Hackaday Prize Entry: BLE Beacon Library

June 21, 2016 by Elliot Williams 26 Comments

While faking BLE advertising beacons using an nRF24L01+ module is nothing new, it’s become a heck of a lot easier now that [Pranav Gulati] has written some library code and a few examples for it.

[Pranav]’s work is based on [Dmitry Grinberg]’s epic bit-banging BLE research that we featured way back in 2013. And while the advertisement channel in BLE is limited in the amount of data it can send, a $1 nRF24 module and a power-thrifty microcontroller would be great for a battery-powered device that needs to send small amount of data infrequently for a really long time.

We’re not 100% sure where [Pranav] is going to take this project. Honestly, the library looks like it’s ready to use right now. If you’ve been holding off on making your own BLE-enabled flock of birds, or even if you just want to mess around with the protocol, your life has gotten a lot easier.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: DIY Automatic Tool Changer

June 20, 2016 by Moritz Walter 27 Comments

Choosing between manually changing endmill bits on a CNC machine and investing in an expensive automated solution? Not for [Frank Herrmann], who invented the XATC, an eXtremely simple Automated Tool Changer. [Frank’s] ingenious hack achieves the same functionality as an industrial tool changer using only cheap standard hardware you might have lying around the workshop.

Like many ATCs, this one features a tool carousel. The carousel, which is not motorized, stores each milling bit in the center bore of a Gator Grip wrench tool. To change a tool, a fork wrench, actuated by an RC servo, blocks the spindle shaft, just like you would do it to manually change a tool. The machine then positions the current bit in an empty Gator Grip on the carousel and loosens the collet by performing a circular “magic move” around the carousel. This move utilizes the carousel as a wrench to unscrew the collet. A short reverse spin of the spindle takes care of the rest. It then picks another tool from the carousel and does the whole trick in reverse.

The servo is controlled via a WiFi connected NodeMCU board, which accepts commands from his CNC controller over HTTP. The custom tool change sequences are provided by a few JavaScript macros written for the TinyG workspace on chilipeppr.com, a browser-based G-code host. Enjoy the video of [Frank Herrmann] explaining his build!

Thanks to Smoothieboard creator [Arthur Wolf], who is currently working on a similar project, for the tip!

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Microscopy With Blu-ray

June 18, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 5 Comments

Confocal microscopy is an imaging technique that provides higher resolution micrographs than that of traditional optical microscopy. Confocal microscopes attain this higher resolution from an image sensor behind a pinhole. By eliminating out of focus light, and by scanning the specimen back and forth under the microscope, a very high resolution image may be produced. This technique has applications ranging from life sciences to semiconductor work. For this year’s Hackaday Prize, [andreas.betz] is building a confocal microscope using little more than a Blu-ray drive read head.

[andreas]’ build uses a standard Playstation 3 Blu-ray drive mechanism. The read head for this mechanism is well documented, but [andreas] still has to drive the laser and the voice coils for this machine to do anything. With the Blu-ray drive working, only the optics remained.

Just this last week, [andreas] imaged the die of a transistor with a resolution of about 680nm. An inductor was also imaged, showing a track separation of about 10um. This is approaching the limits of optical microscopy, and the apparatus is simple enough for anyone to replicate.

As a feat of technical ingenuity, this is a great project. It’s one of the best we’ve seen for the Citizen Science portion of the Hackaday Prize, and can’t wait to see what other images [andreas] can make with this machine.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Visualizing Magnetic Fields

June 17, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

In 1820, Hans Christian Oersted discovered the needle of a compass would deflect when placed next to a wire carrying an electric current. It took 15 years for the first electric motor to be invented following this observation. Humans are dumb, but perhaps they wouldn’t be so oblivious to the basic facts of our reality if they could see magnetic fields. Or if they just had a 3D printer. For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Ted Yapo] is doing just this: adding a magnetic field scanner to a 3D printer, allowing for the visualization of magnetic fields in three dimensions.

The device [Ted] is working on is actually extremely simple, and is mostly implemented in software. The hardware is just a 3D printer with a toolhead consisting of a HMC5883L magnetometer breakout board. This is the simplest and easiest way to find the direction and intensity of a magnetic field, the rest of the work is done in software.

