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Open Hardware: Raspberry Pi, Adaptive Keyboards, and More
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peppe8o ☛ Seafile with Raspberry PI: Open-Source file&sync Solution Alternative to Surveillance Giant Google Cloud, iCloud, OneDrive
In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to install and configure Seafile on a Raspberry Pi using Docker, which makes the installation procedure far simpler.
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Hackaday ☛ Meowsic Keyboard MIDI Adapter Aims For Purrfection
Both small children and cats have a certain tendency to make loud noises at inopportune times, but what if there were a way to combine these auditory effects? This seems to have been the reasoning behind the creation of the Meowsic keyboard, a children’s keyboard that renders notes as cats’ meows. [Steve Gilissen], an appreciator of unusual electronic instruments, discovered that while there had been projects that turned the Meowsic keyboard into a MIDI output device, no one had yet added MIDI input to it, which of course spurred the creation of his Meowsic MIDI adapter.The switches in the keys of the original keyboard form a matrix of rows and columns, so that creating a connection between a particular row and column plays a certain note. [Steve]’s plan was to have a microcontroller read MIDI input, then connect the appropriate row and column to play the desired note. The first step was to use a small length of wire to connect rows and columns, thus manually mapping connections to notes. After this tedious step, he designed a PCB that hosts an Arduino Nano to accept input, two MCP23017 GPIO expanders to give it enough outputs, and CD4066BE CMOS switches to trigger the connections.[Steve] was farsighted enough to expect some mistakes in the PCB, so he checked the connections before powering the board. This revealed a few problems, which some bodge wires corrected. It still didn’t play during testing, and after a long debugging session, he realized that two pins on an optoisolator were reversed. After fixing this, it finally worked, and he was able to create the following video.Most of the MIDI hacks we’ve seen involved creating MIDI outputs, including one based on a Sega Genesis. We have seen MIDI input added to a Game Boy, though.
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Ken Shirriff ☛ Inside the Apollo "8-Ball" FDAI (Flight Director / Attitude Indicator)
During the Apollo flights to the Moon, the astronauts observed the spacecraft's orientation on a special instrument called the FDAI (Flight Director / Attitude Indicator). This instrument showed the spacecraft's attitude—its orientation—by rotating a ball. This ball was nicknamed the "8-ball" because it was black (albeit only on one side). The instrument also acted as a flight director, using three yellow needles to indicate how the astronauts should maneuver the spacecraft. Three more pointers showed how fast the spacecraft was rotating.
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Android Police ☛ Pebble's throwback revival drops in July, and even your old watch could score a surprise
Alongside the new hardware, Core Devices is also launching a brand-new Pebble app built for both iOS and Android. While it’s designed with the Core 2 lineup in mind, the good news is it’ll also support older Pebble watches like the Pebble 2 and Pebble Time series. Migicovsky confirmed that legacy users can join the beta to test things out, but heads up, spots are limited and sign-ups are already live.
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9to5Google ☛ Pebble smartwatch reboot starts shipping in July
In a blog post this week, original Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky provides a handful of updates around his “Core Devices” company and the reboot of the Pebble smartwatch. Migicovsky explains that a beta test of the Core 2 Duo will see 200 customers get their watch early, while the new iOS and Android app is also launching in beta soon.
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Adventures in PC Emulation ☛ Exploring 16-bit Bus Access on the PC/AT
I've been adding support for the 8086 CPU to MartyPC, and looking ahead to eventual support for the 286. The biggest fundamental change coming from the 8088 is that the data bus width on these CPUs expands from 8 bits to 16.
This ends up being a bit more complicated than I originally anticipated, but I've come to learn some interesting things about how Intel implemented the 16-bit data bus that explains some things that were long-standing mysteries to me, such as the reason for memory alignment penalties.
In this article, we'll explore schematics for the IBM 5170, better known as the IBM AT. This model was arguably IBM’s most influential computer, as it established the eponymous AT standard that shaped the PC-compatible market - setting it on an evolutionary path that modern PCs continue to follow.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ The U.S. Army is 3D-printing drones and repairing them — will soon have the capability to make 'the vast majority' in-house
The files provided clarify the model of printer used to test the design and also include recommended settings to get the best results possible when printing. 3D printing a drone from scratch just requires the right file (or files). From there, it's just a matter of tweaking your g-code settings when slicing the file for printing and making sure your printer is good to go.
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Hackaday ☛ Adaptive Keyboards & Writing Technologies For One-Handed Users
After having been involved in an accident, [Kurt Kohlstedt] suffered peripheral neuropathy due to severe damage to his right brachial plexus — the network of nerves that ultimately control the shoulder, arm, and hand. This resulted in numbness and paralysis in his right shoulder and arm, with the prognosis being a partial recovery at best. As a writer, this meant facing the most visceral fear possible of writing long-form content no longer being possible. While searching for solutions, [Kurt] looked at various options, including speech-to-text (STT), before focusing on single-handed keyboard options.
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CNX Software ☛ Valtrack V4 is a programmable 4G LTE GPS vehicle tracker with ESP32-C3 Bluetooth & Wi-Fi SoC (Crowdfunding)
Valetron Systems VALTRACK-V4-VTS-ESP32-C3 (or Valtrack V4 for short) is a 4G LTE GPS vehicle tracker based on ESP32-C3 WiFi and Bluetooth SoC and a SIMCom SIM7672 cellular and GNSS module. Designed to track bicycles, cars, or trucks, the Valtrack V4 GPS tracker is housed in an IP67 waterproof enclosure, takes 12V to 42V DC input from a lead battery or 3.7-4.2V from a backup LiPo or Li-Ion battery, and features an accelerometer to wake up when motion is detected or detect theft, as well as three RGB LEDs for status.
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Hackaday ☛ LED Probe: A Smart, Simple Solution For Testing LEDs
If you’ve worked on a project with small LEDs, you know the frustration of determining their polarity. This ingenious LED Probe from [David] packs a lot of useful features into a simple, easy-to-implement circuit.
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Hackaday ☛ The PCB Router You Wish You Had Made
The advent of cheap and accessible one-off PCB production has been one of the pivotal moments for electronic experimenters during the last couple of decades. Perhaps a few still etch their own boards, but many hobbiest were happy to put away their ferric chloride. There’s another way to make PCBs, though, which is to mill them. [Tom Nixon] has made a small CNC mill for that purpose, and it’s rather beautiful.
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New Electronics ☛ Tria’s latest family of modules now support Windows, Android and Linux
These options include Android, Windows 11 IoT Enterprise, and Yocto Linux which means that the modules can be used for embedded designs in the industrial, medical, agriculture and construction sectors, as well as any embedded application that can benefit from edge computing, machine learning and AI.