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:
Open-Source Firmware For Your Toy Drone
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/01/07/2058211/open-source-firmware-for-your-toy-drone
Since now you’re going to either register your drone or have to be flying your [small drone] indoors anyway in the USA, you might as well celebrate the one freedom you still have: the freedom to re-flash the firmware with open source! The Eachine H8 is a typical-looking mini-quadcopter of the kind that sell for under $20.
Tomi Engdahl says:
2015: As the Hardware World Turns
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/31/2015-as-the-hardware-world-turns/
If 2014 was the year of a million single board Linux computers, 2015 was the year of the insanely cheap single board Linux computer.
Right about the time C.H.I.P. was getting ready to ship their nine dollar computers out to backers, the $5 Raspberry Pi Zero was released.
2015 will go down as the most important year in the history of Arduino. There’s really no question about that. The funny thing is, the importance of 2015 for Arduino isn’t about any significant boards that were released, and it wasn’t about any new technology. It’s all about trademarks, the two Arduinos, and a bitter rivalry.
3D Printing is so 2014…
Tomi Engdahl says:
32C3: So You Want to Build a Satellite?
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/31/32c3-so-you-want-to-build-a-satellite-2/
[INCO] gave this extremely informative talk on building a CubeSat. CubeSats are small satellites that piggyback on the launches of larger satellites, and although getting a 10 cm3 brick into orbit is cheap, making it functional takes an amazing attention to detail and redundant design.
CubeSats must be powered down during launch, with no radio emissions or anything else that might interfere with the rocket that’s carrying them. The satellites are then packed into a box with a spring, and you never see or hear from them again until the hatch is opened and they’re pushed out into space.
[INCO] said that 50% of CubeSats fail on deployment, and to avoid being one of the statistics, you need to thoroughly test your deployment mechanisms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Portable, DIY Radiography
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/31/portable-diy-radiography/
[Matt] has a background in radiation, electronics, and physics, which means building a device to generate X-rays was only a matter of time. It’s something not everyone should attempt, and [Matt] discourages anyone from attempting anything like this, but if you’re looking for a project with a ‘because it’s there’ flair to it, building your own X-ray machine can be a fun and rewarding project.
Despite being scary and mysterious, X-rays are a rather old technology that date back to some of the first purposeful experiments in electronics. Most X-ray devices today are built around the same parts they were 100 years ago, namely, a Coolidge tube
http://sigurthrenterprises.blogspot.fi/2015/12/portable-diy-x-ray-source-radiography.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Little Helper: Open Source Hardware Hacker Multitool
http://hackaday.com/2015/12/25/little-helper-open-source-hardware-hacker-multitool/
We love a good multitool. There’s something seductive about knowing that if, for some reason, you need to saw down a tree on a moment’s notice, you have a tiny saw in your pocket. We also like electronic versions of the multitool: gadgets that serve a lot of purposes as you develop and debug hardware. One of the most polished-looking ones we’ve seen is [Phillip Schuster’s] Little Helper.
The open source gadget looks like an iPod (if an iPod had header pins sticking out of it). It has basic analog I/O capability, can generate PWM pulses, sniff I2C traffic, and do lots of other features. It is open source, so you can always add more capabilities if you need them.
http://www.appfruits.com/2015/12/little-helper/
Tomi Engdahl says:
PIC32 Smart Watch for Less Than a Benjamin
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/10/pic32-smart-watch-2/
[Matthew Filipek] likes smart watches, but wanted to build one for under $100, so he did. The watch has a 1.7 inch LCD touchscreen, a rechargeable LiPo battery, an SD card, and Bluetooth. The watch is a little large since [Matthew] had only a month to complete the project that drove him to use some pre-made modules image004and meant one shot at getting his custom PCB right.
The watch sports three applications: a settings app, a simple game, and a sketch program
http://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/courses/ece4760/FinalProjects/f2015/mjf332/mjf332/mjf332/mjf332.htm
Tomi Engdahl says:
Relay Logic Clock
A digital 24 hour clock using only relays and diodes for the counting logic.
https://hackaday.io/project/8683-relay-logic-clock
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arduino UNO clone gallery
An image gallery of arduino UNO clones found on the web
https://hackaday.io/project/9149-arduino-uno-clone-gallery
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackers and Heroes: A Tale of Two Countries
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/11/hackers-and-heroes-two-tales-of-tech-limit-testers/
Hacker culture in Germany and the US is very similar in a lot of ways, from the relative mix of hardware versus software types to the side-affinities for amateur radio and blinkenlights.
Say the word “hacker” in different social circles, and you never know what kind of response you’re going to get. Who exactly are “hackers” anyway? Are we talking about the folks blackmailing you for your account details on Ashley Madison? Or stealing credit card numbers from Target? Or are we talking about the folks who have a good time breaking stuff and building stuff, and taking things apart to see how they work?
The discussion over who’s a “hacker” is as old as the hills, by Internet standards anyway, and it’s not going to get settled here. But think about the last time you heard the word “hacker” used in anything but its negative sense in the popular press.
“Why Hackers are so Important for Society.” You know why, and I know why; because we take things apart and think about how they work on a fundamental level: from consumer electronics to encryption protocols. But imagine reading that headline in an American newspaper.
German hackers have enough respect that the German government frequently takes testimony from representatives of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) on matters of IT security, electronic voting machines, data freedom, and similar areas of expertise. The press, and not just the computer press, comes to the CCC when they have a story to check out.
The Pirate Party, founded at the c-base hackerspace in Berlin, actually got enough votes to have representation in four German state parliaments in 2012
It All Started with on the Phone
The US image of a hacker is a guy, maybe even a teen-ager, working long hours alone trying to break into AT&T’s system or playing tic-tac-toe with WOPR. And in the early 1980’s, this wasn’t far wrong, except for the loner bit. There were phone phreaks hacking away to make (illegal) free phone calls. But they were often organized in crews, sharing information and working together. The Legion of Doom’s own Technical Journal, Phrack or 2600, and the free information shared on myriad BBSes of the day were anything but isolating. If you had access, they were positively inviting.
Early-1980s hacking in both the US and Germany were characterized by legal and not-so-legal hacking as a group effort, and was centered around a love of technological exploration and its communication both in digital and print media. Everyone was phone-phreaking against a telecom monopoly
This is where paths begin to diverge. By the 1990’s, the American hackers were marginalized and largely separated, while the German hackers had formed a strong national organization with branches in a number of cities.
In the US, the golden age of phone phreaking came to an end in 1990 when the US Secret Service seized many of the computers on which people were running BBSes and essentially announced open season on hackers.
