Sunday, April 30
Vintage Vending Machine Makes The Perfect Gift
Nothing says ‘I Love You’ like an old vending machine, and if it is a restored and working vintage Vendo V-80 cola dispenser then you have yourself a winner. [Jan Cumps] from Belgium was assigned the repair of the device in question by a friend. He started off with just a working refrigerator and no electronics. In a series of repairs, he began with replacing the mechanical coin detector’s switches with optical and magnetic sensors to detect the movement of the coin. These sensors are in turn connected to an Arduino which drives the dispensing motor. The motor itself had to be rewound as part of the repair. Since the project is on a deadline, the whole thing is finished using protoboards and through-hole parts. The final system works by dispensing one frosty bottle every time a coin is inserted.
In contrast to most vending machine repairs, this project was a simple one. Instead of using an off-the-shelf coin detector, a simple LED and photodiode pair brought the hack to life. This could easily be adapted to any machine and even be used to create a DIY vending machine on the cheap.
In his blog, [Jan Cumps] demonstrates each working step in a video and share the Arduino code and schematic as well as other interesting details. You can see the final working version in the video below.
It has been a long time since a Vending Machine Prototyping project was commissioned and we would love to see what this project inspires.
Filed under: Arduino Hacks
Wilson’s Heart is Oculus’ most interesting VR misfire yet
When will a VR system finally get an honest-to-goodness adventure? Early adopters and curious onlookers continue to ask this question, wondering when they'll get their own unique, hours-upon-hours mix of story, puzzles, battles, and thrills.
The closest answer up until now remains the incredible and memorable Resident Evil 7. However, that's a bit of a cheat, since it launched primarily for normal TV displays with an optional, albeit awesome, VR mode attached. Thus, the hunt's still on—and the folks at Oculus have been crowing for months about how their upcoming game Wilson's Heart would do the trick.
I'm not just here to inform you that Oculus's high-budget, high-production-value attempt missed the mark—especially for those readers who don't own an Oculus and high-end PC to match. Rather, I'm interested in exploring just how this week's new game, which once looked quite promising, slammed to Earth with melted wings on its back—and what that says for the current state of VR gaming.
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TI 99/4A Weather Station
If you still have a drawer full of slap bracelets from the 1990s because, you know, they might come back, then you’ll appreciate [Vorticon’s] latest project. Sure, we see lots of weather stations, but this one is controlled by a TI 99/4A computer. This home computer from the 1980s was actually ahead of its time with a 16-bit processor.
The sensors use Xbee modules and an Arduino Uno. Of course, the Uno has more power than the TI computer, but that’s not really the point, right? He’s made a series of videos detailing the construction (you can see the first one below, but there are five, so far).
Normally, talking serial to the Arduino would require assembly language on the TI computer. However, TI hacker [Rich Gilbertson] already fixed that. He created Rich Extended BASIC (RxB), which has a CALL IO statement that was perfect for [Vorticon’s] needs.
The TMS9900 CPU had a novel feature where subroutine calls caused the registers to shift so that each subroutine had some registers in common with their caller and some that were private. This sounds good on paper, but the registers residing in main memory was a death sentence as processor speeds increased (the 9900 in this computer only ran at 3 MHz). It also had a sprite-based graphics processor that was used to good effect in games.
No matter how impractical, we love these old retro projects. Even though a new owner of a TI 99/4A back in the 1980s would have been shocked at how much computing power you can buy for the cost of a good meal now, the TI was still capable of some impressive output for its day. While it might not be able to play Doom or Call of Duty, it can handle Flappy Bird.
Filed under: classic hacks, wireless hacks
This Week in Making: Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver, Mad Max Mobiles, and Double Action Keyboard
The post This Week in Making: Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver, Mad Max Mobiles, and Double Action Keyboard appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
U.S Air Force Is Going To Get Hacked
[HackerOne] has announced that US Dept of Defense (DoD) has decided to run their biggest bug bounty program ever, Hack the Air force.
You may remember last year there was the Hack the Pentagon bug bounty program, Well this year on the coattails of last year’s success the DoD has decided to run an even bigger program this year: Hack The Air force. Anyone from “The Five Eyes” countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and of course the United States) can take part. This is a change in format from the Pentagon challenge which was only open to U.S citizens and paid out a total of around $75,000 in bug bounties.
Now obviously there are rules. You can’t just hack The Air Force no matter how much you want “All their base are belong to you”. The DoD want computer hackers to find bugs in their public facing web services and are not so much interested in you penetration testing their weapons systems or any other critical infrastructure. Try that and you may end up with a lovely never-ending tour of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.
