Displaying an accurate status in Slack (or whatever other employer-provided collaboration program you may be forced to run) is crucial in 2020. If you need to make a sandwich or take the dog out real quick, but you don’t update your status to show yourself as away, you might come back to a string of increasingly concerned or frustrated messages with lots of annoying question marks and the occasional interrobang.

[Becky Stern] decided that a physical interface would be a far more fun way to keep tabs on her status, and an excellent visual reminder to actually do it. We totally agree. Inside the box is a NodeMCU which is using [Brian Lough]’s Slack API library for Arduino. This made it easy for [Becky] to create a switch/case selector of statuses, and in each of these she can set the presence token as auto or away, and show a custom message with an appropriate emoji. These of course match the emoji semi-circling the selector, which is a rotary switch with a really nice knob.

While we’re on the subject of Slack notifiers, how about a companion cat to wave when you’ve been mentioned?

source https://hackaday.com/2020/09/02/dont-slack-off-on-updating-your-status/

If you have worn a mask and glasses together for more than a quarter of a second, you are probably annoyed that we don’t have a magical solution for foggy lenses. Moisture-laden air is also a good indicator of where unfiltered air is escaping. Most masks have some flexible metal across the nose bridge that is supposed to seal the top, but it is woefully inadequate. The Badger Seal by [David Rothamer] and [Scott Sanders] from the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering is free to copy during the COVID-19 pandemic, even commercially. It works by running an elastic cord below the jaw and a formable wire over the nose to encourage contact all around both mouth and nose.

You can build your own in three ways. Each configuration is uniquely suited to a different situation. The first design is the easiest to make and should work for most people. The second is best for folks who need a better seal on the lower half of their face, like someone sporting a beard. It can also have ear loops, and that means your 3D printed ear savers have another use. The Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin also has fun with lock cracking and graphene experiments.

 

Badger Seal takes its name from [Bucky Badger], the school’s mascot. There was no animal testing for this project, but if you can fit a mask on a badger’s face, you can name it whatever you want.

Thank you for the tip, [cyberlass]

source https://hackaday.com/2020/09/02/fog-free-mask-hack-solves-mask-versus-glasses-conundrum-with-superb-seal/

There’s never been a better time to be a hardware hacker: the tools are cheap, the information is free, and the possibilities are nearly endless. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. The Flipper One was developed to make the world of hardware hacking even more accessible, and as of this writing, has officially ended its Kickstarter campaign after raising a staggering $4.8 million. To say the community is excited about this little gadget is perhaps an understatement.

So what does the Flipper One do that’s gotten everyone so worked up? Well, for one, it’s not so much what it can do as how it does them. Taking inspiration from the already popular pwnagotchi project, the Flipper One gamifies the normally rather mundane tasks of sniffing for 433 MHz signals and flashing EEPROMs with the addition of an animated dolphin that’s sustained by your hacking. If you want the little fellow to grow and be happy, you need to keep poking and prodding around at any piece of hardware you come across.

If you’re looking for a comprehensive list of features, that’s a little harder to nail down. Partially because the device has picked up a number of new tricks (such as support for Bluetooth and NFC) thanks to the fact it made better than 8,000% of its original funding goal, but also because it can be expanded with additional hardware and software which obviously won’t get developed until the community gets their hands on the core device.

But even the core functionality, demonstrated in the video after the break, is quite compelling. The Flipper One’s CC1101 transceiver chip (anyone else thinking of the IM-ME right now?) allows it to record, analyze, and play back RF signals from 300 to 928 MHz, meaning you can instantly take over remote control systems that aren’t using a rolling code for authentication. It can also read and emulate many different RFID cards, record and transmit IR signals, emulate a USB HID device and run programmable payloads, and act as a USB to UART/SPI/I2C adapter. All contained in a sleek and pocket-sized enclosure that looks like a proper cyberpunk hacking gadget.

