url stringlengths 37 208 | title stringlengths 4 148 | author stringclasses 173 values | publish_date stringclasses 1 value | categories listlengths 0 12 | tags listlengths 0 27 | featured_image stringlengths 0 272 | content stringlengths 0 56.1k | comments_count int64 0 900 | scraped_comments_count int64 0 50 | comments listlengths 0 50 | scraped_at float64 1.76B 1.76B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/28/lost-foam-aluminium-alloy-casting/ | Lost Foam Aluminium Alloy Casting | Dave Rowntree | [
"Parts"
] | [
"A356",
"aluminium casting",
"automotive",
"foam",
"moulding",
"sand casting"
] | [Kelly Coffield] makes intake manifolds for old Ford throttle bodies for fun, demonstrating an
excellent technique for making such things in the small shop
. The mould patterns are CNC machined from a solid polystyrene block, with all the necessary gates to feed the aluminium into the mould. The principle is to introduce aluminium from a large central runner into the mould structure, which feeds the gates into the mould parts. The various foam mould components are then glued with an extra brace bar at the bottom to strengthen it.
Dip coating with a refractory slurry
The complete structure is then sprayed with surfactant (just plain old soapy water) and dip-coated in a refractory slurry. The surfactant adjusts the coating’s surface tension, preventing bubbles from forming and ruining the surface quality produced by this critical coating step.
Once a satisfactory coating has been applied and hardened, the structure is placed inside a moulding pan fitted with a pneumatic turbine vibrator, to allow sand to be introduced. The vibrations ease the flow of sand into all the nooks and crannies, fully supporting the delicate mould structure against the weight of the metal, and gases produced as the foam burns away. A neat offset pouring cup is then added to the top of the structure and packed in with more sand to stabilise it. It’s a simple setup that can easily be replicated in any hackerspace or backyard for those motivated enough. [Kelly] is using
A356 aluminium alloy
, but there’s no reason this technique won’t work for other metals.
It was amusing to see [Kelly] demould by just dumping out the whole stack onto the drive and throwing the extracted casting into a snow bank after quenching. We might as well use all that free Midwest winter cooling capacity! After returning to the shop, [Kelly] would typically perform any needed adjustments, such as improving flatness in the press, while the part was in the ‘as cast temper’ condition. We’ll gloss over the admission of cutting the gates off on the table saw! After these adjustments, the part is
artificially aged to a T5-like specification
, to give it its final strength and machinability properties. There are plenty more videos on this process on the channel, which is well worth a look.
Aluminium casting is nothing new here, here’s a simple way to
cast using a 3D printed pattern
. But beware,
casting aluminum can be hazardous
, it does like to burn.
Thanks to [Chuck] for the tip! | 21 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104067",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2025-02-28T17:15:47",
"content": "Kelly’s videos are amazing. He’s built up a very impressive toolchain. In a lot of his earlier videos he used handheld woodworking equipment like pin routers and wooden templates to cut all his fo... | 1,760,371,622.798537 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/28/this-week-in-security-malicious-themes-crypto-heists-and-wallbleed/ | This Week In Security: Malicious Themes, Crypto Heists, And Wallbleed | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Crypto Heist",
"This Week in Security",
"WallBleed"
] | It’s usually not a good sign when
your downloaded theme contains obfuscated code
. Yes, we’re talking about the very popular Material Theme for VSCode. This one has
a bit of a convoluted history
. One of the authors wanted to make some money from all those downloads. The original Material Theme was yanked from the VSCode store,
the source code (improperly) re-licensed as closed source
, and replaced with freemium versions. And this week, those freemium versions have been pulled by Microsoft for
containing malware
.
Now there’s a quirk to this story. No one has been able to answer a simple yet vital question:
What exactly did the theme plugin do that was malicious
? The official response is that “A theming extension with heavily obfuscated code and unreasonable dependencies including a utility for running child processes”. Looking at the official statements and unofficial security reviews, I can’t find confirmation that the plugins have actually been observed doing something malicious. The only concrete problem is that the plugin shipped obfuscated JavaScript. There are several incomplete statements about a problem with a sanity.io dependency that may have been compromised.
The conclusion at this point is that a thorough security review of these plugins has not been published. The Microsoft team found enough problematic elements in the plugins to trigger pulling them. But I join the chorus of voices calling on Microsoft to clearly answer the vital question: Have any users of Material Theme plugins actually been compromised?
Low-hanging Backups
NAKIVO backup has
an interesting endpoint,
the
getImageByPath
call that’s used for loading the system’s logo, and is accessible for unauthenticated users. It’s pretty simple, just taking a path to a file on the appliance filesystem, and returning the byte array for use as an image. And of course, it doesn’t check whether the requested file is actually an image. Nor is it limited to a list of allowed paths.
So hence we essentially have an arbitrary file read. It’s not entirely arbitrary, as the file is first loaded into memory before being served. So the backups themselves are likely too big to successfully exfiltrate in this way. There are still some rather interesting targets, including the system logs. But the real juicy target is the system database itself. Thankfully, the user credentials for the NAVIKO system itself seem to be properly hashed to avoid casual theft. But setting up useful backups will require all sorts of integrations, like SSH and AWS credentials. And those are stored in plain text inside the database. Whoops.
Apple Did What?
A couple weeks ago we talked about
Apple and the UK government having a tussle
over iCloud backup encryption. Apple has finally rolled out end-to-end encryption for those backups, and the UK’s Snooper’s Charter has been used to require Apple to add an encryption backdoor in that system. That’s problematic for multiple reasons, and Apple has opted to not quietly oblige the UK government. You may have seen headlines that
Apple has pulled access to the new Advanced Data Protection (ADP) for UK users
. This seems to be
the next step of anti-compliance with the new UK rule
.
The logic here seems to be that not offering any end-to-end encrypted backup system for UK users is a better choice than claiming to offer such a system that actually contains a backdoor. That’s doubly true, as the law in question doesn’t seem to limit itself to UK users. If the UK government doesn’t back down on their extremely questionable demands, the next major step may be for Apple to pull sales from the country entirely.
Crypto Heist
We have a pair of crypto heist stories this week, with the first one being
the largest in history
. At a staggering $1.5 Billion, this seems like the biggest single theft of any kind to ever be successfully pulled off. And the details of how it was done are still a bit murky. The funds were stolen out of a Bybit “multisig” cold wallet. Those are clever currency stores that actually include smart contracts in the storage mechanism, requiring multiple owners to sign off on transactions.
It’s believed that this hack was pulled off by North Korean agents, through the use of very clever but simple techniques: Social engineering, and UI manipulation. In essence, a request for digital signature that claimed to do something benign, that actually unlocked the funds for theft. Some things never seem to change.
And that’s not all that’s happening with Cryptocurrency these days. It turns out that
there’s another dead-simple attack that is targeting job-seeking individuals
, instead of huge companies. “We may have a job for you, go to this website and run this application to apply!” Rather than a legitimate videoconferencing or interviewing application, the download is a simple backdoor. It’s used primarily to find crypto wallets and siphon the funds out.
Wallbleed
Remember
Heartbleed
? That’s the glitch in OpenSSL from 2014, where the TLS heartbeat implementation could trivially leak large amounts of system memory.
Wallbleed is a strangely similar bug
in the implementation of the Chinese Great Firewall system. One way the Great Firewall does censorship is via DNS injection. Request the DNS information for a blocked domain, and the firewall will intercept that request in real time, and return a spoofed response with a bogus IP address for the requested domain. Importantly for this discussion, that spoofing is bi-directional. You can send DNS requests to Chinese IP addresses, and get spoofed responses from the Great Firewall.
