An Arduino And A CD-ROM Drive Makes A CD Player

January 3, 2021 by Jenny List 49 Comments

In an age of streaming media it’s easy to forget the audio CD, but they still remain as a physical format from the days when the “Play” button was not yet the “Pay” button. A CD player may no longer be the prized possession it once was, but it’s still possible to dabble in the world of 120 mm polycarbonate discs if you have a fancy for it. It’s something [Daniel1111] has done with his Arduino CD player, which uses the little microcontroller board to control a CD-ROM drive via its IDE bus.

The project draws heavily from the work of previous experimenters, notably ATAPIDUINO, but it extends them by taking its audio from the drive’s S/PDIF output. A port expander drives the IDE interface, while a Cirrus Logic WM8805 S/PDIF transceiver handles the digital audio and converts it to an I²S stream. That in turn is fed to a Texas Instruments PCM5102 DAC, which provides a line-level audio output. All the code and schematic can be found in a GitHub repository.

To anyone who worked in the CD-ROM business back in the 1990s this project presses quite a few buttons, though perhaps not enough to dig out all those CDs again. It would be interesting to see whether the I²S stream could be lifted from inside the drive directly, or even if the audio data could be received via the IDE bus. If you’d like to know a bit more about I²S , we have an article for you.

Big Time Character LCD Clock

December 28, 2020 by Sven Gregori 9 Comments

While the SSD1306 OLED has somewhat become the go-to display for up-to-date projects, the good old character displays with their Hitachi HD44780 controller don’t seem to be disappearing just yet either. And why would they, especially if you want to show just text, having a built-in font has certainly its perk compared to worrying about integrating your own characters — which you can still do on top as well. Or perhaps you can combine both worlds, which is what [oldmaninSC] did with his digital clock that takes an entire 16×2 LCD to show each single digit.

The whole clock uses 16 individual, upright rotated 16×2 LCDs that are arranged in two rows of eight LCDs each, turning the entire construct sort of into a giant 8×2 display itself. For some additional information such as the date, there’s also a smaller font available that uses only half the height, allowing up to four total rows of information. To communicate with each LCD via I2C, two TCA9548A I2C multiplexers are connected to an Arduino, along with an RTC to keep track of the time and date itself.

As the TCA9548A has three pins dedicated to define its own address, the entire clock could be scaled up to a total of 64 LCDs — so how about a 16×4 display made out of 16×4 displays? Sure, adding smooth scrolling might become a bit tricky at some point, but imagine playing Tetris on that one!

PinePhone Gets 3D Printed Mechanical Keyboard

December 3, 2020 by Tom Nardi 9 Comments

Do you remember when smartphones had real physical keyboards? Working the command line on some remote machine over SSH was a breeze, and you could even knock out a few lines of code if you were so inclined. But these days you’ve either got to lug around an external keyboard, or suffer through pecking out a few words per minute on a piece of glass. Doesn’t sound much like progress to us.

By the looks of it, [James Williams] doesn’t think so either. He’s designed a physical keyboard add-on that snaps onto the back of the PinePhone to deliver a proper, albeit condensed, typing experience. This is no repurposed BlackBerry board either; he’s created a custom mechanical keyboard that manages to fold into an incredibly small size thanks to resin printed keycaps and Kailh low profile switches. Other than the hand-drawn legends, it’s probably not a stretch to say this is a better keyboard than what many people have on their actual computers.

In addition to the 3D printed frame and Kailh switches, there’s also an Arduino Pro Micro onboard to communicate with the phone. Rather than use USB, the keyboard is wired to the I2C accessory port on the rear of the PinePhone. It sounds like [James] needs a little more time to polish his QMK build before its ready to release, so you might want to wait a bit before you start printing off your own copy of the parts.

Those following along with the development of the PinePhone know there’s supposedly an official keyboard accessory in the works, but who wants to wait when we’re so close to mobile Linux nirvana? Besides, we doubt it will be nearly as pleasant to type on as the board [James] has put together.

Six New HackadayU Courses Announced For Fall 2020

August 13, 2020 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

The fall lineup of HackadayU courses was just announced, get your tickets now!

Each course is led by expert instructors who have refined their topics into a set of four live, interactive classes plus one Q&A session we like to call Office Hours. Topics range from leveling up your Linux skills and learning about serial buses to building interactive art and getting into first-person view (FPV) drone flight.

Checkout the course titles, instructors, and details listed below. If you’d like to hear about each class from the instructors themselves, their teaser videos are embedded after the break.

Interactive Media Art with Light and Sensors
- Instructor: Mirabelle Jones
- Course overview: This course will cover how to develop interactive artworks, installations, and experiences based on sensor input.
Introduction to FPV Drones
- Instructor: Ayan Pahwa
- Course overview: We’ll get familiar with the multi-rotor category of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) including physics, aerodynamics, electronics, digital signal processing (DSP), and writing software that is involved.
Intro to LEDs Using Arduino and FastLED
- Instructors: Cathy Laughlin & Mirabelle Jones
- Course overview: Students will learn all about how LEDs work as well as how to program LED patterns using the Arduino IDE.
Linux + Electronics: A Raspberry Pi Course
- Instructor: Pablo Oyarzo
- Course overview: This course is for those who had wanted to go from Arduino to a Linux computer small enough to fit the project but greatly more powerful to full fill the project’s needs and don’t know where to start.
Embedded Serial Buses (Part 1)
- Instructor: Alexander Rowsell
- Course overview: This course will cover the I2C and 1-Wire serial buses. We will look at the hardware layer, the protocol layer, and the software/application layer for both bus types.
Art + Code
- Instructor: Casey Hunt
- Course overview: Students will grow their technical skills through mastery of the P5.js JavaScript library, and will also learn about aesthetics and art history in the digital space.