US started to enforce laws that were previously intended to protect government computers as applying to any computer on the Internet.
In short, there was an overnight raid on hacking in the States. Hacking was criminalized
And at perhaps the high point of US hacker-government relations we saw a crew of seven from L0pht testifying in front of the US Senate on the relevance of hacking to US state security.
The folks from L0pht would eventually become early advocates of full disclosure, whether responsible or otherwise.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Learning And Failing At Digitial Electronics
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/11/learning-and-failing-at-digitial-electronics/
[spencerhamblin] is starting his explorations into digital electronics the hard way: reproducing a “simple” IC’s functionality by wiring up a board full of discrete transistors. In this case, the end product is a binary-to-seven-segment decoder built from scratch.
Building a simple circuit with 39 transistors, 31 resistors, and a handful of diodes is a good introduction to digital electronics, and after two attempts, [spencerhamblin] knocked it out of the park.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A CNC Build Log From The Not So Distant Past
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/11/a-cnc-build-log-from-the-not-so-distant-past/
2007 wasn’t that long ago, but [Adam Ziegler’s] build log is, nevertheless, a pleasant romp through a not so distant past. From beginning to the end of the build, we enjoyed reading [Adam]’s progress and struggles as he worked through the build. Sometimes it’s hard to see the very normal daily work that goes into a project when it’s all polished up at the end.
http://media.adamziegler.com/cnc/
Tomi Engdahl says:
String Racing Robots are Here !
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/12/string-racing-robots-are-here/
This could be the start of a new thing. [HarpDude] showed off his String Car Racers over on the Adafruit forum. It’s like a small model cable car on caffeine. String up enough of them and go head to head racing with others.
A motor with a small pulley runs over a length of string stretched between 2 posts. Below the pulley, acting as a counterweight balance, is the rest of the racer. A Trinket board, motor driver, 9V battery and a pair of long lever micro switches to detect end of travel. The switches also help reverse the motor. A piece of galvanized wire acts as a guide preventing the String Car from jumping off the string.
String Car Racer – Trinket version
http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?t=87373
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackers and Heroes: Rise of the CCC and Hackerspaces
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/12/hackers-and-heroes-rise-of-ccc-and-hackerspaces/
From its roots in phone phreaking to the crackdowns and legal precedents that drove hacking mostly underground (or into business), hacker culture in the United States has seen a lot over the last three decades. Perhaps the biggest standout is the L0pht, a visible 1990s US hackerspace that engaged in open disclosure and was, arguably, the last of the publicly influential US hacker groups.
Chaos Computer Club
But let’s turn away from the USA and catch up with Germany. In the early 1980s, in Germany as in America, there were many local computer clubs that were not much more than a monthly evening in a cafeteria or a science museum or (as was the case with the CCC) a newspaper office. Early computer enthusiasts traded know-how, and software, for free. At least in America, nothing was more formally arranged than was necessary to secure a meeting space: we all knew when to show up, so what more needed to be done?
Things are a little different in the German soul. Peer inside and you’ll find the “Vereinsmentalität” — a “club-mentality”. Most any hobby or sport that you can do in Germany has an associated club that you can join. Winter biathlon, bee-keeping, watercolor painting, or hacking: when Germans do fun stuff, they like to get organized and do fun stuff together.
So the CCC began as an informal local hacker meetup in 1981, and then went on to having regular meetings in Hamburg. In 1984, they held the first Chaos Communication Congress, an annual meeting held just after Christmas that’s now in its 32nd year.
Translated from the CCC’s website: “In order to rule out legal misunderstandings, the CCC was registered as an e.V. to further information freedom, and the human right of at least worldwide unhindered communication.” I want to draw your attention to the cute phrase: “to rule out legal misunderstandings.” You see, even though the CCC had only been in informal existence for about five years, they’d already pulled off some stellar hacks that could potentially land people in difficult legal situations — and would have without question just a few years later in America. Ironically, by publicly incorporating and becoming pre-emptively open, rather than trying to hide, the CCC was buying itself some cover.
If you notice the parallel between the reason that the CCC became a registered association and the reasons that Mudge brought the L0pht into the government’s eye, you’ve got this article’s thesis in a nutshell. Publicly-visible and responsible hacking groups take an end-run around the potential charge that they’re a “gang” or that they’re doing something shady. How many gangs have 501c3 status? At the same time, they make it easy for newspapers and congressmen alike to find them if they have questions. The hackers become members of society.
While the CCC may have started out like other clubs, a few early high-profile hacks helped set the direction of the club, as well as contribute to their public image as being on the side of the common man.
Hackerspaces, Bringing a Slice of Germany to the USA (and the World)
All this talk about the CCC brings us, oddly enough, back to the USA. Whether you realize it or not, the CCC’s 25 locals (and the independent but friendly c-base in Berlin and Metalab in Vienna) were the prototype for what I’d call new-wave hackerspaces in the USA.
A group of American hackers, among them Bre Pettis, Nick Farr, and Mitch Altman, went on a European vacation to the Chaos Communications Camp in the summer of 2007, and then on to a tour of German and Austrian hackerspaces to see what made them tick, with the thought of bringing the idea back home to the US. At the 24th Chaos Communications Congress in December 2007, Jens Ohlig and Lars Weiler, founders of the CCC branches in Cologne and Dusseldorf gave a talk about everything they new about running a hackerspace to help out their American friends: Building a Hackerspace.
In February 2008, the for-profit NYC Resistor opened its doors. By March, HacDC was incorporated as a non-profit and was open for non-business.
Within a couple years, there were a hundred hackerspaces in the USA. Today, there are 406 registered active hackerspaces on hackerspaces.org in the US, and 1,200+ worldwide. Not bad for eight years’ work! If you haven’t been to your local hackerspace yet, you owe it to yourself.
Due to the tastes of individual members, every hackerspace is slightly different. I don’t know how exactly to draw the distinction between a hackerspace and a “makerspace” but it seems that there are groups that focus more on hardware projects, and those that focus more on computers and information freedom. But my own experience is that there are no hard boundaries, either, and the strong-suits of a space tend to shift over time.
Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!
