A lot of us have nostalgia for our childhood toys, and as long as they’re not something like lawn darts that nostalgia often leads to fun upgrades since some of us are adults with industrial-sized air compressors. Classics like Super Soakers and Nerf guns are especially popular targets for improvements, and this Nerf machine gun from [Emiel] is no exception.
The build takes a Nerf ball-firing toy weapon and basically tosses it all out of the window in favor of a custom Nerf ball launching rifle. He starts with the lower receiver and machines a pneumatic mechanism that both loads a ball into the chamber and then launches it. This allows the rifle to be used in both single-shot mode and also in fully-automatic mode. From there, a barrel is fashioned along with the stock and other finishing touches.
[Emiel] also uses a high-speed camera to determine the speed of his new Nerf gun but unfortunately it isn’t high-speed enough, suffering from the same fate as one of the fastest man-made objects ever made, and he only has a lower bound on the speed at 400 km/h. If you don’t want to go fast with your Nerf builds, though, perhaps you should build something enormous instead.
E-ink displays haven’t revolutionized the world so much as served us humbly in e-book readers such as the Kindle and its ilk. Most such readers are designed for extended sessions reading novels and the like, but [Roni Bandini] decided a haiku-sized device was in order.
The diminutive device runs off an ESP32, which has plenty of clock cycles for easily driving displays. It’s paired with a 2.9 inch Waveshare e-ink display, upon which it delivers poetry in the popular Japanese haiku format – 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables. Writing to the display is easy with the GxEPD library, which is compatible with a variety of common e-ink displays. Presently the poetry is hardcoded in the program, and there’s plenty that could be included with the ESP32’s roomy program storage. However, [Roni] notes it would be simple to have the reader pull poems from an SD card instead.
It’s a fun project, and a great way to get familiar with the basics of working with e-ink displays. We’d love to see a WiFi-enabled version that pulls down the hottest daily haikus fresh from the web, too. Funnily enough, our own archives only feature one other reference to the famous Japanese art, which has little to do with poetry. If you fancy changing that, make something relevant and drop us a line. Video after the break.
There are few hard and fast rules in the world of custom cyberdecks, but many of these bespoke machines do share a certain level of commonality. They generally use a low-power ARM board such as the Raspberry Pi that doesn’t consume much power or require any exotic thermal management, and a large mechanical keyboard is almost a given. But at a glance, it’s clear that [Daan Gerits] wasn’t concerned with the status quo when designing the Sypherdeck.
Now to be fair, dropping the ARM single-board computer for x86 isn’t completely unheard of. But those builds tend to be considerably bulkier than the Sypherdeck. The secret here seems to be that the 3D printed enclosure doesn’t hold much else than the LattePanda and a seven inch LCD touch screen. The hatch on the side covers the rear of the power, USB, and HDMI bulkhead connectors, but it looks like there’s enough room in there to squeeze in a bit of custom electronics should you wish. There’s no obvious place to install any batteries, so if you wanted to take the show on the road, you’ll need to use an external pack.
The bigger surprise is the complete lack of an integrated keyboard. Obviously this allowed [Daan] to create an even more svelte enclosure, but of course at the cost of having to carry around an external keyboard. That said, if you’ve got some kind of use case that is completely fulfilled by the touch screen, that could be seen as an advantage. It sounds like the original plan was to make the keyboard clip onto the bottom or top of the deck, but that feature didn’t make the cut for this first version.
We live in the information age where access to the internet is considered a fundamental human right. Exercising this right does largely rely on the technological advances made in optical communication. Using light to send information has a long history: from ancient Greece, through Claude Chappe’s semaphore towers and Alexander Graham Bell’s photophone, to fiber optical networks and future satellite internet constellations currently developed by tech giants.
Let’s dive a little bit deeper into the technologies that were used to spread information with the help of light throughout history.
Semaphores and Heliographs
Reconstruction of a hydraulic telegraph at Thessaloniki Technology Museum. Credit: Gts-tg, CC BY-SA 4.0
Since light can travel in air much further than sound, visual communication has always been the method of choice to broadcast information over long distances. One of the earliest examples is the Phryctoriae from ancient Greece, a system of towers build on mountaintops that could send messages by lighting torches. Allegedly, this is how the news of the fall of Troy was spread throughout the country. The Greeks came up with different methods of encoding messages. One was to have two groups of five torches where each torch would represent the row and column in a 5×5 matrix of Greek letters known as the Polybius square. The other is the hydraulic telegraph which consisted of a container filled with water and a vertical rod floating within. The rod was inscribed with various messages along its height. When the remote torch signal was received, water from the container was slowly drained until the torch went out again. Through the position of the inscribed rod, the water level could be correlated with a specific message.
Semaphore towers and coding scheme devised by Claude Chappe. Credit: Govind P. Agrawal, Public Domain
In the late 18th century the Chappe brothers devised and erected a network of semaphore towers in France for military communication. On the top of each tower was a semaphore comprised of two movable wooden arms connected by a crossbar. By adjusting the angle of each arm and the crossbar a total of 196 symbols could be displayed which were observed from the next tower with a telescope. By waiting for the downline station to copy the symbol, the communications protocol already included an ACK signal as a means of flow control. In terms of data rate, the system could reach about 2-3 symbols per minute; taking about two minutes for a symbol to travel from Paris to Lille over 22 stations and 230 km.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, the heliograph was widely used for military communication. It consisted of a mirror that could be pivoted or blocked with a shutter to generate flashes of sunlight and was mostly used to transmit Morse code. Even though the heliograph was rendered obsolete by most armies in the 1940s it was still used by Afghan forces during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s and is still included in many survival kits for emergency signaling.
Bell’s Greatest Invention
Illustration of the transmitter part of the photophone. Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
Many of you probably know the kind of DIY projects where an audio signal is transmitted by a laser beam which is surprisingly easy to build. The invention goes back to Alexander Graham Bell, who in 1880 invented the photophone which he thought to be his “greatest invention ever made, greater than the telephone”. It could transmit speech wirelessly using a flexible mirror mounted at the end of a speaking tube to modulate the intensity of the reflected sunlight. The receiver part consisted of a selenium photocell at the focus of a parabolic mirror. Bell and his assistant Tainter also build nonelectric receivers using materials coated with lampblack thereby discovering the photoacoustic effect. Even though Bell was immensely proud of his invention up to the point where he wanted to name his second daughter “photophone”, the device never really hit it off. This was mainly because radio wave transmissions as pioneered by Marconi a few years later far surpassed the distance achievable with light and did not require a direct line of sight.
Guiding Light Through Glass
Increase of the bandwidth-distance product throughout history. The squares mark the introduction of new technologies like wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) and space-division multiplexing (SDM). Credit: Govind P. Agrawal
Apart from a few military projects, telecommunication in the 20th century was mainly conducted via coaxial cables and microwave signals in the relatively low frequency 1-10 GHz range. This was until the development of fiber-optic communications in the 1970s, which was enabled by the invention of low-loss optical fibers and semiconductor lasers.
The main drawback of high-speed communication via coaxial cables is that signals have to be repeated about every kilometer to make up for cable losses. With wireless radio frequency (RF) communication, the repeater spacing can be a lot larger, but in both cases, the bandwidth is limited to ~100 Mbit/s due to the “low” frequency of the RF carrier.
