Arduino And FPGA Done Differently

March 21, 2021 by Al Williams 37 Comments

FPGA guru [Max Maxfield] recently took a look at the XLR8 (pronounced accelerate) board from a company called Alorium. On the surface, it looks like another Arduino UNO clone. But instead of a CPU, it contains an Intel MAX10 FPGA that runs a softcore AVR processor. Of course, that’s only part of the story. If the board was just a mock Arduino using an FPGA, that’s not very interesting for practical purposes. However, by incorporating accelerator blocks or XBs, you can add FPGA modules to the soft CPU. [Max] shows an example that you can see in the video below where an FPGA block controls servos more easily than a standard Arduino. There’s also a version that looks like an Arduino Nano, but can clock much faster as well as use the XBs.

In addition to prebuilt XBs, there is a workflow to build your own if you are familiar with working with FPGAs. The products aren’t exactly new, but we enjoyed [Max’s] take on the product. We also appreciated the simple code examples showing exactly how you would convert a program to use the accelerated functions. Continue reading “Arduino And FPGA Done Differently” →

Surf’s Up, A Styrofoam Ball Rides The Waves To Create A Volumetric Display

March 19, 2021 by Michael Shaub 22 Comments

We are big fans of POV displays, particularly ones that move into 3D. To do so, they need to move even faster than their 2D cousins. [danfoisy] built a volumetric display that doesn’t move LEDs or any other digital display through space, or project light onto a moving surface. All that moves here is a bead of styrofoam and does so at up to 1 meter per second. Having low mass certainly helps when trying to hit the brakes, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

[danfoisy] and son built an acoustic levitator kit from [PhysicsGirl] which inspired the youngster’s science fair project on sound. See the video by [PhysicsGirl] for an explanation of levitation in a standing wave. [danfoisy] happened upon a paper in the Journal Nature about a volumetric display that expanded this one-dimensional standing wave into three dimensions. The paper described using a phased array of ultrasonic transducers, each with a 40 kHz waveform.

After reading the paper and determining how to recreate the experiment, [danfoisy] built a 2D simulation and then another in 3D to validate the approach. We are impressed with the level of physics and programming on display, and that the same code carried through to the build.

[danfoisy] didn’t stop with the simulations, designing and building control boards for each ~~100 x 100~~ 10 x 10 grid of transducers. Each grid is driven by 2 Intel Cyclone FPGAs and all are fed 3D shapes by a Raspberry Pi Zero W. The volume of the display is 100 mm x 100 mm x 145mm and the positioning of the foam ball is accurate down to .01 mm though currently there is considerable distortion in the positioning.

Check out the video after the break to see the process of simulating, designing, and testing the display. There are a number of tips along the way, including how to test for the polarity of the transducers and the use of a Python script to place the grids of transducers and drivers in KiCad.

Continue reading “Surf’s Up, A Styrofoam Ball Rides The Waves To Create A Volumetric Display” →

Reverse Engineering The Weather Channel’s Magic

March 14, 2021 by Tom Nardi 32 Comments

For American readers of a certain age, Local on the 8s likely holds a special spot in your heart. The program, once a staple of The Weather Channel, would provide viewers with a text and eventually graphical depiction of their local forecast set to some of the greatest smooth jazz ever heard outside of an elevator. In the days before smartphones, or even regular Internet access for that matter, these broadcasts were a critical part of planning your day in the 1980s through to the early 2000s.

Up until recently the technical details behind these iconic weather reports were largely unknown, but thanks to the Herculean efforts of [techknight], the fascinating engineering that went into the WeatherSTAR 4000 machines that pumped out current conditions and Shakin’ The Shack from CATV distribution centers all over the US for decades is now being documented and preserved. The process of reversing the hardware and software has actually been going on for the last couple of years, but all those juicy details are now finally going to be available on the project’s Hackaday.IO page.