All information should be free
Mistrust authority—promote decentralization
Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position
You can create art and beauty on a computer
Computers can change your life for the better
Tomi Engdahl says:
Second Skin Synth Fits Like a Glove
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/12/second-skin-synth-fits-like-a-glove/
California textiles artist and musician [push_reset] challenged herself to make a wearable, gesture-based synth without using flex-sensing resistors. In the end, she designed almost every bit of it from the ground up using conductive fabric, resistive paint, and 3-D printed parts.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Second-Skin-Synth/
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Makerspace” Trademark Application Rejected
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/13/makerspace-trademark-application-rejected/
The German Patent and Trademark Office has denied the application from UnterhehmerTUM for a trademark on the word “Makerspace”. It wasn’t likely to be a threat to the community anyway, but now it’s entirely off the table. So Kwartzlab Makerspace, Houston Makerspace, Rochester Makerspace, Anchorage Makerspace, … you can all breathe easy!
To be fair, there was never any danger, just a misunderstanding. We reported earlier on the trademark application and within a day or so got an official reply in the comments from Phil (“Mr. Mobile”) Handy that they weren’t looking to enforce anything, but were just essentially trying to make sure that nobody else could pull the rug out from under them.
The makerspace in question is an open-access offshoot of a business incubator that’s associated with Munich’s Technical University
Tomi Engdahl says:
Crappy Robots And Even Crappier Electronics Kits
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/12/crappy-robots-and-even-crappier-electronics-kits/
Robots and DIY electronics kits have a long history together. There probably isn’t anyone under the age of forty that hasn’t had some experience with kit-based robots like wall-hugging mouse robots, a weird walking robot on stilts, or something else from the 1987 American Science and Surplus catalog. DIY robot kits are still big business, and walking through the sales booths of any big Maker Faire will show the same ideas reinvented again and again.
[demux] got his hands on what is possibly the worst DIY electronics kit in existence. It’s so incredibly bad that it ends up being extremely educational; pick up one of these ‘introduction to electronics’ kits, and you’ll end up learning advanced concepts like PCB rework, reverse engineering, and Mandarin.
http://www.banggood.com/Walking-Robot-DIY-Kit-NE555-Educational-Training-Part-p-1009187.html
Walking Robot NE555 DIY Kit – Part 1/3 – Unboxing (Banggood – 1009187)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UksyEsGhIV0&feature=youtu.be
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stallman’s One Mistake
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/13/stallmans-one-mistake/
We all owe [Richard Stallman] a large debt for his contributions to computing.
Linux, Apache, PHP, Blender, Wikipedia and MySQL simply wouldn’t exist without open and permissive licenses, and we are all richer for [Stallman]’s insight that software should be free. Hardware, on the other hand, isn’t. Perhaps it was just a function of the time [Stallman] fomented his views, but until very recently open hardware has been a kludge of different licenses for different aspects of the design. Even in the most open devices, firmware uses GPLv3, hardware documentation uses the CERN license, and Creative Commons is sprinkled about various assets.
If [Stallman] made one mistake, it was his inability to anticipate everything would happen in hardware eventually. The first battle on this front was the Tivoization of hardware a decade ago, leading to the creation of GPLv3. Still, this license does not cover hardware, leading to an interesting thought experiment: what would it take to build a completely open source computer? Is it even possible?
Although open source doesn’t really apply to hardware itself, would it be possible to build a computer where every single line of code is available? Is it possible to build a complete computer from only printed documentation and a keyboard? Yes, for varying values of computer.
We can start with the simplest case, the most basic computer anyone could possibly build. Fortunately homebrewers have this type of build on lockdown. The simplest open source computer would probably be based on the 6502 CPU, with a few handfuls of RAM and ROM, tied together with 74-series glue logic.
For software, there are dozens of choices to choose from. Forth, Basic, and CP/M have been built for a computer like this. With just a few bytes in ROM, it’s rather easy to build a completely open source computer with everything – firmware, schematics, and all program code – open for inspection.
Starting at the bottom is the easy way to build a completely open source computer, but it doesn’t make for a good machine. WiFi is out of the question, serial ports are the best networking you’ll get, and any modern workflow is completely impossible. What about starting at the top and working our way down? Let’s extend this thought experiment to taking a modern computer and paring everything down until it becomes an open source, usable computer.
Intel is right out. The Intel Management Engine (ME) is a small coprocessor embedded in every Intel PCU made since 2006. This chip has access to the cryptography engine, the ROM, RAM, and network access. It is a complete computer by itself, and very few people know how it works. While it makes a perfect backdoor, it goes against every open source ideology, and won’t be found in a completely open source laptop.
Going even further back the Intel chip timeline, every x86 chip from the 8080 onwards contains microcode, low-level software that tells the circuitry how to behave for each instruction. Microcode is found in nearly every CPU architecture of the last 20 years with one significant exception: ARM chips.
[Bunnie], the engineer behind the Chumby and the original XBox hack, built himself an open source laptop. It’s called the Novena, and after three years this laptop is finally making its way into the hands of its crowdfunding supporters.
The Novena is built on Freescale’s i.MX6 chip, a quad-core ARM Cortex A9 running at 1.2 GHz. This CPU does not have any microcode, and the entire datasheet and programming manual is available from Freescale without an NDA. There are very few powerful processors out there that do not require an NDA
Choice of WiFI card is very much limited because of binary blobs, and 3D acceleration though the Vivante GC2000 GPU cannot be used
While the Novena might be the first usable open source computer, the peripherals are not.
Similarly, the best way to put a webcam on the Novena is through USB. This is a problem. In 2014, BadUSB came to the community’s attention, and it means we are screwed. BadUSB adds nefarious abilities to the microcontroller in any USB device, allowing an attacker into a computer over a spoofed Ethernet connection. As long as a BadUSB-infected keyboard or webcam is plugged in, the computer is at risk. Surprisingly, a BadUSB attack is one of the easier ones to counter with open source; building a USB keyboard is as easy as programming an Arduino, and building a USB webcam is possible with smaller ARM chips. To date, though, I haven’t seen many arguments for open sourcing peripherals in the light of BadUSB.
If keyboards and mice are easy to build under the auspices of open source, hard drives are not
the hardware community lays the groundwork for an open source hard drive
Stallman’s Solution
With the near impossibility of a completely open source computer, one has to wonder what [Stallman] uses. This is well documented. It’s an old Thinkpad loaded up with the Libreboot open source firmware. The drive in this computer is surely running proprietary code, and the laptop’s keyboard is a USB device that could be compromised.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Best Projects That Fit In A Square Inch
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/13/the-best-projects-that-fit-in-a-square-inch/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sourcing your CNC Tools in 2016: Build Them
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/13/sourcing-your-cnc-tools-in-2016-build-them/
Perhaps the tolerances on today’s hobbyist machines just aren’t good enough for you, or perhaps the work area is just too cramped. Either way, there are times when an off-the-shelf solution just wont fit your needs, and you resolve to build your own CNC machine. Fortunately, none of us are alone in this endeavor because hobbyists have been building their own automation equipment for years. Whether you’re talking building the machine, generating the G-code, or interpreting that G-code into motor signal pulses, the DIY CNC community has evolved a sophisticated set of tools aimed at getting the job done. I thought I’d take a tour of some of the hobbyist’s tools that hallmark 2016 as the best year yet to build your CNC machine.