The frequency of visible and infrared light is about 1014 Hz, much higher than the 109 Hz “Gigahertz” frequencies used for RF communication. As a consequence, the optical spectrum is about 2600 times wider, in terms of frequency, than the entire RF spectrum. This broader bandwidth enables much higher data rates.
One of the first applications of fiber optics included the control of short-range missiles through a fiber optic tether attached to the back of the missile that rapidly unspooled during flight. In 1977, General Telephone and Electronics sent the world’s first live telephone traffic through a fiber-optic system at 6 Mbit/s. Today, the worldwide optical fiber network is estimated to span more than 400 million kilometers, close to three times the distance to the sun.
Optical fiber communication soon far surpassed the transmission speeds of RF communication and was further boosted by multiplexing techniques like wavelength-division multiplexing (sending multiple wavelengths down the same fiber), time-division multiplexing (separating signals by their arrival times), or space-division multiplexing (using multi-core or multimode fibers). Using a combination of these techniques, data rates of up to 11 Pbit/s have been demonstrated in the lab. The low light losses of 0.2 dB/km (i.e. the intensity loses only around 5% after 1 km) in modern fiber cables enable repeater spacings of ~80 km.
Internet From Your Light Bulb
We still mostly use the RF spectrum for wireless communication, but there has been some renewed interest in wireless optical. At short distances, this goes under the catchy name LiFi and became a trendy topic about 10 years ago, partly triggered by this TED talk. It advertised the idea of using the already existing infrastructure of regular LED lighting for data transmission.
Some of the advantages being that it is more efficient, more secure against eavesdropping, and enables higher bandwidths. However, the idea of having your WiFi at home transmitted through your light bulbs never really became popular. Arguably one of the reasons might be that having a connection that depends on light shining onto your device is not always considered an advantage. Up to now, LiFi is only used in some industrial applications where electromagnetic interference or security are important issues. But lower bandwidth versions are prime areas for hacking.
Going Long Range
The optical transmission of data over long ranges goes under the name free-space optical communication (FSO). You may remember Facebook’s Aquila drone program, a giant solar-powered vehicle that should stay in the stratosphere for months to beam internet to remote areas. In addition to standard GHz frequency bands for air-to-ground communication, they were also experimenting with free-space optical links. The technology behind this is still similar to Bell`s photophone, although we now use IR lasers instead of sunlight. Shortly after Facebook canceled its Aquila drone program in 2018, it became public that they are working on a similar system that uses satellites instead of drones due to technical difficulties. In September 2020, Facebook’s subsidiary PointView Tech launched the Athena satellite which is supposed to test a laser ground link.
Google (or Alphabet if you prefer) is/was working on similar projects called Loon and Taara. Maya Posh just wrote a more detailed article about Loon. Its goal was to send a network of high-altitude balloons into the stratosphere providing internet access to underserved areas, but the project was shut down a few weeks ago. Within project Loon a 155 Mbit/s laser communication between two balloons more than 100 km apart was achieved. Project Taraa builds on this success and aims at developing towers that use free-space laser communication to deliver 20 Gbit/s connectivity over distances of 20 km. Compared to installing fiber optic cables, this would be a cost-effective and quickly deployable way to bring high-speed connectivity to remote areas.
Transmitter-receiver pair of the open-source project Ronja. Credit: Twibright Labs
Similar systems are already commercially available by a company called Koruza delivering up to 10 Gbit/s, albeit over a modest range of 150 m. Of course, hackers have also played around with the technology. Way back in 2001, the open-source project Ronja provides instructions to build a low-cost transmitter-receiver pair capable of 10 Mbit/s communication over a 1.4 km range. As a transmitter it just uses a standard red LED collimated by large lenses salvaged from magnifying glasses. Ronja works in most weather conditions including rain and snow but fails during fog.
Artist rendering of inter-satellite link via laser communication. Credit: Mynaric
This marks one of the major downsides of FSO. While requiring a direct line of sight makes communication more secure, it also imposes some restrictions. Cloudy weather can make satellite-to-ground communications break up, so microwave signals are considered more viable in this case. However, future internet satellite constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink, OneWeb, or Amazon’s Project Kuiper are likely to use laser communication as a secure, high bandwidth link in between satellites. At the forefront of developing this hardware are the German companies Tesat and Mynaric. Their laser systems currently offer data rates of up to 10 Gbit/s between LEO satellites and ground stations and 1.8 Gbit/s between geosynchronous satellites up to 80,000 km apart.
The advancement of optical communication from the ancient Phryctoriae to modern laser communication was driven by the goal to expand humanity’s interconnectedness. Since the beginning, the communication data rate has increased by ~12 orders of magnitude and culminated in a space race to provide global broadband access via satellite networks. Bringing internet access to underserved areas is certainly a noble goal but we may also question the meaningfulness of enabling ever-higher bandwidths when it is mostly devoured by video streaming. Although there is no strict fundamental limit to the bitrate achievable with optical communication it also interesting to ask the question of what comes beyond, perhaps neutrino communication?
We live in the information age where access to the internet is considered a fundamental human right. Exercising this right does largely rely on the technological advances made in optical communication. Using light to send information has a long history: from ancient Greece, through Claude Chappe’s semaphore towers and Alexander Graham Bell’s photophone, to fiber optical networks and future satellite internet constellations currently developed by tech giants.
Let’s dive a little bit deeper into the technologies that were used to spread information with the help of light throughout history.
Semaphores and Heliographs
Reconstruction of a hydraulic telegraph at Thessaloniki Technology Museum. Credit: Gts-tg, CC BY-SA 4.0
Since light can travel in air much further than sound, visual communication has always been the method of choice to broadcast information over long distances. One of the earliest examples is the Phryctoriae from ancient Greece, a system of towers build on mountaintops that could send messages by lighting torches. Allegedly, this is how the news of the fall of Troy was spread throughout the country. The Greeks came up with different methods of encoding messages. One was to have two groups of five torches where each torch would represent the row and column in a 5×5 matrix of Greek letters known as the Polybius square. The other is the hydraulic telegraph which consisted of a container filled with water and a vertical rod floating within. The rod was inscribed with various messages along its height. When the remote torch signal was received, water from the container was slowly drained until the torch went out again. Through the position of the inscribed rod, the water level could be correlated with a specific message.
Semaphore towers and coding scheme devised by Claude Chappe. Credit: Govind P. Agrawal, Public Domain
In the late 18th century the Chappe brothers devised and erected a network of semaphore towers in France for military communication. On the top of each tower was a semaphore comprised of two movable wooden arms connected by a crossbar. By adjusting the angle of each arm and the crossbar a total of 196 symbols could be displayed which were observed from the next tower with a telescope. By waiting for the downline station to copy the symbol, the communications protocol already included an ACK signal as a means of flow control. In terms of data rate, the system could reach about 2-3 symbols per minute; taking about two minutes for a symbol to travel from Paris to Lille over 22 stations and 230 km.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, the heliograph was widely used for military communication. It consisted of a mirror that could be pivoted or blocked with a shutter to generate flashes of sunlight and was mostly used to transmit Morse code. Even though the heliograph was rendered obsolete by most armies in the 1940s it was still used by Afghan forces during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s and is still included in many survival kits for emergency signaling.
