An animated GIF of Engineer Bo's Precision Bluetooth Scroll Wheel wirelessly, and effortlessly scrolling down the Hack A Day blog with a single finger

Doomscroll Precisely, And Wirelessly

December 31, 2024 by Michael Shaub 18 Comments

Around here, we love it when someone identifies a need and creates their own solution. In this case, [Engineer Bo] was tired of endless and imprecise scrolling with a mouse wheel. No off-the-shelf solutions were found, and other DIY projects either just used hacked mice scroll wheels, customer electronics with low-res hardware encoders, or featured high-res encoders that were down-sampled to low-resolution. A custom build was clearly required.

We loved seeing hacks along the whole process by [Engineer Bo], working with components on hand, pairing sensors to microcontrollers to HID settings, 3D printing forms to test ergonomics, and finishing the prototype device. When 3D printing, [Engineer Bo] inserted a pause after support material to allow drawing a layer of permanent marker ink that acts as a release agent that can later be cleaned with rubbing alcohol.

We also liked the detail of a single hole inside used to install each of the three screws that secure the knob to the base. While a chisel and UV-curing resin cleaned up some larger issues with the print, more finishing was required. For a project within a project, [Engineer Bo] then threw together a mini lathe with 3D printed and RC parts to make sanding easy.

Scroll down with your clunky device to see the video that illustrates the precision with a graphic of a 0.09° rotation and is filled with hacky nuggets. See how the electronics were selected and the circuit designed and programmed, the use of PCBWay’s CNC machining in addition to board assembly services, and how to deal with bearings that spin too freely. [Engineer Bo] teases that a future version might use a larger bearing for less wobble and an anti-slip coating on the base. Will the board files and 3D models be released, too? Will these be sold as finished products or kits? Will those unused LED drivers be utilized in an upcoming version? We can’t wait to see what’s next for this project.

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Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Curvy Centerfold

December 16, 2024 by Kristina Panos 7 Comments

What do you get when you combine a Raspberry Pi 4B, a Kaypro keyboard, and a 9″ Apple ], you get the coolest AVR development workstation I’ve seen in a while.

A Raspberry Pi-based AVR workstation that uses a Kaypro keyboard and 9" monochrome Apple ][c display. — Image by [John Anderson] via Hackaday.IO

As you may have guessed, I really dig the looks of this thing. The paint job on the display is great, but the stripes on the keyboard and badging on are on another level. Be sure to check out the entire gallery on this one.

About that keyboard — [John] started this project with two incomplete keyboards that each had a couple of broken switches. Since the two keyboards were compliments of each other parts-wise, they made a great pair, and [John] only had to swap out three switches to get it up and clacking.

In order to make it work with the Pi, [John] wrote a user-mode serial driver that uses the uinput kernel module to inject key events to the kernel. But he didn’t stop there.

Although the Pi supports composite video out, the OS doesn’t provide any way to turn off the chroma color signal that’s modulated on top of the basic monochrome NTSC signal, which makes the picture look terrible. To fix that, he wrote a command-line app that sets up the video controller to properly display a monochrome NTSC signal. Happy AVRing on your amazing setup, [John]! Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Curvy Centerfold” →

Updated Mouse Ring Does It With A Joystick

December 10, 2024 by Kristina Panos 9 Comments

Have you ever wished for easy mouse controls to go along with your VR headset experience? Or maybe you just want a cooler way to mouse in general. In any case, look no further than [rafgaj78]’s Bluetooth Mouse Ring project.

This is version two, which of course comes with several improvements over version one. The biggest change is from tactile buttons to a joystick input. [rafgaj78] also did away with the power switch, using deep-sleep mode instead. Version two is easier to assemble and offers improved ergonomics, as well as a range of ring sizes.

Like the first version, this ring runs on a Seeed Xiao nRF52840 and is programmed in CircuitPython. There are two modes to choose from. In one mode, the joystick does left and right mouse click and wheel up and down, while the push action recovers the micro from deep sleep. In the other mode, the joystick axis is a mouse pointer mover, and you push down to left click.

We really like this sleek design, and [rafgaj78] has great instructions if you want to build your own. This isn’t the first cool mouse ring we’ve seen, and it certainly won’t be the last.

Cute Brass Lunar Lander Is A Neat Little Environment Monitor

January 19, 2024 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

Sometimes form can make a project more attractive than its simple function. [Mohit Bhoite]’s free-form builds are great examples of this. His latest effort is a gorgeous little device that displays environmental readings, and it’s shaped like a lunar lander. (Nitter) Just exquisite!

The device is based around a Seeedstudio XIAO nRF52840 dev board. It’s hooked up to a BME280 sensor which delivers temperature, humidity and air pressure readings from the immediate environment. These readings are displayed on a tiny 128×32 OLED display, along with the current time. Power is via a compact 14250 lithium cell.