In the last few years, affordable extruded profiles and brackets have made leaps and bounds to satisfy a hungry DIY 3D printer community. Beyond 3D printers, these beams and brackets are a good start for some of our needs in the world of linear motion control. Here’s a quick look at a few components off-the-shelf.
Unless you’ve discovered a deal on eBay or AliExpress, building up a machine from precision linear rails can be a pricey ordeal. Linear rails offer us a rigid, wiggle-free guide for motion along a single axis, but in some cases, the cost needed for hobbyists to afford this precision is outside their budget.
Software
Tomi Engdahl says:
Joshua Gay says:
January 13, 2016 at 1:42 pm
And those of us who work for the FSF and who also happen to just come from having (before seeing this article) an hour long conversation about hardware certification and free hardware designs with Richard Stallman, find this article to be conspicuously lacking in actually stating the thoughts of Stallman and the FSF when it comes to free hardware designs. I encourage people to read ‘Free Hardware and Free Hardware Designs’ http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-hardware-designs.en.html and to consider that our ideal solution and goal is not hardware that has proprietary firmware in use in secondary processors and peripherals but a begrudging acceptance of using those nonfree firmware components until they can be replaced with free software. We want computing devices in which all designs, code, and documentation are distributed under free licenses. And, further, the GPL does take into consideration free hardware designs to a certain extent.
Rick Downer says:
January 13, 2016 at 2:30 pm
There is a fair chunk of the community, myself included, who – while recognizing Stallman’s past contributions – cannot overlook his shortcomings and frankly, to be polite, don’t care what he has to say.
AC says:
January 13, 2016 at 3:14 pm
HEY YOU!!!
If Brian said Stallman said something, or didn’t say something, then that’s what happened! Brian has spent decades designing fully open source computers from scratch.
Source: http://hackaday.com/2016/01/13/stallmans-one-mistake/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hams in Space: Project OSCAR
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/14/hams-in-space-project-oscar/
In early December 1961, a United States Air Force rocket took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California carrying a special payload. The main payload was a Corona surveillance satellite, but tucked just aft of that spacecraft was a tiny package of homebrew electronics stuffed into something the looked like a slice of cake. What was in that package and how it came to tag along on a top-secret military mission is the story of OSCAR 1, the world’s first amateur radio satellite.
The first glimmers of what was to become Project OSCAR – a somewhat forced acronym for “Orbital Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio” – came in 1959, barely two years after Sputnik. To call the idea audacious is an understatement. Space exploration at the time was the turf of the superpowers; after all, who else would have the resources to put a package into orbit? And so when Don Stoner, a man who would later build his radio shack into the front of a Mercedes, wrote an article that year in CQ Magazine decrying the fact that hams were being left behind in the space race and that they could easily build a satellite if only somebody had a missile handy to launch it, it actually got noticed, and in an atmosphere of “Sputnik fever”, things started happening.
Hams in California started brainstorming about what an amateur radio satellite would look like.
they stuck to the electronic design and settled on a simple transistorized VHF transmitter. It would be battery-powered to avoid the complexities of solar power, transmitting a simple beacon signal over a monopole antenna. Transmissions would be the classic Morse cypher for laughter, “HI”, sent by an electronic keyer that would vary the speed of the signal based on the temperature of the satellite.
OSCAR 1 worked flawlessly, transmitting for 20 days before the batteries died. A total of 570 hams from 28 countries reported hearing OSCAR 1, which completed about 280 orbits before reentry in late January 1962.
Tomi Engdahl says:
All Aboard the Hardware Startup Train
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328676&
After years of software-based funding and tedious development, the crowdfunding tide is turning toward hardware. At International CES, held Jan. 6- 9, officials from Indiegogo said companies throughout the chip and gadget ecosystem are getting on board.
“Everyone from Foxconn to Qualcomm want to talk to entrepreneurs…and offer them all the resources so they can make great products. That’s a new thing,” Evan Cohen, Indiegogo’s senior director of design, technology and hardware, told EE Times. “The whole maker movement has matured into an entrepreneur movement at this point.”
More than 110 products at this year’s CES started on Indiegogo, CEO Slava Rubin said, adding that the company has raised over $800 million in campaigns. Rubin believes one out of six companies on the CES show floor received funding from an Indiegogo campaign.
Direct conversations with larger companies are leading to a serious advancement in developer tools for the Arduinos and Raspberry Pis commonly used by startups, Cohen said. Companies such as Brookstone and GE are also getting in on some of crowdfunding’s benefits—market validation of otherwise unknown products and a built-in audience—with a recently announced enterprise crowdfunding from Indiegogo.
“The higher-up enthusiasm toward the startup world is really exciting. There was a time where you were a maker and you were lucky to get in front of somebody,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oh Baby, Baby10 – Build a Classic Analog Music Sequencer
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/14/oh-baby-baby10-build-a-classic-analog-music-sequencer/
Recently I’ve been learning more about classic analog music synthesizers and sequencers. This has led me to the Baby10, a classic and simple analog sequencer design. In this article I’ll introduce its basic operation, and the builds of some awesome hackers based on this design.
A basic sequencer is a great beginners project. It’s easy to understand the basic operation of the circuit and produces a satisfyingly entertaining result. The Baby 10 was originally published in a column called “Captain’s Analog”, but has now been widely shared online.
The circuit uses the 4017, a simple CMOS decade counter. The 4017 takes an input clock signal then sequentially outputs a high pulse on each of 10 output pins. As such, the 4017 does almost everything we need from a sequencer in a single IC! However, we want our sequencer to output a varying voltage which we can then use to generate differing tones.
For the clock we can use a simple 555 astable oscillator. The schematic below should produce a clock with a suitably variable range (from about 70Hz to 0.3Hz).
