It is hard to remember how expensive an electronic hobby used to be. It wasn’t long ago, for example, that a solderless breadboard was reasonably expensive and was likely to have some sort of baseboard. The nicer ones even had a power supply or some simple test instruments. While you can still buy that sort of thing today, the low cost of bare breadboards have made them much more common. [Sebastian] decided to use his 3D printer to give those cheap breadboards a nice home.

The design looks great, and frankly isn’t much of a technical triumph, but it is useful and clean looking. The build uses some banana jacks, a switch, an LED, a 9V battery, and a common small power supply module. Of course, you also need a few breadboards.

The 9V battery fits snug inside, although we might have added an optional AC adapter jack. [Sebastian] left a lot of space inside, so we thought about how feasible it would be to make a mating storage box that would fit underneath and keep parts away from the electronics.

There are actually a lot of quick mods you could do on this design. A cheap meter module would let you measure the current draw, for example. You could put a few pots in that blank spot, also. We might add a mating dock to the top so you could plug in option boards that had, for example, an Arduino, an ESP8266, or a Raspberry Pi for different projects.

We always keep a stock of 5V LEDs to reduce the number of parts we need on the breadboard, but you could make your own if you prefer. If you don’t mount pots in the enclosure, this little board is handy enough.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/26/breadboarding-console-has-the-power/

The Gables Engineering G-2789 audio selector panels aren’t good for much outside of the aircraft they were installed in, that is, until [MelkorsGreatestHits] replaced most of the internals with a Teensy 3.2. Now they are multi-functional USB input devices for…well, whatever it is you’d do with a bunch of toggle switches and momentary push buttons hanging off your computer.

With the Teensy going its best impression of a USB game controller, the host operating system has access to seven momentary buttons, twelve toggles, and one rotary axis for the volume knob.

Right now [MelkorsGreatestHits] says the code is set up so the computer sees a button press on each state change; in other words, the button assigned to the toggle switch will get “pressed” once when it goes up and again when it’s flicked back down. But of course that could be modified depending on what sort of software you wanted to interface the device with.

As we’ve seen with other pieces of vintage aircraft instrumentation, lighting on the G-2789 was provided by a series of incandescent bulbs that shine through the opaque front panel material. [MelkorsGreatestHits] replaced those lamps with white LEDs, but unfortunately the resulting light was a bit too harsh. As a quick fix, the LEDs received a few coats of yellow and orange paint until the light was more of an amber color. Using RGB LEDs would have been a nice touch, but you work with what you’ve got.

This isn’t the first time that [MelkorsGreatestHits] has turned an old aircraft cockpit module into a USB input device, and we’re certainly interested in seeing what the next project will look like. Though we’re perhaps more interested in finding out where all all these old school airplane parts are coming from…

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/25/vintage-aircraft-controls-turned-usb-button-box/

The Gables Engineering G-2789 audio selector panels aren’t good for much outside of the aircraft they were installed in, that is, until [MelkorsGreatestHits] replaced most of the internals with a Teensy 3.2. Now they are multi-functional USB input devices for…well, whatever it is you’d do with a bunch of toggle switches and momentary push buttons hanging off your computer.

With the Teensy going its best impression of a USB game controller, the host operating system has access to seven momentary buttons, twelve toggles, and one rotary axis for the volume knob.

Right now [MelkorsGreatestHits] says the code is set up so the computer sees a button press on each state change; in other words, the button assigned to the toggle switch will get “pressed” once when it goes up and again when it’s flicked back down. But of course that could be modified depending on what sort of software you wanted to interface the device with.

As we’ve seen with other pieces of vintage aircraft instrumentation, lighting on the G-2789 was provided by a series of incandescent bulbs that shine through the opaque front panel material. [MelkorsGreatestHits] replaced those lamps with white LEDs, but unfortunately the resulting light was a bit too harsh. As a quick fix, the LEDs received a few coats of yellow and orange paint until the light was more of an amber color. Using RGB LEDs would have been a nice touch, but you work with what you’ve got.

This isn’t the first time that [MelkorsGreatestHits] has turned an old aircraft cockpit module into a USB input device, and we’re certainly interested in seeing what the next project will look like. Though we’re perhaps more interested in finding out where all all these old school airplane parts are coming from…

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/25/vintage-aircraft-controls-turned-usb-button-box/

The Gables Engineering G-2789 audio selector panels aren’t good for much outside of the aircraft they were installed in, that is, until [MelkorsGreatestHits] replaced most of the internals with a Teensy 3.2. Now they are multi-functional USB input devices for…well, whatever it is you’d do with a bunch of toggle switches and momentary push buttons hanging off your computer.

With the Teensy going its best impression of a USB game controller, the host operating system has access to seven momentary buttons, twelve toggles, and one rotary axis for the volume knob.

Right now [MelkorsGreatestHits] says the code is set up so the computer sees a button press on each state change; in other words, the button assigned to the toggle switch will get “pressed” once when it goes up and again when it’s flicked back down. But of course that could be modified depending on what sort of software you wanted to interface the device with.

As we’ve seen with other pieces of vintage aircraft instrumentation, lighting on the G-2789 was provided by a series of incandescent bulbs that shine through the opaque front panel material. [MelkorsGreatestHits] replaced those lamps with white LEDs, but unfortunately the resulting light was a bit too harsh. As a quick fix, the LEDs received a few coats of yellow and orange paint until the light was more of an amber color. Using RGB LEDs would have been a nice touch, but you work with what you’ve got.

