HackSpace #71

It’s been a tough couple of years to be a Raspberry Pi enthusiast and having to eke out your supply of boards, or search through online stores trying to find some for sale. Today, we firmly put that part of history behind us. The Raspberry Pi 5 is almost ready and if you’re a subscriber, we have reserved stock that you can pre-order (for recommended retail price). If you’re not a subscriber, don’t worry, there’s still time to subscribe and claim your spot at the front of the queue. To find out about the new release, we headed to Cambridge to get the inside story of the board from Eben Upton and James Adams. We found out about the shiny new SoC, the extra features and, of course, the power…

hsmag.cc/KOAT0 We’ve seen many homemade portable computer builds, but not too many that purposefully eschew the usual OLED screens in favour of a dinky 256×48 VFD display. The maker, Robson Couto, concedes that this isn’t really enough screen real estate to be useful but that, in this case, he’s aiming to make something beautiful rather than functional. The build uses a Raspberry Pi 3 (because that’s what Robson had available to him at the time), a K68 mechanical keyboard, and a cool 3D-printed handle/case, so in the event of a zombie apocalypse, it’ll be handy to use on the move.…

hsmag.cc/LinuxTeletype In the dim and distant past, before PCs, organisations would have one big computer (a mainframe) connected to many smaller computers (terminals). You can see the linguistic clues of this past in today’s Linux distributions, which all have at least one terminal application where the user interacts with the computer via typed commands. Fans of the terminal say it’s often faster, more accurate, and more power-efficient than using a graphical interface. Fans of this Linux terminal, created by CuriousMarc, can also say that it smells nicer and feels better than using a graphical PC. This beautiful machine takes a Model 15 Teletype machine built in 1930. It’s an electromechanical device that was used to send and receive messages typed into a keyboard, and printed out onto paper strips. There’s…

hsmag.cc/TouchCam You may have seen the Pi Cam by Mukesh Sankhla, an internet-connected Raspberry Pi-based camera capable of streaming video and images. This redesign takes that already nifty design and adds a couple of new features to make it even better. First and most obviously, there’s the touchscreen display, providing a visual interface for camera controls, image previews, and video playback. Mukesh has also added a 5V fan and heatsinks to provide efficient temperature regulation, and the whole thing is housed in an all-new 3D-printed housing designed in Fusion 360.…

hsmag.cc/OrionSpace 5 × 5 × 75 mm satellite on the form factor of a 1.5P PocketQube. One of the sides is covered by a solar panel. It consists of four (inside) PCBs: EPS, OBC, COM, and Payload. Solar panels, base plate, and other panels make up the structure of the PocketQube. The PocketQube satellite format is a wonderful example of citizen science. It’s made space accessible to schools, colleges, universities, and other enthusiast groups, and as such, it’s a natural for use with open-source and homemade electronics. This training kit from Orion Space gives would-be participants in the PocketQube program the ability to practice on a PocketQube satellite without the price tag. It’s 1.5× the size of a standard PocketQube at 50 × 50 × 75mm, and features the battery…

hsmag.cc/Tide_Clock This clock is a great example of taking a very simple mechanism and making it a lot more interesting using a bit of ingenuity. The Tide Clock uses an ordinary circular clock mechanism, and adds a linkage to make an indicator slide up and down. As the indicator reaches the top or the bottom, it slows down; towards the middle of its travel, it speeds up. This is, as its creator explains, the sine function at work, and it’s also exactly how the tides move.…