Friday Hack Chat: Chip Gracey From Parallax

May 3, 2017 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

Learn the ins and outs of multi-core microcontrollers as Chip Gracey leads this week’s Hack Chat on Friday 5/5 at noon PDT. Chip founded Parallax and has now been working for more than a decade on the Propeller 2 design, a microcontroller which has 8 and 16 core options.

When it comes to embedded development, most people think of a single process running. Doing more than one task at a time is an illusion provided by interrupts that stop one part of your program to spend a few cycles on another part before returning. The Propeller 2 has true parallel processing; each core can run its own part of the program. From the embedded engineer’s perspective that makes multiple real-time operations possible. Where things get really interesting is how those cores work together.

Here’s your chance to hear about multi-core embedded first hand, from both the silicon design side and the firmware developer side. Join us for a Parallax Hack Chat this Friday at noon PDT.

Here’s How To Take Part:

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging.

Log into Hackaday.io, visit that page, and look for the ‘Join this Project’ Button. Once you’re part of the project, the button will change to ‘Team Messaging’, which takes you directly to the Hack Chat.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Hackaday Prize Entry: Hacker Calculus

May 1, 2017 by Jenny List 42 Comments

Mathematics, as it is taught in schools, sometimes falls short in its mission to educate the pupils. This is the view of [Joan Horvath] and [Rich Cameron], particularly with respect to the teaching of calculus, which they feel has become a purely algebraic discipline that leaves many students in the cold when it comes to understanding the concepts behind it.

Their Hacker Calculus project aims to address this, by returning to [Isaac Newton]’s 1687 seminal work on the matter, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. They were struck by how much the Principia was a work of geometry rather than algebra, and they are seeking to return to [Newton]’s principles in a bid to make the subject more accessible to students left behind when it comes to derivatives and integrals. They intend to refine the geometric approach to create a series of practical items to explain the concepts, both through 3D printed items and through electronics.

We can see that this is an approach that has considerable merit, given that most Hackaday readers will have at some time or other sat through a maths lesson and come away wondering what on earth the teacher was talking about and having been baffled by further attempts to explain it through impenetrable maths-speak. If you were the kid who “got” calculus when the relationship between speed and acceleration – another thing we have [Newton] to thank for describing – was explained in your physics lessons, then you will probably understand.

The pair have some Hackaday Prize history, you may remember them from such previous entries as their 3D prints for the visually impaired project from last year.

Hackaday Prize Entry: High Speed Sampling For The Raspberry Pi

April 30, 2017 by Jenny List 8 Comments

The Raspberry Pi has become a firm favorite in our community for its array of GPIOs and other interfaces, as well as its affordable computing power. Unfortunately though despite those many pins, there is a glaring omission in its interfacing capabilities. It lacks an analogue-to-digital converter, so analog inputs have to rely on an expansion card either on those GPIOs or through the USB port.

Most people remain content with simple ADCs such as Microchip’s MCP3008, or perhaps a USB sound card for low frequency moving targets. But not [Kelu124], he’s set his sights on something much faster. The original Pi is reputed to be capable of handling a 10Msamples/s ADC, so he thinks its faster successors should be able to work much faster. To that end, he’s created an ADC pHAT which he thinks should be good for twice that figure.

The choice of silicon is a CA3306E, a 6-bit device that’s rated at 15Msamples/S. It’s something of a dated device as is shown by its DIP package, and a quick look through major suppliers shows it to be no longer available. Happily though, when you look at his GitHub repo it emerges that he’s also producing a board based on the ADC08200, so his software is targetable at other chips.

Whether or not you need your Pi to serve as video digitizer or high-speed instrument, it’s useful and interesting to take a look at a board like this one in action. We often don’t use the raw power of our single board computers, and this project proves that should we ever need to, we can.

If ADCs interest you, take a look at [Bil Herd]’s series on delta-sigma ADCs.

Thanks [Fustini] for the tip.

Friday Hack Chat: The Hackaday Prize

April 27, 2017 by Brian Benchoff No comments

Did you know Hackaday is hosting a fantastic contest to build hardware and software? It’s true! The Hackaday Prize will award hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hackaday community members for building the coolest hardware designed to make a difference in the world.

The Hackaday Prize has many ways to enter, focusing on several themes throughout this year. We’ll be discussing that and opening the floor to questions. Tomorrow, Friday, April 28, at noon, Pacific time, we’re hosting a Hack Chat for the Hackaday Prize over on Hackaday.io.

Our guest host for this chat is [Alberto], creator of the project that won last year’s Hackaday Prize. He’ll be in the Hack Chat telling everyone what he learned from last year’s Hackaday Prize. If we’re lucky, he might even tell us something about what building his project out in the Supply Frame Design Lab is like. It’s all very cool, and it’s going down tomorrow at noon, PDT.

Here’s How To Take Part:

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging.

You don’t have to wait until tomorrow; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

And Tindie, Too!

