ESP32 Clock Pushes Outrun Graphics Over Composite

October 19, 2021 by Tom Nardi 24 Comments

We’ve covered plenty of clocks powered by the ESP32, but this one from [Marcio Teixeira] is really something special. Rather than driving a traditional physical display, the microcontroller is instead generating a composite video signal of an animated digital clock. This could be fed into whatever device you wish, but given the 80’s synthwave style it’s pumping out, you’ll probably want to find a suitably retro CRT to do it justice.

Specifically this is a variant of the “Dali” clock, where each digit seems to melt and morph into its successor. Though his version doesn’t necessarily share code with all the previous iterations, [Marcio] does credit the developers who have pulled off similar visual tricks going all the way back to 1979. Given the vintage of this particular animation, the neon skyline and infinite scrolling grid certainly feel like a perfect fit.

Want to add a little vaporwave vibe to your own workbench? Assuming you’ve already got a 80s style CRT, all you need is an ESP32 and two wires stuck into the composite video port. One goes to ground, and the other goes to the chip’s analog pin. Once everything is powered up, you’ll be able to configure the clock with a web-based interface. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

In the documentation, [Marcio] calls out a few open source projects which were instrumental to getting his clock off the ground. The pioneering work [bitluni] did to get video out of the ESP32 is something of a given, but he also sends a hat tip to [rossumur] for his collection of 8-bit game console emulators written for the microcontroller. Projects like this are a fantastic example of what’s possible when a community works together to truly push the envelope.

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Scanimate Analog Video Synths Produced Oceans Of Motion Graphics

March 31, 2021 by Kristina Panos 21 Comments

Why doesn’t this kind of stuff ever happen to us? One lucky day back in high school, [Dave Sieg] stumbled upon a room full of new equipment and a guy standing there scratching his head. [Dave]’s curiosity about this fledgling television studio was rewarded when that guy asked [Dave] if he wanted to help set it up. From that point on, [Dave] had the video bug. The rest is analog television history.

Today, [Dave] is the proud owner and maintainer of two Scanimate machines — the first R&D prototype, and the last one of only eight ever produced. The Scanimate is essentially an analog synthesizer for video signals, and they made it possible to move words and pictures around on a screen much more easily than ever before. Any animated logo or graphics seen on TV from the mid-1970s to the mid-80s was likely done with one of these huge machines, and we would jump quite high at the chance to fiddle with one of them.

Analog television signals were continuously variable, and much like an analog music synthesizer, the changes imposed on the signal are immediately discernible. In the first video below, [Dave] introduces the Scanimate and plays around with the Viceland logo a bit.

Stick around for the second and third videos where he superimposes the Scanimate’s output on to the video he’s making, all the while twiddling knobs to add oscillators and thoroughly explaining what’s going on. If you’ve ever played around with Lissajous patterns on an oscilloscope, you’ll really have a feel for what’s happening here. In the fourth video, [Dave] dives deeper and dissects the analog circuits that make up this fantastic piece of equipment.

Here’s another way to play with scan lines: delay the output to some of them and you have a simple scrambler.

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Shocking Tinnitus Therapy Is Music To Sufferers’ Ears

October 16, 2020 by Kristina Panos 67 Comments

Do you suffer from tinnitus? We were surprised to learn that 15-20% of people have this condition that amounts to constant ringing in the ears. Science doesn’t fully understand the ringing part, but one possible explanation is that the brain is compensating for the frequencies it can’t hear any more.

[Hubert Lim], a biomedical engineer at the University of Minnesota discovered that the brain can be stimulated to the point of suppressing tinnitus for as long as one year. [Lim] discovered this by accident while doing deep brain stimulation on a patient with tinnitus. The electrode strayed a bit, touching other areas of the brain and the patient suddenly exclaimed that they couldn’t hear their tinnitus anymore.

Then [Lim] and his team tested guinea pigs, searching here, there, and under the armpits for the best place to suppress tinnitus. As it turns out, the tongue is one of the best places when used along with a specific soundscape. So then they did a human trial with 326 people. Each person had a small paddle electrode on their tongue and headphones on their ears.

