Kritik sah

A perennial in the esoteric operating system space is ReactOS, a project with its roots in the 1990s which is doing a pretty good job of creating an open source clone of 32-bit Windows. They have a new version out , and it’s acquired some useful features. Top of the list is a new graphical installer, removing the need for separate live and install ISOs, followed by improvements in video bug fixes and high definition audio drivers and subsystems. There’s a headless server install too, in which the GUI is suppressed. Perhaps most interesting, they are working on version syncing the open-source projects such as WINE on which they rely, meaning with luck that any improvements there will show up in ReactOS. A while back we took a look at using ReactOS as a daily , and found it to be quirks aside, as usable as you’rd expect a Windows XP clone to be. Given that there are plenty of pieces of hardware and software around that still need an early-2000s era Windows to run, this...

Perhaps the most annoying kinds of faults are those that involve expensive equipment that just sit around in a cupboard, only for them to just stop working at all. Such was the case with the £2,000 Amprobe cable trace kit that [Tom] bought for work-related purposes. After sitting around unused for a few years, the signal generating part of the kit refused to power up at all, with Fluke’s service department wanting at least £600 to even attempt a repair after already having had [Tom] cough up £70 to even get this quote. Subsequently he instead sent it to [Buy it Fix it] on YouTube for an attempted repair , which at the very least would be a less costly option. These systems use a signal generator connected to the cable, with a separate detector wirelessly tracking this signal. By itself that doesn’t sound too complex, but as it turns out it wasn’t quite so straightforward to diagnose. After eliminating a basic power or display issue, the SoC’s boot sequence was ...

The hope is always that a good business card will leave a good impression. For those in the electronics field, they also serve as an opportunity to showcase creative design skills. [Wilson Harper] demonstrates that ably with a rather nifty energy-harvesting build. The card is based around a thin PCB in the typical business card size. It’s populated by 21 Charlieplexed LEDs, a small microcontroller, and some supporting components. Now, this is normally where you might expect the device to be powered by a small coin cell, maybe deftly integrated into the PCB thickness itself to make the card less cumbersome. But no—[Wilson] went a different route. The thing is that in 2026, most of us are carrying phones with NFC readers built in. Thus, the card was built to harvest this source of energy with a PCB trace antenna, designed with the aid of STM’s antenna inductance tools and an LLM script lobbed into KiCad. All one needs to do is to pop the card on the back of a phone and the ...

When it comes to building real-world flying vehicles, testing can be arduous and expensive. You have to find somewhere to fly, then you have to contend with environmental conditions and the possibility of damaging your craft if things go wrong. Simulation is a great solution to this, allowing testing without so much risk. To that end, [AlexanderRex] whipped up a platform for testing UAVs from the comfort of your computer desk. PteroSim is intended as a comprehensive test bench for simulating autonomous aerial vehicles. It can run PX4, ArduPilot, and Betaflight binaries right in the simulator. The autopilot code is given simulated sensor data, and in turn responds with actuator commands, just as it would in a real craft. The simulator runs the flight dynamics using JSBSim, and the resulting scene is rendered in Unreal Engine 5. If you’ve ever wanted to quickly road test different autopilot settings without heading out to the field or risking hardware, this is a great way to do so...

Sometimes regarded as a less violent form of tennis, badminton is still a pretty challenging sport. One which suffers like so many sports from requiring at least two players since magically flying balls and shuttlecocks haven’t been invented yet. After years of tinkering on a shuttlecock serving robot, [Travis Mitchell] hit upon the idea to convert a small industrial robotic arm for the purpose. The target of this conversion is a positively cute-sized Denso VS050 robotic arm, with Denso helpfully providing a 3D model of the arm as a solid jumping-off point in a CAD project. Here the task of the robotic arm is two-fold: one is to grab a fresh shuttlecock from a hopper with a pneumatic grabber, the other is to feed it into the spinning wheels that grip and launch it. Fortunately [Travis] has a pretty tricked-out workshop available, including the ability to 3D print metal parts, making building the prototype a snap. After initially thinking of using a Raspberry Pi Pico, he ended u...

