Leandro Pereira

In a market full of Fitbits, Misfits, and Fuelbands, it’s easy to get carried away with sophisticated personal fitness tracking technology.  That’s why [André] took a totally different approach with his super simple run tracking device, the C25K machine.

C25K stands for “Couch to 5k” which is a slimmed down exercise schedule designed to gradually bring people who have otherwise no exercise routine up to a level of fitness where they can run a 5k in just 9 weeks.  To keep participants from wearing themselves out too early, the routine specifies a sequence of running and walking periods to be completed in series on specific days.  Though simpler than most fitness plans, it’s still a lot to keep track of especially when you’re sweating so hard you can barely see your stopwatch.

André found a solution using a bare-bones circuit based on the ATTiny2313.  After loading the C25k calendar into its firmware (which takes up less than half of its 2K of flash), he needs only to toggle the dipswitch to select the appropriate day of the program, and the little device (scarcely larger than a key fob) will beep to let him know to switch from running to walking or back again.

Definitely a great project for any hobbyist looking for a geeky way to get in shape.

"Well I just synced my Twarfle to my Fluckr, so I can Tworf my Flecks."

[cyanide and happiness / via]

Read more on MAKE

Released in 1984, the original Macintosh was a wonder – not only did it have a GUI and a mouse, it was actually one of the smaller computers of the day. Now that we’re nearly 30 years past the release of the OG Mac, it follows that a smaller version should be possible. [John] did just that by creating a 1:3 scale replica of the original 128k Mac.

As you would expect, this tiny Mac is powered by a Raspberry Pi running Mini vMac, an emulator for these olde tymie 68k Macs. The display is a 3.5″ LCD with a resolution of 300×200, not quite up to the standard classic mac resolution of 512×342. At least this version has color, though.

Also inside the carefully crafted PVC case are a WiFi and Bluetooth dongle, along with an off-the-shelf phone charger. It’s a remarkable piece of craftsmanship, and given the games and applications (i.e. Photoshop 1.0) available for these old Macs, its possibly more useful for general computing than a stock Raspberry Pi.

You can check out the video walkthrough of everything this tiny little Mac can do below.

At Hackaday, we’re familiar with projects that say they’re exploring space. Most of the time, these are high altitude balloons that ascend up to 100,000 feet. Sure, this is very, very high, but it’s only about 1/3rd of the way to lower limit of what can be called space at 100 km or 62 miles. Now, we’re seeing the first steps towards embedding Arduinos, cameras, and other goodies into the celestial spheres with the NE-1 Rocket, a project by [Jonathan McCabe] in Madison, Wisconsin.

The goal of the NE-1 rocket is to launch a 5kg payload into a suborbital trajectory to a height of 120 kilometers. From there, the payload – be it an electronic, biological, or simple imaging experiment – will experience a few minutes of weightlessness before falling back to Earth under a parachute.

Getting into space without the help of a government space agency has been done a few times before, mostly with solid-fuel rockets. [Jonathan]‘s system uses a liquid-fueled engine, fed with nitrous oxide as the oxidizer and a secret self-pressurizing liquid fuel. These are fed into an engine that uses a ‘cold wall vortex’ to cool the engine instead circulating fuel around the combustion chamber as in traditional engines.

[Jonathan] has already done a few static tests with a half-scale engine, and he already has a lot of the very hard-to-source components in his lab. It’s a promising project. It falls right in line with the ‘Hackaday Space Program’ idea we’ve been kicking around, and we’d be more than happy to see this project get off the ground

quickhits:

Washington Post: “William Allison, 92, came to today’s march with same sign he marched with in ‘63 pic.twitter.com/qT3kL8VlEP via @HamilHarris #MarchonWashington”

Amazing.

amroyounes:

Growing up, my most fond memories was visiting abandoned places with my brother.  To this day, if opportunity presents itself, I bring my camera and take a few pictures.  These are not my work ofcourse, but I hope you enjoy the visual beauty and maybe it brings fond memories of your own adventures.

Part II:

1. Abandoned Construction of Nuclear Power Plant. Photo By brokenview
2. Chatillon Car Graveyard in Belgium
3. Jiancing Historic Trail in Taipingshan National Forest in Taiwan. Photo By T.-C
4. Abandoned theme park in nara dreamland, japan. Photo by michaeljohngrist
5. Clock tower
6. Old shack in a snow field, Idaho. Photo By James Neeley
7. Abandoned terminal at Nicosia Airport. Photo By eyesfutur
8. Milan, New Orleans. Photo By JustUptown
9. Abandoned church in autumn. Photo by *CainPascoe
10. Abanonded steam engine in Uyuni train cemetery, Bolivia. Photo By jimmyharris

I was almost hit by a guy driving while reading an iPad. I feel his pain. 