As the electrodes sparkled like Pop Rocks against their tongues, the trial participants listened to pure frequencies played over a background of sound resembling vaporwave music. The combination of the two overstimulates the brain, forcing it to suppress the tinnitus reaction. This discovery certainly seems like a game changer for tinnitus sufferers. If we had tinnitus, we would be first in line to try this out given the chance. Armed with the soundscape, we’re left to wonder how many 9V batteries we’d have to lick to approximate the paddle.

Speaking of taste, have you ever experienced all five at once? Here’s a device that simulates them all.

Hackaday Links: December 16, 2018

December 16, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 12 Comments

Microsoft is really leaning into vaporwave these days. Microsoft is giving away knit Windows sweaters to social media influencers. Is it for an ugly sweater contest? Maybe, or maybe Microsoft is capitalizing on the mid-90s ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣ. Recently, Apple got back in their 90s logo game with the release of a few ‘rainbow Apple’ t-shirts. The spirit of the 90s lives on in tech culture.

Have a Hackerspace? Frack is organizing the great Inter-hackerspaces Xmas goodies swap! Since your hackerspace is filled with weird ephemera and random crap, why not box it up and send it out to another hackerspace? You’ll probably get another random box of crap in return!

Just an observation looking for commentary, but is Thingiverse slow these days? It seems really, really, really slow these days.

The Blockchain makes it to the Apple II! By far, the most interesting thing in tech right now is the blockchain, with AI, at the edge. This will get your Merkle trees tinglin’ with some AI, and 5G is where it’s at. We’re back with cylinder computing this time, and this is the greatest achievement that will synthesize brand new paradigms. Of course, if it weren’t for millennials, we’d have it already.

There’s a new portable console out there, and it’s at the top of everyone’s Christmas lists. The SouljaGame Handheld is a rebrand of what’s available on AliExpress. What makes this one different? It has Soulja Boy’s name on it. If you couldn’t get your hands on the SouljaGame Handheld, don’t worry: Post Malone Crocs are available on eBay for about $300.

Hackaday Links: September 11, 2016

September 11, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 13 Comments

You know about the Hackaday Superconference, right? It’s the greatest hardware con ever, and it’s happening on November 5+6. Details incoming shortly.

The Hackaday Retro Edition exists. It’s the Hackaday blog, HTML-1-izized for weird and old computers? Why did I do this? Because Google is the quickest page to load on a Powerbook 180. There’s a new Retro Success, this time coming from @LeSpocky and his Nokia 3109c phone from 2008.

This is your official notice. The Open Hardware Summit is less than a month away. It’s going down in Portland, OR. Why Portland? The Ｖａｐｏｒｗａｖｅscene, of course. Hackaday, Tindie, and the rest of the crew will be out in Portland next month getting the latest news on the state of Open Hardware. We won’t be sitting in church pews this year, but then again there is no lady made out of soap.

Speaking of OHS, [Dave] just solved all their problems. The ‘problem’ with Open Hardware, if you can call it that, is that people use it as a bullet point on a sales deck. That neat gear logo can be marketing wank, without any of the sources, schematics, or anything else that makes a project Open Hardware. Last year, OSHWA announced they would be creating a certification process, with a trademarked logo, so they can sue people who don’t post schematics and mechanical designs (slightly inaccurate, but that’s the jist of the program). [Dave] is suggesting keeping the cool gear logo, but adding letters the teeth of the gear to designate what makes something Open Hardware. Add an S for schematic, add a B for a BOM, sort of like the creative commons logo/license. Is it a good idea? If OSHWA keeps using the gear logo for the ‘official’ Open Hardware logo/designation, there’s no recourse for when people misuse it. I’m of several minds.

[Colin Furze] is famous for his zany builds. His latest Youtube is anything but. It’s a shed. Of course, it’s the entry for his underground bunker, but this is a quality shed with a concrete pad, a few bits to keep it off the ground, and insulation. The roof is slate (because why not?), but if your design decisions are based on the phrase, ‘you only live once,’ copper may be a better choice.

The ESP32 has been released. The ESP32 is the follow-on to the very popular ESP8266. The ’32 features WiFi and Bluetooth, dual core processors, and a few undisclosed things that will make it very interesting. You can buy ESP32 modules right now, but no one has them on their workbench quite yet. To get you started when they finally arrive, [Adam] created an ESP32 KiCad Library for the ESP32 chip, and the ESP32-WROOM and ESP3212 modules.