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16 Articles

Hackaday Links: April 12, 2020

April 12, 2020 by Dan Maloney 14 Comments

Anyone who worked in the tech field and lived through the Y2K bug era will no doubt recall it as a time seasoned with a confusing mix of fear and optimism and tempered with a healthy dose of panic, as companies rushed to validate that systems would pass the rollover of the millennium without crashing, and to remediate systems that would. The era could well have been called “the COBOL programmers full-employment bug,” as the coders who had built these legacy systems were pulled out of retirement to fix them. Twenty years on and a different bug — the one that causes COVID-19 — is having a similarly stimulative effect on the COBOL programmer market. New Jersey is one state seeking COBOL coders, to deal with the crush of unemployment insurance claims, which are killing the 40-year-old mainframe systems the state’s programs run on. Interestingly, Governor Phil Murphy has only put out a call for volunteers, and will apparently not compensate COBOL coders for their time. I mean, I know people are bored at home and all, but good luck with that.

In another throwback to an earlier time, “The Worm” is back. NASA has decided to revive its “worm” logo, the simple block letter logo that replaced the 50s-era “Meatball” logo, the one with the red chevron bracketing a starfield with an orbiting satellite. NASA switched to the worm, named for the sinuous shape of the letters and which honestly looks like a graphic design student’s last-minute homework assignment, in the 1970s, keeping it in service through the early 1990s when the meatball was favored again. Now it looks like both logos will see service as NASA prepares to return Americans to space on their own launch vehicles.

Wait a minute, what happens when we stand this thing upright?

Looking for a little help advancing the state of your pandemic-related project? A lot of manufacturers are trying to help out as best they can, and many are offering freebies to keep you in the game. Aisler, for one, is offering free PCBs and stencils for COVID-19 prototypes. It looks like their rules are pretty liberal; any free and open-source project that can help with the pandemic in any way qualifies. Hats off to Aisler for doing their part.

And finally, history appears to have been made this week in the amateur radio world with the first direct transatlantic contact on the 70-cm band was made. It seems strange to think that it would take 120 years since transatlantic radio became reduced to practice by the likes of Marconi for this accomplishment to occur, but the 70-cm band is usually limited to line of sight, and transatlantic contacts at 430 MHz are usually done using a satellite as a relay. The contact was between stations FG8OJ on Guadaloupe Island in the Caribbean — who was involved in an earlier, similar record on the 2-meter band — and D4VHF on the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa, and used the digital mode FT8. The 3,867-km contact was likely due to tropospheric ducting, where layers in the atmosphere form a refractive tunnel that can carry VHF and UHF signals much, much further than they usually go. While we’d love to see that record stretched a little more on each end, to make a truly transcontinental contact, it’s still quite an accomplishment, and we congratulate the hams involved.

Posted in Hackaday Columns, Hackaday linksTagged 70 cm, Aisler, cobol, Covid-19, FT8, hackaday links, logo, meatball, nasa, pcb, retro, stencils, transatlantic, uhf, worm, y2k

Custom Logo Display Pushes Nixie Tube Technology

March 16, 2020 by Dan Maloney 22 Comments

No matter what you think about Nixie tubes, you’ve got to admit that having a Nixie custom made for you would be pretty cool. The cost of such a vanity project is probably prohibitive, but our friends at Keysight managed to convince none other than [Dalibor Farný] to immortalize their logo in glass, metal, and neon, and the results are beautiful.

Nixie aficionados and lovers of fine craftsmanship will no doubt be familiar with [Dalibor]’s high-end, hand-built Nixie tubes, the creation of which we’ve covered before. He’s carved out a niche in this limited market by turning the quality far above what you can find on the surplus Nixie market, and his custom tubes grace sleek, distinctive clocks that really make a statement. Bespoke tubes are not a normal offering, but he decided to tackle the build because it gave him a chance to experiment with new methods and materials. Chief among these are the mesh cathodes seen in the video below. Most Nixies have thin cathodes for each character cut from solid sheet metal. The elements of the Keysight logo were skeletonized, with a solid border and a hexagonal mesh infill. We’d have loved to see the process used to create those pieces — laser cutting, perhaps?

The bulk of the video is watching the painstaking assembly process, which centers around the glassblower’s lathe. It’s fascinating to watch, and the finished, somewhat out-sized tube is a work of art, although part of the display seems a little dark. Even though, [Dalibor] needs to be careful — plenty of outfits would love to see their logo Nixie-fied. Wouldn’t a Jolly Wrencher tube look amazing?

Continue reading “Custom Logo Display Pushes Nixie Tube Technology” →

Posted in Misc HacksTagged custom, glassblower, Keysight, lathe, logo, neon, nixie

This Space For Rent: Advertisements In Orbit

May 8, 2019 by Tom Nardi 34 Comments

Recently there’s been some buzz in the news that Pepsi, or more accurately the company’s Russian division, had partnered with a startup by the name of StartRocket to experiment with the idea of putting “billboards” in space. After overwhelmingly negative response to the idea on social media, Pepsi’s official line is that the StartRocket experiment was a one-time partnership, and that the company has no plans to push ahead with a space advertising program “at this time”.

