Author Archives: Brian Benchoff

Hackaday Links: July 30, 2017

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What are you doing next weekend? How about going to the Vintage Computer Festival West at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Hackaday is sponsoring, and there are always a ton of awesome builds. Last year, someone played Tron on a Commodore PET. Not a video game — the movie.

In case anyone forgot, I created the most desirable independent hardware badge this year at Def Con. It’s a hilarious joke, I got three from OSH Park, thirty more in different colors from Seeed, and something, somewhere, jumped a shark. [Drew Fustini] also shared these PCBs on OSH Park. …read more

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Four Chords Should Be Enough For Anyone

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You might be surprised at how many pop songs are exactly the same. Cat Scratch Fever is the exact same song as Smoke on the Water. Even one of Yeezy’s songs is strikingly similar to a weird 90s French electronic group. Musically, though, there are an incredible number of songs that follow a I-V-vi-IV progression. Let it Be is one of them, as is Beast of Burden. aLady Gaga’s Poker Face is another. Now, finally, we have automated most of the pop songs you know and love. [Sven] has created a small MIDI device that only plays a I-V-vi-IV progression, …read more

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Building a DEF CON Badge in Two Weeks

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DEF CON is starting right now, and this is the year of #badgelife. For the last few years, independent hardware wizards have been creating and selling their own unofficial badges at DEF CON, but this year it’s off the charts. We’ve already taken a look at Bender Badges, BSD Puffer Fish, and the worst idea for a conference badge ever, and this is only scratching the surface.

This is also a banner year for the Hackaday / Tindie / Supplyframe family at DEF CON. We’re on the lookout for hardware. We’re sponsoring the IoT village, [Jasmine] — the high …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Pan And Tilt Sprinkler

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There are a few very popular irrigation systems entered into this year’s Hackaday Prize. In fact, last year’s winner for the Best Product portion of the Prize was the Vinduino, a soil moisture monitor for vineyards. Most of these irrigation systems use drip irrigation or are otherwise relatively small-scale. What if you need something a little more powerful? That’s where [Patrick]’s PTSprinkler comes in. It’s a massive lawn sprinkler coupled to a computer controlled pan and tilt mount. Think of it as a remote controlled Super Soaker, or the Internet of squirt guns. Either way, it’s a great entry for …read more

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Friday Hack Chat: Crowd Supply

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Crowdfunding is a mixed bag, at best. On one hand, you have fantastically successful products like Pebble, Oculus, and the Kano personal computer that managed to take in money, turn out a product, and become a successful company. (If even just for a while, the Pebble was great.) On the other hand, you have obvious scams like a color-picking pen that are run by a literal Nigerian scammer.

Crowd Supply is different. Unlike other crowdfunding platforms, to get on Crowd Supply you’ll need a working prototype. Where other platforms can measure their success by how many campaigns were successfully funded, …read more

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Rapidly Prototyping RF Filters

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RF filters are really just a handful of strategically placed inductors and capacitors. Yes, you can make a 1 GHz filter out of through-hole components, but the leads on the parts turn into inductors at those frequencies, completely ruining the expected results in a design.

The solution to this is microstrip antennas, or carefully arranged tracks and pads on a PCB. Anyone can build one of these with Eagle or KiCad, but that means waiting for an order from a board house to verify your design. [VK2SEB] has a better idea for prototyping PCB filters: use copper tape on blank …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: USB Packet Snooping

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Sometimes you run into a few problems when developing your own hardware, and to solve these problems you have to build your own tools. This is exactly how [KC Lee]’s USB Packet Snooper was created. It’s a small device that allows for capturing and analyzing Full Speed USB traffic to debug one of [KC]’s other Hackaday Prize entries.

[KC] is building an HID Multimedia Dial for this year’s Hackaday Prize. It’s kind of like the Microsoft Surface Dial or the ubiquitous Griffin PowerMate that has been on the market for the better part of two decades. This multimedia dial is …read more

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How to Take Pictures of PCBs

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While we’ve covered light box builds and other DIY photography solutions, general picture-snapping tips and tricks are a bit out of the purview of what we normally write about. Nevertheless, [Alain] just put up a great tutorial for taking pictures of PCBs. This is a great skill to have — no one cares about what you’ve built unless you have a picture of it — and the same techniques can be applied to other small bits and bobs of electronic equipment.

As with all matters of photography, light is important. [Alain] built a DIY light box using two cheap outdoor …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Don’t Build This

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The ESP8266 is a remarkable piece of hardware. What we originally thought — and what was originally marketed as — a simple UART to WiFi bridge with Hayes modem commands has turned into one of the best embedded platforms around. It’s a powerful little microcontroller, it has WiFi, and it can send raw frames. That last bit is awesome, because it allows for some mischief or mirth making, depending on your point of view.

For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Tejas] is building a WiFi Jammer with an ESP8266. It’s a small device that is able to disconnect anyone from a …read more

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