I have long had an art practice. Some of it involves software, but much of it doesnt, like this 6' x 9' abstract https://www.instagram.com/p/Cvd9-WTLqPN/
or this drawing of a few random redditors: https://www.instagram.com/p/CvnvbTcPC78/
Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
451–460 of 694 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Sonos product team had a completely unexplainable aversion to line in jacks, to the point where you almost weren't even allowed to discuss it. I suspect it was a lot of fairly self-interested resume padding for some PM resumes. Nobody there was going to make their next career move as "innovators" shipping a technology that'd been perfected for fortyish years before them.
And here we have the person who knows how to graft one onto the PCB. Is that possible?
Probably, but I don't have the time, interest, or access to the PCB files any more.
I think you'd be out of luck in most cases anyway, as we almost always used I2S as our audio interface of choice. If we didn't have a use for the RX line (i.e. The audio input line) of the I2S interface, it generally wasn't broken out of the SoC fanout.
What's more: we didn't generally enable driver support for I2S receive in products that didn't use it. There simply isn't a use for it.
Furthermore, you probably wouldn't be able to modify the app stack to use that data if you somehow did figure out all the needed kernel mods. Sonos deployed Secure Boot and signed app updates starting in 2013, because they realized they were potentially selling a botnet for hire if they didn't have a good way to secure their players.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/06/13/prologis-amazon-warehous... Prologis controls roughly 1 billion square feet of warehouses and distribution centers used by companies including Amazon, Home Depot and FedEx. Probably there are others as well that rent warehouses to Anazon. Having a sign with the name of a business on a building does not mean that the business owns the building itself. Many companies rent offices for…
A building I worked in had multiple tenants. My (now former) employer leased five of the six floors, but the big sign on the building advertised a company that had half of the first floor at most. Obviously they were willing to pay more money for advertising rights.
Does this explain the proliferation of "Salesforce Towers" around the world? I have not been convinced they actually need that much office space.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#454I was a co-builder of “the funhouse”. Have a look - https://funhouse.house My ex and I built a large physical love note to each other by way of turning what started as her boring studio apartment into an interactive art installation we would live together in and build. It’s now an exhibit in Manhattan and over 100k people have moved through the whimsy and magic at a huge scale… and yet, it started with a huge crush b…
That's amazing. I spent a good 20 minutes looking at it all. You guys must have had a lot of fun building all that.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#455I assembled an automatic watch for about 100£. I wanted to buy an automatic watch (I was planning on something reasonable, around 1k-3k) but none of the watches pleased me completely.
I bought a Miyota movement, a case, hands, a face, a leather strap and a bunch of tools. It wasn't easy to assemble it and there is definitely not a lot of documentation online, but it wasn't impossible either.
It looks great, it's exactly how I wanted my automatic watch to look like. Highly recommend the experience.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not sure how much a PPL will run you these days. As of 2019, about 10k (more if you needed extra time).
It depends greatly on where you are. I LOVE airplanes and being in the air, and everything at all to do with aviation, so I once entertained the idea of getting a PPL. I called around to the various local airports and clubs to get an idea of what was involved. Although I could technically afford it, the price tag was eye-wateringly expensive for what would realistically amount to an expensive and non-trivially danger…
> I took up an interest in motorcycles instead.
Can you expand on this? I am a motorcyclist with an interest in flying and based on my idea of what flying involves (at least in not very busy areas) it seems a lot more chill and probably less dangerous than motorcycling. Multiple people try to kill me every day the mental load involved in managing all the hazards is quite high.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the core standard is called NEN1010 and it costs money to get it. The way I got it is they had just built an app for reading the standards and they were offering a trial of the app. So I got the trial, dumped the entire NEN1010 and some accompanying docs and read them at my leisure. I don't think I've seen stranded wire at the Hornbach. Of course you could do it wrong if you buy your wire in entirely the wrong sec…
> So the core standard is called NEN1010 [...] If you still have it & don't mind sharing my email's in my profile... :-) > I meant it's hard to do it wrong if you're trying to do it right[...] This example came to mind because a friend of mine (we're also both in Amsterdam) got this specific thing wrong, then asked me and a couple of others about melted connectors. I agree it's generally quite easy, and yeah the "ins…
> reversing which side of the socket live and neutral are on.
What do you mean? Like mid way through an install? As far as I'm aware there's no rules about which side the phase should be on, and googling only shows some electricians prefer to have phase on the left side because it's easy to remember and consistency helps with debugging.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#458I was told the Snoo was the bees knees of baby rockers. Damn it was pricey (1600) bucks. I luckily saw a friend's model in action. Figured it can't be hard to make! Bought myself an Arduino, a stepper motor, a few trips to home depot to get some 2*6s (needed a bit of experimentation here) as a base and a lazy Susan swivel. Voila! Hard work but a lot of fun as I not only had a working rocker (definitely wasn't as pret…
Neat :) A friend used a wiper motor from a 1943 Jeep and a very long piece of string to rock his kids cradle because otherwise he wouldn't sleep.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#459As a teenager, a friend and I built an underwater rocket, with the idea that a solid model rocket engine would burn when submerged, provided we could get it lit. We started with an Estes model rocket (https://estesrockets.com/products/mosquito IIRC), inserted the engine and igniter, and sealed the entire exhaust end of the engine with hot glue, as well as around the seams elsewhere. We installed a standard launch pad in a big trash bin filled with water (our original idea of swimming into a lake was quickly scrapped) and wired everything up.
It worked. The rocket actually launched from underwater! But by the time it reached the surface, the drag of the water had ripped two of the fins off, so the in-air portion was pretty wild. We even caught the whole thing on 8mm film (this was in the early 90s).
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#460A modular synthesizer! I designed the case in CAD, put it online for free, and it got kinda popular in the DIY synth community. Some companies are making it.
I built all modules from scratch with my own circuit designs too. Mostly novel designs, especially in oscillators and filters. A lot of JFETs being used to control voltages, amplitudes, etc. It was unstable and non-linear but had its charm :)