Concept art from StartRocket

Had this been the first time a worldwide conglomerate like Pepsi had turned their eyes up into the black and saw dollar signs, you might think that humanity’s brief flirtation with space-bound advertisements was nothing but a social media stunt. But the truth of the matter is that companies such as Coca-Cola and Pizza Hut have been trying to get their products off terra firma since the 1980’s. This isn’t even Pepsi’s first attempt, despite what their PR department might want you to believe right about now.

So why haven’t we seen advertisers putting their money into space advertising schemes? Well, we have, actually. They just haven’t been terribly effective and the average person likely has no recollection of them. We’re seeing considerable excitement about spaceflight in the new media right now with billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos battling to see who can build the most outlandish rockets, but historically, you’d do better getting a 10 second spot during the Super Bowl than plastering your logo on the side of a weather satellite.

In honor of Pepsi’s recent blunder, let’s take a look at some of the standout attempts to conquer advertising’s true true final frontier from the last few decades.

Continue reading “This Space For Rent: Advertisements In Orbit” →

Posted in Current Events, Featured, Interest, SpaceTagged advertising, billboard, coke, logo, nasa, Space Shuttle

Building Your Bots The 1980s Way

November 25, 2016 by Jenny List 29 Comments

There are many kits available to today’s hobbyists who wish to try their hand at producing simple computer-controlled robots. Small concoctions of servos and laser-cut acrylic, to which boards such as the Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or Beaglebone can easily be fitted.

In the 1980s though this was a market that was yet to be adequately served. The sheer size of the many 8-bit machines of the day meant they could not be incorporated in your robot, and interfacing to them was a bit more challenging than the easy-to-use GPIOs of their modern counterparts. Then the mechanical hardware of a small robot was something that had not been easily and cheaply packaged for the constructor, making building a physical robotic platform a significant task in itself.

[Jeffery Brace] and [Evan Koblentz] write for IEEE Spectrum about their work at New York City’s World Maker Faire back in October, making a pair of small robots using only components and computers available in the 1980s.

Charlie the robot
Charlie the robot

[Charlie] is a robot based on the Capsela construction system, a toy consisting of interlocking plastic spheres containing different functions of shafts, gears, and motors. There was a Robotic Workshop kit for Capsella that featured a Commodore 64 interface, and it is through this means that [Charlie]’s three motors are controlled. It includes a ROM that extends Commodore BASIC with extra commands, which allow the robot to be easily controlled.

Artie the robot, with Dacta box in foreground
Artie the robot, with Dacta box in foreground

Meanwhile [Artie] is a Lego robot, using the Dacta TC Logo, a kit sold for the educational market and available at the time with interfaces for the PC and the Apple II. They had a Dacta control box but not the Apple II card to go with it, so had to make do with a functional replica built on a prototyping card. As the name suggests, this was programmed using Logo, and came with the appropriate interpreter software.

Both robots are reported to have been a success in terms of working in the first place, then demonstrating the 1980s technology and providing entertainment and engagement with the faire’s visitors.

We have covered numerous Lego robots over the years, as a search of our site will confirm. But this is only the second time we’ve featured a Capsela project, the first being this Arduino rover from 2011. [Mike] mused why we don’t see Capsela more often, and the same sentiment is true today. Do you have a Capsela set gathering dust somewhere that could make a robotic project?

Via Hacker News.

Posted in classic hacks, Robots HacksTagged apple II, basic, capsela, commodore 64, lego, logo, robot

Hackaday Links July 10, 2016

July 10, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 44 Comments

Several years ago, Iran used GPS spoofing to ‘land’ an RQ-170 Sentinel drone operated by the US military. Why is this interesting now? Because this week Pokemon GO was released. It’s a mobile, augmented-reality game that forces you to walk around your neighborhood to catch Pokemon. Apparently you can capture a Mewtwo if you make it to Area 51, Groudon near any volcano, and Deoxys is aboard the International Space Station. In the next week or two, someone will figure out how to spoof the GPS location on a phone to catch rare and legendary Pokemon. This will happen.

The FR4 Machine Shield is a CNC kit made from a PCB. Yes, the entire machine can be constructed using a panel from a board house. It’s now a Kickstarter. Like other desktop PCB milling machines, the FR4 uses hobby brushless motors (think quadcopters) for the spindle, and features tab and slot construction. It’s a pretty neat little tool we checked out a little while ago

There’s a lot going on during the first weekend in August. We’re going to DEF CON, I’m trying to rope a few writers into going to the Vintage Computer Festival West, and Electromagnetic Field Camp is happening in the UK. Hackaday will have a contingent at EMF Camp, so be sure to tell us if you’re going and we’ll bring some stickers

If you ride a bicycle, you have a hand pump somewhere around. Those hand pumps get pretty tiring. Here’s a much better solution. It’s a pneumatic air pump. It will inflate your bike tire with the power of compressed air. But that’s not all… this device will also inflate basketballs, soccer balls, and footballs, all with a simple and easy to use air compressor.