Filed under: contests
Afroman Makes A UHF Oscillator From A Potato
If you have ever worked with simple logic gates, there is a good chance that at some point you will have built a ring oscillator from a chain of inverters. With the addition of a resistor and a capacitor, you can easily make a square wave oscillator up into the megahertz range with standard logic chips.
[Afroman] received some rather special logic chips, from an unexpectedly named company, Potato Semiconductor. They specialise in making versions of common 74 series logic that smash the usual 100+ MHz barrier of the faster conventional 74 series chips, and extend their bandwidth up to over 1 GHz. Using one of their 74GU04 parts, he made a ring oscillator relying only on the stray capacitances of its gate inputs for its timing, and while he didn’t manage to achieve a GHz he did measure it at about 373 MHz. He took a look with a spectrum analyser, and as you might expect from a logic circuit found strong harmonics in the GHz range.
Now normally there would be no news in someone making a ring oscillator with a 7404. It really wouldn’t be a hack with a run-of-the-mill 74LS or 74HC part. But this Potato part is sufficiently unusual that it deserves a bit of attention in its own right. After all, we’re not used to logic chips that can work at those kinds of frequencies.
We’ve put his video below the break. Meanwhile, the Potato Semiconductor website makes for an interesting browse, and proves that there is plenty of life left in the venerable 74 series.
We’ve featured Afroman many times before, most recently with a simple power inverter circuit, and a small FM transmitter. We look forward to more from this prolific source.
Filed under: parts
The Mother of All Belt Grinders
It seems like everyone is building belt grinders these days. You might think [Jeremy Schmidt] is just hoping on the bandwagon, but you’d be wrong. He took a full two years to design the perfect belt grinder for his needs. Now he’s built his perfect beast, and we must say, it’s quite impressive!
[Jeremy] had seen grinders which can tilt, but most of them tilt the entire machine, including the table. He designed his machine with an independent table. This means the belt can be placed at any angle, while the table remains flat. He’s achieved some really interesting finishes with a course grind on a 45-degree angle to the workpiece.
No build is without its problems. In [Jeremy’s] case it was building the box which acts as a receiver for the machine and the tables. Regular square tube stock wasn’t quite rigid enough, so bar stock was the way to go. The first attempt at building the box resulted in a warped tube, due to the stresses of welding. [Jeremy] was more careful the second time, moving from section to section of the four welds. This kept the heat from building up, and the box stayed straight.
The final result is an incredibly rigid machine which definitely will withstand anything that [Jeremy] can throw at it.
If you want to see more belt grinders at work, check out [Bob]’s treadmill belt grinder, or [Mike’s] conversion.
Filed under: tool hacks
A LED Strip Clock As Linear As Time
We love custom clocks here at Hackaday, and are always thrilled to see each inventive means of time-keeping. In a seldom-seen take on the familiar device, the [Bastel Brothers]’s LED Strip Clock’s sleek profile finds itself in good company.
The clock is a two-metre strip of 60 LEDs; every minute past the current hour corresponds to one lit LED, every fifth LED is turned to red in order to make reading minutes easier. So 3 red LEDs +3 green LEDs=18 minutes, with the hour marked by a third color. Sounds complex, but the [Brothers] are quick to say you get used to it quickly, especially when the 6 o’clock LED is centered at some noticeable object or feature.
We recently featured a different kind of linear clock, but really, you could spend days browsing our archives of many magical and wondrous clocks.
Filed under: ATtiny Hacks, clock hacks
Linger Keeps You Around After You’ve Gone
We’re not sure if this is art, anti-snooping guerilla warfare, or just a cheeky hack, but we do know that we like it! [Jasper van Leonen]’s Linger keeps the SSIDs that your cell phone (for example) spits out whenever it’s not connected to a WiFi network, and replays them after you’re gone.
Some retail stores and other shady characters use MAC addresses and/or the unique collection of SSIDs that your phone submits in probe requests to fingerprint you and track your movement, either through their particular store or across stores that share a tracking provider. Did you know that you were buying into this when you enabled “location services”? Did the tracking firms ask you if that was ok? Of course not. What are you going to do about it?
Linger replays the probe requests of people who have already moved on, making it appear to these systems as if nobody ever leaves. Under the hood, it’s a Raspberry Pi Zero, two WiFi dongles, and some simple Python software that stores probe requests in a database. There’s also a seven-segment display to indicate how many different probe-request profiles Linger has seen. We’re not sure the price point on this device is quite down to “throwie” level, but we’d love to see some of these installed in the local mall.
The fact that your smartphone leaks data that’s able to fingerprint and track you should be old news to our crowd. But don’t just take our word for it, try it out yourself! With one Raspberry Pi in your backpack, you could log all the signals around you. Add a few more nodes and you could even try to triangulate your phone within your own home. Just because it’s a creepy invasion of privacy doesn’t mean it’s out of the realm of the DIY hacker.