DNS request and response packets use an interesting variable length transport system, where the domain name being requested is turned into a set of length-value pairs.
example.com
is represented as
07example03com00
. 7 bytes for the domain, then 3 bytes for the TLD, and a terminating null. Many of us are immediately wondering, what happens if that query was packed incorrectly:
07example20com00
? There aren’t actually 20 bytes in the query, so what do various DNS responders do when handed such a query? Well-written DNS servers recognize that this is garbage, and just drop the packet. Some of the great firewall infrastructure did something far more interesting. It spoofs the DNS response, and performs a buffer over-read when constructing the response. Yes, leaking a few bytes of raw system memory back to the requester, a la Heartbleed.
And when we say “a few bytes”, the maximum observed leakage in a single spoofed response was 125. As you might imagine, that’s quite a bit of data. Enough data, in fact, to learn quite a bit about the Great Firewall and what sort of traffic it sees. There were also what appeared to be x86_64 pointers and Linux stack frames.
This attack was first discovered by researchers in 2021 and finally completely fixed in March 2024. In the intermediate time, those researchers used the vulnerability quite heavily to mine the Great Firewall infrastructure for data. This is an interesting ethical question. Normally it’s considered completely unacceptable to weaponize a vulnerability beyond what’s needed as a proof of concept. The Great Firewall is in some ways an adversarial device, making exploitation a bit murkier. On the other hand, vulnerabilities like this a usually disclosed in order to get them fixed. What is a researcher’s responsibility in this case, when the vulnerability is in a censorship device? It seems the Chinese authorities discovered the Wallbleed vulnerability themselves, excusing researchers from needing to fully answer this particular ethical question.
Bits and Bytes
It’s not surprising to open up an electronic device, and find an ugly glob of potting compound spread over one or several of the key chips inside. Or for some devices, the compound is ubiquitous, covering everything. [Graham Sutherland] has
some thoughts on how to defeat the stuff
. And while some is obvious, like using a drill press to very carefully expose a target interface, there are some really inventive ideas I would never have considered, like throwing an entire board into a pressure cooker for an hour!
How long does it take for a cyber criminal to go from initial access on an internal machine, to full access to a privileged computer? In the ReliaQuest case,
it was 48 minutes
. The hack was simple and clever. Start a mass spam and phishing campaign, and then pose as a helpful IT worker who could help end the carnage. All it takes is one employee to fall for the fake help desk routine, and 48 minutes.
Let’s say you wanted to pirate music from a streaming service like Deezer, but you really didn’t want your IP address or machine associated with the piracy. What would you do? Use Tor? VPNs? How about
create a malicious PyPi package that does your downloading for you
. That seems to be the bizarre case of
automslc
, a reasonably popular package that secretly downloads and scrapes from the music platform. | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104026",
"author": "strawberrymortallyb0bcea48e7",
"timestamp": "2025-02-28T15:39:55",
"content": "openSSL needs Rust rewrite",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8104138",
"author": "Kryptylomese",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,371,622.300423 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/28/gonzo-film-making-with-the-raspberry-pi/ | Gonzo Film Making With The Raspberry Pi | Lewin Day | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"camera hacks",
"gonzo",
"raspberry pi"
] | Gonzo journalism has been a hip thing since the 1970s or so, a way of covering a story in a compelling format with more subjectivity and less objectivity. The style has since been applied to all sorts of media, including film—and indeed, the makers of
the Gonzo Pi
.
The Gonzo Pi is a camera with an open source design, yes, but it’s also a lot more than that. It’s intended to be an entire platform for film-making, all in the one housing. Camera-wise, the design combines a Raspberry Pi with the requisite first-party High Quality Camera, and warps it up in a 3D printed housing. You can build it up with a viewfinder and whatever old-school C-mount or 8 mm film lenses you can lay your hands on.
Beyond that, there’s an editing platform baked in to the device. It’s not unlike the tools in so many social media apps these days. The idea of the Gonzo Pi is that rather than shooting a whole ton of footage and takes and poring over them in great detail later, instead, you run and gun with the device and edit as you go. You can shoot retakes as you need, and even dub in more audio as necessary as you compose your film on the hoof. It’s intended to change the way you make films by virtue of its unique compositional paradigm.
We’ve featured some neat
homebrew cameras
before, to be sure, but none that quite put the edit suite right in the box.
[Thanks to Moritz for the tip!] | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104017",
"author": "HunterSThompson",
"timestamp": "2025-02-28T15:02:41",
"content": "(1) The website is down :((2) The rest of the YT channel has some very surreal “ads” that are very much worth watching",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comm... | 1,760,371,622.405062 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/28/copying-commodore-data-tapes-40-years-late/ | Copying Commodore Data Tapes, 40 Years Late | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"audio",
"commodore",
"data storage",
"datasette",
"hi-fi",
"retrocomputing",
"tape"
] | Unless you handle the backups for a large corporation, bank, or government entity, you likely haven’t stored much data to tape recently. But magnetic storage used to be fairly mainstream back in the 1980s for all kinds of computer programs. Plenty of computers used standard cassette tapes for this too but you couldn’t just copy them with standard audio equipment. You’d need something like this
1560 datasette from [Jan]
.
The core problem with using Hi-Fi equipment to copy tapes storing data instead of audio is that data tapes need to be much more precise in order to avoid losses that might not be noticeable in an audio recording. In the 80s computer companies like Commodore built tape drives specifically for their computers, so [Jan]’s project uses two of these 1530 drives to build this “1560” datasette. (No working 1530 hardware was harmed in this build.) An inverter circuit in one tape deck is used to provide the signal to write the data to the other tape, reliably copying data from these data tapes in a way Hi-Fi never could.
[Jan] does lament not having something like this back in the 80s when the Commodore was in its heyday, but there’s still a dedicated retrocomputing scene for these machines that will get plenty of use out of projects like this. If you need to go the other direction in time, there are also interfaces that allow data
tapes from old Commodores to be read by modern computers with USB
. | 41 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103920",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-02-28T09:25:44",
"content": "Um, what? Copying game tapes was routinely done with hifi equipment back in the day. Sure, there was a chance that the copy didn’t work, but that wasn’t because the copier wasn’t good enough, just the inev... | 1,760,371,622.579451 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/27/bringing-a-current-dumping-amplifier-back-to-life/ | Bringing A Current Dumping Amplifier Back To Life | Jenny List | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"current dumping amplifier",
"Tantalum capacitor"
] | Over the years there have been many different audio amplifier designs which have found favour for a while and then been supplanted by newer ideas. One of them has crossed the bench of [Jazzy Jane],
it’s a current dumping amplifier from the mid-1980s
. A nicely-done home-made project on stripboard mounted on a wooden base board, it sports a power supply, RIAA pre-amp board, and the amplifier itself.
The current dumping amplifier is one that combines a small class A amplifier with a hefty class B one, and through feedback trickery uses the combination to remove the crossover distortion of the class B stage. It’s a simple yet elegant circuit with fewer parts than an equivalent class AB amplifier, and there was a time back in the day when it was all the rage. This one has an op-amp providing the class A part and a complimentary pair of Darlington pairs as the class B.
