Hackaday Podcast 075: 3D Printing Japanese Joinery, Android PHONK, One-Armed Time Bandit, And Whistling Bridges

July 10, 2020 by Mike Szczys No comments

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams scoop up a basket of great hacks from the past week. Be amazed by the use of traditional Japanese joinery in a 3D-printed design — you’re going to want to print one of these Shoji lamps. We behold the beautiful sound of a noise generator, and the freaky sound from the Golden Gate. There’s a hack for Android app development using Javascript on an IDE hosted from the phone as a webpage on your LAN. And you’ll like the KiCAD trick that makes enclosure design for existing boards a lot easier.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (60 MB or so.)

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A Practical Portable Wii Emerges From The Memes

January 3, 2019 by Tom Nardi 6 Comments

A few months ago, [Shank] built what will almost certainly go down in history as the world’s smallest portable Nintendo Wii. As it turns out, the Wii motherboard is home to a lot of unnecessary hardware, and with a careful hand and an eye for detail, it’s possible to physically cut it down to a much smaller unit; allowing this particularly tenacious hacker to put an actual Wii, along with everything else required to make it portable, into an Altoids tin.

As you might expect, between the cramped controls, comically short battery life, and the fact that the whole thing got hot to the touch during use, it was a miserable excuse for a portable console. But the incredible response the project received inspired [Shank] to dust off an earlier project: a far more practical portable Wii that he calls PiiWii. This time around the handheld is a more reasonable size, a useful battery life, and proper controls. It even has an integrated “Sensor Bar” so you can use real Wii Remotes with it. It might not be the prettiest portable console conversion we’ve ever seen, but it certainly ranks up there as one of the most complete.

[Shank] actually “finished” the PiiWii some time ago, but in his rush to complete the project he got a little overzealous with the hot glue and ended up with a device that was difficult to diagnose and fix when things started to go wrong. He shelved the project and moved on to his Altoids tin build, which helped him refine his Wii shrinking skills. With a clearer head and some more practical experience under his belt, the PiiWii was revamped and is clearly all the better for it.

Unlike previous Wii portables we’ve seen, there’s no attempt at adding GameCube controller ports or video out capability. It’s built to be a purely handheld system, and that focus has delivered a system that’s roughly the size of the original Game Boy Advance. Beyond the cleverly sliced Wii motherboard, the inside of the PiiWii features a 3.5 inch display, a custom designed audio amplifier PCB, four 3400 mAh cells which deliver a run time of around four hours, a 3DS “slider” analog stick, and a generous helping of Kapton tape in place of hot glue.

If there’s any criticism of the PiiWii, it’s likely going to be about the system’s boxy exterior. But as [Shank] explains, there’s an excellent reason for that: it’s literally built into a project box. He simply took a commercially available ABS project box, the Polycase SL 57, and made all his openings on the front with a laser cutter. Other than the fact taking a laser to ABS releases hydrogen cyanide, he found it a good way to quickly knock out a custom enclosure.

Last year we took a look his ridiculously small Altoids tin Wii, and while that was an impressive project to be sure, we’re glad he revisited the PiiWii and showed that a portable Wii can be more than just a novelty. Compared to other systems, the Wii doesn’t seem to get the portable treatment that often, so we’re always glad to see somebody come in and do the concept justice.

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Need Cheap And Plentiful Project Boxes? Hit Up Your Local Hardware Store

August 5, 2011 by Mike Nathan 35 Comments

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One thing that really makes a project complete is the way in which you package your final product. Some people are fine with a piece of protoboard with wires sticking out in every direction, and truth be told, so are we – depending on the application.

[Daniel] over at archive.org was seeking out enclosures to wrap up some humidity and temperature monitors he was working on. He suddenly realized that electrical junction boxes were cheap, widely available, and perfectly suited for the job. He hauled off to the hardware store and bought a few different boxes, then spent some time cleaning them up a bit before putting them into service.

While he couldn’t put the PVC-based plastic lids into his laser cutter, he did grab some birch plywood at the store, which fit his needs nicely. A few minutes in the cutter and a few coats of paint later, he had some great looking covers for his project boxes. He added a piece of ply to the inside of the metal enclosures to protect his components, and when everything was finished, he was quite pleased with the results.

Let’s say you don’t happen to have a laser cutter on hand. Plastic boxes would do fine in most scenarios, but if you absolutely required a metal enclosure, a few coats of Plastidip on all interior surfaces would keep your electronics safe as well.

Now, no one is calling the use of junction boxes for electronics projects revolutionary by any means. It’s just one of those items you can blindly pass by in the hardware store countless times without giving them a second glance, until someone happens to point out that they would make a perfect enclosure. That’s something we can appreciate.

If you’re interested in putting some of your own together, [Daniel] has made his laser cutter templates available online.

DIY Resin Cast Project Box

April 25, 2011 by Mike Nathan 26 Comments

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[Rhys] wrote in to share a custom project box he built from scratch using polyester resin. He states that in New Zealand, he tends to have problems finding the perfect project box. They are typically too big or small to get the job done, so he figured he might as well just build his own to spec.

Using Google SketchUp, he designed his ideal project box, then got busy building wooden molds. He scored some free melamine scraps from a local company, which he used to build the base of his molding rig. Once the inner and outer molds were built, he secured them to his base and mixed up some polyester resin.

A few hours later, he pulled apart his molds and smoothed out his project box with some sandpaper. He drilled and tapped screw holes, then prepared to make a lid and base for the box.

He admits that the process is quite involved, but there is something to be said for building yourself an enclosure made specifically for the project it is going to house. If you are looking to do something similar be sure to check out his blog – he offers up some sound resin casting tips, as well as some pitfalls to avoid.