Kritik sah

It’s likely many of us have been in the position of first set-up on a machine such as a Raspberry Pi, and had keyboard problems. Either no spare keyboard is to be found, or a cluttered desk has to find extra space for a full-size keyboard. [Henk] has a handy solution, use the existing keyboard on your laptop . His approach is both ingenious and simple, as it’s only the K part of a KVM. On the laptop end, it’s a serial terminal, without the receiving side. The serial port in question is an RP2040 board which implements a USB-to-serial port. This serial connection goes to another RP2040, which does the ingenious bit. It’s a serial-to-USB HID keyboard. All of this means that keystrokes on the laptop are sent down the serial connection, and appear on the Pi or whatever computer as a USB keyboard as though typed locally. The mildly annoying first set-up can be done, and then it can be run via SSH or whatever other remote access protocol as normal. The code is provide...

One of the great things of Linux as an ecosystem is that there is so much choice. Yet this is also its greatest weakness, as unlike on MacOS and Windows this means that simple questions often do not have a simple answer. The topic of distributing software is one of these vexing topics that never really goes away, with [Noam Lewis], as author of the Fresh editor, recently expressing their frustrations on this topic . This is a familiar topic that we have covered before, mostly in the context of cross-platform installers. Whereas on MacOS and Windows you just pick any of a handful of standard installer frameworks that do roughly the same thing, on Linux you are dealing with a dizzying number of package managers, including distro-specific ones, NPM, Homebrew, Rust crates, third party repositories like Arch Linux’s AUR or stray APT repositories for Debian, and of course AppImage and Flatpak along with a host of other options. After going through the entire list with help from the F...

Now that MCUs like the ESP32-S3 are quite capable computer systems including USB host functionality, it only makes sense that you can connect USB peripherals like Logitech racing wheels to them. Of course, these aren’t basic HID USB devices, so they require a bit of setup to make them start spitting out the data updates which we’re interested in. Making this process easy is the goal of the LogiWheelHost project for ESP32-S3 by [Joel Kometz]. This single-header library supports the G29, G923, G920, G27, G25, DFGT, Driving Force Pro wheels, building on top of the EspUsbHost project. As explained in the README, these racing wheels do not start streaming all updates to their controls once powered on, but boot into a restricted mode in which only neutral or combined-axis data is sent. To change this you need to trigger the so-called native mode switch in which far more detailed information as well as updates on extended features like separate pedals, all buttons and the gear ...

In this era of consumer-grade FDM printers that have automatic bed levelling, automatic pressure advance tuning, automatic temperature regulation and so on buttoned away behind bullet-proof presets and automation, something as archaic as manual filament tuning does seem a bit out of place. Unless you’re running that hot rod Voron FDM printer, does it make sense to ‘waste time’ with manual tuning your off-the-shelf FDM printer? In a recent video [MandicReally] argues that it still makes sense to unlock more performance. Up front it’s made clear that these auto-tuned configurations are perfectly fine for the average user, who will be perfectly happy with something like a ‘generic PLA’ preset combined with whatever auto-configuration the printer did. That said, not every filament is the same, nor is each heating element, nozzle and feeding system. In that sense it can be worth it to take a deeper look. In the video basic aspects like preparing the mat...

That’s not what an NTC should be reading. (Credit: The Repair Forge, YouTube) It’s no real secret that battery packs for power tools aren’t the foremost when it comes to user serviceability, so if said battery pack suddenly stops charging outside of warranty, you generally just e-waste it. That’s what [The Repair Forge] could have done for the Makita battery pack in question, but instead it was opened up for a diagnosis and fix. Rather than the charger throwing up an error with this specific battery, it would flash its red LED and run its fan, but never actually start the charging process. Apparently the charger seems to think that the battery is either too hot or cold to be charged, which already gives a big hint as to what might be wrong. Using the open source PocketOBI tool it’s possible to query the battery, which showed that one of the internal thermistors reported the battery being at a chilly -30°C while the other a more reasonable 28°C. After p...

Gears are usually the biggest contributors to backlash in a mechanical system, but they’re far from the only culprits. Ball bearings are a less obvious source of imprecision, since any gaps between the balls and the races can lead to axial wobble. Precision mechanisms can eliminate this by pairing two ball bearings, holding the outer races fixed, and applying a preload force to the inner traces. [Chronova Engineering], however, has a different solution, for which he split a ball bearing in half . Besides taking up more room, thermal expansion also means that it’s difficult to apply a consistent preload force between two ball bearings. Instead, to make a self-contained preloaded bearing, [Chronova Engineering] first disassembled a single ball bearing. The most difficult part of this is taking apart the ball cage; the two parts of this are normally riveted together, but he managed to find a crimped cage and pry it apart. After taking the bearing completely apart, he cut the outer trace...