Bell’s Greatest Invention
Illustration of the transmitter part of the photophone. Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
Many of you probably know the kind of DIY projects where an audio signal is transmitted by a laser beam which is surprisingly easy to build. The invention goes back to Alexander Graham Bell, who in 1880 invented the photophone which he thought to be his “greatest invention ever made, greater than the telephone”. It could transmit speech wirelessly using a flexible mirror mounted at the end of a speaking tube to modulate the intensity of the reflected sunlight. The receiver part consisted of a selenium photocell at the focus of a parabolic mirror. Bell and his assistant Tainter also build nonelectric receivers using materials coated with lampblack thereby discovering the photoacoustic effect. Even though Bell was immensely proud of his invention up to the point where he wanted to name his second daughter “photophone”, the device never really hit it off. This was mainly because radio wave transmissions as pioneered by Marconi a few years later far surpassed the distance achievable with light and did not require a direct line of sight.
Guiding Light Through Glass
Increase of the bandwidth-distance product throughout history. The squares mark the introduction of new technologies like wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) and space-division multiplexing (SDM). Credit: Govind P. Agrawal
Apart from a few military projects, telecommunication in the 20th century was mainly conducted via coaxial cables and microwave signals in the relatively low frequency 1-10 GHz range. This was until the development of fiber-optic communications in the 1970s, which was enabled by the invention of low-loss optical fibers and semiconductor lasers.
The main drawback of high-speed communication via coaxial cables is that signals have to be repeated about every kilometer to make up for cable losses. With wireless radio frequency (RF) communication, the repeater spacing can be a lot larger, but in both cases, the bandwidth is limited to ~100 Mbit/s due to the “low” frequency of the RF carrier.
The frequency of visible and infrared light is about 1014 Hz, much higher than the 109 Hz “Gigahertz” frequencies used for RF communication. As a consequence, the optical spectrum is about 2600 times wider, in terms of frequency, than the entire RF spectrum. This broader bandwidth enables much higher data rates.
One of the first applications of fiber optics included the control of short-range missiles through a fiber optic tether attached to the back of the missile that rapidly unspooled during flight. In 1977, General Telephone and Electronics sent the world’s first live telephone traffic through a fiber-optic system at 6 Mbit/s. Today, the worldwide optical fiber network is estimated to span more than 400 million kilometers, close to three times the distance to the sun.
Optical fiber communication soon far surpassed the transmission speeds of RF communication and was further boosted by multiplexing techniques like wavelength-division multiplexing (sending multiple wavelengths down the same fiber), time-division multiplexing (separating signals by their arrival times), or space-division multiplexing (using multi-core or multimode fibers). Using a combination of these techniques, data rates of up to 11 Pbit/s have been demonstrated in the lab. The low light losses of 0.2 dB/km (i.e. the intensity loses only around 5% after 1 km) in modern fiber cables enable repeater spacings of ~80 km.
Internet From Your Light Bulb
We still mostly use the RF spectrum for wireless communication, but there has been some renewed interest in wireless optical. At short distances, this goes under the catchy name LiFi and became a trendy topic about 10 years ago, partly triggered by this TED talk. It advertised the idea of using the already existing infrastructure of regular LED lighting for data transmission.
Some of the advantages being that it is more efficient, more secure against eavesdropping, and enables higher bandwidths. However, the idea of having your WiFi at home transmitted through your light bulbs never really became popular. Arguably one of the reasons might be that having a connection that depends on light shining onto your device is not always considered an advantage. Up to now, LiFi is only used in some industrial applications where electromagnetic interference or security are important issues. But lower bandwidth versions are prime areas for hacking.
Going Long Range
The optical transmission of data over long ranges goes under the name free-space optical communication (FSO). You may remember Facebook’s Aquila drone program, a giant solar-powered vehicle that should stay in the stratosphere for months to beam internet to remote areas. In addition to standard GHz frequency bands for air-to-ground communication, they were also experimenting with free-space optical links. The technology behind this is still similar to Bell`s photophone, although we now use IR lasers instead of sunlight. Shortly after Facebook canceled its Aquila drone program in 2018, it became public that they are working on a similar system that uses satellites instead of drones due to technical difficulties. In September 2020, Facebook’s subsidiary PointView Tech launched the Athena satellite which is supposed to test a laser ground link.
Google (or Alphabet if you prefer) is/was working on similar projects called Loon and Taara. Maya Posh just wrote a more detailed article about Loon. Its goal was to send a network of high-altitude balloons into the stratosphere providing internet access to underserved areas, but the project was shut down a few weeks ago. Within project Loon a 155 Mbit/s laser communication between two balloons more than 100 km apart was achieved. Project Taraa builds on this success and aims at developing towers that use free-space laser communication to deliver 20 Gbit/s connectivity over distances of 20 km. Compared to installing fiber optic cables, this would be a cost-effective and quickly deployable way to bring high-speed connectivity to remote areas.
Transmitter-receiver pair of the open-source project Ronja. Credit: Twibright Labs
Similar systems are already commercially available by a company called Koruza delivering up to 10 Gbit/s, albeit over a modest range of 150 m. Of course, hackers have also played around with the technology. Way back in 2001, the open-source project Ronja provides instructions to build a low-cost transmitter-receiver pair capable of 10 Mbit/s communication over a 1.4 km range. As a transmitter it just uses a standard red LED collimated by large lenses salvaged from magnifying glasses. Ronja works in most weather conditions including rain and snow but fails during fog.
Artist rendering of inter-satellite link via laser communication. Credit: Mynaric
This marks one of the major downsides of FSO. While requiring a direct line of sight makes communication more secure, it also imposes some restrictions. Cloudy weather can make satellite-to-ground communications break up, so microwave signals are considered more viable in this case. However, future internet satellite constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink, OneWeb, or Amazon’s Project Kuiper are likely to use laser communication as a secure, high bandwidth link in between satellites. At the forefront of developing this hardware are the German companies Tesat and Mynaric. Their laser systems currently offer data rates of up to 10 Gbit/s between LEO satellites and ground stations and 1.8 Gbit/s between geosynchronous satellites up to 80,000 km apart.
The advancement of optical communication from the ancient Phryctoriae to modern laser communication was driven by the goal to expand humanity’s interconnectedness. Since the beginning, the communication data rate has increased by ~12 orders of magnitude and culminated in a space race to provide global broadband access via satellite networks. Bringing internet access to underserved areas is certainly a noble goal but we may also question the meaningfulness of enabling ever-higher bandwidths when it is mostly devoured by video streaming. Although there is no strict fundamental limit to the bitrate achievable with optical communication it also interesting to ask the question of what comes beyond, perhaps neutrino communication?
We live in the information age where access to the internet is considered a fundamental human right. Exercising this right does largely rely on the technological advances made in optical communication. Using light to send information has a long history: from ancient Greece, through Claude Chappe’s semaphore towers and Alexander Graham Bell’s photophone, to fiber optical networks and future satellite internet constellations currently developed by tech giants.
Let’s dive a little bit deeper into the technologies that were used to spread information with the help of light throughout history.