The team behind the Femtoduino – an extraordinarily small repackaging of the Arduino – sent in a few videos from YouTuber [phineasIV], a.k.a. [Eric] that shows one of the smallest multicopters we’ve ever seen.

Because this isn’t a traditional quad or hexcopter, the control system is a little weird. Two of the motors and props are fixed along the vertical axis, while the rear prop is connected to a small servo to rotate from side to side. Still, the electronics are fairly standard for any multi rotor vehicle – a triple-axis gyro provides the stability of the vehicle coupled with MultiWii, while an amazingly small servo receiver, Bluetooth module,, Femtoduino, and a trio of brushless ESCs tie everything together.

The end result is a tri-copter that weighs about the same as the Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter, but is just a bit smaller. As impressive as it is on video (seen below), we’d love to see this tiny robotic hummingbird in person.

After modifying his new manual treadmill to fit under his standing desk, [Brian Peiris] found a way to let him stroll all over the internet.

After removing the treadmill’s original time/distance display, [Peiris] reverse engineered the speed sensor to send data to an Arduino and his PC.  We’ve seen a number of projects that interface treadmills with virtual worlds, but what really makes this project stand out is a simple script using the Throxy Python library which allows the treadmill to throttle his machine’s internet connection.

The end result is a browsing experience that reacts to how fast the user runs.  In the demonstration video, you can see Peiris tiptoe through images or jog through YouTube videos.  A minimum bandwidth setting keeps the connection live, so if you can’t make it all the way through that HD Netflix movie, taking a breather won’t time out the connection.

It’s certainly a great way to get in shape, or at the very least, it’ll make your ISP’s bandwidth cap feel a lot bigger.

Video after the jump.

mechanicalelf:

So I put this as one of the backgrounds

Yesterday, I found that someone changed my background to something soccer related, so just to mess around with them, I put this

Today, I looked at all the computers around me, plus my computer and

You children…………..

You are playing a dangerous game.

We’re actually going to link to an old post from back in February because we think it’s equally as impressive as the most recent work. This is a 3D printed ornithopter powered by a rubber band (translated). The frame is much like a traditional rubber band plane. The difference is that after winding it up it doesn’t spin a propeller. The flapping of the four plastic membrane wings makes it fly like magic. Seriously, check out the demo below… we almost posted this as “Real or Fake?” feature if we hadn’t seen similar offerings a couple of years back.

The flight lasts a relatively long time when considering the quick winding before launch is all that powered it. But the most recent offerings (translated) from the site include the motorized ornithopter design seen above. It carries a small Lithium cell for continuous flight. These designs have a 3D printed gear system which makes them a bit more complicated, but brings steering and remote control to the party. If you want one of your own they’re working on a small run of kits. We figure it’d be a lot more fun to prototype and print your own. Sure, it’s reinventing the wheel. But it’s a really cool wheel!

[via Hacked Gadgets]

When it was released just three years ago, the Boxee Box – a set-top box designed to run the Boxee HTPC environment – was a pretty cool little device. Even though it was somewhat crippled from the get-go, the Boxee Box had a lot of neat features including a remote with a QWERTY keyboard, the ability to stream media over a home network, and automatic scraping of IMDB for proper info for all your torrented media. Team Boxee recently left for Samsung, and the severs have been shut down, but that doesn’t mean your Boxee Box has outlived its usefulness. Here’s a few hacks to get your Boxee Box up and running again, sent in by [Ryan].

Last year at DEFCON 20, [GTVHacker] demonstrated two ways to get root on the original Boxee Box. The first is a software root method that runs a shell script on every boot. The second is a far more elegant hardware modification that involves cutting two traces and soldering wires to a UART adapter.

Root is fine, but what the Boxee Box really needs is an update to its media player. Boxeehack does just this and only requires a USB stick for installation. Boxeehack puts back some of the default XMBC functions that were removed from the Boxee Box, and gives anyone running this media center root.

It may be old and unsupported, but there’s still plenty of life left in the Boxee Box. They’re also pretty cheap, so if you’re looking for a small media player for your TV, you might want to think about picking one of these boxes up.