Filed under: Cellphone Hacks, Raspberry Pi
Saturday, April 29
The Connected Calculator with ESP8266
Calculator hacks have been around for a while now and we have seen the most action around the Texas Instruments TI-83 and TI-84. When [johnkimdinh] found a way to add an ESP8266 to a scientific calculator (machine translation) and this time around it’s a Kenko FX-82M calculator which appears eerily similar to the Casio FX-82M.
In his video, [johnkimdinh] demonstrates his hack which has a web interface for transmitting numbers to the calculator. This is accomplished by accessing the keypad using the ESP8266 GPIOs and it is essentially the equivalent of typing remotely. The rest of the circuit remains intact so bit more work and the other functions should be available remotely as well.
Perhaps this hack is best suited as a dedicated display for outputting measurements and other data which requires some type of post-processing to be human readable. If the next iteration delivers the ability to read from the display we’ll really be getting somewhere. We envision such calculators being used as the future of education where the connectivity is used to retrieve an array of real time parameters for assignments. Add a few sensors into the mix and it could be the next big thing for STEM.
In the past, we have had calculators brought to life to do vector and matrix math and ESP8266s connected to TI-84 calculators. After all, everyone has calculators, they simply must be hacked!
Filed under: Microcontrollers
The LEGO has landed: New set allows you to build the Moon rocket
LEGO
In 2014, Felix Stiessen and Valerie Roche proposed the idea for Saturn V rocket on the LEGO Ideas website. About a year later, their concept received the 10,000 votes necessary for formal consideration by LEGO. The company green-lighted the idea in 2016, and now we have our first look at this set.
As a full disclaimer, I am a lifelong fan of LEGOs and a lifelong fan of spaceflight. So don't expect a rational review of this product by Ars. I mean, the final product will have three removable rocket stages, as well as the lunar lander and lunar orbiter. Drool.
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Weekend Watch: The Mesmerizing Timelapse of Machine Embroidery
The post Weekend Watch: The Mesmerizing Timelapse of Machine Embroidery appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
Simple Range Testing for LoRa Modules
WiFi and Bluetooth have their use cases, but both have certain demands on things like battery life and authentication that make them unsuitable for a lot of low-power use cases. They’re also quite limited in range. There are other standards out there more suitable for low-power and wide area work, and thankfully, LoRa is one of them. Having created some LoRa pagers, [Moser] decided to head out and test their range.
Now, we’ve done range tests before. Often this involves sending one party out with a radio while the other hangs back at base. Cellphones serve as a communications link while the two parties go back and forth, endlessly asking “Is it working now? Hang on, I’ll take a few steps back — what about now?”
It’s a painful way to do a range test. [Moser]’s method is much simpler; set a cellphone to log GPS position, and have the pager attempt to send the same data back to the base station. Then, go out for a drive, and compare the two traces. This method doesn’t just report straight range, either — it can be used to find good and bad spots for radio reception. It’s great when you live in an area full of radio obstructions where simple distance isn’t the only thing affecting your link.
Build details on the pagers are available, and you can learn more about LoRa here. While you’re at it, check out the LoRa tag for more cool builds and hacks.
Filed under: radio hacks
Gloomhaven review: 2017’s biggest board game is astoundingly good
Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com.
Gloomhaven, the new cooperative, campaign-driven dungeon crawl board game from designer Isaac Childres, is big. Really big.
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Logs For A Toilet
The Internet of Things, as originally envisioned in papers dating to the early to mid-90s, is a magical concept. Wearable devices would report your location, health stats, and physiological information to a private server. Cameras in your shower would tell your doctor if that mole is getting bigger. Your car would monitor the life of your cabin air filter and buy a new one when the time arrived. Nanobots would become programmable matter, morphing into chairs, houses, and kitchen utensils. A ubiquity of computing would serve humans as an unseen hive mind. It was paradise, delivered by ever smaller computers, sensors, and advanced robotics.
The future didn’t turn out like we planned. While the scientists and engineers responsible for asking how they could make an Internet-connected toaster oven, no one was around to ask why anyone would want that. At least we got a 3Com Audrey out of this deal.
Fast forward to today and we learn [Christopher Hiller] just put his toilet on the Internet. Why is he doing this? Even he doesn’t know, but it does make for a great ‘logs from a toilet’ pun.
The hardware for this device is a Digistump Oak, a neat little Arduino-compatible WiFi-enabled development board. The Digistump Oak is able to publish to the Particle Cloud, and with just five lines of code, [Chris] is able to publish a flush to the Internet. The sensor for this build is a cheap plastic float switch. There are only three components in this build, and one of them is a 4k7 resistor.
