Unraveling The Hackaday Podcast Hidden Message

July 1, 2022 by Tom Nardi 7 Comments

When Elliot and I record the raw audio for the weekly podcast, it’s not unusual for us to spend the better part of two hours meandering from topic to topic. During one of these extended gab sessions, we wondered if it would be possible to embed a digital signal into the podcast in such a way that it could be decoded by the listener. Of course, storing and transmitting data via sound is nothing new — but the podcast format itself introduced some level of uncertainty.

Would the encoded sound survive the compression into MP3? Would the syndication service that distributes the file, or the various clients listeners will use to play it back, muddy the waters even further? Was it possible that the whole episode would get flagged somewhere along the line as malicious? After a bit of wild speculation, the conversation moved on to some other topic, and the idea was left to stew on one of our infinite number of back burners.

That is, until Elliot went on vacation a couple weeks back. In place of a regular episode, we agreed that I’d try my hand at putting together a special edition that consisted of pre-recorded segments from several of the Hackaday contributors. We reasoned this simplified approach would make it easier for me to edit, or to look at it another way, harder for me to screw up. For the first time, this gave me the chance to personally oversee the recording, production, and distribution of an episode. That, and the fact that my boss was out of town, made it the perfect opportunity to try and craft a hidden message for the Hackaday community to discover.

I’m now happy to announce that, eleven days after the EMF Camp Special Edition episode was released, ferryman became the first to figure out all the steps and get to the final message. As you read this, a coveted Hackaday Podcast t-shirt is already being dispatched to their location.

As there’s no longer any competition to see who gets there first, I thought it would be a good time to go over how the message was prepared, and document some interesting observations I made during the experiment.

Continue reading “Unraveling The Hackaday Podcast Hidden Message” →

Hexagonal Mirror Array Hides Hidden Message

November 14, 2021 by Donald Papp 18 Comments

[Ben Bartlett] recently got engaged, and the proposal had a unique bit of help in the form of a 3D-printed hexagonal mirror array, whose mirrors are angled just right to spell out a message with the reflections. A small test is shown above projecting a heart, but the real deal was a bigger version reflecting the message “MARRY ME?” into sand at sunset. Who could say no to something like that? Luckily for all of us, [Ben] shared all the details of what went into designing and building such a thoughtful and fascinating device.

Mirrors on the 3D-printed array are angled just right to reflect light into a message.

Essentially, the array of mirrors works a bit like a projector. Each individual reflection can be can be thought of as a pixel, and the projected position of each can be modified by the precise angle of each mirror. With the help of some Python code, [Ben] calculated the exact angles needed to spell out “MARRY ME?” and generated the necessary 3D model. A smaller-scale test (shown in the header image above) was successful, and after that it was just a matter of printing the array and gluing on some mirrors.

Of course, that’s the short version. In practice there were quite a few troublesome issues that demonstrated the value of using early tests to discover hidden problems. For one thing, mirror angle and alignment is crucial, which meant that anything that could affect the shape of the array was a potential problem. Glue that expands or otherwise changes shape as it dries or cures could slightly change a mirror’s angle, so cyanoacrylate (CA) glue was preferred. However, the tiniest bit of CA glue will mess up a mirror’s surface in a hurry, so care was needed during assembly.

The gleaming hexagonal mirrors are reminiscent of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Another gotcha was when [Ben] suddenly realized, twenty hours into printing the final assembly, that the message needed to be reversed! As designed, the array he was printing would project “?EM YRRAM” and this wasn’t caught during testing because the test pattern (a heart) was symmetrical. Fortunately there was time to correct the error and start again, but it was close. [Ben]’s code has an optional visualization function, which was invaluable for verifying that things would actually turn out as expected. As it happens, the project took right up to the last minute to complete and there wasn’t quite time to check everything 100% before the big moment, but it all turned out alright. What’s life without a little mystery and danger, anyway?

The pictures are great, but you won’t regret taking the time to read through the project page (don’t miss the annotated Python code) because [Ben] goes into just the right level of detail. The end result looks fantastic, and makes an excellent keepsake with a charming story.