Finding The Random Seed Of Minecraft’s Title Screen

July 20, 2020 by Lewin Day 12 Comments

Minecraft is a game about exploring procedure-generated worlds. Each world is generated from a particular “seed” value, and sharing this seed value allows others to generate the same world in their own game. Recently, the distributed computing project Minecraft@Home set about trying to find the seed value of the world shown in the Minecraft title screen, and have succeeded in their goal.

The amount of work required to complete this task should not be underestimated. 137 users contributed 181 hosts with 231 GPUs to the effort, finding a solution in under 24 hours. The list of contributors to the project is a long one. It appears the method to find the seed involved comparing screenshots from various seed worlds to the original image. This took a lot of reverse engineering in order to calculate the camera FOV and other settings of the original capture, such that the results could be compared accurately. Interestingly, the group found two seeds that can generate the requisite world, suggesting the world generator code has some collisions between seed values.

We’re not sure what’s more astounding, the amount of work that went into the project, or that there’s a distributed computing project tackling advanced Minecraft research. Either way, we’re no strangers to Minecraft hacks around these parts. Video after the break. Continue reading “Finding The Random Seed Of Minecraft’s Title Screen” →

Sow Your Seed Efficiently With This Multi-Way Drop Seeder

November 16, 2019 by Jenny List 8 Comments

Anyone who has ever had to propagate small plants from seed will know that efficiently sowing seed can be a difficult process. Getting a consistent number of seed in each point while achieving any sort of speed is almost impossible, and as a result it becomes a tedious process. If only there were some means by which it could be automated, perhaps a way to do a whole tray at once!

Fortunately [Michael Ratcliffe] is at hand, with his tray-sized drop seeder. It consists of two sheets of acrylic each with a grid of holes, offset from each other by able to be brought into alignment with a lever. Seed is shaken over the upper surface until all the holes contain some, and then the lever is operated allowing it to drop through into the soil below. There is a matching dibber if required to push the required grid of holes in the soil.

It’s a simple yet ingenious gadget that genuinely will make the lives of horticulturalists a lot easier, even though it might not be perfect for all types of seed. He’s created a video which we’ve placed below the break, and should you wish to create the dibber we’ve already covered it.

Continue reading “Sow Your Seed Efficiently With This Multi-Way Drop Seeder” →

Automated Vacuum Lettuce Seed Placement

December 26, 2016 by Jenny List 7 Comments

[Jethro Tull] is a name you may well associate with a 1970s prog/folk rock band featuring a flautist, but the original [Tull] was an inventor whose work you benefit from every day. He was a British lawyer and landowner who lived over the turn of the 18th century, and who invented among other things the mechanical seed drill.

Were [Tull] alive today he would no doubt be impressed by the work of [Akash Heimlich], who has created an exquisite vacuum seed placer for his rooftop hydroponic lettuce farm. Unlike the continuous rows of seed on the Berkshire earth of [Tull]’s farm, the lettuce seed must be placed in an even grid on a foam substrate for the hydroponic equivalent. This was an extremely tedious task when done by hand, so [Akash] set about automating the process with a vacuum seeder that is a thing of beauty.

It uses a simple yet effective mechanism involving a row of pipettes connected to a vacuum line, that are rotated over a vibrating hopper of seeds from which each one collects a single seed, before being rotated back over the foam where the seeds are dropped in a neat row through 3D-printed funnels. The foam is advanced, and the process is repeated until there is a neat grid of seeds. In only four minutes it can deliver 150 seeds, reducing several hours work into under half an hour.

The whole machine is controlled by an Arduino, with a couple of stepper motors to move foam and pipettes alongside the vibrator motor. You can see its operation in the video below the break.

Continue reading “Automated Vacuum Lettuce Seed Placement” →

3D Print Your Garden

October 2, 2016 by James Hobson 7 Comments

How would you go about sculpting a garden in the 21st century? One answer, perhaps predictably, is with a 3D printer. Gone are the days of the Chia pet. Thanks to a team of students out of University of Maribor in Slovenia, today we can 3D print living sculptures of our own design.

PrintGREEN traces its roots to an art project undertaken by Maja Petek, Tina Zidanšek, Urška Skaza, Danica Rženičnik, and Simon Tržan — an engineering student who worked on the project’s 3D printer — all mentored by professor Dušan Zidar. It uses a modified CNC machine to print layers of clay soil, water, and grass seeds that germinate and sprout in short order.

The goal of the project was to meld art, technology, and nature. Hard to argue with the results. With the rising necessity of environmentally-conscious technologies in all areas, even gardening it seems, is not lacking for innovation.

If you’re looking to implement some more tech into your gardening, check out this homemade watering controller, as well as some space-saving solutions for urban gardening.

Is Entropy Slowing Down Your Android Device?

January 4, 2013 by Mike Szczys 50 Comments

[Lambgx02] got tired of his Android device getting bogged down and decided to dig down to the cause of the issue. His investigation led him to believe that entropy is causing the slowdown. He believes that his workaround reduces 90% of the lag on the average Android device.

So how is it possible that entropy is causing the problem? It seems there is a bottleneck when an app requests a random number from the Linux kernel running at the lowest level of the device. Android is set up to use /dev/random for all random number requests, but [Lambgx02] says that location has a very shallow pool of numbers available. When they run out the kernel has to reload with a new seed and this is blocking the app that requested the data from continuing.

His solution was to write his own app that seeds /dev/random once every second using a number from /dev/urandom. He mentions that this might cause a security vulnerability as seeding the random data in this way is not quite as random. There may also be issues with battery life, so make sure to monitor performance if you give it a try.

[via Reddit]

Using A 555 Timer And ADC As A Random Seed

October 1, 2012 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

Most toolchains for embedded system include support for random number generation. But if you’ve read the manual you’ll know that this is really just pseudo random number generation (PRNG). When calling this function the same numbers will always return in the same order unless a different random number seed is supplied in advance. [Gardner] put together a simple and cheap solution for deriving better random number seeds. He reads a voltage from a 555 timer using the ADC on the microcontroller. At first glance it may not seem like a great source of randomness, but he performed some testing and the results look quite promising.

The project is aimed at Arduino-based circuits, but any chip with an ADC will work. The 555 timer is used as a free running oscillator. We know that this not be very stable when compared to even the worst of crystal oscillators, but that’s what makes it work so well as a random seed source. Add to this the low parts count and small size of the additional circuitry and you’ve got a winning combination. So keep this in mind when you need a random number but don’t necessarily need rock solid entropy.

[via Reddit and Freetronics]

Scratch-build Garden Nursery Uses Arduino Monitoring

June 1, 2012 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

Starting your garden indoors helps to ensure large yields. This is because the plants get a head start before it’s warm enough for them to be put in the ground. But the process involves a fair amount of labor, ensuring that the lights are turned on and off at the right times each day, and that the temperature for germination and growth, as well as humidity, hit a certain target. It’s obvious that a bit of automation would be nice, and this Arduino-based garden nursery does just that. One of the things that sets this project apart is that it shows you how to go from an empty room to the bounty of plant starters seen here.

For the most part the equipment is what you’d expect, seed trays and covers, tray warming mats, and fluorescent light fixtures. the whole thing is given a small footprint thanks to an adjustable shelving unit. The Arduino is used in conjunction with a Sprout Board to add connectivity for switching the lights and warming mats. This is just a matter of driving a relay to switch mains voltage and can take any number of forms, including this home automation project we saw the other day.

[Thanks Tom]