If the media shortcut keys on your keyboard don’t function correctly due to outdated firmware, the manufacturer may recommend you ship it to them for an update. [Alvaro] didn’t care to wait that long, so he cracked it open and taught himself how to mod the EEPROM. The result is a well-documented breakdown of sorting out the keyboard’s guts. Inside he finds a USB hub, which he ignores, and the keyboard controller chip, which he attacks. Two data sheets and a schematic later, [Alvaro] breaks out the logic analyzer to compare physical key presses to the keypad codes they output.

He dumps the entire EEPROM and follows up with a quick flash via I2C to change the “next song” key to instead output the letter “a”. That seems to work, so [Alvaro] combs through an HID USB usage table for some codes and has to guess which ones will properly control Spotify. He converts the media keys from “scan next” and “scan previous” to “rewind” and “fast forward.” Problem solved.

[Alvaro] had zero knowledge of keyboards prior to opening this one up. If you aren’t already taking things apart to see how they function and how to fix them, hopefully his success will persuade you to explore and learn about those “black boxes” in your home. And, if you’ve never used I2C before—or think it might be the name of a boy band—head over to [Kevin's] tutorial on bitbanging I2C by hand.

These slides may not be the style of character art you remember from the days of 2400 baud modems; they’re more advanced than what was out there in the beginning. It turns out there is still some life left in this art subculture. For this week’s installment of Retrotechtacular we look in on [Doug Moore's] talk on the history and survival of ANSI and ASCII art given at this year’s BSides conference.

ASCII is still a common character encoding so chances are you’re already familiar with it. ANSI on the other hand is a rather confusing term as it’s been lost in obscurity when referring to character sets. In this case it refers to a set of extended characters which is better described as Windows Code Pages.

Most of what we know about the ANSI art scene is from watching BBS: The Documentary (which is on our ten best hacking videos list). We certainly remember seeing the vertically scrolling art after connecting to a dial-up BBS back in the day. But understanding the factions that formed around the creation, bundling, and distribution of this is art is fascinating. [Doug] does a great job of covering this history, sharing side-by-side examples of the shunned practice of “ripping” another artists work. This image is actually not a rip. Later in his talk he discusses the continued existence of the subculture, showing what a modern take on the same subject looks like.

If you’re merely into the technical the first half of the video below is worth watching. But we bet it’ll be hard not to continue to the end for a side-trip into art history.

Retrotechtacular is a weekly column featuring hacks, technology, and kitsch from ages of yore. Help keep it fresh by sending in your ideas for future installments.

At $1.5 a liter in Moscow, [Michail] couldn’t resist buying some liquid nitrogen for himself. He thought that because Arduinos were quite popular among geeks, he’d try to overclock one while bringing its temperature down to -196°C/-320°F.

To check the ATmega was still working correctly, [Michail] designed several stability tests: SRAM read/write, flash read, arithmetic math and program flow tests (code with some conditionals). He used a standard HD44780 LCD to view the tests results but also an LED, blinking the number of the test it would have failed. The Arduino was externally clocked by a TTL-logic based square signal generator he designed, which can produce a clock between 16 and 100MHz. It turns out that you can run an Arduino at 65.3MHz when it is cooled with liquid nitrogen!

[Michail]‘s article also explains what happens to the different on-board components when cooled with LN2: electrolytic capacitors becomes virtually non-existent, X7R capacitors’ impedance drop by 2/3, silicon diodes voltage drop increase by 50% and LED’s colors change. Check out the video below:

Spiderman + Japan + 70’s

tvcm:

Toei’s Spider-Man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_(Toei_TV_series)
http://marvel.com/tv/show/128/japanese_spiderman/

I’m really enjoying the visuals in this series of four idents for CCTV that translate human motion into digitally sculpted objects that look like steel, water, and wood. The clips were created by Taiwan design house JL Design and KORB. If you liked this also check out the photography of Shinichi Maruyama or Choros.

pasturemud:

iampetershervheim:

rkidd:

d0esntmakesense:

This is probably the coolest GIF I’ve ever seen.

now there’s some perspective.

I once saw a storm roll like this once. It was beautiful.

i love watchin rain roll in

It’s official. [Notch], creator of Minecraft, has confirmed he’s shelved plans for 0x10c, the space-based block building and exploration MMO that features assembly programming as a core game component.

Over the last year or so since 0x10c was announced, a whole lot of programmers have picked up the in-game fictional CPU – the DCPU – by writing emulators and even emulating this CPU that only exists as a design document on an AVR. Needless to say, there are a lot of very skilled programmers that want this game to exist. Now, it seems, this community is forging ahead with this project without [Notch].

