Hackaday Newsletter 0x37

Who are you building for? [HACKADAY]( The Invisible Battlefields of the Russia-Ukraine War [Read Article Now»]( Make it Compatible By [Elliot Williams]( I'm probably as guilty as anyone of reinventing the wheel for a subpart of a project. Heck, sometimes I just feel like working on a wheel design. But if that's the path you choose, you have to think about whether or not it's important that others can replicate your project. The nice thing about a bog-standard wheel is that everyone has got one. The case study I have in mind is [a wall-plotter project that appeared on Hackaday this week](. It's a really sweet design, and in many ways would be an ideal starter project. I actually need a wall plotter (for reasons) and like a number of the choices made. For instance, having nearly everything, including the lightweight geared steppers on the gondola makes it easy to install and uninstall -- you just pin up the timing belt from which it hangs and you're done. Extra weight on the gondola helps with stability anyway. It's open source and based on the Arduino libraries, so it should be easy enough to port to whatever microcontroller I have on hand. But the image-generation toolchain is awkward, involving cutting and pasting into a spreadsheet, which generates a text file in a custom plotting micro-language. Presumably the designer doesn't know about Gcode, which is essentially the lingua franca of moving machines, or just didn't feel like implementing it. Where in Gcode, movement commands are like "G1 X100 Y50", this device expects "draw_line(0,0,100,50)". They're essentially equivalent, but incompatible. I totally understand that the author must have had a good time thinking up the movement commands and writing the spreadsheet that translates SVG files into them. I've been there and done that! But if the wall plotter spoke Gcode instead of its own dialect, it would slot instantly into any number of graphics processing workflows, which would make me, the potential user, happier. When you are looking at reinventing the wheel, think about your audience. If you're the only person likely to see the project, go ahead and scratch whatever itch you've got. You'll learn more that way. But if you want to share the project with as many people as possible, adhering to the most widely used standards is a good choice for your users, even if it is less fun than dreaming up your own movement language. Sci-Fi Contest is On! Over on Hackaday.io, we just started up the [Sci-Fi Contest](. If you've got a favorite movie, series, novel, or holodeck program, this is your chance to make something real that would fit into that universe. Heck, if it's futuristic enough, and looks like it should be on a spaceship, we won't quibble about whether it's canon or not. The prizes are $150 spending sprees, supplied by the nice folks at Digi-Key, and there are a number of honorable mention categories as well. Check out all the details, fire up a Hackaday.io project, and get to work. You've got until April 25th! (Unless you have a time machine.) From the Blog --------------------------------------------------------------- [Grid Batteries On Wheels: The Complicated Logistics Of Vehicle-Grid Integration]( By [Maya Posch]( Should we charge up the grid with our electric cars? Or are non-rolling batteries better? [Read more »]( [Remoticon 2021 // Vaibhav Chhabra and the M19 Collective Make One Million Faceshields]( By [Arsenijs Picugins]( In this inspiring Remoticon talk, Vaibhav tells us how Indian hackerspaces made faceshields, repaired oxygen generators, and saved many lives. [Read more »]( [Raspberry Pi And The Story Of SD Card Corruption]( By [Arsenijs Picugins]( If you've had problems with the Pi and SD cards, you need to read this one. [Read more »]( [Hackaday Podcast]( [Hackaday Podcast 159: Zombie Killer or Rug Maker, 3D Printed Rims, 1950s Drum Machines, and Batteries on Wheels]( By [Hackaday Editors]( What happened last week on Hackaday? The Podcast will get you up to speed. [Read more »]( If You Missed It --------------------------------------------------------------- [Greedy Receivers: FCC Considers Regulating Receivers After Altimeter Showdown]( [The 3D Printed Car Tire Rim Finally Hits the Road, Sorta]( [Silent Stepper Motors Make Electromechanical Clock Fit For a Living Room]( [Hydrofoils Love This One Simple Trick]( [One Stepper Plus a Whole Bunch of Magnets Equals a Unique Seven-Segment Display]( [Hackaday]( NEVER MISS A HACK [Share]( [Share]( [Share]( [Terms of Use]( [Privacy Policy]( [Hackaday.io]( [Hackaday.com]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?]( [unsubscribe from this list]( [update preferences]( Hackaday.com · 61 S Fair Oaks Ave Ste 200 · Pasadena, CA 91105-2270 · USA