Saturday, March 31
There’s More To MIDI Than Music – How About A Light Show?
MIDI instruments and controllers are fun devices if you want to combine your interest in music and electronics in a single project. Breaking music down into standardized, digital signals can technically turn anything with a button or a sensor into a musical instrument or effect pedal. On the other hand, the receiving end of the MIDI signal is mostly overlooked.
[FuseBerry], a music connoisseur with a background in electronics and computer science, always wanted to build a custom MIDI device, but instead of an instrument, he ended up with a MIDI controlled light show in the shape of an exploded truncated icosahedron ([FuseBerry]’s effort to look up that name shouldn’t go unnoticed). He designed and 3D-printed all the individual geometric shapes, and painstakingly equipped them with LEDs from a WS2818B strip. An Arduino Uno controls those LEDS, and receives the MIDI signals through a regular 5-pin DIN MIDI connector that is attached to the Arduino’s UART interface.
The LEDs are mapped to pre-defined MIDI notes, so whenever one of them is played, and their NoteOn message is received, the LEDs light up accordingly. [FuseBerry] uses his go-to DAW to create the light patterns, but any software / device that can send MIDI messages should do the trick. In the project’s current state, the light pattern needs to be created manually, but with some adjustments to the Arduino code, that could be more automated, something along the lines of this MIDI controlled Christmas light show.
You Bring It, This Blings It: Retrofitting a Hot Foil Stamping Machine
Hot foil stamping is a method often used to embellish and emboss premium print media. It’s used on things like letterhead and wedding invitations to add a touch of luxury. The operation is actually quite simple, where a custom die is heated, pressed into a heat transfer foil, and then transferred on to the print media. Some of the very first manuscripts used gold leaf embossing to decorate intricate calligraphy. You can also see it often used to decorate the sides of religious texts.
Professional foil stamping machines are often pricey and the cheaper ones you can get from eBay are usually poorly made. [Lindsay Wilson] found this out when he purchased a low-cost hot foil stamping machine that was too difficult to use reliably. It got shelved for years until he had another hot foil stamping project. This time he was prepared. He took the machine apart and robust-ified it by attaching it to a heavy-duty arbor press. He also retrofit the heating assembly with his own temperature controller to improve the accuracy for the foils he wanted to use.
We’ve actually gotten this done professionally at a book printing factory in Shenzhen and took some photos. This is the heat transfer foil. You can usually get these on huge rolls that mount on to the machine. They also come in various metallic colors such as metallic blue, green, red, as well as the usual gold and silver.
This is the actual machine used to hot foil stamp on to books. It’s also used to stamp the edges of the books to make it look more appealing at book stores.
This is an example of how hot foil stamping can decorate books. In this case, it’s used to decorate the edges of the books which makes it more eye-catching, especially when there’s a stack of them sitting on a table at a book store. It also reminds me of the bibles I always see in the drawers of the hotels I’ve stayed at.
Now we’re just waiting for a conductive heat transfer foil so we can stamp out our circuits on to book covers.
Simple Decoder Serves as Solo Ham’s Test Buddy
For a hobby that’s ostensibly all about reaching out to touch someone, ham radio can often be a lonely activity. Lots of hams build and experiment with radio gear much more than they’re actually on the air, improving their equipment iteratively. The build-test-tweak-repeat cycle can get a little tedious, though, especially when you’re trying to assess signal strength and range and can’t find anyone to give you a report.
To close the loop on field testing, [WhiskeyTangoHotel] threw together a simple ham radio field confirmation unit that’s pretty slick. It relies on the fact that almost every ham radio designed for field use incorporates a DTMF encoder in the microphone or in the transceiver itself. Hams have used Touch Tones for in-band signaling control of their repeaters for decades, and even as newer digital control methods have been introduced, good old analog DTMF hangs in there. The device consists of a DTMF decoder attached to the headphone jack of a cheap handy talkie. When a DTMF tone is received, a NodeMCU connected to the decoder calls an IFTTT job to echo the key to [WTH]’s phone as an SMS message. That makes it easy to drive around and test whether his mobile rig is getting out. And since the receiver side is so portable, there’s a lot of flexibility in how tests can be arranged.
