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https://hackaday.com/2025/09/21/mandrel-magic-small-box-assembly-with-3d-printing/ | Mandrel Magic: Small Box Assembly With 3D Printing | Matt Varian | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed tool",
"mandrel"
] | Often, we face tedious tasks with no way around them. Sometimes, you just have to grit your teeth and push through. But small tweaks can make the onerous task a bit easier to handle. [James Bowman] sent in his latest quick project that helps him
fold small boxes
more efficiently.
To fulfill orders on his previously covered
TermDriver2
, [James Bowman] is faced with folding thousands of small boxes. To aid in this daunting task, he had the idea of making a tool to streamline the process — every second saved adds up when you’re repeating a task thousands of times. He designed a 3D printed mandrel that pops the flat box blank open as it’s slid over the tapered top, shaping it into a perfect rectangle for easy folding of the top flaps.
The nice thing about 3D printng is how easy it is to iterate on a design. Once James had the first version printed and verified it worked as hoped, he had ideas to improve it, such as adding a second mandrel to twist the box from both the inside and outside and adding a guide on one side to enhance rigidity.
While we often think of 3D printers producing ready-to-use parts,
but printed tooling holds
great
potential for repetitive tasks
, and is a huge cost saver compared to traditional methods. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182992",
"author": "Cory Johnson",
"timestamp": "2025-09-22T17:39:28",
"content": "I’m more interested about where he can get a low volume of custom boxes assembled and printed without adding a ton of cost to the end product.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": ... | 1,760,371,421.665405 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/21/first-transistor-computer-reborn/ | First Transistor Computer Reborn | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Big Iron",
"mainframe",
"metrovick",
"retrocomputing",
"university of manchester"
] | Ok, we’ll admit it. If you asked us what the first transistorized computer was, we would have guessed it was the TC from the University of Manchester. After all, Dr. Wilkes and company were at the forefront and had built Baby and EDSAC, which, of course, didn’t use transistors. To be clear, we would have been guessing, but what we didn’t know at all was that the TC, with its magnetic drums and transistors in 1955, had a second life as a commercial product from Metropolitan-Vickers, called the Metrovick 950. [Nina Kalinina] has a
simulator inspired by the old machine
.
The code is in Python, and you can find several programs to run on the faux machine, including the venerable lunar lander. If you haven’t heard of the Metrovick, don’t feel bad. Oral histories say that only six or seven were ever built, and they were used internally within the company.
It seems hard to imagine now, but in the 1950s, transistors for computing were actually a disadvantage. The devices were slow. The TC, for example, used old point-contact transistors (200 of them) and 1,300 point diodes. The Metrovick 950, mercifully, used more modern junction devices. You might think that transistors would be more robust, but the early devices often failed.
The Metrovick wasn’t totally transistor-based. Like the somewhat newer TRADIC from Bell Labs, it used a vacuum tube to produce a clock signal with enough oomph to feed the whole machine. The first fully transistorized machine is a bit of a moving target, but is probably either the Harwell CADET, the IBM 604, or an ICBM guidance computer from Burroughs. Want to know more? You can read the
original engineering report
(which included the title picture).
We have long been fascinated with the
EDSAC
and often wonder if we’d have been as smart as
David Wheeler
and invented the subroutine. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182862",
"author": "Pheebe",
"timestamp": "2025-09-22T08:59:44",
"content": "Nina Kalinina wrote up some history over on the fediverse athttps://tech.lgbt/@nina_kali_nina/115242939849102943, and it’s worth a read if you want a bit more info on the background and some other info",
... | 1,760,371,421.343536 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/21/hackaday-links-september-21-2025/ | Hackaday Links: September 21, 2025 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"3d printing",
"amateur",
"AOL",
"bookbinding",
"cd",
"hackaday links",
"hacking",
"ham",
"Harrison Ford",
"Jay Leno",
"license",
"Pacific",
"plastic",
"radio",
"security",
"toilet",
"washing machine"
] | Remember AOL? For a lot of folks, America Online was their first ISP, the place where they got their first exposure to the Internet, or at least a highly curated version of it. Remembered by the cool kids mainly as the place that the normies used as their ISP and for the mark of shame an “@aol.com” email address bore, the company nevertheless became a media juggernaut, to the point that “AOL Time Warner” was a thing in the early 2000s. We’d have thought the company was long gone by now, but it turns out it’s still around and powerful enough of a brand that
it’s being shopped around for $1.5 billion
. We’d imagine a large part of that value comes from Yahoo!, which previous owner Verizon merged with AOL before selling most of the combined entity off in 2021, but either way, it’s not chump change.
For our part, the most memorable aspect of AOL was the endless number of CDs they stuffed into mailboxes in the 90s. There was barely a day that went by that one of those things didn’t cross your path, either through the mail or in free bins at store checkouts, or even inside magazines. They were everywhere, and unless you were tempted by the whole “You’ve got mail!” kitsch, they were utterly useless; they didn’t even make good coasters thanks to the hole in the middle. So most of the estimated 2 billion CDs just ended up in the trash, which got us thinking: How much plastic was that? A bit of poking around indicates that a CD contains about 15 grams of polycarbonate, so that’s something like 30,000 metric tonnes! To put that into perspective, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is said to contain “only”
around 80,000 metric tonnes of plastic
. Clearly the patch isn’t 37% AOL CDs, but it still gives one pause to consider how many resources AOL put into marketing.
You want lice? Because
hacking a network of smart washing machines on a college campus
is how you get lice. Or at least that’s the somewhat overwrought fear after someone broke into the smart washing machines at a housing complex serving Amsterdam college students earlier in the year. The hack, which disabled the electronic payment system on the washers, was discovered in July, which seems like a strange time of year for students to be doing laundry, but whatever. The company that owns the machines finally disabled them, leaving 1,250 residents with only a couple of old coin-op machines, most of which they report are chronically out of order. That fits well with our college laundry experience, which more often than not was a waste of time and quarters, enough so that it was worth the drive home to use Mom’s machines. But what about the lice? It seems that some students are complaining that their unclean clothes are leaving them itchy and in fear of an outbreak of lice unless the laundry situation improves. So much for the hacker’s attempt to become a folk
Being an amateur radio operator, we’re always on the lookout for ham-adjacent stories, especially the increasing number where amateur allocations are being infringed upon or worse, privileges are being outright revoked. That’s why we were alarmed to see a story about
amateur radio licenses being suspended in Equatorial Guinea
, but it turns out that there’s a little more to the story than just anti-ham sentiment. All existing amateur licenses in the African nation were temporarily suspended thanks to the discovery of a foreign citizen who apparently illegally purchased a license and then accessed “sensitive areas” of the country. It sounds like Equatorial Guinea is pretty strict, requiring inspection of equipment and proper licensing prior to allowing radios into the country. The suspension of all licenses seems like overkill to us, especially since no apparent timeline for restoring privileges has been communicated. Separately, we’d also like to call out the article’s graphic designer for one of the worst examples of
map gore
we’ve ever seen.
If you write a column like this and you see a story with a title like “
Jay Leno 3D prints toilet seat for Harrison Ford
,” it’s really hard to resist writing it up. But as it turns out, there’s not a lot to the story, at least to those of us used to printing unobtanium parts. Jay Leno, famed for his amazing collection of antique and rare motor vehicles, has gotten into additive manufacturing in a big way, often printing parts for his restorations. Harrison Ford, on the other hand, isn’t much into 3D printing, but he does have a toilet he’s especially fond of — we can absolutely relate to this — but whose seat has seen better days. Being out of production, he couldn’t source a replacement until he remembered a visit to Jay’s garage, where he was first introduced to 3D printing. So Harrison sent the seat to Jay (eww) for reverse engineering and printing. We’d love to know a few details, such as what plastic was deemed fit for Indiana Jones’ tush. We’d also like to know which printing modality was used; we hope it wasn’t FDM, because layer lines would be pretty gross on a toilet seat.
And finally, clear your viewing calendar for
this four-part series on custom bookbinding
. We know, we know; bookbinding isn’t really the kind of tech we usually feature around here. But watching Dennis over at Four Keys Book Arts take a cheap book-club edition of Frank Herbert’s classic
Dune
and turn it into a work of art is absolutely mesmerizing. From disassembly and restoration of the original to tooling the new leather cover and applying gold leaf, every step along the way is absolute craftsmanship. Check it out; we doubt you’ll be disappointed. Enjoy! | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182804",
"author": "Jeff Wright",
"timestamp": "2025-09-22T00:59:37",
"content": "I loved Umberto Eco’s take on the vanity press community:https://wanderinglibrarian.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/publisher-schemes-foucault%E2%80%99s-pendulum%E2%80%A6-the-continued-wanderings/Still—thing... | 1,760,371,421.868477 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/21/a-serial-mouse-for-a-homebrew-8-bit-computer/ | A Serial Mouse For A Homebrew 8-bit Computer | Al Williams | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"8-bit computers",
"Ben Eater",
"mouse",
"serial mouse"
] | [Too Many Wires] has a custom computer he’s building. He wanted a mouse, but USB is a bit of a stretch for the fledgling computer. We might have opted for PS/2, but he went for something even older:
a serial mouse connected with a DE-9
(colloquially, a DB-9). Check it out in his recent video update on the project below.
Don’t remember serial mice? They were very common many years ago, and apparently, you can still buy new ones, which makes you wonder what people are doing with them. If you are an old hand at serial, you’ll immediately know why he couldn’t get it to work at first. If you haven’t worked with RS-232 gear before, you’ll learn a lot.
The protocol
is simple enough
, and you can read the code or find plenty of old documents. He’s using a UART chip, which offloads the CPU. However, the PS/2 mice are very easy to work with directly, and you could skip the +/- 12V RS-232 and other issues.
Either way, however, using an RS-232 or PS/2 mouse in a project is relatively straightforward. You might not think you need a mouse, but don’t forget, they are really accurate two-axis sensors. An optical mouse on a motion table, for example, could be worth something.
The computer is based on
[Ben Eater]’s design
, if you want more details on that. Can’t decide between RS-232 and PS/2?
You don’t have to
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182786",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2025-09-21T22:33:12",
"content": "Besides the mouse, a big benefit of implementing a basic, widely supported serial interface on a basic computer is having a basic, widely supported serial interface on a basic computer.",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,371,421.705858 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/21/welding-with-natural-gas-and-oxygen/ | Welding With Natural Gas And Oxygen | Aaron Beckendorf | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"acetylene",
"diy torch",
"natural gas",
"oxygen",
"oxygen concentrator"
] | By virtue of its triple bond, acetylene burns hotter than any other common hydrocarbon when mixed with oxygen, but it isn’t the only flame hot enough for welding. With the assistance of a homemade oxygen concentrator,
[Hyperspace Pirate] was able to make a natural gas torch
that melts steel, even if welding with the torch remains difficult.
[Hyperspace Pirate] built his oxygen concentrator around a
pressure-swing adsorption system
, which uses two tanks of a molecular sieve to selectively adsorb and purge nitrogen, leaving behind mostly oxygen. [Hyperspace Pirate] used reverse-osmosis membrane casings as the tanks, solenoid valves to control gas flow, and an Arduino with some MOSFETs to control the timing. For fuel, he used a convenient source of natural gas, already installed in his garage: the water heater’s gas supply. Since the house’s meter regulates the gas down to a fairly low pressure, and the oxygen concentrator doesn’t produce high pressures, the torch didn’t need any inline regulators.
Inline check valves, on the other hand, were very much necessary, a mixture of oxygen and natural gas propagating back along the lines being undesirable for obvious reasons, and flashback arrestors would have been a good addition. [Hyperspace Pirate] built the torch itself out of copper tubing and needle valves, with a 0.9 mm MIG welder tip as the nozzle. Adjusting the gas mixture was mostly a matter of trial and error. With an oxygen-rich flame, it could cut thin metal decently well, but it tended to melt thick pieces more than it cut. On the other hand, even with a neutral flame, the water vapor in the exhaust oxidized steel, which made welding quite difficult, but not impossible.
The oxygen supply by itself was an entertaining tool, turning smoldering pieces of charcoal or steel wool violently incandescent. With the assistance of some steel wool, [Hyperspace Pirate] set a steel tube on fire. With a bit more oxygen, it would probably make an effective
thermic lance
. If you still want to do your welding with acetylene, he’s also
made that before
. | 15 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182719",
"author": "Albert",
"timestamp": "2025-09-21T17:22:14",
"content": "Gonna eat plenty of kebabs to produce enough natural ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) gas for any serious welding project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8182770",
... | 1,760,371,421.401215 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/21/low-cost-high-gain-a-smart-electronic-eyepiece-for-capturing-the-cosmos/ | Low-Cost, High-Gain: A Smart Electronic Eyepiece For Capturing The Cosmos | Matt Varian | [
"Space"
] | [
"eyepiece",
"imx307",
"night vision camera",
"telescope"
] | We’ve all seen spectacular pictures of space, and it’s easy to assume that’s how it looks to the naked eye through a nice telescope. But in most cases, that’s simply not true. Space is rather dark, so to make out dim objects, you’ll need to amplify the available light. This can be done with a larger telescope, but that’s an expensive route. Alternatively, you can observe objects for longer periods. This second approach is what [Jordan Blanchard] chose, creating a
budget electronic eyepiece
for his telescope.
This eyepiece is housed in a 3D printed enclosure designed to fit a standard 1.25″ telescope focuser. The sleek, ergonomic enclosure resembles a night vision device, with a 0.39″ screen for real-time observation of what the camera captures through the telescope. The screen isn’t the only way to view — a USB-C video capture module lets you connect a phone or computer to save images as if you were peering through the viewfinder.
The star of this project is the IMX307 camera module, which supports sense-up mode for 1.2-second exposures and increased gain to capture dim objects without post-processing. This sensor, commonly used in low-light security cameras and dash cams, excels at revealing faint celestial details. All combined, this project cost under 200 Euros, an absolute steal in the often pricey world of astronomy.
Don’t have a telescope? Don’t worry, you can
build one of those as well
. | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182693",
"author": "m1ke",
"timestamp": "2025-09-21T16:08:33",
"content": "Great shot of Saturn! Can it take a peek at Uranus?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8182707",
"author": "LookAtDaShinyShiny",
"timesta... | 1,760,371,421.758279 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/21/for-a-robot-claw-the-eyes-have-it/ | For A Robot Claw, The Eyes Have It | Al Williams | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"claw",
"ESP32"
] | Have you ever wished your hand had an extra feature? Like, maybe, a second thumb? A scope probe pinky maybe? Well, if you are building a robot effector, you get to pick what extra features it has.
[Gokux] has the aptly named Cam Claw
, which is a 3D printed claw with a built-in camera so you can see exactly what it is doing.
The brains are an ESP32-S3 and the eyes — well, the eye technically — uses an OV3660 camera. There’s even a light in case you are in a dark space. A servo drives it, and the printed gear train is pretty fun to watch, as you can see in the video below.
This project is all about the mechanics. The electronic hardware is trivial. A battery, a power controller, and a servo complement the ESP32 and camera. Six LEDs for light, and the job is done.
Obviously, the gripping power will only be as good as the servo. However, we really liked the idea of putting eyes on a robot hand where they count. Of course, the claw you really want a camera on
is in the arcade
. We’d like to see cameras on some other
robot appendages
. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182704",
"author": "Piecutter",
"timestamp": "2025-09-21T16:32:27",
"content": "I just got a surprisingly affordable drug store otoscope that pairs with my smart phone screen to retrieve a large, impacted cerumen. I immediately started planning to take it apart, extend it, and comb... | 1,760,371,421.440015 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/21/building-a-not-very-portable-xbox/ | Building A (Not Very) Portable Xbox | Fenix Guthrie | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Xbox Hacks"
] | [
"diy handheld",
"portable",
"xbox"
] | Modern handheld game consoles are impressive feats of engineering, featuring full fledged computers in near pocket-sized packages. So what happens if you take an original Xbox and sprinkle on some modern electronics and create a handheld? Well, if you’re [James] of
James Channel
, you end up with this
sandwich of PCBs held together with hot glue and duck tape.
The first order of miniaturization in this Xbox was replacing the hard drive. Because a
CompactFlash card uses parallel ATA, that could be a simple drop in replacement. However, the Xbox locks the hard drive to the system requiring a mod chip for the CF card to work. Fortunately, the sacrificial Xbox came with a mod chip installed. After using an arcade machine to flash the card and copy over the contents of the drive, the CF card install was a breeze.
For the screen and batteries, a portable DVD player that had remained unused since 2006 was repurposed. The battery cells were rather unhappy, but managed to get resurrected with some careful charging. As it turns out, the iPod 30 pin connector inside the portable screen contains an
S-Video line
. By tapping into that and adding in some power management for the batteries, the Xbox became a pile of PCBs that could maybe be taken places.
Wiring up the two halves of the controller.
However, the form factor was not yet complete. With some careful angle grinder work, the controller got split in half, with jumper wires going between the two sides. By cutting slots into the housing, the Xbox mainboard could now rest between the two controller halves, along with some hot glue for good measure. By using hot glue as an insulating layer, the PCB sandwich started to resemble a handheld console.
A few gremlins still lurked inside, namely, inside the optical drive. The first issue was the mainboard supplied 2.5 V where 5 V is needed, so instead of debugging the issue, [James] simply tapped directly into a 5 V line. But the drive was still uncooperative. As it turned out, the hastily refurbished unit was broken, so a fresh one replaced it. Yet that still proved unsuccessful. Eventually, after testing eight drives, it turned out seven were broken, and the IDE cable needed to be re-crimped.
But at last, the portable Xbox could be used, so the build was finished off with a bit more hot glue and a case made of duck tape. While certainly not pretty, it does, in fact, work, with nearly 10 minutes of battery life. It’s not very handheld, or very portable, but it does meet the definitions of both while maintaining a CD drive, something likely never done before. Just keep your fingers clear of the spinning disc.
Looking for something that might actually fit in your pocket? Turns out the
Wii can be turned into an incredibly compact handheld
with some careful cutting. | 24 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182609",
"author": "The ink-srsined wretcg",
"timestamp": "2025-09-21T09:16:35",
"content": "Please, the language is going to hell, don’t make it worse. Do we tape ducks with ductape? No, we tape(d) flat foam replacements for thin steel hemorrhage-causing HVAC ducts! The only probl... | 1,760,371,421.58281 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/20/march-to-the-beat-of-your-own-piezoelectric-drum/ | March To The Beat Of Your Own Piezoelectric Drum | Tyler August | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"drum",
"piezo disk",
"piezoelectric generator",
"technically successful"
] | Drums! You hit them, and they vibrate. It’s kind of fun. Piezoelectric elements can create electric current when they vibrate. [Will Dana] put two and
two together to try and charge his phone
on his YouTube channel
WillsBuilds
embedded below.
It worked… about as well as you might expect. Which is to say: not very well. The random piezo elements [Will] glues to his drum almost certainly aren’t optimized for this use case. Adding weight helps, but it doesn’t look like a tuned system. Even if it was, piezoelectric generators aren’t terribly efficient by nature, and the (small) losses from the required bridge rectifiers aren’t helping. An energy-harvesting chip might have worked
better
, but it probably wouldn’t have worked
well
.
Since he cannot produce enough voltage in real time, [Will] opts to charge a capacitor bank that he can dump into the phone once it gets enough charge in it to register with the phone’s circuitry. It takes about 30 minutes drumming to charge the capacitors in parallel, before switching to series to get the voltage up to discharge. The capacitors drain in about a quarter second, probably to no measurable result– but the phone does read as “charging”, which was the goal.
Did it work? Technically, yes. The phone was “charging”. Is it practical? Certainly not. Is it a hack? Undeniably so. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182642",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-09-21T12:52:30",
"content": "Goofy clickbait for the hard of thinking, but I’ll bite.Piezo elementscanbe fairly efficient, but it’s all about impedance matching: bothmechanicalandelectrical.That’s the purpose of that brass disk: it’s a ... | 1,760,371,421.627667 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/20/when-low-sram-keeps-the-doom-off-your-vape/ | When Low SRAM Keeps TheDOOMOff Your Vape | Maya Posch | [
"Games",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"does it run doom",
"vape"
] | The PIXO Aspire is a roughly $35 USD vape that can almost play
DOOM
, with [Aaron Christophel]
finding that the only thing
that realistically stops it from doing so is that the Cortex-M4-based Puya
PY32F403XC
MCU only has 64 kB of SRAM. CPU-wise it would be more than capable, with a roomy 16 MB of external SPI Flash and a 323×173 pixel LC touch screen display covering the other needs. It even has a vibration motor to give you some force feedback. Interestingly, this vape has a Bluetooth Low-Energy chip built-in, but this does not seem to be used by the original Aspire firmware.
What [Aaron] did to still get some
DOOM
vapors on the device was to implement
a screenshare firmware
, allowing a PC to use the device as a secondary display via its USB interface. This way you can use the regular PC mouse and keyboard inputs to play
DOOM
, while squinting at the small screen.
Although not as completely overpowered as a
recent Anker charging station
that [Aaron] played
DOOM
on, we fully expect vapes in a few years to be perfectly usable for some casual gaming, with this potentially even becoming an original manufacturer’s function, if it isn’t already. | 28 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182549",
"author": "Cody",
"timestamp": "2025-09-21T03:53:43",
"content": "Why the hell does a vape need a Coretex M4 CPU and an LCD screen?An 8 bit OTP microcontroller and a couple of LEDs should be more than sufficient.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,421.822561 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/20/a-ruggedized-raspberry-pi-for-sailors/ | A Ruggedized Raspberry Pi For Sailors | Aaron Beckendorf | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"Autopilot",
"nmea 0183",
"NMEA 2000",
"Raspberry Pi Compute Module",
"supercapacitor",
"waterproof",
"waterproofing"
] | Nautical navigation has a long history of innovation, from the compass and chronometer to today’s computer-driven autopilot systems. That said, the poor compatibility of electronics with saltwater has consequently created a need for rugged, waterproof computers, a category to which
[Matti Airas] of Hat Labs has contributed with the open-source HALPI2
.
Powered by the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, the electronics are housed in a heavy duty enclosure made of aluminium, which also serves as a heat sink, and closes with a waterproof seal. It has a wide variety of external connectors, all likewise waterproofed: power, HDMI, NMEA 2000 and NMEA 0183, Ethernet, two USB 3.0 ports, and an external WiFi or Bluetooth antenna. The external ports are plugged into the carrier board by short extension cables, and there are even more ports on the carrier board, including two HDMI connectors, two MIPI connectors, four USB ports, and a full GPIO header. The case has plugs to install additional PG7 or SP13 waterproof connectors, so if the existing external connectors aren’t enough, you can add your own.
Besides physical ruggedness, the design is also resistant to electrical damage. It can run on power in the 10-32 volt range, and is protected by a fuse. A supercapacitor bank preserves operation during a power glitch, and if the outage lasts for more than five seconds, can keep the system powered for 30-60 seconds while the operating system shuts down safely. The HALPI2 can also accept power over NMEA 2000, in which case it has the option to limit current draw to 0.9 amps.
The design was originally created to handle navigation, data logging, and other boating tasks, so it’s been configured for and tested with OpenPlotter. Its potential uses are broader than that, however, and it’s also been tested with Raspberry Pi OS for more general projects. Reading through its website, the most striking thing is how thoroughly this is documented: the site describes everything from the LED status indicators to the screws that close the housing – even a template for drilling mounting holes.
Given the quality of this project, it probably won’t surprise you to hear this isn’t [Matti]’s first piece of nautical electronics, having previously made Sailor HATs for the
ESP32
and the
Raspberry Pi
. | 33 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182498",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-09-20T23:26:01",
"content": "So,What happens to the Ethernet, USB and HDMI connections once their made up?I spent a goodly parts of my professional life putting electronics in less than hospitable conditions.These connects are going to... | 1,760,371,421.944734 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/20/venus-climate-orbiter-akatsukis-mission-has-ended/ | Venus Climate Orbiter Akatsuki’s Mission Has Ended | Maya Posch | [
"Space"
] | [
"JAXA",
"venus"
] | Japan’s Venus Climate Orbiter
Akatsuki
was launched on May 21, 2010, and started its active mission in 2015 after an initial orbital insertion failure. Since that time,
Akatsuki
has continuously observed Venus from orbit until issues began to crop up in 2024 when contact was lost in April of that year due to attitude control issues. Japan’s space agency, JAXA, has
now announced
that the mission has officially ended on September 18, 2025, after a period of trying to coax the spacecraft back into some level of functionality again.
The Akatsuki spacecraft in 2010 before its launch. (Credit:
JAXA
)
The
Akatsuki
spacecraft had six instruments, consisting of cameras covering the visible spectrum, ultraviolet and infrared spectra, as well as an oscillator for radio occultation experiments.
All primary mission goals were successfully completed in April of 2018, but engineers determined
Akatsuki
was capable of lasting at least another few years. This puts it well past its original design lifespan, and has provided us with much more scientific data than we could have hoped for.
Unfortunately, the shutdown of
Akatsuki
represents the end of the last active Venus mission, with much uncertainty surrounding any
potential upcoming mission
to Earth’s near-twin planet. The next potential mission is the
Venus Life Finder
, as an atmospheric mission penciled in for a 2026 launch. It would take at least until 2028 for a potential orbiter mission to launch, so for the foreseeable future Venus will be left alone, without its artificial moon that has kept it company for a decade. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182515",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-09-21T00:21:47",
"content": "10 years of data from Venus is still amazing. I’m sure plenty was learned about the planet and how to make the next orbiter more robust. Maybe next time they’ll use rope memory. :)",
"parent_id": null,... | 1,760,371,422.04732 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/20/regretfully-3000-worth-of-raspberry-pis/ | Regretfully: $3,000 Worth Of Raspberry Pi Boards | Al Williams | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"hpc",
"Pi",
"Pi Cluster"
] | We feel for [Jeff Geerling]. He spent a lot of effort building an
AI cluster out of Raspberry PI boards
and $3,000 later, he’s a bit regretful. As you can see in the video below, it is a neat build. As Jeff points out, it is relatively low power and dense. But dollar for dollar, it isn’t much of a supercomputer.
Of course, the most obvious thing is that there’s plenty of CPU, but no GPU. We can sympathize, too, with the fact that he had to strip it down twice and rebuild it for a total of three rebuilds. One time, he decided to homogenize the SSDs for each board. The second time was to affix the heatsinks. It is always something.
With ten “blades” — otherwise known as compute modules — the plucky little computer turned in about 325 gigaflops on tests. That sounds pretty good, but a Framework Desktop x4 manages 1,180 gigaflops. What’s more is that the Framework turned out cheaper per gigaflop, too. Each dollar bought about 110 megaflops for the Pis, but about 140 for the Framework.
So was it good for AI anyway? Predictably, no. While the Pi 5 does have an integrated GPU, llama can’t use the version of Vulkan for speedups. Even a cheap consumer PC can turn in better performance. The Framework without its GPU did about six or seven times better. With the GPU? Around 14X compared to the Pi cluster.
Should you build it? [Jeff] says no, unless you have a very special use case for it. However, we build plenty of things that aren’t super practical. If you have a use for the beast, let us know in the comments.
Even if your cluster isn’t as powerful as this one, you can still
pretend it is a Cray
. We wonder if
ten Pi 5s can beat 1,060 Pi 3s
? | 53 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182383",
"author": "LordNothing",
"timestamp": "2025-09-20T17:25:25",
"content": "most home computer users dont have a need for vector compute beyond perhaps rendering. besides if you did need light parallel compute you would find your gpu has you covered. been programming for year... | 1,760,371,422.134434 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/20/computer-has-one-instruction-many-transistors/ | Computer Has One Instruction, Many Transistors | Bryan Cockfield | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"architecture",
"assembler",
"computer",
"instruction set",
"isa",
"lcd",
"subleq"
] | There’s always some debate around what style of architecture is best for certain computing applications, with some on the RISC side citing performance per watt and some on the CISC side citing performance per line of code. But when looking at instruction sets it’s actually possible to eliminate every instruction except one and still have a working, Turing-complete computer. This instruction is called
subleq
or “
subtract and branch if less-than or equal to zero
“.
[Michael] has built a computer that does this out of discrete components from scratch
.
We’ll save a lot of the details of the computer science for [Michael]
or others
to explain, but at its core this is a computer running with a 1 kHz clock with around 700 transistors total. Since the goal of a single-instruction computer like this is simplicity, the tradeoff is that many more instructions need to be executed for equivalent operations. For this computer it takes six clock cycles to execute one instruction, for a total of about 170 instructions per second. [Michael] also created an assembler for this computer, so with an LCD screen connected and mapped to memory he can write and execute a simple “hello world” program just like any other computer.
[Michael] does note that since he was building this from Logisim directly he doesn’t have a circuit schematic, but due to some intermittent wiring issues might have something in the future if he decides to make PCBs for this instead of using wire on a cardboard substrate. There’s plenty of other information on
his GitHub page
though. It’s a unique project that gets to the core of what’s truly needed for a working computer.
There are a few programming languages out there that are built on a similar idea
. | 22 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182336",
"author": "AndreN",
"timestamp": "2025-09-20T14:39:26",
"content": "Anyone crazy enough to want to try writing code for a single instruction computer can go try the free Steam game called SIC-1. (Disclaimer: I’m in no way affiliated with the game, just tried to play it a ... | 1,760,371,422.000372 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/20/simplest-oscilloscope-is-a-cunning-vector-display/ | “Simplest” Oscilloscope Is A Cunning Vector Display | Tyler August | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"crt hacks",
"diy oscilloscope",
"oscilloscope clock"
] | Superlatives are tricky things. [mircemk]’s guide “
How to make Simplest ever Oscilloscope Clock
” falls into that category. It’s that word, simplest. Certainly, this is an oscilloscope clock, and a nice one. But is it simple?