Now the sequencer is sending out clocked, varying control voltages they need to be turned into a tone to produce a sound. Many commercial synths provide a CV input. The basic sequencer is therefore already useful
It’s pretty easy to put this project together on a breadboard, and the components only cost a few dollars. But I’m also hoping to put a PCB together so we can run workshops at our local hacker space
Using the Baby10 as a basis you can hack around with the design in various ways to produce more interesting sounds, and many hackers have produced unique sequencers based on this design. By combining 2 4017s for example you can build a 16 step sequencer
The Baby 10 Sequencer
http://www.midiwall.com/gear/babyseq/
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Shareable Wireless Biometric Flash Drive
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/15/a-shareable-wireless-biometric-flash-drive/
Wireless storage and biometric authentication are both solved problems. But as [Nathan] and [Zhi] have noticed, there is no single storage solution that incorporates both. For their final project in [Bruce Land]’s ECE 4760, they sought to combine the two ideas under a tight budget while adding as many extras as they could afford, like an OLED and induction coil charging.
final_product_600Their solution can be used by up to 20 different people who each get a slice of an SD card in the storage unit
The base station connects to the host PC over USB and contains an Arduino for serial pass-through and an nRF24L01+ module for communicating with the storage side. The storage drive’s components are crammed inside a clear plastic box.
Due to budget limitations and time constraints, the data transfer isn’t very fast (840 bytes/sec), but this isn’t really the nRF modules’ fault—most of the transmission protocol was implemented in software and they simply ran out of debugging time.
Biometric Wireless Pen Drive
http://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/courses/ece4760/FinalProjects/f2015/nds55_zt27/nds55_zt27/nds55_zt27/index.html
A wireless mass storage device with a fingerprint scanner for authorization, induction coil for wireless charging, and OLED screen for user feedback.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Interesting hack:
Minecraft mod adds a BASIC renderer for code within code within code
LET us$ = “:o”
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2442282/minecraft-mod-adds-a-basic-renderer-for-code-within-code-within-code
MAD STUFF in Minecraft is at the more trivial end of the news canon, but we’ve always believed it’s valid because it’s just so damned cool what people with too much time on their hands can do with Microsoft’s 8-bit virtual world game.
A YouTuber by the name of SethBling has managed to create a functioning interpreter for BASIC, the programming language that launched 1,000 careers, using nothing more than Minecraft’s standard rulesets.
It will come as no surprise to learn that it’s not without its faults. It has glitches and slows down from the already slow 20Hz refresh clock speed of Minecraft the more you use it. But it works.
We’ve already seen the entire game ported to a smartwatch, a virtual chip fabricator built within the confines of a world, and even a complete map of Great Britain built in all its blocky glory.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Numbers don’t lie—it’s time to build your own router
With more speed available and hardware that can’t adapt, DIY builds offer peak performance.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/numbers-dont-lie-its-time-to-build-your-own-router/
I’ve noticed a trend lately. Rather than replacing a router when it literally stops working, I’ve needed to act earlier—swapping in new gear because an old router could no longer keep up with increasing Internet speeds available in the area. (Note, I am duly thankful for this problem.) As the latest example, a whole bunch of Netgear ProSafe 318G routers failed me for the last time as small businesses have upgraded from 1.5-9mbps traditional T1 connections to 50mbps coax (cable).
Yes, coax—not fiber. Even coax has proved too much for the old ProSafe series. These devices didn’t just fail to keep up, they fell flat on their faces. Frequently, the old routers dropped speed test results from 9mbps with the old connection to 3mbps or less with the 50mbps connection. Obviously, that doesn’t fly.
These days, the answer increasingly seems to be wireless routers. These tend to be long on slick-looking plastic and brightly colored Web interfaces but short on technical features and reliability. What’s a mercenary sysadmin to do? Well, at its core, anything with two physical network interfaces can be a router. And today, there are lots and lots of relatively fast, inexpensive, and (super important!) fully solid-state generic boxes out there.
So, the time had finally come. Faced with aging hardware and new consumer offerings that didn’t meet my needs, I decided to build my own router. And if today’s morphing connectivity landscape leaves you in a similar position, it turns out that both the building and the build are quite fast.
Hardware, hardware, hardware
We’ll go through the how-to in a future piece, but today it’s important to establish why a DIY router-build may be the best option. To do that, you first need to understand today’s general landscape.
In the consumer world, routers mostly have itty-bitty little MIPS CPUs under the hood without a whole lot of RAM (to put it mildly). These routers largely differentiate themselves from one another based on the interface: How shiny is it? How many technical features does it have? Can users figure it out easily?
At the higher end of the SOHO market, you start seeing some smartphone-grade ARM CPUs and a lot more RAM. These routers—like the Nightgear Nighthawk series, one of which we’ll be hammering on later—feature multiple cores, higher clock speeds, and a whole lot more RAM. They also feature much higher price tags than the cheaper competition. I picked up a Linksys EA2750 for $89, but the Netgear Nighthawk X6 I got with it was nearly three times more expensive (even on holiday sale!) at $249.
After some good old-fashioned Internet scouring and dithering, finally I took the Alibaba plunge and ordered myself a new Partaker Mini PC from Shenzhen Inctel Technology Company. After $240 for the router itself and another $48 for a 120GB Kingston SSD from Newegg, I’d spent about $40 more on the Homebrew Special than I had on the Nighthawk. Would it be worth it?
I’ve got a botnet in my pocket, and I’m ready to rock it
I briefly considered setting up some kind of hideous, Docker-powered monstrosity with tens of thousands of Linux containers with individual IP addresses, all clamoring for connections and/or serving up webpages. Then I came to my senses. As far as the routers are concerned, there’s no difference between maintaining connections to thousands of individual IP addresses or just to thousands of ports on the same IP address. I spent a little bit of time turning Lee Hutchinson’s favorite webserver nginx into a ridiculous Lovecraftian monster with 10,000 heads and an appetite for destruction.
That’s the Homebrew Special flexing its crypto muscle. It has an OpenVPN server running. For that test, the WAN-side server, Menhir, is connected to the router’s on-board OpenVPN server.
In the name of thoroughness, we should observe one shared limitation, something by all the consumer network gear I’ve ever managed: the desire to reboot after almost any change. Some of those reboots take well over a minute. I haven’t got the foggiest idea why, but whatever the reason, the Homebrew Special isn’t afflicted with this industry standard. You make a change, you apply it, you’re done. And if you do need to reboot the Special? It’s up again in 12 seconds. (I timed it by counting dropped pings.)
Tomi Engdahl says:
IEEE DIY Project is open to all to make this a better world
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/diy-zone/4440671/IEEE-DIY-Project-is-open-to-all-to-make-this-a-better-world
IEEE DIY Project. This is a challenge to all residents of the United States of America and other countries, where permitted by local law, who are the age of eighteen (18) or older as well as IEEE community members
You, the engineers and makers of this world, have the opportunity to showcase the great tech projects you may be working on or plan to work on. Whether it is robotics, wearable technology, software, hardware, or an alternative energy device, if your project solves complex problems and has applications in the real world the IEEE wants to see it!