On the fence about ham as a hobby? We don’t blame you. But fun projects like this are the perfect excuse to go get licensed and start experimenting.
Sharpening with Bluetooth
Few things are as frustrating in the kitchen as a dull knife. [Becky] and her chef friend collaborated to build a Bluetooth module to tell you when you are sharpening a knife at the optimum angle. That might sound a little specialized, but the problem boils down to one that is common enough in a lot of situations: how do you tell your exact orientation while in motion? That is, with the knife moving rapidly back and forth over the sharpening stone, how can you measure the angle of the blade reliably?
Looking for a challenge, [Becky’s] first attempt was to just use an accelerometer. It worked, but it wasn’t very precise. Her final answer turned out to be a full inertial measurement unit — the BNO055 — that combines an accelerometer, a magnetometer, and a gyroscope along with enough smarts to fuse the data into actual position data.
The project should be simple to replicate. It’s made of off-the-shelf modules, breakout boards, and common components like a battery, a switch, and some magnets. There’s also a 3D printed case to cover it all up.
Of course, another answer is to make a jig to hold the knife at the right angle. If you aren’t a fan of sharpening knives by hand, we can help with that, too.
A Retrocomputer Disk On A Chip
There have been a lot of different mass storage methods over the relatively short lifespan of the computer. Magnetic tapes, drums, all sorts of disks, and flash memory have each had their time. Each of these new innovations required some time to become easy to use. One of the early attempts to simplify using flash memory was the M-Systems DiskOnChip device. Looking like a standard 8K JEDEC-compatible memory device, it actually provided access to a flash disk drive ranging from 16MB to 1GB. [Smbakeryt] bought some of these devices and built an ISA board to provide a disk and clock for the old 8-bit bus. You can see a video discussion about the device below.
SanDisk bought M-Systems and discontinued the devices back in 2007. Of course, you can still design flash memory into your system, but the simple and efficient interface of the DiskOnChip is no more. It is a testament to how simple the interface is that the schematic for the little board fits on a page, including the DS12885 real time clock.
The DiskOnChip was sophisticated enough to present a proper BIOS signature so its own BIOS was loaded on the PC’s power up sequence. When you consider how little circuitry is involved — especially if you ignore the clock which isn’t part of the disk subsystem — it is really quite elegant.
We love these old builds and we miss when you could just whip together a board to plug into your PC with minimal effort. These days, if you want to do some fancy PCI or PCI Express interface, you are as well off to start with an FPGA board. Or, you might hack an existing board.
Friday, March 30
DIY Mini-Amp Goes to Eleven
On the day mini-amps were invented, electric guitar players the world over rejoiced. No longer would they be house-bound when jamming out on their favourite guitar. It is a doubly wondrous day indeed when an electric guitar-inclined maker realizes they can make their own.
[Frank Olson Music] took apart an old pair of headphones and salvaged the speakers — perhaps intending to replicate a vintage sound — and set them aside. Relying on the incisive application of an X-Acto knife, [Olson] made swift work cutting some basswood planks into pieces of the amp before gluing them together — sizing it to be only just bigger than the speakers. A tie was also shown no mercy and used as a dapper grille screen. Both the head and speaker cabinets were sanded and stained for a matching finish.
The speakers are wired to a simple aux jack and connect to an LM386 low-voltage amp circuit which [Olson] assembled and mounted into the header. In spite of our earlier hype, [Olson] seems to be using an external power supply for this mini-amp; but before you count that as a mark against this build, the music you hear him playing in the build video came from the amp. Pair that with this mini-not-quite-a-Tesla-coil, and you’re ready to jam.
Tips of the Week: Hobby Knife Hacks, Paint Handle Push Sticks, Brazing 101, and Say My Name!
Another week of wonderful tips, tricks, and tool hacks.
The post Tips of the Week: Hobby Knife Hacks, Paint Handle Push Sticks, Brazing 101, and Say My Name! appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
You can officially buy an Android Go phone in the US
ZTE
ZTE put its new Tempo Go smartphone up for sale on Thursday, making it the first phone with Google's Android Go configuration to be available for purchase in the US along the way.
The phone is now available for $79.99 on ZTE's website. The listing was first spotted by Android Police.
Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Learn What Did and Didn’t Work In this Prototyping Post-Mortem
[Tommy] is a one-man-shop making electronic musical things, but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about the outstanding prototyping post-mortem he wrote up about his attempt to turn his Four-Step Octaved Sequencer into a viable product. [Tommy] had originally made a hand-soldered one-off whose performance belied its simple innards, and decided to try to turn it into a product. Short version: he says that someday there will be some kind of sequencer product like it available from him, “[B]ut it won’t be this one. This one will go on my shelf as a reminder of how far I’ve come.”
The unit works, looks great, has a simple parts list, and the bill of materials is low in cost. So what’s the problem? What happened is that through prototyping, [Tommy] learned that his design will need many changes before it can be used to create a product, and he wrote up everything he learned during the process. Embedded below is a demo of the prototype that shows off how it works and what it can do, and it helps give context to the lessons [Tommy] shares.
When it comes to discovering practical issues and unexpected, lurking problems, hands-on prototyping can be a great teacher. Another great teacher is experience, and that is an excellent opportunity to bring up [Dan Gelbart] sharing his 40 years of mechanical prototyping experience. In the first few minutes of the first video, [Dan] talks about choices in enclosure design and gives a good idea of what the rest of the series is like. It’s a great follow-up to [Tommy]’s write-up about his prototyping lessons.
Video: Chris Hadfield on the complexities of music in microgravity
Video shot and edited by CNE. Click here for transcript.
Astronaut Chris Hadfield’s cover of Bowie’s “Space Oddity” is thought-provoking, visually fascinating, and absolutely worth watching—but it’s far more than just a great cover of a classic song. It’s an inherently human video, because it demonstrates the fundamental truth that we are a species of storytellers—and that we remain so whether or not we’re on Earth.
Music is both one of the oldest human traditions and also one of the oldest astronaut traditions. We’ve been taking songs into orbit with us since the 1960s, first transmitted from the ground and then later via tape, CD, and electronic formats. What we sing in space is similar to what we sing on the ground—music fills in the gaps of a day, helps boredom, focuses the mind, diffuses anger, and does a million other things to soothe the homesick spaceman.
Ground control to Lionel Hutz
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hadfield’s cover ran into legal trouble almost immediately after its release, because copyright doesn’t particularly care how popular or viral a song is. In spite of having explicit permission from David Bowie and his attorneys, Hadfield’s “Space Oddity” was pulled from YouTube not too long after it went up.
Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Building a Puppet With The Broken Nerd
Witness the birth of this wonderful puppet
The post Building a Puppet With The Broken Nerd appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
Get Ready for Easter with these 10 Unique Egg Designs
With the holiday right around the corner, it's time to start picking out the perfect Easter egg designs. What will you choose this year?
The post Get Ready for Easter with these 10 Unique Egg Designs appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
Oracle v Google could Chill Software Development
Unless you’ve completely unplugged from the news, you probably are aware that the long-running feud between Oracle and Google had a new court decision this week. An appeal court found that Google’s excuse of fair use wasn’t acceptable and that they did infringe on Oracle’s copyrights to Java. Oracle has asked for about $9 billion in damages, although the actual amount is yet to be decided. In addition, it is pretty likely Google will take it up to the Supreme Court before any actual judgment is levied.
The news is aimed at normal people, so it is pretty glossy about what exactly happened. We set out to try to make sense of it all. We found a pretty good article from [Michaela Barry] about what the courts previous found. There were three main parts:
- There were 37 API (Application Programming Interface) declarations taken verbatim from Java. This would be like a C header file if you aren’t familiar with Java.
- Google decompiled 8 security files and used them.
- The rangeCheck function — 9 lines of Java code — were exactly the same in Oracle’s Java and Android.
Google’s argument was that this is fair use, which has a specific legal definition. Here at Hackaday, we aren’t lawyers, so we’ll let you look up that definition yourself. However, paraphrasing [Judge Potter Stewart], “we may not be able to define fair use, but we know it when we see it.”
Decompiling the security files does seem to be a bit much. There might be some case to be made there. However, the idea that creating an API that conforms to another API is an infringement is pretty scary. Linux, for example, offers a similar API to Unix (or POSIX). There is a long history of APIs per se not being intellectual property.
