troll physics

8 Articles

Hackaday Links: November 10, 2013

November 10, 2013 by 18 Comments

hackaday-links-chain

[Henryk Gasperowicz], the wizard of electrons who makes LEDs glow for no apparent reason, has put up another one of his troll physics circuits. We have no idea how he does it (he does say he’s using wireless energy transmission) so a few solution videos would be cool, [Henryk].

Altoids tins make great electronic enclosures, but how about designing your PCBs to fit mint and gum containers? Here’s a Trident USBASP, a tiny Tic Tac ISP thingy, and a Mentos USB to JTAG interface.

By the end of this week, the PS4 will be out, along with the new PS4 camera. It’s a great camera – 1280×800 at 60Hz – but unless someone develops a driver for it, it shall forever remain tethered to a PS4. Luckily, there’s a project to develop a PS4 camera driver, so if you have some USB 3.0 experience, give it a shot.

Multimeter teardowns? [David]’s got multimeter teardowns. It’s an HP 3455A, a huge bench top unit from the 80s. This is, or was, pro equipment and strange esoteric components definitely make a showing. ±0.01% resistors? Yep. Part two has some pics of the guts and a whole ton of logic.

The US Air Force Academy just moved their embedded systems course over to the MSP430. Course director [Capt Todd Branchflower] just put all the course materials online, with the notes, datasheets, and labs available on Github.

Troll Physics: 3 LEDs Powered By Hand

October 9, 2013 by 54 Comments

[Henryk] just sent us his latest episode of simple LED circuit puzzles. In front of the camera he solders one pin of each of the 3 LEDs to a different switch. He then puts the three assemblies in his hand and flips each switch to make the corresponding LED come on. We look forward to your explanations in the comments.

You may remember two other videos that [Henryk] made (also embedded after the break). The first video was a simple circuit with a resistor, three switches, and three LEDs in series. When a battery was connected, the LEDs were somehow switched on one at a time.The second video featured the same resistor/switches/LEDs, this time in a parallel circuit. Turning on the first switch made the first LED light up, and the second switch made the second LED light up.

Here are the few other troll physics projects we featured: the original LED circuits post, the super deluxe edition and the amazing solution to the trickery.

Continue reading “Troll Physics: 3 LEDs Powered By Hand” →

Hackaday Links: October 6, 2012

October 6, 2012 by 33 Comments

Upgrading a desktop with a diamond cutting wheel

[Michail] needed a new graphics card. The only problem was his motherboard didn’t have any free PCI-E x16 slots available. Unable to find a PCI-E x1 card, he did what any of us would do and broke out the Dremel. Yes, he got it working, but don’t do this unless you know what you’re doing.

It’s recycling!

[Steve] recently got a Galaxy S3 and was looking for something to do with his old phone. It’s got WiFi, it’s got a camera, and with a free app, [Steve] now has an IP Webcam. Neat way to recycle a phone.

This is now bookmarked

We’re not much for plugging other blogs, but Math ∩ Programming – that’s intersection, remember – is really cool. Apparently it has been around for a little more than a year and already there are quite a few really cool posts. How to use cellular automaton to generate caves in video games and facial recognition through Eigenvalues are amazingly in depth, and show the theory behind some really cool techniques. Very, very cool.

Troll Physics: now wireless!

Remember [Fredzislaw100], the guy who puzzled the Internet with impossible circuits? He’s back again, this time with wireless LEDs. We’re guessing something similar to an induction charging system in the battery clip, wirelessly coupled to something under the paper, and that is wirelessly coupled to the LEDs. Your guess will probably be better than ours, though.

Not shown: Captain Obvious, Major Major

Pv2 [Zachary Ricks] of the U.S. Army thought we would get a kick out of the last name of one of the guys in his company. Yes, it’s ‘Hackaday,’ and yes, it’s a real surname. Here’s the full pic [Zach] sent in. Apparently it’s a name along the lines of ‘Holiday.’ Honestly, we had no idea this was a real surname, but we’re thinking Private Hackaday could use a care package or two (dozen).

Anyone up for sending a few hacker friendly (for [Zach] and a few other guys) care packages? Even socks or books or Oreos would make for an awesome care package. Email me if you want the mailing address.

Hackaday Links: July 20, 2012

July 20, 2012 by 13 Comments

Hey, it’s the 43rd anniversary of men first walking on the moon. Here’s some stuff we found to celebrate that. Fun trivia: for Apollo 11, [Neil] and [Buzz] didn’t go more than 200 feet from the LEM.

This is so incredibly sad

Remember Heathkit? A lot of cool kit-based electronics came from them. They’re out of business, but you can get all the Heathkit swag you can imagine from the repo man. A ton of stuff from the old Heathkit headquarters is being auctioned off in Byron Center, Michigan this Tuesday, July 24. Notable lots include a HE-Robot and a nice pair of o’scopes. If someone wants to pick up one of the catalog lots for us, we’d be thankful.

