Kritik sah

After the little Mars helicopter Ingenuity blew everyone away with its performance, it was clear that a future Mars mission should involve more helicopters like it, with even more capabilities. The main proposal here is NASA’s SkyFall mission which would involve three autonomous helicopters, capable of searching for resources like water. To this end they would need a ground-penetrating radar system, with the antenna somehow folding away for landings, an idea that JPL is currently testing . The SkyFall mission is currently penciled in to commence in 2028, following which it will be deployed from the Space Reactor-1 fission reactor-powered spacecraft based around elements of the now discarded Lunar Gateway space station. This obviously poses some uncertainties around when and if this mission will actually take place, but that doesn’t prevent JPL engineers from solving issues with these SkyFall helicopters. As the antenna for the ground-penetrating radar extends beyond the ...

[Ayushmaan] states up front that most of his free time is spent “building things that probably didn’t need to exist”. Well, this one might be an anomaly, because it seems pretty useful to us. HYDR8, as it says on the tin, is a wearable that knows when it’s time to hydrate . The impetus for this one was something we all chase: the flow state. [Ayushmaan] would sit down, get deep into work, and look up hours later to to find that he had a headache and a full water bottle. Phone reminders were soon swiped away in annoyance. This wearable is based on a XIAO ESP32-C3. It reads heart rate, oxygenation, skin temperature, and both the ambient temperature and humidity. It also learns your personal resting numbers range. Taking all of this into consideration, it generates a heat/hydration stress score between 0-100. The thing is, HYDR8 tells you specifically what to do; sometimes it’s ‘drink water’ and other times, it’s ‘find shade’. ...

Your desk or bench is a work area, so why not make it look the part? That’s the idea behind the miniature blinking traffic barrels that [Glen Akins] recently put together . Of course, just a single blinking light doesn’t really sell the idea of a busy construction zone, so he spent a somewhat surprising amount of time and effort optimizing the design for small-scale production. The end result is a fascinating write-up that dives into the design decisions [Glen] made. Every aspect of this project, from the overhang of the “handle” on the 3D printed barrel to the number of passive components on the PCB was carefully considered. Critics may say [Glen] put too much thought into something that didn’t need to be so complex, but projects like these are an excellent way to keep your skills sharp — there’s no such thing as practicing too much. Starting with the design of the barrel itself, we appreciate that [Glen] kept the capabilities of his desktop ...

Link shorteners have been a staple of the online world for over two decades now, but they’ve got some issues– for one thing, it’s totally non-transparent where the link actually goes, leaving you open to all sorts of shenanigans, of which RickRolling is probably the best case. For two, your traffic is going through an external service who may have their own nefarious intent. [PortalRunner] had an idea: don’t shorten the link, but compress it . You see, a traditional URL shortener like tinyurl just generates a random code and associates that with your original link in its database. That’s fine, but you’re relying on a third party database. The alternative is to take the URL, encode it in some way, and apply some compression algorithm to the data. If the encoding and compression are open-source– which [Portal ]’s absolutely are — then you can check yourself before following the link, and/or self-host the whole thing for piece of mind....

When it comes to 3D printing in the FDM world, you can go a long way just relying on standard settings that ship with your 3D printer and/or slicer. If you want to push the limits, though, it pays to better understand the hardware and materials you’re working with to know what you can get away with. To that end, [Robert Samples] put together the MeltCalc database to help.  The purpose of MeltCalc is simple—it collates data on hot ends and materials regarding factors like maximum flow rate, print speeds, and heater requirements. If you’re wondering whether a given hot end can flow a given filament at a given rate, for example, this tool is a great place to start. It features 64 different hot ends and 36 polymers typically used in the 3D printing world, and can spit out maximum flow rates and print speed estimations even accounting for fancy tech like Core Heating Technology (CHT) nozzles. It’s all based on thermodynamic modelling which [Robert] put together based on hi...

If you are a regular reader, then the odds are you have taken apart an electronic gadget, either for a fix, or simply because your curiosity got the better of you. Once inside, it’s all but impossible to help yourself from doing at least a little reverse engineering. That’s what happened when [PRBS23] took a look inside a Gravity 800 Grill for a simple wire fix. But one thing led to the next, and now open source firmware for the grill is freely available! Control board schematic. The first order of business in creating the firmware is reverse engineering the original controller . Opening it up immediately reveals an ESP-32 and a well-labeled programming port. The rest of the control board is equally simple, including connectors for four thermistor temperature sensors, lid open/close switch, fan driver, 16 segment LCD, piezo buzzer, and some physical inputs. The thermistor along with the physical inputs are connected to a 16 pin chip, interfacing with the MCU over a 9600 b...