Posts

Alfred Jones and Kipp Bradford to Deliver Keynotes at Remoticon Next Week

Image
There’s just one week left until Hackaday Remoticon , our online gathering in place of our traditional in-person conference during this time of social distancing. Joining the more than 20 hands-on workshops that make up the bulk of Remoticon, we’re excited to announce the two keynote speakers who will be taking the virtual stage: Alfred Jones and Kipp Bradford. Tickets to see these keynote talks, to watch the SMD Challenge, to see hardware demos, and to take part in the show and tell are free, so get yours today !   Alfred Jones Head of Mechanical Engineering at Lyft’s Self-Driving Division Alfred Jones is the Head of Mechanical Engineering at Lyft’s level 5 self-driving division. Level 5 means there are no humans involved in operating the vehicle and it is still capable of driving anywhere a human could have. What goes into modifying a vehicle for this level of self-driving? What processes does his team use to deliver safe automation? And will cars in the near future completely

Rockin’ Out in LTSpice: Simulating Classic Guitar Pedals

Image
Musicians have a fantastic language to describe signals. A sound can be fat, dark, crunchy, punchy — the list goes on. These aren’t very technical terms, but they get the job done. After all, it’s much easier to ask to guitarist for a crisper sound than to ask them to sharpen the edges of the waveform, while amplifying the high-frequency components and attenuating the low-frequency components. Of course, it’s fun to look at signals this way as well, especially when you can correlate shifts in sound quality to changes in the waveform and, ideally, the circuit that produces it. To undergo such an investigation, [Nash Reilly] has been simulating guitar effects pedals in LTSpice . Able to find most of the schematics he needs online, [Nash] breaks down the function of each part of the circuit and builds a simulation of the entire system. His write-up clearly explains, and often demonstrates, what’s going on inside the box. On the surface, it’s an interesting tour of the inner workings of

DSL is Barely Hanging on the Line as Telcos Stop Selling New Service

Image
Are you reading this over AT&T DSL right now? If so, you might have to upgrade or go shopping for a new ISP soon. AT&T quietly stopped selling new traditional DSLs on October 1st , though they will continue to sell their upgraded fiber-to-the-node version. This leaves a gigantic digital divide, as only 28% of AT&T’s 21-state territory has been built out with full fiber to the home, and the company says they have done almost all of the fiber expansion that they intend to do. AT&T’s upgraded DSL offering is a fiber and copper hybrid, where fiber ends at the network node closest to the subscriber’s home, and the local loop is still over copper or coax. At about the same time, a report came out written jointly by members of the Communications Workers of America union and a digital inclusion advocacy group. The report alleges that AT&T targets wealthy and non-rural areas for full fiber upgrades, leaving the rest of the country in the dark. As the internet has been the

Massive Battle Bot Needs Equally Chunky Custom-Molded Wheels

Image
We’ve all run into situations where the right part for the job isn’t something that you can just buy off the shelf. In a lot of cases, 3D-printing is the cure for that problem, but sometimes you need to go big with tough parts for a tough job. These custom molded urethane battlebot wheels are a great example of that. (Video, embedded below.) The robotic warrior in question is “Copperhead”, a heavyweight death-dealer that has competed on the “BattleBots” show on TV. It’s an incredibly stout machine with a ridiculous 50 pound (23 kg) drum of spinning tool-steel on the front to disassemble competitors. Add to that the sheer mass of the bot’s armor plating and running gear, throw in the need to withstand the punishment meted out by equally diabolical weapons, and standard wheels are not going to fly. As [Robert Cowan] details in the video below, nothing but the sturdiest wheels will do, so the bot builders mold custom wheels with integrated hubs. The four-piece mold was machined out of

DIY Regular Expressions

Image
In the Star Wars universe, not everyone uses a lightsabe, and those who do wield them had to build them themselves. There’s something to be said about that strategy. Building a car or a radio is a great way to learn how those things work. That’s what [Low Level JavaScript] points out about regular expressions. Sure, a lot of people think they are scary. So why not write your own regular expression parser and engine ? Get that under your belt and you’ll probably never fear another regular expression. Of course, most of us probably won’t do it ourselves, but you can still watch the process in the video below. The code is surprisingly short, but don’t expect all the bells and whistles you might find in Python or even Perl. In the hands of the skilled, regular expressions are very powerful and offer a quick way to split apart text data. Like a lot of powerful ideas, the basic concept — that of a finite state machine — is really simple. It is the application to real problems that becomes

This Z80 Computer Bootstraps Itself

[Plasmode] has created several Z80-compatible board designs, at least four of them using the oddball Z280 . The Z280 was a special variant of a Z80 that could bootstrap itself with no external PROM, making it ideal for anyone trying to build a system on a breadboard. According to his post, the cost to build the board is about $35. Although the 8080 CPU got a lot of glory, it was much harder to use than the Zilog Z80. The Z80 only required a single clock and power supply, so it was much easier to build a system, even on a breadboard. On top of that, the bus wasn’t multiplexed and it could refresh DRAM memory by itself. Maybe that’s why you can still get Z80-derived chips readily. There was one thing, though, you needed an EPROM or some other way to run some initial code to bootstrap your system. Zilog knew this a problem. In those days, you had to use a special tool to burn a PROM and unless it was erasable (and you had the special UV light to erase it), any mistakes cost you a chip.

Projecting Halloween Peril

Image
Every holiday has a few, dedicated individuals committed to “going all out.” Whether they’re trying to show up the neighbors, love the look, or just want to put a smile on the faces of those passing by; the results are often spectacular. A recent trend in decorations has been away from analog lights and ornaments and towards digital light shows via a projector. [Georgia Clegg] and [Luma Bakery] have written up a fantastic guide detailing the involved process of house projection for those feeling the holiday spirit. There is more to the effect than simply pointing a projector at a home and running a video clip. The good displays make use of the geometry of the home and the various depths of the walls don’t distort the picture. The house itself is mapped into the image being displayed. There are generally two approaches to mapping: point of view mapping and neutral/orthographic mapping. The first is just setting the projector in a fixed position and designing the graphics in such a wa