software

142 Articles

FreeCAD Is Near 1.0

September 21, 2024 by 47 Comments

The open-source parametric 3D modelling software, FreeCAD, is out in a release candidate for version 1.0.  If you’ve tried FreeCAD before and found a few showstoppers, it might be a good time for you to test it out again because the two biggest of them have been solved in this latest version.

First, version 1.0 finally implements a solution to the “topological naming problem”. Imagine you want to put a hole into a surface. The program needs to know on which surface to put the hole, and so it refers to this surface by name / number. Now imagine you subdivide the surface, and both subsections get new names. Where does your hole go now?  If you want to dig into the issue, the inimitable [MangoJelly] has a great video about the topo naming problem. Practically, there were workarounds, like only adding chamfers after the main design has stabilized, but frankly it was a hassle to remember all of the tricks. This is a huge fix.

The second big fix concerns assemblies.  Older versions of FreeCAD were great for making single parts, but combining them all together inside the CAD program was always janky.  Version 1.0 combines the previous two patchwork assembly workbenches into one, and it’s altogether more pleasant to use. The constraints of how two parts move when held together with an axle just works now, and this is a big deal for multi-part models.

If you’re coming from any other parametric CAD program, most of FreeCAD will seem familiar to you, but there will also be workflow differences that will take some getting used to. In trade, what do you get? Scriptability in Python, real open source software, and all of the bells and whistles for free. Now that its two biggest pain points have been addressed,  FreeCAD has become a lot easier to love. We’re looking forward to some good V1.0 tutorials in the future, and we’ll keep you posted when we find them.

Get Thee To Git

September 7, 2024 by 21 Comments

While version control used to be reserved for big corporate projects, it is very mainstream these days. You can attribute much of that to Git, the software that has nearly displaced other version control. Git works well, it is versatile, and it scales well. It is easy to use as an individual developer or as part of a worldwide team. But Git is also one of those things that people don’t always study, they just sort of “pick it up” as they go. That motivated [Glasskube] to create “The Guide to Git I Never Had.”

If you are ready to click away because you are not a software person, hang on. Git is actually useful for many different kinds of data, and there are a number of hardware projects that use Git in some form. That’s especially true if the project has some code associated with it, but there are projects that consist of PCBs, reverse engineering documentation, or schematics.

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Hackaday Links: September 1, 2024

September 1, 2024 by 21 Comments

Why is it always a helium leak? It seems whenever there’s a scrubbed launch or a narrowly averted disaster, space exploration just can’t get past the problems of helium plumbing. We’ve had a bunch of helium problems lately, most famously with the leaks in Starliner’s thruster system that have prevented astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from returning to Earth in the spacecraft, leaving them on an extended mission to the ISS. Ironically, the launch itself was troubled by a helium leak before the rocket ever left the ground. More recently, the Polaris Dawn mission, which is supposed to feature the first spacewalk by a private crew, was scrubbed by SpaceX due to a helium leak on the launch tower. And to round out the helium woes, we now have news that the Peregrine mission, which was supposed to carry the first commercial lander to the lunar surface but instead ended up burning up in the atmosphere and crashing into the Pacific, failed due to — you guessed it — a helium leak.
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Putting A Pi In A Container

August 30, 2024 by 16 Comments

Docker and other containerization applications have changed a lot about the way that developers create new software as well as how they maintain virtual machines. Not only does containerization reduce the system resources needed for something that might otherwise be done in a virtual machine, but it standardizes the development environment for software and dramatically reduces the complexity of deploying on different computers. There are some other tricks up the sleeves as well, and this project called PI-CI uses Docker to containerize an entire Raspberry Pi.

The Pi container emulates an entire Raspberry Pi from the ground up, allowing anyone that wants to deploy software on one to test it out without needing to do so on actual hardware. All of the configuration can be done from inside the container. When all the setup is completed and the desired software installed in the container, the container can be converted to an .img file that can be put on a microSD card and installed on real hardware, with support for the Pi models 3, 4, and 5. There’s also support for using Ansible, a Docker automation system that makes administering a cluster or array of computers easier.