Semaphores and Heliographs
Reconstruction of a hydraulic telegraph at Thessaloniki Technology Museum. Credit: Gts-tg, CC BY-SA 4.0
Since light can travel in air much further than sound, visual communication has always been the method of choice to broadcast information over long distances. One of the earliest examples is the Phryctoriae from ancient Greece, a system of towers build on mountaintops that could send messages by lighting torches. Allegedly, this is how the news of the fall of Troy was spread throughout the country. The Greeks came up with different methods of encoding messages. One was to have two groups of five torches where each torch would represent the row and column in a 5×5 matrix of Greek letters known as the Polybius square. The other is the hydraulic telegraph which consisted of a container filled with water and a vertical rod floating within. The rod was inscribed with various messages along its height. When the remote torch signal was received, water from the container was slowly drained until the torch went out again. Through the position of the inscribed rod, the water level could be correlated with a specific message.
Semaphore towers and coding scheme devised by Claude Chappe. Credit: Govind P. Agrawal, Public Domain
In the late 18th century the Chappe brothers devised and erected a network of semaphore towers in France for military communication. On the top of each tower was a semaphore comprised of two movable wooden arms connected by a crossbar. By adjusting the angle of each arm and the crossbar a total of 196 symbols could be displayed which were observed from the next tower with a telescope. By waiting for the downline station to copy the symbol, the communications protocol already included an ACK signal as a means of flow control. In terms of data rate, the system could reach about 2-3 symbols per minute; taking about two minutes for a symbol to travel from Paris to Lille over 22 stations and 230 km.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, the heliograph was widely used for military communication. It consisted of a mirror that could be pivoted or blocked with a shutter to generate flashes of sunlight and was mostly used to transmit Morse code. Even though the heliograph was rendered obsolete by most armies in the 1940s it was still used by Afghan forces during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s and is still included in many survival kits for emergency signaling.
Bell’s Greatest Invention
Illustration of the transmitter part of the photophone. Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
Many of you probably know the kind of DIY projects where an audio signal is transmitted by a laser beam which is surprisingly easy to build. The invention goes back to Alexander Graham Bell, who in 1880 invented the photophone which he thought to be his “greatest invention ever made, greater than the telephone”. It could transmit speech wirelessly using a flexible mirror mounted at the end of a speaking tube to modulate the intensity of the reflected sunlight. The receiver part consisted of a selenium photocell at the focus of a parabolic mirror. Bell and his assistant Tainter also build nonelectric receivers using materials coated with lampblack thereby discovering the photoacoustic effect. Even though Bell was immensely proud of his invention up to the point where he wanted to name his second daughter “photophone”, the device never really hit it off. This was mainly because radio wave transmissions as pioneered by Marconi a few years later far surpassed the distance achievable with light and did not require a direct line of sight.
Guiding Light Through Glass
Increase of the bandwidth-distance product throughout history. The squares mark the introduction of new technologies like wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) and space-division multiplexing (SDM). Credit: Govind P. Agrawal
Apart from a few military projects, telecommunication in the 20th century was mainly conducted via coaxial cables and microwave signals in the relatively low frequency 1-10 GHz range. This was until the development of fiber-optic communications in the 1970s, which was enabled by the invention of low-loss optical fibers and semiconductor lasers.
The main drawback of high-speed communication via coaxial cables is that signals have to be repeated about every kilometer to make up for cable losses. With wireless radio frequency (RF) communication, the repeater spacing can be a lot larger, but in both cases, the bandwidth is limited to ~100 Mbit/s due to the “low” frequency of the RF carrier.
The frequency of visible and infrared light is about 1014 Hz, much higher than the 109 Hz “Gigahertz” frequencies used for RF communication. As a consequence, the optical spectrum is about 2600 times wider, in terms of frequency, than the entire RF spectrum. This broader bandwidth enables much higher data rates.
One of the first applications of fiber optics included the control of short-range missiles through a fiber optic tether attached to the back of the missile that rapidly unspooled during flight. In 1977, General Telephone and Electronics sent the world’s first live telephone traffic through a fiber-optic system at 6 Mbit/s. Today, the worldwide optical fiber network is estimated to span more than 400 million kilometers, close to three times the distance to the sun.
Optical fiber communication soon far surpassed the transmission speeds of RF communication and was further boosted by multiplexing techniques like wavelength-division multiplexing (sending multiple wavelengths down the same fiber), time-division multiplexing (separating signals by their arrival times), or space-division multiplexing (using multi-core or multimode fibers). Using a combination of these techniques, data rates of up to 11 Pbit/s have been demonstrated in the lab. The low light losses of 0.2 dB/km (i.e. the intensity loses only around 5% after 1 km) in modern fiber cables enable repeater spacings of ~80 km.
Internet From Your Light Bulb
We still mostly use the RF spectrum for wireless communication, but there has been some renewed interest in wireless optical. At short distances, this goes under the catchy name LiFi and became a trendy topic about 10 years ago, partly triggered by this TED talk. It advertised the idea of using the already existing infrastructure of regular LED lighting for data transmission.
Some of the advantages being that it is more efficient, more secure against eavesdropping, and enables higher bandwidths. However, the idea of having your WiFi at home transmitted through your light bulbs never really became popular. Arguably one of the reasons might be that having a connection that depends on light shining onto your device is not always considered an advantage. Up to now, LiFi is only used in some industrial applications where electromagnetic interference or security are important issues. But lower bandwidth versions are prime areas for hacking.
Going Long Range
The optical transmission of data over long ranges goes under the name free-space optical communication (FSO). You may remember Facebook’s Aquila drone program, a giant solar-powered vehicle that should stay in the stratosphere for months to beam internet to remote areas. In addition to standard GHz frequency bands for air-to-ground communication, they were also experimenting with free-space optical links. The technology behind this is still similar to Bell`s photophone, although we now use IR lasers instead of sunlight. Shortly after Facebook canceled its Aquila drone program in 2018, it became public that they are working on a similar system that uses satellites instead of drones due to technical difficulties. In September 2020, Facebook’s subsidiary PointView Tech launched the Athena satellite which is supposed to test a laser ground link.
Google (or Alphabet if you prefer) is/was working on similar projects called Loon and Taara. Maya Posh just wrote a more detailed article about Loon. Its goal was to send a network of high-altitude balloons into the stratosphere providing internet access to underserved areas, but the project was shut down a few weeks ago. Within project Loon a 155 Mbit/s laser communication between two balloons more than 100 km apart was achieved. Project Taraa builds on this success and aims at developing towers that use free-space laser communication to deliver 20 Gbit/s connectivity over distances of 20 km. Compared to installing fiber optic cables, this would be a cost-effective and quickly deployable way to bring high-speed connectivity to remote areas.
Transmitter-receiver pair of the open-source project Ronja. Credit: Twibright Labs
Similar systems are already commercially available by a company called Koruza delivering up to 10 Gbit/s, albeit over a modest range of 150 m. Of course, hackers have also played around with the technology. Way back in 2001, the open-source project Ronja provides instructions to build a low-cost transmitter-receiver pair capable of 10 Mbit/s communication over a 1.4 km range. As a transmitter it just uses a standard red LED collimated by large lenses salvaged from magnifying glasses. Ronja works in most weather conditions including rain and snow but fails during fog.
