Spiral Laser Cut Buttons Make A Super-Slim USB MIDI Board
We see a huge variety of human-computer interface devices here at Hackaday, and among them are some exceptionally elegant designs. Of those that use key switches though, the vast majority employ off the shelf components made for commercial keyboards or similar. It makes sense to do this, there are some extremely high quality ones to be had.
Sometimes though we are shown designs that go all the way in creating their key switches from the ground up. Such an example comes from [Brandon Rice], and it a particularly clever button design because of its use of laser cutting to achieve a super-slim result. He’s made a sandwich of plywood with the key mechanisms formed in a spiral cut on the top layer. He’s a little sketchy on the exact details of the next layer, but underneath appears to be a plywood spacer surrounding a silicone membrane with conductive rubber taken from a commercial keyboard. Beneath that is copper tape on the bottom layer cut to an interweaving finger design for the contacts. An Adafruit Trinket Pro provides the brains and a USB interface, and the whole device makes for an attractive and professional looking peripheral.
You can see the results in action as he’s posted a video, which we’ve included below the break.
We’ve shown you spiral structures for flexibility in the past, with flexible materials made via 3D printing.
Inventing The Microprocessor: The Intel 4004
We recently looked at the origins of the integrated circuit (IC) and the calculator, which was the IC’s first killer app, but a surprise twist is that the calculator played a big part in the invention of the next world-changing marvel, the microprocessor.
There is some dispute as to which company invented the microprocessor, and we’ll talk about that further down. But who invented the first commercially available microprocessor? That honor goes to Intel for the 4004.
Path To The 4004
We pick up the tale with Robert Noyce, who had co-invented the IC while at Fairchild Semiconductor. In July 1968 he left Fairchild to co-found Intel for the purpose of manufacturing semiconductor memory chips.
While Intel was still a new startup living off of their initial $3 million in financing, and before they had a semiconductor memory product, as many start-ups do to survive they took on custom work. In April 1969, Japanese company Busicom hired them to do LSI (Large-Scale Integration) work for a family of calculators.
Busicom’s design, consisting of twelve interlinked chips, was considered a complicated one. For example, it included shift-register memory, a serial type of memory which complicates the control logic. It also used Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) arithmetic. Marcian Edward Hoff Jr — known as “Ted”, head of the Intel’s Application Research Department, felt that the design was even more complicated than a general purpose computer like the PDP-8, which had a fairly simple architecture. He felt they may not be able to meet the cost targets and so Noyce gave Hoff the go-ahead to look for ways to simplify it.
Hoff realized that one major simplification would be to replace hard-wired logic with software. He also knew that scanning a shift register would take around 100 microseconds whereas the equivalent with DRAM would take one or two microseconds. In October 1969, Hoff came up with a formal proposal for a 4-bit machine which was agreed to by Busicom.
This became the MCS-4 (Micro Computer System) project. Hoff and Stanley Mazor, also of Intel, and with help from Busicom’s Masatoshi Shima, came up with the architecture for the MCS-4 4-bit chipset which consisted of four chips:
- 4001: 2048-bit ROM with a 4-bit programmable I/O port
- 4002: 320-bit DRAM with 4-bit output port
- 4003: I/O expansion that was a 10-bit static, serial-in, serial-out and parallel-out shift register
- 4004: 4-bit CPU
Making The 4004 Et Al
In April 1970, Noyce hired Federico Faggin from Fairchild in order to do the chip design. At that time the block diagram and basic specification were done and included the CPU architecture and instruction set. However, the chip’s logic design and layout were supposed to have started in October 1969 and samples for all four chips were due by July 1970. But by April, that work had yet to begin. To make matters worse, the day after Faggin started work at Intel, Shima arrived from Japan to check the non-existent chip design of the 4004. Busicom was understandably upset but Faggin came up with a new schedule which would result in chip samples by December 1970.
Faggin then proceeded to work 80 hour weeks to make up for lost time. Shima stayed on to help as an engineer until Intel could hire one to take his place.
Keeping to the schedule, the 4001 ROM was ready in October and worked the first time. The 4002 DRAM had a few simple mistakes, and 4003 I/O chip also worked the first time. The first wafers for the 4004 were ready in December, but when tried, they failed to do anything. It turned out that the masking layer for the buried contacts had been left out of the processing, resulting in around 30% of the gates floating. New wafers in January 1971 passed all tests which Faggin threw at it. A few minor mistakes were later found and in March 1971 the 4004 was fully functional.
In the meantime, in October 1970, Shima was able to return to Japan where he began work on the firmware for Busicom’s calculator, which was to be loaded into the 4001 ROM chip. By the end of March 1971, Busicom had a fully working engineering prototype for their calculator. The first commercial sale was made at that time to Busicom.