There’s a nice oscilloscope circuit with a cute 2″ 5LO38I CRT and EF80 tubes for horizontal and vertical deflection that we’d say is pretty simple. (It’s based on an earlier DIY oscilloscope project [mircemk] did.) The bill of materials is remarkably sparse– but it’s modules that do it. One entry is a DC-DC step up supply to get the needed HV. Another is a LM317 to get 6.3 V to heat the tubes. The modules make for a very simple BOM, but on another level, there’s quite a bit of complex engineering in those little modules.
When we get to the “clock” part of the oscilloscope clock, that quandary goes into overdrive. There’s only one line on the BOM, so that’s very simple. On the other hand, it’s an ESP32. Depending on your perspective, that’s not simple at all. It’s a microcomputer, or at least
something that can play at emulating one
.
Oh, in the ways that matter to a maker — parts count, time, and effort, this oscilloscope clock is very simple. The fact that its actually a vector display for a powerful little micro just adds to the versatility of the build. We absolutely love it, to be honest. Still, the idea that you can have millions of transistors in a simple project — never mind the “simplest ever” — well, it just seems weird on some level when you think about it.
It all comes back to what counts as “simple”. If we’re taking lines on a BOM, arguably this would be even simpler if you
used an existing oscilloscope. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182279",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-09-20T11:19:00",
"content": "A 555 or even a single transistor is horribly complex in itself and a product of thousands of years of technological development.I think a project is simple when the work done for that particular project is s... | 1,760,371,422.189628 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/20/fnirsi-ips3608-a-bench-power-supply-with-serious-flaws/ | Fnirsi IPS3608: A Bench Power Supply With Serious Flaws | Maya Posch | [
"Reviews"
] | [
"bench power supply",
"review",
"teardown"
] | Fnirsi is one of those brands that seem to pop up more and more often, usually for portable oscilloscopes and kin. Their IPS3608 bench power supply is a bit of a departure from that, offering a mains-powered PSU that can deliver up to 36 VDC and 8 A in a fairly compact, metal enclosure.
Recently [Joftec] purchased one of these units
in order to review it and ended up finding a few worrying flaws in the process.
One of the claims made on
the product page
is that it is ‘much more intelligent than traditional power supplies’, which is quite something to start off with. The visual impression of this PSU is that it’s somewhat compromised already, with no earth point on the front next to the positive and negative banana plug points, along with a tilting screen that has trouble staying put. The USB-C and -A ports on the front support USB-PD 3.0 and a range of fast charge protocols
The ‘intelligence’ claim seems to come mostly from the rather extensive user interface, including a graphing function. Where things begin to fall apart is when the unit locks up during load testing presumably due to an overheating event. After hooking up an oscilloscope, the ripple at 1 VDC was determined to be about 200 mV peak-to-peak at 91 kHz. Ripple increased at higher voltages, belying the ’10 mV ultra-low ripple’ claim.
A quick teardown revealed the cause for the most egregious flaw of the unit struggling to maintain even 144 Watt output: a very undersized heatsink on the SMPS board. The retention issues with the tilting issue seemed to be due to a design choice that prevents the screen from rotating without breaking plastic. While this latter issue could be fixed, the buggy firmware and high ripple on the DC output make this €124 ‘285 Watt’ into a hard pass. | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182209",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2025-09-20T08:07:02",
"content": "200mv = 0.2V. When supplying 1V. That is TWENTY PERCENT RIPPLE.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8182219",
"author": "Johan",
"times... | 1,760,371,422.253094 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/19/fire-extinguishers-optical-density-ratings-and-safely-using-home-lasers/ | Fire Extinguishers, Optical Density Ratings And Safely Using Home Lasers | Maya Posch | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"laser engraving",
"laser safety",
"PSA"
] | Ski goggle type laser safety lenses may look dorky, but they leave no gaps and fit around glasses. (Credit:
FauxHammer
, YouTube)
After [Ross] from
FauxHammer
miniature model fame got lured into reviewing laser engravers and similar via the Bambu Lab H2D’s laser module, he
found himself getting slightly nervous
about the whole ‘safety’ aspect of these lasers. After all, lasers can not only light stuff on fire, but it’s a well-known fact that even reflected laser light can be sufficient to cause permanent damage to your retinas. Or worse.
Since your eyes generally do not regenerate, it makes sense to get caught up on laser safety before turning on one of those plentiful-and-increasingly-affordable home laser systems for engraving and/or cutting.
While the issue of stuff catching on fire is readily solved by having a good CO2 extinguisher – and plan B options – at the ready, for safety glasses it’s significantly more complex. There’s not just the issue of finding glasses that block the wavelength of the laser system that you are using, but also with the right
optical density
(OD) rating. Every mm of the safety lens material can attenuate a certain amount of laser light at the given wavelength, so the OD rating of your laser safety goggles need to match the laser’s power output level, or you might be living with a false sense of security.
Finally, there is the issue of the smoke and fumes produced by these lasers as they obliterate the target material. Much of what is in this smoke you do not want to breathe in, even ignoring long-term dust and VOC exposure issues, so having a solid fume extraction setup and PPE as necessary are absolute necessities. As [Ross] puts it, you don’t want to breathe in the smell of regret today, for your future self to reflect on a decade from now.
Work safe, work smart, don’t become the
subject of a laser safety PSA
. | 25 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182182",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-09-20T06:48:55",
"content": "The lack of knowledge of laser safety by the general public is staggering.I ran across someone with an open-frame laser engraver operating it out in the open at a booth in a local mall. There were people stan... | 1,760,371,422.38406 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/19/the-inside-story-of-the-uks-great-cb-petrol-scam/ | The Inside Story Of The UK’s Great CB Petrol Scam | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"burner",
"cb",
"exploit",
"gasoline",
"linear",
"petrol scam",
"theft",
"uk"
] | Looking at gasoline prices today, it’s hard to believe that there was a time when 75 cents a gallon seemed outrageous. But that’s the way it was in the 70s, and when it tripped over a dollar, things got pretty dicey. Fuel theft was rampant, both from car fuel tanks — remember lockable gas caps? — and even from gas stations, where drive-offs became common, and unscrupulous employees found ways to trick the system into dispensing free gas.
But one method of fuel theft that escaped our attention was
the use of CB radios to spoof petrol pumps
, which [Ringway Manchester] details in his new video. The scam happened in the early 80s, only a few years after CB became legal in the UK but quite a while since illegal use had exploded. The trick involved a CB transceiver equipped with a so-called “burner,” a high-power and highly illegal linear amplifier used to boost the radiated power of the signal. When keyed up in the vicinity of dispensers with digital controls, the dispensing rate on the display would appear to slow down markedly, while the pump itself stayed at the same speed. The result was more fuel dispensed than the amount reported to the cashier.
If this sounds apocryphal, [Ringway] assures us that it wasn’t. When the spoofing was reported, authorities up to and including Scotland Yard investigated and found that it was indeed plausible. The problem appeared to be the powerful RF signal interfering with the pulses from the flowmeter on the dispenser. The UK had both 27 MHz and 934 MHz CB at the time; [Ringway] isn’t clear which CB band was used for the exploit, but we’d guess it was the former, in which case we can see how the signals would interfere. Another thing to keep in mind is that CB radios in the UK were FM, as opposed to AM and SSB in the United States. So we wonder if the same trick would have worked here.
At the end of the day, no matter how clever you are about it, theft is theft, and things probably aren’t going to go well for you if you try to pull this off today. Besides, it’s not likely that pumps haven’t been hardened against these sorts of attacks. Still, if you want a look inside a modern pump to see if you can find any weaknesses,
have at it
. Just don’t tell them where you heard about it. | 28 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181642",
"author": "alloydog",
"timestamp": "2025-09-19T11:06:54",
"content": "Did it really work?I heard many times of the owner of a dog who lived next door to someone’s uncle’s third-cousin twice removed who used a CB with boots to reset the pump price to zero.Never knew if it w... | 1,760,371,422.581072 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/19/dirty-pots-meet-power-tools/ | Dirty Pots, Meet Power Tools! | Tyler August | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"oscillating tool",
"polishing"
] | Let’s face it, nobody likes scrubbing, but what option do you have? You can’t exactly break out the grinder to clean off the remains of last nights dinner… right? Well, maybe not a grinder, but thanks to this hack by [Markus Opitz],
you can use an oscillating tool
.
It’s a simple enough hack: [Markus] modeled the attachment for his Bosch oscillating tool in Tinkercad, and created a bracket to hold a large metal binder clip. The clip attaches with a screw, and can hold whatever scrubbing pad your carpel-tunnel afflicted hands can’t bear to hold on to. He’s using a self-cleaning stainless-steel sponge.
One nice touch is a pair of protective lips on the jaws of the metal clip, to keep it from accidentally scratching the delicate surface under care. Of course if you have a drill or a Dremel handy you
can
buy attachments for polishing disks of various grits, but what’s the fun in that? Doing the dishes with a hacked-together oscillating tool just somehow seems more fun. Plus this way you can’t accidentally produce
an engine-turning pattern.
We don’t seem to have featured many hacks for these fun, buzzing, multi-purpose tools, so if you’ve got one
send us a tip.
We did feature an
oscillating cutter for CNC once
, but that was fully DIY. | 26 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181597",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2025-09-19T08:33:26",
"content": "I’m not sure this would be good for non-stick surfaces…Also I was amused to find that the headline made me think it was about deoxidising variable resistors! I think I’ve been watching too much Big Clive…... | 1,760,371,422.514728 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/18/a-gem-of-a-desktop-environment/ | A GEM Of A Desktop Environment | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"atari st",
"digital research",
"GEM"
] | Desktop environments are the norm as computer interfaces these days, but there was once a time when they were a futuristic novelty whose mere presence on a computer marked it out as something special. In the early 1980s you could buy an expensive but very fancy Mac from Apple, while on the PC there were early Windows versions, and GEM from Digital Research. It’s something of a footnote here in 2025, and some insight as to why comes from [Programming at the right level]
with a retrospective on the software
.
Coming from the perspective of an Atari user whose ST shipped with a version of GEM, it tracks the projects from its earliest roots with a Xerox employee, through development to launch on the PC and Atari ST. We learn about an Apple legal threat that resulted in the hobbled interface many of us remember from later GEM versions, and about the twists and turns in its path before the final dissolution of DR in the early 1990s.
From 2025 it’s clear that Windows won the PC desktop battle not by being special but by being the default; when GEM was an add-on extra it would have been a tough sell. The software was eventually made open-source by the eventual owner of the DR assets, Caldera (when they weren’t trying to torpedo Linux, presumably), and can be run today on
FreeDOS
.
GEM header image: Rolf Hartmann,
CC BY-SA 3.0
. | 25 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181580",
"author": "James Honey",
"timestamp": "2025-09-19T06:29:27",
"content": "Yep, remember GEM. I used to draw ‘mouse draw’ pictures in 16 shades of grey scale in GEM Paint. It felt like being in the future as a young boy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,371,422.31605 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/18/think-you-need-a-new-pc-for-windows-11-think-again/ | Think You Need A New PC For Windows 11? Think Again | Tyler August | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"operating system",
"Windows 11"
] | As the sun sets on Windows 10 support, many venues online decry the tsunami of e-waste Windows 11’s nonsensical hardware requirements are expected to create. Still more will offer advice: which Linux distribution is best for your aging PC? [Sean] from Action Retro has an alternate solution:
get a 20 year old Sun Workstation, and run Windows 11 on that.
The Workstation in question from 2005 is apparently among the first Sun made using AMD’s shiny new 64-bit Opteron processor. Since Windows has no legacy 32-bit support– something it shares with certain Linux distributions– this is amongst the oldest hardware that could conceivably install and run Redmond’s latest.
And it can! Not in unaltered form, of course– the real hack here is courtesy of [ntdevlabs], whose “Tiny11” project strips all the cruft from Windows 11, including its hardware compatibility checker. [ntdevlabs] has produced a Tiny11Builder script
that is available on GitHub
, but the specific version [Sean] used is
available on Archive.org.
[Sean] needed the archived version of Tiny11 because Windows 11 builds newer than 22H2 use the POPCNT operation, which was not present in AMD’s first revision of the x86_64 instruction set. POPCNT is part of Intel’s SSE4 extension from 2007, a couple years after this workstation shipped.
If you’re sick of being told to switch to Linux, but can’t stomach staying with Windows either, maybe check out Haiku,
which we reported as ready for daily driving early last year
. | 25 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181551",
"author": "scott_tx",
"timestamp": "2025-09-19T02:39:16",
"content": "Win10 LTSC. There, fixed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8181592",
"author": "volt-k",
"timestamp": "2025-09-19T08:05:56",
... | 1,760,371,422.634739 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/18/a-deep-dive-on-creepy-cameras/ | A Deep Dive On Creepy Cameras | Navarre Bartz | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"ai",
"AI countermeasure",
"AI poison",
"ALPR",
"automated license plate reader",
"computer vision",
"law enforcement",
"raspberry pi"
] | George Orwell might’ve predicted the surveillance state, but it’s still surprising how many entities took 1984 as a how-to manual instead of a cautionary tale. [Benn Jordan] decided to take a closer look at the creepy cameras invading our public spaces and
how to circumvent them
.
[Jordan] starts us off with an overview of how machine learning “AI” is used Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) cameras and some of the history behind their usage in the United States. Basically, when you drive by one of these cameras, an ” image segmentation model or something similar” detects the license plate and then runs optical character recognition (OCR) on the plate contents. It will also catalog any bumper stickers with the make and model of the car for a pretty good guess of it being your vehicle, even if the OCR isn’t 100% on the exact plate sequence.
Where the video gets really interesting is when [Jordan] starts disassembling, building, and designing countermeasures to these systems. We get a teardown of a Motorola ALPR for in-vehicle use that is better at being closed hardware than it is at reading license plates, and [Jordan] uses a Raspberry Pi 5, a Halo AI board, and You Only Look Once (YOLO) recognition software to build a “computer vision system that’s much more accurate than anything on the market for law enforcement” for $250.
[Jordan] was able to develop a transparent sticker that renders a license plate unreadable to the ALPR but still plainly visible to a human observer. What’s interesting is that depending on the pattern, the system could read it as either an incorrect alphanumeric sequence or miss detecting the license plate entirely. It turns out, filtering all the rectangles in the world to find just license plates is a tricky problem if you’re a computer. You can
find the code on his Github
, if you want to take a gander.
You’ve probably heard about using
IR LEDs to confuse security cameras
, but
what about yarn
? If you’re looking for more artistic uses for AI image processing, how about this
camera that only takes nudes
or this one that
generates a picture based on geographic data
? | 33 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181530",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-09-19T01:08:58",
"content": "We should set up decoys that use screens that project wanted criminals faces in from of the cameras with new ones every day.So many false positives and the police start ignoring the cameras.",
"pare... | 1,760,371,422.792807 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/18/enhanced-definition-tv-a-poor-mans-high-def/ | Enhanced Definition TV: “A Poor Man’s High-Def” | Maya Posch | [
"History"
] | [
"EDTV",
"hdtv"
] | Although to many of us the progression from ‘standard definition’ TV and various levels of high-definition at 720p or better seemed to happen smoothly around the turn of the new century, there was a far messier technological battle that led up to this. One of these contenders was Enhanced Definition TV (EDTV), which was 480p in either 4:3 or 16:9, as a step up from Standard Definition TV (SDTV) traditional TV quality. The convoluted history of EDTV and the long transition to proper HDTV is the subject of
a recent video
by [VWestlife].
One reason why many people aren’t aware of EDTV is because of marketing. With HDTV being the hot new bullet point to slap on a product, a TV being widescreen was often enough to market an EDTV with 480p as ‘HD’, not to mention the ‘HD-compatible’ bullet point that you could see everywhere.
That said, the support for digital 480p and ‘simplified 1080i’ signals of EDTV makes these displays still quite usable today, more than SDTV CRTs and LCDs that are usually limited to analog signals-only at regular NTSC, PAL or SECAM. It may not be HD, but at least it’s enhanced. | 14 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181481",
"author": "Nikolai",
"timestamp": "2025-09-18T21:28:46",
"content": "I had a Sony Trinitron Wega CRT TV 4×3 with 1080i and DVI Input. The playback quality from DVD via DVI port was significantly better that common RCA back then.The model was similar to KV-30XBR910. The spe... | 1,760,371,422.845303 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/18/worst-clock-ever-teaches-you-qr-codes/ | Worst Clock Ever Teaches You QR Codes | Elliot Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"arduino",
"library",
"qr code"
] | [WhiskeyTangoHotel]
wrote in with his newest clock build
— and he did warn us that it was minimalist and maybe less than useful. Indeed, it is nothing more than a super-cheap ESP32-C3 breakout board with an OLED screen and some code. Worse, you can’t even tell the time on it without pointing your cell phone at the QR code it generates. Plot twist: you skip the QR code and check the time on your phone.
But then we got to thinking, and there is actually a lot to learn from here on the software side. This thing pulls the time down from an NTP server, formats it into a nice human-readable string using
strftime
, throws that string into a QR code that’s generated on the fly, and then pushes the bits out to the screen. All in a handful of lines of code.
As always, the secret is in the libraries and how you use them, and we wanted to check out the QR code generator, but we couldn’t find an exact match for
QRCodeGenerator.h
. Probably the most popular library is the
Arduino QRCode library
by [ricmoo]. It’s bundled with Arduino, but labelled version 0.0.1, which we find a little bit modest given how widely it’s used. It also hasn’t been updated in eight years: proof that it just works?
That library drew from [nayuki]’s fantastically documented multi-language
QR-Code-generator library
, which should have you covered on any platform you can imagine, with additional third-party ports to languages you haven’t even heard of. That’s where we’d go for a non-Arduino project.
What library did [WTH] use? We hope to find out soon, but at least we found a couple good candidates, and it appears to be a version of one or the other.
We’ve seen a lot of projects where the hacker generates a QR code using some online tool, packs the bits into a C header array, and displays that. That’s fine when you only need a single static QR code, but absolutely limiting when you want to make something dynamic. You know, like an unreadable clock.
You will not be surprised to know that this isn’t the first
unreadable QR-code clock
we’ve featured here. But it’s definitely the smallest and most instructive. | 9 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181489",
"author": "El Gru",
"timestamp": "2025-09-18T21:41:30",
"content": "This could have been a paper printout of a QR code to a time website? Doesn’t even need a 555. /grinThe changing QR code is a neat thing, though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
... | 1,760,371,422.894261 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/19/bcachefs-is-now-a-dkms-module-after-exile-from-the-linux-kernel/ | BCacheFS Is Now A DKMS Module After Exile From The Linux Kernel | Maya Posch | [
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"BcacheFS",
"filesystem",
"linux kernel"
] | It’s been a tense few months for users of the BCacheFS filesystem, as amidst the occasional terse arguments and flowery self-praise on the Linux Kernel mailing list the future of this filesystem within the Linux kernel hung very much in the balance. After some initial confusion about what ‘externally maintained’ means in Linux parlance, it’s now clear that this means that BCacheFS has effectively been kicked out of the kernel as [Linus] promised and will ship as a DKMS module instead. The gory details of this change are discussed
in a recent video
by [Brodie Robertson].
We covered
the BCacheFS controversy
in the Linux world a few months ago, amidst reports of data loss and filesystem corruption among its users. Its lead developer, [Kent Overstreet], came to blows with [Linus Torvalds] on the LKML after [Kent] insisted on repeatedly pushing new features into kernel release candidate branches along with rather haughty statements on why he should be able to do this.
To make a long story short, [Linus] didn’t like this and froze BCacheFS support in the current kernel release with all future in-kernel development ceased. Distributions like SuSE have initially said that will disable BCacheFS starting in kernel version 6.17, meaning that users of BCacheFS may now have to install the DKMS module themselves. Some distributions like Arch are likely to include this DKMS module by default, which is something you want to check if you use this filesystem. | 46 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182145",
"author": "V",
"timestamp": "2025-09-20T04:52:52",
"content": "Finally. Nothings gonna teach this guy a lesson on testing, production and maturity. I normally do not like or brown nose Linus but this guy pushed the envelope too much, I don’t care how many people rely on it... | 1,760,371,422.722906 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/19/test-pattern-generator-for-scart-and-rgb-tvs/ | Test Pattern Generator For SCART And RGB TVs | Tyler August | [
"hardware",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"analog tv",
"crt",
"pattern generator",
"rp2040",
"test pattern"
] | CRTs don’t last forever, and neither do the electronics that drive them. When you have a screen starting to go wonky, then you need a way to troubleshoot which is at fault. A great tool for that is a pattern generator, but they’re not the easiest to come by these days. [baritonomarchetto] needed a pattern generator to help repair his favourite arcade machine, and decided to make his own
DIY Portable RGB CRT Test Pattern Generator.
One of the test patterns available from the device. This TV appears to be in good working order.
While he does cite [Nicholas Murray]’s
RP2040 test pattern generator
as a starting point (which itself builds on the
PicoVGA library once featured here
), he couldn’t just build one. That worthy project only outputs VGA and because [baritonomarchetto] is in Europe, he needed a SCART connector. Since he’s working on arcade machines, he needed non-SCART RGB signals, too. The arcade signals need to be at higher voltages (TLL level) than the RGB signal you’d find in SCART and VGA.
The upshot is while he’s using [Nicholas]’s code for the RP2040, he’s rolled his own PCB, including a different resistor ladders to provide the correct voltages depending on if he’s dealing with a home TV or arcade CRT. To make life easier, the whole thing runs off a 9V battery.
If you’re wondering what the point of these test patterns is, check out this
1981-vintage pattern generator
for some context from the era. If a digital replica doesn’t float your boat, it is possible to recreate
the original analog circuitry
that generated these patterns back when the CRT was king. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8182064",
"author": "David H",
"timestamp": "2025-09-20T00:28:52",
"content": "Fascinating project, and it reminded me of how huge and bulky SCART was. Truly an interface designed by a committee of bureaucrats :)As far as test patterns go, to those of us who are British and of a cer... | 1,760,371,423.049196 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/19/haasoscope-pro-open-everything-2-ghz-usb-oscilloscope/ | Haasoscope Pro: Open-Everything 2 GHz USB Oscilloscope | John Elliot V | [
"hardware"
] | [
"Haasoscope Pro",
"Open-Everything",
"usb oscilloscope"
] | Our hacker [haas] is at it again with the
Haasoscope Pro
, a full redesign of the original Haasoscope, which was a successful Crowd Supply campaign back in 2018.
This new Pro version was funded on Crowd Supply in April this year and increases the bandwidth from 60 MHz to 2 GHz, the vertical resolution from 8 to 12 bits, and the sample rate from 125 MS/s to 3.2 GS/s. Selling for $999 it claims to be the first open-everything, affordable, high-bandwidth, real-time sampling USB oscilloscope.
The firmware and software are under active development and
a new version was released yesterday
.
The hardware has an impressive array of features packed into a slick aluminum case with quiet 40 mm internal fan and 220 x 165 x 35 mm (8.66 x 6.5 x 1.38 in) form-factor weighing in at 0.9 kg (1.98 lbs). Also available is an active probe supporting up to 2 GHz analog bandwidth.
The Haasoscope Pro is miles ahead of alternatives such as
this USB oscilloscope
from back in 2010 and you can find a bunch of support material on GitHub:
drandyhaas/HaasoscopePro
. | 34 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181946",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-09-19T20:22:04",
"content": "In what universe is a 3.2 GS/s scope a 2 GHz scope?Credibility spent.Nyquist to the head.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8181958",
"author": ... | 1,760,371,423.120671 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/19/unobtanium-no-more-perhaps-we-already-have-all-the-elements-we-need/ | Unobtanium No More; Perhaps We Already Have All The Elements We Need | Jenny List | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"mining",
"rare earth metals"
] | It’s been a trope of the news cycle over the past decade or so, that there’s some element which we all need but which someone else has the sole supply, and that’s a Bad Thing. It’s been variously lithium, or rare earth elements, and the someone else is usually China, which makes the perfect mix of ingredients for a good media scare story. Sometimes these things cross from the financial pages to the geopolitical stage, even at times being cited in bellicose language. But is there really a shortage?
The Colorado School of Mines say perhaps not, as
they’ve released a paper from an American perspective pointing out that the USA already has everything it needs
but perhaps doesn’t realize it. We’re surprised it seems to have passed unnoticed in a world preoccupied with such matters.
We’ve covered a few stories about mineral shortages ourselves, and
some of them even point to the same conclusion
reached by the School of Mines, that those mineral riches lie not in the mines of China but in the waste products closer to American industry. In particular they point to the tailings from existing mines, a waste product of which there is a huge quantity to hand, and which once stripped of the metal they were mined for still contain enough of the sought-after ones to more than satisfy need.
The history of mining from medieval lead miners processing Roman tailings to 19th century gold miners discovering that their tailings were silver ore and on to the present day, includes many similar stories. Perhaps the real story is economic both in the publicity side and the mining side, a good scare story sells papers, and it’s just cheaper to buy your molybdenum from China rather than make your own. We’ll keep you posted if we see news of a tailings bonanza in the Rockies. | 81 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181889",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-09-19T18:41:38",
"content": "The stories are a wake up call, or an attempt at least, to point out that you shouldn’t lean on foreign powers such as China for your basic sustenance.One of the reasons why such basic resources aren’t sourc... | 1,760,371,423.005879 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/19/hackaday-podcast-episode-338-smoothing-3d-prints-reading-cnc-joints-and-detecting-spicy-shrimp/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 338: Smoothing 3D Prints, Reading CNC Joints, And Detecting Spicy Shrimp | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up over the tubes to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous seven days or so.
In Hackaday news, we’ve got a new contest running!
Read all about the 2025 Component Abuse Challenge
, sponsored by DigiKey, and
check out the contest page
for all the details. In sad news,
American Science & Surplus are shuttering online sales
, leaving just the brick and mortar stores in Wisconsin and Illinois.
On What’s That Sound, it’s a results show, which means Kristina gets to take a stab at it. She missed the mark, but that’s okay, because [Montana Mike] knew that it was the theme music for the show
Beakman’s World
, which was described by one contestant as “Bill Nye on crack”.
After that, it’s on to the hacks and such, beginning with a really cool way to smooth your 3D prints in situ. JWe take a much closer look at that talking robot’s typewriter-inspired mouth from about a month ago. Then we discuss several awesome technological feats such as running code on a PAX credit card payment machine, using the alphabet as joinery, and the invention of UTF-8 in general. Finally, we discuss the detection of spicy shrimp, and marvel at the history of email.
Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Download in
DRM-free MP3
and savor at your leisure.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 338 Show Notes:
News:
2025 Hackaday Component Abuse Challenge: Let The Games Begin!
Hackaday.IO — Component Abuse Challenge
American Science And Surplus Ends Online Sales
What’s that Sound?
Congratulations to [Montana Mike], the Beakmaniest of them all!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Smooth! Non-Planar 3D Ironing
A Closer Look Inside A Robot’s Typewriter-Inspired Mouth
Running Code On A PAX Credit Card Payment Machine
Jointly Is A Typeface Designed For CNC Joinery
Complex Wood Joints, Thanks To New Software’s Interactive Features
50 Digital Wood Joints by Jochen Gros – WINTERDIENST
Original Mac Limitations Can’t Stop You From Running AI Models
UTF-8 Is Beautiful
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Oil-Based Sprengel Pump Really Sucks
Reverse-Engineering The Milwaukee M18 Diagnostics Protocol
A 10″ Telescope, Because You Only Live Once
USB-C PD Decoded: A DIY Meter And Logger For Power Insights
Kristina’s Picks:
Making A Laptop With A Mechanical Keyboard
Hosting A Website On A Disposable Vape
When Is Your Pyrex Not The Pyrex You Expect?
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Naturally Radioactive Food And Safe Food Radiation Levels
Forgotten Internet: The Story Of Email
Wikipedia — Juno Online Services | 8 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181867",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-09-19T18:19:04",
"content": "Regarding radiation damage: “Statistically speaking, it is the right thing to do”.This is assuming that the means to mitigate the problem are themselves problem free – that you can only do good. Over-reactin... | 1,760,371,423.213922 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/19/imagining-the-cps-1-an-early-70s-4-bit-microcomputer-from-canada/ | Imagining The CPS-1: An Early 70s 4-bit Microcomputer From Canada | John Elliot V | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"4-bit Microcomputer",
"CPS-1",
"Microsystems International Ltd",
"MIL 7114",
"York University Computer Museum"
] | [Michael Gardi] wrote in to let us know about his project:
CPS-1: Imagining An Early 70s 4-bit Microcomputer
.
The CPS-1 was the first Canadian microprocessor-based computer. It was built by Microsystems International Ltd. (MIL) in Ottawa between 1972 and 1973 and it is unknown how many were made and in what configurations. The CPS-1 supported a 12-bit address bus and a 4-bit data bus. MIL also developed the supporting hardware including RAM. The processor was called the MIL 7114.
[Michael] worked in collaboration with [Zbigniew Stachniak] from York University Computer Museum. [Zbigniew] had developed a
MIL CPS-1 Emulator
and [Michael]’s job was to implement a front panel hardware interface for the emulator which runs on a Raspberry Pi. The only complication: there are no remaining CPS-1 computers, and no known photographs, so no one can say for sure what a real front panel might have looked like!
With a bit of guess work and 3D printing, as well as some inspiration from contemporaneous hardware such as the DEC PDP-11, [Michael] came up with an implementation. He used an IO extender HAT which adds 32 IO pins to the existing Pi GPIO pins that are accessible via an 3-wire I2C interface. This was enough hardware to support the 26 switches and 29 LEDs on the panel. There’s a brief demo of the custom printed switches in the video embedded below.