The video below the break shows the process of bringing the amp back to life, a process mostly concerned with the power supply. There are a set of tantalum capacitors which have failed, and the replacements she’s using turn out to have problems too. They’re a period part for a project of this age, but we might have been tempted to go for another capacitor type here.
The result is an unusual amplifier, brought back to life. You may have seen [Jane] feature here before, with
her 1950s signal generator
. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103868",
"author": "akimmet",
"timestamp": "2025-02-28T06:48:37",
"content": "Current dumping amplifier schematics always looked strange to me. I am considering building one, just to try one out.Solid tantalum capacitors strike again. These capacitors deserve the poor reputation th... | 1,760,371,622.234164 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/27/ai-helps-researchers-discover-new-structural-materials/ | AI Helps Researchers Discover New Structural Materials | Navarre Bartz | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Science"
] | [
"3d print",
"Additive Manufacturing",
"ai",
"artificial intelligence",
"machine learning",
"materials",
"materials science",
"metamaterials",
"nanostructure",
"science",
"space elevator"
] | Nanostructured metamaterials have shown a lot of promise in what they can do in the lab, but often have fatal stress concentration factors that limit their applications. Researchers have now found a strong, lightweight
nanostructured carbon
. [via
BGR
]
Using a multi-objective
Bayesian optimization
(MBO) algorithm trained on finite element analysis (FEA) datasets to identify the best candidate nanostructures, the researchers then brought the theoretical material to life with 2 photon polymerization (2PP) photolithography. The resulting “carbon nanolattices achieve the compressive strength of carbon steels (180–360 MPa) with the density of Styrofoam (125–215 kg m
−3
) which exceeds the specific strengths of equivalent low-density materials by over an order of magnitude.”
While you probably shouldn’t start getting investors for your
space elevator startup
just yet, lighter materials like this are promising for a lot of applications, most notably more conventional aviation where fuel (or energy) prices are a big constraint on operations. As with any lab results, more work is needed until we see this in the real world, but it is nice to know that superalloys and composites aren’t the end of the road for strong and lightweight materials.
We’ve seen
AI help identify battery materials already
and this seems to be one avenue where
generative AI
isn’t just about making
embarrassing photos
or
making us less intelligent
. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103831",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-02-28T03:21:31",
"content": "Is it compressive strength needed for a space elevator to become viable or tensile strength?I believe I remember it being tensile strength with a counter weight being used in a slightly higher orbit tha... | 1,760,371,622.501658 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/27/convert-a-cheap-tube-preamp-into-a-headphone-amp-with-jenny/ | Convert A Cheap Tube Preamp Into A Headphone Amp With Jenny | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"6J1",
"amplifier",
"preamp",
"tube",
"tubes"
] | Big-name tube amplifiers often don’t come cheap. Being the preserve of dedicated audiophiles, those delicate hi-fis put their glass components on show to tell you just how pricy they really ought to be. If you just want to dip your toe in the tube world, though, there’s a cheaper and more accessible way to get started. [Jenny List] shows us the way
with her neat headphone amp build.
The build starts with an off-the-shelf preamp kit based around two common 6J1 tubes. These Chinese pentode valves come cheap and you can usually get yours hands on this kit for $10 or so. You can use the kit as-is if you just want a pre-amp, but it’s not suitable for headphone use out of the box due to its high-impedance output. That’s where [Jenny] steps in.
You can turn these kits into a pleasing headphone amp with the addition of a few choice components. As per the schematic
on Github
, a cheap transformer and a handful of passives will get it in the “good enough” range to work. The transformer isn’t perfect, and bass response is a compromise, but it’s a place to start your tinkering journey. Future work from [Jenny] will demonstrate using a MOSFET follower to achieve much the same result.
We’ve seen a great number of headphone amplifiers over the years, including
one particularly attractive resin-encased example
. Video after the break. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103815",
"author": "jbx",
"timestamp": "2025-02-28T01:56:03",
"content": "…audiophiles…Say no more !",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8103912",
"author": "Jenny List",
"timestamp": "2025-02-28T09:16:04",
... | 1,760,371,622.361722 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/27/thermorphs-self-folding-3d-prints/ | Thermorphs: Self-Folding 3D Prints | Navarre Bartz | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"cnc kitchen",
"folding",
"folding object",
"origami",
"rapid prototyping",
"thermorph"
] | Prints separating from the build plate or warping when you don’t want them to is a headache for the additive manufacturer. [CNC Kitchen] walks us through a technique to
use that warping to our advantage
.
Based on a paper by researchers at the
Morphing Matter Lab at UC Berkeley
, [CNC Kitchen] wanted to try making 3D printed objects that could self-assemble when placed in hot water. Similar to a bimetal strip that you find in simple thermostats, the technique takes advantage of the stresses baked into the print and how they can relax when reaching the glass transition temperature of the polymer. By printing joints with PLA and TPU layers, you can guide the deformation in the direction you wish, and further tune the amount of stress in the part by changing the print speed of different sections.
[CNC Kitchen] found that Hilbert curve infill slows the printer down sufficiently to create relatively stress-free sections of a print to create flat sections which is an improvement over the original researchers’ all TPU flat sections with respect to rigidity. We’ve covered how to
reduce warping in 3D prints
, but now we can use those techniques in reverse to design self-assembling structures. These parts, being thermoplastic, can also be heated, reformed, and then exhibit shape memory when placed back into hot water. It’s very experimental, but we’re curious to see what sort of practical or artistic projects could be unlocked with this technique.
We’ve seen a few other interesting techniques with folded objects like
laser cutter origami
, some
flat-to-folded 3D prints
that might be interesting to try with this technique, and also
folded hybrid mechanisms
made with laser cutting and 3D printing. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103739",
"author": "slg",
"timestamp": "2025-02-27T21:02:43",
"content": "When you don’t want them *to",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8103754",
"author": "Navarre Bartz",
"timestamp": "2025-02-27T21:44:42",
... | 1,760,371,622.446355 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/27/esp-hal-a-stable-api-esp32-hal-gift-for-your-rust-code/ | Esp-hal, A Stable-API ESP32 HAL Gift For Your Rust Code | Arya Voronova | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"esp-idf",
"ESP32",
"rust"
] | Looking to write Rust on the ESP32? You’re in luck, a new challenger has entered the scene, looking to help you write code that lasts – [Scott Mabin] and the team from Espressif have brought us
the
esp-hal
1.0.0-beta.
From a personal project to an Espressif-sponsored one to an effort under Espressif’s wing, [Scott] tells us about the arduous journey of bringing first-class Rust support to ESP32 chips, Xtensa and RISC-V alike.
In particular,
esp-hal
, with the
hal
part standing for Hardware Abstraction Layer, focuses on providing you with a stable API to access hardware, making sure your code can remain stable for years to come. For now, you get drivers for GPIO, UART, SPI and I2C, as well as a number of auxiliary features like time and SoC reset, more than enough for a large amount of projects we hackers build with a generic MCU in mind.
Next stop? WiFi and BLE support, of course, an ESP32 just doesn’t feel the same without these two. Rust is a fun and seriously promising language, and it’s a joy to use! So, if you have a wireless-less project in mind and you’re looking for a HAL,
try out the
esp-hal
, it might just be exactly what you need.
If you’re looking for examples, here’s
an STM32 touchpad project
with Rust firmware, a
PIC32 Rust blinky
demo, and we’ve even featured larger projects like this ESP32 open-source (
reverse-engineered
)
WiFi MAC stack being written in Rust.
