Just like the garage computer explosion of the 70’s through the 80’s, which brought us such things as Apple, pong, Bill Gate’s hair, and the proliferation of personal computers, the maker movement is the new garage hardware explosion. Today, 135 million adults in the United States alone are involved in the maker movement.
Enthusiasts who want to build the products they want, from shortwave radios to personal computers, and to tweak products they’ve bought to make them even better, have long been a part of the electronics industry. By all measures, garage-style innovation remains alive and well today, as “makers” as they are called continue to turn out contemporary gadgets, including 3D printers, drones, and embedded electronics devices.
Making is about individual Do-It-Yourselfers being able to design and create with tools that were, as of a decade or two ago, only available to large, cash-rich corporations: CAD tools, CNC mills, 3D printers, low-quantity PCB manufacturing, open hardware such as Arduinos and similar inexpensive development boards – all items that have made it easier and relatively cheap to make whatever we imagine. For individuals, maker tools can change how someone views their home or their hobbies. The world is ours to make. Humans are genetically wired to be makers. The maker movement is simply the result of making powerful building and communication tools accessible to the masses. There are plenty of projects from makers that show good engineering: Take this Arduino board with tremendous potential, developed by a young maker, as example.
The maker movement is a catalyst to democratize entrepreneurship as these do-it-yourself electronics are proving to be hot sellers: In the past year, unit sales for 3D printing related products; Arduino units, parts and supplies; Raspberry Pi boards; drones and quadcopters; and robotics goods are all on a growth curve in terms of eBay sales. There are many Kickstarter maker projects going on. The Pebble E-Paper Watch raises $10 million. The LIFX smartphone-controlled LED bulb raises $1.3 million. What do these products have in common? They both secured funding through Kickstarter, a crowd-funding website that is changing the game for entrepreneurs. Both products were created by makers who seek to commercialize their inventions. These “startup makers” iterate on prototypes with high-end tools at professional makerspaces.
For companies to remain competitive, they need to embrace the maker movement or leave themselves open for disruption. Researchers found that 96 percent of business leaders believe new technologies have forever changed the rules of business by democratizing information and rewiring customer expectations. - You’ve got to figure out agile innovation. Maybe history is repeating itself as the types of products being sold reminded us of the computer tinkering that used to be happening in the 1970s to 1990s – similar in terms of demographics, tending to be young people, and low budget. Now the do-it-yourself category is deeply intertwined with the electronics industry. Open hardware is in the center in maker movement – we need open hardware designs! How can you publish your designs and still do business with it? Open source ecosystem markets behave differently and therefore require a very different playbook than traditional tech company: the differentiation is not in the technology you build; it is in the process and expertise that you slowly amass over an extended period of time.
By democratizing the product development process, helping these developments get to market, and transforming the way we educate the next generation of innovators, we will usher in the next industrial revolution. The world is ours to make. Earlier the PC created a new generation of software developers who could innovate in the digital world without the limitations of the physical world (virtually no marginal cost, software has become the great equalizer for innovation. Now advances in 3D printing and low-cost microcontrollers as well as the ubiquity of advanced sensors are enabling makers to bridge software with the physical world. Furthermore, the proliferation of wireless connectivity and cloud computing is helping makers contribute to the Internet of Things (IoT). We’re even beginning to see maker designs and devices entering those markets once thought to be off-limits, like medical.
Image source: The world is ours to make: The impact of the maker movement – EDN Magazine
In fact, many parents have engaged in the maker movement with their kids because they know that the education system is not adequately preparing their children for the 21st century. There is a strong movement to spread this DIY idea widely. The Maker Faire, which launched in the Bay Area in California in 2006, underlined the popularity of the movement by drawing a record 215,000 people combined in the Bay Area and New York events in 2014. There’s Maker Media, MakerCon, MakerShed, Make: magazine and 131 Maker Faire events that take place throughout the world. Now the founders of all these Makers want a way to connect what they refer to as the “maker movement” online. So Maker Media created a social network called MakerSpace, a Facebook-like social network that connects participants of Maker Faire in one online community. The new site will allow participants of the event to display their work online. There are many other similar sites that allow yout to present yout work fron Hackaday to your own blog. Today, 135 million adults in the United States alone are involved in the maker movement—although makers can be found everywhere in the world.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Let’s Make Life A Little Better
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/22/lets-make-life-a-little-better/
Chances are you’ve spent a lot of time trying to think of the next great project to hit your workbench. We’ve all built up a set of tools, honed our skills, and set aside some time to toil away in the workshop. This is all for naught without a really great project idea. The best place to look for this idea is where it can make life a little better.
I’m talking about Assistive Technologies which directly benefit people. Using your time and talent to help make lives better is a noble pursuit and the topic of the 2016 Hackaday Prize challenge that began this morning.
Assistive Technology is a vast topic and there is a ton of low-hanging fruit waiting to be discovered. Included in the Assistive Technology ecosystem are prosthetics, mobility, diagnostics for chronic diseases, devices for the aging or elderly and their caregivers, and much more. You can have a big impact by working on your prototype device, either directly through making lives better and by inspiring others to build on your effort.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Prints for Teachers of the Visually Impaired
https://hackaday.io/project/11312-3d-prints-for-teachers-of-the-visually-impaired
Visually impaired students can make great use of 3D prints to learn just about any subject, but their teachers need help making good models.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Retro-futuristic automobile control panel
https://hackaday.io/project/10579-retro-futuristic-automobile-control-panel
Conversion of dashboard from an old, Communist clone of the French Renault 12 (Dacia 1310)
Tomi Engdahl says:
ODrive – High performance motor control
https://hackaday.io/project/11583-odrive-high-performance-motor-control
Hobby brushless motors are incredibly cheap and powerful. However we need a way to make robots out of them. ODrive is that way.