The IEEE DIY Project is a competition that is asking students to submit engineering projects they have created at school or during their free time to a microsite developed by IEEE.
The IEEE DIY Project
https://transmitter.ieee.org/diy/
The IEEE DIY Project is a challenge to you—IEEE community member—to showcase the great tech projects you are working on. Whether it is robotics, wearable technology, software, hardware, or an alternative energy device, if your project solves complex problems and has applications in the real world we want to see it!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kids and Hacking: Electromagnetic Eggs
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/20/kids-and-hacking-electromagnetic-eggs/
One of my favorite things to do is visit with school kids who are interested in engineering or science. However, realistically, there is a limit to what you can do in a single class that might last 30 to 90 minutes. I recently had the chance to work with a former colleague, a schoolteacher, and The Teaching Channel to create an engineering unit for classroom use that lasts two weeks.
This new unit focuses on an egg drop. That’s not an original idea, but we did add an interesting twist: the project develops a “space capsule” to protect the egg, but also an electromagnetic drop system to test the capsules. The drop system allows for a consistent test with the egg capsule releasing cleanly from a fixed height.
So in addition to the classic egg drop capsule, the kids have to build an electromagnet, a safe switching circuit, and a test structure. Better still, teams of kids can do different parts and integrate them into a final product, closely mimicking how real engineering projects work.
There are a few reasons for the complexity. First, given ten class sessions, you can do a lot more than you can in a single day. Second, I always think it is good if you can find exercises that will appeal to lots of different interests. In the past, I’ve used robots and 3D printers for that reason.
In fact, although you can make things as complex (and as expensive) as you like, it doesn’t have to cost much at all. A budget-conscious school could use zip lock bags as the capsules, tin can lids for magnetic attachment, homemade electromagnets, and forego the switches for a direct wire to the battery. Or, you could let your Arduino class create a complicated fire control system.
To change the emphasis of the exercise, you can tune various parts of the project.
Learning About Design Decisions
As they design the parts of the system, I like to discuss design trades: the balance of cost, weight, power consumption, and other factors to decide what design choice is “best.” They never fail to surprise me with their creative solutions.
It also can improve your communication skills. One thing we tried to get the kids to do was to produce drawings before they built things. My old drafting teacher (Mr. Stewart) always emphasized how you had to have enough dimensions on a drawing that someone could build the thing. If you had too many dimensions, he might mark off a few points. But if you didn’t have enough, you were getting an F.
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/engineering-model-blueprint-challenge-boeing
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Toy Maker
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/22/the-toy-maker/
A large part of the world still educates their kids using a system that’s completely antiquated. Personal choices and interests don’t matter, and learning by rote is the norm. Government schooling is woefully inadequate and the teachers are just not equipped, or trained, to be able to impart useful education. [Arvind Gupta], a science educator, is trying to change this by teaching kids how to build toys. His YouTube channel on Toys for Science and Math Education has almost 100,000 subscribers and over 44 million views. It’s awesome.
https://www.youtube.com/user/arvindguptatoys
Our core belief is that children learn by doing – by touching, feeling, cutting, sticking — pulling things apart, putting things together. We believe that this hands-on science helps them relate to curriculum and get conceptual understanding. We believe this will revolutionize the way children learn.
Tomi Engdahl says:
0:00 / 2:22
Arvind Gupta Toys – Our Work & Philosophy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcxIUkzzz_c
Our core belief is that children learn by doing – by touching, feeling, cutting, sticking — pulling things apart, putting things together. We believe that this hands-on science helps them relate to curriculum and get conceptual understanding. We believe this will revolutionize the way children learn. A child lighting up a LED with a Syringe Generator is more likely to light up his village tomorrow.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Europe: Call for Proposals
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/21/hackaday-europe-call-for-proposals/
Hackaday is coming to Europe in April. The world’s most superb conference on hardware creation starts with you. Please submit your proposal to present a talk or workshop at 2016 Hackaday | Belgrade, Hackaday’s first-ever European conference.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Screen Printing Electroluminescent T-Shirts From Tron’
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/21/screen-printing-electroluminescent-t-shirts-from-tron/
Travel around to enough security conferences, faires, and festivals, and you’ll see some crazy wearable electronics. Most of them blink, and most of them use LEDs. Electroluminescent panels are used for wearables, but that’s a niche – the panels are a little expensive, and you have to deal with high frequency AC instead of the much simpler, ‘plug in a LiPo here’ circuit LED-based wearables have to contend with.
Still, electroluminescent panels are cool, and thanks to how EL panels are made, you can screen print EL displays. That’s what some of the guys at AMBRO Manufacturing did recently: screen printing electroluminescent lights directly onto garments. It’s t-shirts from Tron made real.
EL panels and EL wire are really only three separate parts: a conductor of some sort, a phosphor, and another conductor. Pass a high-frequency AC current through the conductors, and the phosphor lights up. With EL wire, it’s a thick copper wire clad in phosphor and wrapped in a very fine copper wire. EL displays are made with conductive ITO-coated glass or plastic. It’s a relatively simple construction
Screen Printing Electroluminescent Lights On Garments
http://www.ambrolabs.com/screen-printing-electroluminescent-lights-on-garments/
Today AMBRO Labs successfully screen printed an electroluminescent light on a t-shirt. Over the last several months we’ve been experimenting with various techniques to print EL on fabric without success. Screen printing electroluminescent lights on garments will offer Makers and DIY enthusiasts a flexible and washable solution for their light up wearable projects. This methodology also enables retail and production pieces the flexibility of offering illumination on fabric without the need for hard and inflexible circuitry.
While screen printing electroluminescent lights on garments is a good first step, we would like to provide this capability to the DIY and Maker community via the use of transfer / iron on technology. Further experimentation will be necessary in order to achieve this goal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacklet 92 – Workbenches and Toolboxes
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/23/hacklet-92-workbenches-and-toolboxes/
Everyone needs a place to work. While some of us have well equipped labs with soldering stations, oscilloscopes, and a myriad of other tools, others perform their hacks on the kitchen table. Still, some hackers have to be on the go – taking their tools and work space along with them on the road. This week’s Hacklet is all about the best toolbox and workbench projects on Hackaday.io!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Drawn in by the Siren’s Song
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/21/drawn-in-by-the-sirens-song/
When I say “siren” what do you think of? Ambulances? Air raids? Sigh. I was afraid you were going to say that. We’ve got work to do.
