Collaborate Disseminate
YouTuber [MechPanda] has recreated a DIY STM hack we covered about ten years ago, updating it to be primarily 3D-printed, using modern electronics, making it much more accessible to many …read more Continue reading Building a 3D Printed Scanning Tunneling Microscope
A public transport agency operating in Montréal announced that a ransomware attack had affected its website and other systems. The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) disclosed the infection on a web page it created to keep customers updated about i… Continue reading Montréal Public Transport Agency Discloses Ransomware Attack
In a perfect world, everything would be open source. Our current world, on the other hand, has a lot of malicious actors and people willing to exploit trade secrets if given the opportunity, so chip manufacturers take a lot of measures to protect their customers’ products’ firmware. These methods aren’t …read more
Continue reading Breaking Into a Secure Facility: STM32 Flash
Some of us here at Hackaday are suckers for a bit of chiptune music as the backdrop for many excellent times. The authentic way to create chiptunes is of course the original hardware, but in 2019 it’s far more common to do so with an emulator on a modern computer. …read more
We can’t think of where you’d buy a new, cheap, MIDI keytar that’s just a keyboard and a handle with some pitch and mod wheels or ribbon controllers. This is a format that died in the 90s or thereabouts. Yes, the Rock Band controller exists, but my point stands. In …read more
We missed [iliasam’s] laser text projector when it first appeared, perhaps because the original article was in Russian. However, he recently reposted in English and it really caught our eye. You can see a short video of it in operation, below.
The projector uses raster scanning where the beam goes over each spot in a grid pattern. The design uses one laser from a cheap laser pointer and a salvaged mirror module from an old laser printer. The laser pointer diode turned out to be a bit weak, so a DVD laser was eventually put into service. A DVD motor …read more
Small microcontrollers and tiny systems-on-chips are getting more and more popular these days as the price comes down and the ease of programming goes up. A Raspberry Pi is relatively inexpensive and can do pretty much everything you need, but not every chip out there can do something most of us take for granted like output video. For a lot of platforms, it’s next to impossible to do while saving any processor or memory for other tasks besides the video output itself.
[Dave] aka [Mubes] has been working on the Blue Pill platform which is a STM32F103C8 board. While they …read more
Designing a good clock takes a lot of considerations. It’s not just hands, faces, and numbers anymore; there are also word clocks, electronic clocks, marble clocks, or water clocks, and just about anything else imaginable can be used to tell time. Of course, electronic clocks are great for their versatility, and this one shows off an analog-looking clock that is (of course) digital, leveraging all of the perks of analog with all of the upsides of digital electronics.
One of the key design considerations that [Sasa] had while building this piece was that it needed to be silent. LEDs certainly …read more
We don’t usually think of a microscope as an active instrument, but researchers in Canada have used a scanning tunneling microscope to remove or replace single hydrogen atoms from the surface of a hydrogen-passivated silicon wafer. If the scientific paper is too much to wade through, there’s an IEEE Spectrum article and a video that might run on the 6 o’clock news below.
As usual with these research projects, there is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that — in theory — a memory device made using hydrogen lithography could store 138 terabytes per square …read more
Continue reading Scanning Tunneling Microscope Packs the Bits
Part of the problem with getting involved in a new hobby is the cost. Whether you’re learning to surf, weld, garden, or program, often the entry cost is several hundred dollars. We’re huge fans of things with low barriers to entry, though, so we were happy to see the latest project from [pappas.chris] which promises to introduce newcomers to the musical hobby of synthesizers for just over $20.
The build revolves around an STM32F7 microcontroller and offers a 6-voice virtual analog synthesizer. The build is expandable, too, so if you want to build on the STM platform with any other …read more
Continue reading Virtual Analog Synth Brings Tunes To The Masses