Hackaday Links: March 20, 2022

March 20, 2022 by Dan Maloney 5 Comments

Well, that de-escalated quickly! It was less than a week ago that the city of Shenzhen, China was put on lockdown due to a resurgence of COVID-19 in the world’s electronics manufacturing epicenter. This obviously caused no small amount of alarm up and down the electronics supply chain, promising to once again upset manufacturers seeking everything from PCBs to components to complete electronic assemblies. But just a few days later, the Chinese government announced that the Shenzhen lockdown was over. At least partially, that is — factories and public transportation have been reopened in five of the city’s districts, with iPhone maker Foxconn, one of the bigger players in Shenzhen, given the green light to partially reopen. What does this mean for hobbyists’ ability to get cheap PCBs made quickly? That’s hard to say, at least at this point. Please feel free to share your experiences with any supply chain disruptions in the comments below.

Better news from a million miles away, as NASA announced that the James Webb Space Telescope finished the first part of its complex mirror alignment procedure. The process, which uses the complex actuators built into each of the 18 hexagonal mirror segments, slightly moves each mirror to align them all into one virtual optical surface. The result is not only the stunning “selfie” images we’ve been seeing, but also a beautiful picture of the star Webb has been focusing on as a target. The video below explains the process in some detail, along with sharing that the next step is to move the mirrors in and out, or “piston” them, so that the 18 separate wavefronts all align to send light to the instruments in perfect phase. Talk about precision!

Is a bog-standard Raspberry Pi just not tough enough for your application? Do you need to run DOOM on a platform that can take a few g of vibration and still keep working? Sick of your Pi-based weather station breaking own when it gets a little wet or too hot? Then you’ll want to take a look at the DuraCOR Pi, a ruggedized chassis containing a Pi CM4 that’s built for extreme environments. The machine is in a tiny IP67-rated case and built to MIL-STD specs with regard to vibration, temperature, humidity, and EMI conditions. This doesn’t really seem like something aimed at the hobbyist market — it’s marketed by Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions, a defense contractor that traces its roots all the way back to a couple of bicycle mechanics from Ohio that learned how to fly. So this Pi is probably more like something you’d spec if you were building a UAV or something like that. Still, it’s cool to know such things are out there.

BrainLubeOnline has a fun collection of X-rays. With the exception of a mouse — the other kind — everything is either electronic or mechanical, which makes for really interesting pictures. Seeing the teeth on a gear or the threads on a screw, and seeing right through the object, shows the mechanical world in a whole new light — literally.

And finally, would you buy a car that prevents you from opening the hood? Most of us probably wouldn’t, but then again, most of us probably wouldn’t buy a Mercedes EQS 580 electric sedan. Sarah from Sarah -n- Tuned on YouTube somehow got a hold of one of these babies, which she aptly describes as a “German spaceship,” and took it for a test drive, including a “full beans” acceleration test. Just after that neck-snapping ride, at about the 7:20 mark in the video below, she asks the car’s built-in assistant to open the hood, a request the car refused by saying, “The hood may only be opened by a specialist workshop.” Sarah managed to get it open anyway, and it’s not a frunk — it’s home to one of the two motors that power the car, along with all kinds of other goodies.

Vintage Meter Repair? It’s Easier With X-Rays

March 6, 2022 by Donald Papp 18 Comments

Here’s an interesting and detailed teardown and repair of a Keithley 2001 7.5 Digit multimeter that is positively dripping with detail. It’s also not every day that we get to see someone using x-ray imaging to evaluate the extent of PCB damage caused by failed electrolytic capacitors.

Dark area is evidence of damage in the multi-layer PCB.

Sadly, this particular model is especially subject to that exact vintage electronics issue: electrolytic capacitor failure and leakage. These failures can lead to destroyed traces, and this particular unit had a number of them (in addition to a few destroyed diodes, just for good measure.) That’s where the x-ray machine comes in handy, because some of the damage is hidden inside the multi-layer PCBs.

[Shahriar], perhaps best known as [The Signal Path], narrates the entire process of fixing up the high-quality benchtop multimeter in a video, embedded below (or you can skip directly to the x-ray machine being broken out.) [Shahriar] was able to repair the device, thanks in part to it being in relatively good shape, and having the right tools available. Older electronics are not always so cooperative; the older a device is, the more likely one is to run into physical and logical standards that no longer exist.

Continue reading “Vintage Meter Repair? It’s Easier With X-Rays” →

DIY X-Ray Machine Becomes CT Scanner

February 20, 2019 by Ted Yapo 16 Comments

Once you’ve built your own X-ray machine to take 2D images of the insides of stuff, there’s really only one logical next step: building your own computed tomography (CT) scanner to get 3D reconstructions instead. That’s exactly what [Fran Piernas] has done, and documented over on hackaday.io. While the original X-ray machine build dealt with scary hardware stuff such as high voltage and ionizing radiation, this time it’s the turn of scary mathematics like inverse radon transforms.

The original build, which we wrote about in December, uses a commercial dental X-ray tube and a home-made 65 kV power supply to send X-rays through objects. Transmitted X-rays are viewed using an intensifying screen that converts the rays to visible light. The result is a 2D image similar to that we’re all familiar with.

To create a 3D reconstruction of an object, you need a number of X-ray images taken from different angles. If you’ve ever been unlucky enough to need a medical CT scan, you’ll remember staying motionless in the tunnel while the X-ray apparatus rotated around you. In this build, [Fran] rotates the object instead, using a motor that may have once been part of a microwave oven (one of those “mystery motors” we all have laying around). The required sequence of images is simply obtained by recording video of the X-ray screen while the motor rotates the object.

Continue reading “DIY X-Ray Machine Becomes CT Scanner” →

X-Rays And High Voltage Hack Chat

February 18, 2019 by Dan Maloney 16 Comments

Join us on Wednesday at noon Pacific time for the X-rays and high-voltage Hack Chat!

Fran Piernas likes to push the envelope a bit with projects that others might shy away from. A quick glance at his Hackaday.io profile reveals a few of the exciting projects he’s been working on recently, including a DIY X-ray machine and the high-voltage driver needed to run it. Not only that, he’s recently taken his home-brew X-ray rig to the next level – a computed tomography (CT) scanner. His YouTube channel also has some exciting stuff using potentially lethal voltages and ionizing radiation.

Please join us for this Hack Chat, in which we’ll cover:

How one safely works with high voltage and ionizing radiation;
Sourcing uncommon components like X-ray tubes;
How Fran decided to start playing at the edge of the danger zone; and
What sort of experiments he has in mind for the future.

You are, of course, encouraged to add your own questions to the discussion. You can do that by leaving a comment on the X-rays and high-voltage Hack Chat and we’ll put that in the queue for the Hack Chat discussion.

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, February 20, at noon, Pacific time. If time zones have got you down, we have a handy time zone converter.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.