Stepper motors are ubiquitous in hobby robotics projects: If you make a robotics or automation project today, it is very likely you will use them. Almost all DIY projects from 3D printers and CNC mills, to other kinds of projects like air hockey robots, use them. However in industrial automation, brushless servomotors have taken over, and it’s clear why: They don’t lose steps, are much more powerful, efficient, and silent.
However, brushless motors are not unique to expensive industrial automation equipment. In fact, you can get some very powerful and cheap motors at hobby shops. The electronics to drive these motors are also dirt cheap. So how come virtually no non-industrial automation systems use them?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Solar Powered Garden Irrigation System
Minimal effort Solar powered wireless controlled automatic watering
https://hackaday.io/project/10785-solar-powered-garden-irrigation-system
The. aim of this Project is to design and build a Garden Irrigation Syatem incorporating PCBs using low powered SMD components to control the Zone Solenoids thus permitting wireless control of watering periods with limited water pressure from an external Pump Unit fed from a Waterbutt. The Project, initially submitted at the Concept Stage, now covers multiple Raised Beds.
Let’s be clear from the beginning. This will not be a particularly innovative Project and it won’t result in a ‘cheap and cheerful’ watering aid. You can’t produce a waterproof reliable Product without some relatively expensive parts. This Project is about (hopefully) demonstrating that it’s never too late to learn new skills and apply them to a practical requirement that will help people whose physical health precludes using simpler, albeit less costly, solutions.
Open-source, lower cost and expandability are key features that will diffentiate this Unit from most commerciall
Decisions are now close and currently I’m conducting tests using MQTT with a RaspberyPi as a ‘Broker’ and the target ESP8266 Solenoid Controllers as Clients/Servers. Once I have concluded these tests I shall look at redesigning the original PCB to conform t a modified form factor to fit my selected housing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Detecting Motion With AC/Static Electricity
https://hackaday.io/project/11982-detecting-motion-with-acstatic-electricity
Using only a single wire to increase sensitivity, an Arduino’s ADC can be used to detect motion!
I’ve developed a library called Buzz to add simple motion detection to projects using just a 6-12″ wire connected to an Arduino’s ADC pin!
By monitoring the amplitude of AC electricity waveforms in the air for changes caused by the passing of statically charged objects, (people, animal, blankets, etc.) Buzz provides motion detection using only a wire! It’s extremely easy to implement, and a perfect library for all experience levels.
The Buzz library is just for experimental use only, and is not intended for providing a home/business security solution.
Due to the ATMega328p’s ADC being very high impedance, it can easily detect the AC electricity waves that leak into the air via open outlets, bad shielding, and more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Compact ePaper Business Card
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/23/compact-epaper-business-card/
Is your business card flashy? Is it useful in a pinch? Do they cost $32 each and come with an ePaper display? No? Well, then feast your eyes on this over-the-top business card with an ePaper display by [Paul Schow]. Looking to keep busy and challenge himself with a low-power circuit in a small package, he set about making a business card that can be updated every couple of months instead of buying a new stack whenever he updated his information.
designed the board in KiCad over a few hours after cutting it down to simply the power control,
Epaper Business Card
http://www.paulschow.com/2016/08/epaper-business-card.html
I decided on a few things that I wanted my design to have:
Epaper display
Size of a business card
No on/off switch
Components only on the back of the board
All surface mount components
Powered by a thin coin cell battery
Press button to switch between two images
I did have some time to mess around with Pervasive Displays ePaper and discovered they have extensive open documentation, software, and hardware at their RePaper website.
More specifically, they have examples for the TI Energia Launchpad platform. This platform is great because you can use almost Arduino code with the TI MSP430 line of microcontrollers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
[Limpkin’s] new business card
http://hackaday.com/2012/10/04/limpkins-new-business-card/
[Limpkin] decided to give the whole embedded business card thing a try. Here is his finished project, a low-profile mass storage business card that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. Sure, the $6 price tag could score him a hundred paper cards, but those don’t light up like this one does!
http://www.limpkin.fr/index.php?post/2012/09/15/My-new-business-card
Tomi Engdahl says:
An Engineer’s Emergency Business Card
http://hackaday.com/2013/12/02/an-engineers-emergency-business-card/
http://boldport.blogspot.fi/2013/11/an-engineers-emergency-kit-business-card.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Grain-Of-Light LED LIGHT
https://hackaday.io/project/5194-grain-of-light-led-light
Designing a beautiful light with a vintage and authentic feel. Integrating technological intelligence with old school elegance.
Shining the spectrum of light through the grain of wood.
Designing a beautiful light with a vintage and authentic feel. Integrating technological intelligence with old school elegance; this will be a high performance and functional device with charming style.
This light will be a quality device for the human to use in all activities.
I will be incorporating smart circuitry to allow for a sweet mix of battery life, lumen output, CRI, weight, rechargeable battery life, user friendliness and all of this with charming style.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Charliplexed 7-Segment Display Takes Advantage of PCB Manufacturers
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/23/charliplexed-7-segment-display-takes-advantage-of-pcb-manufacturers/
Cutting out precise shapes requires a steady hand, a laser cutter, or a CNC mill, right? Nope! All you need is PCB design software and a fabrication facility that’ll do the milling for you. That’s the secret sauce in [bobricius]’s very pleasing seven-segment display design.