We’re extremely interested in seeing what the community can do with the Flipper One, especially now that the extra windfall has allowed the team to create a formal Developer Program for people who want to help work on the core platform or produce add-on modules. After banking nearly $5 million, this will be the yardstick by which all other crowd sourced hacking gadgets are measured for years to come; let’s hope they make it count.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/09/02/flipper-zero-blasts-past-funding-goal-and-into-our-hearts/

If you own a laptop that’s got a few years on the clock, you’ve probably contemplated getting a replacement battery for it. Which means you also know how much legitimate OEM packs cost compared to the shady eBay clones. You can often get two or three of the knock-offs for the same price as a single real battery, but they never last as long as the originals. If they even work properly at all.

Which is why [Alexander Parent] decided to take the road less traveled and scratch built a custom battery for his ThinkPad T420. By reverse engineering how the battery pack communicated with the computer, he reasoned he would be able to come up with an open source firmware that worked at least as well as what the the third party ones are running. Which from the sounds of it, wasn’t a very high bar. From a more practical standpoint, it also meant he’d be able to create a higher capacity battery pack than what was commercially available should he chose to.

A logic analyzer wired in between one of the third party batteries and a spare T420 motherboard allowed [Alexander] to capture all the SMBus chatter between the two. From there he wrote some Arduino code that would mimic a battery as a proof of concept. He was slowed down a bit by an undocumented CRC check, but in the end he was able to come up with a fairly mature firmware that even allows you to provide a custom vendor name and model number for your pack.

The code was shifted over to an ATtiny85, with a voltage divider wired up to one of the pins so it can read the pack voltage. [Alexander] says his firmware still doesn’t do a great job of reporting the actual battery capacity remaining, but it’s close enough for his purposes. He came up with a simple PCB design to hold the MCU and support components,  which eventually he plans on putting inside of a 3D printed case that actually plugs into the back of his T420.

This project is obviously still in a relatively early stage, but we’re very interested to see [Alexander] take it all the way. The ThinkPad has long been the hacker’s favorite laptop, and we can think of no machine more worthy of a fully open hardware and software battery pack.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/09/02/building-an-open-source-thinkpad-battery/

“Sorry. I had music playing. Would you say that again?” If we had a money-unit every time someone tried talking to us while we were wearing headphones, we could afford a super-nice pair. For an Embedded C class, [extremerockets] built Listen Up!, a cutoff switch that pauses your music when someone wants your attention.

The idea was born while sheltering in place with his daughter, who likes loud music, but he does not want to holler to get her attention. Rather than deny her some auditory privacy, Listen Up! samples the ambient noise level, listens for a sustained rise in amplitude, like speech, and sends a pause signal to the phone. Someday, there may be an option to route the microphone’s audio into the headphones, but for now there is a text-to-speech module for verbalizing character strings. It might be a bit jarring to hear a call to dinner in the middle of a guitar riff, but we don’t like missing dinner either, so we’re with [extremerockets] on this one.

We don’t really need lots of money to get fun headphones, and we are not afraid of making our own.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/09/02/pause-your-tunes-when-it-is-time-to-listen-up/

Before there were demolition derbies, there were train totalings. That’s right, somebody had the idea to take a couple of worn-out train engines that were ready for the scrap heap, point them at each other, and drive them full steam ahead. And their boss said capital idea, let’s do it. This was the late 1890s.

Maybe it wasn’t the safest way to spend an evening, but a staged train wreck was surely an awesome spectacle to behold. Imagine being one of the brave engineers who had no choice but to get the train going as fast as possible and then jump out at the last second. A demolition derby seems like child’s play by comparison.

The largest and most widely-publicized wreck was put on by a man named William George Crush who was trying to find new ways to promote the Missouri-Kansas-Texas passenger railway. Once he got the okay, Crush found a large field surrounded by three hills that made for excellent viewing. He stood up a temporary town complete with a circus tent restaurant, a wooden jail cell, and 200 rent-a-constables.

On September 15th, 1896, forty thousand people gathered to watch two trains collide along a section of purpose-built track. They hit each other going 50 mph (80 km/h) and both engines exploded, sending hot iron projectiles every which way. Several people were injured, a few died, and a hired photographer lost an eye to shrapnel. Train totalings nevertheless continued until the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the practice was discarded as wasteful.