This isn’t the first time that [MelkorsGreatestHits] has turned an old aircraft cockpit module into a USB input device, and we’re certainly interested in seeing what the next project will look like. Though we’re perhaps more interested in finding out where all all these old school airplane parts are coming from…

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/25/vintage-aircraft-controls-turned-usb-button-box/

[Tye’s] dog Lucifur unfortunately has degenerative arthritis causing her a lot of pain in her feet. The vet suggested orthotic carpal braces to help alleviate the pain, but they come at a price tag of at least $1600. Given her current budgetary limitations, [Tye] decided to try the DIY route.

The first task was to cast Lucifur’s paws in plaster to make a mold of her feet in both the weight-bearing and non-weight-bearing orientations. According to [Tye], the non-weight-bearing orientation is more representative of the shape of a “normal” paw, but she also needed to model the weight-bearing orientation to better design the braces for walking.

Then it was time to print a PLA-based dog splint from a design she found on Thingiverse. Since PLA softens when it’s in boiling water, the splint can be easily molded to Lucifur’s paw. This is where the paw molds [Tye] made earlier come in handy, since nobody would want Lucifur wearing a PLA splint fresh out of boiling water. Finally, she added a bit of super glue to the heel of the splint in hopes that it will hold up better over time.

We certainly can’t recommend DIY solutions to medical problems and [Tye] made sure she stressed the importance of following the recommendations of your vet if you’re ever in her position. Either way, we hope Lucifur finds some momentary reprieve, and that she can eventually receive those $1600 braces she desperately needs.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/25/3d-printed-doggie-braces/

Speaker design used to be as much about woodwork as it was about advanced acoustic mathematics. In recent decades, technologies such as digital signal processing and 3D printing have changed the game significantly. Leaning heavily on these techniques, [ssashton] developed a design called Mr. Speaker.

The speaker contains a 3″ woofer for good bass response, and twin tweeters to deliver stereo audio. Using WinISD to help do the requisite calculations on porting and volume, [ssashton] designed a swooping 3D printed enclosure with a striking design. Sound comes into the unit through an off-the-shelf Bluetooth module, before being passed to an ADAU1401 digital signal processing unit. From there, it’s passed to a mono amp to drive the woofer and a stereo one for the tweeters.

To get the flattest frequency response possible and maintain linear phase, it’s all about DSP in this case. RePhase software was used to design a DSP filter to achieve these goals, helping the speaker to produce the desired output. The ADAU1401 DSP was then programmed using Sigma Studio, which also allows the designer to do things such as split outputs for seperate woofer and tweeter drives.

[ssashton] does a great job of explaining both DSP principles and old-school speaker design tricks, from phase plugs to reflections. The use of 3D printed parts to rapidly iterate the design is impressive, too. We’d love to see the final enclsoure get an acetone smoothing treatment to really take it over the edge.

If you’re into serious speaker design and want more, be sure to check out this advanced transmission line design. For those of you with your own builds with some nifty tricks, drop us a note on the tipline.

 

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/25/3d-printed-speaker-uses-dsp-for-ultimate-performance/

Machine tools often have powerful drive motors, allowing them to work quickly and accurately to get the job done fast. However, this can cause major damage if the tool head collides with an unexpected object. To protect against such occurances, [Xnaron] developed a simple system to shut down his plasma cutter in the event of a crash.

The system consists of a 3D printed collar that fits around the plasma cutting torch. The collar has two mating parts, which are held together with three magnets and three ball bearings to act as a key, maintaining the correct orientation. Three limit switches are then fitted, held closed by the two mating halves. When the torch collides with an object, this causes the magnetic coupling to seperate, triggering one or more of the limit switches, and shutting down the machine safely.

Video of an unplanned collision shows the device working well. It’s a neat solution that could probably be adapted to other types of machine tool that don’t experience high lateral forces. Of course, if you don’t yet have a plasma cutter, you can always make your own. Video after the break.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/25/simple-plasma-cutter-collision-detection-system/

Machine tools often have powerful drive motors, allowing them to work quickly and accurately to get the job done fast. However, this can cause major damage if the tool head collides with an unexpected object. To protect against such occurances, [Xnaron] developed a simple system to shut down his plasma cutter in the event of a crash.

The system consists of a 3D printed collar that fits around the plasma cutting torch. The collar has two mating parts, which are held together with three magnets and three ball bearings to act as a key, maintaining the correct orientation. Three limit switches are then fitted, held closed by the two mating halves. When the torch collides with an object, this causes the magnetic coupling to seperate, triggering one or more of the limit switches, and shutting down the machine safely.

Video of an unplanned collision shows the device working well. It’s a neat solution that could probably be adapted to other types of machine tool that don’t experience high lateral forces. Of course, if you don’t yet have a plasma cutter, you can always make your own. Video after the break.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/25/simple-plasma-cutter-collision-detection-system/

You can find commercial USB sticks that can also connect via WiFi. But [Neutrino] made his own using an ESP8266 married to a card reader. It all starts with the old trick of soldering a header to an SD card adapter. The USB port is still there, but it is only for power. A 3.3 V regulator and an ESP12E board round out the hardware.

Of course, the trick is the software. Starting from a few examples, he wound up providing an FTP server that you can connect to and send or receive files using that protocol.

It sounds like a few design compromises led to the device being somewhat slow, although it looked usable. [Neutrino] wants to change to the ESP32 and make some other changes to get better speeds.

Of course, you could go buy a SanDisk Connect Wireless or similar product, but what fun is that? Besides, being able to connect an SD card to your project opens up a lot of possibilities for data logging, configuration, and more.

Honestly, we’ve had relatively poor results with most of the commercial wireless memory offerings including the venerable FlashAir, so it is attractive to have a device that you can completely control. If you have an SD card connected to a project, one thing you can do is play some tunes.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/07/25/esp8266-makes-a-wireless-card-reader/