4 digit charlieplexed segment display
ultra thin custom display … only 6 gpio for 30 leds
https://hackaday.io/project/10280-4-digit-charlieplexed-segment-display
Tomi Engdahl says:
All About Biosignals
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/23/all-about-biosignals/
DIY medical science is fun stuff. One can ferret out many of the electrical signals that make the body run with surprisingly accessible components and simple builds. While the medical community predictably dwells on the healthcare uses of such information, the hacker is free to do whatever he or she wants.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rainy Day Fun by Calculating Pi
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/24/rainy-day-fun-by-calculating-pi/
If you need a truly random event generator, just wait till your next rainstorm. Whether any given spot on the ground is hit by a drop at a particular time is anyone’s guess, and such randomness is key to this simple rig that estimates the value of pi using raindrop sensors.
RainPi – Calculate Pi with Raindrops!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-BC_vI4CAE
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: A Printer For Alternative Photography
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/24/hackaday-prize-entry-a-printer-for-alternative-photography/
Film photography began with a mercury-silver amalgam, and ended with strips of nitrocellulose, silver iodide, and dyes. Along the way, there were some very odd chemistries going on in the world of photography, from ferric and silver salts to the prussian blue found in Cyanotypes and blueprints.
Metal salts are fun, and for his Hackaday Prize entry, [David Brown] is building a printer for these alternative photographic processes. It’s not a dark room — it’s a laser printer designed to reproduce images with weird, strange chemistries.
Direct UV Printer for Alternative Photography
https://hackaday.io/project/10101-direct-uv-printer-for-alternative-photography
Design of a UV printer for making exposures of Alternative Photography prints, direct from a digital image
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vale, LOGO creator Seymour Papert, who taught us that code can be creative play
Arduino-fiddling kids, and the rest of us, owe Papert a debt of gratitude
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/25/vale_logo_creator_seymour_papert_who_taught_us_that_code_can_be_creative_play/
Back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and I was a kid, I received the gift of a “100-in-1 Electronics Kit” that taught me the basics of electrical circuit design as I strung pre-cut wires between springy posts. At the very centre of this kit – its beating heart – a single transistor could be wired to work in an amplifier, or AM radio, or tone generator.
All of these projects, detailed in the accompanying instructional guide, really only served to whet my appetite. I quickly ditched that book because I’d learned enough to be dangerous and try wiring my own circuits.
A lot of these self-designed projects never worked. But that didn’t matter, because every failure taught me something else: current can only flow this way through the diode; DC won’t flow across a capacitor and; you can make the transistor very hot if you connect it directly to a 9V battery.
Those hours of experiments left me with a lifelong passion for electronics, and I still enjoy assembling a circuit on a breadboard.
Just over a decade ago some clever folks in Italy put together the Arduino, a credit-card sized board powered via USB and programmed with an IDE that borrows a lot from Processing, a programming language designed to make it easy to write interactive applications. As soon as I heard about Arduino, I ordered one, and not very long after Arduino number 435 arrived, I had it blinking an LED – the ‘Hello, World’ of hardware.
Over the last decade probably two million Arduinos have been manufactured – the actual total is unknowable because they released their designs as open source, leading to a range of Arduino clones.
If there’s a device that can talk to a computer, chances are that someone has figured out how to connect it to an Arduino, written the code to control it, then blogged both the circuit design and the code. It’s gotten to the point where – most of the time – you simply need to Google ‘How to connect $THING to Arduino’ to find detailed instructions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arduino Versus Logic: The Coil Gun War Continues
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/25/arduino-versus-logic-the-coil-gun-war-continues/
On GreatScott’s Arduino vs common IC’s comparison
https://fedetft.wordpress.com/2016/08/23/on-greatscotts-arduino-vs-common-ics-comparison/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Seeed Studio’s ReSpeaker Speaks All the Voice Recognition Languages
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/25/seeed-studios-respeaker-speaks-all-the-voice-recognition-languages/
Seeed Studio recently launched its third Kickstarter campaign: ReSpeaker, an open hardware voice interface. After their previous Kickstarted IoT hardware, such as the RePhone, mostly focused on connectivity, the electronics manufacturer from Shenzhen now tackles another highly contested area of IoT: Voice recognition.
The ReSpeaker Core is a capable development board based on Mediatek’s MT7688 WiFi module and runs OpenWrt. Onboard is a WM8960 stereo audio codec with integrated 1W speaker/headphone driver, a microphone, an ATMega32U4 coprocessor, 12 addressable RGB LEDs and 8 touch sensors. There are also two expansion headers with GPIOs, I2S, I2C, analog audio and USB 2.0 and an onboard microSD card slot.
The latter is especially useful to feed the ReSpeaker’s integrated speech recognition engine PocketSphinx with a vocabulary and audio file library, enabling it to respond to keywords and commands even when it’s not hooked up to the internet. Once it’s online, ReSpeaker also supports most of the available cloud based cognitive speech recognition services, such as Microsoft Cognitive Service, Amazon Alexa Voice Service, Google Speech API, Wit.ai and Houndify. It also comes with an SDK and Python API, supports JavaScript, Lua and C/C++, and it looks like the coprocessor features an Arduino-compatible bootloader.