As for the rangeCheck function, it is true that it appears to be a copy. However, if you look at the code, it is pretty laughable to think it is stealing anyone’s secrets:
private static void rangeCheck(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex)
{
if (fromIndex > toIndex)
throw new IllegalArgumentException("fromIndex(" +
fromIndex + > toIndex(" + toIndex+")");
if (fromIndex < 0)
throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(fromIndex);
if (toIndex > arrayLen)
throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(toIndex);
}
We could think of other names for arrayLen, fromIndex, and toIndex, but the implementation is pretty obvious, don’t you think?
This hasn’t been a simple case. One court finds for Google then the next finds for Oracle. We suppose you could take the opposite tack. If you spent years building a super API for some purpose, why can’t you protect it? Somehow, though, that just doesn’t seem right. Maybe it is like the [Potter Stewart] quote. If you copyright your API to take an array and multiply it by 10, that seems like you shouldn’t be able to protect it. But we could imagine some intricate and logical API that we might feel could be intellectual property. We can’t think of any off hand, but we could imagine it.
In a further twist, the original case had a patent component that was successfully refuted. However, the court that made this week’s ruling normally would not hear a copyright case and only heard this one because of the patent component that was no longer under contention.
Incidentally, at least some of the Java code was covered by the GNU Public License. However, Google’s code — at least parts of it — fell under an Apache Open License which is apparently more permissive and incompatible. The $9 billion figure stems from Oracle’s assertion that Google killed demand for their Java mobile product.
We expect a lot of comments on this. Are your APIs your intellectual property? Or are they like mathematical formulae or algorithms and inherently not subject to copyright? If they are, how do you stop big companies (or small companies with legal resources) from gobbling up the software landscape with endless trivial APIs and killing everyone with lawsuits?
Learn About Accelerometers and Make Your Own Digital Level
Make your own digital "spirit level" with a few inexpensive electronic components and a 3D enclosure.
The post Learn About Accelerometers and Make Your Own Digital Level appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
Putting a Poor Man’s Vector Analyzer Through Its Paces
If anything about electronics approaches the level of black magic, it’s antenna theory. Entire books dedicated to the subject often merely scratch the surface, and unless you’re a pro with all the expensive test gear needed to visualize what’s happening, the chances are pretty good that your antenna game is more practical than theoretical. Not that there’s anything wrong with that — hams and other RF enthusiasts have been getting by with antennas that work without really understanding why for generations.
But we’re living in the future, and the tools to properly analyze antenna designs are actually now within the means of almost everyone. [Andreas Spiess] recently reviewed one such instrument, the N1201SA vector impedance analyzer, available from the usual overseas sources for less than $150. [Andreas]’s review does not seem to be sponsored, so it seems like we’re getting his unvarnished opinion; spoiler alert, he loves it. And with good reason; while not a full vector network analyzer (VNA) that will blow a multi-thousand dollar hole in your wallet, this instrument looks like an incredible addition to your test suite. The tested unit works from 137 MHz to 2.4 GHz, so it covers the VHF and UHF ham bands as well as LoRa, WiFi, cell, ISM, and more. But of course, [Andreas] doesn’t just review the unit, he also gives us a healthy dose of theory in his approachable style.
[The guy with the Swiss accent] has been doing a lot of great work these days, covering everything from how not to forget your chores to reverse engineering an IoT Geiger counter. Check out his channel — almost everything he does is worth a watch.
Thanks to [Nita Vesa] for the tip.
Thursday, March 29
HairIO: An Interactive Extension of the Self
Most of what we see on the wearable tech front is built around traditional textiles, like adding turn signals to a jacket for safer bike riding, or wiring up a scarf with RGB LEDs and a color sensor to make it match any outfit. Although we’ve seen the odd light-up hair accessory here and there, we’ve never seen anything quite like these Bluetooth-enabled, shape-shifting, touch-sensing hair extensions created by UC Berkeley students [Sarah], [Molly], and [Christine].
HairIO is based on the idea that hair is an important part of self-expression, and that it can be a natural platform for sandboxing wearable interactivity. Each hair extension is braided up with nitinol wire, which holds one shape at room temperature and changes to a different shape when heated. The idea is that you could walk around with a straight braid that curls up when you get a text, or lifts up to guide the way when a friend sends directions. You could even use the braid to wrap up your hair in a bun for work, and then literally let it down at 5:00 by sending a signal to straighten out the braid. There’s a slick video after the break that demonstrates the possibilities.