In case you missed it, we’ve
introduced Rust to you
a couple of times, even
as far as 2015! | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103732",
"author": "Grawp",
"timestamp": "2025-02-27T20:37:07",
"content": "If you want to try Rust then Embassy-rs with both nRF52840 a RP2040 is a blessing.Btw. Rust or not both are substantially better value for money then some ESP unless you create your totally artificial metri... | 1,760,371,622.858631 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/27/linux-fu-usb-everywhere/ | Linux Fu: USB Everywhere | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Linux Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"linux",
"usb",
"usbip"
] | It is a common problem: I have a USB device on a computer out in the shop, and I want to use it from the comfort of my office. What to do? Well, you could remote desktop into the distant machine. But, honestly, I always find any remote desktop more than
ssh
clunky and somewhat undesirable. Fortunately, Linux can do virtually anything if you only know how to do it. So, this time, I’ll show you how to transport a USB device over your network. Of course, I have a network that reaches out to the shop. It should be a simple matter to tell my desktop machine that one of its USB devices lives across the network. Well, it wasn’t that simple, but it is doable.
The Tools
The whole thing involves a program called
usbip
. That should be the end of it, but of course, it isn’t. In order for this to work, both machines on the network will need some kernel modules and a daemon on the server: the machine with the USB devices to share.
You may be able to install
usbip
from your package manager. On Ubuntu, it is in the
linux-tools-common
package, so a simple
apt-get
might give you everything you need. I wasn’t so lucky.
How far away can you mount this USB drive?
I use a custom kernel (
xanmod
), so I had a problem. While I had the kernel modules, I didn’t have the client tools and the ones in the standard repository are tied to your kernel version. Running the stock versions gave me an error message. So I had to find a way to make things myself.
Here’s what you need in the way of kernel modules on the server:
usbip_core
,
usbip_host
. You also need
usbipd
(the daemon). On both machines, you need the control program,
usbip
. On the client machine, you need the
vhci_hcd
module. If you can get all this working and with compatible versions, you are pretty much home-free.
In my case, I had to download my kernel source and find the
tools/usb/usbip
directory. Normally, you can build everything with the
Makefile
in
tools/
, but this seems to be a special case. You run the
autogen.sh
file to create the build setup. Then do a
./configure
and a
make
. A
make install
will finish things up. Just be sure that where it installs for you is where you run the tools in the next steps.
The Pi Connection
Many people use a Raspberry Pi as a sort of USB server. In that case, the setup is pretty easy:
sudo apt install usbip hwdata usbutils
That should get you everything you need. For that matter, if you run a pretty stock version of Ubuntu, you might try:
sudo apt install linux-tools-generic linux-cloud-tools-generic
For anything else, you’ll need to do some homework.
Setup
Assuming you have everything ready, you need to do several things. First, you must load the modules on both the server and the client. Then, you need to run the daemon on the server. You can bind one or more USB devices to the server using the command line tool. Notice that the USB device has to be free; once you bind it to the server, you can’t use it directly anymore.
You’ll then connect with the client. Again, one client acquires the device, and that’s it. It can’t be shared. Sure, you can release it, and someone else can get it. Or the server can drop it, returning the device for local use. However, while the server has the device, only one client can use that device at any given time.
Loading the modules is easy with
modprobe
, although over the long term, you probably want to add them to
/etc/modules-load.d
so they will load at boot time. For now, on the server, try:
sudo modprobe -a usbip_core usbip_host
On the client:
sudo modprobe -a vhci_hcd
You’ll also have to run
usbipd
on the server. You can do that in any way you usually run a daemon, including systemd,
rc.local
, or whatever. For now, just run it as root from the command line.
You need to find at least one device to share, so from the server try:
sudo usbip list -l # -l for local
This will give you a list of devices. What you want is the “bus id.” Suppose it is 4-3.1. You’ll bind that device to the server:
sudo usbpip bind -b 4-3.1
Now, from the client, you should be able to see the device:
sudo usbip list -r myserver.local # use your server name or IP
You can then attach to it:
usbip attach -r myserver.local -b 4-3.1
Commands
A good first test is to share a USB drive over the network. There are other ways to do this, but it is easy to see that it works with standard software. Here’s a transcript, assuming root prompts on both server and client, along with all the preliminary setup:
server # usbip list -l
...
- busid 5-2.1.2.3 (0781:5575)
SanDisk Corp. : Cruzer Glide (0781:5575)
...
server # usbip bind -b 5-2.1.2.3
client # usbip list -r 192.168.1.2 # or whatever IP/address
Exportable USB devices
======================
- 192.168.1.2
5-2.1.2.3: SanDisk Corp. : Cruzer Glide (0781:5575)
: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.2/0000:01:00.0/0000:02:08.0/0000:08:00.3/usb5/5-2/5-2.1/5-2.1.2/5-2.1.2.3
: (Defined at Interface level) (00/00/00)
client # ls /dev/sd* # see what hard drives are available before sharing
/dev/sda /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3
client # usbip attach -r 192.168.1.2 -b 5-2.1.2.3
client # ls /dev/sd*
/dev/sda /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdb3
client # mount /dev/sdb3 /mnt
client # ls /mnt
... output of ls ...
client # umount /mnt
client # usbip port
Imported USB devices
====================
Port 00: <Port in Use> at High Speed(480Mbps)
SanDisk Corp. : Cruzer Glide (0781:5575)
3-1 -> usbip://192.168.1.2:3240/5-2.1.2.3
-> remote bus/dev 005/028
client # usbip detach -p 00 # 00 is port number from above
server # usbip unbind -b 5-2.1.2.3 # release from server, too
Note that you have to detach by port number, even though everything else takes a bus ID, which is somewhat dynamic across reboots. Also, if the system suspends, you may have to reshare the device.
This GUI for usbip has a Hackaday.io page and a project on GitHub.
To summarize, you can use variations of the list command to show local or remote devices. If you ask the server to show you remote devices on 127.0.0.1, you can easily see what devices are exported. On the client, the port command shows you what’s connected.
On the server, you bind or unbind devices. On the client, you attach and detach.
Once the device attaches, it looks like any other USB port on your system. Pretty cool!
If the command line isn’t your thing, we noticed a
Hackaday.io
project aimed at creating a Qt GUI for the client work. It doesn’t seem to be active, but it might be something to try or someplace to start.
The Windows Connection
There are two clients for using USB devices on Windows. The
newer one
requires you to be in test signing mode and has several other warnings. It originally forked from an
older version
that some people prefer and may support the server part, too. I haven’t tried it, so if you want to explore using Windows, you are on your own but do report what you find in the comments.
Usually, we want our USB cables
shorter
, not longer. We wonder if a USB keyboard and monitor with a Pi server could make a good
remote terminal
. | 21 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103673",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2025-02-27T18:20:09",
"content": "Thanks for the tip as I’ve never heard of this. May have to explore it a bit.I just use standard NFS. Mount an external USB drive (my drives are formatted ext4) to a folder, say /mnt/usbdrive and expor... | 1,760,371,622.648263 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/27/how-do-air-fryers-work/ | How Do Air Fryers Work? | Navarre Bartz | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"baking",
"convection",
"fries",
"oven"
] | Air fryers are the new hotness in the kitchen, but are they actually any different than a convection oven? [Technology Connections] walks us through the
design of these countertop appliances
to find out.
If you like your fries and chicken crispy instead of soggy, you traditionally had to eat out or spend the better part of an hour waiting on your food to cook to a crisp in the oven. Convection ovens significantly speed up this process by moving the air about and keeping the food from sucking most of the heat out of the stagnant layer just next to it.