It all started around Christmas of 2018, when an eBay alert [techknight] had configured for the WeatherSTAR 4000 finally fired off. His offer was accepted, and soon he had the physical manifestation of Local on the 8s in his own hands. He’d reasoned that getting the Motorola MC68010 machine working would be like poking around in a retrocomputer, but it didn’t take long for him to realize he’d gotten himself into a much larger project than he could ever have imagined.

Continue reading “Reverse Engineering The Weather Channel’s Magic” →

Framed PONG Is Picture Perfect

March 8, 2021 by Kristina Panos 9 Comments

How cool would it have been if arcade cabinets had acrylic panels all along that let you gaze upon the field of TTL chips within? When [Jürgen Müller] scored the innards of an original 1972 PONG machine, that’s exactly what the plan was: build a suitable cabinet that re-imagines PONG as a sleek and stunning work of art.

Instead of trying to cram a CRT in that nice mahogany cabinet, [Jürgen] opted to use an 8″ TFT screen. But get this: [Jürgen] built a Spartan 6 FPGA-based upscaler to adds the scan lines, blur, and afterglow that make it look like the classic PONG experience.

[Jürgen] also built an interface board that amplifies the sound, splits the video out into sync and brightness for the upscaler, and provides 5 V to the PONG circuit board. [Jürgen] decided to circumvent the board’s native voltage regulator in the name of keeping things cool.

[Jürgen] says the project’s web page is in a preliminary stage right now with more information to come. We sure hope that includes a video of it in action. For now, you can check out the files for the interface PCB, the FPGA board, and a list of the fonts.

Should you ever get tired of classic PONG, try playing it in one dimension.

Thanks for the tip, [Anonymous].

Make Room For A New Arduino Competitor – With Native Brainf*ck!

January 12, 2021 by Jenny List 70 Comments

With so many smaller and more capable microcontroller boards on the market it’s now fairly safe to say that the classic Arduino footprint and form factor is rather outdated. That’s not to say that there’s no fight left in the old contender though, and to prove it here’s a new platform in the familiar style set by the venerable Atmel-based board. [Eduardo Corpeño]’s Brainfuino is an Arduino competitor that runs everyone’s favourite esoteric programming language, Brainf*ck. (Keeping it SFW, folks.)

And in case you mistake it for a Brainf*ck emulator on a PCB then stand ready to be corrected, for this board runs the language natively in a Brainf*ck softcore on a Lattice MachXO2 FPGA. This is the real deal, on which only a true genius or masochist would dare to code.

The board itself is very neatly executed with a graphical style that presents more than a nod to the original Arduino. On this board is the FPGA, 256 kB ROM and 138 kB RAM, an STM32 to provide a USB serial port and an analogue input, and a level shifter to provide Arduino-style 5 V logic on the pins. We can see it’ll provide hours of fun to anyone interested in learning Brainf*ck, but besides that it has potential as an Arduino-shaped FPGA board. We like the joke, we like the graphical and engineering design, but underneath that lies quite the technical achievement.

Brainf*ck has made it to Hackaday before, not least in this jaw-dropping relay computer.

Custom Controller Makes Turbomolecular Pump Suck

January 6, 2021 by Anool Mahidharia 16 Comments

[Mark Aren] purchased a pair of Turbomolecular pumps (TMP) sans controllers, and then built an FPGA based BLDC controller for the Turbomolecular pumps. A TMP is similar to a jet turbine, consisting of several stages of alternating moving turbine blades and stationary stator blades, and having turbine rotation speeds ranging from 10,000 rpm to 90,000 rpm. TMP’s cannot exhaust directly to atmosphere, and must be combined with a backing (or roughing) pump to create a lower grade vacuum first. They find use in lots of applications such as electron microscopy, analytical sciences, semiconductors and lamp manufacturing. With the lamp industry rapidly embracing LEDs, many of the traditional lamp making lines are getting decommissioned, and if you are lucky, you can snag a TMP at a low cost – but it still will not be cheap by any means.