If you’re interested in old school 4-bit tech you might also like to check out
4-bit Single Board Computer Based On The Intel 4004 Microprocessor
. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181942",
"author": "regent",
"timestamp": "2025-09-19T20:13:30",
"content": "I love the look of this faceplate. Now I want to build one, but use the interface for something like home automation!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,371,423.162474 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/19/this-week-in-security-the-shai-hulud-worm-shadowleak-and-inside-the-great-firewall/ | This Week In Security: The Shai-Hulud Worm, ShadowLeak, And Inside The Great Firewall | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Ad Fraud",
"NPM",
"prompt injection",
"This Week in Security"
] | Hardly a week goes by that there isn’t a story to cover about malware getting published to a repository. Last week it was millions of downloads on NPM, but this week it’s something much more concerning. Malware published on NPM is now
looking for NPM tokens, and propagating to other NPM packages when found
. Yes, it’s a worm, jumping from one NPM package to another, via installs on developer machines.
It does other things too, like grabbing all the secrets it can find when installed on a machine. If the compromised machine has access to a Github account, a new repo is created named
Shai-Hulud
, borrowed from the name of the sandworms from Dune. The collected secrets and machine info gets uploaded here, and a workflow also uploads any available GitHub secrets to the
webhook.site
domain.
How many packages are we talking about? At least 187, with some reports of over 500 packages compromised. The immediate attack has been contained, as NPM has worked to remove the compromised packages, and apparently has added filtering code that blocks the upload of compromised packages.
So far there hasn’t been an official statement on the worm from NPM or its parent companies, GitHub or Microsoft. Malicious packages uploaded to NPM is definitely nothing new. But this is the first time we’ve seen a worm that specializes in NPM packages. It’s not a good step for the trustworthiness of NPM or the direct package distribution model.
Token Impersonation in Azure
There’s an interesting write-up from [Dirk-jan Mollema] detailing
his findings regarding Azure impersonation tokens and how to abuse them
. This is about the Entra ID service, the identity and access management component of the Azure cloud. Azure has a function that allows a service like Exchange to generate an actor token, allowing the service to interact with the rest of Azure on behalf of a user.
These tokens are just signed JSON Web Tokens (JWTs). For a service to actually use one of these tokens, it’s embedded inside yet another, unsigned JWT. This outer token container has multiple fields indicating the the tenant that signed the inner token and the tenant the request is intended for. You may already wonder, what happens if we could get our hands on one of these double-wrapped tokens, and manipulate the target tenant field?
If an attacker can discover the tenant ID and a valid
netId
for a user in the victim tenant, one of these impersonation tokens could be generated from the attacker-owned tenant, and then manipulated to point to the victim tenant. From there, the attacker could perform any action as that user. It was an extremely significant flaw, and Microsoft pushed an immediate patch within days. The CVE scores a perfect 10 base score in the CVSS 3.1 scale.
ShadowLeak and Prompt Injection, the Attack That Won’t Go Away
There’s yet another example of weaponizing prompt injections against LLMs, in the form of
ShadowLeak
. And again, it’s the case where agentic AI can fall to social engineering.
The setup is that the AI is handling incoming emails, and the prompt is hidden inside an incoming email, perhaps as white text on a white background. The real challenge here isn’t sneaking the prompt in, but how to exfiltrate data afterwards. OpenAI’s Deep Research agent includes
browser.open
, to allow the AI to interact with the Internet. And of course, this gives the agent the ability to send data to a remote endpoint.
Firewall Warnings
SonicWall has announced that their MySonicWall
systems were breached
, and customers have been warned that their firewall configuration backups may have been compromised. These backups appear to include passwords.
Watchguard Firebox firewalls have an
out-of-bounds write that can allow Remote Code Execution (RCE)
on firewalls running VPNs with IKEv2. A fix is available for the units that are still actively supported, and it’s possible to mitigate against the flaw.
Inside The Great Wall
There was a huge, 600 GB leak last week, of
source code and information about the Great Firewall of China
. If you click through, the 600 GB leak is available to download, but it’s not something to download and interact with lightly. Put simply, it’s a lot of data produced by level state-sponsored actors, dealing with rather sensitive capabilities.
Among the non-source files, there are some interesting details, such as how the Chinese firewall has been exported to multiple other countries. The source code itself is still being analyzed, and so far it’s an interesting look into the cat and mouse game that has been long played between the Chinese government and VPN technologies. This leak will likely take quite some time to fully analyze, but promises to provide a significant look into the internals of the Great Firewall.
Bits and Bytes
LG TVs running WebOS had a fun issue,
where plugging in a USB drive exposed the files on a web endpoint
. The filename to download is specified via a parameter to that url, and that parameter doesn’t do path traversal filtering. This gives arbitrary read access to the whole device filesystem.
Google has
uncovered and then squashed the SlopAds advertising fraud campaign
. This campaign was a collection of apps that presented themselves as hastily made, “AI slop” apps. But when installed, these apps clicked as fast as they could on ads that paid out for the attackers. This represents 224 malicious applications removed, and was resulting in 2.3 billion ad hits per day. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181809",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2025-09-19T16:31:41",
"content": "FYI, from a search : Npm stands for Node Package Manager, which is a tool used to manage JavaScript packages…I didn’t have a clue what that stood for or what it applied too.",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,371,423.259025 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/17/its-a-variable-capacitor-but-not-as-we-know-it/ | It’s A Variable Capacitor, But Not As We Know It | Jenny List | [
"Parts",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"capacitor",
"radio",
"variable capacitor"
] | Radio experimenters often need a variable capacitor to tune their circuits, as the saying goes, for maximum smoke. In decades past these were readily available from almost any scrap radio, but the varicap diode and then the PLL have removed the need for them in consumer electronics. There have been various attempts at building variable capacitors, and here’s [radiofun232]
with a novel approach
.
A traditional tuning capacitor has a set of meshed semicircular plates that have more of their surface facing each other depending on how far their shaft is turned. The capacitor presented in the first video below has two plates joined by a hinge in a similar manner to the covers of a book. It’s made of tinplate, and the plates can be opened or closed by means of a screw.
The result is a capacitor with a range from 50 to 150 picofarads, and in the second video we can see it used with a simple transistor oscillator to make a variable frequency oscillator. This can form the basis of a simple direct conversion receiver.
We like this device, it’s simple and a bit rough and ready, but it’s a very effective. If you’d like to see another unusual take on a variable capacitor,
take a look at this one using drinks cans
. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181163",
"author": "Charles Springer",
"timestamp": "2025-09-18T00:06:22",
"content": "Mann-Russell Electronics of Tacoma, WA made RF gluing machines for wood glues. Hand held and also very large for things like their continuous beam presses that made architectural wood beams. The ... | 1,760,371,423.578713 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/17/smooth-non-planar-3d-ironing/ | Smooth! Non-Planar 3D Ironing | Elliot Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"ironing",
"non-planar"
] | Is 2025 finally the year of non-planar 3D printing? Maybe it won’t have to be if [Ten Tech] gets his way!
Ironing is the act of going over the top surface of your print again with the nozzle, re-melting it flat. Usually, this is limited to working on boring horizontal surfaces, but no more!
This post-processing script from [Tenger Technologies]
, coupled with a heated, ball-shaped attachment, lets you iron the top of arbitrary surfaces.
At first, [Ten Tech] tried out non-planar ironing with a normal nozzle. Indeed,
we’ve seen exactly this approach taken last year
. But that approach fails at moderate angles because the edge on the nozzle digs in, and the surrounding hot-end parts drag.
[Ten Tech]’s special sauce is taking inspiration from the ball-end mill finishing step in subtractive CNC work: he affixed the round tip of a rivet on the end of a nozzle, and insulating that new tool turned it into an iron that could smooth arbitrary curvy top layers.
One post-processing script later, and the proof of concept is working.
Check out the video below
to see it in action. As it stands, this requires a toolhead swap and the calibration of a whole bunch of new parameters, but it’s a very promising new idea for the community to iterate on. We love the idea of a dedicated tool and post-processing smoother script working together in concert.
Will 2025 be the year of non-planar 3DP? We’ve seen not one but two superb multi-axis non-planar printer designs so far this year:
one from [Joshua Bird]
and
the other from [Daniel] of [Fractal Robotics]
. In both cases, they are not just new machines, but are also supported with novel open-source slicers to make them work. Now [Ten Tech]’s ironer throws its hat in the ring. What will we see next?
Thanks to [Gustav Persson] for the tip! | 25 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181092",
"author": "George Graves",
"timestamp": "2025-09-17T20:54:22",
"content": "The more I 3d print, the less enamored I am with it. It’s great for somethings, and sucks at others. The problem is that people are using it for everything under the sun. Did that happen with ou... | 1,760,371,423.519208 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/17/floss-weekly-episode-847-this-is-networking/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 847: This Is Networking | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"FLOSS Weekly",
"networking"
] | This week
Jonathan
and
Rob
chat with Tom Herbert about XDP2! It’s the brand new framework for making networking really fast, making parsers really simple, and making hardware network acceleration actually useful with Linux.
https://medium.com/@tom_84912/xdp2-this-changes-everything-at-least-for-ai-ml-infrastructure-850c1ba82771
https://medium.com/@tom_84912/programming-a-parser-in-xdp2-is-as-easy-as-pie-8f26c8b3e704
Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show right on
our YouTube Channel
? Have someone you’d like us to interview? Let us know, or contact the guest and have them contact us!
Take a look at the schedule here
.
Direct Download
in DRM-free MP3.
If you’d rather read along,
here’s the transcript for this week’s episode
.
Places to follow the FLOSS Weekly Podcast:
Spotify
RSS
Theme music: “Newer Wave” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under
Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,371,423.45637 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/17/forgotten-internet-the-story-of-email/ | Forgotten Internet: The Story Of Email | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Retrocomputing",
"Slider"
] | [
"AOL",
"arpanet",
"email",
"imap",
"pop",
"smtp"
] | It is a common occurrence in old movies: Our hero checks in at a hotel in some exotic locale, and the desk clerk says, “Ah, Mr. Barker, there’s a letter for you.” Or maybe a telegram. Either way, since humans learned to write, they’ve been obsessed with getting their writing in the hands of someone else. Back when we were wondering what people would do if they had a computer in their homes, most of us never guessed it would be: write to each other. Yet that turned out to be the killer app, or, at least, one of them.
What’s interesting about the hotel mail was that you had to plan ahead and know when your recipient would be there. Otherwise, you had to send your note to their home address, and it would have to wait. Telegrams were a little better because they were fast, but you still had to know where to send the message.
Early Days
An ad from the 1970s with a prominent Telex number
In addition to visiting a telegraph office, or post office, to send a note somewhere, commercial users started wanting something better at the early part of the twentieth century. This led to dedicated teletype lines. By 1933, though, a network of Teletype machines — Telex — arose. Before the Internet, it was very common for a company to advertise its Telex number — or TWX number, a competing network from the phone company and, later, Western Union — if they dealt with business accounts.
Fax machines came later, and the hardware was cheap enough that the average person was slightly more likely to have a fax machine or the use of one than a Telex.
Computers
It is hard to remember, but through much of this time, you were probably more likely to have access to a fax machine than a computer that was connected to anyone outside of your immediate office. In 1962, MIT’s Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) had a way for users to share files, and, of course, they did. By 1962, the IBM 1440 could send messages from terminal to terminal. Not really email, but it was a start.
People sharing files on CTSS led to a MAIL command by 1965. Each user had a local file called, in a fit of originality, MAIL BOX. Anyone could append messages to the file, but only the owner could read or edit it. Other early systems got the idea quickly.
By 1971, ARPANET — the granddaddy of the Internet — got SNDMSG to handle mail between networked computers. It could also transfer files. Each address had a local part and a remote hostname. In between? The “@” sign. The first message went between two PDP-10 machines that were in sight of each other. The developer, Ray Tomlinson, is often credited with inventing modern email. He would continue to drive mail innovation as part of the International Network Working Group.
Tomlinson’s program caused an explosion of similar mail programs. Unix had one. IBM was developing what would eventually become its office suite for mainframe computers. The University of Illinois had
PLATO
IV, which offered, among other things, mail.
The Rest of the World
In 1978, CompuServe started offering mail, primarily aimed at commercial customers. In the next year, they’d launch MicroNET, allowing people to dial into a computer to, among other things, send and receive mail.
By 1981, Compuserve rebranded its mail service as EMAIL, although it probably wasn’t the first to coin that term. That same year, IBM rolled out its internal system to the rest of the world. PROFS was widely used in the business world, and it wasn’t uncommon to hear people say they “sent you a PROFS.”
The biggest differentiator, of course, was if you could send mail to other people using your (presumably big) computer, other people on your network, or anywhere. There were plenty of schemes to get local mail off the local machine, like
UUCP
, for example.
The 1980s saw an explosion of LANs that had their own servers, and these usually offered, at least, local mail services. Of course, you could also buy software from Microsoft, Lotus, or others to provide mail.
The Internet
Back then, normal people didn’t have access to the Internet. That’s how companies like CompuServe, and their main competitor The Source, managed to entice people to sign up for services. They would often have gateways to other mail systems and, eventually, the Internet, too. But 1985 would see the formation of Quantum Link. Never heard of them? Maybe you’ll remember in 1989 when they changed their name to America Online and, later, AOL.
For whatever reason, AOL took over that market. By 1995, AOL had around three million active users, and its signature “You’ve got mail!” audio clip, voiced by the late Elwood Edwards, was a cultural icon. In addition to email, it pioneered instant messaging and flooded the market with free trial disks.
Of course, people started getting access to the actual Internet, so all the specialized mail providers suffered.
Milestones
The first head of state to send an email? Queen Elizabeth II, back in 1976. Jimmy Carter was the first known presidential candidate to use email in 1976. Astronauts on the Space Shuttle (STS-43 in 1991) were the first to send email from space. It was pretty complicated, as Scott Manley discusses in the video below.
Less inspiring, Gary Thuerk sent the first spam message over ARPANET in 1978. The topic? A new product for DEC.
Modern Mail
Modern mail primarily relies on SMTP, IMAP, and, sometimes POP. Surprisingly, these protocols date back to the early 1980s, but were mostly part of the ARPANET until the Internet opened up.
Of course, the protocols have changed with time. E-mail needed to adapt to TCP/IP and DNS. Today, the protocols have provisions for validating senders to help stop spam, as well as to encrypt messages. But at the core, the technology that moves mail around the Internet is mostly unchanged. The nice thing: you can send to someone without knowing where they’ll be and when they’ll be there. Mr. Barker doesn’t have to get a packet from the front desk anymore. | 25 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181018",
"author": "Hariedo",
"timestamp": "2025-09-17T17:10:23",
"content": "Glossed right over the pre-DNS considerations of how mail got routed. Before you had a phonebook of IP addresses to know ‘prep.ai.mit.edu’ by its number, you had to give your data a route. Instead ofjoe@... | 1,760,371,423.331709 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/17/american-science-and-surplus-ends-online-sales/ | American Science And Surplus Ends Online Sales | Tom Nardi | [
"News"
] | [
"mail order",
"store closing",
"surplus"
] | For nearly 90 years, American Science and Surplus has been shipping out weird and wonderful stuff to customers far and wide. In the pre-Internet days, getting their latest catalog in the mail — notable for its hand-drawn illustrations and whimsical style — was always exciting. From Romanian gas masks to odd-ball components, there was no telling what new wonders each issue would bring. In time, the printed catalog gave way to a website, but the eclectic offerings and hand-drawn images remained.
Unfortunately, those days are officially no more. Earlier this week, American Science and Surplus had to make
the difficult decision to shutter their entire mail order division
. It’s no secret that the company as a whole had been struggling over the last few years. Like many small businesses they were hit hard during the COVID-19 years, and while they made it through that particular storm, they faced skyrocketing operational costs.
Earlier this year, the company turned to crowd funding to help stay afloat.
That they were able to raise almost $200,000
speaks to how much support they had from their community of customers, but while it put the company in a better position, the writing was on the wall. The warehouse space required to support their mail order operations was simply too expensive to remain viable.
But it’s not all bad news. At least two of the company’s physical storefronts, located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Geneva, Illinois will remain open and operate under the ownership of the employees themselves. The fate of the third store in Park Ridge, Illinois is less clear. They currently don’t have a buyer, but it sounds like they haven’t given up hope of selling it yet.
Anyone in the Illinois area feel like getting some buddies together and buying a turn-key surplus business? | 29 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180963",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2025-09-17T15:39:21",
"content": "Apropos of this, the Marlin P. Jones company also recently went out of business.Electronic Goldmine is still operating.Anyone have a more electronics surplus outfits that do mail order?",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,371,423.706981 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/17/naturally-radioactive-food-and-safe-food-radiation-levels/ | Naturally Radioactive Food And Safe Food Radiation Levels | Maya Posch | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Science"
] | [
"food safety",
"ionizing radiation"
] | There was a recent recall of so-called ‘radioactive shrimp’ that were potentially contaminated with cesium-137 (Cs-137). But contamination isn’t an all-or-nothing affair, so you might wonder exactly how hot the shrimp were. As it turns out, the
FDA’s report makes clear
that the contamination was far below the legal threshold for Cs-137. In addition, not all of the recalled shrimp was definitely contaminated, as disappointing as all of this must be to those who had hoped to gain radioactive Super Shrimp powers.
After US customs detected elevated radiation levels in the shrimp that was imported from Indonesia, entry for it was denied, yet even for these known to be contaminated batches the measured level was below 68 Bq/kg. The FDA limit here is 1,200 Bq/kg, and the radiation level from the potassium-40 in bananas is around the same level as these ‘radioactive shrimp’, which explains why bananas can trigger radiation detectors when they pass through customs.
But this event raised many questions about how sensible these radiation checks are when even similar or higher levels of all-natural radioactive isotopes in foods pass without issues. Are we overreacting? How hot is too hot?
Healthy Radiation, Normal Radiation
Pandalus montagui
in an aquarium. (Credit:
Claude Nozères
)
Ionizing radiation from nuclear sources forms both an unavoidable and an essential part of food safety. The practice of
food irradiation
involves exposing food to gamma rays in order to destroy anything that is still alive in it, like bacteria and other potentially harmful microorganisms. Much like heating with pasteurization and similar practices that aim to wipe out these microorganisms, this can render food safe for consumption for much longer than would otherwise be possible.
Whereas food irradiation does not actually introduce radioactive isotopes to the foodstuffs, these isotopes can still enter prospective food in other ways. Long before these infamous Indonesian shrimp – likely
prawns
– found themselves post-mortem on their way to the US, these critters were either happily galivanting about in the Pacific Ocean or less happily stuck in a shrimp farm, doing all the things that pre-mortem shrimp do. This includes consuming a lot of shrimp food, starting with plankton and moving up to worms, bivalves and other crustaceans as they mature.
All of these food sources along with the water that they live in contain some level of radioactive isotopes, ranging from the uranium-238 that’s plentiful in seawater, to tritium from atmospheric sources, and manmade isotopes like cesium-137 from nuclear weapons testing. Most isotopes, including Cs-137, do not bioaccumulate: in humans Cs-137 has a biological half-life of about 70 days . This suggests that this particular batch of whiteleg shrimp ingested some kind of relatively Cs-137-rich food shortly before harvesting.
The
Castle Bravo
15 MT blast on March 1, 1954. (Source:
USDOE
)
The Pacific Ocean area was a particularly prolific area when it came to
nuclear weapons testing
, with of the worldwide approximately 2,121 tests so far the US and France detonating a significant number in the Pacific. Tests such as the 15 megaton
Castle Bravo
experiment featuring the ironically named SHRIMP device, which significantly raised the amount of
carbon-14
(C-14), Cs-137, and strontium-90 (Sr-90) in the region. Due to its bioaccumulating nature, Sr-90 with its 29-year half life poses a particular risk, while C-14 with its 5,700-year half life is generally deemed of no consequence, on par with the normal intake of potassium-40 as both isotopes behave in a very similar way in the body.
Although the amount of Cs-137 from these tests has reduced significantly due to natural radioactive decay, this provides one potential path through which these and many other isotopes from both manmade and natural sources can find themselves inside small crustaceans prior to their untimely demise at the hand of bipedal primates with an appetite for seafood.
The one question that remains here is how we can know that a certain amount of an isotope per kg of foodstuff is too much for human consumption. How dangerous is the radioactive potassium-40 in bananas really?
Setting Limits
We earlier listed the FDA’s 1,200 Bq/kg as the limit for the
Cs-137
. A radioactive source rates one Becquerel if it undergoes
one disintegration event per second
, and dividing this by the weight gives a rough measure of radiation density. But all decay biproducts aren’t created equally. If we look at the
FDA guidance documents
pertaining to radionuclides in imported food, we can see that this listed limit pertains to the so-called Derived Intervention Levels (DILs), superseding the older Levels of Concern (LOCs). The same document lists the DILs for other isotopes, including:
Sr-90
at 160 Bq/kg.
Iodine-131
at 170 Bq/kg.
Cs-134
+
Cs-137
at 1,200 Bq/kg.
Pu-238
+
Pu-239
+
Am-241
at 2 Bq/kg.
What these isotopes have in common is that they are generally only produced by artificial sources, while omitting a very common natural isotope like
potassium-40
(K-40) which only forms the third-largest source of natural background radiation after thorium-232 and uranium-238. Since K-40 is readily present in soil and anywhere else that other potassium isotopes are present, it’s practically unavoidable to consume significant amounts of K-40 each day, regardless of whether you’re a crustacean, plant or mammal.
Potassium-40 decay scheme. (Credit: Tubas-en,
Wikimedia
)
K-40 is both a beta and gamma emitter, with approximately 140 grams of it present at any given time in a 70 kg adult human body, where it is responsible for an approximate constant 4,000 Bq of radiation.
Despite the long half-life of 1.248 billion years, K-40’s prevalence makes up for this sluggish nuclear decay rate, with around 4,000 of such disintegration events happening inside an adult human body each second, as a K-40 nucleus decays into either argon-40 or calcium-40 via gamma or beta decay respectively.
Cesium-137 decay into barium via one of two routes. (Credit: Tubas-en,
Wikimedia
)
We can contrast this with Cs-137’s 30 year half-life and somewhat similar decay into barium. Nearly 95% of Cs-137 nuclei decay into the metastable barium-137m via beta decay, before decaying into the stable barium-137 via gamma decay. The remaining 5% decay immediately via beta decay into this stable nucleus.
The much shorter half-life and primary gamma decay route make Cs-137 significantly more radiologically active than K-40. Yet while more gamma radiation may sound worse, one has to remember that the biological impact for radiation exposure once ingested is flipped around. For example, while the very powerful alpha radiation is luckily stopped by the top layers of our skin and dissipates its energy mostly in dead skin cells, you don’t want the same to happen to living cells like the inside of your lungs or various other soft issues, with alpha radiation absolutely cooking the nearest layers of cells.
This is where gamma decay ironically helps to distribute the radiation exposure from Cs-137 somewhat, while also complicating the comparison with K-40, as that isotope decays mostly via beta decay and thus can potentially do more damage per event to local tissue as beta radiation does not travel as far through the body.
Overabundance Of Caution
The
American Nuclear Society (ANS) article
on the “contaminated shrimp” event probably puts this event in best context. Normally shrimp from the Pacific region contains some level of Cs-137, but these recent batches caught the attention at the importing ports due to a 100x higher level of Cs-137 than normally seen. That sounds like a problem, but it only places the shrimp roughly in line with bananas.
A
2023 study
performed in Poland found that of animal products produced in that country, cattle muscle tissue showed Cs-137 levels up to 23.5 Bq/kg (wet weight), sheep nearly 50 Bq/kg, and in wild game animals some muscle tissue scored well over 4,000 Bq/kg. All of which place these commonly consumed animal tissues well above the typical value for Indonesian shrimp, and either in the ballpark or significantly above that of the ‘contaminated’ shrimp.
Threshold Models
The LNT model versus other models and measurements. (Source:
CNSC
)
Government regulations pertaining to radiation exposure are most often based on the linear no-threshold (
LNT
) model, which extrapolates down from very high radiation doses where we can measure the damage more easily. But it does so linearly, making the assumption that ten multiple small doses, even if they are spread out over time, are equivalent to one exposure that is ten times as strong.
Recent studies have suggested that below 100 mSv there are
no observable effects
, which suggests that a model that incorporates a threshold might make more sense for radiological contamination of food.
The National Academy of Science report on low levels of radiation from 2005
, on which most of the US regulations are based, at the time rejected the threshold model due to insufficient evidence. They also cite studies where very small doses are claimed to have negative effects on children still in the womb, suggesting that the lower threshold may not be uniform across different populations.
Even if a lower threshold does exist, and there is an
increasing push
by scientists for moving past the LNT, establishing the exact value for this threshold is difficult. Below a certain dosage, there just isn’t significant epidemiological data. You cannot prove a negative: “below this level there
will be
no increased risk of cancer”. One can only say that no excess risk was detected in this or that particular study.
Add in sensitivity about manmade radioisotopes in drinking water, food, and anything else that is sold or presented to the public, and most governments take the LNT approach even if it is likely to be very conservative. And that, in short, is why we got a ‘radioactive’ shrimp recall, when eating that banana might arguably be more hazardous for you. | 25 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180943",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-09-17T15:02:01",
"content": "Even if the LNT model is true, below a certain point where we cannot even measure the effect because it’s so small that it’s hard to show even in large multi-decade studies, the question becomesdoes it even ... | 1,760,371,423.7758 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/17/oil-based-sprengel-pump-really-sucks/ | Oil-Based Sprengel Pump Really Sucks | Tyler August | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"pump",
"vacuum",
"vacuum pump"
] | Have you heard of the Sprengel pump? It’s how they drew hard vacuum back before mechanical pumps were perfected — the first light bulbs had their vacuums drawn with Sprengel pumps, for example. It worked by using droplets of a particular liquid to catch air particles, and push them out a narrow tube, thereby slowly evacuating a chamber. The catch is that that liquid used to be mercury, which isn’t something many of us have on hand in kilogram quantities anymore. [Gabriel Wolffe] had the brainwave that one might substitute modern vacuum pump oil for mercury, and built a
pump to test that idea.
Even better, unlike
the last (mercury-based) Sprengel pump
we saw, [Gabriel] set up his build so that no glassblowing is required. Yes, yes,
scientific glassblowing
used to be an essential skill taught in every technical college in the world. Nowadays, we’re glad to have a design that lets us solder brass fittings together. Technically you still have to cut an eyedropper, but that’s as complex as the glasswork gets. Being able to circulate oil with a plastic tube and peristaltic pump is great, too.
If you try it, you need to spring for vacuum pump oil. This type of pump is limited in the vacuum it can draw by the vapor pressure of the fluid in use, and just any oil won’t do. Most have vapor pressures far in excess of anything useful. In the old days, only mercury would cut it, but modern chemistry has come up with very stable oils that will do nearly as well.
How well? [Gabriel] isn’t sure; he bottomed out his gauge at 30 inches of Mercury (102 kPa). It may not be any lower than that, but it’s fair to say the pump draws a healthy vacuum
without
any unhealthy liquid metals. Enough to
brew up some tubes, perhaps
. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180826",
"author": "Jan Prägert",
"timestamp": "2025-09-17T11:22:34",
"content": "[Helga]: “It’s definitely sucking.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duUOXmlWk80(obligatory sucking joke.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "818093... | 1,760,371,423.63775 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/17/the-practicality-of-solar-powered-meshtastic/ | The Practicality Of Solar Powered Meshtastic | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"Meshtastic",
"solar power"
] | A Meshtastic node has been one of the toys of the moment over the last year, and since they are popular with radio amateurs there’s a chance you’ll already live within range of at least one. They can typically run from a lithium-ion or li-po battery, so it’s probable that like us you’ve toyed with the idea of running one from a solar panel. It’s something we have in common with [saveitforparts], whose experiments with a range of different solar panels
form the subject of a recent video
.
He has three different models: one based around a commercial solar charger, another using an off-the-shelf panel, and a final one using the panel from a solar garden light. As expected the garden light panel can’t keep an ESP32 with a radio going all day, but the other two manage even in the relatively northern climes of Alaska.
As a final stunt he puts one of the nodes out on a rocky piece of the southern Alaskan coastline, for any passing hacker to find. It’s fairly obviously in a remote place, but it seems passing cruise ships will be within its range. We just
know
someone will take up his challenge and find it. | 18 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180787",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-09-17T08:32:12",
"content": "I am working on something similar but instead of meshtastic I’m using plain old P2P LoRa. I just want to bridge a few relatives’ houses together on one network. All in a 5km radius",
"parent_id": nu... | 1,760,371,423.829859 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/16/reviewing-deluxe-paint-40-years-on/ | Reviewing Deluxe Paint, 40 Years On | Tyler August | [
"News"
] | [
"amiga",
"Deluxe Paint",
"pixel art"
] | When Deluxe Paint came out with the original Amiga in 1985, it was the killer app for the platform. [Christopher Drum] starts
his recent article on just that note
, remembering the day he and his mother walked into a computer store, and walked out with a brand new Amiga… thanks entirely to
Deluxe Paint.
Forty years on, how well can this killer app compete?
[Christopher] isn’t putting
Deluxe Paint
head-to-head with modern
Photoshop
; they’re hardly in the same class. Not
Photoshop
, no, but modern applications that do what
Deluxe Paint
did so well: pixel art. There was no need to call it pixel art back then, no, but with the resolutions on hand, all digital art was pixel art in 1985.
Or 1989, which is when
Deluxe Paint III
came out– that’s the last version written by Dan Silva and coincidentally the last version [Christopher] owned, and the one he focuses in on his tests. It has held up amazingly well.
Sure, you don’t get a full 24-bit colour palette, but most pixel artists stick to limited palettes still anyway. You don’t quite get a modern UI, but presence of useful keyboard shortcuts allows a Hands-On-Keybord-And-Mouse (We’ll call it HOKAM, in honour of HOTAS in aerospace)
workflow that is incredibly efficient.
About the only things [Christopher] found
Deluxe Paint III
lacked compared to its successors were a proper layering system, and of course the infinite undo we’ve all gotten so used to. (
DPIII
has an undo button, but it could only store one operation.) He also complained about cursor latency for some brushes, but we wonder if that might have had something to do with Windows and the emulation layer adding a delay. One thing Amiga was always known for back in the day was the snappy cursor movement, even when the processor was loaded.