The expansion header accepts shield-like hardware add-ons. Some of them are also available through the campaign.
Seeed also cooperates with the Meow King Audio Electronic Company to develop a nice tower-shaped enclosure with built-in speaker, 5W amplifier and battery.
ReSpeaker – Add Voice Interaction To Anything You Like
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/seeed/respeaker-an-open-modular-voice-interface-to-hack
Open Source, Modular design. Voice Interaction Development Board. IoT controller. Interact with the world, just using your voice.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Simple stereo 3-band audio equaliser
I love digital thing but also analogue thing.
https://hackaday.io/project/13299-simple-stereo-3-band-audio-equaliser
The circuit contains 2-ch 3-band equaliser circuit with Lipo battery charing circuit as follows
All of the parts (except for USB terminal and Lipo charger (TP4057) are lead-axial type and soldering is quite easy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DH 4.0 Spectrometer V 4 ( upgrade 2 )
The ZEN of simplicity
https://hackaday.io/project/12335-dh-40-spectrometer-v-4-upgrade-2
The 2016 Hackaday Prize
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David H Haffner Sr
Join this project’s team
plab
hardware
ongoing project
uv-vis Spectroscopy spectrometer dhaffnersr plab homemade electronics electrical-homemade cmos CCD 2016HackadayPrize cmos-web-cam wecam webcam chemistry
This project is submitted for
The 2016 Hackaday Prize
Automation
This project was created on 06/21/2016 and last updated 14 hours ago.
Description
I re-named this project to the DH 4.0 v 4 Spectrometer because I have spent the last 7 months working very hard on modifying and perfecting the original Plab design (so I feel like I should take the credit.) Current specifications for this device are, I have a 1.6nm spectral bandwidth, and the math and plots to prove it, I am using an 8.4G R/W DVD as my diffraction grating (ruling density of 2270 lines per mm) and a 0.12mm acetate film slit.
Measurements between the slit to cmos camera eye are not as important as precise alignment of camera to DVD grating and DVD grating to slit entrance, so with this in mind, the camera is now at 39 deg relative to slit entrance and DVD grating is at same (39 deg) relative to cmos camera eye, for a UV-VIS spectral bandwidth of 1.6nm ( this is due to the camera’s limitations.)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Losing the ability to troubleshoot
http://www.analog-eetimes.com/news/losing-ability-troubleshoot
Scotty Deuty bemoans the lost art of troubleshooting and making do from first principles. He describes the loss as an American problem but perhaps it is just a consequence of advanced functionality born of complexity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Shop-built Inspection Camera Lends Optical Help on a Budget
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/26/shop-built-inspection-camera-lends-optical-help-on-a-budget/
Stereo microscopes and inspection cameras are great additions to your bench, but often command a steep price. So this DIY PCB inspection microscope might be just the thing if you’re looking to roll your own and save a few bucks.
It’s not fancy, and it’s not particularly complex, but [Saulius]’ build does the job, mainly because he thought the requirements through before starting the build.
The camera itself is an off-the-shelf USB unit with a CS mount that allows a wide range of lenses to be fitted. A $20 eBay macro slider allows for fine positioning, and a ring light stolen from a stereo microscope provides shadow-free lighting.
DIY PCB inspection microscope
http://kurokesu.com/main/2016/08/02/diy-pcb-inspection-microscope/
Software recomendation
I tried many software packages to record video from USB camera and/or screen in the past. Some of them were better, some worse and some hopeless. But when I tested Open Broadcaster Software was surprised in a good way. It can record USB video, screen, mix views, has transitions between scenes and on top of that can stream directly to Youtube (or other service) live feed. It was definitely worth mentioning!
https://obsproject.com/
OBS is completely free! Not a dime! There are no subscriptions, no payments at all. OBS is available to everyone, with source code publicly available on github for anyone to help contribute.’
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacklet 122 – Spectrometers
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/27/hacklet-122-spectrometers/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dirt Cheap VR Gun with Tracking for $15 of Added Hardware
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/28/dirt-cheap-vr-gun-with-tracking-for-15-of-added-hardware/
This project is an attempt to develop a VR shooting demo and the associated hardware on a budget, complete with tracking so that the gun can be aimed independent of the user’s view. [matthewhallberg] calls it The Oculus Cardboard Project, named for the combined approach of using a Google Cardboard headset for the VR part, and camera-based object tracking for the gun portion. The game was made in Unity 3D with the Vuforia augmented reality plugin. Not counting a smartphone and Google Cardboard headset, the added parts clocked in at only about $15.
The Oculus Cardboard Project
DIY Virtual Reality Gun For Google Cardboard
http://www.wirebeings.com/virtual-reality-gun.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Digital” sundial: ancient clock gets clever upgrade
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/power-points/4442591/-Digital–sundial–ancient-clock-gets-clever-upgrade?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20160826&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20160826&elqTrackId=4897fd5fedf146a58cabf703a987374a&elq=0b9317b9ee70418299d243612ae97eff&elqaid=33603&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=29376
I am often amazed at the innovative twists that clever engineers devise, regardless of actual benefit or marketability. In parallel with that, I am impressed with how the latest developments in computer-aided design/manufacturing (CAD/CAM) tools are being combined with rapid prototyping (aka 3D printing). This pairing is allowing us to do things which were previously either inconceivable, or impossible to implement even if viable “thought” projects.