It turns out that most air fryers are just a coil stove element and a fan placed above a basket which is just a fancy re-arrangement of the parts of a toaster or convection oven. The magic sauce here is the small size and the fact you don’t have to futz with pulling a hot wire basket out of your toaster or larger convection oven. The small size does give you a pretty big advantage in preheating and precise application of heat to the food for smaller batch sizes, but if you already have a convection oven, the advantages might not outweigh the additional space and cost of yet another kitchen gadget. We appreciate the sacrifice of eating “a lot of french fries” to test the differences between brands and conventional convection ovens for our edification.
If you’re looking for a way to make cookies faster instead of fries, how about this
hack using a microwave and a heat gun
? Or maybe it’s better to redesign the food instead of the appliance like
this ramen in an edible package
or these
origami noodles
. | 64 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103623",
"author": "Cyna",
"timestamp": "2025-02-27T16:56:59",
"content": "“New” hotness? So, nothing new has appeared in the kitchens the last 5 or so years?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8104435",
"author": "TG",
... | 1,760,371,622.974752 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/27/what-game-should-replace-doom-as-the-meme-port-of-choice/ | What Game Should Replace Doom As The Meme Port Of Choice? | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"Games",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"Counter-Strike",
"crysis",
"doom",
"game",
"half-life",
"quake"
] | DOOM. The first-person shooter was an instant hit upon its mrelease at the end of 1993. It was soon ported off the PC platform to a number of consoles with varying success. Fast forward a few years, and it became a meme. People were porting Doom to everything from
thermostats
to
car stereos
and even
inside Microsoft Word itself
.
The problem is that porting Doom has kind of jumped the shark at this point. Just about every modern microcontroller or piece of consumer electronics these days has enough grunt to run a simple faux-3D game engine from 1993. It’s been done very much to death at this point. The time has come for a
new
meme port!
Good Game
Doom became a popular meme port for multiple reasons. For one, it’s just complex and resource-intensive enough to present a challenge, without being so demanding as to make ports impractical or impossible. It’s also been open-source for decades, and the engine has been hacked to death. It’s probably one of the best understood game engines out there at this point. On top of that, everybody plays Doom at some point, and it was one of the biggest games of the 90s. Put all that together, and you’ve got the perfect meme port.
However, you can always have too much of a good thing. Just as
The Simpsons
got old after season 10 and
Wonderwall
is the worst song you could play at a party, Doom ports have been overdone. But what other options are there?
Quake
Quake made a huge leap forward from the pseudo-3D engine used in Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. Credit: screen capture by author
While Doom is credited as a groundbreaking first-person shooter, it doesn’t have that much in common with the genre as we know it today. It merely created the illusion of a 3D environment with clever 2D tricks, and didn’t have the free-rolling mouselook that we now take for granted. Released in 1996, Quake was a real step forward. The game featured real-time 3D rendering, making it a far more demanding game for mid-1990s computers to run.
Compared to Doom, Quake’s fully-3D engine presents a more demanding challenge for those trying to port it to unusual hardware. At the same time, like Doom, the engine’s source code has been available under an open-source license since 1999. Thus, it’s readily available to anyone who wishes to tinker with it. It’s also a widely-popular game well embedded in the broader hacker consciousness. If your friends are showing off their Doom ports, pulling off a Quake port is an easy way to one-up them.
Half-Life/Counter-Strike
Half-Life set a new standard for FPS games when it came out in 1999. Credit: screenshot via
Valve
If Quake is still too old for your tastes, you might find Half-Life more relevant. Released in 1999, it became popular for its rich science-fiction plot and compelling gameplay. Funnily enough, Half-Life ran on the GoldSrc engine, which was developed and heavily modified from the original Quake engine. Most crucially, it added robust AI and skeletal animation features, which brought the FPS genre to new levels of immersion. Half Life soon became a popular basis for mods, spawning the immensely-successful Counter Strike amongst many others.
The source code for GoldSrc was never officially released, but the engine is well understood and has been reverse-engineered by numerous projects like Xash3D and FreeHL. These community-created engines could provide a solid starting point for any porting efforts.
You won’t have much luck getting a full-version of Half-Life running on a space-constrained platform—the game took up over 250 MB of disk space, compared to Quake, at under 80 MB, and Doom, which fit on a couple of floppy disks. Still, it’s not supposed to be easy—it’s supposed to be hard! With that said, few people expect you to include a full single-player game with a meme port. Usually, one playable level is enough. In Half-Life’s case, maybe that could be the mind-numbing unskippable intro that has you riding a tram for twenty minutes. Alternatively, do a multiplayer Counter-Strike port that lets you run around de_dust. That should be enough.
Crysis
: The Impossible Flex
Ah, Crysis. The tropical jungle game that brought high-end PCs to their knees when it launched in 2007. For over a decade, “But can it run Crysis?” was a tongue-in-cheek benchmark for computing power. If that phrase sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a reskin of a much older saying—”Can it run DOOM?” For this reason alone, it deserves a mention here.
The problem with Crysis is that it’s a thoroughly modern game with thoroughly modern requirements. Running on CryEngine2, it featured advanced lighting, motion blur and depth of field effects, and even a multi-threaded physics engine that let you blast chunks out of the environment. Getting even a heavily downscaled version of Crysis running on inappropriate hardware would thus be the ultimate flex in the hardware hacking community.
Crysis followed Far Cry, continuing Crytek’s theme of putting its name in the title of its games, and its focus on building games in tropical environs.
There’s just one problem—source code for Crysis nor CryEngine 2 was ever really released to the public. The closest you could get is the open-source Open 3D engine, which is related to CryEngine by a few degrees of separation. Without the source, it’s hard to really port at all. You could remake Crysis on whatever platform you like, but it’s not really the same thing.
Ultimately, though, this just ups the challenge. You need to be charismatic enough, rich enough, or a good enough thief, to get the source code out of Crytek’s archives in the first place. Then you can pull off the meme port to end all meme ports.
Why Bother?
Impractical ports aren’t about actually playing a game on weird hardware. Sure, a few people might have enjoyed tapping around Doom on an iPod, but by and large, that’s beyond the point. They do, however, serve several purposes beyond just bragging rights. In reality, they’re a test of skill, and a way to explore what’s really possible on a random piece of hardware. Can you play Half Life on a Toyota infotainment system from 2022? Well, there’s one good way to find out!
The next time you’re looking at your smart dishwasher and thinking about making it run Doom, consider aiming higher. Your project might take longer and cause more headaches, but imagine the satisfaction when you’ve got Gordon Freeman fighting headcrabs on your smart TV, or Trent Reznor’s
Quake
soundtrack pumping out of your e-reader. Doom is great, but it’s been done. It’s time to move on! | 115 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103559",
"author": "jbx",
"timestamp": "2025-02-27T15:08:37",
"content": "Descent ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8103566",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2025-02-27T15:22:05",
"content": "I love... | 1,760,371,623.799004 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/27/a-precisely-elegant-cyberdeck-handheld/ | A Precisely Elegant Cyberdeck Handheld | Donald Papp | [
"Cyberdecks",
"handhelds hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"atmega32u4",
"cyberdeck",
"nautical",
"PSP joystick",
"QMK",
"raspberry pi"
] | [Nicholas LaBonte] shows off a
Cyberdeck Handheld
that demonstrates just how
good
something can look when care and attention goes into the design and fabrication. He wanted to make something that blended cyberpunk and nautical aesthetics with a compact and elegant design, and we think he absolutely succeeded.