Artist rendering of inter-satellite link via laser communication. Credit: Mynaric
This marks one of the major downsides of FSO. While requiring a direct line of sight makes communication more secure, it also imposes some restrictions. Cloudy weather can make satellite-to-ground communications break up, so microwave signals are considered more viable in this case. However, future internet satellite constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink, OneWeb, or Amazon’s Project Kuiper are likely to use laser communication as a secure, high bandwidth link in between satellites. At the forefront of developing this hardware are the German companies Tesat and Mynaric. Their laser systems currently offer data rates of up to 10 Gbit/s between LEO satellites and ground stations and 1.8 Gbit/s between geosynchronous satellites up to 80,000 km apart.
The advancement of optical communication from the ancient Phryctoriae to modern laser communication was driven by the goal to expand humanity’s interconnectedness. Since the beginning, the communication data rate has increased by ~12 orders of magnitude and culminated in a space race to provide global broadband access via satellite networks. Bringing internet access to underserved areas is certainly a noble goal but we may also question the meaningfulness of enabling ever-higher bandwidths when it is mostly devoured by video streaming. Although there is no strict fundamental limit to the bitrate achievable with optical communication it also interesting to ask the question of what comes beyond, perhaps neutrino communication?
These days, there’s a huge variety of screens on the market for use with microcontrollers. OLEDs and graphic LCDs abound, while e-ink devices tempt the user with their clean look and low energy consumption. However, for many purposes, the humble HD44780 character LCD does the job just fine. If you’re using such a device, you might want to implement a simple menu system, and in that case, [MyHomeThings] has you covered.
The menu code is simple to modify and implement. It allows the user to define a certain number of menu items, along with button labels and functions to be executed with button presses. By default, it’s set up to work with left and right function buttons, with up and down buttons to toggle through the menu’s various entries. This suits the commonly available Arduino shields which combine a 16×2 character LCD with a set of four tactile buttons in a cross formation. However, modifying the code to use an alternate button scheme would be simple for those eager to tweak things to their liking.
For the absolute beginner to programming, it’s a great way to put together a simple interface for your microcontroller projects. It’s the sort of thing you might use if you’d built a do-everything Arduino handheld device, as we’ve seen built before. If you find text menus too archaic for your purposes, though, be sure to sound off with your favourite solutions in the comments.
While not a Cabinet position, the NASA Administrator is nominated by the president of the United States and tasked with enacting their overall space policy. As such, a new occupant in the White House has historically resulted in a different long-term directive for the agency. Some presidents have wanted bold programs of exploration, while others have directed NASA to follow a more reserved and economical path, with the largest shifts traditionally happening when the administration changes hands between the parties.
So it’s no surprise that the fate of Artemis, a bold program initiated by the previous administration that aims to establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon, has been considered uncertain since the November election. But the recent announcement that SpaceX has been awarded a $331.8 million contract to launch the first two modules of the lunar Gateway station, an orbital outpost that will serve as a rallying point for astronauts coming and going to the Moon’s surface, should help quell some concerns. While the components still aren’t slated to fly until 2024 at the earliest, it’s a step in the right direction and strong indicator that the new administration plans on seeing Artemis through.
Two For the Price of One
The contracted launch is unique in that SpaceX is being tasked with launching two separate modules, the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) built by Maxar Technologies, and the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) from Northrop Grumman, on the same rocket. These two core Gateway components, which essentially make up a miniature space station themselves, will be mated on the ground at Kennedy Space Center and tested for several months before being loaded onto a Falcon Heavy.
While the mass of these two modules is well within the capabilities of the Falcon Heavy, their combined length will require SpaceX to develop an extended payload fairing. They will also need to build a new mobile gantry at launchpad 39A that will allow for the modules to be attached to the rocket vertically, rather than horizontally as is the case with all current Falcon and Falcon Heavy launches. The new fairing and integration facility naturally represent a considerable investment by SpaceX, but long term, these changes will enable the Falcon Heavy to carry large national security satellites for the Pentagon and provide the company with a lucrative new revenue stream.
Originally the PPE and HALO modules would have flown on two separate rockets, possibly even by different launch providers, needing an autonomous docking maneuver after their rendezvous at the Moon. But to reduce costs and get the Gateway operational sooner, it was decided to send them both at the same time. This does introduce the possibility that a failure could result in the loss of both modules, but since their functionality is so intrinsically linked anyway, NASA believes it’s worth the risk to expedite the program.
Deep Space Legacy
As with many NASA projects, Gateway is the end result of a long and winding development process. The PPE is an evolution of the electric propulsion module intended for the agency’s now-canceled Asteroid Redirect Mission, and the idea of a small self-contained space station being sent to lunar orbit has its roots in the Deep Space Habitat concept that engineers have been working on since the retirement of the Shuttle refocused NASA’s long-term goals on activities outside of low Earth orbit.
Orion and cargo atop the EUS.
Back in 2017, NASA was calling this concept the Deep Space Gateway, and envisioned it as a stepping stone to distant destinations such as Mars. The three initial modules of the Deep Space Gateway would be launched into orbit around the Moon using the upgraded Block 1B variant of the Space Launch System. In this configuration, the booster would use the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) and have enough power to carry a station module and Orion crew capsule in one launch. At that point, commercial launches were only being considered for less critical components which would be added on later, such as an airlock or additional laboratory module.
But the EUS, much like the Space Launch System itself, is taking far longer to bring online than anyone at NASA anticipated. Despite being in development since 2014, the design only made it through the final review stage a few months ago, and actual flight hardware isn’t expected to be completed until at least 2025. This would put it beyond all the currently scheduled Artemis missions, though if everything goes according to plan, by that time both Gateway and a potential outpost on the lunar surface will be able to benefit from the enhanced cargo capabilities of the SLS.
Competition, or Lack Thereof
Launching large objects to the Moon and Mars is arguably why NASA is building their Space Launch System in the first place, and yet according to the current timeline, Gateway will be up and operational before the megarocket is capable of delivering any noteworthy amount of cargo. Much like the recent announcement that NASA will fly the Europa Clipper on a commercial booster, this is another example of the agency’s homegrown vehicle losing a high profile mission to a smaller and cheaper rocket.
Starship would land on the Moon independently.
At this point, one of the few clear uses for the Space Launch System and its EUS in the context of the Artemis program is for delivering large landers to the Moon. Whether they go directly into lunar orbit or rendezvous with the Gateway, two out of the three commercial Human Landing Systems selected by NASA are designed to be launched aboard an SLS Block 1B. Although as a contingency, their principle components can also be carried on smaller rockets and assembled in orbit.
But the third lander, proposed by SpaceX, is a variant of their Starship vehicle that can take off from Earth and land on the Moon under its own power. As a completely independent system, it doesn’t require the Gateway or SLS to complete its mission. On one hand, this is a clear advantage given how frequently NASA’s own plans miss their deadlines and slip further into the future. But there’s certainly an argument to be made against pinning so much of the Artemis program on a single contractor.
A long-term sustainable program for lunar exploration and utilization should include a fleet of boosters and spacecraft that are independently designed, manufactured, and operated. Yet as of right now, SpaceX is the sole company responsible for both launching Gateway and sending regular resupply missions to it. Whether it’s Old Space or New Space, there’s an inherent risk in relying so completely on any one entity. But unless something changes in the next few years, it looks like that’s exactly the situation NASA’s Artemis program could find itself in.
It’s recently come to our attention that a company by the name of Nourished has carved out a niche for themselves by offering made-to-order gummy vitamins produced with their own custom designed 3D printers. Customers can either select from an array of pre-configured “stacks”, or dial in their own seven layers of gelatinous goodness for a completely bespoke supplement.