Troll Physics: ‘What is with this guy’ edition

We’ve seen [Fredzislaw]’s LED trickery before. The first time was a crazy 3 LED circuit, the reveal of which showed two AC power supplies in a battery connector. This time, [Fred] has two switches and an LED. Turn one switch on, the LED lights up. Turn that switch off and flip the other one, the LED still lights up. Turn both switches on, the LED goes off. Your guess is as good as ours.

Prototyping with a key fob remote

[Gary] wrote in to tell us about the dev board he’s been working on. It has either a PIC or AVR on the back side, broken out into 0.1 inch headers on the front. There’s a small solderless breadboard and an on-board RF link that uses a five-button key fob remote. Seems very useful, no matter what side of the PIC/AVR holy war you’re on.

Consumer Alerts: Software defined radio

Over on the RTLSDR subreddit, [photoscotty] bought this TV tuner dongle from Deal Extreme and received the inferior EZTV645 tuner. Unsurprisingly, Chinese manufacturers will just grab whatever is available, put it in an envelope, and ship it off on a slow boat from China. [photoscotty] is trying to return his dongle to DX, but until Sparkfun or Adafruit start selling these things (yes, there’s a market now get on it) you’ll have to be careful out there.

Wouldn’t this feel terrible against your skin all day?

[Colin] printed a watch band on his Makerbot. Apparently Shenzhen humidity didn’t play nicely with his nylon strap, so [Colin] made his own out of plastic. It’s flexible and has a neat looking clasp, as well as an awesome demo for what a 3D printer can actually do. Thingiverse files here.

Ask Hackaday: Troll Physics Super Deluxe Edition

May 27, 2012 by 16 Comments

Here’s a brain bender for you: YouTube user [Fredzislaw100] put up a video of six LEDs and six switches wired up in series. After soldering a resistor and 9V battery connector, the first switch turns on the first LED, the second switch turns on the second LED, and so on for the rest of the circuit.

We’ve seen this trick before from [Fredzislaw100], only this time he’s moved up from 3 LEDs to 6. In the reveal of the previous trick, [Fredzislaw] built two AC power supplies inside a nine volt battery connector; one high frequency and one low frequency. The low frequency AC line powers the first two LEDs with the help of diodes in the switches and LEDs. The high frequency AC line turns on the third LED with the help of an inductor inside an LED. Apparently [Fredzislaw] still has some soldering skills to show off; the circuit powering this trick is most likely the work of a soldering god.

From a close viewing, it looks like LEDs are wired up in pairs, i.e. LED 1 works the same as LED 2, LED 3 works the same as LED 4, etc. We’ll let Hackaday readers argue it out in the comments as to how this trick is possible.

Tip ‘o the hat to [Th0m4S] for sending this one in.

Followup: Troll Physics Solved

January 27, 2012 by 48 Comments

A month ago, we saw a marvelous demonstration of troll physics from YouTube user [Fredzislaw100]. In his video, we saw a circuit of three switches and three LEDs wired in series and but not acting like the should. A lot of the comments for this post elicited reasonable explanations like modifying the battery or pure camera wizardry via After Effects. Thankfully, [Alan] stepped in and showed us how it was done. The solution uses two AC power sources with diodes in two of the switches and LEDs and inductors in the third pair. [Alan]’s build was rather large compared to the original video, so we were wondering how this circuit could be made invisible.

[Fredzislaw100] just posted a video on how he did it. Like [Alan]’s build, it uses two AC power sources, diodes, and inductors. In contrast to every single guess about where the circuit is hidden, the majority of the build is inside the battery connector. [Fredzislaw] did some amazing work hiding a 74LV132 quad NAND Schmitt trigger inside the battery connector. The diodes were easily hidden on LEDs 1 and 3 with some red nail polish, but we’re amazed by the inductor built into the LED seen in the title pic.

So there you go. With a ton of electronics know-how and an extremely steady hand (and a microscope), you too can build your own troll circuit. Check out the video after the break.

Continue reading “Followup: Troll Physics Solved” →

Followup: Reproducing Impossible Circuits

January 6, 2012 by 43 Comments

Last month we caught wind of an impressive display of troll physics. [Fredzislaw100] out of Poland posted a video of a circuit that should not exist. As expected, the comments in our coverage blew up with 200 posts. About half the commenters called a little Adobe After Effects trickery, while the other half offered up an electrical explanation. We’re happy to report that [Alan] successfully reproduced the impossible circuit and earned an incredible amount of electronic wizard points in the process.

[Alan]’s solution uses low-frequency AC with the first two LEDs. The first LED points forwards and the second diode is reversed. Easy enough. For the third LED, [Alan] used high frequency AC with an inductor wired in parallel with the LED and the third switch. For those of you keeping track, that means [Fredzislaw100] put an SMD diode in two LEDs and two switches and an inductor in one LED and one switch.

[Alan]’s build is just a proof of concept – It’s still on a breadboard and doesn’t have the incredible level of polish that [Fredzislaw100]’s has. That being said, [Alan]’s build is most likely very similar given the small glitch at 2:05 in the original video.

Check out [Alan]’s build video below, and for an added treat check out his 2011 Advent Calendar of Circuits.

Continue reading “Followup: Reproducing Impossible Circuits” →