Right now, [Ted] has a setup that will scan a 3D volume with a printer. By placing a magnet in the middle of the print bed, he can visualize the magnetic field inside the volume of his 3D printer. It’s a visualization that is vastly superior to a compass, ferrofluid, or even a mess of iron filings, and is surely a much better pedagogical apparatus for classrooms and science museums alike.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Electronic, Visual Harmonicas

June 16, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 5 Comments

[sholnkin] is tasked with teaching a kindergarten class how to play a musical instrument. No, not those cheap plastic recorders. [shlonkin] is teaching kindergarteners how to play the only instrument that both blows and sucks: the harmonica.

Unlike a classroom of kids with plastic recorders, where the fingering is either right or it isn’t, [shlonkin] needs to teach kids to put their mouth over the right hole, and suck or blow to produce a note. The classroom has a poster laying out the notes on the harmonica, but they needed something better. [shlonkin] envisioned a large illuminated sign that lit up in different colors, and could play the displayed notes with a speaker.

The high-level design for this project includes a Teensy 3.2 with the Audio Adapter breakout driving a small audio amp. The Teensy also controls a bunch of LEDs mounted inside a wooden case. The layout of these LEDs went surprisingly well, and it’s rare to find a backlit panel that is lit this evenly.

As a classroom musical teaching aid, this type of device has been around for decades – deep in the recesses of band rooms in schools across the world, you can find old Wurlitzer pianos with devices that aren’t much different from this simple device. It’s a pedagogical method that worked back then, and should work now.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Controling E-ZPass

June 11, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 37 Comments

You can drive from Boston to Chicago without picking up a single ticket from a toll booth, or handing money to a single toll booth worker. You can do this because of E-ZPass, a small plastic brick mounted in most cars in the Northeast United States. The E-ZPass contains an RFID transponder linked to your checking account. Yes, it’s convenient, and yes, it is a way for the government to track your movements remotely without your knowledge.

For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Jordan] is peering into that suspicious white box on his dashboard and adding notifications to his E-ZPass. He’s upgraded his E-ZPass with a little bit of circuitry to his to notify him when it is being scanned, whether it’s at a turnpike plaza or just driving three blocks through midtown Manhattan.

A notification system for the E-ZPass brick has been around for a few years now thanks to a talk by [Pukingmonkey] at DEF CON. Because of this simple circuit, we know the NYPD is collecting E-ZPass data of people driving around Manhattan. Why? Something something sovereign citizen or thereabouts.

[Jordan] is taking the E-ZPass notification system a bit farther than previous builds and adding a logging functionality with a small GPS module. Of course [Jordan]’s build will still have blinkey LEDs for notifying him when the E-ZPass is read, but by logging this data to an SD card, he’ll be able to play a road trip back on his computer and do a proper expense report. Security research while collecting expense data; it doesn’t get better than that.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Automatic Digital Microscope

June 10, 2016 by Moritz Walter 5 Comments

Ziehl-Neelsen Sputum Smear Microscopy (ZN) is one of most common methods for diagnosing Tuberculosis. On the equipment side, it requires not much more than an optical microscope, although it still needs a trained professional to look through the glass, identify and count the number of bacteria in a sample. To provide reliable and effective Tuberculosis diagnostic to regions, where both equipment and trained personnel is in short supply, [Rodrigo Loza] and [khalilnallar] are developing an automated digital microscope based on computer vision and machine learning, their entry for the Hackaday Prize.

They started out gathering images of Tuberculosis bacteria from the internet and experimented with color threshold algorithms to detect dyed bacteria, as well as algorithms for counting individual and clusters of bacteria. This process alone can, according to the team, take a trained professional 30 minutes or more. A graphical interface highlights identified bacteria and reads the bacteria count.

[Rodrigo Loza] and [khalilnallar] are testing their device at the Dr. Roberto Galindo Teran hospital in Cobija, Bolivia. However, getting access to a lab environment is one thing, and being given access to a steady supply of fresh M. Tuberculosis samples is another. Unable to obtain samples, which they need to test their algorithms on live subjects, they turned to another front of their project: The hardware. In several iterations, they developed a low-cost, 3D-printable kit, which transforms a laboratory-grade optical microscope into an embedded CNC-controlled microscopy platform. Their kit comprises three stepper-motor-based axis for the X, Y and Z direction, as well as a webcam mount. An Intel Edison and a custom, Arduino compatible shield control the system to achieve features such as homing procedures, autofocus and bacteria detection.

The team is currently in the process of refining their bacteria detection pipeline, exploring the feasibility of semi-automated detection methods, machine learning and neural networks for classification of bacteria within the hardware constraints. The video below shows their latest update on the Z-axis of their microscope.

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