Thanks for the tip, [Martin]!

source https://hackaday.com/2020/09/02/staged-train-wrecks-an-idea-that-ran-out-of-steam/

Anyone can go out and buy a handheld console, and if you want to be the cool kid on the school bus, you can always ask your parents to take you out to get one. But if you want real street cred that lasts through your adult years, you’ve gotta put something together yourself. [GingerOfMods] has done just that with the Wiiboy Color. 

Yes, it’s another home-console-turned-portable, and it’s perfomed with exquisite execution. The Wii motherboard is cut and sliced to the absolute bare minimum, as the aim was to build the entire system to the rough form factor of the original Game Boy Color. Custom PCBs were then used to link the chopped ‘board to peripherals, such as the USB drive used to load games and the circuitry from a Gamecube controller. The screen is a beautifuly looking 3.5″ IPS LCD, running at 480p and originally intended for use as an automotive backup camera. Battery life is around 2-3 hours, with a USB-C port included for easy charging. More details are included on the forum build log.

It’s a tidy build, and the 3D printed case, Switch joysticks and DS Lite buttons give it a near-production quality finish. [GingerOfMods] intends to build more for commissions, though expect a hefty price tag given the labor and custom work involved. We’ve seen other portable Wiis before too, like this tightly-packed Kapton-heavy build. Video after the break.

[Thanks to LG Dirk for the tip!]

source https://hackaday.com/2020/09/02/wiiboy-color-is-exactly-what-it-sounds-like/

The NanoVNA made network analyzers cheap enough for almost everyone. Now you can get a $49 spectrum analyzer to go with it. Is it worth it? Watch [IMSAI Guy]’s video after the break for his opinion. From the tinySA.org website:

• Spectrum Analyzer with two inputs, high-quality MF/HF/VHF input for 0.1MHZ-350MHz, lesser quality UHF input for 240MHz-960MHz.
• Switchable resolution bandpass filters for both ranges between 2.6kHz and 640kHz
• Color display showing 290 scan points covering up to the full low or high-frequency range.
• Input Step attenuator from 0dB to 31dB for the MF/HF/VHF input.
• When not used as Spectrum Analyzer it can be used as Signal Generator, MF/HF/VHF sinus output between 0.1MHZ-350MHz, UHF square wave output between 240MHz-960MHz.
• A built-in calibration signal generator that is used for automatic self-test and low input calibration.
• Connected to a PC via USB it becomes a PC controlled Spectrum Analyzer
• Rechargeable battery allowing a minimum of at least 2 hours portable use

A lot of cheap scopes and PC-based scopes can do spectrum analysis, too, of course, so this isn’t as exotic as a VNA. But at this price, having a dedicated instrument might be worth it to you, especially if you don’t care about frequency below 100 MHz.

There are some limitations, of course, but the price is right. [IMSAI Guy] shows a few oddities that he didn’t like, but overall, it seemed like a good value. If you have a modern scope it may already do this function, or you might be able to do a software solution. If you only need audio frequencies and you want novelty, try some ping pong balls

source https://hackaday.com/2020/09/01/tinysa-is-a-49-spectrum-analyzer/

As the pace of technology charges blindly forward, a lot of older tools or products get left in the dust, forgotten to most but those left with them. This doesn’t mean they’re useless, though. In fact, old technology that continues to survive in the present tends to be more robust and sturdy than most modern, cheap replacements. While this might be survivorship bias, this is certainly true in particular of oscilloscopes. Rugged CRTs in large metal housings with discrete through-hole components in simple layouts made them reliable, but they’re heavy, bulky, and lack features of modern instruments. With some modifications, though, you can give them a new home and keep their vintage aesthetic.

[BuildComics] had just such an oscilloscope on hand and set out to make it into something useful but aesthetically pleasing as well. With a small circuit board, formerly available as a kit from Sparkfun/Dutchtronix but now only available if you can build them yourself, the cathode ray tube can be modified to output not waveforms but rather a working clock face. The donor oscilloscope was a Heathkit IO-102 which was fine for its time but is now lacking, so the CRT was removed from its housing and placed in a custom-built enclosure with a 40s radio style that suits its new purpose well.