Here’s a recent example using a truly ancient measurement device: the sundial. This device roughly indicates the time using position and length of the shadow cast by the center-mounted gnomon as the Sun’s rays pass around it.
When I see this type of innovative idea, I always have three questions:
What prompted the inventor/innovator to think of the idea in the first place?
What tools and techniques (math, physics, machining) did he or she use to translate the idea into the actual design details?
What technology advances enabled those details to become reality?
Each of these three questions leads us to better understand the mind and perspective of the innovative person, and how he or she goes from concept to implementation. That’s what engineers, scientists, and even some artists do: they have an idea and work through its twists and turns.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Contributors to poor air quality and ultimately the health of inhabitants could typically be due to transportation, road traffic, home heating, industrial emissions, and other local anthropic actions are the major emission sources of toxic gases (NOx, O3, CO, SO2, NH3, H2S), volatile organic compounds (benzene, toluene, xylene), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, N2O), particulate matter (PM10, PM2.5, PM1.0 are particles less than 10 micrometers in diameter), aerosol and dust, heavy metals, pollens in the environment. Humans inhaling pollutants for an extended period of time will cause irreversible damage to their health.
Sensor-nodes can be made part of a fixed and/or mobile sensor network as well as attached to streetlights and traffic lights. Each node can transmit the sensing data to a gateway via ZigBee or other low power wireless protocol, and the gateway would then send data to a control center via a wireless network such as GSM. Mapping of urban pollution would be created for further analysis
In the final step, data processing can convert the raw sensing data into individual an Air Quality Index (AQI) for each air-pollutant using the following Equation 1
The AQI numbers range from 0 to 500. The higher the AQI value, the greater the level of the air-pollution, and therefore the greater the health concern to the residents. To put things in perspective, an AQI value of 33 represents very-clean air that contains little or no potential to affect the residents’ health; an AQI value over 150 represents air quality so hazardous and heavily-polluted that just about every inhabitant may experience serious health effects. AQI values at or below 100 are seen as satisfactory.
For the wireless communication, ZigBee/IEEE802.15.4 protocol is sometimes chosen. The wireless sensor networks deployed can also be modules for Global Positioning System/General Packet Radio Service (GPS/GPRS).
Source: http://www.edn.com/design/power-management/4442580/2/Let-s-clear-the-air–analog-and-power-management-of-environmental-sensor-networks
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open Indirect Ophthalmoscope
https://hackaday.io/project/11943-open-indirect-ophthalmoscope
An open-source, ultra-low cost, portable screening device
for retinal diseases
Tomi Engdahl says:
LayerOne 2017
Badge design for http://LayerOne.org 2017 conference
https://hackaday.io/project/13262-layerone-2017
Tomi Engdahl says:
Impressive Junkyard CNC Made From Fancy Garbage
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/30/impressive-junkyard-cnc-made-from-fancy-garbage/
We’ll just come out and say it, [reboots] has friends with nice garbage. Sure, some of us have friends who are desperately trying to, “gift,” us a CRT monitor, hope dropping like a rock into their stomach when they realize they can’t escape the recycling fee. [reboots] has friends who buy other people’s poorly thought out CNC projects and then gift him with the parts.
After dismantling the contraption he found himself with nice US and Japanese made linear motion components. However, he needed a CNC controller to drive it all. So he helped another friend clean out their garage and came away with a FlashCut CNC controller.
The Rabbot
http://reboots.g-cipher.net/rabbot/
An adventure in making a quick-and-dirty CNC router, with minimal financial outlay as a primary design constraint.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Zach Fredin: Take Your Hardware Idea Through Pilot-Scale Production
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTfieGjMSUg
Zach Freeding is helping to teach about how the nervous system works through a set of electronic nodes he designed. They connect together in different ways, mimicking neurons and teaching about their function in a less-abstract way. The project, NeuroBytes, was a finalist for Best Product in the 2015 Hackaday Prize. Zach gave a talk on the process of going from prototype to 100-unit production at the 2015 Hackaday SuperConference. Since then Zach’s company, NeuroTinker, received news that the project has been recommended for an NSF grant.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize: 20 Projects That Are The Height Of Automation
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/29/hackaday-prize-20-projects-that-are-the-height-of-automation/
Automation makes the world go around. Whether it’s replacing elevator attendants with buttons, replacing songwriters with computer algorithms, or giving rovers on Mars the same sense and avoid capability as a Tesla, Automation makes our lives easier and better. Today we’re excited to announce the twenty projects that best demonstrate the possibilities of Automation in the running for the 2016 Hackaday Prize. These projects tackled problems ranging from improving the common stepper motor to flying Lidar around a neighborhood on a gigantic ducted fan.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tricking Duck Hunt to See A Modern LCD TV as CRT
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/30/tricking-duck-hunt-to-see-a-modern-lcd-tv-as-crt/
A must-have peripheral for games consoles of the 1980s and 1990s was the light gun. A lens and photo cell mounted in a gun-like plastic case, the console could calculate where on the screen it was pointing when its trigger was pressed by flashing the screen white and sensing the timing at which the on-screen flying spot triggered the photo cell.
Unfortunately light gun games hail from the era of CRT TVs, they do not work with modern LCDs as my colleague [Will Sweatman] eloquently illustrated late last year. Whereas a CRT displayed the dot on its screen in perfect synchronization with the console output, an LCD captures a whole frame, processes it and displays it in one go. All timing is lost, and the console can no longer sense position.
