[Ty Palowski] doesn’t like folding his many shirts. He saw one of those boards on TV that supposedly simplifies folding, but it does require you to manually move the board. That just won’t do, so [Ty] motorized it to create a shirt folding robot.

The board idea is nothing new, and probably many people wouldn’t mind the simple operation required, but what else are you going to do with your 3D printer but make motor mounts for a shirt folding machine. The folding board is, of course, too big for 3D printing so he made that part out of cardboard at first and then what looks like foam board.

The side “wings” were easy to manipulate, but the top fold required a little more effort. The machine still requires a manual fold at the end and, of course, you have to put the shirt on the right way for things to work out.

Honestly, we aren’t sure this is a very practical project, but we still enjoyed the idea and we can’t deny it seems to work. We don’t think there’s much torque required so we wondered if some beefy RC servos would have been just as effective and probably a lot easier to work with. Still, just about anything that could move would work. You could probably even use a spring and a solenoid to get the same effect. There’s not much build detail, but we think you could figure it out using whatever motors you happen to have on hand.

If you find laundry too time-consuming, there’s always Eleven. If you want a better folding robot, you’ll have to put in some serious work.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/22/robot-sudo-fold-my-laundry/

The TS100 smart soldering iron may have some new competition. Pine — the people best known for Linux-based phones and laptops — though the world needed another smart soldering iron so they announced the Pinecil — Sort of a knock off of the TS100. It looks like a TS100 and uses the same tips. But it does have some important differences.

It used to be a soldering iron was a pretty simple affair. Plug in one end; don’t touch the other end. But, eventually, things got more complicated and you wanted some way to make it hotter or cooler. Then you wanted the exact temperature with a PID controller. However, until recently, you didn’t care how much processing power your soldering iron had. The TS100 changed that. The smart and portable iron was a game-changer and people not only used it for soldering, but also wrote software to make it do other things. One difference is that the device has a RISC-V CPU. Reportedly, it also has better ergonomics and a USB C connector that allows for UART, I2C, SPI, and USB connections. It also has a very friendly price tag of $24.99.

We like that you can use a USB C port or a barrel jack to power the iron. That opens up a number of possibilities. Software-wise, the original author of the TS100 firmware, [Ben Brown] stepped up and set the device up to support the OLED and PWM tip drive. There are a few things left to iron out — no pun intended — but it sounds like it is mostly functional.

Of course, you can also use the device as a starter for a completely different thing that fits nicely in a hand-held form factor. The release talks about a drill or a multimeter, but we are sure there will be other ideas, including the inevitable soldering iron games. If you somehow have escaped learning about the old TS-100, read our review. It will give you something to do while waiting to order your Pinecil — they should be available in the next three months.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/22/pine-made-phones-laptops-and-now-soldering-irons/

A few days ago, Chinese researchers from technology giant Tencent released a paper outlining a firmware vulnerability in several types of fast charger power bricks (translated). The attack is known as BadPower, and it works by altering the default parameters in the firmware of fast chargers to deliver more power to devices than they can handle, which can cause them to overheat, melt, or catch fire.

The ancient and basic USB charging spec provides 0.5 A at 5 V, which is equal to 2.5 W. In theory, that’s all you’ll ever get from those types of chargers. But the newer generation of chargers are different. When you plug your phone into a fast charger, it negotiates a voltage and charging speed with your phone before passing it any power.

Fast chargers can push power at 20 V or more to speed up the charging process, depending on the charger and connected device. If the phone doesn’t do fast charging, it will default to the 5 V standard. Researchers claim the BadPower attack is capable of harming devices whether or not they include a fast charging feature. When a capable device is connected, the charger will still negotiate for 5V, but instead give 20V and wreak havoc.

In the demo after the break, one of the team uses a malicious device disguised as a phone to push the BadPower firmware change to a fast charger that’s hooked up to a voltmeter. Before the attack, the charger gives 5V. After the attack, it gives 5V for a few seconds before jumping up near 20V. Then they connect the now-dirty charger to two identical illuminated magnifying glasses. In one the chip lets the smoke monster out rather violently, and the chips of the other emit sparks.

The researchers tested 35 of the 200+ fast charging bricks currently on the market and found that 18 of them were vulnerable to BadPower, including 11 that can be exploited through the charging port itself. They believe the issue is fixable with a firmware update.

What is not available is enough information to verify this research, or a list of brands/models that are vulnerable. Researchers say the findings were submitted to the China National Vulnerability Database (CNVD) on March 27th, so the absence of this information may be a product of manufacturers needing more time to patch the vulnerability.

What do you think? We say halfway decent chargers shouldn’t be open to firmware attacks from the devices they are charging. And any halfway decent phone should have built-in electrical protection, right?

Via ZDNet

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/22/badpower-vulnerability-in-fast-chargers-might-make-phones-halt-and-catch-fire/

[Rickysisodia] had a few dead ATmega128 chips laying around that he didn’t want to just throw away, so he decided to turn them into his own light-up fidget toy. The toy is in the form of a six-sided die so small that you can hang it on a keychain. He soldered an ATmega128 on each side of the cube and added a few dot circles to give his toy the look of a functional dice. We were pretty amazed by his impressive level of dexterity. Soldering those 0.8 mm-pitch leads together seems pretty tedious if you ask us.