The Hackaday logo was one of the first things on Thingiverse, but surprisingly there aren’t many jolly wrenchers plastered onto 3D prints. To fix this glaring oversight by everyone, [Tom] whipped up the Hackaday logo in OpenSCAD.

[Blecky] is building a local positioning system for his entry into this year’s Hackaday Prize. Now it’s a Kickstarter. As a new feature, a pair of these boards can also do motion detection

Posted in Hackaday Columns, Hackaday linksTagged bicycle pump, electromagnetic field camp, EMF camp, fr4, gps, jolly wrencher, logo, mill, pneumatic, Pokemon Go, SubPos

Hackaday Links: February 21, 2016

February 21, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 59 Comments

Like ridiculously large electromechanical devices? [Fran] took a tour of the Wanamaker Pipe Organ in Philly, the largest fully playable pipe organ in the world. The scale is tremendous – 28,000 pipes in 463 ranks spread out over five floors of a department store.

The Nintendo Entertainment System is well over thirty years old now, and still there are only about ten or so games that require the Nintendo Zapper, the light gun so primitive you can use a light bulb to beat Duck Hunt. Now there’s a new game: Super Russian Roulette. Yes, it’s Russian Roulette with the NES Zapper. It’s actually a very advanced game for the NES, using a lot of Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) for real audio in the game. Of course it’s also Russian Roulette with a gun that doesn’t look like a revolver, making this the perfect game to introduce young children to the wonders of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Video demo.

Click to embiggen
Tek logos and typefaces through the years. Click to embiggen.

Tektronix has a new logo! It’s not as cool as the old CRT flying spaceman globe thingy logo, but at least it’s not awash with 90s era corporate industrial design motifs.

The new logo is finally a logo and not just a serif typeface with a red slash below it. In keeping with every new corporate branding in recent memory, the new typeface is a sans-serif with a few bits cut off here and there. Is it a good logo? I’m sure it tested well in focus groups. Sometimes art is more of a science than an art. A lot of people don’t get that.

Because you – yes, you – don’t believe content creators should be paid, adblock reigns supreme. While Hackaday.com only has a few static, nonintrusive ads per page, Wired is taking a far different approach. They’re requiring you to whitelist their domain in adblock (loading over a dozen ads, some of them video, sponsored links to products on Amazon, and other advertisements masquerading as content), or pay them $1 per month. Someone over at noisebridge still reads Wired and has a JavaScript one-liner that fixes Wired’s Ad Blocker Blocker. Of course this will eventually lead to more articles and content targeting the ‘doesn’t understand Internets’ and ‘not sophisticated enough to install a browser plugin’ demographic, i.e. low brow clickbait. A much better solution would be to take responsibility for the media you consume. Whitelist Hackaday in your ad blocker.

A few months ago there was news the FCC would start locking down router firmware. Scary stuff, and now it has come to pass. TP-Link has already locked down the firmware for a few popular wireless routers, and they’re not offering alternative firmware.

Posted in Hackaday Columns, Hackaday linksTagged adblock, fcc, logo, nes, pipe organ, router, russian roulette, tektronix, Wanamaker

Hackaday Links: October 4, 2015

October 4, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 19 Comments

Tattoo[Philip] got a tattoo of the Hackaday Skull ‘n Wrenches. His job is mostly office work in long sleeves, so everything’s good. The original logo was drawn in Flash by [Phil Torrone] of Adafruit, and reworked into a slightly more modern file format by [Elliot]. Yes, a skull and wrenches is a biker symbol and can be found in the emblem for a few military divisions (mostly for armored support). The Hackaday logo is by far the most cartoonish of all of these Jolly Wrenchers.

Speaking of scrawling the Hackaday logo on stuff, [Rodrick] was bored and needed a distraction last Saturday night.

We’ve seen perpetual motion machines on Kickstarter, and we’ve seen projects that may actually have some basis in reality. We’ve seen 12-year-olds put up a Kickstarter for a new gaming computer, and we’ve seen campaigns to build a bar in some random guy’s basement. There is only one project we haven’t seen on Kickstarter, until now: a campaign to build another crowdfunding platform. It is the Shortening of the Way.

You want a fail? This is a fail. [Chris] is working on a device that combines the familiar Arduino pinout with a CAN transceiver. A good idea, but if you build a PCB, you’re going to need traces. [Chris] sent his files off to our favorite purple board house and got back a sheet of copper laminate with holes in it. A good reminder to check your Gerbers before sending them off.

Live around Denver? There’s a hackerspace in Broomfield, Colorado that’s looking for a new space. They have a Kickstarter for the lease and they’re looking for some people to fill their space.

You kids out there with Pro Tools and Logic don’t know how good you have it. Back in the day, audio was recorded on magnetic tape with exacting mechanical devices called multitrack recorders. [Fran] fished her Otari 8-track recorder out of storage, and it’s a thing of beauty. Also out of storage is a 300 lb+ plate reverb.

Posted in Hackaday Columns, Hackaday linksTagged colorado, denver, Hackaday Fail, hackaday logo, hackerspace, kickstarter, kickstarter for a kickstarter, logo, multitrack, multitrack recorder, non linear editing is king, recorder, tattoo

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