[Charlie] has attacked this problem with some more recent technology and a bit of lateral thinking, and has successfully brought light gun games back to life.
LCDZapper
https://github.com/charcole/LCDZapper/
Homebrew device for making lightgun games playable on modern LCD TVs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: Coffee Machine Grows In Complexity With No Sign Of Stopping
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/30/hackaday-prize-entry-coffee-machine-grows-in-complexity-with-no-sign-of-stopping/
Coffee machine v2
Automatic Slow Coffee Machine | home information device | music player
https://hackaday.io/project/12688-coffee-machine-v2
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon Dash Button Finds Your Phone
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/31/amazon-dash-button-finds-your-phone/
This scene replays quite often in our house: my wife has misplaced her cell phone so she asks me to call her. But where did I leave my cell phone? And the race is on! Who will find their phone first to call the other?
[Zapta] solves this problem with his Phone Finder. The system comes in two parts: a base station with WiFi that’s also connected to the house’s phone line, and an arbitrary number of Amazon Dash buttons that trigger dialing commands.
[Zapta] presses a Dash button, which connects over WiFi to the base station. The base station recognizes the MAC address of the button, looks up and dials the corresponding missing cell phone. This solves the need-a-phone-to-find-a-phone problem very neatly, and since Dash buttons are dirt cheap they can be scattered liberally around the house. They’re clearly marked “his” and “hers” suggesting a similar domestic dynamic.
https://github.com/zapta/arm/tree/master/phone-finder
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: Open Sip And Puff
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/31/hackaday-prize-entry-open-sip-and-puff/
A sip-and-puff device is an assistive technology used by people who cannot use their hands. Being a quasi-medical device, you can imagine this technology is extremely expensive, incapable of being modified, and basically a black box that can’t do anything except what it was designed for. For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Jason] is building his own sip-and-puff interface that’s cheaper and more capable than the available commercial versions.
Sip-and-puff devices can be mapped to control a wheelchair, click a mouse, or press a key on a keyboard. You can do a lot with USB, so for this open sip-and-puff device, [Jason] is using the ever-popular ATmega32U4 microcontroller.
openSip+Puff
https://hackaday.io/project/12959-opensippuff
Low-cost, open-source “sip-and-puff” interface to enable new methods of expression for people with and without limited mobility.
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Jason Webb
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Personal wiki page
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Snap-together clamshell housing
hardware
ongoing project
assistive technology breath usb ATMega32u4 hid 2016HackadayPrize sip and puff
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Automation
Assistive Technologies
This project was created on 08/01/2016 and last updated 12 days ago.
Description
Commercial sip and puff devices have been available for quite some time but are generally prohibitively expensive, highly specialized, limited in expressivity, require poorly-written and restrictive software and rely on clunky, out-of-date hardware that makes it difficult or impossible to integrate with modern operating systems and even basic software.
Therefore the main objective of openSip+Puff is to provide a cheap, simple, open and modern alternative input method based on the breath of a user that can be easily mapped to a variety of common actions like mouse clicks and keypresses.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet Of Things Woodworking
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/31/internet-of-things-woodworking/
Woodworking is the fine art of building jigs. Even though we have Internet-connected toasters, thermostats, cars, and coffee makers, the Internet of Things hasn’t really appeared in the woodshop quite yet. That’s changing, though, and [Ben Brandt]’s Internet of Things box joint jig shows off exactly what cheap computers with a connection to the Internet can do. He’s fully automated the process of making box joints, all with the help of a stepper motor and a Raspberry Pi.
Programmable Box Joint Jig: First Run | Raspberry Pi 3 + Windows 10 IoT Core
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=399oHwYuAG8
Julkaistu 30.8.2016
As a budding woodworker I always wanted to try making box joints. My table saw however was not designed to handle a dado stack. If I could use a single blade accurately I could make wide finger joints, but that can get difficult and repetitive. If I could automate the process, then I could easily cut box joints of any size. After months of development, here is my first test run on the programmable box joint jig.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Likely Everything You Need To Know Before Adopting A Drill Press
http://hackaday.com/2016/09/01/likely-everything-you-need-to-know-before-adopting-a-drill-press/
Oh sure, the thought of owning a happy whirring drill press of your very own is exciting, but have you really thought about it? It’s a big responsibility to welcome any tool into the home, even seemingly simple ones like a drill press. Lubricants, spindle runout, chuck mounts, tramming, and more [Quinn Dunki], of no small fame, helps us understand what it needs for happy intergration into its new workshop.
Full of useful tips like tramming the drill press and recommended maintenance, this is one of the best guides on this workshop staple that we’ve read.
So you wanna buy a drill press…
http://quinndunki.com/blondihacks/?p=2751
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chronio
Low power Arduino based (smart)watch
https://hackaday.io/project/12876-chronio
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Max.K
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WAtch arduino display Battery atmega328 RTC 2016HackadayPrize
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Assistive Technologies
This project was created on 07/27/2016 and last updated 19 hours ago.
Description
Chronio is an Arduino-based 3D-printed Watch. By not including fancy Wifi and BLE connectivity, it gets several months of run time out of a 160mAh button cell. The display is an always-on 96×96 pixel Sharp Memory LCD. If telling the time is not enough, you can play a simplified version of Flappy Bird on it.
DIY watches often consist of a pcb and screen wrapped in duct tape. I wanted to change that by designing a 3D-printed case. It is closely oriented on the Pebble Time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
4 Bit TTL CPU
A usable 4 bit TTL CPU
https://hackaday.io/project/13017-4-bit-ttl-cpu
Can a 4 bit CPU really be usable?