Docker can be an incredibly powerful tool for developing and deploying software, and tools like this can make the process as straightforward as possible. It does have a bit of a learning curve, though, since sharing operating system tools instead of virtualizing hardware can take a bit of time to wrap one’s mind around. If you’re new to the game take a look at this guide to setting up your first Docker container.

Docker-Powered Remote Gaming With Games On Whales

July 13, 2024 by 15 Comments

Cloud gaming services allow even relatively meager devices like set top boxes and cheap Chromebooks play the latest and greatest titles. It’s not perfect of course — latency is the number one issue as the player’s controller inputs need to be sent out to the server —  but if you’ve got a fast enough connection it’s better than nothing. Interested in experimenting with the tech on your own terms? The open source Games on Whales project is here to make that a reality.

As you might have guessed from the name, Games on Whales uses Linux and Docker as core components in its remote gaming system. With the software installed on a headless server, multiple users can create virtual desktop environments on the same machine, with each spawning as a separate process on the host computer. This means that all of the hardware of the host can be shared without needing to do anything complicated like setting up GPU pass-through. The main Docker container can spin up more containers as needed.

Of course there will obviously be limits to what any given hardware configuration will be able to support in terms of number of concurrent users and the demands of each stream. But for someone who wants to host a server for their friends or something even simpler like not having to put a powerful gaming PC in the living room, this is a real game-changer. For those not up to speed on Docker yet, we recently featured a guide on getting started with this powerful tool since it does take some practice to wrap one’s mind around at first.

Repeatable “One-Click” Fusion, From Your Cellphone

July 6, 2024 by 22 Comments

Sometimes you spend so much time building and operating your nuclear fusor that you neglect the creature comforts, like a simple fusion control profile or a cellphone app to remote control the whole setup. No worries, [Nate Sales] has your back with his openreactor project, your one-click fusion solution!

An inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusor is perhaps the easiest type of fusion for the home gamer, but that’s not the same thing as saying that building and running one is easy. It requires high vacuum, high voltage, and the controlled introduction of deuterium into the chamber. And because it’s real-deal fusion, it’s giving off neutrons, which means that you don’t want to be standing on the wrong side of the lead shielding. This is where remote control is paramount.

While this isn’t an automation problem that many people will be having, to put it lightly, it’s awesome that [Nate] shared his solution with us all. Sure, if you’re running a different turbo pump or flow controller, you might have some hacking to do, but at least you’ve got a start. And if you’re simply curious about fusion on a hobby scale, his repo is full of interesting details, from the inside.

And while this sounds far out, fusion at home is surprisingly attainable. Heck, if a 12-year old or even a YouTuber can do it, so can you! And now the software shouldn’t stand in your way.

Thanks [Anon] for the tip!

BASIC Classroom Management

May 25, 2024 by 22 Comments

While we don’t see it used very often these days, BASIC was fairly revolutionary in bringing computers to the masses. It was one of the first high-level languages to catch on and make computers useful for those who didn’t want to (or have time) to program them in something more complex. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t capable of getting real work done — this classroom management software built in the language illustrates its capabilities.

Written by [Mike Knox], father of [Ethan Knox] aka [norton120], for his classroom in 1987, the programs were meant to automate away many of the drudgeries of classroom work. It includes tools for generating random seating arrangements, tracking attendance, and other direct management tasks as well as tools for the teacher more directly like curving test grades, tracking grades, and other tedious tasks that normally would have been done by hand at that time. With how prevalent BASIC was at the time, this would have been a powerful tool for any educator with a standard desktop computer and a floppy disk drive.

Since most people likely don’t have an 80s-era x86 machine on hand capable of running this code, [Ethan] has also included a docker container to virtualize the environment for anyone who wants to try out his father’s old code. We’ve often revisited some of our own BASIC programming from back in the day, as our own [Tom Nardi] explored a few years ago.