes on twitter) you start to think that your basic trackpad or mouse is, let’s say, lacking a certain something. We think that something may be called ‘usability’ or maybe ease-of-use? Any which way, lots of heavy CAD users gush over their favourite mouse stand-ins, and one particularly interesting class of input devices is the Space Mouse, which is essentially patented up-to-the-hilt and available only from 3DConnexion. But what about open source alternatives you can build yourselves? Enter stage left, the Orbion created by [FaqT0tum.] This simple little build combines an analog joystick with a rotary knob, with a rear button and OLED display on the front completing the user interface.

The idea is pretty straightforward; you setup the firmware with the application you want to use it with, and it emits HID events to the connected PC, replacing the mouse or keyboard input. Since your machine will take input from multiple sources, it doesn’t replace your mouse, it augments it. It may not be very accurate for detailed PCB layout work, but for moving around in a 3D view, or dialling in a video edit, this could be a very useful addition to your workstation, so why not give it a try? The wiring is simple, the parts easily found and cheap, and it’s only a few printed parts! This scribe is already printing the plastics right now, if you listen carefully you might be able to make out the sound of the Lulzbot in background.

There are many other takes on this idea, with varying levels of complexity, like this incredible build from [Ahmsville] that sadly doesn’t make the PCBs available openly, and here’s one we covered earlier mashing the expensive 3DConnexion spacemouse into a keeb.

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The Year Of Owning It

January 8, 2022 by Elliot Williams 41 Comments

Talking over the year in review on the Podcast, Tom Nardi and I were brainstorming what we thought was the single overarching trend in 2021, and we came up with many different topics: victories in the right to repair, increasingly dystopian service contracts, a flourishing of cyberdecks, and even greater prevalence of reverse engineering style hacks. And then we realized: they are all different faces of the same beast — people just want to own the devices that they own.

Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, our modern Internet-connected-everythings have two sides. On one side, we get so much additional functionality from having everything on the net. But on the other, if your car is always connected, it gives Toyota a means to make you pay a monthly fee to use a car fob, and if you have to use Cricut’s free online service to upload designs to the cutter, they can suddenly decide to start charging you. It allows Samsung to not only spy on whatever you’re currently watching on your smart TV, but to also brick it if they want to. More and more, we don’t actually own (in the sense of control) the devices that we own (in the sense of having purchased).

We don’t have to take it lying down. On the one hand, consumer protest made Cricut walk back their plans, and may do the same with Toyota. We can achieve a lot, collectively, by just talking about our grievances, and letting the firms in question know how we feel — naturally also with our wallets. But as hackers and all-around techie types, we can do even more. When something is broken because of a bad service, we can often fix it with firmware or by standing up our own version of the service. We can pwn them.

But there’s even more to the cyberdeck and the extreme DIY movements of the last few years than just the defense against lock-in or the liberating of hardware. There’s also the pride of truly owning something because you made it. Not just owning it because you bought it, or owning it because you control it, but owning it because you understand it and because you gave birth to it.

Whichever way you’re into owning your own, I think that’s the single overarching trend of 2021 — both on the positive and proactive side and the negative and reactive. Talking about it, reverse engineering it, or building it yourself, 2021 was the year of owning it.

A Simple Touch Probe Made With Basic Tools

January 5, 2022 by Dave Rowntree 14 Comments

Six points of contact detect any displacement.

LinuxCNC contributor and machining enthusiast [Andy Pugh] is certainly not afraid to try making specialised tools to see how well they work out, and this time he’s been busy making a touch probe (video, embedded below) for checking the accuracy of machining operations and general measuring applications.

These things are not cheap, since they are essentially ‘just’ a switch with a long probe, But, as with anything specialised and machined with tight tolerances, you can understand why they cost what they do.

After inspecting and spending some time reverse-engineering such a unit, [Andy] then proceeded to grab some PEEK bar he had lying around and chuck it into the lathe (get it?). He notes Delrin would be more cost effective for those wishing to reproduce this, but as long as you have the ability to machine it and it’s non-conductive, there are many other options you could try.

Using no special tools other than a collet block (like this one) all the angled holes and slots were made with ease, with the help of a specially 3D-printed mount for the vise. A nice, simple approach, we think!

[Andy] tested the repeatability of the probe, mounted over his CNC-converted Holbrook lathe, reporting a value of 1 um, which seems rather good. Centering of the probe tip within the probe body was off a bit, as you’d expect for something made practically by hand, but that is less of a problem as it would seem, as it results in a fixed offset that can be compensated for in software. Perhaps the next version will have some adjustability to dial that out manually?

The whole assembly is formed from two plastic parts, a handful of ground-finished hardened steel pins, and a big spring. The only part remotely special is an off-the-shelf probe tip. During the electrical hookup, you may notice the use of a self-fluxing verowire pen, which was something this scribe didn’t know existed and has already placed an order for!

The reference 3D model for the design is shared from [Andy]’s Autodesk Drive for your viewing pleasure.

Of course, this isn’t the first DIY touch probe we’ve seen, here’s one for example, and over on Hackaday.IO, here’s an attempt to make one using a piezoelectric transducer.

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Blender? No, Grinder

December 25, 2021 by Elliot Williams 12 Comments

[Leandro Felipe] is no stranger to the dirty hack, and this video of his conversion of a blender into a handheld rotary grinding tool is no exception. (Embedded below.) But the end result is something pretty useful — a lighter and more maneuverable rotary grinder that’s got a lot more grunt to boot.

(The video is in Portuguese, but the captions work pretty well, once you get over the fact that the robots translate “grinding tool” as “rectifier” a lot of the time. And anyway, you’re here for the hacks.)

