Author Archives: Brian Benchoff

Hackaday Links: October 28, 2018

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Steve Jobs was actually a good designer and CEO. This is a statement that would have been met with derision in 2010, with stories of a ‘reality distortion field’. We’re coming up on a decade in the post-Jobs era, and if there’s one thing the last seven or eight years can tell us, it’s that Jobs really, really knew how to make stuff people wanted. Apart from the iPhone, OS X, and the late 90s redesign of their desktops, the most impressive thing Jobs ever did was NeXT. Now there’s book that describes the minutia of all NeXT hardware. Thanks …read more

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The Ultimate MIDI Wind Controller Is The Human Voice

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When it comes to music, the human voice is the most incredible instrument. From Tuvan throat singing to sopranos belting out an aria, the human vocal tract has evolved over millions of years to be the greatest musical instrument. We haven’t quite gotten to the point where we can implant autotune in our vocal cords, but this project for the Hackaday Prize aims to be a bridge between singers and instrumentalists. It’s a hands-free instrument that relies on vocal gesture sensing to drive electronic musical instruments.

The act of speaking requires dozens of muscles, and of course no device that …read more

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Chiptunes In An Altoids Tin

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For [Dejan]’s entry to the Musical Instrument Challenge in this year’s Hackaday Prize, he’s tapping into some of the great work that has been done over the years to bring bleeps and bloops to the masses. He’s building a drum machine, a bass synth, and an arpeggiator that fits in your pocket, in a handy form factor that fits in an Altoids tin. It’s the FATCAT Altoids Tin Mod Tracker.

This is a simple build meant to fit in an Altoids tin, so you’re not getting a whole lot of hardware here. There’s a battery, there’s a boost circuit, and …read more

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This RC Fortnite Rocket Is A Victory Royale

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Minecraft is over and Red Dead Redemption II has barely even started yet. The biggest thing on the planet right now is Fortnite, and oh man, is it awesome. It’s the best game ever, and we wish every day was a Battle Royale. But what if Fortnite was real life? That’s exactly what [Giaco] and [David] did when they made an RC Fortnite Foam Rocket. It’s Fortnite, in the real world! If you don’t mind, we’re going to go T-pose in the corner.

The core of this build was done with the Maker Knife, first introduced as a Kickstarter …read more

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Hardware Controllers For Software Effects

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There is an interesting multi-effect available for all you musicians out there. It’s the Turnado from Sugar Bytes. It’s a real-time effects unit that takes advantage of a computer’s horsepower to add reverb and ring mods to whatever audio you feed into it. There’s flanger and a phaser. If you feed a drum loop into your computer, there’s a stutter function which means you too can become a Soundcloud rapper.

Unfortunately, this multi-effect runs on a computer. That means you have to deal with the user interface of a desktop or laptop — GUIs, a mouse, and keyboard. Maybe a …read more

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Gutters To Gardens: The IoT Rain Barrel

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There’s nothing quite like having a garden in your backyard. You get tomatoes with flavor. Fresh herbs are easy. If you’d like to go crazy, you can always grow a gigantic pumpkin. But there’s a problem with gardening: the work. You’ve got to water, and you’ve got to weed. You’ve also got to deal with the thousand ladybugs you bought for a laugh.

For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Kent] has solved at least one of these problems. It’s an Internet of Things rain barrel. It’s designed to be as simple as possible so that anyone can set it up …read more

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What Can The Blockchain Do For You?

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Imagine you’re a general, camped outside a fortified city with your army. Your army isn’t strong enough to take the city without help. But you do have help: camped on other hills outside this city are a half dozen more generals, with their armies ready to attack. Attacking one army at a time will fail; taking this city will require at least three or four armies, and an uncoordinated attack will leave thousands dead outside the city gates. How do you coordinate an attack with the other generals? Now, how do you coordinate your attack if one of those other …read more

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This Ukulele Does Chiptunes, and Not Just Because It’s Made Out Of a Game Boy

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When you think about singer-songwriters, the name Bob Dylan might come to your mind. You might think about Jeff Buckley, you might think about Hank Williams, Springsteen, David Bowie, or Prince. You’d be wrong. The greatest singer-songwriter of all time is Tiny Tim, the guy who looks like Weird Al traveled in time and did a cameo in Baker-era Doctor Who. Tiny Tim had the voice of an angel, because Mammon and Belial were angels too, I guess. Tiny Tim is also the inspiration behind the current resurgence of the ukulele, the one thing keeping the stringed instrument industry …read more

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This Synth Plays The Only Scale Everybody Knows

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There’s something common to every form of music. Nearly every musical tradition, from western art music, to Indonesian folk music makes use of a pentatonic scale. This is just a major scale without fourth and seventh scale degrees, or just playing the black keys on a piano.  It’s the one scale everybody knows, and forms the basis of every school of thought for music education. Noodling over the pentatonic scale is what all the cool guys do in Guitar Center. It’s absolutely the foundation of all music.

For their entry into the Hackaday Prize, [randomprojectlab] is building a synthesizer around …read more

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Friday Hack Chat: Air Hacking

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The field of soft robotics sure seems a lot less mature than your standard servo motor and metal framed robot arms. Maybe that’s because building a robot to flex is harder, and maybe it’s because the best methods of constructing soft robotics have only been around for a decade or so. Maybe, though, it’s because it’s hard to control air.

For this week’s Hack Chat, we’re going to be discussing Air Hacking with [Amitabh Shrivastava]. [Amitabh] is a grad student at ITP, NYU studying creative technology, where he makes interactive art, tools for research, and experiments with various materials. Lately …read more

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