Author Archives: Gerrit Coetzee

Teardown a Classic : Tektronix P6042 Current Probe

Posted on by

[Paul Rako]’s teardown of his treasured P6042 current probe shows why Tektronix commands so much respect among the old hats of the electronics world.

Built in 1969, the P6042 is pretty sparse transistor-wise when compared a modern sensor. The user would clip the current probe, permanently attached to the case since the circuit was tuned for each one, over a wire and view the change in volts on an oscilloscope. When the voltage division on the oscilloscope was set properly the current in a circuit could be easily seen.

The teardown is of a working unit so it’s not completely …read more

Continue reading Teardown a Classic : Tektronix P6042 Current Probe→

Hacker Helps His Mother Lift Her Walker When He’s Not There

Posted on by

[typo]’s mother gets around with a walker. It’s a great assistive device until she has to lift the heavy thing up into her car. Noting that this was a little cruel he did as any hacker would and found a way to automate the process.

The build is pretty cool. She had to give up her passenger seat, but it’s a small price to pay for independence. He removed the door paneling on the passenger side. Then he welded on a few mounting points. Next he had to build the device.

The well-built device has a deceptively simple appearance. The …read more

Continue reading Hacker Helps His Mother Lift Her Walker When He’s Not There→

Program Your Brain, Hack Your Way to Productivity

Posted on by

Most people wish they were more productive. Some buckle down and leverage some rare facet of their personality to force the work out. Some of them talk with friends. Some go on vision quests. There are lots of methods for lots of types of people. Most hackers, I’ve noticed, look for a datasheet. An engineer’s reference. We want to solve the problem like we solve technical problems.

There were three books that gave me the first hints at how to look objectively at my brain and start to hack on it a little. These were The Power of Habit by …read more

Continue reading Program Your Brain, Hack Your Way to Productivity→

Become Very Unpopular Very Fast With This DIY EMP Generator

Posted on by

Taking a break from his book, “How to Gain Enemies and Encourage Hostility,” [FPS Weapons] shows us how to build our own handheld EMP generator which can be used to generate immediate dislike from anyone working on something electronic at the hackerspace.

The device is pretty simple. A DC source, in this case an 18650 lithium battery cell, sends power to an “Ultra High Voltage 1000kV Ignition Coil” (as the eBay listing calls it), when a button is pressed. A spark gap is used to dump a large amount of magic pixies into the coil all at once, which generates …read more

Continue reading Become Very Unpopular Very Fast With This DIY EMP Generator→

3D Printed Electric Longboard Courtesy Of Stratasys

Posted on by

[Tallaustin] worked at Stratasys as an intern this past summer. They let him know that he was welcome to use their fancy industrial printers as much as he’d like. Not to waste such an opportunity he promptly got to work and designed an electric longboard, printable for a mere $8,000.

[Tallaustin] is presumably tall, and confided to Reddit that he weighs in at 210 lbs. For those of us who have had the pleasure of designing for FDM 3D printing, we know that getting a skateboard one can actually skate on without it delaminating somewhere unexpected is pretty difficult if …read more

Continue reading 3D Printed Electric Longboard Courtesy Of Stratasys→

Blooming Flower Lamp Will Test Your 3D Printer

Posted on by

[ossum] has a baby on the way. He admits that he got a bit carried away, brimming with parental excitement. What resulted is a fully articulated LED WiFi lamp that blooms and glows dramatically in the friendly confines of the oncoming baby’s room.

We’ve covered [ossum]’s work before. As usual, he started off by showing his complete mastery of Fusion360 and making the rest of us look bad. If you want to learn 360, we recommend scrobbing through his models to see how it’s done.  The base encloses an ESP8266 and a hobby servo. A clever mechanism pulls down on …read more

Continue reading Blooming Flower Lamp Will Test Your 3D Printer→

What We Are Doing Wrong. The Robot That’s Not in Our Pocket

Posted on by

I’m not saying that the magic pocket oracle we all carry around isn’t great, but I think there is a philosophical disconnect between what it is and what it could be for us. Right now our technology is still trying to improve every tool except the one we use the most, our brain.

At first this seems like a preposterous claim. Doesn’t Google Maps let me navigate in completely foreign locations with ease? Doesn’t Evernote let me off-load complicated knowledge into a magic box somewhere and recall it with photo precision whenever I need to? Well, yes, they do, but …read more

Continue reading What We Are Doing Wrong. The Robot That’s Not in Our Pocket→

Simulate Your Robot Before You Build It

Posted on by

[Nurgak] shows how one can use some of the great robotic tools out there to simulate a robot before you even build it. To drive this point home he builds the tutorial off of the easily 3D printable and buildable Robopoly platform.

The robot runs on Robot Operating System at its core. ROS is interesting because of its decentralized and input/output agnostic messaging system. For example, if you leave everything alone but swap out the motor output from actual motors to a simulator, you can see how the robot would respond to any arbitrary input.

[Nurgak] uses another piece of …read more

Continue reading Simulate Your Robot Before You Build It→

The Haunting Last Day of Hot Metal Typesetting at The New York Times

Posted on by

The short film, Farewell — ETAOIN SHRDLU, produced in 1978 covers the very last day the New York Times was set for printing in the old way, using hot metal typesetting.

We’ve covered the magic of linotype machines before, but to see them used as they were in their prime is something else. They saw nearly a hundred years of complete industry dominance. Linotype machines had entire guilds dedicated to their use. Tradesmen built their lives around them. For some of us we see the rise and fall of technology as an expected thing. Something that happens normally, sometimes within …read more

Continue reading The Haunting Last Day of Hot Metal Typesetting at The New York Times→

Hackerspace Takes Fume Extraction Seriously

Posted on by

At first we laughed at the ridiculously over-the-top fume extraction system this hackerspace built for itself. Then we thought about seriously questionable donation rolls of solder some of the members managed to find and bring in. The kind of roll where the local greybeard assures you that a Californian State Trooper has permission to shoot you if you try to take it into the state, but damn does it solder well. They may be onto something is all we’re saying. But on a serious note, for a communal space like this one, a great air quality plan makes the place …read more

Continue reading Hackerspace Takes Fume Extraction Seriously→