HairIO is controlled with an Arduino Nano and a custom PCB that combines the Nano, a Bluetooth module, and BJTs that drive the braid. Each braid circuit also has a thermistor to keep the heat under control. The team also adapted the swept-frequency capacitive sensing of Disney’s Touché project to make HairIO extensions respond to complex touches. Our favorite part has to be that they chalked some of the artificial tresses with thermochromic pigment powder so they change color with heat. Makes us wish we still had our Hypercolor t-shirt.
Nitinol wire is nifty stuff. You can use it to retract the landing gear on an RC plane, or make a marker dance to Duke Nukem.
Researchers “heal” destructive dendrite growth in lithium-metal batteries
Dendrites—branching structures that look like tree limbs—are fun to draw, good on neurons, but generally to be avoided in lithium-ion batteries. As ions are exchanged between the anode and cathode over several charge and discharge cycles, lithium electrodes will sometimes grow dendrites that can expand through the electrolyte that separates the anode and cathode. These dendrites can reduce the battery's capacity, shorten the life of the battery, or even start fires as the dendrites heat up. (Dendrites were found in the batteries related to the Boeing 787 battery fires that happened in 2014, for example.)
But researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, have proposed a way to ameliorate this dendrite growth. They've done this not by fighting against the dendrites and trying to contain them (as many researchers have attempted), but by using the tendency of dendrites to heat up in response to high current density to make those electrode growths smaller.
By applying a high-current pulse to a lithium-metal anode, the researchers were able to produce heat that wasn't enough to melt the lithium metal but was enough to encourage "extensive surface migration" of the lithium atoms. That essentially "healed" the lithium-metal anode of newly-growing dendrites, which smoothed out the surface of the lithium anode again.
Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Dealmaster: Grab a pair of Anker wireless exercise headphones for $22
Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today, the Dealmaster is all about variety: we've got deals on everything from desktop speakers and gaming PCs to iPads and Nintendo Switch accessories.
We'll choose to focus on a solid pair of wireless exercise headphones, though, as Anker's SoundBuds Slim+ are now down to $22 with the coupon code below. This, as you might guess, is an upgraded version of the SoundBuds Slim, which Ars recommended as a top budget option among Bluetooth exercise earbuds late last year. The main difference here is that the Slim+ support the aptX codec, which boosts audio quality somewhat with compatible devices.
They're still $20 earbuds, of course, so don't expect phenomenal sound, but for the price they more than hold their own. Beyond that, you're looking at a decent 7 hours of battery life per charge, IPX5-rated water resistance, and a nondescript but well-constructed build that shouldn't be tricky to fit in your ears. If you just need a cheap beater pair of earbuds for the gym, you could certainly do worse.
Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Windows leader Terry Myerson departs as Microsoft reorganizes Windows division
Terry Myerson (credit: Microsoft)
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced a company reorganization today, with major changes coming to the Windows and Devices Group (WDG), the organizational unit housing Windows development, Surface, and HoloLens.
The WDG is no more. The group is being split up. A new unit, "Experiences & Devices" will be led by Executive Vice President Rajesh Jha. Other parts are moving to Scott Guthrie's "Cloud + AI" group. Certain parts of Microsoft's AI + Research group are also moving to Guthrie's organization. Nadella also said that WDG's leader, Terry Myerson, is departing the company.
Mary Jo Foley has the full details of the reorg. The new naming suggests a downplaying of Windows—still a major money-maker for the company—but not its abandonment. Panos Panay will continue to lead Surface devices with the new title of chief product officer. Joe Belfiore will continue to lead the Windows client experience, covering both Windows itself and cross-device interoperability. Both leaders will report to Jha, as will Brad Anderson and his Windows Enterprise Deployment and Management team.
Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Super-Blue CNC Part Fixturing
Simple clamps are great if you need to keep the pressure on two parallel surfaces, but if you have an irregular plane, or you need to cut through it, clamps are not the correct tool. The folks at [NYC CNC] feature a video with a clever hack borrowing from other disciplines. Painters tape is applied to the top of a level mounting surface in the machine and then burnished. The same is done to the bottom of the workpiece. Superglue is drizzled between the tape layers and pressed together so now the stock is held firmly below the toolhead.