There were just as many features he found had been forgotten in the new generation — like palatte swapping animations, or flood-filling line gradients.
It’s a small detail, but that’s a nice gradient tool.
Anyone who owned an
Amgia probably has fond memories of it
, but alas, in spite of Commodore’s recent resurrection,
we’re not likely to see a new one soon.
On the other hand, at least when it comes to pixel art, there’s apparently no need to upgrade.
via reddit.
(Thumbnail and header image by Avril Harrison, distributed by Electronic Arts with Deluxe Paint.) | 23 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180779",
"author": "frenchone",
"timestamp": "2025-09-17T08:01:02",
"content": "https://www.stef.be/dpaint/kinda clone",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8181147",
"author": "Downshift",
"timestamp": "2025-09-17T... | 1,760,371,423.898827 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/16/perovskite-solar-cell-crystals-see-the-invisible/ | Perovskite Solar Cell Crystals See The Invisible | Heidi Ulrich | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Medical Hacks",
"News",
"Science",
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"crystal",
"CZT",
"NaI",
"perovskite",
"radiation"
] | A new kind of ‘camera’ is poking at the invisible world of the human body – and it’s made from the same weird crystals that once shook up solar energy. Researchers at Northwestern University and Soochow University have built
the first perovskite-based gamma-ray detector
that actually works for nuclear medicine imaging, like SPECT scans. This hack is unusual because it takes a once-experimental lab material and shows it can replace multimillion-dollar detectors in real-world hospitals.
Current medical scanners rely on CZT or NaI detectors. CZT is pricey and cracks like ice on a frozen lake. NaI is cheaper, but fuzzy – like photographing a cat through steamed-up glass.
Perovskites
, however, are easier to grow, cheaper to process, and now proven to detect single photons with record-breaking precision. The team pixelated their crystal like a smartphone camera sensor and pulled crisp 3D images out of faint radiation traces. The payoff: sharper scans, lower
radiation
doses, and tech that could spread beyond rich clinics.
Perovskite was once typecast as a ‘solar cell wonder,’ but now it’s mutating into a disruptive medical eye. A hack in the truest sense: re-purposing physics for life-saving clarity. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180740",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-09-17T03:24:40",
"content": "Inspiration for theComponent Abuse Challengeannounced a short while ago?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8180746",
"author": "carlfoxmarten",
"... | 1,760,371,423.951942 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/16/a-10-telescope-because-you-only-live-once/ | A 10″ Telescope, Because You Only Live Once | Tyler August | [
"classic hacks",
"Space"
] | [
"mirror grinding",
"telescope",
"telescope mirror",
"YOLO"
] | Why build a telescope? YOLO, as the kids say. Having decided that, one must decide what type of far-seer one will construct. For his 10″ reflector, [Carl Anderson]
once again said “Yolo”
— this time not as a slogan, but in reference to a little-known type of reflecting telescope.
Telescope or sci-fi laser gun? YOLO, just try it.
The Yolo-pattern telescope was proposed by [Art Leonard] back in the 1960s, and was apparently named for a county in California. It differs from the standard Newtonian reflector in that it uses two concave spherical mirrors of very long radius to produce a light path with no obstructions. (This differs from the similar Schiefspiegler that uses a convex secondary.) The Yolo never caught on, in part because of the need to stretch the primary mirror in a warping rig to correct for coma and astigmatism.
[Carl] doesn’t bother with that, instead using modern techniques to precisely calculate and grind the required toric profile into the mirror. Grinding and polishing was done on motorized jigs [Carl] built, save for the very final polishing. (A quick demo video of the polishing machine is embedded below.)
The body of the telescope is a wooden truss, sheathed in plywood. Three-point mirror mounts alowed for the final adjustment. [Carl] seems to prefer observing by eye to astrophotography, as there are no photos through the telescope. Of course, an astrophotographer probably would not have built an F/15 (yes, fifteen) telescope to begin with. The view through the eyepiece on the rear end must be astounding.
If you’re inspired to spend your one life scratch-building a telescope, but want something more conventional,
check out this comprehensive guide
. You can go bit
more modern with 3D printed parts
, but you probably don’t want to
try spin-casting resin mirrors.
Or maybe you do: YOLO! | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180735",
"author": "mythoughts62",
"timestamp": "2025-09-17T02:50:18",
"content": "My father built several Newtonian reflector telescopes when I was a child. I remember him talking about the Yolo telescope, but I didn’t remember the name. We had a lot of fun with the telescopes. On... | 1,760,371,424.210916 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/16/making-a-laptop-with-a-mechanical-keyboard/ | Making A Laptop With A Mechanical Keyboard | Fenix Guthrie | [
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"Case mod",
"diy laptop",
"Framework laptop",
"keyboard hack",
"mechanical keyboard",
"rotary encoder"
] | A laptop is one of the greatest tools at the disposal of a hacker. They come in all manner of shapes and sizes with all manner of features. But perhaps the greatest limit held by all laptops is their chiclet keyboard. While certainly serviceable, a proper mechanical keyboard will always reign supreme, which is why [flurples]
built a laptop around a mechanical keyboard.
Such a keyboard could not fit inside any normal laptop, so a custom machined case was in order. The starting point was a standard Framework Laptop 13. Its open source documentation certainly helped the project, but numerous parts such as the audio board and fingerprint sensor are not documented making for a long and tedious process. But the resulting machined aluminum case looks at least as good as a stock Framework chassis, all be it, quite a bit thicker.
The resulting laptop retains three of the four modular input ports the Framework is known for, but one was sacrificed for a USB-A hub and HDMI port exposed by a custom carrier. Only one of the USB-As is externally accessible, with one used as a mouse dongle hider, and the other for keyboard connectivity.
The keyboard itself uses Kailh Choc Sunset switches, with the PCB resting on o rings for a more consistent typing experience. The key caps come from two sets of caps, with the shift and escape keys being dyed an excellent shade of orange. Sitting on the right hand side below the keyboard is a trio of rotary encoders. Using low profile encoders, the knobs blend neatly into the overall laptop, perhaps being invisible at first glance.
The rotary encoders forced a speaker arrangement redesign. Instead of siting next to the battery where the rotary encoders now are, they are attached to the top cover above the battery. This change required lengthening the speaker connector cables, but otherwise worked extremely well.
If you enjoy the work of laptop case replacement, make sure to check out this
Toshiba Libretto get a fresh lease on life with a re-designed case. | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180669",
"author": "lhasagreen",
"timestamp": "2025-09-16T20:22:25",
"content": "Mechanical keyboards: tattoos for your desk—flashy, noisy, and useless for real work. If you want productivity, grab a flat membrane; if you want to annoy everyone else, go clickety-clack your ego away... | 1,760,371,424.008255 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/16/how-to-have-a-medium-format-camera-without-breaking-the-bank/ | How To Have A Medium Format Camera Without Breaking The Bank | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"diy camera",
"film photography",
"medium format"
] | For most people, experimentation with film photography comes in the form of the 35 mm format. Its ubiquity in snapshot photography means cameras are readily available at all levels, and the film offers a decent compromise between resolution and number of shots per dollar spent.
For those who wish to take their film photography further there’s the so-called medium format 120 roll film, but here opting for a higher-end camera can become expensive. Fortunately [Javier Doroteo] is here with
a 3D printed medium format camera
designed to use lenses intended for the Mamiya Press cameras, and from where we’re sitting it looks very nicely designed indeed.
All the files can be found on Printables along with a list of the other parts required. It’s made simple by the Mamiya lenses incorporating the shutter, but there’s still a lot of attention that has been paid to the back of the camera. This is the third version of the design and it shows, details such as the film holder and light proofing are well thought out.
Photography is so often a world in which collecting the latest kit is seen as more important than the photographs themselves, so we like and encourage camera hackers as a reaction to all that. If you’d like to see another medium format camera,
this certainly isn’t the first we’ve brought you
. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180662",
"author": "Tom S",
"timestamp": "2025-09-16T19:49:32",
"content": "Medium format CAMERAs aren’t the bank breakers – Medium format GLASS is.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8181198",
"author": "Dom",
"... | 1,760,371,424.05684 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/16/2025-hackaday-component-abuse-challenge-let-the-games-begin/ | 2025 Hackaday Component Abuse Challenge: Let The Games Begin! | Elliot Williams | [
"classic hacks",
"contests",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"2025 Component Abuse Challenge",
"components",
"contest",
"hacks"
] | In theory, all parts are ideal and do just exactly what they say on the box. In practice, everything has its limits, most components have non-ideal characteristics, and you can even turn most parts’ functionality upside down.
The
Component Abuse Challenge
celebrates the use of LEDs as photosensors, capacitors as microphones, and resistors as heat sources. If you’re using parts for purposes that simply aren’t on the label, or getting away with pushing them to their absolute maximum ratings or beyond, this is the contest for you.
If you committed these sins against engineering out of need, DigiKey wants to help you out. They’ve probably got the right part, and they’re providing us with three $150 gift certificates to give out to the top projects. (If you’re hacking just for fun, well, you’re still in the running.)
This is the contest where the number one rule is that you must break the rules, and the project has to work anyway. You’ve got eight weeks, until Nov 11th.
Open up a project over at Hackaday.io
, pull down the menu to enter in the contest, and let the parts know no mercy!
Honorable Mention Categories:
We’ve come up with a few honorable mention categories to get your ideas flowing. You don’t have to fit into one of these boxes to enter, but we’ll be picking our favorites in these four categories for a shout-out when we reveal the winners.
Bizarro World:
There is a duality in almost every component out there. Speakers are microphones, LEDs are light sensors, and peltier coolers generate electricity. Turn the parts upside down and show us what they can do.
Side Effects:
Most of the time, you’re sad when a part’s spec varies with temperature. Turn those lemons into lemonade, or better yet, thermometers.
Out of Spec:
How hard can you push that MOSFET before it lets go of the magic smoke? Show us your project dancing on the edge of the abyss and surviving.
Junk Box Substitutions:
What you really needed was an igniter coil. You used an eighth-watt resistor, and got it hot enough to catch the rocket motor on fire. Share your parts-swapping exploits with us.
Inspiration
Diodes can do nearly anything. Their forward voltage varies with temperature,
making them excellent thermometers
. Even the humble LED can
both glow and tell you how hot it is
. And don’t get us started on the photo-diode. They are not just photocells,
but radiation detectors
.
Here’s a trick to double the current that a 555 timer can sink
. We’d love to see other cases of 555 abuse, of course, but any other IC is fair game.
Resistors get hot. Thermochromic paint changes color with temperature. Every five years or so, we see an awesome new design.
This ancient clock of [Sprite_tm]’s
lays the foundation, [Daniel Valuch]
takes it into the matrix
, and [anneosaur]
uses the effect to brighten our days
.
Of course, thin traces can also be resistors, and resistors can get
really
hot. Check out [Carl Bujega]’s
self-soldering four-layer PCB
.
And while magnetism is nearly magic,
a broken inductor can still be put to good use as a bike chain sensor.
Or maybe you have a new twist on the absolutely classic
LEDs-as-light-sensors
? Just because it’s been done
since the early says of [Forrest Mims]
doesn’t mean we don’t want to see your take.
Get out there and show us how you can do it wrong too. | 48 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180619",
"author": "ex-Digikey customer",
"timestamp": "2025-09-16T17:21:42",
"content": "Is Digikey still doing the obnoxious thing of blocking any browser running an adblocker? I’m not turning off my adblocker, and I’m absolutely not turning off my adblocker for anyone who demand... | 1,760,371,424.14875 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/18/radio-apocalypse-clearing-the-air-with-scatana/ | Radio Apocalypse: Clearing The Air With SCATANA | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Radio Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"aviation",
"DME",
"faa",
"fcc",
"navaids",
"NORAD",
"Radio Apocalypse",
"radio navigation",
"SCATANA",
"TACAN",
"VOR",
"VORTAC"
] | For the most part,
the Radio Apocalypse series
has focused on the radio systems developed during the early days of the atomic age to ensure that Armageddon would be as orderly an affair as possible. From systems that provided
backup methods
to ensure that launch orders would reach the bombers and missiles, to providing
hardened communications systems
to allow survivors to coordinate relief and start rebuilding civilization from the ashes, a lot of effort went into getting messages sent.
Strangely, though, the architects of the end of the world put just as much thought into making sure messages
didn’t
get sent. The electronic village of mid-century America was abuzz with signals, any of which could be abused by enemy forces.
CONELRAD
, which aimed to prevent enemy bombers from using civilian broadcast signals as navigation aids, is a perfect example of this. But the growth of civil aviation through the period presented a unique challenge, particularly with the radio navigation system built specifically to make air travel as safe and reliable as possible.
Balancing the needs of civil aviation against the possibility that the very infrastructure making it possible could be used as a weapon against the U.S. homeland is the purpose of a plan called Security Control of Air Traffic and Air Navigation Aids, or SCATANA. It’s a plan that cuts across jurisdictions, bringing military, aviation, and communications authorities into the loop for decisions regarding when and how to shut down the entire air traffic system, to sort friend from foe, to give the military room to work, and, perhaps most importantly, to keep enemy aircraft as blind as possible.
Highways in the Sky
As its name suggests, SCATANA has two primary objectives: to restrict the availability of radio navigation aids during emergencies and to clear the airspace over the United States of unauthorized traffic. For safety’s sake, the latter naturally follows the former. By the time the SCATANA rules were promulgated, commercial aviation had become almost entirely dependent on a complex array of beacons and other radio navigation aids. While shutting those aids down to deny their use to enemy bombers was obviously the priority, safety demanded that all the planes currently using those aids had to be grounded as quickly as possible.
The Rogue Valley VOR station in Table Rock, Oregon. According to the sectional charts, this is a VORTAC station. Source:
ZabMilenko
, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Understanding the logic behind SCATANA requires at least a basic insight into these radio navigation aids. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has jurisdiction over these aids, listing “VOR/DME, ILS, MLS, LF and HF non-directional beacons” as subject to shutdown in times of emergency. That’s quite a list, and while the technical details of the others are interesting, particularly the
Adcock LF beacon system
used by pilots to maneuver onto a course until alternating “A” and “N” Morse characters merged into a single tone, but for practical purposes, the one with the most impact on wartime security is the VOR system.
VOR, which stands for “VHF omnidirectional range,” is a global system of short-range beacons used by aircraft to determine their direction of travel. The system dates back to the late 1940s and was extensively built out during the post-war boom in commercial aviation. VOR stations define the “highways in the air” that criss-cross the country; if you’ve ever wondered why the contrails of jet airliners all follow similar paths and why the planes make turns at more or less the same seemingly random point in the sky, it’s because they’re using VOR beacons as waypoints.
In its simplest form, a VOR station consists of an omnidirectional antenna transmitting at an assigned frequency between 108 MHz and 117.95 MHz, hence the “VHF” designation. The frequency of each VOR station is noted on the sectional charts pilots use for navigation, along with the three-letter station identifier, which is transmitted by the station in Morse so pilots can verify which station their cockpit VOR equipment is tuned to.
Each VOR station encodes azimuth information by the phase difference between two synchronized 30 Hz signals modulated onto the carrier, a reference signal and a variable signal. In conventional VOR, the amplitude-modulated variable signal is generated by a rotating directional antenna transmitting a signal in-phase with the reference signal. By aligning the reference signal with magnetic north, the phase angle between the FM reference and AM variable signals corresponds to the compass angle of the aircraft relative to the VOR station.
More modern Doppler VORs, or DVORs, use a ring of antennas to electronically create the reference and variable signals, rather than mechanically rotating the antenna. VOR stations are often colocated with other radio navigation aids, such as distance measuring equipment (DME), which measures the propagation delay between the ground station and the aircraft to determine the distance between them, or TACAN, a tactical air navigation system first developed by the military to provide bearing and distance information. When a VOR and TACAN stations are colocated, the station is referred to as a VORTAC.
Shutting It All Down
At its peak, the VOR network around the United States numbered almost 1,000 stations. That number is on the decrease now, thanks to the FAA’s Minimum Operational Network plan, which seeks to retire all but 580 VOR stations in favor of cockpit GPS receivers. But any number of stations sweeping out fully analog, unencrypted signals on well-known frequencies would be a bonanza of navigational information to enemy airplanes, which is why the SCATANA plan provides specific procedures to be followed to shut the whole thing down.
Inside the FAA’s Washington DC ARTCC, which played a major role in implementing SCATANA on 9/11. Source:
Federal Aviation Administration
, public domain.
SCATANA is designed to address two types of emergencies. The first is a Defense Emergency, which is an outright attack on the United States homeland, overseas forces, or allied forces. The second is an Air Defense Emergency, which is an aircraft or missile attack on the continental U.S., Canada, Alaska, or U.S. military installations in Greenland — sorry, Hawaii. In either case, the attack can be in progress, imminent, or even just probable, as determined by high-ranking military commanders.
In both of those situations, military commanders will pass the SCATANA order to the FAA’s network of 22 Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC), the facilities that handle traffic on the routes defined by VOR stations. The SCATANA order can apply to all of the ARTCCs or to just a subset, depending on the scale of the emergency. Each of the concerned centers will then initiate physical control of their airspace, ordering all aircraft to land at the nearest available appropriate airport. Simultaneously, if ordered by military authority, the navigational aids within each ARTCC’s region will be shut down. Sufficient time is obviously needed to get planes safely to the ground; SCATANA plans allow for this, of course, but the goal is to shut down navaids as quickly as possible, to deny enemy aircraft or missiles any benefit from them.
As for the specific instructions for shutting down navigational aids, the SCATANA plan is understandable mute on this subject. It would not be advisable to have such instructions readily available, but there are a few crumbs of information available in the form of manuals and publicly accessible documents. Like most pieces of critical infrastructure these days, navaid ground stations tend to be equipped with remote control and monitoring equipment. This allows maintenance technicians quick and easy access without the need to travel. Techs can perform simple tasks, such as switching over from a defective primary transmitter to a backup, to maintain continuity of service while arrangements are made for a site visit. Given these facts, along with the obvious time-critical nature of an enemy attack, SCATANA-madated navaid shutdowns are probably as simple as a tech logging into the ground station remotely and issuing a few console commands.
A Day to Remember
For as long as SCATANA has been in effect — the earliest reference I could find to the plan under that name dates to 1968, but the essential elements of the plan seem to date back at least another 20 years — it has only been used in anger once, and even then only partially. That was on that fateful Tuesday, September 11, 2001, when a perfect crystal-blue sky was transformed into a battlefield over America.
By 9:25 AM Eastern, the Twin Towers had both been attacked, American Airlines Flight 77 had already been hijacked and was on its way to the Pentagon, and the battle for United Flight 93 was unfolding above Ohio. Aware of the scope of the disaster, staff at the FAA command center in Herndon, Virginia, asked FAA headquarters if they wanted to issue a “nationwide ground stop” order. While FAA brass discussed the matter, Ben Sliney, who had just started his first day on the job as operations manager at the FAA command center, made the fateful decision to implement the ground stop part of the SCATANA plan, without ordering the shutdown of navaids.
The “ground stop” orders went out to the 22 ARTCCs, which began the process of getting about 4,200 in-flight aircraft onto the ground as quickly and safely as possible. The ground stop was achieved within about two hours without any further incidents. The skies above the country would remain empty of civilian planes for the next two days, creating an eerie silence that emphasized just how much aviation contributes to the background noise of modern life. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181421",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2025-09-18T17:14:39",
"content": "Orderly Armageddon.I predict that somebody will adopt that as their Hackaday handle.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8181423",
"author": "Dude",
... | 1,760,371,424.341989 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/18/pcbs-the-prehistoric-way/ | PCBs The Prehistoric Way | Elliot Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Art"
] | [
"3d printing",
"arduino",
"art",
"clay",
"extreme diy",
"pcb"
] | When we see an extremely DIY project, you always get someone who jokes “well, you didn’t collect sand and grow your own silicon”. [Patrícia J. Reis] and [Stefanie Wuschitz] did the next best thing: they collected local soil, sieved it down, and
fired their own clay PCB substrates over a campfire
. They even built up a portable lab-in-a-backpack so they could go from dirt to blinky in the woods with just what they carried on their back.
This project is half art, half extreme DIY practice, and half environmental consciousness. (There’s overlap.) And the clay PCB is just part of the equation. In an effort to approach zero-impact electronics, they pulled ATmega328s out of broken Arduino boards, and otherwise “urban mined” everything else they could: desoldering components from the junk bin along the way.
The traces themselves turned out to be the tricky bit. They are embossed with a 3D print into the clay and then filled with silver before firing. The pair experimented with a variety of the obvious metals, and silver was the only candidate that was both conductive and could be soldered to after firing. Where did they get the silver dust? They bought silver paint from a local supplier who makes it out of waste dust from a jewelry factory. We suppose they could have sat around the campfire with some old silver spoons and a file, but you have to draw the line somewhere. These are clay PCBs, people!
Is this practical? Nope! It’s an experiment to see how far they can take the idea of the pre-industrial, or maybe post-apocalyptic, Arduino. [Patrícia] mentions that the firing is particularly unreliable, and variations in thickness and firing temperature lead to many cracks. It’s an art that takes experience to master.
We actually got to see the working demos in the flesh, and can confirm that they did indeed blink! Plus, they look super cool.
The video from their talk
is heavy on theory, but we love the practice.
DIY clay PCBs make
our own toner transfer techniques
look like something out of the
Jetsons
. | 46 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181397",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-09-18T16:20:36",
"content": "This is just the aesthetic of environmentalism, not environmentalism itself. The chips are still made of epoxy and silicon and require billions of dollars worth of infrastructure! They need to think abo... | 1,760,371,424.514331 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/18/a-new-generation-of-spacecraft-head-to-the-iss/ | A New Generation Of Spacecraft Head To The ISS | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"News",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"commercial space",
"Cygnus",
"Dream Chaser",
"HTV-X",
"international space station",
"nasa",
"resupply"
] | While many in the industry were at first skeptical of NASA’s goal to put resupply flights to the International Space Station in the hands of commercial operators, the results speak for themselves. Since 2012, the SpaceX Dragon family of spacecraft has been transporting crew and cargo from American soil to the orbiting laboratory, a capability that the space agency had lost with the retirement of the Space Shuttle. Putting these relatively routine missions in the hands of a commercial provider like SpaceX takes some of the logistical and financial burden off of NASA, allowing them to focus on more forward-looking projects.
SpaceX Dragon arriving at the ISS for the first time in 2012.
But as the saying goes, you should never put all of your eggs in one basket. As successful as SpaceX has been, there’s always a chance that some issue could temporarily ground either the Falcon 9 or the Dragon.
While Russia’s Progress and Soyuz vehicles would still be available in an emergency situation, it’s in everyone’s best interest that there be multiple backup vehicles that can bring critical supplies to the Station.
Which is precisely why several new or upgraded spacecraft, designed specifically for performing resupply missions to the ISS and any potential commercial successor, are coming online over the next few years.
In fact, one of them is already flying its first mission, and will
likely have arrived at the International Space Station
by the time you read this article.
Cygnus XL
The Cygnus was the second commercial spacecraft to deliver cargo to the ISS back in 2013, and like the Dragon, has gone through several upgrades and revisions over the years. Rather than starting from a clean slate, the Orbital Sciences Corporation based the vehicle’s pressurized module on the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module which was originally designed to fly inside the Space Shuttle’s cargo bay to provide onboard laboratory space before the construction of the ISS. This was paired with a service module that was derived from their line of communication satellites.
Orbital Sciences Corporation was eventually acquired by Northrop Grumman, which now operates the latest version of the spacecraft, the Cygnus XL. This latest version of the cargo craft lifted off for the first time on September 14th, and is currently en route to the ISS.
It retains the same 3.07 m (10.1 ft) diameter of the original Cygnus, but the length of the vehicle has been increased from 5.14 m (16.9 ft) to 8 m (26 ft). This has nearly doubled the internal pressurized volume of the craft, and the payload capacity has been increased from 2,000 kg (4,400 lb) to 5,000 kg (11,000 lb).
While the Dragon can autonomously dock with the ISS, the Cygnus XL needs to be captured by an astronaut using the Station’s robotic arm, and manually moved into position where it’s eventually bolted into place — a process known as berthing. This is a more labor intensive method of connecting a visiting spacecraft, but it does have at least one advantage, as the diameter of the berthing ports is larger than that of the docking ports. At least in theory, this means Cygnus XL would be able to deliver bulkier objects to the Station than the Dragon or any other spacecraft that makes use of the standard docking ports.
Like the earlier versions of the craft, Cygnus XL is an expendable vehicle, and lacks the heat shield that would be necessary to reenter Earth’s atmosphere safely. Once the vehicle delivers its cargo and is detached from the Station, it’s commanded to perform a deorbit maneuver which will cause it to burn up in the atmosphere. But even this serves an important function, as the astronauts will load the vehicle with trash before it departs, ensuring that refuse from the Station is destroyed in a safe and predictable manner.
HTV-X
Like the Cygnus XL, the HTV-X is an upgraded version of a spacecraft which has already visited the ISS, namely the H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV). Designed and built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the first flight of this upgraded cargo vehicle is tentatively scheduled for late October.
The HTV-X reuses the pressurized module from the HTV, though it has been slightly enlarged and is now located at the rear of the spacecraft instead of the front. The cargo module is in turn attached to a service module that’s responsible for power generation, communications, and propulsion. For all intents and purposes, this service module is its own independent spacecraft, and JAXA is currently investigating future applications which would see this module mated with other payloads for various low Earth orbit missions.
Attached to the opposite side of the service module is an unpressurized cargo module. This is similar to the “trunk” of the Dragon spacecraft, in that it’s essentially just a hollow cylinder with shelves and mounting points inside. This module could potentially be used to bring up components that are intended to be attached to the outside of the ISS, or it could hold experiments and modules that are designed to be exposed to the space environment.
Like the Cgynus XL, the HTV-X will berth to the ISS rather than dock, and it will also burn up after its mission is complete. However the HTV-X is designed to fly freely on its own for up to 18 months after it delivers its cargo to the Station, which JAXA calls the “Technology Demonstration Phase” of the mission. This will essentially allow the agency to perform a second mission after the vehicle has completed its supply run, greatly improving the overall cost effectiveness of the program.
Dream Chaser
Far and away the most ambitious of these new spacecraft is the Dream Chaser, developed by Sierra Space. Reminiscent of a miniature version of the Space Shuttle, this winged vehicle is designed to land like an airplane at the end of its mission. This not only means it can bring material back down to Earth at the end of its mission, but that it can do so in a much less jarring manner than a capsule that ends up splashing down into the ocean under parachutes. This is a huge benefit when dealing with fragile cargo or scientific experiments, and is a capability not offered by any other currently operational spacecraft.
The Dream Chaser has been in active development for over 20 years, but its origins date back even farther than that, as it’s based on HL-20 Personnel Launch System concept from the 1980s. While it was initially designed for crew transport, it lost out to SpaceX and Boeing during NASA’s Commercial Crew Program selection in 2014. It did however secure a contract from the space agency in 2016 for six cargo missions to the ISS. To qualify for these missions, several changes were made to the original design, such as the addition of an expendable module that will attach to the rear of the vehicle to increase its relatively limited internal cargo capacity of 910 kg (2,000 lb) by 4,500 kg (10,000 lb).
The first orbital test flight of the Dream Chaser is currently scheduled to take place before the end of the year, but that date has already slipped several times. Being a reusable vehicle like the Dragon, the first Dream Chaser spaceplane is expected to fly multiple operational missions while a second craft is being assembled.
After completing their contractually obligated missions to the ISS, there are currently plans for the Dream Chaser to fly at least one mission for the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, which will carry an array of scientific experiments provided by member nations that do not have their own domestic space programs. The company also says they remain committed to bringing the crewed version of Dream Chaser to fruition, likely as part of their
partnership with Blue Origin to develop the Orbital Reef
— a “mixed-use business park” in space.
Time is Running Out
It might seem strange that three different spacecraft are scheduled to enter service before the end of the year, but of course, the clock is ticking. Although the date has been pushed out a number of times over the years, the current 2030 timeline for the decommissioning of the International Space Station seems to be holding so far. With as little as five years left to go before the ISS joins us Earthlings back here on the surface, it’s now or never for any vehicles designed for service missions. This is doubly true for companies such as Sierra Space, who have already agreed to perform a set number of missions.
At the same time, any of these vehicles could support a future commercial space station, should one actually materialize.
We’ve covered some of the post-ISS plans previously
, but given how volatile the aerospace world is, nothing is a given until it’s actually in orbit. | 22 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181417",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-09-18T17:05:44",
"content": "Exciting times ahead! Can’t believe we are in the amazing timeline where we have private players in the space race!I was thinking about something, something absolutely cracked out if I say so myself.I w... | 1,760,371,424.284999 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/18/listening-for-the-next-wow-signal-with-low-cost-sdr/ | Listening For The Next Wow! Signal With Low-Cost SDR | Tom Nardi | [
"Space"
] | [
"Radio Telescope",
"sdr",
"The Wow! Signal"
] | As you might expect, the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo has a fascination with radio signals from space. While doing research into the legendary “Wow! Signal” detected back in 1977, they realized that the burst was so strong that a small DIY radio telescope would be able to pick it up using modern software-defined radio (SDR) technology.
This realization gave birth to the
Wow@Home project
, an effort to document both the hardware and software necessary to pick up a Wow! class signal from your own backyard. The University reasons that if they can get a bunch of volunteers to build and operate these radio telescopes, the resulting data could help identify the source of the Wow! Signal — which they believe could be the result of some rare astrophysical event and not the product of Little Green Men.
Ultimately, this isn’t much different from many of the
SDR-based homebrew radio telescopes
we’ve
covered over the years
— get a dish, hook your RTL-SDR up to it, add in the appropriate filters and amplifiers, and point it to the sky. Technically, you’re now a radio astronomer. Congratulations. In this case, you don’t even have to figure out how to motorize your dish, as they recommend just pointing the antenna at a fixed position and let the rotation of the Earth to the work — a similar trick to
how the legendary Arecibo Observatory itself worked
.
