“Ding! That’s the bell for the second challenge round of the 2022 Hackaday Prize. If your project reuses or recycles what would otherwise be waste materials, or helps you to do the same for further projects, we want to see it.

Hackers are often frugal folk — we’ll recycle parts for projects because it’s easier on the pocketbook when prototyping. But in these strangest of times, when we’ve seen $1 microcontrollers in such shortage that they fetch $57 apiece (if you can get the parts at all), making use of what you’ve got on hand can be an outright necessity. If this is going to become the new normal, it’s going to make sense that we automate it. There’s gold, literally and metaphorically, in busted PCBs. How are you going to get the most value out of our broken electronic waste in our post-apocalyptic near future? Have you built an unpick-and-unplace machine? We’d like to see it.

But electronic parts are a small fraction of your recyclable materials, and plastics might play a larger role. If you’re a 3D printerer, you’ve doubtless thought about recycling plastic bottles into filament. Or maybe you’d like to take some of the existing plastics that are thrust upon you by this modern world and give them a second life? This factory churning out paving stones by remelting plastic with sand is doing it on an industrial scale, but could this be useful for the home gamer? Precious Plastic has a number of inspirational ideas. Or maybe you just need an HDPE hammer?

Have you built a fancy can crusher, or a plastics sorter, or a recycling robot? Head on over to Hackaday.io, write it up, and enter it into the Prize!”

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Joshua Vasquez writes:

Board space is a premium on small circuit board designs, and [Alvaro] knows it. So instead of adding a separate programming port, he’s found a niche USB-C feature that lets him use the port that he’s already added both for its primary application and for programming the target microcontroller over JTAG. The result is that he no longer needs to worry about spending precious board space for a tiny programming port; the USB-C port timeshares for both!

In a Twitter thread (Unrolled Link), [Alvaro] walks us through his discovery and progress towards an encapsulated solution. It turns out that the USB-C spec supports a “Debug-Accessory Mode” specification, where some pins are allowed to be repurposed if pins CC1 and CC2 are pulled up to Logic-1. Under these circumstances, the pin functions are released, and a JTAG programmer can step in to borrow them. To expose the port to a programmer, [Alvaro] cooked up a small breakout board with a USB-C plug and separate microcontroller populated on it.

This board also handles a small quirk. Since [Alvaro’s] choice of programming pins aren’t reversible, the USB-C plug will only work one of the two ways it can be plugged in. To keep the user informed, this breakout board sports a red LED for incorrect orientation and a green LED for correct orientation–nifty. While this design quirk sacrifices reversibility, it preserves the USB 2.0 D+ and D- pins while also handling some edge cases with regard to the negotiating for access to the port.

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Aeroh One is a hackable IR remote board that can turn any remote-controlled device into an internet-connected one. It will support Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, iOS/Android App, and IFTTT integration. Aeroh One is compatible with the majority of remote controls that operate over infrared.

Aeroh One has a small footprint, making it easy to mount on top of the infra-red remote receiver of your equipment. In addition, we will have a wide range of mounting options that you can either order or 3D models you can freely download and print yourself.

You can continue to use your old OEM remote while Aeroh One is mounted on the equipment. This is because Aeroh One has an infra-red remote receiver in the front, and can proxy the signals that it receives. It is programmed to emit the remote signals based on what your equipment can understand. With this infra-red remote receiver you can also record custom infra-red signals and program the Aeroh One to work with new equipment.

With Aeroh One, make your smart home smarter, without breaking the bank!

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The HP 11456A Read Out Test Card is a nifty little test board that plugs into the HP 3470 series display modules. I really wish that I had had one of these, before I started working on my faulty HP 34740A display module.

The HP 11456A Read Out Test Card is a nifty little test board that plugs into the HP 3470 series display modules. I really wish that I had had one of these, before I started working on my faulty HP 34740A display module.

Read more…