You see, the siren played an important role in physics and mathematics about 150 years ago. Through the first half of the 1900s, this fine apparatus was trivialized, used for its pure noise-making abilities. During the World Wars, the siren became associated with air raids and bomb shelters: a far cry from its romantic origins. In this article, we’re going to take the siren back for the Muses. I want you to see the siren in a new light: as a fundamental scientific experiment, a musical instrument, and in the end, as a great DIY project — this is Hackaday after all.
DIY Project: The Fan Siren
The first project of his that I ever became aware of is the mini Synth fan, which is nothing more than a computer fan whose blades intermittently block light that shines on a photosensor. Yup, it’s a simple siren, with light playing the role of air.
http://gieskes.nl/instruments/?file=synth-fan
Tomi Engdahl says:
Related to sirens:
Retrotechtacular: Building Hammond Organ Tones
http://hackaday.com/2015/06/30/retrotechtacular-building-hammond-organ-tones/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Using RealSense Cameras With OS X and Linux
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/23/using-realsense-cameras-with-os-x-and-linux/
The original Microsoft Kinect was a revolution in computer vision. For less than one hundred dollars, the Kinect gave everyone a webcam with a depth sensor. If you’re doing anything with robots, 3D scanning, or anything else where a computer needs to know where it is in 3D space, it’s awesome. These depth-mapping cameras have improved over the years, with the latest and most capable hardware being Intel’s RealSense 3D camera.
Despite being a very capable depth camera, support for Linux and OS X doesn’t exist. Researchers, roboticists and IoT developers are slightly miffed about this, and it seems like Intel doesn’t care about people using their hardware on platforms that aren’t Windows.
Now, finally, that’s changed. A few developers have taken it upon themselves to build a cross-platform library for the F200, SR300, and R200 Intel RealSense depth cameras.
The librealsense library features proper RealSense camera support for Linux, OS X, and Windows and provides all the functionality of the official Intel SDK. This functionality includes native depth, color, and infrared streams, synthetic streams for rectified images, calibration information, and the most interesting feature: multi-camera capture
Cross-platform camera capture for Intel® RealSense™ F200, SR300 and R200
https://github.com/IntelRealSense/librealsense
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tie-Fighter Quadcopters Anyone Can Build
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/23/tie-fighter-quadcopters-anyone-can-build/
These are things of beauty, and when in flight, the Tie Fighter Quadcopters look even better because the spinning blades become nearly transparent. Most of the Star Wars-themed quadcopter hacks we’ve seen are complicated builds that we know you’re not even going to try. But [Cuddle Burrito’s] creations are for every hacker in so many different ways.
Tie Fighter Conversion (H107C)
http://www.cuddleburrito.com/blog/2016/1/1/tie-fighter-conversion-h107c
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazing IMU-based Motion Capture Suit Turns You Into a Cartoon
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/23/amazing-imu-based-motion-capture-suit-turns-you-into-a-cartoon/
[Alvaro Ferrán Cifuentes] has built the coolest motion capture suit that we’ve seen outside of Hollywood. It’s based on tying a bunch of inertial measurement units (IMUs) to his body, sending the data to a computer, and doing some reasonably serious math. It’s nothing short of amazing, and entirely doable on a DIY budget. Check out the video
MotioSuit
An open-source, active motion capture suit
https://hackaday.io/project/9266-motiosuit
This full body suit has been developed in bq’s Innovation and Robotics Department.
The suit reads the angles at which each of the user’s limbs are oriented and sends them over bluetooth to the computer, where the model is updated in Blender to follow the movement.
The original intent for this project was to develop a full-body game controller, but other uses can be animating 3D models with natural movements and in a fraction of the time or even controlling a humanoid robot!
The IMUs used here are Bosch’s BNO055, which in addition to an accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer includes a 32-bit cortex M0+ microcontroller running a sensor fusion algorithm that is able to produce orientation in both euler angles and quaternions.
These sensors work over I2C
To make the suit plug-and-play a bluetooth to usb bridge module was added. The suit’s bluetooth is set as master and instructed to connect to the bridge’s MAC address, while the computer searches for any device of type ‘/dev/ttyACMx’.
On the computer side, two Blender files are available in github. The ‘MotioSuit.blend’ is the file ready to be used as in the video, whereas ‘Armature.blend’ contains the script, logic and armature needed but no model. Use this file to be able to control your own 3D model with the suit, by simply parenting the model to the bones.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Facebook is eating the $140 billion hardware market
http://uk.businessinsider.com/facebook-open-compute-project-history-2015-6?r=US&IR=T
It started out as a controversial idea inside Facebook. In four short years, it has turned the $141 billion data-center computer-hardware industry on its head.
Facebook’s extraordinary Open Compute Project is doing for hardware what Linux, Android, and many other popular products did for software: making it free and “open source.”
That means that anyone can look at, use, or modify the designs of the hugely expensive computers that big companies use to run their operations — all for free. Contract manufacturers are standing by to build custom designs and to build, in bulk, standard designs agreed upon by the group.
In software, open source has been revolutionary and disruptive. That movement created Linux, which is the software running most data centers around the world, and Android, the most popular smartphone platform in the world. Along the way, massively powerful companies like Microsoft, Nokia, and Blackberry were disrupted —some to the brink of extinction.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Homemade Exoskeleton Lifts Mini Cooper with Ease
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/25/homemade-exoskeleton-lifts-mini-cooper-with-ease/
Homemade Exoskeleton Lifts Car!
http://imgur.com/gallery/ysKCP
Tomi Engdahl says:
Overunity, Free Energy and Perpetual Motion: The Strange Side of YouTube
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/25/overunity-free-energy-and-perpetual-motion-the-strange-side-of-youtube/
Spend enough time on YouTube, and you’ll eventually find yourself in one of the many dark corners hiding within it. No, I’m not talking about the comments. In this case, I mean the many videos dedicated to free energy, overunity devices, perpetual motion machines, or anything else that violates the laws of thermodynamics by trying to get out more energy than is put in. The human race has been reaching for impossible dreams of perpetual motion and free energy for just about all of recorded history. Now it’s convenient to find them all in one place.
Browsing the tubes, it’s easy to break free energy videos down into two major groups: enthusiasts and scammers. Catching a scammer is easy – they’re looking for money. Somewhere in the video or description will be a link to a website with more information. Eventually that will lead you to a place where the scammer attempts to part you and your hard-earned money.
On the other side of the coin lie the enthusiasts. These are the backyard tinkerers, the ones who put down their computers, pick up their tools, and try to build something.
