Author Archives: Michael Uttmark

Oscilloscope Mod for the Blues

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Roughly 8% of males and 0.6% of females are red-green color blind, and yet many common oscilloscopes use yellow and green for the traces for their two-channel readouts. Since [Roberto Barrios] is afflicted by deuteranopia, a specific form of red-green colorblindness that makes differentiating between yellow and green hard, if not impossible, he got to work hacking his Agilent oscilloscope to make it more colorblind friendly.

Starting with a tip from [Mike] from the EEVblog forums, [Roberto Barrios] set out to rewire the LCD interface and swap the red and green signals. That way yellow will turn bluish (red component …read more

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A Switched Game Boy Advance SP

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After Nintendo’s wild success with the Wii U, Nintendo released it’s Nintendo Switch. The switch functions primarily as a home console, stagnantly connected to a display. However, Nintendo switched things up a bit: the Switch can be removed from its dock for standalone tablet-like use. But there’s a slight problem: when the Switch is in portable mode, it leaves behind a bleak and black box. What’s one to do? Worry not: [Alexander Blake] is here to save the day with a Game Boy Advance SP and an X-Acto knife.

After casually noting that the main control board of the Switch …read more

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3D Printed Radiation Patterns

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Radiation patterns for antennas can be utterly confusing, especially when presented in two dimensions, as they usually are. Fear not, [Hunter] has your back with 3D printed and color-coded radiation patterns.

In the field of antenna design, radiation patterns denote the relationship between the relative strength of radio waves emitted from antennas and the position of a receiver/transmitter in 3D space. In practice, probes can be used to transmit/receive from documented locations around an antenna while recording signal intensity, allowing researchers and engineers to determine the characteristics of arcane antennas. These measurements are normally expressed as two-dimensional slices of three-dimensional …read more

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Automotive Radar and the Doppler Effect

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With more and more cars driving themselves, there is an increasing demand for precise environment aware sensors. From collision avoidance to smooth driving, environmental awareness is a must have for any self-driving cars. Enter automotive radar: cool, precise and relatively cheap. Thanks to a donated automotive radar module, [Shahriar] gifts us with a “tutorial, experiment and teardown.”

Before digging into the PCB, [Shahriar] explains the theory. With just enough math for the mathmagically inclined and not too much for the math adverse, [Shahriar] goes into the details of how automotive radar is different from normal stationary radar.

Only after a …read more

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DIY Grid Eye IR Camera

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Tindie is a great place to find uncommon electronic components or weird/interesting boards. [Xose Pérez] periodically “stroll the isles” of Tindie to keep up on cool new components, and when he saw Panasonic’s Grid_EYE AMG88 infrared sensor, [Xose] knew that he had to build something with it. The awesome find is an 8×8 IR array sensor on a breakout board… the hack is all in what you do with it.

Already taken by “LED fever,” [Xose’s] mind immediately fixated on an 8×8 IR array with an 8×8 LED matrix display. With a vision, [Xose] threw together an IR sensor matrix, …read more

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Gimbal SDI Camera Mod

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Sometimes when you need something, there is a cheap and easily obtainable product that almost fits the bill. Keyword: almost. [Micah Elizabeth Scott], also known as [scanlime], is creating a hovering camera to follow her cat around, and her Feiyu Mini3D 3-axis brushless gimbal almost did everything she’d need. After a few modifications, [Micah] now has a small and inexpensive 3-axis gimbal with a Crazyfire HZ-100P SDI camera and LIDAR-Lite distance sensor.

At thirty minutes long, [Micah’s] documenting video is rife with learning moments. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: “just watch it and thank us later.” …read more

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Fluorescence Microscopy Meets DIY Fluid Management

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Fluorescence microscopy is an optical technique that incorporates fluorescence or phosphorescence (as opposed to reflection and absorption) in order to study the properties of organic and inorganic substances. Not a stranger to bringing DIY techniques into the lab, [Philip] is using 3D printing resources to advance science and delight interns from labs everywhere.

In fluorescence microscopy, a huge limiting factor that decreases the amount of data that can be gleaned from a single sample is the number of targets that can be labeled with fluorescent tags. However, overlap in the spectral emissions of fluorophores limits the fluorophores that can be …read more

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LTE IMSI Catcher

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GSM IMSI catchers preyed on a cryptographic misstep in the GSM protocol. But we have LTE now, why worry? No one has an LTE IMSI catcher, right? Wrong. [Domi] is here with a software-defined base transceiver station that will catch your IMSI faster than you can say “stingray” (YouTube video, embedded below).

First of all, what is an IMSI? IMSI stands for International Mobile Subscriber Identity. If an IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) is your license plate, your IMSI would be your driver’s license. The IMEI is specific to the phone. Your IMSI is used to identify you, allowing phone …read more

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Metal 3D Printing: Insta-Layers

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Selective Metal Sintering is cool but slow. Fear not, a technology that was initially developed to smooth and pattern laser beams is here to save the day, according to a new paper by Lawrence Livermore researchers.

In a paper titled “Diode-based additive manufacturing of metals using an optically-addressable light valve,” the researchers lay out a procedure for using an array of high-powered laser diodes among other things to print a whole layer of metal from powdered metal at one time. No more forward and backward, left and right. Just one bright flash and you’re done. Naturally, the technology is still …read more

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OSM (Pronounced Awesome) Hardware Makes DNA in Space

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OSM stands for Oligonucleotide Synthesizer designed for use in Microgravity, meaning that it’s a device that makes arbitrary DNA strands (of moderate length) in space. Cool eh? I’ve been working on this project for the last eight months with a wonderful team of fellow hackers as part of the Stanford Student Space Initiative, and I’d like to share what we’re doing, what we’ve already done, and where we’re going.

Why space? Well, first of all, space is cool. But more seriously, access to arbitrary DNA in space could accelerate research in a plethora of fields, and the ability …read more

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