The tricky part is collecting and analyzing what’s coming out of the receiver, and that’s where the team at Arecibo hope to make the most headway with their Wow@Home software. It also sounds like that’s where the work still needs to be done. The goal is to have a finished product in Python that can be deployed on the Raspberry Pi, which as an added bonus will “generate a live preview of the data in the style of the
original Ohio State SETI project printouts
.” Sounds cool to us.
If you’re interested in lending a hand, the team says they’re open to contributions from the community — specifically from those with experience RFI shielding, software GUIs, and general software development.
We love seeing citizen science
, so hopefully this project finds the assistance and the community it needs to flourish.
Thanks to [Mark Stevens] for the tip. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181351",
"author": "Jason",
"timestamp": "2025-09-18T14:00:02",
"content": "It will never happen.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8181381",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2025-09-18T15:03:47",
"con... | 1,760,371,424.570075 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/18/give-your-band-the-music-of-the-bands/ | Give Your Band The Music Of The Bands | Jenny List | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"music",
"radio",
"shortwave"
] | The way to get into radio, and thence electronics, in the middle years of the last century, was to fire up a shortwave receiver and tune across the bands. In the days when every country worth its salt had a shortwave station, Cold War adversaries boomed propaganda across the airwaves, and even radio amateurs used AM that could be listened to on a consumer radio, a session in front of the dial was sure to turn up a few surprises. It’s a lost world in the 21st century, as the Internet has provided an easier worldwide medium and switch-mode power supplies have created a blanket of noise. The sounds of shortwave are thus no longer well known to anyone but a few enthusiasts, but that hasn’t stopped [gnd buzz]
investigating their potential in electronic music
.
There’s very little on the air which couldn’t be used in some form by the musician, but the samples are best used as the base for further processing. One example takes a “buzzer” signal and turns it into a bass instrument. The page introduces the different types of things which can be found on the bands, for which with the prevalence of WebSDRs there has never been a lower barrier to entry.
If you’re too young to have scanned the bands,
a capable receiver can now be had for surprisingly little
.
Radio dial header: Maximilian Schönherr,
CC BY-SA 3.0
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181432",
"author": "FT8",
"timestamp": "2025-09-18T17:37:01",
"content": "Listening to the digital mode section of 10m (or any band really) with a wide filter makes a mournful electronic loop, like the lullaby of a dying machine",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,371,424.610586 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/17/when-is-your-pyrex-not-the-pyrex-you-expect/ | When Is Your Pyrex Not The Pyrex You Expect? | Jenny List | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"borosilicate glass",
"glass",
"pyrex",
"soda glass"
] | It’s not often that Hackaday brings you something from a cooking channel, but [I Want To Cook] has
a fascinating look at Pyrex glassware
that’s definitely worth watching. If you know anything about Pyrex it’s probably that it’s the glass you’ll see in laboratories and many pieces of cookware, and its special trick is that it can handle high temperatures. The video takes a look at this, and reveals that not all Pyrex is the same.
Pyrex was a Corning product from the early 20th century, and aside from its many laboratory and industrial applications has been the go-to brand for casserole dishes and much more in the kitchen ever since. It’s a borosilicate glass, which is what gives it the special properties, or at least in some cases it
used
to be a borosilicate glass. It seems that modern-day American Pyrex for the kitchen is instead a soda glass, which while it still makes a fine pie dish, doesn’t quite have the properties of the original.
The video explains some of the differences, as well as revealing that the American version is branded in lower case as pyrex while the European version is branded uppercase as PYREX and retains the borosilicate formulation. Frustratingly there’s no quick way to definitively tell whether a piece of lower-case pyrex is soda glass or not, because the brand switch happened before the formulation switch.
In all probability in the kitchen it makes little difference which version you own, because most users won’t give it the extreme thermal shock required to break the soda version. But some Hackaday readers do plenty of experiments pushing the limits of their glassware, so it’s as well to know that seeking out an older PYREX dish could be a good move.
If you’d like to know more about glass,
we’ve got you covered
. | 22 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181251",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-09-18T06:08:08",
"content": "Frustratingly there’s no quick way to definitively tell whether a piece of lower-case pyrex is soda glass or not, because the brand switch happened before the formulation switch.I’m surprised by this, beca... | 1,760,371,425.78952 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/17/getting-the-most-out-of-ism-transceivers-using-math/ | Getting The Most Out Of ISM Transceivers Using Math | Fenix Guthrie | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"home networking",
"rfm12b",
"SAMD21",
"wireless network",
"wireless networking"
] | WiFi is an excellent protocol, but it certainly has its weaknesses. Its range in even a normal home is relatively limited, so you could imagine the sort of performance you’d expect through the hundred meters of dense woodland that [DO3RB] is trying to penetrate. So naturally the solution was to
develop a new wireless transceiver for the ISM band.
Of course, getting reliable packet transmission is tough. In a building with brick walls, WiFi will get around five to ten percent packet loss. For TCP to remain reliable, one percent packet loss is the maximum designed loss of this wireless protocol. In reality, the transceiver achieves 0.075% packet loss real world.
The crux of the magic behind this excellent reliability is the extended binary Golay code. By halving the bitrate, the Golay code is able to correct for up to four errors per codeword. While a more complicated scheme could have been used, the Golay code allowed for easy porting to an MCU thus simplifying the project. All this is encoded with frequency shift keying in the ISM band.
This magic is tied up inside an tiny SAMD21 paired with a RFM12BP wireless front end. Using TinyUSB, the interface shows up to the host as a USB Ethernet adapter making for seamless networking setups. With reliable bi-directional communication, you could theoretically use this as a home networking solution. However, this is realistically best for IoT devices as the speeds are around 56 kbit/s.
While this is an incredibly simple system, harking back to 90s networking, it certainly gets the job done in a neat and tidy manner. And if you too wish hark back to 90s radio communications,
make sure to check out this satellite imagery hack next!
Thanks [Bernerd] for the tip! | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181200",
"author": "BuriedCode",
"timestamp": "2025-09-18T02:26:04",
"content": "I remember using a modified Golay code for a wireless instrument system prototype for my final year project. The prototype worked OK (ish), but what impressed me was how good that forward error correct... | 1,760,371,426.255132 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/15/off-to-the-races-with-esp32-and-eink/ | Off To The Races With ESP32 And EInk | Tyler August | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"eink",
"ESP32",
"formula 1"
] | Off to the races? Formula One races, that is. This project by [mazur8888] uses an
ESP32 to keep track of the sport
, and display a “live” dashboard on a 2.9″ tri-color LCD.
“Live” is in scare quotes because updates are fetched only every 30 minutes; letting the ESP32 sleep the rest of the time gives the tiny desk gadget a smaller energy footprint. Usually that’s to increase battery life, but this version of the project does not appear to be battery-powered. Here the data being fetched is about overall team rankings, upcoming races, and during a race the current occupant of the pole-position.
There’s more than just the eInk display running on the ESP32; as with many projects these days, micro-controller is being pressed into service as a web server to host a full dashboard that gives extra information as well as settings and OTA updates. The screen and dev board sit inside a conventional 3D-printed case.
Normally when talking Formula One, we’re looking into the
hacks race teams make
. This hack might not do anything revolutionary to track the racers, but it does show a nice use for a small e-ink module that
isn’t another weather display.
The project is open source under a GPL3.0
license with code and STLs available on GitHub
.
Thanks to [mazur8888]. If you’ve got something on the go with an e-ink display (or anything else) send your electrophoretic hacks in to our tips line; we’d love to hear from you. | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180077",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-09-15T19:13:53",
"content": "I’ve got a couple of red/black rink displays I’d like to use, but I haven’t determined the support for them. It wasn’t headed in the right direction last time I looked.Anybody have a cheat sheet for h... | 1,760,371,425.951506 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/15/flashlight-repair-brings-entire-workshop-to-bear/ | Flashlight Repair Brings Entire Workshop To Bear | Tom Nardi | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed parts",
"Anker",
"flashlight",
"lathe"
] | The modern hacker and maker has an incredible array of tools at their disposal — even a modestly appointed workbench these days would have seemed like science-fiction a couple decades ago. Desktop 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC mills, lathes, the list goes on and on. But what good is all that fancy gear if you don’t put it to work once and awhile?
If we had to guess, we’d say dust never gets a chance to accumulate on any of the tools in [Ed Nisley]’s workshop. According to his blog, the prolific hacker is either building or repairing something on a nearly daily basis. All of his posts are worth reading, but
the multifaceted rebuilding of a Anker LC-40 flashlight
from a couple months back recently caught our eye.
The problem was simple enough: the button on the back of the light went from working intermittently to failing completely. [Ed] figured there must be a drop in replacement out there, but couldn’t seem to find one in his online searches. So he took to the parts bin and found a surface-mount button that was nearly the right size. At the time, it seemed like all he had to do was print out a new flexible cover for the button out of TPU, but getting the material to cooperate took him down an unexpected rabbit hole of settings and temperatures.
With the cover finally printed, there was a new problem. It seemed that the retaining ring that held in the button PCB was damaged during disassembly, so [Ed] ended up having to design and print a new one. Unfortunately, the 0.75 mm pitch threads on the retaining ring were just a bit too small to reasonably do with an FDM printer, so he left the sides solid and took the print over to the lathe to finish it off.
Of course, the tiny printed ring was too small and fragile to put into the chuck of the lathe, so [Ed] had to design and print a fixture to hold it. Oh, and since the lathe was only designed to cut threads in inches, he had to make a new gear to convert it over to millimeters. But at least
that was a project he completed previously
.
With the fine threads cut into the printed retaining ring ready to hold in the replacement button and its printed cover, you might think the flashlight was about to be fixed. But alas, it was not to be. It seems the original button had a physical stabilizer on it to keep it from wobbling around, which wouldn’t fit now that the button had been changed. [Ed] could have printed a new part here as well, but to keep things interesting, he turned to the laser cutter and produced a replacement from a bit of scrap acrylic.
In the end, the flashlight was back in fighting form, and the story would seem to be at an end. Except for the fact that [Ed] eventually
did
find the proper replacement button online. So a few days later he ended up taking the flashlight apart, tossing the custom parts he made, and reassembling it with the originals.
Some might look at this whole process and see a waste of time, but we prefer to look at it as a training exercise. After all, the experienced gained is more valuable than keeping a single flashlight out of the dump. That said, should the flashlight ever take a dive in the future, we’re confident [Ed] will know how to fix it. Even better, now we do as well. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180002",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2025-09-15T17:40:22",
"content": "As a kid, I used to take apart and repair flashlights. Recently, I had an LED flashlight fail on me. It’s a slightly fancy one with a spot light in front and a flood light on the side. It wasn’t turning o... | 1,760,371,426.078788 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/15/going-native-with-androids-native-development-kit/ | Going Native With Android’s Native Development Kit | Maya Posch | [
"Android Hacks",
"Featured",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"android ndk",
"android sdk"
] | Originally Android apps were only developed in Java, targeting the Dalvik Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and its associated environment. Compared to platforms like iOS with Objective-C, which is just C with Smalltalk uncomfortably crammed into it, an obvious problem here is that any JVM will significantly cripple performance, both due to a lack of direct hardware access and the garbage-collector that makes real-time applications such as games effectively impossible. There is also the issue that there is a lot more existing code written in languages like C and C++, with not a lot of enthusiasm among companies for porting existing codebases to Java, or the mostly Android-specific Kotlin.
The solution here was the Native Development Kit (
NDK
), which was introduced in 2009 and provides a
sandboxed environment
that native binaries can run in. The limitations here are mostly due to many standard APIs from a GNU/Linux or BSD environment not being present in Android/Linux, along with the use of the minimalistic Bionic C library and APIs that require a detour via the JVM rather than having it available via the NDK.
Despite these issues, using the NDK can still save a lot of time and allows for the sharing of mostly the same codebase between Android, desktop Linux, BSD and Windows.
NDK Versioning
When implying that use of the NDK can be worth it, I did not mean to suggest that it’s a smooth or painless experience. In fact, the overall experience is generally somewhat frustrating and you’ll run into countless Android-specific issues that cannot be debugged easily or at all with standard development tools like GDB, Valgrind, etc. Compared to something like Linux development, or the pre-Swift world of iOS development where C and C++ are directly supported, it’s quite the departure.
Installing the NDK fortunately doesn’t require that you have the SDK installed, with a
dedicated download page
. You can also download the
command-line tools
in order to get the SDK manager. Whether using the CLI tool or the full-fat SDK manager in the IDE, you get to choose from a whole range of NDK versions, which raises the question of why there’s not just a single NDK version.
The answer here is that although generally you can just pick the latest (stable) version and be fine, each update also updates the included toolchain and Android sysroot, which creates the possibility of issues with an existing codebase. You may have to experiment until you find a version that works for your particular codebase if you end up having build issues, so be sure to mark the version that last worked well. Fortunately you can have multiple NDK versions installed side by side without too much fuss.
Simply set the
NDK_HOME
variable in your respective OS or environment to the NDK folder of your choice and you should be set.
Doing Some Porting
Since Android features a JVM, it’s possible to create the typical native modules for a JVM application using a Java Native Interface (
JNI
) wrapper to do a small part natively, it’s more interesting to do things the other way around. This is also typically what happens when you take an existing desktop application and port it, with my
NymphCast Server (NCS) project
as a good example. This is an SDL- and FFmpeg-based application that’s fairly typical for a desktop application.
Unlike the GUI and Qt-based NymphCast Player which was
briefly covered in a previous article
, NCS doesn’t feature a GUI as such, but uses SDL2 to create a hardware-accelerated window in which content is rendered, which can be an OpenGL-based UI, video playback or a screensaver. This makes SDL2 the first dependency that we have to tackle as we set up the new project.
Of course, first we need to create the Android project folder with its specific layout and files. This is something that has been made
increasingly more convoluted
by Google, with most recently your options reduced to either use the Android Studio IDE or to assemble it
by hand
, with the latter option not much fun. Using an IDE for this probably saves you a lot of headaches, even if it requires breaking the ‘no IDE’ rule. Definitely blame Google for this one.
Next is tackling the SDL2 dependency, with the SDL developers fortunately providing direct support for Android. Simply get the
current release
ZIP file, tarball or whatever your preferred flavor is of SDL2 and put the extracted files into a new folder called
SDL2
inside the project’s JNI folder, creating the full path of
app/jni/SDL2
. Inside this folder we should now at least have the SDL2
include
and
src
folders, along with the
Android.mk
file in the root. This latter file is key to actually building SDL2 during the build process, as we’ll see in a moment.
We first need to take care of the Java connection in SDL2, as the Java files we find in the extracted SDL2 release under
android-project/app/src/main/java/org/libsdl\app
are the glue between the Android JVM world and the native environment. Copy these files into the newly created folder at
src/server/android/app/src/main/java/org/libsdl/app
.
Before we call the SDL2 dependency done, there’s one last step: creating a custom Java class derived from
SDLActivity
, which implements the
getLibraries()
function. This returns an array of strings with the names of the shared libraries that should be loaded, which for NCS are
SDL2
and
nymphcastserver
, which will load their respective
.so
files.
Prior to moving on, let’s address the elephant in the room of why we cannot simply use shared libraries from Linux or a project like
Termux
. There’s no super-complicated reason for this, as it’s mostly about Android’s native environment
not supporting versioned shared libraries
. This means that a file like
widget.so.1.2
will not be found while
widget.so
without encoded versioning would be, thus severely limiting which libraries we can use in a drop-in fashion.
While there has been talk of an NDK package manager over the years, Google doesn’t seem interested in this, and community efforts seem tepid at most outside of Termux, so this is the reality we have to live with.
Sysroot Things
It’d take at least a couple of articles to fully cover the whole experience of setting up the NCS Android port, but a Cliff’s Notes version can be found in the
‘build steps’ notes
which I wrote down primarily for myself and the volunteers on the project as a reference. Especially of note is how many of the dependencies are handled, with static libraries and headers generally added to the sysroot of the target NDK so that they can be used across projects.
For example, NCS relies on the
PoCo
(portable component) libraries – for which I had to create the
Poco-build
project to build it for modern Android – with the resulting static libraries being copied into the sysroot. This sysroot and its location for libraries is found for example on Windows under:
${NDK_HOME}\toolchains\llvm\prebuilt\windows-x86_64\usr\lib\<arch>
The folder layout of the NDK is incredibly labyrinthine, but if you start under the
toolchains/llvm/prebuilt
folder it should be fairly evident where to place things. Headers are copied as is typical once in the
usr/include
folder.
As can be seen in the NCS build notes, we get some static libraries from the Termux project, via its
packages
server. This includes FreeImage, NGHTTP2 and the header-only RapidJSON, which were the only unversioned dependencies that I could find for NCS from this source. The other dependencies are compiled into a library by placing the source with Makefile in their own folders under
app/jni
.
Finally, the reason for picking only static libraries for copying into the sysroot is mostly about convenience, as this way the library is merged into the final shared library that gets spit out by the build system and we don’t need to additionally include these
.so
files in the
app/src/main/jniLibs/<arch>
for copying into the APK.
Building A Build System
Although Google has been pushing CMake on Android NDK developers,
ndk-build
is the more versatile and powerful choice, with projects like SDL offering the requisite
Android.mk
file. To trigger the build of our project from the Gradle wrapper, we need to specify the external native build in
app/build.gradle
as follows:
externalNativeBuild {
ndkBuild {
path 'jni/Android.mk'
}
}
This references a Makefile that just checks all subfolders for a Makefile to run, thus triggering the build of each
Android.mk
file of the dependencies, as well as of NCS itself. Since I didn’t want to copy the entire NCS source code into this folder, the
Android.mk
file is simply an adapted version of the regular NCS Makefile with only the elements that
ndk-build
needs included.
We can now build a debug APK from the CLI with
./gradlew assembleDebug
or equivalent command, before waddling off to have a snack and a relaxing walk to hopefully return to a completed build:
Finished NymphCast Server build for Android on an Intel N100-based system.
Further Steps
Although the above is a pretty rough overview of the entire NDK porting process, it should hopefully provide a few useful pointers if you are considering either porting an existing C or C++ codebase to Android, or to write one from scratch. There are a lot more gotchas that are not covered in this article, but feel free to sound off in the comment section on what else might be useful to cover.
Another topic that’s not covered yet here is that of debugging and profiling. Although you can set up a debugging session – which I prefer to do via an IDE out of sheer convenience – when it comes to profiling and testing for memory and multi-threading issues, you will run into a bit of a brick wall. Although Valgrind kinda-sorta worked on Android in the distant past, you’re mostly stuck using the LLVM-based Address Sanitizer (ASan) or the newer
HWASan
to get you sorta what the Memcheck tool in Valgrind provides.
Unlike the Valgrind tools which require zero code modification, you need to specially compile your code with ASan support, add a special wrapper to the APK and a couple of further modifications to the project. Although I have done this for the NCS project, it was a nightmare, and didn’t really net me very useful results. It’s therefore really recommended to avoid ASan and just debug the code on Linux with Valgrind.
Currently NCS is nearly as stable as on desktop OSes, meaning that instead of it being basically bombproof it will occasionally flunk out, with an
AAudio
-related error on some test devices for so far completely opaque reasons. This, too, is is illustrative of the utter joy that it is to port applications to Android. As long as you can temper your expectations and have some guides to follow it’s not too terrible, but the NDK really rubs in how much Android is not ‘just another Linux distro’. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180088",
"author": "helmlier",
"timestamp": "2025-09-15T19:39:44",
"content": "Honestly who cares about Android anymore… just gonna end up being a worse closed garden than apple at this point..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": ... | 1,760,371,426.317378 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/15/usb-c-pd-decoded-a-diy-meter-and-logger-for-power-insights/ | USB-C PD Decoded: A DIY Meter And Logger For Power Insights | Matt Varian | [
"hardware"
] | [
"ESP-01",
"power meter",
"USB-C PD"
] | As USB-C PD becomes more and more common, it’s useful to have a tool that lets you understand exactly what it’s doing—no longer is it limited to just 5 V. This
DIY USB-C PD tool
, sent in by [ludwin], unlocks the ability to monitor voltage and current, either on a small screen built into the device or using Wi-Fi.
This design comes in two flavors: with and without screen. The OLED version is based on an STM32, and the small screen shows you the voltage, current, and wattage flowing through the device. The Wi-Fi PD logger version uses an ESP-01s to host a small website that shows you those same values, but with the additional feature of being able to log that data over time and export a CSV file with all the collected data, which can be useful when characterizing the power draw of your project over time.
Both versions use the classic INA219 in conjunction with a 50 mΩ shunt resistor, allowing for readings in the 1 mA range. The enclosure is 3D-printed, and the files for it, as well as all the electronics and firmware, are available over on the
GitHub page
. Thanks [ludwin] for sending in this awesome little tool that can help show the performance of your USB-C PD project. Be sure to check out some of the other
USB-C PD
projects we’ve featured. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179881",
"author": "Lacey",
"timestamp": "2025-09-15T11:04:17",
"content": "Only an hour ago I was thinking it would be handy to have something like this, mostly because I was using a new PD supply with my phone and have no idea which volate mode it’s operating on out of 5, 9, 12, ... | 1,760,371,425.841288 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/15/original-mac-limitations-cant-stop-you-from-running-ai-models/ | Original Mac Limitations Can’t Stop You From Running AI Models | Ian Bos | [
"News"
] | [
"apple",
"Apple Macintosh",
"mnist databse",
"neural network",
"sdk"
] | Modern retrocomputing tricks often push old hardware and systems further than any of the back-in-the-day developers could have ever dreamed. How about a neural network on an original Mac? [KenDesigns] does just this with a classic
handwritten digit identification network running with an entire custom SDK
!
Getting such a piece of hardware running what is effectively multiple decades of machine learning is as hard as most could imagine. (The
MNIST dataset
used wasn’t even put together until the 90s.) Due to floating-point limitations on the original Mac, there are a variety of issues with attempting to run machine learning models. One of the several hoops to jump through required quantization of the model. This also allows the model to be squeezed into the limited RAM of the Mac.
Impressively, one of the most important features of [KenDesigns] setup is the custom SDK, allowing for the lack of macOS. This allows for incredibly nitty-gritty adjustments, but also requires an entire custom installation. Not all for nothing, though, as after some training manipulation, the model runs with some clear proficiency.
If you want to see it go, check out the video embedded below. Or if you just want to run it on your ancient Mac,
you’ll find a disk image here
. Emulators have even been tested to work for those without the original hardware. Newer hardware traditionally proves to be easier and more compact to use than these older toys; however, it doesn’t make it any less impressive to run a neural
network on a calculator
! | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179834",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-09-15T08:28:35",
"content": "Let’s just wait a little longer and users will have unlearned to use a mouse of a GUI operated system.Instead, they will be asking an LLM like ChatGPT to click an icon or make a selection. Let’s just wait.... | 1,760,371,426.133683 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/14/utf-8-is-beautiful/ | UTF-8 Is Beautiful | Jenny List | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"character set",
"UTF-8"
] | It’s likely that many Hackaday readers will be aware of UTF-8, the mechanism for incorporating diverse alphabets and other characters such as 💩 emojis. It takes the long-established 7-bit ASCII character set and extends it into multiple bytes to represent many thousands of characters. How it does this may well be beyond that basic grasp, and [Vishnu] is here with
a primer that’s both fascinating and easy to read
.
UTF-8 extends ASCII from codes which fit in a single byte, to codes which can be up to four bytes long. The key lies in the first few bits of each byte, which specify how many bytes each character has, and then that it is a data byte. Since 7-bit ASCII codes always have a 0 in their most significant bit when mapped onto an 8-bit byte, compatibility with ASCII is ensured by the first 128 characters always beginning with a zero bit. It’s simple, elegant, and for any of who had to deal with character set hell in the days before it came along, magic.
We’ve talked surprisingly little about the internals of UTF-8 in the past, but it’s worthy of note that this is our second piece ever to use the poop emoji, after
our coverage of the billionth GitHub repository
.
Emoji bales: Tony Hisgett,
CC BY 2.0
. | 30 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179799",
"author": "a",
"timestamp": "2025-09-15T05:47:36",
"content": "*poop",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8179832",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-09-15T08:24:49",
"content": "It’s lacking CP437, which w... | 1,760,371,426.02059 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/14/e-waste-and-waste-oil-combine-to-make-silver/ | E-Waste And Waste Oil Combine To Make Silver | Tyler August | [
"chemistry hacks",
"News"
] | [
"Chemistry",
"e-waste recycling"
] | As the saying goes, “if it can’t be grown, it has to be mined”– but what about all the metals that have already been wrested from the bosom of the Earth? Once used, they can be recycled– or as this
paper charmingly puts it, become ore for “urban mining” techniques
. The technique under discussion in the Chemical Engineering Journal is one that extracts metallic silver from e-waste using fatty acids and hydrogen peroxide.
This “graphical abstract” gives the rough idea.
Right now, recycling makes up about 17% of the global silver supply. As
rich sources of ore dry up
, and the world moves to more sustainable footing, that number can only go up. Recycling e-waste already happens, of course, but in messy, dangerous processes that are generally banned in the developed world. (Like open burning, of plastic, gross.)
This paper describes a “green” process that even the most fervant granola-munching NIMBY wouldn’t mind have in their neighborhood: hot fatty acids (AKA oil) are used as an organic solvent to dissolve metals from PCB and wire. The paper mentions sourcing the solvent from waste sunflower, safflower or canola oil. As you might imagine, most metals, silver included, are not terribly soluble in sunflower oil, but a little refining and the addition of 30% hydrogen peroxide changes that equation.
More than just Ag is picked up in this process, but the oils do select for silver over other metals. The paper presents a way to then selectively precipitate out the silver as silver oleate using ethanol and flourescent light. The oleate compound can then be easily washed and burnt to produce pure silver.
The authors of the paper take the time to demonstrate the process on a silver-plated keyboard connector, so there is proof of concept on real e-waste. Selecting for silver means leaving behind gold, however, so we’re not sure how the economics of this method will stack up.
Of course, when Hackaday talks about
recycling e-waste
, it’s usually more on the
“reuse” part
of “reduce, reuse, recycle”. After all, one man’s e-waste is another man’s parts bin–
or priceless historical artifact
.
Thanks to [Brian] for the tip.Your tips can be easily recycled into Hackaday posts through an environmentally-friendly process
via our tipsline. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179733",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-09-15T02:46:43",
"content": "Ok, but what happens to the slush that’s left over? Presumably the electronics would need to be ground into a more surface-available dust and mixed into a slurry for this chemical process to work. This liquid w... | 1,760,371,425.902714 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/16/this-rail-speeder-needs-a-little-work/ | This Rail Speeder Needs A Little Work | Jenny List | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"Electric motor",
"rail speeder",
"steel rim"
] | If you take the wheels off a FIAT Punto, you might just notice that those rims fit nicely on a rail. [AT Lab] did, and
the resulting build makes for a very watchable video
.
Some of us have been known to spend a little too much time chasing trains, and there’s little on rails that won’t catch a railfan’s eye. That goes for rail speeders too, home constructed railcarts for exploring abandoned lines, and there are some great builds out there. We like the one in the video below the break, but we can’t help noticing a flaw which might just curtail its career.
It’s a simple enough build, a wooden chassis, a single motor and chain drive to one axle. All the wheel fittings are 3D printed, which might be a case of using the one tool you have to do everything, but seems to work. It rides well on the test track which appears to be an abandoned industrial siding, but it’s in those wheels we can see the problem and we guess that perhaps the builder is not familiar with rails. The Punto wheels have an inner rim and an outer rim, while a true rail wheel only has an inner one. There’s a good reason for this; real railways have points and other trackwork, not to mention recessed rails at road crossings or the like. We love the cart, but we’d cut those inner rims off to avoid painful derailments.
If you’re up for the ultimate railway build, take care not to go near a live line, and make sure you follow
this video series
. | 29 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180574",
"author": "JSL",
"timestamp": "2025-09-16T15:53:03",
"content": "“but we’d cut those inner rims off to avoid painful derailments.” I think you meant to say that you’d cut the outer rims off, not the inner ones.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,426.196045 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/16/serious-chemical-threat-sniffer-on-a-budget/ | Serious Chemical Threat Sniffer On A Budget | Heidi Ulrich | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"air",
"air quality",
"air quality monitor",
"chemical warfare",
"gas",
"pollution",
"smog",
"VOC"
] | Chemical warfare detection was never supposed to be a hobbyist project. Yet here we are:
Air Quality Guardian
by [debdoot], the self-proclaimed world’s first open source chemical threat detection system, claims to pack lab-grade sensing into an ESP32-based build for less than $100. Compare that with $10,000+ black-box hardware and you see why this is worth trying at home, even if this project might not have the nut cracked just yet.
Unlike
your air monitor from IKEA,
the device aims to analyze raw gas sensor resistance – ohm-level data most devices throw away – combined with temporal spikes, humidity correlations, and a database of 35+ signatures. Of course, there is a lot of work to be done here on the calibration side, and we don’t have any chemical warfare agents on hand to test against, so we have no idea how well it works, and we’d expect false positives. Still, the idea of taking a more granular look at the data coming off the sensor may bear some fruit.
(Editor’s note: edited with a hefty dash of skeptical salt.)
Featured Image by
Arjun Lama
on
Unsplash | 40 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180487",
"author": "Clark",
"timestamp": "2025-09-16T11:27:26",
"content": "I truly admire the self-confidence of the person who wrote the readme, boldly explaining how this arduino + 8€ COTS sensor combined with ~900 lines of C++ is better than professional chemical warfare detect... | 1,760,371,426.394685 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/16/jointly-is-a-typeface-designed-for-cnc-joinery/ | Jointly Is A Typeface Designed For CNC Joinery | Tyler August | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"mortise and tenon",
"typography",
"woodworking"
] | If you have a CNC router, you know you can engrave just about any text with the right tool, but Jointly is a typeface that isn’t meant to be
engraved
. That would be too easy for [CobyUnger]. His typeface “Jointly” is the first we’ve seen that’s
meant to be used as joinery
.