Now we can’t vouch for whether or not taking a custom supplement like this is any better than just popping a traditional multi-vitamin, but we’ll admit the hardware Nourished has developed is pretty interesting. As briefly seen in the video after the break, large syringes are filled with the seven different vitamin suspensions, and then loaded into what appears to be a heated chamber for extrusion. This is not unlike other food-grade 3D printers we’ve seen, such as the Cocoa Press.
It looks like all of the syringes are being depressed simultaneously with a plate and a pair of beefy lead screws, hinting that the order in which the layers are placed down must be different for each nozzle. A blog post on the company’s site from early last year shows a wildly different machine being used to produce the vitamins, hinting that either their core technology is changing rapidly, or that there are different lines for running off the customized stacks versus the standard formulations.
Interestingly, this is very similar to a concept floated by the U.S. Army’s Combat Feeding Directorate (CFD) back in 2014. They reasoned that a 3D printer could be used to produce meal bars that were customized for each soldier’s personal nutritional needs. Being largely impractical for the battlefield, the program didn’t get very far. But thanks to consumers who are willing to pay the premium that Nourished is charging for this service, it seems the idea has turned into a lucrative business model.
Sensors aren’t just limited to the electrical, mechanical, or chemical realm. Up until 1986, canaries were used as Carbon Monoxide detectors, and food tasters are still used by some heads of state. These so-called sentinel species have been known and used for decades if not centuries. But recent projects using clams to detect water pollution are providing real-time electronic feedback. They are using the species Actinonaias ligamentina, which, as you no doubt recall, was declared “Mussel of the Month” by the University of Wisconsin’s MUSSEL Project back in January 2010. They are more commonly known as mucket clams or mucket mussels, and are particularly sensitive to water pollution — they will clam-up, so to speak, in the presence of contaminated water.
Clam Sensor Wiring Mississippi River Project
Several municipalities along the Mississippi River installed clam-based sensors back in 2015, and another system was installed in the Anacostia River Estuary in 2011. Polish director Julia Pekla produced a documentary about the clam-based sensors installed at the Dębiec Water Treatment Plant on the Wisła River near Warsaw which has been in operation since 1994. Her documentary is titled “Gruba Kaśka (Fat Kathy)” and won the In Vivo Award at the 2020 Imagine Science Film’s 13th annual film festival (see trailer below).
As shown in the lead photo, a simple electrical contact is mounted on each clam, which closes a circuit with the base contact when the shell is clamped shut. The systems along the Mississippi River use multiple clams, 11 in Minneapolis Minnesota and 16 in Moline Illinois. The system in Poland uses eight clams — when four or more clams are in agreement the system automatically shuts down and alerts the operators. These clams only work for three months, after which they are put into retirement with a mark so they won’t be required to serve again.
It might be difficult to imagine in our modern HDMI Utopia, but there was a time when game consoles required proprietary cables to connect up to your TV. We’re not just talking about early machines like the NES either, turn of the millennium consoles like the PlayStation 2, Gamecube, and the original Xbox all had weirdo A/V ports on the back that were useless without the proper adapter.
But thanks to the efforts of [Taylor Burley], you can now upgrade your Slim PS2 with native HDMI capability. It’s not even a terribly difficult modification, as these things go. Sure there’s a lot of soldering involved to run from the console’s A/V connector to the commercially-made HDMI dongle he’s hidden inside the case, but at least it’s straightforward work.
Tapping into the console’s A/V connector.
As [Taylor] shows in the video after the break, all you have to do is remove the proprietary connector from the HDMI adapter dongle, and wire it directly into the console’s A/V port with a bit of ribbon cable. There are only 8 pins in the connector that you need to worry about, and the spacing is generous enough that there’s no problem getting in there with your iron and some standard jumper wires. You’ve also got to pull 5 V from the board to power the adapter, but that’s easy enough thanks to the system’s nearby USB ports.
There’s a perfect spot to mount the adapter board next to the console’s Ethernet connector, and once that’s tacked down with a bit of adhesive, the only thing left to do is cut a hole in the back of the enclosure for the HDMI port and snip away a bit of the metal RF shield. Presumably the same modification could be done on the original “fat” PS2, though you’ll be on your own for finding a suitable place to mount the board.
It’s the dead of winter here in the northern hemisphere, and between the pandemic and the polar vortex, we’re getting pretty tired of staring at the same four walls and eating incessantly. It’s the perfect recipe for trying something new and low-calorie, like baking a loaf of bread-shaped note paper from the stuff in the recycling bin.
[SusanLand] likes to make paper out of whatever discarded things she has on hand, including old jeans. When she tried making paper out of nothing but toilet paper tubes, it didn’t work so well, but it gave her an idea for cooking up some offbeat stationery. She beefed up the pulp with shredded office paper and corn starch, and dialed in the whole wheat hue with a pinch of yellow and orange paper. Once the pulp was ready, she poured it into bread-shaped molds made from a plastic milk jug.
This tidy introduction to making your own paper covers everything from pulping techniques to drying methods. Once the slices are dry, [SusanLand] embellishes them with a scoring tool, colored pencils, and a handful of seeds to complete the look. Check out that process in the videos after the break.
A few years back, the Andy Warhol Museum ran into an unusual problem. They wanted to display digital pieces the pop artist created on his Amiga 1000 back in the 1980s, but putting the vintage computers on the floor and letting the public poke around on them wasn’t really an option. So the team at [Iontank] were tasked with creating an interactive display that looked like a real Amiga, but used all modern technology under the hood.
The technical details on the electronics side are unfortunately a bit light, as the page on the [Iontank] site simply says all of the internals were replaced with “solid-state hardware” and an Amiga emulator. To us that sounds like a Raspberry Pi is now filling in for the Amiga’s original motherboard, but that’s just a guess. The page does note that they went through the trouble of making sure the original mouse and keyboard still worked, so it stands to reason a couple microcontrollers are also along for the ride doing translation duty.
Milling the curved display lens.
While we don’t know much about the computers, [Iontank] do provide some interesting insight into developing the faux CRTs sitting atop the non-Amigas. There were some promising rear-projection experiments conducted early on, but in the end, they decided to use a standard LCD behind a milled acrylic lens. This not only made for a perfect fit inside the original monitor enclosures, but gave the screen that convex depth that’s missing on modern flat panels.
The end result looks like the best of both worlds, combining the sharp bright image of an LCD with just a hint of retro distortion. With a scanline generator in the mix, this technique would be a great way to simulate the look of a CRT display in an arcade cabinet, though admittedly being able to mill down an acrylic lens of the appropriate size would be a tough job for most home gamers.
A few years back, the Andy Warhol Museum ran into an unusual problem. They wanted to display digital pieces the pop artist created on his Amiga 1000 back in the 1980s, but putting the vintage computers on the floor and letting the public poke around on them wasn’t really an option. So the team at [Iontank] were tasked with creating an interactive display that looked like a real Amiga, but used all modern technology under the hood.
The technical details on the electronics side are unfortunately a bit light, as the page on the [Iontank] site simply says all of the internals were replaced with “solid-state hardware” and an Amiga emulator. To us that sounds like a Raspberry Pi is now filling in for the Amiga’s original motherboard, but that’s just a guess. The page does note that they went through the trouble of making sure the original mouse and keyboard still worked, so it stands to reason a couple microcontrollers are also along for the ride doing translation duty.
