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Hackaday Links: June 16th, 2019

June 23, 2019 by 28 Comments

OpenSCAD has been updated. The latest release of what is probably the best 3D modeling tool has been in the works for years now, and we’ve got some interesting features now. Of note, there’s a customizer, for allowing parametrizing designs with a GUI. There’s 3D mouse support, so drag out that weird ball mouse from the 90s. You can export in SVG, 3MF, and AMF. Update your install of OpenSCAD now.

New Hampshire is the home of BASIC, and now there’s a sign on the side of the road saying so. This is a New Hampshire state historical marker honoring BASIC, invented at Dartmouth College in 1964. Interestingly, there are 255 historical markers in New Hampshire, usually honoring bridges and historical figures, which means there’s an off-by-one error depending on implementation.

Because robots a great way to get kids into technology — someone has to repair the future robot workers of the world — DJI has release the RoboMaster S1. It’s a robot with four Mecanum wheels, something like a Nerf turret, a camera, and WiFi. The best part? It’s programmable, either through Scratch or Python. Yes, it’s drag-and-drop programming for line following robots.

If you have a C by GE Smart Light Bulb and connect a new router to your home network, you will need to disassociate your C By GE Smart Light Bulb with your old network. To do this, you first need to turn your bulb on for eight seconds, then turn off for two seconds, then turn on for eight seconds, then turn off for two seconds. Then turn the bulb on for eight seconds, and finally turn the bulb off for two seconds. Finally, turn the bulb on for eight seconds, then turn the bulb off for two seconds. Your bulb should blink three times, indicating it has dissociated with the WiFi network. If this procedure does not work, your light bulb is running an older version of firmware. This is why you put a physical reset button on your stuff, people.

Have a lot of Raspberry Pi hats but you want to play around with the ESP32? No problem, because here’s a Pi-compatible GPIO ESP32 board. It needs a catchier name, but this is an ESP32 that’s mostly compatible with the 40-pin connector found on all Pis. Here’s a Crowd Supply link.

 

The People, Talks, And Swag Of Open Hardware Summit

October 10, 2016 by 6 Comments

Friday was the 2016 Open Hardware Summit, a yearly gathering of people who believe in the power of open design. The use of the term “summit” rather than “conference” is telling. This gathering brings together a critical mass of people running hardware companies that adhere to the ideal of “open”, but this isn’t at the exclusion of anyone — all are welcome to attend. Hackaday has built the world’s largest repository of Open Hardware projects. We didn’t just want to be there — We sponsored, sent a team of people, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves in the process.

Join me after the break for a look at the talks, a walk through the swag bags, and a feel for what this wonderful day held.

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Hackaday In Portland This Week For Open Hardware Summit

October 4, 2016 by 2 Comments

We’ve been trying fit in a tour of the Pacific Northwest for a couple of years now. This week is a perfect excuse. Hackaday is proud to sponsor the Open Hardware Summit which will be held in Portland this Friday!

Hackaday believes in the free and open sharing of information and ideas. Open Hardware has far-reaching benefits that help to educate and inspire current and future generations of hardware developers. Open Hardware also works toward making difficult and important advancements in the state of the art available to people who have the skills and interest to incorporate them in their own work.

This is why we built Hackaday.io, the world’s largest repository of Open Hardware. It’s also why we support the Open Hardware Summit, which brings together the Open Hardware community to discuss what it means to be Open Source Hardware and how to encourage the incorporation of those ideals into new products and projects.

Tindie and Supplyframe are also sponsoring the OHS. Tindie is, of course, the best place to find bleeding edge hardware sold by the designers themselves. Tindie supports Open Hardware licenses and seeks to provide the best marketplace for products and their creators. Supplyframe creates cutting edge tools for engineers to build better. This year they launched the Supplyframe Design Lab which is packed with high-end rapid prototyping tools and staffed by a resident engineer; the lab unlocks the ability to turn great ideas into prototypes that can be followed all the way through to production and product. The goal is to unite all the things necessary to make great open hardware happen.

