Kritik sah

It is a classic Hackaday situation. You have an Egret GT E-scooter. It has a screen that shows the usual dash stats, but that led to an annoyance. You could accidentally enter firmware update mode and, from there, enter operational mode without the security PIN. [Ben] couldn’t let that stand, so he reverse-engineered the protocol and rewrote the firmware in Rust . As he put it, “… because I have to break… everything I own…” We get it. The mobile app was useful for some basic info, since sniffing Bluetooth is fairly easy and analyzing mobile code is, more or less, straightforward. Analysis revealed some data that doesn’t show on the display and that several things are sent back to home base tagged with the scooter’s unique ID — another reason to gut the existing firmware. Internally, the scooter uses the CAN Bus, so out came the oscilloscope and a homebrew CAN decoder.  Surprisingly, the CAN bus is accessible on the USB-C port...

If you’ve never heard of the Spin Semiconductors FP-1 digital signal processor chip, don’t worry– that just means you haven’t been deep into guitar petals and audio effects hardware lately. [adamjvr], a.k.a. [avr] has, and he’s gone to the point of creating a PC-based emulator of this sound chip to simplify development. If you don’t see the utility, stop and think about the development cycle without a simulation like this: you program, you flash to a board, and you test there. Not only does the ‘flash to the board’ step add time and friction, you do also have a limited number of flashes on the board’s memory. With an emulator on your PC, the workflow tightens to ‘code, test’ and you don’t flash the board until the simulated DSP is doing the sounds you want it to. As for the FV-1 itself, it’s an interesting little chip in that it’s quite a full-featured DSP– rather, it’s small instruction s...

You want Retro? We did, when we started our retrocomputing challenge. [Peter] decided that transistors weren’t retro enough, and sent us this lovely homebrew relay computer , complete with 16- bit CPU, which is rather more bits than one normally associates with clicky clacky contacts. The architecture is very simple– it just uses an accumulator register, ACCU, and goes from there. All mathematics and save/load operations go through ACCU. There whole instruction set is only 19 commands, and he’s used that set to program such lovely things as calculating 3 digits of Pi– which only took 8 minutes of glorious clicking. There’s a demo video of that embedded below. [Peter] has even implemented a display by hooking his computer to a 32×32 LED matrix, but don’t expect it to relay updates really quickly. If this computer looks familiar, it’s because its earlier incarnation was one of the more “extra” entries in last year’s one-...

The all-LEGO version barely cuts paper. (Credit: Jamie’s Brick Jams, YouTube) Although building a table saw out of LEGO is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you look at those colorful bits of plastic, [Jamie] has been on a bit of a search for more applications of his LEGO-based air-powered motors. Naturally this led to the idea of doing something useful with it, like making a table saw you can actually use for real wood . Starting off with a basic prototype using only regular LEGO pieces to get the mechanism figured out, [Jamie] then builds this up into said air-powered table saw featuring an actual metal blade. Suffice it to say that this isn’t something that you want your children to do with their LEGO while unsupervised. The star of the show is of course the air-powered turbine that spins the blade. This is something that [Jamie] has been working on for a while , going through a number of prototypes to figure out a 3D printed geometry for the turbine...

[Andy Huot] has a fantastic-looking infinity mirror digital clock that really raises the bar. It uses high quality components, smart use of RGB LED animations, and a clever “stacked diffuser” vertical design to the 7-segment display elements that really enhances the infinity mirror effect. It needs to be seen in action, so check it out. The end result is expressly portal-like, with the smooth animations of the LEDs really playing into the effect. The size helps, too. It’s 24 inches in diameter, giving it considerable presence. The stacked diffuser design for each display element really enhances the effect. A basic infinity mirror design consists of lit elements sandwiched between a reflective back surface and a partially-reflective, partially-transmissive top cover. That same basic principle is used here, but with great care given to ensure nothing so much as a fingerprint spoils the illusion. For example, the top cover is a disk of acrylic with a 90% reflective f...

Folding a sheet of metal in a straight line is one thing, but how does one fold multiple curved lines into a sheet of aluminum without fancy machines? [John] demonstrates how to do exactly that with little more than hand tools and a fair bit of patience. The secret is drilling a lot of small holes along each fold line . Complex shapes are possible with planning, hand tools, and patience. First, a bit of background. [John] wanted to fabricate a curved piece of aluminum as cover that would match the sleek aerodynamic lines of a Belly Tank Lakester . The trick is that there isn’t a single straight line to be found, and the fold lines are all curves. How can one do such folding with only hand tools? [John] found that fabrication was possible by drilling small holes all along each fold line, then carefully bending as needed. The line of holes weakens the metal, acting like a score line, and allow the required curves to be made cleanly. There’s some finishing work and straight...