If you’re intending to transmit on the VHF band, you’re probably going to reach for a handheld or some kind of rackmount rig in your ham shack. But you needn’t bother with all that complexity, when you can use the computer on your desk to spit out such signals using a simple browser tool from [Efe]. The concept is straightforward—[Efe]’s tool manipulates pixel clocks in order to create spurious transmissions from your computer’s graphics hardware. The math pencils out pretty easily—multiply the horizontal resolution by the vertical resolution by the refresh rate, while paying attention to the precise timing of the video standard your monitor is using, and you’ve got your transmission frequency. For example, for a screen displaying 1080p at 60 Hz, with the CEA-861 timing standard, your horizontal and vertical resolutions are 2200 and 1125 respectively when paying attention to the requisite blanking intervals. Multiply those by 60 hz, and you’ll ...

The big news today is, of course, the successful launch and deployment of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope earlier this morning . The space agency’s latest observatory lifted off at 7:26 AM Eastern from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, and by 8:00 AM it was separated from the rocket’s upper stage and flying on its own. While the sound and fury of launch is exciting, it’s just the beginning of the journey for Roman. It will take several months for the spacecraft to complete its roughly 1.5 million-kilometer trek out to Earth’s second Lagrange point (L2), where it will set up shop near — in cosmic terms, anyway — the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Along the way, it will switch on and test various systems and components, with its primary 300 megapixel infrared camera scheduled to power up in three weeks or so. There’s a lot to cover about the Roman Space Telescope. Built from spy satellite spare...

The world’s refusal to standardize on a single type of mains power outlet has led to a vibrant market of so-called travel adapters, all of which try to outdo each other in convenience and universality. This comes at the cost of complexity, something which ultimately reflects in the price. The cheapo $9.26 universal travel adapter that [Brainiac 75] got off an online retailer’s site is thereby a good example of how safety suffers if the overarching goal is to ‘make it cheap’. The first exciting discovery is that when you plug any of its three sets of connectors into an outlet, the others become live at the same voltage. This would suggest that they’re just wired together, a fact soon confirmed with a quick resistance check between the respective prongs. Though to the adapter’s credit, the prongs are not live when fully retracted into the enclosure. Yet as demonstrated in the video, the retracting of prongs is not enforced, so mistakes here are possi...

Now, not everyone minds the characteristic layer lines you get with Filament Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D prints, but sometimes you need a smooth surface. If so we might go for filling primer, Bondo, or maybe break out the ABS and vapor smooth. Well, [I changed a thing] has an alternate suggestion: lasers. Laser melting can smooth the walls on a print , or the top surfaces as he shows in two different videos, both embedded below. The results look roughly similar to vapor smoothing, without the chemical exposure small risk of explosion. Of course, you need a laser to do this, and [I changed a thing] has two diode lasers mounted to the X-axis of his printer. Of the two, the top surfaces were a lot easier to get right than the wall smoothing, which makes sense. Top surfaces are right there for the laser to get at, after all, while with his laser setup [I changed a thing] needs to get at the walls obliquely. [I changed a thing] tries melting layer-by-layer as well as a few methods to get...

At first glance, wireless brakes seem like a recipe for disaster. For something as critical as braking, many bicyclists might prefer a physical connection to their method of safely controlling speed. But there are a number of surprising benefits of electronic or wireless braking systems. For one, they can enable systems like anti-lock braking systems and for another they can eliminate cabling or hydraulics on a bicycle. For these reasons, and just for the thrill of it, [Berm Peak] built a set of wireless brakes for his fat tire bicycle to test out the possibilities. The system uses a set of ESP32 microcontrollers to handle inputs from the braking lever and outputs to the front and rear brakes, as well as a central control unit and display. The brakes themselves are controlled by actuators from car door locks, which when combined with the springs from the stock calipers work to apply a wide range of braking force to the wheels. These did take a bit of prototyping to get working right,...

Needing less than 70 grams of filament, [Chefkoch]’s 3D printed PCB vise solder station might be a good way to use up some filament spool leftovers and get yourself a handy tool in return. What we like about this design is that it is multi-functional, and cleverly uses the solder spool as a counterweight to add stability that might otherwise be lacking in such a compact design. The assembly can be reconfigured so that the jaws are either horizontal or vertical; the solder spool is held conveniently either way. The whole thing is 3D printed, so there’s no other hardware or fasteners involved. It’s probably best suited to small boards, but it’s also compact, entirely 3D printed, and doesn’t need much filament. Still have some filament left over and want a nifty solder feeder to go with it? Check out the solder scroll , a pen-like DIY tool that makes handheld solder feeding a little less of a hassle. from Blog – Hackaday https://ift.tt/u0gkoEO

The Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) is a board carrying a slightly older ESP32 variant, a display with a resistive touchscreen, an SD card, and not much else. It’s often used for straightforward microcontroller applications that need a user interface, but that’s not the limit of its possibilities. [Alun Morris] has a CYD on which you can brows an entire offline Wikipedia . The trick is to take the offline Wikipedia builds from the Kiwix project, and process them further into a custom format suited for a browser firmware on the ESP32. A modern SD card can hold so much data that a full Wikipedia is well within its abilities even with images included. We like this idea, because it takes the knowledge away from the center of the network to its edge. We expect to see it gaining a following among enthusiasts for offline living, because all that knowledge without a network can only be useful. If you recognize [Alun]’s work, it might be because of his ESP32 web browser . from...

Many of us have noted a tremendous price increase in many computer components for some mysterious reason. Whatever this cause is will be debated among the various modern philosophers and Diogeneses, but regardless of cause we all still have to live in this world and make do. That turns us towards getting maximum value from the things we already have rather than trying to go out and buy more computer components right now, like [svofski] using his vast swath of existing microSD cards to build an SD card library . The library is based around a tiny robotic arm that can physically grip the cards and move them in and out of a reader. The first iteration of the arm involved rotating the two pincers, but this turned out to be overly complicated and [svofski] eventually settled on a design resembling a rack and pinion that slides the two pincers together instead. With the gripper sorted out, it’s placed in system called T-bot arrangement, similar to coreXY kinematics, that lets it pick a...

Tiny capacitors in an SD card package. (Credit: Aeson Labs) A nice thing about SD cards is that even in their non-micro format they are conveniently small. This is however a bit of a problem when an SD card stops working, as they are not exactly designed to be easy to service, or to recover data from. There is however a very good chance that the Flash memory and controller are still fine, and it’s actually one of the passives on the tiny PCB that failed, as with the 32 GB SD card that [Yevgeniy Kapishon] recently diagnosed and recovered data from for a customer. A big hint during initial diagnostics was a clear short between the supply rail and ground, but as became clear when taking the SD card apart, this one was built as a monolithic package, without exposed components on a PCB as in older SD cards. Correspondingly an X-ray machine and thermal camera were used to figure out what was inside the package, and where the short was located. By combining the hot spot image with th...

It’s technically true that any piece of software can be reproduced in hardware, although modern software’s size and complexity generally makes this a non-starter. But if we go far enough back in time, older software becomes easier and easier to implement in hardware. The original DOOM from 1993 might one day be recreated in full this way, but that day is not today. Instead, [Nick] has recreated the original music from that game, playing the opening track in nothing but 555 timers . The circuit starts with a 555 timer that acts as a system clock with a rate of just over 7 Hz. These pulses feed a binary counter which in turn feeds a decoder, giving the circuit 15 positions. Each output of the decoder feeds to a diode matrix which stores information about what pitch the circuit should play. The circuit only needs to play six pitches so the diodes effectively connect each moment in time to one of these six notes. From there the circuit feeds into a set of switches which select ...

After building a couple of internal combustion engines by milling billet aluminium stock and cringing at the absolute waste of material this created, [Camden Bowen] figured he’d give casting metal parts a shot . Of course, the key here is to create the molds for said casting, which is where you got a few options available. Since DIY is really his thing, he also made his own kiln using cement and perlite, plus a propane burner. For the aluminium material to melt, he bought a stack of aluminium alloy wheels, as these are made of an alloy that’s actually suitable for casting. These were turned into ingots as a first step towards casting the engine parts, which among other things helps to purify the metal. For the actual casting method he picked lost PLA, meaning the intended shape is 3D printed in PLA, then put into plaster before it’s melted out of the newly minted mold in an oven and subsequently burned out in the kiln. For the plaster [Camden] used regular Plaster o...

In a move that’s no doubt going to trigger a lot of confusion and nostalgia, Mklinux is back , in a sense. As the announcement makes clear, this is multikernel Linux, not microkernel Linux , which is an experimental OS designed to run the Linux kernel as a user-space server running on top of OS X’s Mach kernel. Naming overlap niggles aside, this neo-mklinux lets multiple independent Linux kernels run simultaneously on bare metal. There is still a host kernel which handles the carving up of hardware resources to the newly spawned kernels, but unlike with a hypervisor there are no abstraction or translation layers. In theory this should mean basically perfect isolation between kernels, which is one of the main selling points along with increased performance. Compared to running KVM guests the provided benchmarks show much lower latency, at between parity to two times faster. A website is provided with instructions to get started, along with architectural details if that...

