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Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#661

Post by cushychicken »

pseudosavant wrote: post #473
cushychicken wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd settle for a line-in straight into the power amp. No integration of any kind into the existing Sonos ecosystem. Make them dumb - because the speakers do sound great for their size.

You can probably figure this out by looking at the chip pinouts of the relevant amps, though most of the ones we used were I2S in.

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#662

Post by cushychicken »

LgWoodenBadger wrote: post #503
pseudosavant wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have ten year old Sonos gear that still works. The feature I wish the speakers had most? A line in jack so I could use them with something other than apps. That is a kind of future proofing all powered speakers should have.

I believe both the old and the new Sonos Amp have line-in inputs which can then be shared as the source with other Sonos units. I think there was a dedicated Sonos line-in unit that was cheaper than the Amp, but I can’t recall its name. https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/use-line-in-on-sonos

That's the Sonos Port! I made that too!

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#665

Post by positr0n »

perlgeek wrote: post #30

I was at an alternative/private school, and while lots of it sucked, they did value doing things with your hands, so something I made were: * a bowl made out of copper, with a fitting lid * a three-legged stool * a very fine pair of salad servers, plus a wooden letter opener * my own apron (sewn on a mechanical sewing machine) * a bowl made out of cherry tree If you count perishable items, probably my semolina souffl…

What sucked about the school?

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#666

Post by mikewarot »

scottbez1 wrote: post #592

I made a rotary input device that provides software-defined "virtual" detents and end-stops, implemented using a BLDC gimbal motor. It can dynamically switch from completely smooth unbounded rotation, to having detents with configurable spacing and strength and "end-stops" that spring back if you try to rotate past them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip641WmY4pA It's got a round LCD on the front of the knob (wired…

I've noticed that finding a motor with a through-hole is a persistent problem. Have you experimented with a gear driven design to work around this?

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#667

Post by samtho »

aosaigh wrote: post #656
samtho wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not at the moment, but I agree that I need to start writing about my off-grid and battery-powered (mis-)adventures. Most of my battery management is bespoke hardware and I’d love to share it. I also do not want to highlight the creepy side of remote living because that just attracts the wrong type of attention.

Yes, it would be very interesting. For people like myself, living in parts of Europe where there’s no real off-grid wilderness, it’s fascinating to hear about. Particularly when it’s not paired with a) prepper/conspiracy mentalities or b) gear-obsessed content.

Yeah, I’m the western US which is very sparsely populated by comparison to the eastern half of the US[0] or Europe in general. Waaaay too much of off grid information is focused on preppers and I’ve even been accused of being one. Can’t someone just want a cabin to visit for leisure?

I never appreciated how easy it is for me to find very remote wilderness until I started traveling to other places both in and outside the US. I can take a major US highway over Donner pass, a place that 175 years ago, people were eating each other because they got stuck without food. Now, CalTrans has a fleet of equipment and staff that work 24/7 to keep the road clear 99.9% of the time.

[0]: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/711010main1_...

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#668

Post by defrost »

samtho wrote: post #667
aosaigh wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it would be very interesting. For people like myself, living in parts of Europe where there’s no real off-grid wilderness, it’s fascinating to hear about. Particularly when it’s not paired with a) prepper/conspiracy mentalities or b) gear-obsessed content.

Yeah, I’m the western US which is very sparsely populated by comparison to the eastern half of the US[0] or Europe in general. Waaaay too much of off grid information is focused on preppers and I’ve even been accused of being one. Can’t someone just want a cabin to visit for leisure? I never appreciated how easy it is for me to find very remote wilderness until I started traveling to other places both in and outside…

> Waaaay too much of off grid information is focused on preppers and I’ve even been accused of being one.

I feel your pain, every US "prepper" related material I've read or watched leaves me with a hanging "and ...?" or "so... ?"

I'm 60, my father, still alive and splitting wood, was born in 1935 - we're both from the remote corners of western australia, a state 3x the size of Texas with a 2023 population of ~ 2 million most of whom are concentrated about the single large city.

In the mid 1980s a group of people came in from the western desert and were suprised to find that Europeans had landed in Australia and over run the continent ... it was the first they'd heard of such a thing although they had wondered about the contrails across the sky.

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=4.77&lat=-24.5320&l...

Vs: https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=3.87&lat=37.8390&lo...

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#669

Post by q-base »

swighton wrote: post #361

I made a baseball bat that uses explosives to add a bunch of energy to your swing and hit a baseball really far. It uses the explosive blanks normally used to shoot nails into concrete (e.g. ramset). It worked way better than I expected, didn't have a kick, and turned out to be just a really neat thing to look at while sipping a frosty beverage. I also made a video about it if you're interested: https://youtu.be/Puo6…

Okay this is cool as hell! I love the amount of practical engineering that went into this. You have earned yourself a new subscriber.
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