This is a truly massive undertaking by the community. Not only are the current plans to build an open world, procedurally generated, space-based MMO, it looks like these new developers will also be writing their own engine from scratch. If this were a commercial endeavour, it would require millions of dollars and many years to get to a rough alpha build, and the 0x10c community is doing this for free.

If you have experience in C++, OpenGL, and 3D game programming, the official signup thread is over on the 0x10c subreddit. Even if you’re not a programmer and only have experience in modeling, writing, your experience would be greatly appreciated.

We do hope this project makes you shiver.

“Financial risks” is an audiovisual installation that reacts when you swipe your credit card and prints an odd looking receipt if you type in your pin-code. Even though the website contains few technical details (read none) about the build, we chose to feature the project as we find his intent interesting:

‘Financial Risks’ installation is a project designed to present an ironical viewpoint on encoded wallets, as a data input interface invites to overcome fear of impossibility to control spread of confidential information for the sake of curiosity of interaction with an object of art.

The piece consists of 6 bank card readers, a hardware system of sound and video synthesis, a keyboard for pin code entering, a 2-channel sound system and a cash register printer configured to print images. Up to 6 cards simultaneously may be used for playing.

We do hope that nothing is stored in the platform’s memory… but is the installation monitored?

Ah, the VT100, the first dumb terminal that was controlled with a microprocessor. This ancient beast from the late 70s is quite unlike the terminals you’d find from even five years after its vintage – the keyboard connects via a TRS quarter-inch jack – the electronic and code design of this terminal is a bit weird. [Seth] was up to the challenge of making this mechanical keyboard work as a standard USB device, so he created his own USB adapter.

On the little quarter-inch to USB adapter, [Seth] included an HD 6402 UART to talk to the keyboard, along with a Teensy dev board and a few bits of circuits stolen from DEC engineers. The protocol between the keyboard and terminal is a little weird – first the terminal sets a bit in a status word, then the keyboard scans all the key rows and columns in sequence before telling the terminal it’s done. Yes, this gives the VT100 full n-key rollover, but it’s just weird compared to even an IBM Model M keyboard that’s just a few years younger.

[Seth] finally completed his circuit and wired it up on a perfboard. Everything works just as it should, although a little key remapping was done to keep this keyboard adapter useful for Mac and Windows computers. It’s a wonderful bit of kit, and any insight we can get into the old DEC engineers is a wonderful read in any event.

Vidias below.

(I work for a company that produces a word processing software, which I am supporting.)

Me: “Thank you for calling technical support. Can I have your case number?”

(The customer provides the information. Just by the voice, I know the customer is an older lady. Usually, this means a 45+ minutes call, just because of the technology challenges.)

Me: “Could you right-click on the start button?”

Customer: “Okay, I have programs, documents, settings—”

Me: “That’s left-clicking. Could you please right-click on the start button?”

Customer: “Okay, but I still get programs, documents, settings.”

Me: “Could you describe to me, visually and step by step, what you are doing?”

Customer: “I’m putting the mouse cursor over the right part of the word ‘start’, and I click.”

Me: “Oh, I’m sorry; I was not clear. Is it possible for you to click using the right mouse button?”

Customer: “What do you mean?”

Me: “Okay, please pick up your mouse by the wire, and hold it up in the air.”

Customer: “I feel stupid.”

Me: “No, ma’am, you’re not. We’re all starting from different points. I’m a geek, so it’s normal if I’m a bit ahead of the curve, as far as this stuff goes. I just need to make sure that we’re on a level field, here.”

Customer: “Okay, it’s in the air.”

Me: “Great! Between your wire and your palm-resting are—”

Customer: “What do you mean?”

Me: “Okay, put it flat again, and put your hand on your mouse, as if to use it.”

Customer: “Oh, I get it, the place where my palm is resting.”

Me: “Exactly. Pick it up again. Between the wire and the palm-resting area, there is an area that is divided vertically. How many sections are there?”

Customer: “Two”

Me: “Great! Ma’am, I would like to formally introduce you to your left mouse button and your right mouse button. So when I ask you to right-click—”

Customer: “You want me to use the right mouse button!”

Me: “You’re a smart one!”

(It turns out that the older lady is 96 years old. She was doing her shuffleboard association’s newsletter, and her software had become thoroughly corrupted and needed to be reinstalled. We spend over an hour and a half. This lady had seen the advent of movies, TV, color TV, had seen the Model T, saw the first planes, radio and all. When I will be 96 years old, I just hope I am as technologically savvy as she is!)