The idea is simple: carve mortises that take the shape of letters in one piece, and carve matching letter-tenons into the end of another. Push them together, and voila: a joint! To get this concept to work reliably, the font did have to be specially designed — both the inner and outer contours need to be accessible to a rotary cutting tool. Cutting tools get harder to use the smaller they go (or more fragile, at any rate) so with Jointly, the design spec was that any letters over 3/4″ (19.05 mm) tall needed to be handled with a 1/8″ (3.175 mm) rotary cutter.
This gives the font a friendly curved appearance we find quite fetching. Of course if you’re going to be cutting tenons into the end of a board, you’re going to need either some
serious
z-depth or an interesting jig to get the end of the board under the cutting head. It looks like [CobyUnger] has both, but he mentions the possibility of
using a handheld CNC router
as the cheaper option.
Speaking of routing out type,
do you know the story of Gorton
? You can’t make joinery with that typeface, but you’ve almost certainly seen it. | 23 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180450",
"author": "medix",
"timestamp": "2025-09-16T09:57:47",
"content": "Is it just me or is this is vaguely giving “comic sans in wood” vibes?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8180511",
"author": "Tarheelbandb",
... | 1,760,371,426.460433 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/15/the-microtronic-phoenix-computer-system/ | The Microtronic Phoenix Computer System | John Elliot V | [
"computer hacks",
"hardware",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Busch 2090 Microtronic Computer System",
"Microtronic Phoenix",
"texas instruments",
"TMS1600 microcontroller"
] | A team of hackers, [Jason T. Jacques], [Decle], and [Michael A. Wessel], have collaborated to deliver the
Microtronic Phoenix Computer System
.
In 1981 the
Busch 2090 Microtronic Computer System
was released. It had a 4-bit Texas Instruments TMS1600 microcontroller, ran at 500 kHz, and had 576 bytes of RAM and 4,096 bytes of ROM. The Microtronic Phoenix computer system is a Microtronic emulator. It can run the original firmware from 1981.
Between them the team members developed the firmware ROM dumping technology, created a TMS1xxx disassembler and emulator, prototyped the hardware, developed an Arduino-based re-implementation of the Microtronic, designed the PCB, and integrated the software.
Unlike previous hardware emulators, the Phoenix emulator is the first emulator that is not only a re-implementation of the Microtronic, but actually runs the original TMS1600 firmware. This wasn’t possible until the team could successfully dump the original ROM, an activity that proved challenging, but they got there in the end! If you’re interested in the gory technical details those are here:
Disassembling the Microtronic 2090
, and here:
Microtronic Firmware ROM Archaeology
.
The Phoenix uses an ATmega 644P-20U clocked at 20 MHz, a 24LC256 EEPROM, and an 74LS244 line driver for I/O. It offers two Microtronic emulation modes: the
Neo Mode
, based on [Michael]’s Arduino-based re-implementations of the Microtronic in C; and the
Phoenix Mode
, based on [Jason]’s Microtronic running the original Microtronic ROM on his TMS1xxx emulator.
The Phoenix has a number of additional hardware features, including an on-board buzzer, additional push buttons, a speaker, 256 kBit 24LC256 EEPROM, and six digit 7-segment display. Of course you have to be running in
Neo Mode
to access the newer hardware.
There are a bunch of options when it comes to I/O, and the gerbers for the PCB are available, as are instructions for installing the firmware. When it comes to power there are four options for powering the Phoenix board: with a 9V block battery; with an external 9V to 15V DC power supply over the standard center-positive 2.5 mm power jack; over the VIN and GND rivet sockets; or over the AVR ISP header.
If you’re interested in the history we covered [Michael Wessel]’s Arduino implementation
when it came out back in 2020
. | 4 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180618",
"author": "KC8KVA",
"timestamp": "2025-09-16T17:19:41",
"content": "This brings back so many great memories for me. Spending my Summers in Germany, I would frequent this “Spielwaren” in downtown Donauwoerth that had toys and kits to build. The owner, at the time, knew I ... | 1,760,371,426.579055 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/15/see-voyagers-1990-solar-system-family-portrait-debut/ | See Voyager’s 1990 ‘Solar System Family Portrait’ Debut | Maya Posch | [
"Space"
] | [
"nasa-jpl",
"Voyager 1",
"Voyager 2"
] | It’s been just over 48 years since Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977 from Cape Canaveral, originally to study our Solar System’s planets. Voyager 1 would explore Jupiter and Saturn, while its twin Voyager 2 took a slightly different route to ogle other planets. This primary mission for both spacecraft completed in early 1990, with NASA holding a press conference on this momentous achievement.
To celebrate the 48th year of the ongoing missions of Voyager 1 and its twin, NASA JPL is
sharing an archive video of this press conference
. This was the press conference where Carl Sagan referenced the pinpricks of light visible in some images, including Earth’s Pale Blue Dot, which later would become the essay about this seemingly insignificant pinprick of light being the cradle and so far sole hope for the entirety of human civilization.
For most people in attendance at this press conference in June of 1990 it would likely have seemed preposterous to imagine both spacecraft now nearing their half-century of active service in their post-extended Interstellar Mission. With
some luck
both spacecraft will soon celebrate their 50th launch day, before they will
quietly sail on amidst the stars
by next decade as a true testament to every engineer and operator on arguably humanity’s most significant achievement in space.
Thanks to [Mark Stevens] for the tip. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180260",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-09-16T02:03:43",
"content": "Between them, the pictures from the Voyagers have “billions and billions” of views.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8180496",
"author": "Miguel",
... | 1,760,371,426.618266 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/15/a-closer-look-inside-a-robots-typewriter-inspired-mouth/ | A Closer Look Inside A Robot’s Typewriter-Inspired Mouth | Donald Papp | [
"Art",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"3d printed",
"animatronics",
"lip sync",
"mouth",
"stepper motor"
] | [Ancient] has a video showing off a fascinating piece of work:
a lip-syncing robot whose animated electro-mechanical mouth works like an IBM Selectric typewriter
. The mouth rapidly flips between different phonetic positions, creating the appearance of moving lips and mouth. This rapid and high-precision movement is the product of a carefully-planned and executed build. When we featured this project before, we wanted to see under the hood. Now we can.
Behind the face is a ball that, when moving quickly enough, gives the impression of animated mouth and lips. The new video gives a closer look at how it works.
[Ancient] dubs the concept
Selectramatronics
, because its action is reminiscent of the IBM Selectric typewriter. Instead of each key having a letter on a long arm that would swing up and stamp an ink ribbon, the Selectric used a roughly spherical unit – called a
typeball
– with letters sticking out of it like a spiky ball.
Hitting the ‘A’ key would rapidly turn the typeball so that the ‘A’ faced forward, then satisfyingly smack it into the ink ribbon at great speed. Here’s a look at how that system worked, by way of
designing DIY typeballs from scratch
. In this robot, the same concept is used to rapidly flip a ball bristling with lip positions.
We first saw this unusual and fascinating design when its creator showed
videos of the end result on social media
, pronouncing it complete. We’re delighted to see that there’s now an in-depth look at the internals in the form of a new video (the first link in this post, also embedded below just under the page break.)
The new video is wonderfully wordless, preferring to show rather than tell. It goes all the way from introducing the basic concept to showing off the final product, lip-syncing to audio from an embedded Raspberry Pi.
Thanks to [Luis Sousa] for the tip! | 26 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180210",
"author": "Evaprototype",
"timestamp": "2025-09-16T00:08:16",
"content": "Cool was waiting to see a if they used a stepper or a whiffletree.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8180217",
"author": "Andrew",
"timest... | 1,760,371,426.688103 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/15/hosting-a-website-on-a-disposable-vape/ | Hosting A Website On A Disposable Vape | Maya Posch | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"disposable vape",
"ewaste",
"reverse engineering",
"upcycling",
"webserver"
] | For the past years people have been collecting disposable vapes primarily for their lithium-ion batteries, but as these disposable vapes have begun to incorporate more elaborate electronics, these too have become an interesting target for reusability. To prove the point of how capable these electronics have become, [BogdanTheGeek] decided to turn one of
these vapes into a webserver
, appropriately called the vapeserver.
While tearing apart some of the fancier adult pacifiers, [Bogdan] discovered that a number of them feature Puya MCUs, which is a name that some of our esteemed readers may recognize from ‘cheapest MCU’ articles. The target vape has a Puya
PY32F002B
MCU, which comes with a Cortex-M0+ core at 24 MHz, 3 kB SRAM and 24 kB of Flash. All of which now counts as ‘disposable’ in 2025, it would appear.
Even with a fairly perky MCU, running a webserver with these specs would seem to be a fool’s errand. Getting around the limited hardware involved using the
uIP
TCP/IP stack, and using
SLIP
(Serial Line Internet Protocol), along with semihosting to create a serial device that the OS can use like one would a modem and create a visible IP address with the webserver.
The URL to the vapeserver is contained in the article and on the
GitHub project
page, but out of respect for not melting it down with an unintended DDoS, it isn’t linked here. You are of course totally free to replicate the effort on a disposable adult pacifier of your choice, or other compatible MCU. | 53 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8180111",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-09-15T20:39:29",
"content": "Hariharasubrahmanian Shrikumar designed an itty-bitty cheap web server in 1999:The World’s Smallest Web Server?It is the size of a match head and it costs less than $1. The single chip computer runs an iPic... | 1,760,371,426.781813 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/14/hackaday-links-september-14-2025/ | Hackaday Links: September 14, 2025 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"atomic",
"biosignature",
"crt",
"hackaday links",
"Manhattan Project",
"mars",
"nasa",
"nuclear",
"Perseverance",
"redox",
"retro",
"video"
] | Is it finally time to
cue up the Bowie
? Or was
the NASA presser
on Wednesday announcing new findings of potential Martian biosignatures from
Perseverance
just another in a long line of “We are not alone” teases that turn out to be false alarms? Time will tell, but from
the peer-reviewed paper
released simultaneously with the news conference, it appears that biological activity is now the simplest explanation for the geochemistry observed in some rock samples analyzed by the rover last year. There’s a lot in the paper to unpack, most of which is naturally directed at planetary scientists and therefore somewhat dense reading. But the gist is that
Perseverance
sampled some sedimentary rocks in Jezero crater back in July of 2024 with the
SHERLOC
and
PIXL
instruments, extensive analysis of which suggests the presence of “reaction fronts” within the rock that produced iron phosphate and iron sulfide minerals in characteristic shapes, such as the ring-like formations they dubbed “leopard spots,” and the pinpoint “poppy seed” formations.
The big deal with these redox reactions is that they seem to have occurred
after
the material forming the rock was deposited; in other words, possibly by microorganisms that settled to the bottom of a body of water along with the mineral particles. On Earth, there are a ton of aquatic microbes that make a living off this kind of biochemistry and behave the same way, and have been doing so since the Precambrian era. Indeed, similar features known as “reduction haloes” are sometimes seen in modern marine sediments on Earth. There’s also evidence that these reactions occurred at temperatures consistent with liquid water, which rules out abiotic mechanisms for reducing sulfates to sulfides, since those require high temperatures.
Putting all this together, the paper’s authors come to the conclusion that the simplest explanation for all their observations is the activity of ancient Martian microbes. But they’re very careful to say that there may still be a much less interesting abiotic explanation that they haven’t thought of yet. They really went out of their way to find a boring explanation for this, though, for which they deserve a lot of credit. Here’s hoping that they’re on the right track, and that we’ll someday be able to retrieve
the cached samples
and give them a proper lab analysis here on Earth.
Back here on Earth,
the BBC has a nice article
about aficionados of old-school CRT televisions and the great lengths they take to collect and preserve them. Thirty-odd years on from the point at which we switched from CRT displays and TVs to flat-panel displays, seemingly overnight, it’s getting harder to find the old tube-based units. But given that hundreds of millions of CRTs were made over about 60 years, there’s still a lot of leaded glass out there. The story mentions one collector, Joshi, who scored a lot of ten displays for only $2,500 — a lot for old TVs, but these were professional video monitors, the kind that used to line the walls of TV studio control rooms and video editing bays. They’re much different than consumer-grade equipment, and highly sought by retro gamers who prize the look and feel of a CRT. We understand the sentiment, and it makes us cringe a bit to think of all the PVMs, TVs, and monitors we’ve tossed out over the years. Who knew?
And finally — yeah, a little short this week, sorry — Brian Potter has another great essay over at Construction Physics, this time regarding
the engineering behind the Manhattan Project
. What strikes us about the entire effort to produce the first atomic bombs is that everyone had a lot of faith in the whole “That which is not forbidden by the laws of physics is just an engineering problem” thing. They knew what the physics said would happen when you got just the right amount of fissile material together in one place under the right conditions, but they had no idea how they were going to do that. They had to conquer huge engineering problems, turning improbable ideas like centrifugal purification of gaseous uranium and explosive assembly with shaped charges into practical, fieldable technologies. And what’s more, they had to do it under secretive conditions and under the ultimate in time constraints. It’s an interesting read, as is Richard Rhodes’s “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” which we read back in the late 1980s and which Brian mentions in the essay. Both are highly recommended for anyone interested in how the Atomic Age was born. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8181008",
"author": "Nik",
"timestamp": "2025-09-17T16:40:38",
"content": "Do aliens exist? Yes. Are they alone too? Yes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,426.876761 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/14/retro-x86-with-486tang/ | Retro X86 With 486Tang | Al Williams | [
"FPGA",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"80486",
"fpga",
"Gowin",
"MiSTER",
"Tang"
] | Tang FPGA boards are affordable, and [nand2mario] has been trying to get an x86 core running on one for a while. Looks like it finally worked out, as there is an early version of the
ao486 design on a Tang FPGA board using a Gowin device
. That core’s available on the MiSTer platform, which emulates games using an Altera Cyclone device.
Of course, porting something substantial between FPGA architectures is not trivial. In addition, [nand2mario] made some changes. The original core uses DDR3 memory, but for the Tang and the 486, SDRAM makes more sense. The only problem is that the Tang’s SDRAM is 16 bits wide, which would imply you need two cycles per 32-bit access. To mitigate this, the memory system runs at twice the main clock frequency. Of course, that’s kind of double data rate, but not in the same way as DDR memory.
The MiSTer uses an ARM processor’s high-speed channel to link to the FPGA for disk access. The Tang board lacks a high-speed interface for this, so the disk storage is now on an SD card that the FPGA directly accesses. In addition, the first 128K of the SD card stores configuration settings that the FPGA now reads from that on boot up.
One of the most interesting things about the development was the use of Verilator to simulate the entire system, including things like the VGA card. It was possible to simulate booting to a DOS prompt, although it was slower than being on actual hardware, as you might expect. But, this lets you poke at the entire state of the system in a way that would be difficult on the actual hardware.
Want to give it a try? The Tang boards are cheap. (We have one on a shelf waiting for a future post.) Or, you could go the simulation route.
MiSTer
has really put FPGAs on a lot of people’s radar. If you prefer the C64, that’s
available on a Tang board
, too. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179631",
"author": "fiddlingjunky",
"timestamp": "2025-09-14T21:56:31",
"content": "I love the tang9k and 20k. Very capable little boards.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8179684",
"author": "ellisfl",
"timest... | 1,760,371,426.838034 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/14/reverse-engineering-aleratec-cd-changers-for-archival-use/ | Reverse-Engineering Aleratec CD Changers For Archival Use | Maya Posch | [
"Reverse Engineering",
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"archival",
"cd changer",
"optical media"
] | Handling large volumes of physical media can be a bit of a chore, whether it’s about duplication or archiving. Fortunately this is a perfect excuse for building robotic contraptions, with the robots for handling optical media being both fascinating and mildly frustrating. When [Shelby Jueden] of
Tech Tangents
fame was looking at
using these optical media robots for archival purposes
, the biggest hurdle turned out to be with the optical drives, despite these Aleratec units being primarily advertised for disc duplication.
Both of the units are connected to a PC by USB, but operate mostly standalone, with a documented protocol for the basic unit that makes using it quite easy to use for ripping. This is unlike the larger, triple-drive unit, which had no documented protocol. This meant having to sniff the USB traffic that the original, very limited, software sends to the robot. The protocol has now been documented and
published
on the
Tech Tangents
Wiki for this Aleratec Auto Publisher LS.
Where [Shelby] hit a bit of a brick wall was with mixed-media discs, which standalone DVD players are fine with, but typical IDE/SATA optical drives often struggle with. During the subsequent search for a better drive, the internals of the robot were upgraded from IDE to SATA, but calibrating the robot for the new drives led [Shelby] down a maddening cascade of issues. Yet even after making one type of drive work, the mixed-media issue reared its head again with mixed audio and data, leaving the drive for now as an imperfect, but very efficient, ripper for game and multimedia content, perhaps until the Perfect Optical Drive can be found. | 15 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179582",
"author": "MrW",
"timestamp": "2025-09-14T19:05:02",
"content": "Pioneer 107d",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8179615",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-09-14T20:56:25",
"content": "I used to work for a ... | 1,760,371,426.935735 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/14/this-board-helps-you-prototype-circuits-with-tubes/ | This Board Helps You Prototype Circuits With Tubes | Seth Mabbott | [
"how-to",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"breadboard hacks",
"vacuum tubes"
] | There you are at the surplus store, staring into the bin of faded orange, yellow, red, and black, boxes–a treasure trove of vintage vacuum tubes—dreaming about building a tube amp for your guitar or a phonograph preamp for your DIY hi-fi sound system. But, if you are not already in possession of a vintage, purpose-built tube testing device, how would you test them to know whether they are working properly? How would you test out your designs before committing to them? Or maybe your goal is simply to play around and learn more about how tubes work.
One approach is to build yourself a
breadboard for tubes
, like [MarceloG19] has done. Working mostly with what was laying around, [MarceloG19] built a shallow metal box to serve as a platform for a variety of tube sockets and screw terminals. Connecting the terminals to the socket leads beneath the outer surface of the box made for a tidy and firm base on which to connect other components. The built-in on/off switch, fuse and power socket are a nice touch.
[MarceloG19’s] inaugural design is a simple Class A amplifier, tested with a sine wave and recorded music. Then it’s on to some manual curve tracing, to test a tube that turns out to be fairly worn-out but serviceable for certain use cases.
If you’re dipping your toes into tube-based electronics, you’re going to want a piece of equipment like this prototyping board and [MarceloG19’s] documentation and discussion are a good read to help get you started.
Once you have your board ready, it’s time to move on to building a
stereo amplifier
, a tube-based
headphone preamp
, or take things in a different direction with this
CRT-driven audio amplifier
. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179513",
"author": "werd",
"timestamp": "2025-09-14T14:46:32",
"content": "“surplus store”?! Where is this mythical beast?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8179525",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2025-09-1... | 1,760,371,426.985929 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/14/reverse-engineering-the-milwaukee-m18-diagnostics-protocol/ | Reverse-Engineering The Milwaukee M18 Diagnostics Protocol | Maya Posch | [
"Battery Hacks",
"Reverse Engineering",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"battery pack",
"cordless tool",
"Milwaukee M18"
] | As is regrettably typical in the cordless tool world, Milwaukee’s M18 batteries are highly proprietary. Consequently, this makes them a welcome target for reverse-engineering of their interfaces and protocols. Most recently the
full diagnostic command set for M18 battery packs were reverse-engineered
by [ToolScientist] and others, allowing anyone to check useful things like individual cell voltages and a range of statistics without having to crack open the battery case.
These results follow on
our previous coverage
back in 2023, when the basic interface and poorly checksummed protocol was being explored. At the time basic battery management system (BMS) information could be obtained this way, but now the range of known commands has been massively expanded. This mostly involved just brute-forcing responses from a gaggle of battery pack BMSes.
Interpreting the responses was the next challenge, with responses like cell voltage being deciphered so far, but serial number and the like being harder to determine. As explained in the video below, there are many gotchas that make analyzing these packs significantly harder, such as some reads only working properly if the battery is on a charger, or after an initial read. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179452",
"author": "mnh-jansson",
"timestamp": "2025-09-14T11:49:13",
"content": "While i was involved in this project, the video is from ToolScientist. I would give him the main credit in the article :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,371,427.038231 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/14/from-paper-to-pixels-a-diy-digital-barograph/ | From Paper To Pixels: A DIY Digital Barograph | Matt Varian | [
"hardware"
] | [
"barograph",
"bme280",
"ESP32"
] | A barograph is a device that graphs a barometer’s readings over time, revealing trends that can predict whether stormy weather is approaching or sunny skies are on the way. This
DIY Digital Barograph
, created by [mircmk], offers a modern twist on a classic technology.
Dating back to the mid-1700s, barographs have traditionally used an aneroid cell to move a scribe across paper that advances with time, graphing pressure trends. However, this method has its shortcomings: you must replace the paper once it runs through its time range, and mechanical components require regular maintenance.
[mircmk]’s DIY Digital Barograph ditches paper and aneroids for a sleek 128×64 LCD display that shows measurements from a BME280 pressure sensor. Powered by an ESP32 microcontroller — the code for which is available on the project page — the device checks the sensor upon boot and features external buttons to cycle through readings from the current moment, the last hour, or three hours ago. Unlike traditional barographs that only track pressure, the BME280 also measures temperature and humidity, which are displayed on the screen for a more complete environmental snapshot.
Head over to the project’s Hackaday.io page for more details and to start building your own. Thanks to [mircmk] for sharing this project! We’re excited to see what you come up with next. If you’re inspired, check out other
weather display projects
we’ve featured. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179480",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2025-09-14T13:03:19",
"content": "Built one a few years ago around an Arduino. I might steal some ideas from this one and update mine.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8179555",
... | 1,760,371,427.17912 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/13/3d-modeling-with-paper-as-an-alternative-to-3d-printing/ | 3D Modeling With Paper As An Alternative To 3D Printing | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"Arts and Crafts",
"paper model"
] | Manual arrangement of the parts in Pepakura Designer. (Credit: Arvin Podder)
Although these days it would seem that everyone and their pets are running 3D printers to churn out all the models and gadgets that their hearts desire, a more traditional approach to creating physical 3D models is in the form of paper models. These use designs printed on paper sheets that are cut out and assembled using basic glue, but creating these designs is much easier these days, as [Arvin Poddar]
demonstrates in a recent article
.
The cool part about making these paper models is that you create them from any regular 3D mesh, with any STL or similar file from your favorite 3D printer model site like Printables or Thingiverse being fair game, though [Arvin] notes that reducing mesh faces can be trickier than modelling from scratch. In this case he created the SR-71 model from scratch in Blender, featuring 732 triangles. What the right number of faces is depends on the target paper type and your assembly skills.
Following mesh modelling step is mesh unfolding into a 2D shape, which is where you have a few software options, like the paid-for-but-full-featured
Pepakura Designer
demonstrated, as well as the
‘Paper Model’ exporter
for Blender.
Beyond the software used to create the SR-71 model in the article, the only tools you really need are a color printer, paper, scissor,s and suitable glue. Of course you are always free to use fancier tools than these to print and cut, but the bar here is pretty low for the assembly. Although making functional parts isn’t the goal here, there is a lot to be said for paper models for pure display pieces and to get children interested in 3D modelling. | 32 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179392",
"author": "prfesser",
"timestamp": "2025-09-14T06:05:04",
"content": "Paper modeling is about as inexpensive as a hobby can get. A huge variety of highly detailed models are available for free download. How about a 1/48 scale (2.3 m, seven and a half feet!) Saturn V? Or a ... | 1,760,371,427.253904 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/13/aussie-researchers-say-they-can-bring-the-iron-age-to-mars/ | Aussie Researchers Say They Can Bring The Iron Age To Mars | Tyler August | [
"Space"
] | [
"ISRU",
"mars"
] | It’s not martian regolith, bu it’s the closest chemical match available to the dirt in Gale Crater. (Image: Swinburne University)
Every school child can tell you these days that Mars is red because it’s rusty. The silicate rock of the martian crust and regolith is very rich in iron oxide. Now Australian researchers at CSIRO and Swinburn University claim
they know how to break that iron loose.
In-situ Resource Utilization (IRSU) is a big deal in space exploration, with good reason. Every kilogram of resources you get on site is one you don’t have to fight
the tyranny of the rocket equation
for. Iron might not be something you’d ever be able to haul from Earth to the next planet over, but when you can make it on site? You can build like a Victoria is still queen and it’s time to flex on the French.
The key to the process seems to be simple pyrolysis: they describe putting dirt that is geochemically analogous to martian regolith into a furnace, and heating to 1000 °C under Martian atmospheric conditions to get iron metal. At 1400 °C, they were getting iron-silicon alloys– likely the stuff steelmakers call ferrosilicon, which isn’t something you’d build a crystal palace with.
It’s not clear how economical piling red dust into a thousand-degree furnace would be on Mars– that’s certainly not going to cut it on Earth– but compared to launch costs from Earth, it’s not unimaginable that martian dirt
could be considered ore
. | 44 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179358",
"author": "Sean",
"timestamp": "2025-09-14T02:18:31",
"content": "“It’s not clear how economical piling red dust into a thousand-degree furnace would be on Mars”We are far from there yet, but in the end, unless you are doing asteroid mining in say the Xinglong (The Expanse... | 1,760,371,427.129879 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/13/how-to-make-a-simple-mosfet-tester/ | How To Make A Simple MOSFET Tester | John Elliot V | [
"hardware",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"mosfet",
"MOSFET tester"
] | Over on YouTube our hacker [VIP Love Secretary] shows us
how to make a simple MOSFET tester
.
This is a really neat, useful, elegant, and simple hack, but the video is kind of terrible. We found that the voice-over constantly saying “right?” and “look!” seriously drove us to distraction. But this is a circuit which you should know about so maybe do what we did and watch the video with subtitles on and audio off.
To use this circuit you install the MOSFET you want to test and then press with your finger the spare leg of each of two diodes; in the final build there are some metal touch pads attached to the diodes to facilitate this. One diode will turn the MOSFET off, the other diode will turn the MOSFET on, and the LED will show you which is which.
Apparently this works through stray capacitance, an explanation which makes sense to us. We were so curious that we ran over to the bench to build our own version (pictured with the schematic above) just to see if it worked as advertised, and:
it did!
We tested it with a faulty MOSFET and when the MOSFET under test is faulty then the LED won’t turn on and off like it should when the MOSFET works. Also, if you build one of these, you want to feed in a two or three volt supply (it will depend on the specs of the LED you use); it’s not mentioned in the video but two volts is what we used that worked best for us.
Thanks to [Danjovic] for
writing in
to let us know about this one. If you’re interested in MOSFETs maybe it’s time to
learn the truth
about them. | 22 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179342",
"author": "JSL",
"timestamp": "2025-09-14T00:13:12",
"content": "Nice video. A better explanation is that the stray capacitance of the high-impedance gate should retain whatever charge is imparted upon it to keep the LED turned on or off. The human acts as an antenna for... | 1,760,371,427.313635 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/13/send-images-to-your-terminal-with-rich-pixels/ | Send Images To Your Terminal WithRich Pixels | Donald Papp | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"pixel art",
"terminal",
"unicode"
] | [darrenburns]’
Rich Pixels
is a library for sending colorful images to a terminal. Give it an image, and it’ll dump it to your terminal in full color. While it also supports ASCII art, the cool part is how it makes it so easy to display an arbitrary image — a pixel-art rendition of it, anyway — in a terminal window.
How it does this is by cleverly representing two lines of pixels in the source image with a single terminal row of characters. Each vertical pixel pair is represented by a single Unicode ▄ (U+2584 “lower half block”) character. The trick is to set the
background
color of the half-block to the
upper
pixel’s RGB value, and the
foreground
color of the half-block to the
lower
pixel’s RGB. By doing this, a single half block character represents two vertically-stacked pixels. The only gotcha is that Rich Pixels doesn’t resize the source image; if one’s source image is 600 pixels wide, one’s terminal is going to receive 600 U+2584 characters per line to render the Rich Pixels version.
[Simon WIllison] took things a step further and made
show_image.py
, which works the same except it
resizes the source image to fit one’s terminal
first. This makes it much more flexible and intuitive.
The code is
here on [Simon]’s tools GitHub
, a repository for software tools he finds useful, like the
Incomplete JSON Pretty Printer
. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179302",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-09-13T21:24:15",
"content": "Mode 7, Teletext!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8179325",
"author": "Brendan Robert",
"timestamp": "2025-09-13T22:43:05",
"content": "ca... | 1,760,371,427.368743 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/13/esp32-hosts-functional-minecraft-server/ | ESP32 Hosts FunctionalMinecraftServer | Tyler August | [
"Games",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"esp32-C3",
"minecraft"
] | If you haven’t heard of
Minecraft
, well, we hope you enjoyed your rip-van-winkle nap this past decade or so. For everyone else, you probably at least know that this is a multiplayer, open world game, you may have heard that running a
Minecraft
server is a good job for maxing out a spare a Raspberry Pi. Which is why we’re hugely impressed that [PortalRunner] managed to squeeze an
open world onto an ESP32-C3
.
Of course, the trick here is that the MCU isn’t actually running the game — it’s running
bareiron
, [PortalRunner]’s own C-based
Minecraft
server implementation. Rewriting the server code in C allows it to be optimized for the ESP32’s hardware, but it also let [PortalRunner] strip his server down to the bare essentials, and tweak everything for performance. For example, instead of the multiple octaves of Perlin noise for terrain generation, with every chunk going into RAM, he’s using the
x
and
z
of the corners as seeds for the psudorandom
rand()
function, and interpolating between them. Instead of caves being generated by a separate algorithm, and stored in memory, in
bareiron
the underground is just a mirror-image of the world above. Biomes are just tiled, and sit separately from one another.