In some cases, these are the folks who truly believe they can have a chance to violate the laws of thermodynamics. Inevitably these folks fail to build free energy generators, overunity devices, or whatever their pursuit is, but they all do seem to learn something in the process. A lot can be said about the builds themselves. Some of these are awesome devices. Even if they don’t work for their intended purpose, they are great demonstrations of magnetism or chemistry. This is where I had a change of heart. If someone wants to spend their time working on an impossible hack, then more power to them. I may not think they have any chance of success, but at the very least, they’ll learn how to build.
So the next time you find yourself on the strange side of YouTube don’t run for the hills. You might just find some awesome (pointless) builds hiding between the scammers and the trolls.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AND!XOR DEF CON Badge
Building our own electronic badge. ARM Cortex M3 and Arduino based
https://hackaday.io/project/9064-andxor-def-con-badge
We’re building our own electronic badge. Goal is to provide some great hardware and a free tool chain for easy hacking.
Basic features include LEDs, RF, and an OLED screen plus anything else people want to add.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mouse Pen from Old Parts
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/18/mouse-pen-from-old-parts/
No offense to [Douglas Engelbart] but the computer mouse has always seemed a bit of a hack to us (and not in the good sense of the word). Sure we’ve all gotten used to them, but unlike a computer keyboard, there is no pre-computer analog to a mouse. There are plenty of alternatives, of course, like touchpads and trackballs, but they never seem to catch on to the extent that the plain old mouse has.
One interesting variation is the pen mouse. These do rely on a pre-computer analog: a pen or pencil. You can buy them already made (and they are surprisingly inexpensive), but what fun is that? [MikB] wanted one and decided to build it instead of buying it.
DIY USB Penmouse/Mousepen
http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-USB-PenmouseMousepen/
This instructable is for making an optical USB mouse into a pen style Mousepen. Or Penmouse.
My starting point was from seeing this instructable but wanting to improve the mechanical design a little and add the left-right click switches back.
It’s also an entry in the “Before and After” up-cycling competition:
Before: Cheap plastic mouse with failing scroll-wheel.
After: Useful digital art tool that doesn’t cost a fortune!
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to build some things from (almost) nothing
A collection of tips and info about making on a budget. Ideas welcome!
https://hackaday.io/project/8960-how-to-build-some-things-from-almost-nothing
Tomi Engdahl says:
ramanPi – Raman Spectrometer
https://hackaday.io/project/1279-ramanpi-raman-spectrometer
An open source 3D Printable Raman Spectrometer using a RaspberryPi and easy to find off the shelf components..
Welcome to the hackaday.io project page for the ramanPi! The ramanPi is a raman spectrometer that I decided to build back in April of 2014 because I needed one for another project and could not afford the tens of thousands of dollars a commercial product costs…and there are no DIY or open source systems in existence until now. I knew nothing about spectroscopy, let alone raman spectroscopy back then and everything here documents my learning process towards my goal…..A fully functional, and fairly high resolution raman spectrometer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Shmoocon 2016: Hackers for Charity
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/18/shmoocon-2016-hackers-for-charity/
To one side of the “Chill Room” at this year’s Shmoocon were a few tables for Hackers for Charity. This is an initiative to make skills-training available for people in Uganda. The organization is completely supported by the hacker community.
Johnny started Hackers for Charity as a way to get used electronics and office equipment into the hands of people who needed it most. This led to the foundation of a school in Uganda that teaches technology skills. This can be life-changing for the students who go on to further schooling, or often find clerical or law enforcement positions. Through the charity’s donations the training center is able to make tuition free for about 75% of the student body.
The education is more than just learning to use a word processor. The group has adopted a wide range of equipment and digital resources to make this an education you’d want for your own children. Think Chromebooks, Raspberry Pi, robotics, and fabrication. One really interesting aspect is the use of RACHEL, which is an effort to distribute free off-line educational content.
http://worldpossible.org/rachel/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Basically, Its Minecraft
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/19/basically-its-minecraft/
[SethBling] really likes Minecraft. How can you tell? A quick look at his YouTube channel should convince you, especially the one where he built a full-blown BASIC interpreter in Minecraft. It is not going to win any speed races, as you might expect, but it does work.
http://sethbling.com/Scripting
Tomi Engdahl says:
Developed on Hackaday : HaDge update – it’s a HACK
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/19/developed-on-hackaday-hadge-update-its-a-hack/
Work on HaDge – the Hackaday con badge, continues in bits and spurts, and we’ve had some good progress in recent weeks. HaDge will be one conference badge to use at all conferences, capable of communicating between badges.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacking Education – A Makerspace Experiment
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/19/hacking-education-a-makerspace-experiment/
This is an Education hack, and it’s pretty awesome. [Abhijit Sinha] received an Engineering degree and took up a run-of-the mill IT job in Bangalore, considered India’s IT hub. 7 months down the line on Dec 31st, he gave notice to the company and quit his “boring” job. He ended up in Banjarpalya, a village just 30 kms out of Bangalore. But it could well have been 30 years back in time. The people there had never come across computers, and there wasn’t much sign of other modern technology. So he set up Project DEFY – Design Education for You.
He bought a few refurbished laptops, took a room, and put kids and computers together. Except, these kids just knew a smattering of English. They went to the village school, run by the government and staffed by teachers whose training was basic, at best. He told the kids there are games in those boxes for them to play, but they’d have to figure it out on their own, without help from him. Pretty soon, all of them were playing games like they were pros. That’s when [Abhijit] stepped in and told them that they’d created a base line for having fun. Everything else they did from now on had to be more fun than what they had just done. If they were interested, he would show them how.
He had a gaggle of kids waiting to hear him with rapt attention. He showed them how to look online for information. He showed them how they could learn how to build fun projects by looking up websites like Instructables, and then use locally available materials and their own ingenuity to build and modify. Once a project was done, he showed them how to post details about what they had done and learnt so others around the world could learn from them.
http://www.projectdefy.org/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Continuing Education via Wheel Balancing
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/18/continuing-education-via-wheel-balancing/
There’s an old saying that you should make things twice. Once to figure out how to build the thing, and again to build it the right way. [Pmbrunelle] must agree. His senior project in college was a machine to balance wheels. It was good enough for him to graduate, but he wanted it to be even better.
The original machine required observation of measurements on an oscilloscope and manual calculations. [Pmbrunelle] added an AVR micro, a better motor drive, and made a host of other improvements.
the machine works, but [Pmbrunelle] still wasn’t happy.
In the most recent incarnation, the AVR takes the wheel radius and collected data and tells you where to put the weight and, of course, how much weight to use.
DIY Dynamic Wheel Balancer, Mark 2
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/diy-dynamic-wheel-balancer-mark-2/