The Software Problem
Now that Intel had a microprocessor, they needed someone to write software. At the time, programmers saw prestige in working with a big computer. It was difficult enticing them to stay and work on a small microprocessor. One solution was to trade hardware, a sim board for example, to colleges in exchange for writing some support software. However, once the media started hyping the microprocessor, the college students came banging on Intel’s door.
To Sell Or Not To Sell
Intel’s market was big computer companies and there was concern within Intel that computer companies would see Intel as a competitor instead of a supplier of memory chips. There was also a question about how they would support the product. Some at Intel also wondered whether or not the 4004 could be used for more than just a calculator. But at one point Faggin used the 4004 itself to make a tester for the 4004, proving that there were more uses.
At the same time, cheap $150 handheld calculators were creating difficulties for Busicom’s more expensive $1000 desktop ones. They could no longer pay Intel the agreed contract price. But Busicom had exclusive rights to the MCS-4 chips. And so a fateful deal was made wherein Busicom would pay a lower price and Intel would have exclusive rights. The decision was made to sell it and a public announcement was made in November 1971.
By September 1972 you could buy a 4004 for $60 in quantities of 1 to 24. Overall, around a million were produced. To name just a few applications, it was used in: pinball machines, traffic light controllers, cash registers, bank teller terminals, blood analyzers, and gas station monitors.
Contenders For The Title
Most inventions come about when the circumstances are right. This usually means the inventors weren’t the only ones who thought of it or who were working on it.
In October 1968, Lee Boysel and a few others left Fairchild Semiconductor to form Four-Phase Systems for the purpose of making computers. They showed their system at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in November 1970 and had four of them in use by customers by June 1971.
Their microprocessor, the AL1, was 8-bit, had eight registers and an arithmetic logic unit (ALU). However, instead of using it as a standalone microprocessor, they used it along with two other AL1s to make up a single 24-bit CPU. They weren’t using the AL1 as a microprocessor, they weren’t selling it as such, nor did they refer to it as a microprocessor. But as part of a 1990 patent dispute between Texas Instruments and another claimant, Lee Boysel assembled a system with an 8-bit AL1 as the sole microprocessor proving that it could work.
Garrett AiResearch developed the MP944 which was completed in 1970 for use in the F-14 Tomcat fighter jet. It also didn’t quite fit the mold. The MP944 used multiple chips working together to perform as a microprocessor.
On September 17, 1971, Texas Instruments entered the scene by issuing a press release for the TMS1802NC calculator-on-a-chip, with a basic chip design designation of TMS0100. However, this could implement features only for 4-function calculators. They did also file a patent for the microprocessor in August 1971 and were granted US patent 3,757,306 Computing systems cpu in 1973.
Another company that contracted LSI work from Intel was the Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) in 1970 for $50,000. This was to make a single-chip CPU for their Datapoint 2200 terminal. Intel came up with the 1201. Texas Instruments was hired as a second supplier and made samples of the 1201 but they were buggy.
Intel’s efforts continued but there were delays and as a result, the Datapoint 2200 shipped with discrete TTL logic instead. After a redesign by Intel, the 1201 was delivered to CTC in 1971 but by then CTC had moved on. They instead signed over all intellectual property rights to Intel in lieu of paying the $50,000. You’ve certainly heard of the 1201: it was renamed the 8008 but that’s another story.
Do you think the 4004 is ancient history? Not on Hackaday. After [Frank Buss] bought one on eBay he mounted it on a board and put together a 4001 ROM emulator to make use of it.
[Main image source: Intel C4004 by Thomas Nguyen CC BY-SA 4.0]
Chasing the Electron Beam at 380,000 FPS
Analog TV is dead, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome. [Gavin and Dan], aka The Slow Mo Guys recently posted a video about television screens. Since they have some incredible high-speed cameras at their disposal, we get to see the screens being drawn, both on CRT and more modern LCD televisions.
Now we all know that CRTs draw one pixel at a time, drawing from left to right, top to bottom. You can capture this with a regular still camera at a high shutter speed. The light from a TV screen comes from a phosphor coating pained on the inside of the glass screen. Phosphor glows for some time after it is excited, but how long exactly? [Gavin and Dan’s] high framerate camera let them observe the phosphor staying illuminated for only about 6 lines before it started to fade away. You can see this effect at a relatively mundane 2500 FPS.