HackadayU courses are “pay-as-you-wish”. To help ensure the live seats don’t go to waste, the minimum donation for each class is $1. Proceeds go to charity and we’re happy to report a donation of $4,200 going to Steam Coders from the summer session of HackadayU. A new charity will be chosen for the fall classes, details to follow.

Each class will be recorded and made available once they’ve been edited. You can take a look at the excellent Reverse Engineering with Ghidra series right now. Videos of the Quantum Computing and KiCad + FreeCAD courses are coming soon.

Continue reading “Six New HackadayU Courses Announced For Fall 2020” →

Joy-Con Mod Gives Nintendo Switch Touchpad Control

May 22, 2020 by Tom Nardi 21 Comments

While Valve’s Steam Controller ultimately ended up being a commercial flop, most users agreed its use of touch-sensitive pads in place of traditional analog joysticks or digital directional buttons was at least a concept worth exploring. Those same touchpad aficionados will likely be very interested in this modification by [Matteo Pisani], which replaces the analog joystick on a Nintendo Switch Joy-Con with a capacitive touch sensor.

As [Matteo] explains in his detailed write-up, the initial inspiration for this project was to create a permanent solution to joystick fatigue and drifting issues. He reasoned that if he removed the physical joystick completely, there would be no way for it to fail in the future. We’re not sure how many people would have taken the concept this far, but you can’t argue with the logic.

The original joystick is a fairly straightforward device, comprised of two analog potentiometers and a digital button. It’s connected to the Joy-Con’s main PCB with a 0.5 mm pitch flexible cable, so the first step for [Matteo] was to spin up a breakout for the cable in KiCad to make the development process a bit easier.

The board design eventually evolved to hold an Arduino Pro Mini, a digital potentiometer, and a connector for the circular touchpad. The Arduino communicates with both devices over I2C, and translates the high resolution digital output of the touch controller into an analog signal within the expected ranges of the original joystick. [Matteo] says he still has to implement the stick’s digital push button, but thanks to an impressive 63 levels of pressure sensitivity on the pad, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Now that he knows the concept works, the next step for [Matteo] is to clean it up a bit. He’s already working on a much smaller PCB that should be able to fit inside the Joy-Con, and we’re very interested in seeing the final product.

We’ve seen several interesting Joy-Con hacks since the Switch hit the market, including a somewhat less intense joystick swap. Between the Joy-Con and the legendary Wii Remote, Nintendo certainly seems to have a knack for creating input devices that catch the imagination of gamers and tinkerers alike.

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Reverse Engineering A Saab’s In-Dash Display

April 16, 2020 by Tom Nardi 7 Comments

For [Leigh Oliver], there’s something undeniably appealing about the green on black instrumentation of the 2003 Saab 9-3 Gen2. Perhaps it’s because the Infotainment Control Module 2 (ICM2) screen brings a bit of that classic Matrix vibe to the daily commute. Whatever the reason, it seemed the display deserved better than to be stuck showing the nearly 20 year old stock user interface. Luckily, you can control it via I2C.

Though as you might expect, that fact wasn’t obvious at first. [Leigh] had to start by taking the ICM2 apart and reverse engineering the display board. With a multimeter and high resolution photographs of both sides of the PCB, all of the traces were mapped out and recreated in KiCAD. This might not have been strictly necessary, but it did serve as good practice for using KiCAD; a worthwhile tip for anyone else looking to build practical experience creating schematics.

With everything mapped out, [Leigh] was able to connect a BusPirate V3 up to the board and pretty quickly determine it was using I2C to control the display. As far as figuring out how to repurpose existing displays goes, this was perhaps the best possible scenario. It even allowed for creating a display library based on Adafruit_GFX which offers graphical capabilities far beyond what the ICM2 module itself is capable of.

Even with so much progress made, this project is really just getting started. [Leigh] has managed to put some impressive imagery on the black and green Saab display, but the hardware side of things is still being worked on. For example, there’s some hope that an I2C multiplexer would allow the display to easily and quickly be switched between “stock” mode and whatever enhanced version comes about thanks to the new libraries and an ESP8266 hiding behind the dashboard.

If you don’t have a sufficiently vintage Saab to take advantage of this project, don’t worry. Tapping into the OBD port with an OLED display can get you similar results on a wide range of vehicles.

DJ Hero Controller Gets A New Gig

February 24, 2020 by Kristina Panos 2 Comments

Fans of the Guitar Hero etc. franchise may be interested to hear about Spin Rhythm XD, a similar rhythm game which uses a jog wheel for much of the chase-down-the-notes action. Although it can be played with a keyboard and mouse, the ideal input is a professional DJ MIDI controller — imagine two capacitive “turntables” the size of 45s, and a lot of buttons, knobs, and sliders.

Like most of us, [Dave] doesn’t have one of those. But what he does have is an old DJ Hero controller made for the Wii. It’s a lot like the big boy version of a DJ MIDI controller as far as the inputs go, except that the turntable isn’t capacitive.

Since the Wii brain is just sending I²C over a funny-looking connector, [Dave] was able to replace the Wiimote with a Teensy LC, and write new firmware for the controller inputs using a breakout board built for another project.

[Dave] tried to use as many of the DJ Hero controller’s inputs as he could, so in addition to mapping the wheel and wheel buttons to the main game controls, he wired up the joystick, effects knob, and buttons to navigate through the game menus. The game’s designers had the forethought to map these to keyboard keys, so it was pretty easy to do. He can even use dual turntables and mix or isolate them with the crossfader. Slide past the break to check out the build video, and stick around for a full-length song demo.

Are these games a little too frantic for you? Turn those ‘tables into an Etch-A-Sketch instead.

Continue reading “DJ Hero Controller Gets A New Gig” →