Then he wired a simple, battery-powered tilt switch LED circuit on perfboard that he was able to sneakily place inside the cube. He used a mercury switch, which, as you may figure, uses a small amount of mercury to short two metal contacts inside the switch, completing the circuit and lighting the LED. We would suggest going with the non-mercury variety of tilt switches just to avoid any possible contamination. You know us, anything to mitigate unnecessary disasters is kind of a good route. But anyway, the die lights up a different color LED based on the orientation of the cube and it even blinks.

This is a pretty cool hack for wowing your friends at your next PCB art meet-up. We’ll probably put this in the electronics art category, so it doesn’t get lumped in with those other ever-beloved fidget toys.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/21/bringing-back-the-fidget-toy-craze-with-the-magic-microcontroller-cube/

July 20th marked the anniversary of the first human setting foot on the moon. If you were alive back then, you probably remember being glued to the TV watching the high-tech images of Armstrong taking that first step. But if you go back and watch the video today, it doesn’t look the way you remember it. We’ve been spoiled by high-density video with incredible frame rates. [Dutchsteammachine] has taken a great deal of old NASA footage and used their tools to update them to higher frame rates that look a lot better, as you can see below.

The original film from the moon landing ran between 12 frames per second and as low as 1 frame per second. The new video is interpolated to 24 frames per second. Some of the later Apollo mission film is jacked up to 60 frames per second. The results are great.

We can only hope that future missions will carry enough gear that we can all go via virtual reality. Honestly, when you think of the state of technology back in 1969, it is amazing we have video at all. Consider how the computers had to struggle to do simple trig functions. Some people think the moon landings didn’t have a lot of impacts here on Earth. But we think they’d be wrong.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/21/apollo-missions-get-upgraded-video/

CPUs generate their heat in the silicon die that does all those wonderful calculations which make our computers work. But silicon conducts heat fairly poorly, so the thinner your CPU die, the better it will conduct heat out to the heatsink. This theoretically promises better cooling and thus more scope for performance. Thus, it follows that some overclockers have taken to lapping down their CPU dies to try and make a performance gain.

It’s not a simple process, as the team at [Linus Tech Tips] found out. First, the CPU must be decapped, which on the Intel chip in question requires heating to release the intermediate heat spreader. A special jig is also required to do the job accurately. Once the bare CPU is cleaned of all residual glue and heat compounds, it can then be delicately lapped with a second jig designed to avoid over-sanding the CPU.

After much delicate disassembly, lapping, and reassembly, the CPU appears to drop 3-4 degrees C in benchmarks. In overclocking terms, that’s not a whole lot. While the process is risky and complicated for little gain, the underlying premise has merit – Intel thinned things out in later chips to make minor gains themselves. Video after the break.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/21/die-lapping-for-better-cpu-performance/

In high volume production, smaller PCBs are often “panelized” so that multiple copies can be shuffled through assembly as a single piece. Each board is attached to the panel with a few strategically placed tabs, not unlike the sprues in a plastic model kit. If you only have to separate a few boards you can simply cut them with a hand nipper, but when you’re doing hundreds or thousands of boards, it quickly becomes impractical.

Which is where [Clough42] found himself recently. Looking to improve the situation without breaking the bank, he decided to automate his trusty hand-held depanelizer tool. The basic idea was to build an actuator that could stand in for his own hand when operating the tool. He already had a pneumatic cylinder that he could power the device with, he just needed to design it.

In the video below, he] walks the viewer though his CAD design process for this project. His first step, which is one that’s often overlooked by new players, is creating digital representations of the hardware he’s using. This allows him to quickly design 3D printed parts that have the proper dimensions and clearances to interface with his real-world components. Remember: it’s a lot easier to adapt your 3D model to the components on hand than the other way around.

With the appropriate valves, hoses, and a foot pedal attached to the pneumatic cylinder, he’s able to operate the cutter completely hands-free. He still has to manually move the panel around, but at least it saves him from the repetitive squeezing motion.

With a tool like this and a custom testing jig, you’ll be producing PCBs like the pros in no time.

[Thanks to Anathae for the tip.]

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/21/hand-depanelizer-gets-pneumatic-upgrade/

In high volume production, smaller PCBs are often “panelized” so that multiple copies can be shuffled through assembly as a single piece. Each board is attached to the panel with a few strategically placed tabs, not unlike the sprues in a plastic model kit. If you only have to separate a few boards you can simply cut them with a hand nipper, but when you’re doing hundreds or thousands of boards, it quickly becomes impractical.

Which is where [Clough42] found himself recently. Looking to improve the situation without breaking the bank, he decided to automate his trusty hand-held depanelizer tool. The basic idea was to build an actuator that could stand in for his own hand when operating the tool. He already had a pneumatic cylinder that he could power the device with, he just needed to design it.

In the video below, he] walks the viewer though his CAD design process for this project. His first step, which is one that’s often overlooked by new players, is creating digital representations of the hardware he’s using. This allows him to quickly design 3D printed parts that have the proper dimensions and clearances to interface with his real-world components. Remember: it’s a lot easier to adapt your 3D model to the components on hand than the other way around.

With the appropriate valves, hoses, and a foot pedal attached to the pneumatic cylinder, he’s able to operate the cutter completely hands-free. He still has to manually move the panel around, but at least it saves him from the repetitive squeezing motion.

With a tool like this and a custom testing jig, you’ll be producing PCBs like the pros in no time.

[Thanks to Anathae for the tip.]

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/21/hand-depanelizer-gets-pneumatic-upgrade/