The highlights are a handmade coupling that mates the blender motor with the flexible shaft and chuck, purchased separately. And the flattened-out PVC pipe used as a mounting bracket. And him using the motor itself against a file to “lathe” down the drive shaft. And…

The tip of the day comes when he holds the blender motor in a metal vise to test it out. Metal and spinning magnets — what’s the worst that could happen? Sparks, smoke, and a trip to the thrift store for another used blender.

If you just want to see the finished piece, you can jump ahead to the end. But it’s basically, get yourself a speed-adjustable blender, couple it to the shaft of an off-the shelf grinder, and you’re set.

It’s an idea so conceptually easy, you might wonder if Hackaday has ever showcased a blender dr3mel before. We have. What else can you power with a blender motor?

Thanks [Danjovic] for the tip!

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Ordering prototypes like they were fast food

Has DIY Become Click And Buy?

December 11, 2021 by Elliot Williams 55 Comments

We are living in great times for DIY, although ironically some of that is because of all the steps that we don’t have to do ourselves. PCBs can be ordered out easily and inexpensively, and the mechanical parts of our projects can be ordered conveniently online, fabricated in quantity one for not much more than a song, or 3D printed at home when plastic will do. Is this really DIY if everything is being farmed out? Yes, no, and maybe.

It all depends on where you think the real value of DIY lies. Is it in the idea, the concept, the design? Or in its realization, the manufacturing? I would claim that most of the value actually lies in the former, as much as I personally enjoy the many processes of physically constructing the individual parts of many projects.

For instance, I designed and built a hot-wire CNC foam cutter recently. Or better, I designed a series of improved versions, because I never get anything right on the first try. All along the way, I 3D printed new and improved versions of the plastic parts, ironing as many of the little glitches out as I had patience for. This took probably a good handful of weekends’ time, spread out over a couple months, but in comparison to time spent testing, fixing, and redesigning, very little time or effort was spent in the physical building.

Moreover, I bought most of the parts at the hardware store. The motor controller shield and cheap Arduino clone came from eBay. And even those that I did manufacture myself, the 3D-printed bits, were kind of made by a machine — my experience of the whole process wouldn’t have been any different if I ordered them out.

Of course craftsmanship still exists, and we see that in Hackaday projects all the time. Heck, I’ll admit that I still enjoy a lot of the process of making things with my own hands for its own sake. It’s peaceful. But if there’s one thing that the rapid proliferation of ideas and projects that have been facilitated by 3D printing and cheap short-run PCB services, it’s that the real value of many projects lies in the idea, and the documentation. Which is to say, I gotta get around to writing up that foam cutter…

Find Your Way In The Starry Skies With DobsonianDSC

November 25, 2021 by Maya Posch 13 Comments

An obvious problem with the use of a telescope is getting the former to point at the proper part of the sky which you intend to observe, or vice versa when you spot something interesting and wish to record the exact location. While all of this can be done manually with some trouble, there’s a lot to be said for automating this process. Unfortunately these Digital Setting Circles (DSC) features are not cheap even as add-on, which is why [Vladimir Atehortúa] created DobsonianDSC as a low-cost DIY solution.

As the name suggests, this project is based around a Dobsonian-style telescope: Newtonian tube with simple altazimuth base. Aside from the mechanical construction, this system uses an ESP32 as its controller along with two rotary encoders, with the simple circuit detailed in a build guide. The firmware for the ESP32 is written in the Arduino C dialect, and a guide for flashing the ESP32 with the Arduino IDE and connecting it to the WLAN is provided as well.

After setup, the resulting telescope system can be used either via WiFi or Bluetooth from existing apps such as SkySafari that support the ‘Basic Encoding System’. An initial calibration is required, but after that you should have a telescope that works in concert with SkySafari or similar to automate this tedious part of astronomy away.

Obviously this is not a ready-to-install system, as every telescope is shaped and sized differently, but inspiration for mounting solutions is provided as well.

Cheap DIY Mic Sounds (And Looks) Damn Good

November 6, 2021 by Adam Zeloof 30 Comments

As any musician, podcaster, or youtuber will be quick to tell you, there’s no substitute for a good microphone. They’ll also be quick to tell you all about their favorite microphone, why it’s better than all the others, and how much it cost (oh, and how round it sounds, whatever that means). But what if you could build your own that sounds as good, if not better, and do it for only $30?

That’s what [Matt] from DIY Perks set out to discover when he built his DIY USB-C Microphone. He was able to source the same microphone capsule that can be found in his high-end, $600 CAD E100S, and built a simple pre-amplifier that bumps its quiet output up to line-level. He even connected it to the mic module with some custom cable made from two tiny enameled wires that won’t transmit bumps and vibrations, wrapped inside desoldering braiding which acts as a shield. He fed the output from the pre-amp into a cheap USB audio interface and voilà! — top-notch sound for next to nothing. Make sure you check out the video below to hear a comparison between the mic and its professional counterparts.

Of course, sounding good isn’t quite enough. [Matt] wasn’t satisfied until the piece looked the part as well, which is why he encased the mic module in custom-bent brass mesh shielding and tubing (which also helps to reduce electrical interference). The brass cage sits suspended via rubber o-rings on a beautiful bent brass mount, which sits atop an articulated brass arm of [Matt]’s own design. Finally, the arm is mounted to a wood and brass enclosure that also serves to house the electronics.

And, in true open-source fashion, the video description is full of links to parts, schematics, and templates in case you want to build one of these beauties for yourself. Between this fantastic build and this other, super-overkill scratch-built USB microphone we featured earlier in the year, there has never been a better time to make yourself a mic you won’t have to trade your car for.

Thanks to [RichV] and [BaldPower] for the tip!

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