Milling the curved display lens.
While we don’t know much about the computers, [Iontank] do provide some interesting insight into developing the faux CRTs sitting atop the non-Amigas. There were some promising rear-projection experiments conducted early on, but in the end, they decided to use a standard LCD behind a milled acrylic lens. This not only made for a perfect fit inside the original monitor enclosures, but gave the screen that convex depth that’s missing on modern flat panels.
The end result looks like the best of both worlds, combining the sharp bright image of an LCD with just a hint of retro distortion. With a scanline generator in the mix, this technique would be a great way to simulate the look of a CRT display in an arcade cabinet, though admittedly being able to mill down an acrylic lens of the appropriate size would be a tough job for most home gamers.
A few years back, the Andy Warhol Museum ran into an unusual problem. They wanted to display digital pieces the pop artist created on his Amiga 1000 back in the 1980s, but putting the vintage computers on the floor and letting the public poke around on them wasn’t really an option. So the team at [Iontank] were tasked with creating an interactive display that looked like a real Amiga, but used all modern technology under the hood.
The technical details on the electronics side are unfortunately a bit light, as the page on the [Iontank] site simply says all of the internals were replaced with “solid-state hardware” and an Amiga emulator. To us that sounds like a Raspberry Pi is now filling in for the Amiga’s original motherboard, but that’s just a guess. The page does note that they went through the trouble of making sure the original mouse and keyboard still worked, so it stands to reason a couple microcontrollers are also along for the ride doing translation duty.
Milling the curved display lens.
While we don’t know much about the computers, [Iontank] do provide some interesting insight into developing the faux CRTs sitting atop the non-Amigas. There were some promising rear-projection experiments conducted early on, but in the end, they decided to use a standard LCD behind a milled acrylic lens. This not only made for a perfect fit inside the original monitor enclosures, but gave the screen that convex depth that’s missing on modern flat panels.
The end result looks like the best of both worlds, combining the sharp bright image of an LCD with just a hint of retro distortion. With a scanline generator in the mix, this technique would be a great way to simulate the look of a CRT display in an arcade cabinet, though admittedly being able to mill down an acrylic lens of the appropriate size would be a tough job for most home gamers.
If you’re a maker that publishes projects online, you’ll be well across the production values arms race that’s been raging over the past decade. For those in the 3D printing space, this means that you’ll need to be producing slick timelapse videos of your prints. [BuildComics] is now doing just that, with a custom camera arm to help do the job.
The arm relies on a 3D-printed gear train that allows a stepper motor to turn it slowly throughout the print’s duration. It’s controlled by an Arduino that receives commands via Firmata. The arm is mounted on top of the printer, holding a webcam above the build plate for a good view. It’s setup via Octolapse to take images as each layer is finished, giving that haunting look of a model materialising on the print bed throughout the duration of the timelapse.
The flip happened to [DOTA_Teabag], who suddenly found Mario flying upward to a higher part of a level, completely unexpectedly. Testing by [pannenkoek12] seems to indicate that this may have been due to a single-bit change to Mario’s height value, from C5837800 to C4837800, leading to the plucky Italian plumber warping upwards through the level. The leading theory is that this bit flip was caused by a cosmic ray event, though the likelihood of such an event is exceedingly rare.
It’s possible that there remains another cause for the flip, though after much work from the community replicating the situation in emulation, none has been found. Other suggestions involve electrical noise or other malfunctions causing the flip, though one would rarely expect such an occurrence to change just one bit of RAM. For now, the jury remains out, but who knows – maybe in the future we’ll find out it was a hidden, undiscovered exploit all along. Of course, if Nintendo doesn’t get you going, try speedrunning Windows 95. Video after the break.
Released in early 2020, the Creality Ender V2 is a popular desktop 3D printer in the maker market. However, some users began having problems with machines ordered in the latter half of the year, with repeated layer shifts occuring during long prints. After much investigation, it appears a fix has been found.
After much experimentation by [Fountain_of_Wisdom], it was determined that layer shifts were occuring at the same time as loud thumps or knocks from the printer. This was often during long X or Y traversals, and when these noises occurred, the print head would shift slightly, perpendicular to the axis of travel. Further investigation led to suspicion of the drive signals to the stepper motors, and it was then determined that the driver chips were becoming excessively hot during long prints. The solution landed upon was to install a fan and improve venting to cool the driver electronics, which curtailed the layer shift problem entirely.
However, such problems aren’t the norm, and since then, owners of the affected units with version 4.2.2 motherboards have been advised to upgrade to version 4.2.7. The exact root cause of the problem is not clear, but we’ve seen earlier Ender models upgraded with newer stepper drivers before; perhaps a similar fix is what makes the later revision motherboard a winner in the V2. If you’ve got insight into the problem, sound off in the comments!
The proliferation of desktop 3D printing and powerful single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi has given rise to an absolute explosion of small bespoke computing devices. Whether or not you think these cobbled together devices are close enough to Gibson’s original vision to call them cyberdecks, it’s a remarkable shift from the norm that brings us closer to the “High Tech, Low Life” philosophy so prevalent in cyberpunk literature and films.
[Jay Doscher] has been on the front lines of this movement for some time now, producing several very popular designs. His latest creation leans hard into the more utilitarian aspects of the cyberpunk ethos, inspired more by the grit of The Expanse than the lusciously upholstered interiors of Star Trek’s Enterprise-D. The culmination of lessons learned over the last several years, the new Kuiper Deck is cheaper and easier to build than his previous designs, thanks at least in part to the fact that you no longer need to go out and get an expensive Pelican case.
Like his previous designs, the Kuiper Deck makes extensive use of 3D printed components. But this time around, [Jay] is using an array of smaller pieces that are bolted together on an acrylic front panel. This not only means the project is compatible with a wider array of machines, such as the Prusa Mini, but it’s also easier to print as larger parts have an annoying tendency to warp. The downside is that you’ll need some way to get the acrylic panel cut to shape, though you can buy one through him if you don’t have any way to get it made locally.
In place of the Pelican case his previous designs used as an enclosure, [Jay] has found a heavy-duty stackable plastic tote available from McMaster Carr for $12 USD. It’s not particularly nice looking, nor is it waterproof. But that’s also sort of the point. If you’re just trying to put together a small computer that you can toss around the shop and not have to worry about breaking, the Pelican case was always a bit overkill.
The electronics bill of materials is similarly sparse, comprising mainly of the Raspberry Pi 4, a cooling fan, and a 10 inch LCD from Pimoroni. Everything gets screwed to the rear of the panel and connected with pre-made cables, making assembly very simple. That said, there’s still plenty of room inside the case for custom hardware should you want to put something custom together such as a mobile software defined radio rig.
The proliferation of desktop 3D printing and powerful single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi has given rise to an absolute explosion of small bespoke computing devices. Whether or not you think these cobbled together devices are close enough to Gibson’s original vision to call them cyberdecks, it’s a remarkable shift from the norm that brings us closer to the “High Tech, Low Life” philosophy so prevalent in cyberpunk literature and films.