The Honda Goldwing is one of the more famous motorcycles ever produced. It’s known for its reliability and comfort, but also for being one of the first motorcycles Honda rolls out new technology with. It was the first to have a factory-installed airbag as well as integrated GPS, and is now largely associated for being a sort of two-wheeled RV with how many creature comforts it supports for long-distance riders. [Matt] has a Goldwing of his own, and is taking that RV-like feeling to the extreme with a rooftop camper for this motorcycle . Of course, motorcycles don’t have roofs, but if this Goldwing had one this camper would definitely be above that. Goldwings are already heavy enough without an enormous weight dramatically increasing the center of gravity, and [Matt] certainly had his problems with that along the way. But before this adventure he had modified it into a hill climber, removing a lot of the extraneous equipment from it. Attaching some metal frame and a lightwei...

Recently [Tucker Osman] brought to life what once was just a meme created by the BBC as it poked fun at Apple’s push for ever smaller devices that also dropped many features along the path towards questionable innovation. This ‘Mactini’ was a super-small laptop, with just a single button that did everything, befitting the overpriced more-money-than-sense status symbol vibe that [Jony Ive] brought to Apple. The input method suggested in the BBC video involves convoluted patterns using the single button, which would be functional, albeit cumbersome. Even as [Tucker] set out on this mission to make the Mactini real, he had to answer a lot of questions, while sticking to the rules that it had to follow the rough form factor of the original and have the same features. In lieu of overcomplicating things, he opted to use a 1.69″ ST7789V2-based SPI LCD along with a small RP2350-based board from Waveshare for the brains. Rather than just slapping the LCD example for t...

Over the centuries there have been an incredible number of purported medical devices released onto the market, with some having more outrageous claims than others. Released in the 1910s and produced into the 1920s, the Farador electrotherapeutic device claimed to be a thermoelectric device that would cure all disease conditions. In a recent video over at the [Our Own Devices] channel we get an in-depth look at this device and its usage instructions. It’s a thermoelectric generator. Sort of. (Credit: Our Own Devices, YouTube) On the Smithsonian’s website you can see the version they’ve got . It’s not identical, but the working principle remains the same — after bypassing the whole ‘is this the right treatment’ questionnaire because it’s a cure-all device, you take the main metal device and its connected electrodes out of the box. Unlike similar devices of the era that applied an actual electrical current using batteries or similar, this...

The Universe is a large place, yet despite it being mostly empty space, there are still a lot of things to find and catalogue. This includes mildly terrifying things like supermassive black holes (SMBHs), one of the study subjects of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) project. In their 20th data release of the fifth all-sky survey (SDSS-V), the results of the Black Hole Mapper (BHM) program provides a lot of new insights into these SMBHs. For a good primer on the SDSS’s ongoing survey, you can read this paper by [Kollmeier] et al. from 2017 in which this fifth survey and its three programs, including the BHM, are explained. This comes after four previous phases of the SDSS, all of them focusing on multispectral imaging and spectroscopic redshift survey with the 2.5 m Apache Point Observatory (APO) in New Mexico. With SDSS-V a second 2.5 m observatory at Las Campanas (LCO) was added, with both observatories combined able to observe the entire sky, not just as static images, b...

The TermDriver 2 is a USB-to-serial interface with a twist—it has a built-in screen for displaying relevant information. It can run at anywhere from 100 bit/s to 2Mbit/s, while showing you what’s happening on the wire. [James Bowman] worked on the TermDriver 2, and paid special attention to one feature— the visual look of the status indicators on the display. [James] had hoped to make the status indicators look a little more old-school, a little more analog. His inspiration was the classic indicator panels from Apollo-era space hardware, which used bulbs behind plastic indicators. Incandescent bulbs don’t switch instantly on and off; they take time to warm and cool. This behaviour is both more pleasant, visually speaking, and would aid in making short-duration events on the TX, RX and other indicators more visible. Thus, [James] set about giving the LCD UI elements sixteen steps of brightness from off to fully on. The simulated bulbs get brighter the more rapidly activity i...