Next Tuesday, we’re going to have another chat geared toward sellers on Tindie, the online marketplace where anyone can buy or sell DIY hardware.

This time around, we’re talking about Kickstarter. We roped [Zach Dunham] into this one. He’s the Design & Technology Outreach Lead at Kickstarter, and by every measure a really cool guy.

[Zach] will discuss the ins and outs of turning a hardware project into a Kickstarter campaign. Surprisingly, there’s a significant overlap between Tindie sellers and Kickstarter — some sellers test their ideas on Tindie and build up to doing a crowd funding campaign. Others complete a campaign and then come over to Tindie to sell excess inventory or second runs. Either way, there’s a great opportunity for market verification or simply getting your gear into the hands of those who want to use it.

If you want to get in on the Kickstarter chat action, head on over to the Tindie Dog Park. Request to join the project and show up in the chat sometime before 1pm Pacific on Tuesday, May 2.

Hackaday Prize Entry: Brightenmacher

April 25, 2017 by Jenny List 19 Comments

We have all at some point have made a flashlight. It used to be a staple of childhood electronics, the screw-in bulb in a holder, and a cycle lamp battery. If you were a particularly accomplished youthful hacker you might even have fitted a proper switch, otherwise, you probably made do with a bent paperclip and a drawing pin.

So you might think that flashlights offer no challenges, after all, how many ways can you connect a bulb or an LED to a battery? [Peter Fröhlich] though has a project that should put those thoughts out of your mind. It uses a power LED driven by a TI TPS61165 boost driver, with an ATTiny44 microcontroller providing control, battery sensing, and button interface. The result is a dimmable flashlight in a 3D printed case housing both control circuitry and a single 18650 cell which he sourced from a dead laptop. Suddenly that bent paperclip doesn’t cut it anymore.

The result is a flashlight that is the equal of any commercial offering, and quite possibly better than most of them. You can build one yourself, given that he’s published the physical files necessary, but probably because this is a work in progress there are as yet no software files.

We’ve featured a lot of flashlights over the years, but it’s fair to say they usually tend towards the more powerful. Back in 2015 we published a round-up of flashlight projects if it’s a subject that captures your interest.

Hackaday Prize Entry: MCXY – Mini Laser Cut Aluminum 3D Printer

April 24, 2017 by Jenny List 11 Comments

With the easy availability of cheap and 3D printers from the usual Chinese websites, you might think that there could be little room for another home-made 3D printer project. fortunately, the community of 3D printer making enthusiasts doesn’t see it that way.

[Bobricius] has a rather nice 3D printer design in the works that we think you’ll like. It follows the MakerBot/Ultimaker style of construction in that it is a box rather than a gantry, and it is assembled from CNC-cut aluminum for a sturdy and pleasing effect. Whar sets it apart though is its size, at only 190x190x251mm and with an 80x80x80mm print volume, it’s tiny. You might wonder why that could be an asset, but when you consider that he already has a much larger printer it becomes obvious that something small and portable for quick tiny prints could be an asset.

Unusually for a home-made 3D printer, it has no 3D printed parts, instead, it is laser cut throughout. And also unusually all the CAD work was done in EAGLE, better known for PCB work. It’s a work in progress we’re featuring today because it’s a Hackaday Prize entry, but it looks as though the finished item will be something of a little gem.

Homemade 3D printers can be particularly impressive, for example, we’ve shown you this excellent SLA printer.

Do Something Constructive Tomorrow

April 21, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

This Saturday is a great day to change the world. It’s Earth Day. There’s a National March for Science where millions will demand evidence-based change. We’re doing our own thing. We’re leading a World Create Day, where hackers gather ’round the soldering iron and find solutions to problems we all face.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been getting Hackaday readers to organize meetups in their hometowns, encouraging them to get a few people over, and sending them a bit of neat Hackaday swag. We couldn’t do this without the community leaders out there, and we’d just like to take a moment and recognize a few of the fablabs and hackerspaces that are making World Create Day possible.

A keyfob that makes turning a lock easier for those with limited mobility

Up in Vancouver, the folks at the Spinal Cord Injury Forum will be spending their World Create Day building tools that make life easier for people with limited mobility. Already they’re doing some awesome work with 3D printing, and with a few more minds tackling these problems, they’re sure to come up with something good.

This is a worldwide event, and we have hackerspaces from Cairo to Osaka taking part. Do you know where Tenerife is? There’s a World Create Day meetup there, too.

To give you a little more encouragement to attend a World Create Day meetup near you, just remember we’re still at the start of the Hackaday Prize, a competition where we’re giving away a quarter million dollars to build hardware that will change the world. Even if there isn’t a World Create Day meetup near you, you can always start your own meetup for tomorrow, or just go solo. And don’t forget to show off what’s going on using the #WorldCreateDay hashtag.

This isn’t an event to miss. When else will you be able to come up with creative solutions to problems with a worldwide audience? Find a meetup near you and do something constructive tomorrow.