Some parts are machined in the video, which can be seen below, and the adhesion holds without any trouble. One of the examples they cut would be difficult to hold without damage or stopping the machine. The accepted wisdom is that superglue holds well to a slightly porous surface like tape, but it doesn’t like do as well with smooth surfaces like metal. Removing residue-free tape at the end of a cut is also cleaner and faster than glue any day.
If you have yet to cut your teeth, you can watch our very own Elliot Williams getting introduced to CNC machines or a portable machine even a child can use.
Thank you for the tip, [Keith Olson].
No Man’s Sky coming to Xbox One later this year
Hello Games' massive procedural space exploration sim No Man's Sky will come to the Xbox One later this year, following its summer 2016 launch on the PC and PS4, the company announced this morning.
The 505 Games-published port, which will include 4K and HDR graphics support on the Xbox One X, will follow what Hello Games founder Sean Murray calls "by far our biggest update so far" to the game, called No Man's Sky NEXT. Hello Games isn't detailing what specifically will be included in the upcoming free update, due to launch this summer, save for the few screenshots shown above.
Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
A Cruise car got a traffic ticket—GM says it did nothing wrong
A car from GM's self-driving car unit, Cruise, received a traffic ticket last week from a San Francisco police officer who said that a Cruise car drove uncomfortably close to a pedestrian. Cruise disputes the officer's accusation, saying that the vehicle stayed more than 10 feet away from the pedestrian.
The incident was first reported Tuesday by Jackie Ward, a reporter for the local CBS station in San Francisco. She was tipped off by a viewer, Kevin O’Connor, who snapped this picture of the incident as it happened just a day after a fatal Uber self-driving car crash in Tempe, Arizona.
"According to data collected by Cruise, the pedestrian was 10.8 feet away from the car," Ward says. The car was in self-driving mode and "it began to continue down Harrison at 14th St. Shortly after the car accelerated, the officer pulled it over."
Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Carving a Massive Wooden Baseball Chair with Paul Jackman
Paul Jackman recently published a fantastic video on how he made a chair that looks like a giant baseball that's been sawn in two.
The post Carving a Massive Wooden Baseball Chair with Paul Jackman appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
Maker Spotlight: Hannah Cass of Sew 8-Bit
Meet Hannah Cass, owner of Sew 8-Bit and a full-time mom of one. She sews together wonderful pieces of art live on Twitch.
The post Maker Spotlight: Hannah Cass of Sew 8-Bit appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
Maker Faire Cairo Brings History, Youth, and Battling Bots
The spirit of the event, and of the entire city, was highly infectious and sets a great example of what a wonderful presence makers have on an international stage.
The post Maker Faire Cairo Brings History, Youth, and Battling Bots appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
PC Building Simulator is (most of) the fun of building a PC—without pricey GPUs
Samuel Axon
The "simulator" genre of PC games was already pretty meta, but it has now reached a new level with PC Building Simulator, a game currently available via Steam Early Access. In it, you build desktop PCs (mostly the gaming variety) by opening up the case, installing components, plugging them into the motherboard for power, and more, all in a 3D simulation. (Sorry, no VR.)
After a few hours of testing, we were surprised at how fun it actually is, even though it's quite basic. And in this time of crypto-inflated GPU prices holding upgrade plans back, it might just fill a hole in some PC enthusiasts' hearts.
Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Dumb Down Your Xiaomi Smart Lamp With A Custom Firmware
Undoubtedly, the ESP8266’s biggest selling point is its WiFi capability for a ridiculously low price. Paranoid folks probably await the day its closed-source firmware bits will turn against humanity in a giant botnet, but until then, hobbyists and commercial vendors alike will proceed putting them in their IoT projects and devices. One of those devices is the Yeelight desk lamp that lets you set its color temperature and brightness via mobile app.
[fvollmer] acquired such a lamp, and while he appreciated its design and general concept, he wasn’t happy that it communicates with external servers. So he did the only reasonable thing and wrote his own firmware that resembles the original functionality, but leaves out the WiFi part. After all, the ESP8266 has still a lot to offer in its core essence: a full-blown 32-bit microcontroller with support for the most common, hobbyist-friendly SDKs.