So far, so simple, but the real magic is in the housing. It’s a wireframe lunar lander lookalike which [Mohit] put together using brass wire and some careful soldering. It adds so much to the build, which wouldn’t be nearly as attractive if just assembled on a PCB. It’s not his first rodeo, either. He previously built a cute device (Nitter) with an animated face in 2019 using similar techniques; it used a CCS811 gas sensor to detect air quality.

Often, we find ourselves falling most in love with devices that please the eye. [Mohit] certainly demonstrates a great skill in building things that fit this brief. Sometimes, it only takes a bit of thought and careful application of the mind to bring a beautiful aesthetic to your projects, and the results can be most rewarding. Try his Hackaday Supercon talk if you want to learn more. Continue reading “Cute Brass Lunar Lander Is A Neat Little Environment Monitor” →

A montage of a "death stranding" lamp in two different color modes, purple on the left and blue on the right

Illuminate Your Benched Things With This Death Stranding Lamp

January 29, 2023 by Abe Connelly 4 Comments

[Pinkman] creates a smart RGB table lamp based off of the “Odradek device” robot arm from the video game “Death Stranding”.

[Pinkman] adds a XIAO BLE nRF52840 Sense device, with Bluetooth support, microphone and TinyML capability. The nRF52840 is used to push data to the five WS2812 strips, one for each “blade” of the lamp, and also connects to a TTP223 capacitive touch controller to add touch input detection. The TinyML portion of the nRF52840 allows for custom keyword training to turn on the lamp with voice commands ([Pinkman] uses “Bling Bling”). [Pinkman] has also provided Bluetooth control, allowing the color and pattern to be changed from a phone application.

The lamp is 3D printed with the build being based off of [Nils Kal]’s Printables files. Each of the five blades has a white 3D-printed diffusor plate to help ease out the hot spots for the LED strip. The lamp is fully adjustable in addition to having cavities, channels and access points for “invisible” wiring. [Pinkman] has also upgraded the original 3D files to allow for the three wires needed to drive the WS2812, instead of the two wires that [Nils] had allotted in the original.

[Pinkman] has all of the code, STL files and training data available for download, so be sure to check it out. Lamps are a favorite of ours and we’ve featured our fair share, including 3D printed Shoji lamps and RGB wall lamps.

Video after the break!

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Osprey Keyboard Lets The NRF52840 Spread Its Wings

December 8, 2022 by Kristina Panos 14 Comments

While most people don’t care whether they use one finger or ten, some people want to better themselves by learning how to touch-type. And honestly, there’s no easier way to do that than by getting into the ergo keyboard game. Even if you consider yourself a touch-typist already, an ortholinear or column-staggered keyboard may teach you otherwise, as you find yourself trying to type ‘c’ with your index finger (for example) and failing miserably.

[ebastler] chose the best of all routes and decided to build his own perfect keyboard, called the Osprey. It’s a wireless, column-staggered 40% that runs on ZMK firmware, which of course is open-source, as is the PCB itself and the thick and travel-ready printed enclosure. Although [ebastler] has yet to implement either one of these additional inputs, the Osprey also supports a thumbstick and a track pad.

Brain-wise, it’s a bare nRF52840 chip along with a TI BQ24075 for battery charging. The interesting thing about this implementation is that [ebastler] used and abused Nordic sample schematic #4, which utilizes both DC-DC converter stages of the chip. We can’t wait to see what this trailblazing build will mean for the community!

Palm Portable Keyboard Goes Wireless

February 8, 2022 by Kristina Panos 19 Comments

Long ago when digital portables where in their infancy, people were already loath to type on tiny keyboards, stylus or not. So Palm made a sweet little portable keyboard that would fold up and fit in your cargo pocket. And what do we have now for luxury typing on the go? Rubber roll-up jelly keebs? That’s a hard no from this scribe.

But why mess with the success of the the Palm Portable Keyboard? It just needs to be updated for our times, and that’s exactly what [Xinming Chen] did with their PPK Bluetooth adapter.

Inspired by the work of [cy384] to make a USB adapter as well as [Christian]’s efforts with the ESP32, [Xinming Chen] points out that this version is more power efficient, easier to program, and has a built-in Li-Po charging circuit. It also uses the hardware serial port instead of the software serial, which saves brainpower.

There’s really not much to this build, which relies on the Adafruit Feather nRF52840 and will readily work with Palm III and Palm V keyboards. Since the PPK is RS-232 and needs to be TTL, this circuit also needs a voltage level inverter which can be made with a small handful of components. We love that there’s a tiny hidden switch that engages the battery when the adapter clicks on to the connector.

The schematic, code, and STL files are all there in the repository, so go pick up one of these foldy keebs for cheap on the electronic bay while they’re still around. Watch the demo video unfold after the break.

Want an all-in-one solution for typing on the go? Check out the history of tiny computers.

Continue reading “Palm Portable Keyboard Goes Wireless” →