So yes, what you get from
bareiron
is simpler than a traditional
Minecraft
world — items are simplified, crafting is simplified, everything is simplified, but it’s also running on an ESP32, so you’ve got to give it a pass. With 200 ms to load each chunk, it’s playable, but the World’s Smallest
Minecraft
Server is a bit like a dancing bear: it’s not about how well it dances, but that it dances at all.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen
Minecraft’s
server code re-written:
some masochist did it in COBOL
, but at least that ran on an actual computer, not a microcontroller. Speaking of low performance, you
can’t
play Minecraft on an SNES, but
you can hide the game inside a cartridge
, which is almost as good.
Thanks to [CodeAsm] for the tip. Please refer any other dancing bears spotted in the wild
to our tips line. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179188",
"author": "1Fac3D",
"timestamp": "2025-09-13T17:14:44",
"content": "My respect and my condolences",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8179239",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-09-13T18:24:26",
"content": "Som... | 1,760,371,427.468357 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/13/keep-reading-keep-watching/ | Keep Reading, Keep Watching | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants"
] | [
"newsletter",
"rants"
] | I’ve been flying quadcopters a fair bit lately, and trying to learn some new tricks also means crashing them, which inevitably means repairing them. Last weekend, I was working on some wiring that had gotten caught and ripped a pad off of the controller PCB. It wasn’t so bad, because there was a large SMT capacitor nearby, and I could just piggyback on that, but the problem was how to re-route the wires to avoid this happening again.
By luck, I had just watched a video where someone else was building up a new quad, and had elegantly solved the exact same routing problem. I was just watching the video because I was curious about the frame in question, and I had absolutely no idea that it would contain the solution to a problem that I was just about to encounter, but because I was paying attention, it make it all a walk in the park.
I can’t count the number of times that I’ve had this experience: the blind luck of having just read or seen something that solves a problem I’m about to encounter. It’s a great feeling, and it’s one of the reasons that I’ve always read Hackaday – you never know when one hacker’s neat trick is going to be just the one you need next week. Indeed, that’s one of the reasons that we try to feature not just the gonzo hacks that drill down deep on a particular feat, but also the little ones too, that solve something in particular in a neat way. Because reading up on the hacks is free, and particularly cheap insurance against tomorrow’s unexpected dilemmas.
Read more Hackaday!
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on
the web version of the newsletter
.
Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning?
You should sign up
! | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179164",
"author": "Chris Pepin",
"timestamp": "2025-09-13T14:12:54",
"content": "This is why it’s good to have a well-rounded education and to be constantly learning new things. You never know what bits of information will come in handy and provide unexpected dividends.",
"par... | 1,760,371,427.422743 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/13/turning-a-milling-machine-into-a-lathe/ | Turning A Milling Machine Into A Lathe | Aaron Beckendorf | [
"cnc hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"cnc lathe",
"lathe",
"metal lathe",
"taig mill"
] | If you’re planning to make a metalworking lathe out of a CNC milling machine, you probably don’t expect getting a position sensor to work to be your biggest challenge. Nevertheless, this was
[Anthony Zhang]’s experience
. Admittedly, the milling machine’s manufacturer sells a conversion kit, which greatly simplifies the more obviously difficult steps, but getting it to cut threads automatically took a few hacks.
The conversion started with a secondhand Taig MicroMill 2019DSL CNC mill, which was well-priced enough to be purchased specifically for conversion into a lathe. Taig’s conversion kit includes the spindle, tool posts, mounting hardware, and other necessary parts, and the modifications were simple enough to take only a few hours of disassembly and reassembly. The final lathe reuses the motors and control electronics from the CNC, and the milling motor drives the spindle through a set of pulleys. The Y-axis assembly isn’t used, but the X- and Z-axes hold the tool post in front of the spindle.
The biggest difficulty was in getting the spindle indexing sensor working, which was essential for cutting accurate threads. [Anthony] started with Taig’s sensor, but there was no guarantee that it would work with the mill’s motor controller, since it was designed for a lathe controller. Rather than plug it in and hope it worked, he ended up disassembling both the sensor and the controller to reverse-engineer the wiring.
He found that it was an inductive sensor which detected a steel insert in the spindle’s pulley, and that a slight modification to the controller would let the two work together. In the end, however, he decided against using it, since it would have taken up the controller’s entire I/O port. Instead, [Anthony] wired his own I/O connector, which interfaces with a commercial inductive sensor and the end-limit switches. A side benefit was that the new indexing sensor’s mounting didn’t block moving the pulley’s drive belt, as the original had.
The end result was a small, versatile CNC lathe with enough accuracy to cut useful threads with some care. If you aren’t lucky enough to get a Taig to convert, there are
quite a few
people who’ve built their own
CNC lathes
, ranging from
relatively simple
to the
extremely advanced
. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179282",
"author": "tyler",
"timestamp": "2025-09-13T20:01:33",
"content": "I’m building a bullet lathe in the same veinUsing a piece of railroad track as the bed",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8179476",
"author": "C... | 1,760,371,427.586927 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/13/design-scanimations-in-a-snap-with-the-right-math/ | Design Scanimations In A Snap With The Right Math | Donald Papp | [
"Art",
"classic hacks"
] | [
"animation",
"barrier grid",
"scanimate"
] | Barrier-grid animations (also called scanimations) are a thing most people would recognize on sight, even if they didn’t know what they were called. Move a set of opaque strips over a pattern, and watch as different slices of that image are alternately hidden and revealed, resulting in a simple animation. The tricky part is designing the whole thing — but researchers at MIT designed
FabObscura
as a design tool capable not only of creating the patterned sheets, but doing so in a way that allows for complex designs.
The barrier grid need not consist of simple straight lines, and movement of the grid can just as easily be a rotation instead of a slide. The system simply takes in the desired frames, a mathematical function describing how the display should behave, and creates the necessary design automatically.
The paper
(PDF) has more details, and while it is possible to make highly complex animations with this system, the more frames and the more complex the design, the more prominent the barrier grid and therefore the harder it is to see what’s going on. Still, there are some very nice results, such as the example in the image up top, which shows a coaster that can represent three different drink orders.
We recommend
checking out the video
(embedded below) which shows off other possibilities like a clock that looks like a hamster wheel, complete with running rodent. It’s reminiscent of
this incredibly clever clock
that uses a Moiré pattern (a kind of interference pattern between two elements) to reveal numerals as time passes.
We couldn’t find any online demo or repository for FabObscura, but if you know of one, please share it in the comments. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179128",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-09-13T09:50:40",
"content": "Probably a fun little weekend programming puzzle.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8179150",
"author": "Pumpkinwaffle",
"timestamp": "2025-09-13T11:... | 1,760,371,427.632218 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/12/musical-motors-bldc-edition/ | Musical Motors, BLDC Edition | Tyler August | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"BLDC controller",
"bldc motor",
"electronic music"
] | This should count as a hack: making music from a thing that should not sing. In this case, [SIROJU] is tickling the ivories with
a Brushless DC motor, or BLDC.
To listen to a performance, jump to 6:27 in the embedded video. This BLDC has a distinctly chip-tune like sound, not entirely unlike other projects that
make music with stepper motors
. Unlike most stepper-based instruments we’ve seen [SIROJU]’s BLDC isn’t turning as it sings. He’s just got it vibrating by manipulating the space vector modulation that drives the motor — he gets a response of about 10 kHz that way. Not CD-quality, no, but plenty for electronic music. He can even play chords of up to 7 notes at a time.
There’s no obvious reason he couldn’t embed the music into a proper motor-drive signal, and thus allow a drone to hum it’s own theme song as it hovers along. He’s certainly got the chops for it; if you haven’t seen [SIROJU]’s videos on BLDC drivers on YouTube, you should check out his channel. He’s got a lot of deep content about running these ubiquitous motors. Sure, we could have just linked to him showing you how to do FOC on an STM32, but “making it sing” is an expression for mastery in English, and a lot more fun besides.
There are
other ways
to make
music with motors.
If you know of any others, don’t hesitate to
send us a tip. | 21 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179066",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-09-13T05:06:23",
"content": "Sounds like AI narration. Even if it’s not, I couldn’t get past two minutes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8179071",
"author": "Cad the Mad",
... | 1,760,371,427.685883 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/12/what-is-the-fourier-transform/ | What Is The Fourier Transform? | John Elliot V | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"discrete fourier transform",
"fast fourier transform",
"fourier transform",
"Joseph Fourier"
] | Over at
Quanta Magazine
[Shalma Wegsman] asks
What Is the Fourier Transform?
[Shalma] begins by telling you a little about
Joseph Fourier
, the French mathematician with an interest in heat propagation who founded the field of harmonic analysis in the early 1800s.
Fourier’s basic insight was that you can represent everything as a sum of very basic oscillations, where the basic oscillations are sine or cosine functions with certain parameters. [Shalma] explains that the biology of our ear can do a similar thing by picking the various notes out from a tune which is heard, but mathematicians and programmers work without the benefit of evolved resonant hairs and bone, they work with math and code.
[Shalma] explains how frequency components can be discovered by trial and error, multiplying candidate frequencies with the original function to see if there are large peaks, indicating the frequency is a component, or if the variations average to zero, indicating the frequency is not a component. [Shalma] tells how even square waves can be modeled with an infinite set of frequencies known as the Fourier series.
Taking a look at higher-dimensional problems [Shalma] mentions how Fourier transforms can be used for graphical compression by dropping the high frequency detail which our eyes can barely perceive anyway. [Shalma] gives us a fascinating look at the 64 graphical building blocks which can be combined to create any possible 8×8 image.
[Shalma] then mentions
James Cooley
and
John Tukey
and the development of the Fast Fourier Transform in the 1960s. This mathematical tool has been employed to study the tides, to detect gravitational waves, to develop radar and magnetic resonance imaging, and to support signal processing and data compression. Even quantum mechanics finds use for harmonic analysis, and [Shalma] explains how it relates to the uncertainty principle. The Fourier transform has spread through pure mathematics and into number theory, too.
[Shalma] closes with a quote from
Charles Fefferman
: “If people didn’t know about the Fourier transform, I don’t know what percent of math would then disappear, but it would be a big percent.”
If you’re interested in the Fourier transform and want to dive deeper we would encourage you to read
The Fastest Fourier Transform In The West
and
Even Faster Fourier Transforms On The Raspbery Pi Zero
.
Header image: Joseph Fourier, Attributed to Pierre-Claude Gautherot,
Public domain
. | 20 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179113",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": "2025-09-13T08:10:10",
"content": "The 3blue1brown YouTube channel has an amazing video titled “But what is the Fourier Transform” that really nailed home my intuition for it.https://youtu.be/spUNpyF58BY?feature=shared",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,371,427.740965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/12/running-code-on-a-pax-credit-card-payment-machine/ | Running Code On A PAX Credit Card Payment Machine | Maya Posch | [
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"payment terminal",
"point of sale"
] | The PAX D177 PoS terminal helpfully tells you which tamper points got triggered. (Credit: Lucas Teske)
These days Points of Sale (PoS) usually include a digital payment terminal of some description, some of which are positively small, such as the Mini PoS terminals that PAX sells. Of course, since it has a CPU and a screen it must be hacked to run something else, and maybe discover something fun about the hardware in the process. Thus [Lucas Tuske] set out to
do exactly this with a PAX D177 PoS
, starting with purchasing three units: one to tear apart, one to bypass tamper protections on and one to keep as intact reference.
As expected, there are a few tamper protections in place, starting with pads that detect when the back cover is removed and a PCB that’s densely covered in fine traces to prevent sneaky drilling. Although tripping the tamper protections does not seem to affect the contents of the Flash, the firmware is signed. Furthermore the secrets like keys that are stored in NVRAM are purged, rendering the device effectively useless to any attacker.
The SoC that forms the brains of the whole operations is the relatively obscure
MH1903
, which is made by MegaHunt and comes in a dizzying number of variants that are found in applications like these PoS terminals. Fortunately the same SoC is also found on a development board with the AIR105 MCU that turns out to feature the same MH1903 core. These are ARM Cortex-M3 cores, which makes targeting them somewhat easier.
Rather than try to break the secure boot of the existing SoC, [Lucas] opted to replace the SoC package with a brand new one, which was its own adventure. Although one could say that this is cheating, it made getting a PoC of custom code running on one of these devices significantly easier. In a foll0w-up article [Lucas] expects to have
Doom
running on this device before long. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179059",
"author": "x0rpunk",
"timestamp": "2025-09-13T04:19:32",
"content": "CPU swap….Another 1337 way is to put a SBC in it; classic HaD style",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8179081",
"author": "Per Jensen",
"timest... | 1,760,371,427.78753 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/12/a-breadboard-computer-in-three-chips/ | A Breadboard Computer In Three Chips | Bryan Cockfield | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"breadboard",
"clock",
"computer",
"counter",
"programmable",
"ram"
] | Building a computer on a breadboard is a seminal project for many builders, but it can become complicated quite quickly, not to mention that all the parts needed for a computer are being placed on a medium which often lends itself to loose wires and other hardware bugs.
[3DSage] has a working breadboard computer that is as simple as it can possibly be
, putting it together piece by piece to show exactly what’s needed to get a computer which can count, access memory, and even perform basic mathematical operations.
The first step for any computer is to build a clock, and in this case it’s being provided by a 555 timer which is configured to provide an adjustable time standard and which steps through the clock pulses when a button is pressed. The next piece is a four-bit counter and a memory chip, which lets the computer read and write data. A set of DIP switches allows a user to write data to memory, and by using the last three bits of the data as opcodes, the computer can reset, halt, and jump to various points in a simple program.
Although these three chips make it possible to perform basic programming, [3DSage] takes this a bit further in his video by demonstrating some other simple programs, such as one which can play music or behave as an alarm clock. He also shows how to use a fourth chip in the form of a binary adder to perform some basic math, and then packages it all into a retro-styled computer kit. Of course you can take these principles and build them out as far as they will go, like
this full 8-bit computer
built on a breadboard
or even this breadboard computer that hosts a 486
. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8179060",
"author": "mythoughts62",
"timestamp": "2025-09-13T04:27:53",
"content": "This sounds alotlike a 4-bit machine I built with perf board and dead-bug wiring as a teenager in the ’70s. It used a lot more than 3 chips though, it was all TTL except for the, you guessed it, 555 ... | 1,760,371,427.824057 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/12/reify-your-github-commit-history-with-contrib-cal/ | Reify Your GitHub Commit History With Contrib Cal | John Elliot V | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"hardware",
"LED Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"Contrib Cal",
"GitHub activity",
"Raspberry Pi Zero W"
] | Over on Instructables, [Logan Fouts] shows us
the Contrib Cal GitHub desk gadget
. This build will allow you to sport your recent GitHub commit activity on your wall or desk with an attractive diffuse light display backed by a 7×4 matrix of multicolor LEDs. Motivate yourself and impress your peers!
This humble project is at the same time multifaceted. You will build a case with 3D printing, make a diffuse screen by gluing and cutting, design a LED matrix PCB using KiCad, solder everything together, and then program it all with Python. The brains of the operation are a Raspberry Pi Zero W.
The Instructables article will run you through the required supplies, help you to print the case, explain how to solder the LEDs, tell how to install the heat-set inserts for high quality screw attachments, explain wiring and power, tell you about how to use the various screws, then tell you about where to get more info and the required software on GitHub:
Contrib Cal v2
.
Of course this diffuse LED matrix is only one way to display your GitHub progress, you can also
Track Your GitHub Activity With This E-Ink Display
. | 3 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8178826",
"author": "jawnhenry",
"timestamp": "2025-09-12T17:38:39",
"content": "Only one comment:What does“REIFY”mean?More of your commitment to Artificial Stupidity, Hackaday?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8178865",
... | 1,760,371,427.900583 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/12/hackaday-podcast-episode-337-homebrew-inductors-teletypes-in-the-bedroom-and-action/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 337: Homebrew Inductors, Teletypes In The Bedroom, And Action! | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Fresh hacks here! Get your fresh hot hacks right here! Elliot and Dan teamed up this week to go through every story published on our pages to find the best of the best, the cream of the crop, and serve them up hot and fresh for you. The news this week was all from space, with the ISS getting its latest push from Dragon, plus <<checks notes>> oh yeah, life on Mars. Well, maybe, but it’s looking more and more like we are not alone, or at least not a few million years ago.
But even if we are, plenty is still going on down here to keep you interested. Like homebrewing? Good, because we looked at DIY inductors, wire nuts, and even a dope — but nope — ultralight helicopter. Into retro? We’ve got you covered with a loving look at IRC, a 60s bedside computer guaranteed to end your marriage, and a look at the best 8-bit language you never heard of.
We looked at a rescued fume hood, sensors galore on your phone, a rug that should have — and did, kind of — use a 555, and raytracing for the rest of your natural life. As for “Can’t Miss Articles,” Elliot could barely contain himself with the bounty of projects written up by our Hackaday writers, not to mention Arya’s deep dive into putting GPS modules to work in your builds.
Download this MP3, full of twisty little podcasts, all alike
. Plugh!
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 337 Show Notes:
News:
Dragon Is The Latest, And Final, Craft To Reboost ISS
NASA Presser Reveals New Clues About Ancient Life on Planet Mars – YouTube
What’s that Sound?
Have a listen, guess where the music is from, and
enter your guess right here!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Give Your Twist Connections Some Strength
Print-in-Place Connectors Aim To Make Wiring Easier
Tips For Homebrewing Inductors
Was Action! The Best 8-Bit Language?
AtariWiki V3.1: Action Source Code
AtariWiki V3.1: Action
AtariWiki V3.1: Forth
Retrotechtacular: The Noisy Home Computer From 1967
A Love Letter To Internet Relay Chat
Life After IRC – Your Move, Mozilla!
Making An Ultralight Helicopter
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks
Old Phone Upcycled Into Pico Projector, ASMR
Reverse Engineering A Robot Mower’s Fence
The 555 As You’ve Never Seen It: In Textile!
A Look At Not An Android Emulator
No Plans For The Weekend? Learn Raytracing!
Dan’s Picks:
Restoring A Cheap Fume Hood
Smartphone Sensors Unlocked: Turn Your Phone Into A Physics Lab
Heart Rate Monitoring Via WiFi
Can’t-Miss Articles:
FreeCAD Foray: From Brick To Shell
Bootstrapping Android Development: A Survival Guide
The Android Linux Commander
GPS And Its Little Modules | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,371,427.863178 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/12/this-week-in-security-npm-kerbroasting-and-the-rest-of-the-story/ | This Week In Security: NPM, Kerbroasting, And The Rest Of The Story | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"0-days",
"NPM",
"Obfuscated C Code Contest",
"This Week in Security"
] | Two billion downloads per week. That’s
the download totals for the NPM packages compromised in a supply-chain attack this week
. Ninety-nine percent of the cloud depends on one of the packages, and one-in-ten cloud environments actually included malicious code as a result of the hack. Take a moment to ponder that. In a rough estimate, ten percent of the Internet was pwned by a single attack.
What extremely sophisticated technique was used to pull off such an attack?
A convincing-looking phishing email
sent from the newly registered
npmjs.help
domain. [qix] is the single developer of many of these packages, and in the midst of a stressful week, fell for the scam. We could refer to the obligatory
XKCD 2347
here. It’s a significant problem with the NPM model that a single developer falling for a phishing email can expose the entire Internet to such risk.
And once that account was compromised, it didn’t take long for the mystery attacker to push malicious code. Within an hour, cryptocurrency stealing code was added to two dozen packages. Within a couple hours, the compromise was discovered and the cleanup effort began.
BREAKING
LARGEST SUPPLY CHAIN ATTACK IN HISTORY PULLS OFF MASSIVE CRYPTO HEIST
ATTACKS STEAL $20.05 OF ETH. ENTIRE WORLD CRUMBLING
— vx-underground (@vxunderground)
September 8, 2025
While the attack was staggering in its breadth, in the end
only a few hundred dollars worth of cryptocurrency was actually stolen as a result
. Why was such a successful attack, when measured by deployment, so minimal in actual theft? Two reasons: First, the malware was only live for two hours before takedowns began. And a related second reason, the malicious code was specifically aimed at developer and end-user machines, while the majority of the installs were on servers and cloud deployments, where cryptocurrency transactions weren’t happening.
It brings to mind the question, what could have happened? Instead of looking for cryptocurrency to steal, if the malicious code was tailored to servers and stealth, how long would it have taken to detect? And is there malicious code on NPM and in other places that we just haven’t discovered yet?
SAP ERP CVEs
Let’s break down this Alphabet soup. SAP is an acronym for “Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing”, a German company providing business software. ERP is their Enterprise Resource Planning software, and of course a CVE is a Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure. So to translate the acronyms,
SAP’s accounting software has vulnerabilities
. And in this case, CVE-2025-42944 is a ten out of ten on the CVSS severity scale.
In fact, there are four vulnerabilities altogether, all CVSS of nine or higher, and all in the underlying NetWeaver platform. SAP owned up to the problems,
commenting that they operated as a backdoor
, allowing unauthorized access. Patches are available for all of these issues, but some of them have been found in use in the wild.
Kerbroasting
You know it’s bad
when a sitting US Senator can tell that your security has problems
. Though before I read the article, I had a feeling it would be [Ron Wyden].
The issue here is Microsoft’s support for RC4 encryption in Active Directory. RC4, also known as ARC4, is a pseudorandom number generator developed at RSA in 1987. This continuing support leads to an attack known as
kerberoasting
.
Kerberos is one of the protocols that powers Active Directory. It works through a sort of ticket signing system. The server doing the signing takes a hash of a password and uses that hash as an encryption key to encrypt the Kerberos ticket. There are two possible problems. First, that password may be a human generated password, and therefore a weak password. And second, the legacy combination of RC4 and original NT hashing makes for extremely fast offline password guessing.
So here’s the kerberoasting attack: Take any account in the Active Directory, and request a Kerberos ticket, specifying the legacy RC4 encryption. Take this offline ticket to a modern CPU/GPU, and use Hashcat to crack that password, at a guess rate measured in the billions per second. Once that password is discovered, arbitrary Kerberos tickets can be signed, providing access to basically any account on the AD system.
This was part of the 2024 ransomware attack on Ascension health, and why the US senate is taking notice. What’s strange is how resistant Microsoft has been to fixing this issue. Microsoft states that RC4 only makes up .1% of traffic, which is nonsense, since the attack doesn’t rely on traffic. Finally in 2026, new installs of Windows server 2025 will disable RC4 by default.
Reverse Engineering and TLS Hacking
We get a great primer from [f0rw4rd] on
how to defeat TLS certificates, in a very specific scenario
. That scenario is reverse engineering an embedded or industrial Linux system. One of the tools you might want to use is to intercept traffic from the embedded system to some web server, but if that system uses HTTPS, it will fail to verify that certificate. What is a researcher to do?
One possible solution is to abuse
LD_PRELOAD
to poison the application. This approach uses dynamic library loading to insert a “malicious” library before program execution.
tls-preloader
is a tool to do exactly this, and supports multiple SSL/TLS libraries, allowing sniffing all that useful TLS data.
The Rest of the Story
Just recently we mentioned several 0-day vulnerabilities that were being used for in-the-wild attacks. This week we have updates on a couple of those. First is
the iOS and macOS vulnerability in DNG image file processing
. The basic issue is that this file type has a TIFF header that includes a
SamplesPerPixel
metadata, and a SOF3 section with a component count. A properly formatted file will have consistency between these two elements, and the Apple file processing didn’t handle such an inconsistency correctly, leading to memory corruption and potentially Remote Code Execution (RCE).
The other
recent 0-day is a FreePBX flaw
that was discovered through the presence of a
clean.sh
script on multiple FreePBX installs. The flaw was an automatic class loader that allowed an unauthenticated user to include module files when calling the ajax.php endpoint. One way to turn this into an exploit is SQL injection in one of the modules. This is what has been patched, meaning there are likely more exploits to find using this php injection quirk.
Bits and Bytes
The Apple CarPlay SDK had a buffer overflow that was reachable by a device connecting to the vulnerable head unit.
Researchers from oligo discovered this flaw, and presented it at Def Con this year
. The end result is root-level RCE, and while Apple has already published an SDK update, most cars are still vulnerable to this one.
And finally, enjoy [LaurieWired]
taking a look at
this year’s
International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC)
winners. This contest is all about pushing the limits in how terrifying C code can be, while still compiling and doing something interesting. And these entries don’t disappoint. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8178771",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-09-12T14:39:10",
"content": "One can only assume that Microsoft has been served with a FISA warrant, with gagging, from the FISC to keep the backdoor in place as long as possible.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,371,428.044986 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/12/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-manhattan-project-but-were-afraid-to-ask/ | Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About The Manhattan Project (But Were Afraid To Ask) | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"Manhattan Project",
"nuclear bomb"
] | There have been plenty of books and movies about how the Manhattan Project brought together scientists and engineers to create the nuclear bomb. Most of them don’t have a lot of technical substance, though. You know — military finds genius, genius recruits other geniuses, bomb! But if you want to hear the story of the engineering,
[Brian Potter] tells it all
. We mean, like, all of it.
If you’re looking for a quick three-minute read, you’ll want to give this a pass. Save it for a rainy afternoon when you can settle in. Even then, he skips past a lot of what is well known. Instead, he spends quite a bit of time discussing how the project addressed the technical challenges, like separating out U235.
Four methods were considered for that task. Creating sufficient amounts of plutonium was also a problem. Producing a pound of plutonium took 4,000 pounds of uranium. When you had enough material, there was the added problem of getting it together fast enough to explode instead of just having a radioactive fizzle.
There are some fascinating tidbits in the write-up. For example, building what would become the Oak Ridge facility required conductors for electromagnets. Copper, however, was in short supply. It was wartime, after all. So the program borrowed another good conductor, silver, from the Treasury Department. Presumably, they eventually returned it, but [Brian] doesn’t say.
There’s the old story that they weren’t entirely sure they wouldn’t ignite the entire atmosphere but, of course,
they didn’t
. Not that the nuclear program didn’t have its share
of bad luck
. | 34 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8178736",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2025-09-12T12:52:48",
"content": "Copper, however, was in short supply. It was wartime, after all. So the program borrowed another good conductor, silver, from the Treasury Department. Presumably, they eventually returned it, but [Bri... | 1,760,371,428.17663 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/12/how-strong-of-a-redbull-can-you-make/ | How Strong Of A Redbull Can You Make? | Fenix Guthrie | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"Chemistry",
"redbull"
] | Energy drinks are a staple of those who want to get awake and energetic in a hurry. But what if said energy is not in enough of a hurry for your taste? After coming across a thrice concentrated energy drink, [Nile Blue]
decided to make a 100 times concentrated Redbull.
Energy drinks largely consist of water with caffeine, flavoring and sugar dissolved inside. Because a solution can only be so strong, so instead of normal Redbull, a sugar free variant was used. All 100 cans were gathered into a bucket to dry the mixture, but first, it had to be de-carbonated. By attaching a water agitator to a drill, all the carbon dioxide diffused in the water fell out of solution. A little was lost, but the process worked extremely well.
From there, the Redbull was moved to a fancy vortex drying machine. While simply evaporating the water in a food dehydrator is an option, it takes a very long time and does not preserve the flavor. The solution to patience is expensive machines from China. This particular machine works by shooting in a mist of liquid into a vortex of hot air. This causes the solids to fall out of solution and separate into a powder which is collected. Much of the powder got caked in the vortex funnel and with much effort, a portion of it was removed by a chisel, and washing with water. Of course, the portion washed with water had to be dried in a food dehydrator, which took ten days. Unfortunately, the machine did not work perfectly and about 33.5 cans worth of Redbull powder where lost along the way.
To math the volume of a standard can of Redbull, all 250 grams of powder would need to be dissolved in a mere 250ml of water, a theoretical 67 times concentrated Redbull. While it did mostly dissolve into a somewhat grainy thick sludge, the powder added so much volume it ended up being equivalent to a 37 times concentration. A mere 7ml of this concoction amounts to a single Redbull, likely the strongest concentration of Redbull possible. Of course, for the full Redbull experience, the sludge was carbonated and finally packaged in an appropriate jar.
If you like strange and potentially dangerous chemistry hacks, make sure to check out this
gold nanoparticle fabrication project next! | 38 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "8178686",
"author": "macsimki",
"timestamp": "2025-09-12T08:57:27",
"content": "no comments.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8178689",
"author": "Darkstar",
"timestamp": "2025-09-12T09:03:07",
"content": "WTF is “gol... | 1,760,371,428.25189 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/11/how-the-ti-99-4a-home-computer-worked/ | How The TI-99/4A Home Computer Worked | John Elliot V | [
"hardware",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"home computer",
"texas instruments",
"TI-99/4A"
] | Over on YouTube [The 8-Bit Guy] shows us
how the TI-99/4A home computer worked
.
[The 8-Bit Guy] runs us through this odd 16-bit home computer from back in the 1980s, starting with a mention of the mysterious extra “space” key on its antiquated keyboard. The port on the side is for two joysticks which share a bus, but you can find boards for compatibility with “newer” hardware, particularly the Atari-style joysticks which are easier to find. The AV port on the back is an old 5-pin DIN such as was typical from Commodore and Atari at the time (also there is a headphone port on the front). The other DB9 port on the back of the device is the port for the cassette interface.
The main cartridge interface is on the front right of the machine, and there’s a smaller expansion socket on the right hand side. The front interface is for loading software (on cartridges) and the side interface is for peripherals. The system boots to a now famous “press any key” prompt. (We know what you’re thinking: “where’s the any key!?” Thanks Homer.)
One curiosity is that when the system is waiting for a command the screen background color is a light blue, and when it’s running a command the background color changes to a light green. [The 8-bit Guy] demos some equation calculator software which has support for variables and expressions. In addition to the equation calculator the same cartridge has a version of BASIC (called TI BASIC) and a version of Space Invaders (called TI INVADERS). (Yes, the interface is all uppercase.)