Bring a Hack at OSH Park

There will be a ton of Hackaday, Tindie, and Supplyframe staff at Open Hardware Summit, make sure you stop by our tables, say hello, and grab some swag. But of course we want to see the hardware hacks that you’ve been working on. There are a couple of different opportunities to track down [Brian Benchoff] and [Mike Szczys] who will be on the lookout for hacks to cover in our articles.

On Thursday night we’ll be at OSH Park Headquarters for their Bring A Hack party. There will also be a hardware hangout on Friday to close the day long Summit. We want to see what you’ve been building so don’t be shy!

Retrotechtacular: Fog Over Portland

June 1, 2016 by 23 Comments

In the early days of broadcast television, national spectrum regulators struggled to reconcile the relatively huge bandwidth required by the new medium with the limited radio spectrum that could be allocated for it. In the USA during the years immediately following World War Two there was only a 12-channel VHF allocation, which due to the constraints of avoiding interference between adjacent stations led to an insufficient number of possible transmitter sites to cover the entire country. This led the FCC in 1949 to impose a freeze on issuing licences for new transmitters, and left a significant number of American cities unable to catch their I Love Lucy or The Roy Rogers Show episodes.

The solution sought by the FCC was found by releasing a large block of UHF frequencies between 470 and 890 MHz from their wartime military allocation, and thus creating the new channels 14 to 83. An experimental UHF pilot station was set up in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1949, and by 1952 the FCC was ready to release the freeze on new licence applications. The first American UHF station to go on air was thus KPTV in Portland, Oregon, on September 18th of that year.

UHF TV was a very new technology in 1952, and was close to the edge of what could be achieved through early 1950s consumer electronics. Though the 525-line TV standard and thus the main part of the sets were the same as their VHF counterparts, the tuner designs of the time could not deliver the performance you might expect from more recent sets. Their noise levels, sensitivity, and image rejection characteristics meant that UHF TV reception  did not live up to some of its promise, and thus a fierce battle erupted between manufacturers all keen to demonstrate the inferiority of their competitors’ products over the new medium.

The video below the break delivers a fascinating insight into this world of claim and counter-claim in 1950s consumer electronics, as Zenith, one of the major players, fires salvos into the fray to demonstrate the superiority of their products over competing models or UHF converters for VHF sets. It’s very much from the view of one manufacturer and don’t blame us if it engenders in the viewer a curious desire to run out and buy a 1950s Zenith TV set, but it’s nonetheless worth watching.

A key plank of the Zenith argument concerns their turret tuner. The turret tuner was a channel selection device that switched the set’s RF front end between banks of coils and other components each preset to a particular TV channel. Zenith’s design had a unique selling point that it could be fitted with banks of components for UHF as well as VHF channels thus removing the need for a separate UHF tuner, and furthermore this system was compatible with older Zenith sets so existing owners had no need to upgrade. Particularly of its time in the video in light of today’s electronics is the section demonstrating the clear advantages of Zenith’s germanium mixer diode over its silicon equivalent. Undeniably true in that narrow application using the components of the day, but not something you hear often.

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Red Bull Flugtag Portland

August 2, 2008 by 9 Comments


Off all the competitions for poorly performing human powered flying machines, the Red Bull Flugtag is one of our favorites. Honestly, it’s the only one we can think of, but that doesn’t mean we’re any less enthusiastic about giving flight to half baked ideas. Today was the Portland round of the international event. Teams have to submit an application for their craft in advance. The vehicle can have a maximum wingspan of 30 feet and a weight with pilot of 450 pounds or less. Power is from muscle or simply gravity. The vehicle also has to be easily retreivable so they can get it out of the water. Judging isn’t just for distance, but for creativity, too.

Flickr users [pdx-kate] and [Jabin] have uploaded images and video from the day: The winner was Team Yakima’s big wheel that flew 62 feet. Second place went to Greased Lightning at 55 feet. Third was the FreeBallin sneaker which you can see in flight here. The People’s Choice award went to the Space Balls Winnebago, which we unfortunately can’t find a very good picture of. You can read more about each individual entry on the results page.

Embedded below is the video of the current US record holder: a banjo that went 155 feet in Nashville. The next US event will be September 6th in Chicago.

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