Conventional wisdom has it that the solid state era in electronics began in 1948 with the invention of the transistor, or if you wish to split hairs, with the 1930s invention by the Russian [Oleg Losev] of an early form of tunnel diode. But there’s an earlier amplifier technology that used a solid state circuit which is largely forgotten, and [AWA Communication Technologies Museum] has featured it in a new video. We’re talking of course about the carbon microphone amplifier, a piece of telephone technology which made its way into consumer electronics.

The carbon microphone is a container of loosely packed carbon granules acted upon by a diaphragm. Vibrations from sound compress and decompress the granules, changing the electrical resistance of the carbon. It was the standard microphone used in telephone handsets for most of the twentieth century. Being a resistor it can be placed in a potential divider circuit that produces some significant voltage swings, so when the vibrations come from a high-impedance earpiece it can make an amplifier. It’s not a very good amplifier, it has lousy bandwidth, distortion, and noise characteristics, but it was just about good enough to be paired with a 1920s crystal set. In the video below the break we see a variety of the devices, and even hear them in action sounding very tinny indeed. At the time it must have seemed miraculous to be at the forefront of the new technology though, and we can’t help admiring some of the construction intricacies.

Carbon microphone amplifiers may be rare today, but for all that we’ve touched on them before.

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It’s fair to say that climate change is perhaps the greatest challenge facing our planet, and while much attention is directed towards solutions to the problems it presents, perhaps there’s less attention given to the the other side of the equation in the hydrocarbon industry. For example we all think we know something about hydraulic fracking wells, but how much do we really know?

[John Thurmond] is a geologist who has recently completed a long career in the oil industry, and he gave an informative talk on the matter at the summer’s EMF Camp in the UK. It makes for an interesting watch, as he leads the viewer through the process in detail, before discussing what should and shouldn’t cause worry.

We learn that fracking has two parts: first the hydraulic fracking itself, and then the re-injection of the toxic fracking well water released from underground along with the oil or gas. It seems the water released from the rocks a 10,000 ft depth contains all manner of toxic and even radioactive compounds, and the usual means of disposal is to inject it back into the ground at a much lower depth. He makes the point that while the hazards associated with the fracking are low, those of the re-injection are high.

The talk finishes up with perhaps the most interesting point, by looking at the nature of opposition to fracking, or indeed any other controversial development. Such things are inevitably surrounded by a swirling mess of half-truths, and his point is that identifying those easily deflected as not true is key to understanding the whole thing. It’s presented from an expert and factual perspective that’s so often lacking in this arena, and thus we think it’s worth a watch.

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Ever wondered if you could build a robot controlled by chemical reactions? [Marb] explores this wild concept in his video, merging chemistry and robotics in a way that feels straight out of sci-fi. From glowing luminol reactions to creating artificial logic gates, [Marb]—a self-proclaimed tinkerer—takes us step-by-step through crafting the building blocks for what might be the simplest form of a chemical brain.

In this video, the possibilities of an artificial chemical brain take centre stage. It starts with chemical reactions, including a fascinating luminol-based clock reaction that acts as a timer. Then, a bionic robot hand makes its debut, complete with a customised interface bridging the chemical and robotic worlds. The highlight? Watching that robotic hand respond to chemical reactions!

The project relies on a “lab-on-a-chip” approach, where microfluidics streamline the processes. Luminol isn’t just for forensic TV shows anymore—it’s the star of this experiment, with resources like this detailed explanation breaking down the chemistry. For further reading, New Scientist has you covered.

We’ve had interesting articles on mapping the human brain before, one on how exactly brains might work, or even the design of a tiny robot brain. Food for thought, or in other words: stirring the gray matter.

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Va bene la sicurezza e l'innovazione, pero mi pare ci si stia legando un po troppo mani e piedi ad un dispositivo che dopo breve tempo diventa obsoleto ... e rifiuto.

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We will admit it. If we found a 386 motherboard as badly corroded as the one [Bits und Bolts] did, we would trash it—not him, though. In fact, we were surprised when he showed it and said he had already removed most of it in vinegar. You can check the board out in the video below.

There was still a lot of work to do on both the front and back of the board. The motherboard was a Biostar and while it isn’t as dense as a modern board, it still had plenty of surface mount parts jammed in.

One challenge was that fixing corroded vias could break connections with traces on inner layers of the multi-layer PCB. It was important to try to find out where things were going in case it was going to need some wiring repair after some of the other repairs.

Even after cleaning and resoldering, there were some bad components — notably some tantalum capacitors. With those replaced, the board came up as you’d expect. It is worth listening to the maniacal laughter of satisfaction at about the 53-minute mark when the board booted up. We get it.

The 386 is simple enough that you could do your own motherboard. Otherwise, you might expect to have to provide some TLC.