On the inside is a Raspberry Pi and an RTL-SDR. The back of the unit is machined from hardwood, and sports a bronze heat sink for the Raspberry Pi. The front has a prominent red PSP joystick for mouse input and a custom keyboard. The keyboard is especially interesting. On the inside it’s a custom PCB with tactile switches and a ATmega32U4 running
QMK
firmware — a
popular choice
for DIY keyboards — and presents to the host as a regular USB HID device.
The keys are on a single plate of little tabs, one for each key, that sits between the front panel and press on the tact switches inside.
How did he make those slick-looking keys? It’s actually a single plate that sits between the front panel and the switches themselves. [Nicholas] used a sheet of polymer with a faux-aluminum look to it and machined it down, leaving metal-looking keys with engraved symbols as tabs in a single panel. It looks really good, although [Nicholas] already has some ideas about improving it.
On the right side is the power button and charging port, and astute readers may spot that the power button is where a double-stack of USB ports would normally be on a Raspberry Pi 5. [Nicholas] removed the physical connectors, saving some space and connecting the USB ports internally to the keyboard and SDR.
As mentioned, [Nicholas] is already full of ideas for improvements. The bronze heat sink isn’t as effective as he’d like, the SDR could use some extra shielding, and the sounds the keyboard ends up making could use some work. Believe it or not, there’s still room to spare inside the unit and he’d maybe like to figure out a way to add a camera, GPS receiver, or maybe a 4G modem. We can’t wait! Get a good look for yourself in the video, embedded below. | 15 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103522",
"author": "lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-02-27T12:08:41",
"content": "This is awesome. Love the custom key board. Wish I had this case and screen!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8103531",
"author": "freddobarz... | 1,760,371,623.932032 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/27/shelved-kindle-gets-new-life-as-weather-display/ | Shelved Kindle Gets New Life As Weather Display | Bryan Cockfield | [
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"dashboard",
"display",
"e-ink",
"jailbreak",
"kindle",
"weather"
] | In the rush to always have the latest and greatest, it’s not uncommon that perfectly serviceable hardware ends up collecting dust in a drawer somewhere. If you’ve got an old Kindle laying around, you may be interested in this write-up from [Hemant] that shows a practical example of how the popular e-reader can be
pushed into service as a weather dashboard
.
The first step is to jailbreak the Kindle, providing the user with root access to the device. From there the Kindle Unified Application Launcher (KUAL) is installed along with USBNetwork which allows you to connect to the reader over SSH. With root access and a network connection, the real project of converting it to a weather dashboard begins. [Hemant] split the project into two parts here, a Node.js server that scrapes weather data from the internet and converts it into an image, and a client for the Kindle that receives this image for display.
The Kindle has a number of quirks and issues that [Hemant] covers as well, including handling image ghosting on the e-ink display as well as a problem where the device will hang if the Internet connection is lost. For those with jailbroken Kindles that want to put their devices back into useful service, this is an excellent guide for getting started and [Hemant] also provided all of the source code
on the project’s GitHub page
.
There has been a long tradition of using Kindles for things other than e-readers, and even devices with major hardware problems can still have useful life in them
thanks to this project which allows the e-ink display to have a second life on its own
. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103483",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-02-27T09:21:03",
"content": "Pretty cool!I’m curious though, why didn’t they just let the weather fetching script run on the kindle? It does have all the horsepower required right? Maybe because they would’ve needed to install curl... | 1,760,371,623.466823 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/28/phytoremediation-to-clean-the-environment-and-mine-critical-materials/ | Phytoremediation To Clean The Environment And Mine Critical Materials | Navarre Bartz | [
"green hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"bioengineering",
"biology",
"botany",
"Camelina sativa",
"critical materials",
"heavy metals",
"mining",
"Odontarrhena",
"phytomining",
"phytoremediation",
"plants"
] | Nickel contamination can render soils infertile at levels that are currently impractical to treat. Researchers at UMass Amherst are looking at how
plants can help these soils and source nickel
for the growing EV market.
Phytoremediation is the use of plants that preferentially hyperaccumulate certain contaminants to clean the soil. When those contaminants are
also critical materials
, you get phytomining. Starting with
Camelina sativa
, the researchers are looking to enhance its preference for nickel accumulation with genes from the even more adept hyperaccumulator
Odontarrhena
to have a quick-growing plant that can be a nickel feedstock as well as produce seeds containing oil for biofuels.
Despite being able to be up to 3% Ni by weight,
Odontarrhena
was ruled out as a candidate itself due to its slow-growing nature and that it is invasive to the United States. The researchers are also looking into what soil amendments can best help this super
Camelina sativa
best achieve its goals. It’s no panacea for expected nickel demand, but they do project that phytomining could provide 20-30% of our nickel needs for 50 years, at which point the land could be turned back over to other uses.
Recycling things already in technical cycles
will be important to a circular economy, but being able to remove contaminants from the environment’s biological cycles and place them into a safer technical cycle instead of just burying them will be a big benefit as well. If you want learn about a more notorious heavy metal, checkout our piece on the
blessings and destruction wrought by lead
. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104306",
"author": "DavidO",
"timestamp": "2025-03-01T11:49:31",
"content": "Sounds too good. Trifids?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8104455",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-03-01T20:37:39",
"con... | 1,760,371,623.380551 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/28/building-an-interferometer-with-lego/ | Building An Interferometer With LEGO | Lewin Day | [
"Science",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"interferometer",
"physics"
] | LEGO! It’s a fun toy that is popular around the world. What you may not realize is that it’s also made to incredibly high standards. As it turns out, the humble building blocks are good enough to build a interferometer if you’re so inclined to want one.
[Kyra Cole] shows us how it’s done.
The build in question is a Michelson interferometer; [Kyra] was inspired to build it based on earlier work
by the myphotonics project.
She was able to assemble holders for mirrors and a laser, as well as a mount for a beamsplitter, and then put it all together on a LEGO baseboard. While some non-LEGO rubber bands were used in some areas, ultimately, adjustment was performed with LEGO Technic gears.
Not only was the LEGO interferometer able to generate a proper interference pattern, [Kyra] then went one step further. A Raspberry Pi was rigged up with a camera and some code to analyze the interference patterns automatically. [Kyra] notes that using genuine bricks was key to her success. Their high level of dimensional accuracy made it much easier to achieve her end goal. Sloppily-built knock-off bricks may have made the build much more frustrating to complete.
We don’t feature a
ton
of interferometer hacks around these parts. However, if you’re a big physics head, you might enjoy
our 2021 article
on the LIGO observatory. If you’re cooking up your own physics experiments at home, don’t hesitate to
drop us a line!
Thanks to [Peter Quinn] for the tip! | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104236",
"author": "Wells Campbell",
"timestamp": "2025-03-01T04:24:12",
"content": "I think that’s a neat build and should work fine where changes over time aren’t important. However the plastic used, as most plastics do, has a high coefficient of thermal expansion, which would ne... | 1,760,371,623.600107 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/28/a-different-take-on-the-river-table-does-it-in-bronze/ | A Different Take On The River Table Does It In Bronze | Navarre Bartz | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"bronze",
"bronze casting",
"casting",
"furniture",
"metalwork",
"woodworking"
] | River tables are something we’ve heard decried as a passé, but we’re still seeing some interesting variations on the technique. Take this example done with
bronze instead of epoxy
.