Seeing old hardware that is past its prime being put to work in a new way is great, both from a technical standpoint and also because that’s usable hardware that’s being kept out of the landfill. Oscilloscopes are popular for projects like these too since they are relatively easy to understand and modify. Besides being used as clocks, we’ve also seen them modified to play video games such as Pac-Man.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/09/01/antique-oscilloscope-gets-new-home-and-purpose/

Not long after Dyson unveiled their “bladeless” fan, a fairly steady stream of ever cheaper clones have been hitting the market. But this 3D printed version created by [Elite Worm] must surely be one of the most budget-friendly takes on the concept. If you’ve got a 3D printer, we’d wager you’ve already got most of the parts required to build your own.

To be clear, of course there’s a blade. They aren’t magic, obviously. The fan is just small, and hidden inside the base. Air is pulled from the sides and bottom, and into the ring mounted to the top of the unit. When the air eventually exits the thin slit in the ring, it “sticks” to the sides due to the Coandă effect and produces a low pressure zone in the center. That’s all a fancy way of saying that the air flow you get from one of these gadgets is several times greater than what the little dinky fan would be capable of under normal circumstances. That’s the theory, anyway.

We can’t promise that all the physics are working as they should in this 3D printed version, but in the video after the break it certainly appears to be moving a considerable amount of air. It’s also quite loud, but that’s to be expected given it’s using a brushless hobby motor. To get it spinning, [Elite Worm] is using a Digispark ATtiny85 connected to a standard RC electronic speed control (ESC). The MCU reads a potentiometer mounted to the side of the fan and converts that to a PWM signal required by the ESC.

Beyond the electronics, essentially every piece of this project has been printed on a standard desktop 3D printer. An impressive accomplishment, though we probably would have gone with a commercially available propeller for safety’s sake. On the other hand, the base of the fan should nicely contain the shrapnel created should it explode at several thousand RPM. Probably.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/09/01/this-3d-printed-bladeless-fan-gets-it-done-cheap/

In case you needed more confirmation that we’re living in the future, a flight on approach to Los Angeles International Airport on Sunday night reported “a guy in a jet pack” flying within about 300 yards of them. A second pilot confirmed the sighting. It’s worth watching the video after the break just to hear the recordings of the conversation between air traffic control and the pilots.

The sighting was reported at about 3,000 feet which is an incredible height for any of the jet packs powerful enough to carry humans we’ve seen. The current state of the art limits jet pack tech to very short flight times and it’s hard to image doing anything more than getting to that altitude and back to the ground safely. Without further evidence it’s impossible to say, which has been an ongoing problem with sightings of unidentified flying objects near airports.

While superheros (or idiots pretending to be superheros) flying at altitude over the skies of LA sounds far fetched, the RC super hero hack we saw nine years ago now comes to mind. At 300 yards, that human-shaped drone might pass for an actual person rather than a dummy. This is of course pure speculation and we don’t want to give the responsible members for the RC aircraft community a bad name. It could have just as easily been trash, balloons, aliens, or Mothra. Or perhaps the pilot was correct and it was “some guy” flying past at 3,000 feet. That’s not impossible.

We anxiously await the results of the FAA’s investigation on this one.

[via HN and TheDrive]

source https://hackaday.com/2020/09/01/a-guy-in-a-jet-pack-reported-flying-next-to-aircraft-near-lax/

If you’ve got a personal website that needs hosting or a few hundred gigabytes of files that could use a centralized storage location, the Raspberry Pi’s small size and extreme energy efficiency make it a compelling server choice compared to that curbside Pentium 4 box you’ve been trying to find a home for. All you need is something to put in.

Of course there’s no shortage of Pi case designs ready to be extruded from your 3D printer, but we recently found ourselves particularly taken with this unique one designed by [Ken Segler]. It’s not only small and sleek with a dash of futuristic flair, but it includes a front-mounted two inch 240 x 320 IPS display that connects to the Pi over SPI. At the minimum that gives you a way to see all those beautiful boot messages on startup, but with a little code, it could provide you with various system statics and status messages at a glance.