Here is an attempt.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Feeds Open Software
VC rides open source startups
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330391&
The annual geek fest aims to encourage software developers to contribute to and collaborate on open source code. Walking the talk, Facebook described code it plans to release for everything from stabilizing 360-degree videos to improving data compression and machine learning. However, the event also showed Facebook’s openness has its limits.
“There is so much happening in the open and we can solve problems faster working together,” said Jay Parikh, head of engineering and infrastructure at Facebook in a keynote talk, noting an estimated 1.5 million engineers follow open source projects.
Companies building products based on open code, many with “proprietary software wrapped around it to make enterprise ready” will make up some of the largest tech public offerings in the next few years, Li said, claiming more than 75% of business users are adopting open source code.
“Open source is a development and licensing model with many flavors, but open adoption software is a broader business model shift in how code is developed, used and monetized, like Salesforce pioneered a new way of delivering software — this is the same thing,” he said. “There’s no way a 12-person R&D shop is going to out innovate this room, so customers are turning toward the networking effect,” he added, pointing to the audience of several hundred developers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Starry Night” Dress Shines on the Experience of Multiple Builds
http://hackaday.com/2016/09/02/starry-night-dress-shines-on-the-experience-of-multiple-builds/
[Dave Hrynkiw] wrote up some practical and useful detail around embedding electronics into clothing. It centers around his daughter’s “Starry Night” high school graduation dress, which is the culmination of a lot of experimentation in finding the best way to do things. His daughter accented the dress with LEDs to produce a twinkling starfield effect, and a laser-cut RGB pendant to match.
Technology Grad Dresses
https://solarbotics.com/blog/?p=4101
Dress 1 Lessons Learned:
Solid-core wire LED strands cannot be trusted to last more than a single evening
Permanently mounting electronics to a dress is a bad idea for cleaning purposes.
2) Dress 2 – Addressable RGB LED Awards Dress
Another Salvation-Army rescue dress, this time being a strapless number for an awards banquet.
Dress 2 Lessons learned:
Even removable electronics are a pain to deal with.
Quilt batting does a fabulous job of LED color diffusion.
Gaffer tape is a good short-term solution for attaching battery packs to dress linings.
3) Dress 3 – the Starry Night
The latest and greatest, a proper store-bought and fitted blue 1-shoulder gown, with accenting laser-cut pendant with addressable twinkle effects.
The “Starry Night” dress parts in this bundle:
1 x Arduino Pro Mini – 5V
2 x 2 position, 0.1″ Terminal blocks
1 x 6 position, 0.1″ Terminal block
2 x BattR15 LiPoly cells
2 bobins of Superflex Wire
10 x WS2812B LEDs on white PCB (individuals)
1 x Superflex LED Strand – Warm white
1 x SWT16 power switch
Dress #3 lessons learned:
A technology layer is a must for a more-than-one-time use dress
Hot glue is a viable construction method for attaching wearables
Superflex wire is fabulous for flexing wearables (bobbins quantities available)
A 560 ohm resistor on the 1st WS2812B LED in the chain saves lots of grief
FastLED.io is a wonderful Arduino library to work with. It has a built-in animation that made creating the twinkle effect trivial.
Use unique connectors for each subsystem. Batteries, addressable LEDs and Superflex LEDs all had their own family of connector. Simplifies on-the-body wiring up hugely.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Books You Should Read: Engineer to Win By Carroll Smith
http://hackaday.com/2016/09/02/books-you-should-read-engineer-to-win-by-carroll-smith/
One problem with engineering education today is a lack of experimental teaching. Oh sure you may have a project or two, but it’s not the focus of the program because it’s hard to standardize a test around. Typically sections of the field are taught in a highly focused theoretical course by a professor or graduate student with a specialization in that section. Because classes treat individual subject areas, it’s entirely possible to get a really good understanding of two pieces of the same puzzle, but never realize that they fit together to make a picture. It’s only when a freshly minted engineer gets out into the real world that they start to make the connections between seemingly disparate fields of knowledge.
This is why Carroll Smith’s book “Engineer to Win” is so good. He spent a lifetime as a practicing engineer in a field where a small failure could mean the death of a friend.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hand Waving Unlocks Door
http://hackaday.com/2016/09/05/hand-waving-unlocks-door/
Who doesn’t like the user interface in the movie Minority Report where [Tom Cruise] manipulates a giant computer screen by just waving his hands in front of it? [AdhamN] wanted to unlock his door with hand gestures. While it isn’t as seamless as [Tom’s] Hollywood interface, it manages to do the job. You just have to hold on to your smartphone while you gesture.
The project uses an Arduino and a servo motor to move a bolt back and forth. The gesture part requires a 1sheeld board. This is a board that interfaces to a phone and allows you to use its capabilities (in this case, the accelerometer) from your Arduino program.
The 1sheeld reads the accelerometer data and when it sees the right gesture, it operates the servo.
Unlock your door with a hand gesture
http://www.instructables.com/id/Unlock-Your-Door-With-a-Hand-Gesture/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Quick Hack Creates A Visual Beep Alarm
http://hackaday.com/2016/09/04/quick-hack-creates-a-visual-beep-alarm/
Sometimes a simple modification is all it takes to get something just the way you want it. The Ikea LÖTTORP clock/thermometer/timer caught [Mansour Behabadi’s] eye. The LÖTTORP has four functions based on its orientation. [Mansour] loved the orientation feature, but hated the clock’s shrill beeping alert. Visual beeps or alarms can be handy when working with headphones or in a loud environment. With this in mind [Mansour] decided to crack his LÖTTORP open and rewire it to produce a visual beep for the timer function.