When they were designing the system the TI-99/4A engineers had been considering an 8-bit CPU but they settled on the 16-bit TMS9900 instead. However, much of the board had already been designed for an 8-bit CPU, which lead it to being a bit of a weird hybrid. The CPU only has 15 address lines but it makes up for it by addressing two bytes at a time, allowing it to read up to 64K.
[The 8-Bit Guy] goes on to discuss the computer architecture, the Graphic Programming Language (GPL), and its various BASIC implementations. Also the internals of the cartridges are explored along with the Video Display Processor (VDP) which supported rudimentary graphics mode (32×24 characters with 15 colors and 32 sprites) in addition to a text mode (40×24 characters). The 4-voice sound generator chip was the SN76489, this chip proved to be useful in many other products as well.
[The 8-Bit Guy] finishes his video with a look at the expansion capabilities, which basically just daisy chain off the right hand side. Each of the peripheral devices demands its own power supply too!
If you’re interested in the TI-99/4A check out
Persistence Pays In TI-99/4A Cassette Tape Data Recovery
and
Don’t Mess With Texas – The TI-99/4A Megademo
. | 59 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "8178649",
"author": "Oliver",
"timestamp": "2025-09-12T05:44:47",
"content": "Omg we used tot have ons of these. Came with some big box on the side too. I remember my dad sitting there hours to an end typing in code , by hunt and peck, (to this day he cant type properly)from a maga... | 1,760,371,427.99815 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/11/analog-optical-computer-for-inference-and-combinatorial-optimization/ | Analog Optical Computer For Inference And Combinatorial Optimization | Maya Posch | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"analog computing",
"inference",
"optical computing"
] | Although computers are overwhelmingly digital today, there’s a good point to be made that analog computers are the more efficient approach for specific applications. The authors behind
a recent paper
in
Nature
are arguing that inference – essential for LLMs – can be done significantly more efficiently using an analog optical computer (AOC).
As the authors describe it, the function of this AOC is to perform a fixed-point search using only optical and analog electronic components. The optics handle the matrix-vector multiplications, while the analog components handle the non-linear operations, subtractions and annealing. This is performed in 20 ns cycles until noise has been reduced to an acceptable level, considering the analog nature of the computer. A big advantage here is that no analog-digital conversions are required as with other (digital) hybrid systems.
So far a small-scale AOC has been constructed for tasks like image classification and non-linear regression tasks, with the authors claiming the AOC being over a hundred times more efficient than current GPU-derived vector processors. | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8178654",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-09-12T06:15:50",
"content": "If I understand correctly, it’s basically a row of LEDs, the light projected into lines onto grayscale TFT, and gathered again into points on photodetector in the perpendicular direction. Fairly simple tech a... | 1,760,371,428.094985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/11/6502-puts-on-an-sdr-hat/ | 6502 Puts On An SDR Hat | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"40-meter",
"6502",
"ham",
"microprocessor",
"radio",
"sdr",
"software-defined radio"
] | The legendary 6502 microprocessor recently turned 50 years old, and to celebrate this venerable chip which brought affordable computing and video gaming to the masses [AndersBNielsen] decided to put one to work doing something well outside its comfort zone. Called the PhaseLoom,
this project uses a few other components to bring the world of software-defined radio (SDR) to this antique platform
.
The PhaseLoom is built around an Si5351 clock generator chip, which is configurable over I2C. This chip is what creates the phase-locked loop (PLL) for the radio. The rest of the components, including antenna connectors and various filters, are in an Arduino-compatible form factor that let it work as a shield or hat for
the 65uino platform
, an Arduino-form-factor 6502 board. The current version [Anders] has been working on is dialed in to the 40-meter ham band, with some buttons on the PCB that allow the user to tune around within that band. He reports that it’s a little bit rough around the edges and somewhat noisy, but the fact that the 6502 is working as an SDR at all is impressive on its own.
For those looking to build their own, all of the schematics and code are available on
the project’s GitHub page
. [Anders] has some future improvements in the pipe for this project as well, noting that with slightly better filters and improved software even more SDR goodness can be squeezed out of this microprocessor. If you’re looking to experiment with SDR using something a little bit more modern, though,
this 10-band multi-mode SDR based on the Teensy microcontroller
gets a lot done without breaking the bank. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8178643",
"author": "Anders Nielsen",
"timestamp": "2025-09-12T05:19:55",
"content": "Thanks for the mention!I think it’s more my “two pieces of wire in the attic” antenna that’s picking up noise rather than the design.The quadrature sampling detector doesn’t have as much selectivit... | 1,760,371,428.385009 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/11/multi-use-roof-eliminates-roof/ | Multi-Use Roof Eliminates Roof | Bryan Cockfield | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"building",
"elevated",
"garden",
"roof",
"solar",
"solar panel"
] | One of the biggest downsides of installing solar panels on a rooftop is that maintenance of the actual roof structure becomes much more difficult with solar panels in the way. But for many people who don’t have huge tracts of land, a roof is wasted space where something useful could otherwise go. [Mihai] had the idea of simply eliminating traditional roofing materials altogether
and made half of this roof out of solar panels directly, with the other half being put to use as a garden
.
Normally solar panels are installed on top of a roof, whether it’s metal or asphalt shingles or some other material, allowing the roof to perform its normal job of keeping weather out of the house while the solar panels can focus on energy generation. In this roof [Mihai] skips this step, having the solar panels pull double duty as roof material and energy generation. In a way this simplifies things; there’s less to maintain and presumably any problems with the roof can be solved by swapping out panels. But we would also presume that waterproofing it might be marginally more difficult.
On the antisolar side of the roof, however, [Mihai] foregoes the solar panels in favor of a system that can hold soil for small garden plants. Putting solar panels on this side of the roof wouldn’t generate as much energy but the area can still be useful as a garden. Of course we’d advise caution when working on a garden at height, but at least for the solar panels you can save some trips up a ladder for maintenance by using something
like this robotic solar panel scrubber
. | 57 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8178505",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-09-11T20:17:57",
"content": "Story is useless without picture of room ceiling below panels.How waterproof is this setup?Closeup of how he flashed the panel joins?I’d overlap and overlay them a half inch, like large fragile tiles.Amateur... | 1,760,371,428.342517 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/11/round-and-round-with-a-tape-delay-synth/ | Round And Round With A Tape Delay Synth | Jenny List | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"delay",
"loop",
"synth",
"tape loop"
] | Over the years we’ve been entertained by an array of musical projects from [Look Mum No Computer], and his latest is no exception.
It’s a tape delay, loop generator, and synth all in one
. Confused? That’s what you get if you position a load of tape heads around a rotating disk with magnetic tape on its perimeter.
Taking a circular piece of inch-thick Perspex, he wraps a length of one inch tape round its perimeter. This is placed as though it were a turntable on a stepper motor with variable speed, and the tape heads are positioned around its edge. Each read head feeds its own preamp which in turn drives a mixer array, and there’s also a record head and an erase head. If you’ve ever played with tape loops you’ll immediately understand the potential for feedback and sequence generation to make interesting sounds. There’s a lot of nuance to the build, in designing the mount for the motor to stop the enclosure flexing, in using a gearbox for increased torque, and in balancing the disk.
The result is as much an effect as it is an instrument in its own right, particularly in its prototype phase when the read head was movable. We’re treated to a demo/performance, and we look forward to perhaps seeing this in person at some point. There’s a future video promised in which a fix should come for a click caused by the erase circuitry, and he’ll make a more compact enclosure for it. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8178476",
"author": "ialonepossessthetruth",
"timestamp": "2025-09-11T18:49:46",
"content": "The first image is beautiful! “He’ll male” what now?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8178521",
"author": "YoDrTentacles",
"tim... | 1,760,371,428.486208 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/11/dragon-is-the-latest-and-final-craft-to-reboost-iss/ | Dragon Is The Latest, And Final, Craft To Reboost ISS | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"commercial space",
"international space station",
"iss",
"reboost",
"shuttle"
] | The International Space Station has been in orbit around the Earth, at least in some form, since November of 1998 — but not without help. In the vacuum of space, an object in orbit can generally be counted on to remain zipping around more or less forever, but the Station is low enough to experience a bit of atmospheric drag. It isn’t much, but it saps enough velocity from the Station that without regular “reboosts” to speed it back up , the orbiting complex would eventually come crashing down.
Naturally, the United States and Russia were aware of this when they set out to assemble the Station. That’s why early core modules such as Zarya and Zvezda came equipped with thrusters that could be used to not only rotate the complex about all axes, but accelerate it to counteract the impact of drag. Eventually the thrusters on Zarya were disabled, and its propellant tanks were plumbed into Zvezda’s fuel system to provide additional capacity.
An early image of ISS, Zarya module in center and Zvezda at far right.
Visiting spacecraft attached to the Russian side of the ISS can transfer propellant into these combined tanks, and they’ve been topped off regularly over the years. In fact, the NASA paper
A Review of In-Space Propellant Transfer Capabilities and Challenges for Missions Involving Propellant Resupply
, notes this as one of the most significant examples of practical
propellant transfer between orbital vehicles
, with more than 40,000 kgs of propellants pumped into the ISS as of 2019.
But while the thrusters on Zvezda are still available for use, it turns out there’s an easier way to accelerate the Station; visiting spacecraft can literally push the orbital complex with their own maneuvering thrusters. Of course this is somewhat easier said than done, and not all vehicles have been able to accomplish the feat, but over the decades several craft have taken on the burden of lifting the ISS into a higher orbit.
Earlier this month
, a specially modified SpaceX Cargo Dragon became the newest addition to the list of spacecraft that can perform a reboost. The craft will boost the Station several times over the rest of the year, which will provide valuable data for when it comes time to reverse the process and de-orbit the ISS in the future.
Reboosting the Russian Way
By far the easiest way for a visiting spacecraft to reboost the ISS is to dock with the rear of the Zvezda module. This not only places the docked spacecraft at what would be considered the “rear” of the Station given its normal flight orientation, but puts the craft as close as possible to the Station’s own thrusters. This makes it relatively easy to compute the necessary parameters for the thruster burn.
Progress 72 in 2019
Historically, reboosts from this position have been performed by the Russian Progress spacecraft. Introduced in 1978, Progress is essentially an uncrewed version of the Soyuz spacecraft, and like most of Russia’s space hardware, has received various upgrades and changes over the decades. Progress vehicles are designed specifically for serving long-duration space stations, and were used to bring food, water, propellants, and cargo to the Salyut and Mir stations long before the ISS was even on the drawing board.
Reboosts could also be performed by the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). Built by the European Space Agency (ESA), the ATV was essentially the European counterpart to Progress, and flew similar resupply missions. The ATV had considerably greater cargo capacity, with the ability to bring approximately 7,500 kg of materials to the ISS compared to 2,400 kg for Progress.
Only five ATVs were flown, from 2008 to 2014. There were several proposals to build more ATVs, including modified versions that could potentially even carry crew. None of these versions ever materialized, although it should be noted that the design of the Orion spacecraft’s Service Module is based on the ATV.
American Muscle
Reboosting the ISS from the American side of the Station is possible, but involves a bit more work. For one thing, the entire Station needs to flip over, as the complex’s normal orientation would have the American docking ports facing fowards. Of course, there’s really no such thing as up or down in space, so this maneuver doesn’t impact the astronauts’ work. There are however various experiments and devices aboard the Station that are designed to point down towards Earth, so this reorientation can still be disruptive.
Depending on the spacecraft, simply flipping the Station over might not be sufficient. In the case of the Space Shuttle, which of the American vehicles performed the most reboost maneuvers by far, the entire complex had to be rotated into just the right position so that the thrusters on the spaceplane would be properly aligned with the Stations’ center of mass.
As described in the “AUTO REBOOST” section of the
STS-129
Orbit Operations Checklist
, the Shuttle’s computer would actually be given control of the maneuvering systems of the ISS so the entire linked structure can be rotated into the correct position. A diagram in the Checklist even shows the approximate angle the vehicle’s should be at for the Shuttle’s maneuvering thrusters to line up properly.
With the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011, maintaining the Station’s orbit became the sole domain of the Russians until 2018, when the Cygnus became the first commercial spacecraft to perform a reboost. The cargo spacecraft had a swiveling engine which helped get the direction of thrust aligned, but the Station did still need to rotate to get into the proper position.
After performing a second reboost in 2022, the Cygnus spacecraft was retired. It’s replacement, the upgraded Cygnus XL — is currently scheduled to
launch its first mission to the ISS no earlier than September 14th
.
Preparing for the Final Push
That brings us to the present day, and the Cargo Dragon. SpaceX had never designed the spacecraft to perform a reboost, and indeed, it would at first seem uniquely unsuited for the task as its “Draco” maneuvering thrusters are actually located on the front and sides of the capsule. When docked, the primary thrusters used for raising and lowering the Dragon’s own orbit are essentially pressed up against the structure of the ISS, and obviously can’t be activated.
Crew Dragon approaching the ISS, note four Draco thrusters around docking port.
To make reboosting with the Dragon possible, SpaceX added additional propellant tanks and a pair of rear-firing Draco thrusters within the spacecraft’s un-pressurized “trunk” module. This hollow structure is usually empty, but occasionally will hold large or bulky cargo that can’t fit inside the spacecraft itself. It’s also occasionally been used to deliver components destined to be mounted to the outside of the ISS, such as the for the outside of the ISS, such as the
International Docking Adapter (IDA)
and the
roll-out solar panels
.
Additional propellant tanks mounted in the trunk of the Cargo Dragon.
While the ability to have the Dragon raise the orbit of the International Space Station obviously has value to NASA, the implications of this experiment go a bit farther.
SpaceX has already been awarded the contract to
develop and operate the “Deorbit Vehicle”
which will ultimately be used to slow down the ISS and put it on a targeted reentry trajectory sometime after 2030. Now that the company has demonstrated the ability to add additional thrusters and propellant to a standard Dragon spacecraft via a module installed in the trunk, it’s likely that the Deorbit Vehicle will take a similar form.
So while the development of this new capability is exciting from an operational standpoint, especially given deteriorating relations with Russia, it’s also a reminder that the orbiting laboratory is entering its final days. | 48 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8178461",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-09-11T17:56:17",
"content": "Those tanks don’t look like they take up nearly the volume of the cargo bay. I know it’s all they need and it doesn’t make sense to add more, but I wonder what kind of range the lil guy would have if you packe... | 1,760,371,428.574283 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/11/4-bit-single-board-computer-based-on-the-intel-4004-microprocessor/ | 4-bit Single Board Computer Based On The Intel 4004 Microprocessor | John Elliot V | [
"computer hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"4-bit microprocessor",
"intel 4004",
"Intel 4040",
"SBC",
"single board computer"
] | [Scott Baker] is at it again and this time he has
built a 4-bit single board computer based on the Intel 4004 microprocessor
.
In the board design [Scott] covers the CPU (both the Intel 4004 and 4040 are supported), and its support chips: the 4201A clock-generator, its crystal, and the 4289 Standard Memory Interface. The 4289 irons out the 4-bit interface for use with 8-bit ROMs. Included is a ATF22V10 PLD for miscellaneous logic, a 74HCT138 for chip-select, and a bunch of inverters for TTL compatibility (the 4004 itself uses 15 V logic with +5 V Vss and -10 V Vdd).
[Scott] goes on to discuss the power supply, ROM and page mapper, the serial interface, the RC2014 bus interface, RAM, and the multimodule interface. Then comes the implementation, a very tidy custom PCB populated with a bunch of integrated circuits, some passive components, a handful of LEDs, and a few I/O ports. [Scott] credits
Jim Loo’s Intel 4004 SBC project
as the genesis of his own build.
If you’re interested in seeing this board put to work check out the video embedded below. If you’d like to know more about the 4004 be sure to check out
Supersize Your Intel 4004 By Over 10 Times
,
The 4004 Upgrade You’ve Been Waiting For
, and
Calculating Pi On The 4004 CPU, Intel’s First Microprocessor
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8178437",
"author": "Tim McNerney",
"timestamp": "2025-09-11T16:42:12",
"content": "Excellent work, Scott!–Tim (founder of 4004 anniversary project: 4004.com)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8179041",
"author": "Scott ... | 1,760,371,428.617464 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/11/freecad-foray-good-practices/ | FreeCAD Foray: Good Practices | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"freecad",
"tips"
] | Last time, we built a case for a PCB that handles 100 W of USB-C power, an old project that I’ve long been aiming to revive. It went well, and I’d like to believe you that the article will give you a much-needed easy-to-grasp FreeCAD introduction, Matrix knowledge upload style, having you designing stuff in no time.
Apart from my firm belief in the power of open-source software, I also do believe in social responsibilities, and I think I have a responsibility to teach you some decent FreeCAD design practices I’ve learned along the way. Some of them are going to protect your behind from mistakes, and some of them will do that while also making your project way easier to work with, for you and others.
You might not think the last part about “others” matters, but for a start, it matters in the ideal world that we’re collectively striving towards, and also, let’s be real, things like documentation are half intended for external contributors, half for you a year later. So, here’s the first FreeCAD tip that will unquestionably protect you while helping whoever else might work with the model later.
Okay, we’re all hackers, so I’ll start with zero-th FreeCAD tip – press Ctrl+S often. That’ll help a ton. Thankfully, FreeCAD’s autorecovery system has made big leaps, and it’s pretty great in case FreeCAD does crash, but the less you have to recover, the better. Now, onto the first tip.
Name Your Bodies, Always
The button is F2. That’s it. Click on your models in the tree view and give them a name. Do it for all extrudes, cuts, and even fillets/chamfers. You don’t have to do it for sketches, since those are always contained within an extrusion. If at all possible, do it immediately, make it a habit.
Why? Because names make it clear what the extrusion/cut/fillet is for, and you’ll be thankful for it multiple times over when modifying your model or even just looking at it the next morning. Also, it makes it way easier to avoid accidentally sending the wrong 3D model to your printer.
They’re the same picture.
How to make naming easier? I’ve figured out an easy and apt naming scheme, that you’ve seen in action in the previous article. For Fusions, I do “primary object +addition” or “with addition”, mentioning just the last addition. So, “Bottom case +cutouts” is a cut that contains “Bottom case +logo” and “Cutouts”, “Bottom case +logo” is a cut that contains “Bottom case” and “Logo”, and “Bottom case” contains “Bottom floor” and “Bottom walls”.
It’s not a perfect scheme, but it avoids verbosity and you have to barely think of the names. Don’t shy away from using words like “pip” and “doohickey” if the word just doesn’t come to your mind at the moment – you’re choosing between a project that’s vaguely endearing and one that’s incomprehensible, so the choice is obvious. Naming your models lets you avoid them becoming arcane magic, which might sound fun at a glance until you realize there’s already an object of arcane magic in your house, it’s called a “3D printer”, and you’ve had enough arcane magic in your life.
Last but not least, to hack something is know learn its true name, and whatever your feature is, there’s no truth in “Cut034”. By the way, about FreeCAD and many CAD packages before it, they’ve been having a problem with true names, actually, it’s a whole thing called Topological Naming Problem.
Naming Is Hard, Topology Is Harder
How do you know where a feature really is? For instance, you take a cube, and you cut two slots into the same side. How does the CAD package ensure that the slots are on the same side? One of the most popular options for it is topological naming. So, a cube gets its faces named Face1 through Face6, and as you slowly turn that cube into, say, a Minecraft-style hand showing a middle finger, each sketch remembers the name of the side you wanted it attached to.
Now, imagine the middle finger hand requires a hole inside of it, and it has to be done at from very start, which means you might need to go back to the base cube and add that hole. All of a sudden, there will be four new faces to the internal cube that holds the finger sketches, and these new faces will need names, too. Best case, they’ll be named Face7 through Face10 – but that’s a best case and the CAD engine needs to ensure to always implement it properly, whereas real world models aren’t as welcoming. Worst case, the faces will be renumbered anew, the sketch-to-face mapping will change which faces get which names, and the model of the hand will turn into a spider. Spooky!
It’s not Halloween just yet, and most regretfully, people don’t tend to appreciate spiders in unexpected places. Even more sadly, this retrospective renaming typically just results in your sketches breaking in a “red exclamation mark” way, since it’s not just sketch-to-face mappings that get names, it’s also all the little bits of external geometry that you’ll definitely invoke if you want to avoid suffering. Every line in your sketch has an invisible name and a number, and external geometry lines will store – otherwise, they couldn’t get updated when you change the base model under their feet, as one inevitably does.
Before FreeCAD v1.0, I sometimes had to make “plug” solids instead of removing cutouts. Nowadays, I have to do that way less often.
This used to be a big problem with FreeCAD, and it still kind of is, but it’s by no means exclusive to FreeCAD. Hell, I remember dealing with something similar back when my CAD (computer-aided despair) suite of choice was SolidWorks. It’s not an easy problem to solve, because of the innumerable ways you can create and then modify a 3D object; every time you think you’ll have figured out a solution to the horrors, your users will come up with new and more intricate horrors beyond your comprehension.
FreeCAD v1.0 has clamped down on a large amount of topological naming errors. They still exist; one simple way I can trigger it is to make a cutout in a cube, make a sketch that external-geometry-exports the cut-in-half outwards-facing line of the cube, and then go back and delete the cutout. It makes sense that it happens, but oh do I wish it didn’t, and it makes for unfun sketch fixing sessions.
How To Stay Well Away
Now, I’m no stranger to problems caused by name changes, and I’m eager to share some of what I’ve learned dealing with FreeCAD’s names in particular.
The first solution concerns cutouts, as they specifically might become the bane of your model. If you have a ton of features planned, just delay doing the cutouts up until you’ve done all the basics of the case that you might ever want to rely on. Cutouts might and often will change, and if your board changes connector or button positions, you want to be able to remake them without ever touching the rest of the sketch. So, build up most of your model, and closer to the end, do the case cutouts, so that external geometry can rely on walls and sides that will never change.
Next, minimize the number of models you’re dealing with, so that you have less places where external geometry has to be involved. If you need to make a block with a hole all the way through, do it in one sketch instead of doing two extrudes and a cut. You’ll thank yourself, both because you’ll have less opportunity for topo naming errors, but also because you have fewer model names to think up.
In case you wondered what the “bad naming” example was about, it’s from this part. It’s a perfectly fine part because no external geometry relies on it in practice, but it’s also absolutely a good example of a part you can instead do in a single sketch-extrude and a (not shown) fillet.
The third thing is what I call the cockroach rule. If you see a cockroach in your house, you back off slowly, set the house on fire, and then you get yourself a different house, making sure you don’t bring the cockroach into the new house while at it. Same can apply here – if you remove a feature in the base model and you see the entire tree view light up with red exclamation marks, click “Close” on the document, press “Discard changes”, open the document again, and do whatever you wanted to do but in a different way.
Why reload? Because Ctrl+Z does not always help with such problems, as much as it’s supposed to. This does require that you follow the 0th rule – press Ctrl+S often, and it also requires that you don’t press Ctrl+S right after making those changes, so, change-verify-enter. Thankfully, FreeCAD will unroll objects in the model tree when one of the inner object starts to, so just look over the model tree after doing changes deep inside the model, and you’ll be fine. This is also where keeping your models in a Git repo is super helpful – that way, you can always have known-good model states to go back to.
Good Habits Create Good Models
So, to recap. Save often, give your models names, understand topo naming, create cutouts last if at all possible, keep your models simple, and when all fails, nuke it from orbit and let your good habits cushion the fall. Simple enough.
I’ll be on the lookout for further tips for you all, as I’ve got a fair few complex models going on, and the more I work with them, the more I learn. Until then, I hope you can greatly benefit from these tips, and may your models behave well through your diligent treatment. | 26 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8178369",
"author": "sweethack",
"timestamp": "2025-09-11T14:16:04",
"content": "In short, prefer using PartDesign to Part workbench. If you think in boolean operation too much (Cut / Union / Intersect), you’ll end up with unsolvable and unmodifiable mess. Make the most you can in P... | 1,760,371,428.875142 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/11/old-phone-upcycled-into-pico-projector-asmr/ | Old Phone Upcycled Into Pico Projector, ASMR | Tyler August | [
"Cellphone Hacks"
] | [
"cell phone display",
"diy projector",
"home theatre",
"lcd"
] | To update an old saying for the modern day, one man’s e-waste is another man’s bill of materials. Upcycling has always been in the hacker’s toolkit, and cellphones provide a wealth of resources for those bold enough to seize them. [Huy Vector] was bold enough, and transformed an old smartphone into a
portable pico projector
and
an ASMR-style video
. That’s what we call efficiency!
Kidding aside, the speech-free video embedded below absolutely gives enough info to copy along with [Huy Vector] even though he doesn’t say a word the whole time. You’ll need deft hands and a phone you really don’t care about, because one of the early steps is pulling the LCD apart to remove the back layers to shine an LED through. You’ll absolutely need an old phone for that, since that trick doesn’t apply to the OLED displays that most flagships have been rocking the past few years.
It looks like he’s specifying a 20 W LED (the bill of materials is in the description of the video on YouTube), so this projector won’t be super bright, but it will certainly be usable in darkened rooms. At least that lower wattage also means the batteries salvaged from an old power bank should give enough runtime to finish a movie… as long as it’s not the director’s cut, anyway. A heatsink and fan keep the LED from cooking itself and what’s left of the cell phone inside the foam board case.
The projected image looks surprisingly good considering the only optics in this thing are the LCD and the lens from a 5x magnifying glass from AliExpress.
(Editor’s Note: Indeed. Surprisingly good. We’re guessing the image was “improved” in post-production, which is a bit of a bummer. See the discussion in the comments, and please keep it civil and/or constructive.)
The foam board case, too, ends up looking surprisingly good once the textured vinyl wrap is applied. That’s a quick and easy way to get a nice looking prototype, if you don’t particularly need durability.
It’s not the
brightest screen
you can build, nor
the highest resolution
projector we’ve seen– but it might just be the easiest such build we’ve featured. As long as you handle the tricky LCD disassembly step, this is absolutely something we could see doing with children, which isn’t always the case on Hackaday. | 29 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8178330",
"author": "Cricri",
"timestamp": "2025-09-11T11:14:07",
"content": "At 3min07 he says a 50W LED cob. He’s got a small cooler and a 40mm (I think?) fan to cool it down.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8178333",
"aut... | 1,760,371,428.687271 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/11/debugging-vs-printing/ | Debugging Vs Printing | Al Williams | [
"Software Development"
] | [
"debugger",
"debugging"
] | We’ll admit it. We have access to great debugging tools and, yes, sometimes they are invaluable. But most of the time, we’ll just throw a few print statements in whatever program we’re running to better understand what’s going on inside of it. [Loop Invariant] wants to point out to us that there are things a proper debugger can do that you
can’t do with print statements
.
So what are these magical things? Well, some of them depend on the debugger, of course. But, in general, debuggers will catch exceptions when they occur. That can be a big help, especially if you have a lot of them and don’t want to write print statements on every one. Semi-related is the fact that when a debugger stops for an exception or even a breakpoint, you can walk the call stack to see the flow of code before you got there.
In fact, some debuggers can back step, although not all of them do that. Another advantage is that you can evaluate expressions on the fly. Even better, you should be able to alter program flow, jumping over some code, for example.
So we get it. There is more to debugging than just crude print statements. Then again, there are plenty of Python libraries to make
debug printing
nicer (including
IceCream
). Or
write your own debugger
. If gdb’s user interface puts you off, there are
alternatives
. | 26 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8178286",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2025-09-11T08:30:58",
"content": "All correct as far as it goes.Nothing beats good logging for debugging problems that somebodyelsehas with your software. I can’t connect a debugger to somebody else’s computer and minitor it 24/7 unt... | 1,760,371,428.748989 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/10/65f02-is-an-fpga-6502-with-a-need-for-speed/ | 65F02 Is An FPGA 6502 With A Need For Speed | Tyler August | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"6502 processor",
"65c02",
"fpga"
] | Does the in 65F02 “F” stand for “fast” or “FPGA”? [Jurgen] doesn’t know, but his drop-in replacement board for the
6502 and 65c02 is out there and open source
, whatever you want it to stand for.
The “f” could easily be both, since at 100 MHz, the 65f02 is blazing fast by 6502 standards–literally 100 times the speed of the first chips from MOS. That speed comes from the use of a Spartan 6 FPGA core to implement the 6502 logic; making the “f” stand for “FPGA” makes sense, given that the CMOS version of the chip was dubbed the 65c02. The 65f02 is a tiny PCB containing the FPGA and all associated hardware that shares the footprint of a DIP-40 package, making it a drop-in replacement. A really fast drop-in replacement.
You might be thinking that that’s insane, and that (for example) the memory on an Apple ][ could never run at 100 MHz and so you won’t get the gains. This is both true, and accounted for:
the 65F02 has an internal RAM “cache” that it mirrors
to external memory at a rate the bus can handle. When memory addresses known to interact with peripherals change, the 65f02 slows down to match for “real time” operations.
The USB adapter board for programming is a great touch.
Because of this the memory map of the external machine matters; [Jurgen] has tested the Commodore PET and Apple ][, along with a plethora of German chess computers, but, alas, this chip is not currently compatible with the Commodore 64, Atari 400/800 or BBC Micro (or at least not tested). The
project is open source
, however, so you might be able to help [Jurgen] change that.
We admit this project isn’t totally new– indeed, it looks like [Jurgen]’s last update was in 2024– but a fast 6502 is just as obsolete today as it was when [Jurgen] started work in 2020. That’s why when [Stephen Walters] sent us the tip (
via electronics-lab
), we just had to cover it, especially considering the
6502’s golden jubilee
.
We also recently featured
a 32-bit version of the venerable chip
that may be of interest, also on FPGA. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8178236",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2025-09-11T06:12:55",
"content": "I am immediately start wondering if I make this a drop in replacement for my project car’s 6502 based ECU. Reading data from the ECU is severely limited by serial bandwidth, this may allow the reading of muc... | 1,760,371,428.810558 |
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