While the LCD is clearly the star of the show here, the case also has a few other nice features that make it worthy of your consideration. The magnetically attached fan filter on the the top, for one. The stacked layout that puts the Pi directly above the SSD also makes for a relatively compact final product.

One thing to note though is that [Ken] is using Power-over-Ethernet, meaning there’s no spot for a dedicated power jack on the case. It’s an easy enough feature to add into your own build, but naturally not everyone’s network is suitably equipped. In that case, beyond the normal annoyances of editing STL files, it shouldn’t be too much trouble to add one in without having to literally hack your way through the printed plastic.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/09/01/a-cyclopic-lcd-case-for-your-raspberry-pi-server/

If you’ve got a personal website that needs hosting or a few hundred gigabytes of files that could use a centralized storage location, the Raspberry Pi’s small size and extreme energy efficiency make it a compelling server choice compared to that curbside Pentium 4 box you’ve been trying to find a home for. All you need is something to put in.

Of course there’s no shortage of Pi case designs ready to be extruded from your 3D printer, but we recently found ourselves particularly taken with this unique one designed by [Ken Segler]. It’s not only small and sleek with a dash of futuristic flair, but it includes a front-mounted two inch 240 x 320 IPS display that connects to the Pi over SPI. At the minimum that gives you a way to see all those beautiful boot messages on startup, but with a little code, it could provide you with various system statics and status messages at a glance.

While the LCD is clearly the star of the show here, the case also has a few other nice features that make it worthy of your consideration. The magnetically attached fan filter on the the top, for one. The stacked layout that puts the Pi directly above the SSD also makes for a relatively compact final product.

One thing to note though is that [Ken] is using Power-over-Ethernet, meaning there’s no spot for a dedicated power jack on the case. It’s an easy enough feature to add into your own build, but naturally not everyone’s network is suitably equipped. In that case, beyond the normal annoyances of editing STL files, it shouldn’t be too much trouble to add one in without having to literally hack your way through the printed plastic.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/09/01/a-cyclopic-lcd-case-for-your-raspberry-pi-server/

If you’ve got a personal website that needs hosting or a few hundred gigabytes of files that could use a centralized storage location, the Raspberry Pi’s small size and extreme energy efficiency make it a compelling server choice compared to that curbside Pentium 4 box you’ve been trying to find a home for. All you need is something to put in.

Of course there’s no shortage of Pi case designs ready to be extruded from your 3D printer, but we recently found ourselves particularly taken with this unique one designed by [Ken Segler]. It’s not only small and sleek with a dash of futuristic flair, but it includes a front-mounted two inch 240 x 320 IPS display that connects to the Pi over SPI. At the minimum that gives you a way to see all those beautiful boot messages on startup, but with a little code, it could provide you with various system statics and status messages at a glance.

While the LCD is clearly the star of the show here, the case also has a few other nice features that make it worthy of your consideration. The magnetically attached fan filter on the the top, for one. The stacked layout that puts the Pi directly above the SSD also makes for a relatively compact final product.

One thing to note though is that [Ken] is using Power-over-Ethernet, meaning there’s no spot for a dedicated power jack on the case. It’s an easy enough feature to add into your own build, but naturally not everyone’s network is suitably equipped. In that case, beyond the normal annoyances of editing STL files, it shouldn’t be too much trouble to add one in without having to literally hack your way through the printed plastic.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/09/01/a-cyclopic-lcd-case-for-your-raspberry-pi-server/

There’s an unexpected part of hacking that is very difficult to get right, namely photographing printed circuit boards. Everything seems to catch the light, making for a complex dance of manipulating light sources and camera angles. We were thus captured by [Roman Walls]’ budget rig for taking PCB photos that makes ingenious use of roadside trash to achieve a result.

It was inspired by a video featuring a much more accomplished rig, which he set out to emulate for much less outlay. Instead of an expensive lens, he’s using a Nikon camera with its kit lens. And instead of a tripod there’a a scrap drawer salvaged from the roadside and modified to become a camera holder. Lighting is diffused by baking paper, and the result is a rig that can photograph PCBs with neutral lighting and without annoying highlights.