The lamp’s color temperature and brightness are set with a rotary encoder / push button combo switch, and the LEDs themselves are controlled via PWM. All things considered, it’s a rather straightforward endeavour, for which [fvollmer] chose the standalone C SDK. And in the end, it’s not like he’s unreasonably cautious to keep some control over his household items.
Eavesdropping on a VGA Monitor’s Conversations
Did you ever wonder what your monitor and your computer are talking about behind your back? As it turns out, there’s quite a conversation going on while the monitor and the computer decide how to get along, and sniffing out VGA communications can reveal some pretty fascinating stuff about the I²C protocol.
To reverse engineer the configuration information exchanged between a VGA monitor and a video card, [Ken Shirriff] began by lopping a VGA cable in two. The inside of such cables is surprisingly complex, with separate shielding wires for each color and sync channel and a host of control wires, all bundled in multiple layers of shielding foil and braid to reduce EMI. [Ken] identified the clock and data lines used for the I²C interface and broke those out into a PocketBeagle for analysis using the tiny Linux machine’s I²C tools.
With a Python script to help decode the monitor’s Extended Display Identification Data (EDID) data, [Ken] was able to see everything the monitor knows about itself — manufacturer, serial number, all the supported resolution modes, and even deprecated timing and signal information left over from the days when CRTs ruled the desktop. Particularly interesting are the surprisingly limited capabilities of a VGA display in terms of color reproduction, as well as [Ken]’s detailed discussion on the I²C bus in general and how it works.
We always enjoy these looks under the hood that [Ken] is so good at, and we look forward to his reverse engineering write-ups. His recent efforts include a look at core memory from a 50-year old mainframe and reverse engineering at the silicon level.
An LED Effect for Every Occasion
Quality software development examples can be hard to come by. Sure, it’s easy to pop over to Google and find a <code> block with all the right keywords, but having everything correctly explained can be hit or miss. And the more niche the subject, the thinner the forum posts get. Bucking the downward trend [HansLuijten] provides an astoundingly thorough set of LED strip patterns in his comprehensive post titled Arduino LED strip effects.
Don’t let the unassuming title lead you astray from the content, because what’s on offer goes beyond your average beginner tutorial on how to setup a strand of NeoPixels. [HansLuijten] is thorough to a fault; providing examples for everything from simple single color fades and classic Cylon eyes to effects that look like meteors falling from the sky. Seriously! Check out the video after the break. Those chasing lights you see around theater signs? Check. Color twinkle and sparkle? Check. Color wipes and rainbow fades? Check, and check.
At this point, an average forum post would be a jumbled mess of source which only works on an authentic Arduino Duemilanove running at 3.3v sitting on top of the 2nd printing of the author’s favorite issue of Make. But not here! These samples work with Adafruit’s easy to use NeoPixel library as well as FastLED, the quickest pixel in the West. On top of that the examples are clear and concise and explanation is plentiful. But the best part is definitely that each effect has a video clearly showing what it looks like.
If only everything were this easy to use, the open source revolution would already be here.
Wednesday, March 28
Building a Loc-Line Close-Up Work Light with Adam Savage
Watch as Adam puts together an adjustable workbench light for precision work using industrial hosing and an LED video light.
The post Building a Loc-Line Close-Up Work Light with Adam Savage appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
The future of video game design
Last week was the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, so we hosted a special episode of Ars Technica Live about the future of game design. Ars Reviews Editor Samuel Axon joined me to ask Tracy Fullerton about where games are headed in the future. An award-winning game developer, Tracy heads the Game Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California. She gave us her perspective as a creator and as a teacher of the next generation of game creators.
We began by talking about two of Tracy's best-known games, Walden and The Night Journey, both of which push the definition of what counts as a game. In Walden, the player takes on the identity of American philosopher Henry David Thoreau during the mid-19th century when he built a tiny cabin in the woods and tried to live off the land. That experience became his famous book On Walden Pond, and Tracy recreated it in her game by allowing players to build a cabin, wander a set of paths around the pond based on actual maps from the period, and watch thousands of different trees transform with the seasons.
Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