Simply removing the buzzer and soldering its terminal to the noticeable green LED provided the desired effect.
Visual Beep
The quieter you become, the more you hear.
https://blog.oxplot.com/visual-beep/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: Lucid Dreaming Research
http://hackaday.com/2016/09/04/hackaday-prize-entry-lucid-dreaming-research/
Lucid dreaming is one of the rare psychological phenomenon terrible sci-fi frequently gets right. Yes, lucid dreaming does exist, and one of the best ways to turn a normal dream into a lucid dream is to fixate on a particular object, sound, or smell. For their Hackaday Prize entry, [Jae] is building a device to turn the electronic enthusiast community on to lucid dreaming. It’s a research platform that allows anyone to study their own dreams and access a world where you can do anything.
The core of this project is an 8-channel EEG used to measure the electrical activity in the brain during sleep. These EEG electrodes are fed into a 24-bit ADC which is sampled 250 times per second by an ARM Cortex M4F microcontroller.
OpenLD: Lucid Dreaming Research Platform
https://hackaday.io/project/13285-openld-lucid-dreaming-research-platform
An open source platform to help induce and research the realm of Lucid Dreaming.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D-Printed Prosthetic Puts the Power in the Hands of Those Who Need It
http://hackaday.com/2016/09/05/3d-printed-prosthetic-puts-the-power-in-the-hands-of-those-who-need-it/
In recent years, prosthetics have seen a dramatic increase in innovation due to the rise of 3D printing. [Nicholas Huchet] — missing a hand due to a workplace accident in 2002 — spent his residency at Fab Lab Berlin designing, building, testing and sharing the files and tutorials for a prosthetic hand that costs around 700 Euros.
Myoelectric Exiii hand
http://myhumankit.org/en/tutoriels/myoelectric-exiii-hand/
Build a $700 open source bionic prosthesis with new tutorial by Nicolas Huchet of Bionico
http://www.3ders.org/articles/20160729-build-a-open-source-bionic-prosthesis-with-new-tutorial-by-nicolas-huchet-of-bionico.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Would You Like a Satellite Dish?
http://hackaday.com/2016/09/05/would-you-like-a-satellite-dish/
Satellite dishes are a common site these days, although admittedly most of them are Ku- and Ka-band dishes. The older C-band dishes are still around, though, just less frequently in people’s yards. [Greenish Apple] decide to cut the cable and start watching free TV so he built a C-band dish. The trick is, he made the dish out of wood.
The design is the offset type, not a prime focus dish
Scratchbuilt Wooden Offset Satellite Dish
http://www.instructables.com/id/Scratchbuilt-Wooden-Offset-Satellite-Dish/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bamboo Plant Becomes A Stylish Light Switch
http://hackaday.com/2016/09/05/bamboo-plant-becomes-a-stylish-light-switch/
Creating an electrostatic field around a conductive medium, the capacitive touch relay constantly monitors this field and will toggle when any minuscule change to the capacitance is detected. [Xkitz] uses a bamboo plant as his trigger. Gently touching any leaf will still act as an adequate trigger
Turn a House Plant into a Touch Switch
http://www.instructables.com/id/Turn-a-House-Plant-Into-a-Light-Switch/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bicycle Seismograph Measures The Streets
http://hackaday.com/2016/09/06/bicycle-seismograph-measures-the-streets/
Riding the streets of the Netherlands on a bicycle is a silky-smooth experience compared to doing the same on those of Germany. So says [Kati Hyyppä], who made the move with her trusty Dutch bike. The experience led her to record the uneven cobblestones and broken asphalt of the German roads on a home-made seismograph, a paper chart recorder driven by the bike’s motion and recorded upon by a pen free to vibrate as it passed over any bumps.
http://katihyyppa.com/bicycle-seismographs/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wooing A Lady Into Persisting with Persistence… of Vision
http://hackaday.com/2016/09/06/wooing-a-lady-into-persisting-with-persistence-of-vision/
As the story goes, years ago [Matt Evans] was wooing the beautiful and talented [Jen]. There were many suitors vying for her hand; he would have to set himself apart.
At the wave of a hand would write songs of adoration in the air with nothing but light. The runes of power, all typed out in the proper order, would be held by a ATiny. A CR2032 coin cell provided the magic pixies which would march to its commands, delivering their spark to the LEDs in the right order.
miniPOV: the gift of light
http://axio.ms/projects/miniPOV/
Tomi Engdahl says:
evive: a prototyping platform for makers
An open-source Arduino based toolkit to learn, build & debug electronics and robotics projects
https://hackaday.io/project/13091-evive-a-prototyping-platform-for-makers
evive is an opensource prototyping platform. With Arduino MEGA at its heart, it offers a novel way of interacting with your hardware using it’s menu based visual interface. The accurate current & voltage sensing capabilities let you collect and analyze data from your projects. The whole world of Internet of Things, with power supplies and support for sensors & actuators is available in one small portable unit. This all-in-one kit saves your time and allows you to be more creative and innovative. Its just like a maker’s tablet.
Explore more at http://igg.me/at/evive.