[Jay Doscher] has been on the front lines of this movement for some time now, producing several very popular designs. His latest creation leans hard into the more utilitarian aspects of the cyberpunk ethos, inspired more by the grit of The Expanse than the lusciously upholstered interiors of Star Trek’s Enterprise-D. The culmination of lessons learned over the last several years, the new Kuiper Deck is cheaper and easier to build than his previous designs, thanks at least in part to the fact that you no longer need to go out and get an expensive Pelican case.
Like his previous designs, the Kuiper Deck makes extensive use of 3D printed components. But this time around, [Jay] is using an array of smaller pieces that are bolted together on an acrylic front panel. This not only means the project is compatible with a wider array of machines, such as the Prusa Mini, but it’s also easier to print as larger parts have an annoying tendency to warp. The downside is that you’ll need some way to get the acrylic panel cut to shape, though you can buy one through him if you don’t have any way to get it made locally.
In place of the Pelican case his previous designs used as an enclosure, [Jay] has found a heavy-duty stackable plastic tote available from McMaster Carr for $12 USD. It’s not particularly nice looking, nor is it waterproof. But that’s also sort of the point. If you’re just trying to put together a small computer that you can toss around the shop and not have to worry about breaking, the Pelican case was always a bit overkill.
The electronics bill of materials is similarly sparse, comprising mainly of the Raspberry Pi 4, a cooling fan, and a 10 inch LCD from Pimoroni. Everything gets screwed to the rear of the panel and connected with pre-made cables, making assembly very simple. That said, there’s still plenty of room inside the case for custom hardware should you want to put something custom together such as a mobile software defined radio rig.
These days, home appliances are equally as likely to have soft buttons and rotary encoders as they are to have a simple old clunk/clunk power switch and an analog knob for controls. This is all well and good if the device aligns with your personal philosophy about how such controls should work; otherwise, it’s absolutely maddening. [j-zero] ran into this problem with their ORSALA lamp from IKEA, and set about rectifying the problem with some custom firmware.
The ORSALA lamp uses a rotary encoder for setting both brightness and color temperature, with a button to toggle modes. A long press is required to switch the lamp off. The custom firmware modifies this behaviour, such that the lamp can be switched on and off with a simple button press. Turning the encoder modifies brightness, and turning it to minimum switches the lamp off too. Meanwhile, the less commonly used color temperature setting can be modified by using the button while adjusting the encoder.
The hack was executed by reprogramming the ORSALA’s onboard microcontroller, the STM8S003F3P6, via its SWIM interface. The pads for the interface are easily located on the board, making the hack easy. Other than the inputs, the lamp packs separate TTP932 LED drivers for the warm white and cool white LEDs, making it easy to code a custom firmware to handle all the necessary functions.
It’s a great example of a hacker taking control of their own device and remaking it to suit their needs. Of course, if you want to go for another hacker trope, just stuff a Raspberry Pi in there instead!
These days, home appliances are equally as likely to have soft buttons and rotary encoders as they are to have a simple old clunk/clunk power switch and an analog knob for controls. This is all well and good if the device aligns with your personal philosophy about how such controls should work; otherwise, it’s absolutely maddening. [j-zero] ran into this problem with their ORSALA lamp from IKEA, and set about rectifying the problem with some custom firmware.
The ORSALA lamp uses a rotary encoder for setting both brightness and color temperature, with a button to toggle modes. A long press is required to switch the lamp off. The custom firmware modifies this behaviour, such that the lamp can be switched on and off with a simple button press. Turning the encoder modifies brightness, and turning it to minimum switches the lamp off too. Meanwhile, the less commonly used color temperature setting can be modified by using the button while adjusting the encoder.
The hack was executed by reprogramming the ORSALA’s onboard microcontroller, the STM8S003F3P6, via its SWIM interface. The pads for the interface are easily located on the board, making the hack easy. Other than the inputs, the lamp packs separate TTP932 LED drivers for the warm white and cool white LEDs, making it easy to code a custom firmware to handle all the necessary functions.
It’s a great example of a hacker taking control of their own device and remaking it to suit their needs. Of course, if you want to go for another hacker trope, just stuff a Raspberry Pi in there instead!
These days, home appliances are equally as likely to have soft buttons and rotary encoders as they are to have a simple old clunk/clunk power switch and an analog knob for controls. This is all well and good if the device aligns with your personal philosophy about how such controls should work; otherwise, it’s absolutely maddening. [j-zero] ran into this problem with their ORSALA lamp from IKEA, and set about rectifying the problem with some custom firmware.
The ORSALA lamp uses a rotary encoder for setting both brightness and color temperature, with a button to toggle modes. A long press is required to switch the lamp off. The custom firmware modifies this behaviour, such that the lamp can be switched on and off with a simple button press. Turning the encoder modifies brightness, and turning it to minimum switches the lamp off too. Meanwhile, the less commonly used color temperature setting can be modified by using the button while adjusting the encoder.
The hack was executed by reprogramming the ORSALA’s onboard microcontroller, the STM8S003F3P6, via its SWIM interface. The pads for the interface are easily located on the board, making the hack easy. Other than the inputs, the lamp packs separate TTP932 LED drivers for the warm white and cool white LEDs, making it easy to code a custom firmware to handle all the necessary functions.
It’s a great example of a hacker taking control of their own device and remaking it to suit their needs. Of course, if you want to go for another hacker trope, just stuff a Raspberry Pi in there instead!
The Raspberry Pi Pico burst onto the microcontroller scene last month with much fanfare, and is already popping up in projects left, right and center. Notable for its high clock speed and exciting IO features, it’s a breath of fresh air in a market slowly weaning itself onto ARM architectures and away from 8-bit staples. Not one to miss out on a slice of the action, Arduino have announced their own upcoming board based on the Pico’s RP2040 chip.
The board is named the Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect, a moniker that’s not just a mouthful but likely to be confused with existing Arduino Nano products. It sports several differences to the Raspberry Pi Pico, namely packing WiFi, Bluetooth, and an IMU on board which should make developing motion-sensitive and IoT projects easier, particularly in cases where the Pico’s flexible IO could be useful.
Naturally, Arduino IDE integration will be a major plus point that gets many makers on board, and we can imagine there will be swift development of libraries leveraging the RP2040’s PIO subsystem. If you still haven’t gotten the low down on the Raspberry Pi Pico yet, though, never fear – our own [Elliot Williams] can tell you everything you need to know!
[0xricksanchez] participated in a software reverse-engineering challenge and recently wrote up the solution, and in so doing also documented the process used to discover it. The challenge was called Devil’s Swapper, and consisted of a small binary blob that output a short message when executed. The goal of the challenge? Discover the secret key and the secret message within. [0xricksanchez]’s writeup, originally intended just as a personal record, ended up doing an excellent job of showing how a lot of reverse engineering tools and processes get applied to software in a practical way.
What’s also great about [0xricksanchez]’s writeup is that it uses standard tools and plenty of screenshots to show what is being done, while also explaining why those actions are being chosen and what is being learned. It’s easy to follow the thought process as things progress from gathering information, to chasing leads, and finally leveraging what’s been learned. It’s a fascinating look into the process of applying the reverse engineering mindset to software, and a good demonstration of the tools. Give it a read, and see how far you can follow along before learning something new. Want more? Make sure you have checked out the Hackaday 2020 Remoticon videos on reverse engineering firmware, and doing the same for PCBs.