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Let’s face it, failed Kickstarters are no good. But they can spark good things, like real versions of technologies that might have actually been faked for the platform. A touchscreen mouse, for instance, with shortcuts that can be programmed for various applications.

Image by [Sam Baker] via Hackaday.IOThis story is one of scope creep, as [Sam Baker] says in the project details. At first, he thought he could just basically duct tape a touchscreen with shortcuts to an existing mouse. A couple of mouse teardowns later, [Sam] arrived at the conclusion that things would not be so simple.

After some digging around, [Sam] found a repository where someone created a way to communicate with the ADNS-5050 optical sensor, so [Sam] started by creating a breakout board for this sensor. By combining that with an ESP32 dev board and a touchscreen, [Sam] had his shortcut mouse.

Does it work? Yes. Is it useful? Well, yes. And also no. The beauty part of using a regular mouse is that you don’t have to look down at it to know where the buttons are. In the future, [Sam] would like to implement some kind of buttons for tactility. In the meantime, haptic feedback could be nice.

Converting (Another!) Folding Keyboard Into Bluetooth

There is a ton of neat old technology out there, and not all of it has to end up as e-waste. You might remember this post about a cool old folding keyboard converted to Bluetooth for use with phones and tablets.

Image by [Xinming Chen] via GitHub[Xinming Chen] wrote in to alert me that not only are there other folding keyboards that were made for PDA devices back when, namely the G750; he has converted these to Bluetooth as well.

There were a bunch of different models sold under various names, but [Xinming] says as long as the keyboard looks the same, it should work with his adapter. The biggest difference is that the G750 itself uses inverted TTL for the RX line, while other models do not.

The really amazing part of this is the actual build itself, which fits in the smaller-than-a-Shuffle footprint of the original PDA connector. Naturally, [Xinming] had to roll his own PCB, which is based on the CH582F microcontroller. But another awesome bit is the micro-switch, which turns on the Bluetooth module when the keyboard is unfolded, and off when it is pushed back together. The whole deal is a really slick maneuver that you should check out in the demo video below.

Whether you build or buy one of these adapters, you don’t have to limit yourself to one device: the CH582F can support up to four hosts as well as the USB connection, so feel free to use it like a KVM switch. Awesome!

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The Centerfold: Peep This Beautiful Beast!

Image via Bili Bili
So I was trawling reddit and came across someone asking for the 3D models for these hand rests. I was of course myself more interested in the keyboard, which is a 6×6 dactyl manuform (translated) with an extended num pad in between. That’s quite a few keys, innit? 38 keys per half plus the center beast at 30; I assume the black things are knobs. On a personal note, as much as I like the dactyl and even tried to build one, the dactyl manuform’s thumb cluster just looks uncomfortable to my small hands.

Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad? Send me a picture along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!

Historical Clackers: the Lasar

Just like any burgeoning, lucrative industry, many entered the typewriter game, but few actually won. Among history’s many forgotten typewriters and the men who made them is the Lasar, made between 1890-1892 by the Godfrey Henry Lasar of St. Louis, MO.
Image via the Antikey Chop
Lasar held an impressive number of patents for various typewriter elements, including one for a “telegraph transmitter”. For the Lasar itself, he received a whopping 17 patents in a single day — November 19, 1889.

For all of Lasar’s innovation, his company did almost no marketing, which may have attributed to its downfall. Fortunately, several ads were published by the St. Louis Typewriter exchange. Unfortunately, most of them ran after the company went out of business.

The Lasar sold for $75, which comes out to over $2500 in 2024 money. This is about smack dab in the middle of the average cost for a typewriter at the time, however.

One of the reasons it may have failed is because it only typed uppercase, but every other guy’s machine did lowercase, too. One of Lasar’s Lasar patents is for a shift mechanism, but he didn’t implement it. It is thought that the Lasar was always meant to be a telegraph typewriter, and was even advertised as “the Best Machine for Telegraph Work”. The world may never know.

ICYMI: the Case For the Vecdec Cyberdeck

Image by [svenscore] via GitHubAs awesome as cyberdecks are to behold, many of them just aren’t that useful. It’s a shame, really. But [svenscore]’s Versatile Ergonomic Computing device, or vecdec, is different.

Hackaday’s own [Tom Nardi] spotted this bad boy at JawnCon 0x1, where it was being used in place of a laptop. This build was born when [svenscore] caught the split keyboard bug and couldn’t reconcile going back to a rectangle on the go. Totally understandable!

Despite its sleek form factor, this Raspberry Pi 4-powered cyberdeck has a few surprises. One is the built-in LoRa radio for doing Meshtastic wherever. The other is a pair of gesture sensors that let you fly through documents with a wave of your hand like you’re in Minority Report (2002) or something. If you ask me, this interface should be standard on every cyberdeck going forward.

Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards? Help me out by sending in a link or two. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to email me directly.

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