Starting with two beautiful slabs of walnut, [Burls Art] decided that instead of cutting them up to make guitars he would turn his attention to a river table to keep them more intact. Given the price of copper and difficulty in casting it, he decided to trim the live edges to make a more narrow “river” to work with for the project.
Since molten copper is quite toasty and wood likes to catch on fire, he wisely did a rough finish of the table before making silicone plugs of the voids instead of pouring metal directly. The silicone plugs were then used to make sand casting molds, and a series of casting trials moving from copper to bronze finally yielded usable pieces for the table. In case that all seems too simple, there were then several days of milling and sanding to get the bronze and walnut level and smooth with each other. The amount of attention to detail and plain old elbow grease in this project is impressive.
We’ve seen some other interesting mix-ups of the live edge and epoxy formula like a
seascape night light
or this
river table with embedded neon
. And if you’re looking to get into casting, why not
start small in the microwave
? | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104331",
"author": "RetepV",
"timestamp": "2025-03-01T13:55:31",
"content": "Beautiful table. I don’t think I could afford to buy one. But one day I might make one. ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8104351",
"author": "de... | 1,760,371,623.879588 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/28/cheap-fiber-optic-wand-toy-becomes-tiny-weird-display/ | Cheap Fiber Optic Wand Toy Becomes Tiny Weird Display | Lewin Day | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"fiber optic",
"led",
"led matrix"
] | If you’ve ever seen those cheap LED fiber optic wands at the dollar store, you’ve probably just thought of them as a simple novelty. However, as [Ancient] shows us,
you can turn them into a surprisingly nifty little display
if you’re so inclined.
The build starts by removing the fiber optic bundle from the wand. One end is left as a round bundle. At the other end, the strands are then fed into plastic frames to separate them out individually. After plenty of tedious sorting, the fibers are glued in place in a larger rectangular 3D-printed frame, which holds the fibers in place over a matrix of LEDs. The individual LEDs of the matrix light individual fibers, which carry the light to the round end of the bundle. The result is a tiny little round display driven by a much larger one at the other end.
[Ancient] had hoped to use the set up for a volumetric display build, but found it too fragile to be fit for purpose. Still, it’s interesting to look at nonetheless, and a good demonstration of how fiber optics work in practice. As this display shows, you can have two glass fibers carrying completely different wavelengths of light right next to each other without issue.
We’ve featured some other great fiber optic hacks over the years, like this guide on
making your own fiber couplings
. Video after the break.
[Thanks to Zane and Darryl and Ash for the tip! This one was all over the tipsline!] | 11 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104156",
"author": "elwing",
"timestamp": "2025-02-28T21:16:30",
"content": "looks like some interactive Ishihara test. awesome",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8104188",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2025-02-28T22:58:... | 1,760,371,623.840305 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/28/low-resolution-fluid-simulation-on-an-esp32/ | Low-Resolution Fluid Simulation On An ESP32 | Lewin Day | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ESP32",
"Fluid mechanics",
"gas",
"liquid",
"simulation"
] | Fluid simulations are a key tool in fields from aerospace to motorsports and even civil engineering. They can be three-dimensional and complicated and often run on supercomputer clusters bigger than your house. However, you can also do simple two-dimensional fluid simulations on very simple hardware, as
[mircemk] demonstrates.
This build is almost like a simple toy that displays particles rolling around and tumbling as you turn it one way or the other. Behind the scenes, an ESP32 is running the show, simulating a group of particles responding to gravity in a fluid-like manner. The microcontroller is hooked up with an 3-axis gyroscope and accelerometer, which it uses to track motion and influence the motion of the particles in turn. The results of the simple fluid simulation are displayed on a screen made up of a 16 x 16 matrix of WS2812B addressable RGB LEDs, which add enough color to make the build suitably mesmerizing.
There’s something compelling about turning the display and watching the particles tumble and flow, particularly when they’re all set to different colors. [mircemk] also gave the build the ability to operate in several different modes, running “sand,” “liquid” and “gas” simulations and with dynamic coloring to boot.
We’ve seen some great videos from [mircemk] before, too,
like this sensitive metal detector rig. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104152",
"author": "scott_tx",
"timestamp": "2025-02-28T20:59:34",
"content": "neato, I like that.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8104207",
"author": "William Payne",
"timestamp": "2025-03-01T00:31:23",
"content": ... | 1,760,371,623.421065 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/28/tech-in-plain-sight-shopping-cart-locks/ | Tech In Plain Sight: Shopping Cart Locks | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"shopping cart"
] | The original locking wheel.
Shopping carts are surprisingly expensive. Prices range up to about $300 for a cart, which may seem like a lot, but they have to be pretty rugged and are made to work for decades. Plastic carts are cheaper, but not by much.
And carts have a way of vanishing. We’ve seen estimates that cart theft costs hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide annually. To stem the tide, stores sometimes pay a reward to people to round up carts off the street and return them to the store — it’s cheaper than buying a new one. That led [Elmer Isaacks] to
patent a solution
to this problem in 1968.
The [Isaacks] system used lots of magnets. A cart leaving the store had a brake that would be armed by running over a magnet. Customers were expected to follow a path surrounded by magnets to prevent the brake from engaging. If you left the track, a rod passing through the wheel locked it.
A third magnet would disarm the brake when you entered the store again. This is clever, but it has several problems. First, you have to insert magnets all over the place. Second, if someone knows how the system works, a simple magnet will hold the brake off no matter what.
The original modern-style court from a 1946 patent
There are some low-tech ways to stop theft, too. For example, if the store has barriers too narrow for the carts to pass, customers can’t leave the store. That’s not very nice if you are trying to get a week’s worth of stuff to your car. You sometimes see poles on carts rising taller than the door, to prevent the cart from leaving the building, which, of course, has the same problem.
Some stores, particularly Aldi, require a small deposit to get a cart. You get the deposit back when you return the cart. This not only discourages theft but also cuts down on having to hire kids to round up carts in the parking lot. The problem is that the deposit is usually a low-denomination coin, so if you really want to steal a $200 shopping cart, losing a quarter is probably not much of a deterrent.
Higher Tech
Building on the [Isaacks] solution, more modern systems use a perimeter fence — usually a wire, but sometimes magnets — that causes the brake to engage if you roll the cart over it.
This drives the cost up and is expensive to install. Worse, if you only have one wheel lock, a smart customer could lift that wheel off the ground and bypass the virtual fence. That means you probably want two locking wheels, although that still doesn’t preclude a strong thief or two thieves from carrying the cart over the line. You can see a breakdown of what’s happening in the Science Channel video below.
Smart cart locks can also help solve “pushout,” an industry term for people filling a cart and walking out without paying. A properly equipped cart can determine if it exits the store without going through a checkout line. This is probably error-prone and not foolproof, but it might stop many pushouts.
Where’s the Hack?
Many common carts use 7.8 kHz signals on the sensing wire. Since that’s within the range of audio, you can actually hack them pretty easily.
A DEFCON presentation shows how you can
use your phone to lock and unlock shopping carts
. Not that we suggest you do that. As [Joseph Gabay] notes: “I never really wanted a shopping cart, but…I have the knowledge that if I wanted a shopping cart, I could have one.” His video below shows many of the internal details of some of the common shopping cart systems.
Who Knew?
