Wunderkind & Mekbolt
Wunderkind
Hey Mekbolt, I’ve been building a swarm of tiny autonomous drones that can map abandoned metro tunnels and flag structural weaknesses in real time. With your decrypted schematics and obsession for overgrown tunnels, would you help fine‑tune the sensors? Also I need a way to back up their data onto old drives without the modern network—any ideas?
Mekbolt
Hey, that sounds like a solid project. For the sensors, start with a low‑power LIDAR that runs on the old 12V rail you’ve got in that rusted control box. Pair it with a MEMS accelerometer to catch any micro‑vibrations that mean a shaft is failing. Use a cheap analog FM tuner as a failsafe—if the signal drops, you know the drone lost power or is stuck.
Now for the backup. Grab a few of those 3.5” HDDs that used to sit in the abandoned service cars. Reflash the firmware to a custom Linux distro that only talks to the hard drive over a direct SATA link—no Ethernet, no Wi‑Fi. Mount the drive on a cheap Raspberry Pi with a 5V regulator, but instead of the Pi’s USB, use a SATA‑to‑USB bridge that plugs straight into the hard drive. Dump the drone logs onto the Pi’s RAM, then copy the entire buffer to the HDD in one block transfer. After each run, just eject the drive, drop it in the bunker, and roll it over to the next one. That way you keep a triplicate backup chain with no network sniffers watching you. If you’re worried about the old drives eating themselves, keep a spare set of old 5.25” drives ready; they’re more tolerant of shock than the newer ones. Good luck, and keep those vending machines from spying on you.
Wunderkind
Thanks, Mekbolt, that’s a genius setup—low‑power LIDAR, MEMS vibes, and an FM tuner as the ultimate fail‑safe, like a radio‑controlled superhero. I’ll grab those 3.5” HDDs and reflash them to a minimalist distro; the SATA‑to‑USB bridge hack is pure magic. Quick thought: what if we add a tiny DS18B20 sensor on the Pi to log the drive temperature during transfers? That way we can catch thermal runaway before it starts the fire. Also, maybe swap the Pi’s RAM for a small eMMC module; it’s faster and less prone to corruption during those one‑block dumps. Let me know if you need a test script for the temp logger, and I’ll fire up a new prototype—watch out, vending machines, you’re officially hacked!
Mekbolt
Sounds solid. Put the DS18B20 on a 1‑wire bus from the Pi’s GPIO, read it in a quick loop every 5 seconds, and if it climbs above 55 °C abort the transfer. Here’s a tiny shell script you can drop on the Pi:
```bash
#!/bin/bash
sensor=28-00000xxxxxxx # replace with your ROM code
while true; do
temp=$(cat /sys/bus/w1/devices/$sensor/w1_slave | grep -oP 't=\K[0-9]+')
temp_c=$(echo "scale=2; $temp/1000" | bc)
echo "$(date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S') $temp_c°C"
if (( $(echo "$temp_c > 55" | bc -l) )); then
echo "Temp too high, aborting transfer"
# insert abort command here
fi
sleep 5
done
```
Hook that up to your backup script so you get a live log. As for eMMC, just swap the SD card slot to a compatible 8‑bit eMMC module; just make sure the power supply stays under 5 V. Keep the drives in a thermally isolated box with a heat sink, and the vending machine’s cameras will still think you’re just playing with toys. Good luck, and keep those drives from melting.
Wunderkind
Cool script, thanks! I’ll wire the DS18B20 to the Pi’s GPIO, plug the shell in, and tweak the abort line to trigger a soft power‑off of the drive before the buffer hits the HDD. I’ll also mount a small heat‑sink on the drive enclosure and run the whole thing in that thermally isolated box you suggested. One more tweak: let’s log the transfer status to a tiny CSV so I can plot the temperature vs. data rate later—visual feedback always sparks new ideas. Keep hacking, and don’t let the vending machines spy on us too hard!
Mekbolt
Nice plan, keep the CSV on the Pi, each line timestamp, temp, bytes transferred. That’ll give you a clear curve. And remember: if the vending machines start blinking, just throw a bag of nuts over the network ports and call it a “maintenance upgrade.” Stay cool, and good luck with the logs.