We especially like work that takes junk and makes something useful from it, and though our purpose isn’t in reverse engineering it’s impressive to see how well the technique reveals the traces. We’ll definitely be experimenting with some of the techniques herein, and those lighting tips might also work with the Hackaday ear camera microscope.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/09/01/perfect-photographs-for-pcb-reverse-engineering/

It’s hurricane season in the northern hemisphere right now, and plenty of news and weather organizations remain dedicated to alerting people if a storm is about to impact their area. There’s no shortage of ways to receive this information, either. We all have our favorite weather app or forecasting site, and there are emergency alerts to cell phones, TV, and radio stations as well. If none of that suits you, though, you can also roll out your own weather alert readerboard.

[Damaged Dolphin] built a weather alert readerboard using a Raspberry Pi and a 64×128 LED matrix. The Raspberry Pi runs Raspbian and uses a HAT from Adafruit, and once connected to the internet pulls down weather information for a specific area using custom python code. From there it can display any emergency weather alerts instantly on the readerboard screen including alerts for hurricanes. It does rely on data from the National Weather Service though, so if that is not available in your area some modifications will need to be made to the code.

While he notes that you probably shouldn’t rely on his non-professional python code exclusively when getting weather information, it would still be a good way of retrieving information about weather events without having to refresh a browser all the time. Once the storms have passed though, be sure you’re prepared for the days following.

Thanks to [b00tfa|l] for the tip!

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/31/the-hurricanes-are-coming/

[Jean-Francois Debroux] spent 35 years designing analog ASICs. He’s started a book and while it isn’t finished — indeed he says it may never be — the 180 pages he posted on LinkedIn are a pretty good read.

The 46 sections are well organized, although some are placeholders. There are sections on design flow and the technical aspects of design. Examples range from a square root circuit to a sigma-delta modulator, although some of them are not complete yet. There are also sections on math, physics, common electronics, materials, and tools.

The text is decidedly practical. For example, there’s a succinct summary of what a MOSFET channel width and length do to parameters such as capacitance, noise, and saturated resistance.

If you prefer a PDF copy, here’s a tip. When viewing the document, click on the full-screen button. Then at the top, you’ll see a download button. The link there looks as though it isn’t a static link, so you’ll need to visit the post yourself to do the download.

It is a lot of work to put a book together and even though this isn’t complete, it is a great start and already useful. If you want some more book recommendations, check out ours. We never fail to recommend The Art of Electronics, too.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/31/an-analog-ic-design-book-draft/

To get the perfect mix for your paint, you need a good shake that is as random as possible. [Mark Rhodes] wanted to automate the process of mixing paint, so he built a 3D printed shaker to thoroughly shake small paint bottles. Using only a single motor, it shakes the bottle along three axes of rotation and one axis of translation.

A cylindrical container is attached to a U-shaped bracket on each end, which in turn is attached to a rotating shaft. Only one of these shafts are powered, the other is effectively an idler. When turned on, it rotates the cylinder partially around the pitch and yaw axis, 360 degrees around the roll axis, and reciprocates it back and forth. The design appears to be based on an industrial mixer known as a “Turbula“. Another interesting feature is how it holds the paint bottle in the cylinder. Several bands are stretched along the inside of the cylinder, and by rotating one of the rings at the end, it creates an hourglass-shaped web that can tightly hold the paint bottle.

The mechanism is mounted on a 3d printed frame that can be quickly clamped to a table. The Twitter post embedded below is a preview for a video [Mark] is working for his Youtube channel, along with which he will also release the 3D files.

Mixing machines come in all shapes and sizes, and we’ve seen a number of 3D printed versions, including a static mixer and a magnetic stirrer.

So I have been working on a little something to help me mix my paints. It is completely and utterly over engineered for the problem, and that is why it reminds me of the bottle opener that @donttrythis and @Laura_kampf made . It does look cool though! pic.twitter.com/2EatMGfC5j

— Mark Rhodes (@mrhodes) August 25, 2020

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/31/a-3d-printed-paint-mixer/