Cranking things up to 380,117 FPS, the highest speed ever recorded by the duo, we see even more amazing results. Even at this speed, quite a few “pixels” are drawn each frame. [Gavin] illustrates that by showing how Super Mario’s mustache is drawn in less than one frame of slow-mo footage. You would have to go several times faster to actually freeze the electron beam. We think it’s amazing that such high-speed analog electronics were invented and perfected decades ago.
Switching from CRT to LCD, the guys show us how the entire screen stays lit, while refresh runs top to bottom. Experimenting on an iPhone 7+ showed that the screen refresh is always from the top of the screen down, toward the home button. If you change the phone to landscape orientation, it will appear to be refreshing from left to right. All pretty interesting stuff, so check out the video. If you’d like to know more about TV technology, read up on the Sony Trinitron story, or learn about the signals used in displaying video.
Thanks for the tip [Quirin]!
The Noisiest Seven-Segment Display Ever
Few mechanical clocks are silent, and many find the sounds they make pleasant. But the stately ticking of an old grandfather clock or the soothing sound of a wind-up alarm clock on the nightstand are nothing compared to the clattering cacophony that awaits [ProtoG] when he finishes the clock that this electromechanical decimal to binary to hex converter and display will be part of.
Undertaken as proof of concept before committing to a full six digit clock build, we’d say [ProtoG] is hitting the mark. Yes, it’s loud, but the sound is glorious. The video below shows the display being put through its paces, and when the clock rate ramps up, the rhythmic pulsations of the relays driving the seven-segment flip displays is hypnotizing. The relays, one per segment of the Alfa Zeta flip displays, have DPDT contacts wired to flip a segment by reversing polarity. As a work in progress, [ProtoG] hasn’t shared many more details yet, but he promises to keep us up to date on the converter aspect of the circuit. Right now it just seems like a simple but noisy driver. We’ll be following this one with interest.
If you prefer your clocks quieter but still like funky displays, check out this mixed media circus-themed clock.
Opt-Out Fitness Data Sharing Leads to Massive Military Locations Leak
People who exercise with fitness trackers have a digital record of their workouts. They do it for a wide range of reasons, from gathering serious medical data to simply satisfying curiosity. When fitness data includes GPS coordinates, it raises personal privacy concerns. But even with individual data removed, such data was still informative enough to spill the beans on secretive facilities around the world.
Strava is a fitness tracking service that gathers data from several different brands of fitness tracker — think Fitbit. It gives athletes a social media experience built around their fitness data: track progress against personal goals and challenge friends to keep each other fit. As expected of companies with personal data, their privacy policy promised to keep personal data secret. In the same privacy policy, they also reserved the right to use the data shared by users in an “aggregated and de-identified” form, a common practice for social media companies. One such use was to plot the GPS data of all their users in a global heatmap. These visualizations use over 6 trillion data points and can be compiled into a fascinating gallery, but there’s a downside.
This past weekend, [Nathan Ruser] announced on Twitter that Strava’s heatmap also managed to highlight exercise activity by military/intelligence personnel around the world, including some suspected but unannounced facilities. More worryingly, some of the mapped paths imply patrol and supply routes, knowledge security officers would prefer not to be shared with the entire world.
This is an extraordinary blunder which very succinctly illustrates a folly of Internet of Things. Strava’s anonymized data sharing obsfucated individuals, but didn’t manage to do the same for groups of individuals… like the fitness-minded active duty military personnel whose workout habits are clearly defined on these heat maps. The biggest contributor (besides wearing a tracking device in general) to this situation is that the data sharing is enabled by default and must be opted-out:
“You can opt-out of contributing your anonymized public activity data to Strava Metro and the Heatmap by unchecking the box in this section.” —Strava Blog, July 2017
We’ve seen individual fitness trackers hacked and we’ve seen people tracked through controlled domains before, but the global scope of [Nathan]’s discovery puts it in an entirely different class.
[via Washington Post]
More Than Just An Atari Look-Alike
The Raspberry Pi has been a boon for hackers with a penchant for retro gaming. Redditor [KaptinBadkruk] Wanted to get on board the game train and so built himself an Atari 2600-inspired Raspberry Pi 3 console!
After settling on an Atari 2600-inspired look, [KaptinBadkruk] laboured through a few more obstacles in finishing it off — namely, power. He originally intended for this project to be portable, but power issues meant that idea had to be sidelined until the next version. However — that is arguably offset by [KaptinBadkruk]’s favourite part: a slick 3D Printed item box from Mario Kart front and center completes the visual styling in an appropriately old-meets-new way.
That item block isn’t the first time a lightshow has accompanied an Atari console, but don’t let that stop you from sticking one in your pocket.
[Via /r/DIY]
Source: https://hackaday.com/