The two BOC-Edwards EXT255H Compound Molecular Pumps (PDF), that [Mark] bought did not have their accompanying EXC100E Turbomolecular Pump Controllers (PDF), and given pandemic related restrictions, he decided to build a controller of his own, using components and modules from his parts bin. The pump and controller user manuals offered only sketchy details about the sensored BLDC motor used in the pump. The low phase-to-phase resistance implied low drive voltage, and [Mark] decided to try running it at 24 V to start with. He already had experience using the Mitsubishi PS21245-E IGBT inverter bridge, and even though it was rated for much higher voltages, he knew that it would work just fine at 24 V too.

After figuring out a state machine for motor commutation that utilized PWM based adjustable current control, he implemented it on a 128 element FPGA board. Considering how expensive the TMP was, he wisely decided to first try out his driver on a smaller “expendable” BLDC motor. This whole process was non-trivial, since his available IGBT module was untested and undocumented, and required several tweaks before he could run it at the required 12 kHz PWM signals. His test motor was also undocumented, failing to run correctly when first hooked up. Fixing that issue meant having to disassemble the motor to check its internal wiring. Eventually, his efforts paid off, and he was able to safely run the TMP motor to confirm that his design worked.

With FPGA code, IGBT wiring and power supply issues sorted, the next step was to add a supervisory micro-controller, using an Arduino Nano. Its functions included interfacing with a touch screen LCD as a user interface, communicating with the FPGA module, and controlling several relays to switch power to the motor power supply, the roughing pump, TMP cooling fan, and a solenoid for the vacuum vent. Spindle current is calculated by measuring voltage drop across shunt resistors on the low side of the IGBT. Motor speed is measured using one of the motor hall sensors, and a thermistor provides motor temperature sensing. [Mark]’s PCB fabrication technique seems a bit different too. Using an Excellon drill file, he drills holes in a piece of plastic using a laser cutter to create a bare board, and then solders copper tracks by hand.

His initial tests at atmospheric pressure (although not recommended unless you monitor pump temperature), resulted in 7300 rpm while consuming about 7 Amps before he had to shut it down. In further tests, after adding a roughing pump to the test setup, he was able to spin the TMP to 20,000 rpm while it consumed 0.6 A. Obviously, the pump is rated to operate at a higher voltage, possibly 48 V based on the values mentioned in the TMP controller manual. The project is still “work in progress” as [Mark] hopes to eventually drive the pump up to its specified 60,000 rpm operating speed. What is not clear is what he eventually intends to do with this piece of exotic machinery. All he mentions is that “he has recently taken an interest in high-vacuum systems and is interested in exploring the high-vacuum world of electron guns.”

Maybe [Mark] can compare notes with the Open Source Turbomolecular Pump Controller that we featured some time back. And if you’d like to be a little bit more adventurous and build you own TMP, we got you covered with this DIY Everyman’s Turbomolecular Pump.

2020: As The Hardware World Turns

December 29, 2020 by Tom Nardi 13 Comments

By pretty much any metric you care to use, 2020 has been an unforgettable year. Usually that would be a positive thing, but this time around it’s a bit more complicated. The global pandemic, unprecedented in modern times, impacted the way we work, learn, and gather. Some will look back on their time in lockdown as productive, if a bit lonely. Other’s have had their entire way of life uprooted, with no indication as to when or if things will ever return to normal. Whatever “normal” is at this point.

But even in the face of such adversity, there have been bright spots for our community. With traditional gatherings out of the question, many long-running tech conferences moved over to a virtual format that allowed a larger and more diverse array of presenters and attendees than would have been possible in the past. We also saw hackers and makers all over the planet devote their skills and tools to the production of personal protective equipment (PPE). In a turn of events few could have predicted, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic helped demonstrate the validity of hyperlocal manufacturing in a way that’s never happened before.

For better or for worse, most of us will associate 2020 with COVID-19 for the rest of our lives. Really, how could we not? But over these last twelve months we’ve borne witness to plenty of stories that are just as deserving of a spot in our collective memories. As we approach the twilight hours of this most ponderous year, let’s take a look back at some of the most interesting themes that touched our little corner of the tech world this year.

Continue reading “2020: As The Hardware World Turns” →