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Ask HN: What is your hardware/garage side-project?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your hardware/garage side-project?

#3

Post by tobz »

I'm working on a headphone stand that has a USB DAC/headphone amplifier built in, along with circuitry to detect when the headphones have been hung up, thereby switching the DAC output to a line out (to drive speakers, or whatever).

It's a shameless amalgamation of a DIY post on Reddit[1] and some design aesthetics from an existing DAC/headphone amp[2] that I really like. I'm currently at the point where the internals are close to finalized enough to order boards and do integration testing, and starting work on modeling the enclosure, which will involve some mix of CNC milling, mandrel bending and welding.

I really like throwing away money, apparently.

Blog here: https://nuclearfurnace.wordpress.com/

[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/529qyp/smart_he...

[2] - https://www.jdslabs.com/products/151/the-element/

Re: Ask HN: What is your hardware/garage side-project?

#4

Post by deutronium »

I'm currently working on trying to crack an electronic safe lock based on the awesome DEFCON talk by Plore ( https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2024/DEF%20CON%2024%20pre... )

I don't think the photos are exactly up-to-date, but I currently have an STM32F429 DISCO dev board, configured with a ladder DAC, so I can generate the analog keypresses for the safelock via my laptop, the board also sets a pin high to force my oscilloscope to trigger and capture the voltage from my ucurrent, which is hooked up to the battery of the safe-lock.

https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/safe/

I'm also trying to get some iron nanoparticles, if I can find them cheap enough, in order to try to optically image a floppy disk.

I've got some images from one in the link below, but that was using a magnetic developer, with much larger particles.

https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/optical-magnetic-stri...

Re: Ask HN: What is your hardware/garage side-project?

#6

Post by DannyB2 »

A 40 digit calculator using a Ras Pi, Java, 7-segment readouts, MAX7219 chips driven slightly out of spec (ab)using the SPI pins. Two 4x4 keypads to form an 8x4 keypad so it will be a scientific calculator. Found a Java library to do transcendental functions using BigDecimal. All of this on a breadboard. (I'm a software guy who doesn't know which end of a soldering iron to pick up.)

Other project. A 64x64 RGB LED display driven by a Teensy 3.2, in C++. A friend who does hardware but not so much software sent a beautifully assembled rig in a very nice enclosure.

No blog.

Re: Ask HN: What is your hardware/garage side-project?

#7

Post by coderjames »

I've been developing a Motorola 68K-based retro computer. The goal is somewhere around Atari ST-era sophistication, but it isn't quite there yet. Currently has a UART, some switches, some LEDs, and a periodic timer. Still needs keyboard input, video output, removable storage, and a slightly smarter interrupt controller.

http://coderjames.bitbucket.org/

The website has a bunch of broken links to missing material, as I haven't gotten around to writing it yet. All the schematics, gerbers, and firmware source code are up though, so it should be reproducible.

Re: Ask HN: What is your hardware/garage side-project?

#9

Post by lowglow »

Not really a side project but we're scrappy and it's basically out of someone's garage. We're building applied AI hardware and software, personal AI companions and an interface for autonomous intelligent agents in an AGENT-SERVICE-INTERFACE model.

Asteria page: https://getasteria.com/

Baqqer page: https://baqqer.com/projects/asteria

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