Right now, there are a few issues with the build. It’s battery-powered, but that’s only because [Chris]’ toilet isn’t close enough to a wall outlet. There’s a bit of moisture in a bathroom, and clingfilm solves the problem for now, but some silly cone carne would solve that problem the right way. [Chris] also has two toilets, so he’ll need to build another one.
Filed under: home hacks
Amonkhet review: A gleaming Egyptian city where humans are fattened for slaughter
©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Sam Burley.
Magic: The Gathering dives into classic Egyptian mythology in Amonkhet, its second expansion set of the year after Aether Revolt. The new set is released today, April 28, and you're strongly encouraged to go along to your local game store (or open up Magic Online) and give it a whirl.
Of course, if you want to read about the set before you spend some money, we've got you covered as well. We've been playing with the new cards for a couple of weeks—here's our review.
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Teensy and 3D Printer Make Beautiful Music Together
[Otermrelik] wanted to experiment with the Teensy audio library and adapter. That, combined with his 3D printer, led to a very cool looking build of the teensypolysynth. The device looks like a little mini soundboard with sliders and 3D printed knobs. You can see (and hear) it in the video below.
The Teensy audio library supports several output devices including several built-in options and external boards like the audio adapter used here. The library does CD-quality sound, supports polyphonic playback, recording, synthesis, mixing, and more.
The tool can export code you add to your project and can import it again, too, if you need to make changes. Overall, it is very slick. Of course, the library does all the work, as you can see from this simple exported code:
#include <Audio.h> #include <Wire.h> #include <SPI.h> #include <SD.h> #include <SerialFlash.h> // GUItool: begin automatically generated code AudioSynthWaveform waveform1; //xy=344,303 AudioInputAnalog adc1; //xy=351,227 AudioMixer4 mixer1; //xy=485,230 AudioEffectFlange flange1; //xy=657,237 AudioFilterFIR fir1; //xy=804,233 AudioOutputAnalog dac1; //xy=947,227 AudioConnection patchCord1(waveform1, 0, mixer1, 3); AudioConnection patchCord2(adc1, 0, mixer1, 0); AudioConnection patchCord3(mixer1, flange1); AudioConnection patchCord4(flange1, fir1); AudioConnection patchCord5(fir1, dac1); // GUItool: end automatically generated code
The build details are a little light, but between the code, the pictures, and the 3D printable files you can probably figure it out. Your layout might be a little different, but you’d probably want that anyway.
We’ve talked about the Teensy audio library before, and we are still impressed. If music synthesis isn’t your thing, don’t worry. You can’t help but love this voice changer.
Filed under: Arduino Hacks, ARM, musical hacks
A ‘Do Not Disturb’ Digital Assistant
Flow requires a certain amount of focus, and when that concentration is broken by pesky colleagues, work can suffer, on top of time wasted attempting to re-engage with the task at hand. The Technical Lead in [Estera Dezelak]’s office got fed up with being interrupted, and needed his own personal assistant to ward off the ‘just one question’-ers.
Initially, [Grega Pušnik] — the tech lead — emailed the office his schedule and blocked out times when he wasn’t to be disturbed, with other developers following suit. When that route’s effectiveness started to wane, he turned the product he was working on — a display for booking meeting rooms — into his own personal timetable display with the option to book a time-slot to answer questions. In an office that is largely open-concept — not exactly conducive to a ‘do not disturb’ workstation — it was a godsend.
[Thanks for the tip, Estera!]
Filed under: misc hacks, Software Development
An Alien-Themed… Cuckoo Clock?
If you are a follower of the sci-fi horror film genre then it is likely that you will be familiar with the Alien series of movies. Images of Sigourney Weaver bearing a significant amount of firepower, or of John Hurt’s chest being rent asunder by an emerging creature will be brought to mind, it’s one of those franchises which seems to have entered the public consciousness.
With the release of another movie in the series fast approaching, [Keith Elliott] resolved to mark the occasion with his own Alien themed tribute. What, you might ponder, could he choose? Surely there must be plenty of iconic moments in the films that could provide fertile ground for a tribute project!
So presumably after a significant period of reflection, he’s built an Alien themed cuckoo clock. Something of an off-the-wall choice, you might say, but he persevered with it. The main body of the clock is the torso and head of an unfortunate human crew member, the face of the clock is formed by an alien facehugger on his face, and the cuckoo is not a bird in the manner of the Alpine originals, but a chest-bursting alien that issues forth from the torso.
There is a video, which we’ve posted below. Perhaps the chestburster action needs a little more spontaneity and to be a little less rhythmic, but we’ll leave it to you to decide whether it is inspired or merely kitsch.
Alien props have been a little thin on the ground hereabouts, but we do have on to show you from 2011, a recreation of the motion trackers from the original movie.
Filed under: clock hacks