You’d think a shopping cart was about the simplest thing you’d deal with all day. But, like many things these days, it conceals some very high-tech electronics. And it seems like there should be some better options. Locking wheels might be fine when you have someone actually stealing, but if you ever have a cart lock up while you are moving quickly, it isn’t pleasant.
If you become super interested in shopping carts, the National Museum of American History has
a section of shopping carts
. Why not? People get obsessed with strange things. If the modern system seems familiar, maybe you are thinking of
invisible doggie fences
. If you want to
hack a cart
, you probably want to buy your own to start with.
Featured image: “
Large Capacity Shopping Cart
” from the National Museum of American History collection. | 49 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104105",
"author": "JpS",
"timestamp": "2025-02-28T18:36:44",
"content": "“the store has barriers to narrow for the carts to pass” –> “too narrow for the carts to pass”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8104118",
"autho... | 1,760,371,623.556927 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/28/hackaday-podcast-episode-310-cyanotypes-cyberdecks-and-the-compass-cnc/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 310: Cyanotypes, Cyberdecks, And The Compass CNC | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up in a secret location with snacks to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week.
First up in the news, and there’s a lot of it: we announced the Hackaday Europe 2025 workshops and a few more speakers, though the big keynote announcement is still to come. In case you missed it, KiCad 9 moved up into the pro league, and finally, we’re hiring, so come join us in the dungeon.
On What’s That Sound, Kristina didn’t get close at all, but at least had a guess this time. That’s okay, though, because nobody got it right! We’re still giving a t-shirt away to [Dakota], though, probably because Elliot has a thing for using random number generators.
Then it’s on to the hacks and such beginning with a beautiful handheld compass CNC and cyanotype prints made with resin printer’s UV light. After that, we take a look at open-source random numbers, a 3D-printed instant camera, and a couple of really cool cyberdecks. Finally, we discuss whether DOOM is doomed as the port of choice in this day and age, and kvetch about keyboards.
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 310 Show Notes:
News:
Hackaday Europe 2025: Workshops And More Speakers
KiCad 9 Moves Up In The Pro League
We’re Hiring: Come Join Us!
What’s that Sound?
Congrats to [Dakota] who drew lucky number 13 and a Hackaday Podcast t-shirt!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Handheld Compass CNC Lets Teensy Do The Driving
Hands-On The Shaper Origin: A Tool That Changes How We Build
Cyanotype Prints On A Resin 3D Printer
Using A Potato As Photographic Recording Surface
Open-Source Random Numbers
3D Print An Instant Camera
Harvesting Water With High Voltage
A Precisely Elegant Cyberdeck Handheld
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Pico Gets A Speed Bump
A Web-Based Graphics Editor For Tiny Screens
To Test A (Smart) LED
Import GPU: Python Programming With CUDA
SHOUT For Smaller QR Codes
Kristina’s Picks:
3D Print Yourself A Split Flap Display
The Perfect Pi Pico Portable Computer
Infill Injection Experiment Makes Stronger Parts
Can’t-Miss Articles:
What Game Should Replace Doom As The Meme Port Of Choice?
Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With All The Green Keyboards | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104244",
"author": "Mat",
"timestamp": "2025-03-01T05:20:10",
"content": "Please, please add clickable links to show notes",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8105078",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,371,623.643168 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/26/shout-for-smaller-qr-codes/ | SHOUT For Smaller QR Codes | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"character encoding",
"QR codes"
] | QR codes have been with us for a long time now, and after passing through their Gardenesque hype cycle of inappropriate usage, have now settled down to be an important and ubiquitous part of life. If you have ever made a QR code you’ll know all about trying to generate the most compact and easily-scannable one you can, and for that [Terence Eden] is here with an interesting quirk.
Upper-case text produces smaller codes than lower-case
.
His post takes us on a journey into the encoding of QR codes, not in terms of their optical pattern generation, but instead the bit stream they contain. There are different modes to denote different types of payload, and in his two examples of the same URL in upper- and lower- cases, the modes are different. Upper-case is encoded as alphanumeric, while lower-case, seemingly though also containing alphanumeric information, is encoded as bytes.
To understand why, it’s necessary to consider the QR codes’ need for efficiency, which led its designers to reduce their character set as far as possible and only define uppercase letters in their alphanumeric set. The upper-case payload is thus encoded using less bits per character than the lower-case one, which is encoded as 8-bit bytes. A satisfying explanation for a puzzle in plain sight.
Hungry for more QR hackery?
This one contains more than one payload
! | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103509",
"author": "strawberrymortallyb0bcea48e7",
"timestamp": "2025-02-27T11:14:32",
"content": "Humanity couldn’t standardize on a binary format which would be the smallest..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8103514",
... | 1,760,371,623.985965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/26/district-heat-pump-systems-save-money-and-gas-utilities/ | District Heat Pump Systems Save Money And Gas Utilities | Navarre Bartz | [
"green hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"district heating",
"energy",
"geothermal"
] | Ground-source heat pump systems are one of the most efficient ways to do climate control, but digging the wells can be prohibitively expensive for the individual citizen.
What if you could do it at a larger scale
?
Starting with a pilot to serve 37 commercial and residential buildings in Framingham, MA, Eversource is using its experience with natural gas drilling and pipe to serve up a lower carbon way to heat and cool this neighborhood. While district heating via geothermal has precedents elsewhere in the country, Boise is a notable example, it has remained a somewhat niche technology. Once networked, excess heat from one location can be used elsewhere in the system, like data centers or industrial facilities being used to heat homes in the winter.
As gas utilities look to transition away from fossil fuels, their existing knowledge base is a perfect fit for geothermal, but there are some regulatory hurdles. Six states have passed laws allowing natural gas utilities to expand beyond just gas, and bills have been filed in six more. This will likely accelerate with the formation of the Utility Networked Geothermal Collaborative which includes many utilities including giants like Dominion Energy who are looking to expand their energy portfolios.
If you want to dig more into district heating systems or geothermal energy, we’ve covered
cogeneration from power plants
to serve up the heat instead,
doing it with wind
, or even using
old coal mines for geothermal heat
. | 48 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103415",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2025-02-27T03:35:34",
"content": "A University in my city uses waste heat from a data center to heat an academic building across the street.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8103426",
... | 1,760,371,624.183556 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/26/building-a-diy-muon-tomography-device-for-about-100/ | Building A DIY Muon Tomography Device For About $100 | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"geiger counter",
"geiger-muller",
"muon"
] | Muon tomography, or muography, is the practice of using muons generated by cosmic rays interacting with Earth’s atmosphere to image structures on Earth’s surface, akin to producing an X-ray. In lieu of spending a fair bit of money on dedicated muon detectors, you can also
hack such a device together
with two Geiger-Müller tubes and related circuitry for about $100 or whatever you can source the components for.
The reason for having two Geiger-Müller tubes is to filter out other much more prevalent sources of ionizing radiation that we’re practically bathed in every second. Helped by a sheet of lead between both tubes, only a signal occurring at the same time from both tubes should be a muon. Specially cosmic ray muons, as these have significantly more kinetic energy that allows them to pass through both tubes. As a simple check it’s helpful to know that most of these muons will come from the direction of the sky.
The author of the article tested this cobbled-together detector in an old gold mine. Once there the presence of more rock, and fewer muons, was easily detected, as well as a surge in muons indicating a nearby void from a mine shaft. While not a fast or super-easy way to image structures, it’s hard to beat for the price and the hours of fun you can have while spelunking. | 25 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103396",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-02-27T02:16:44",
"content": "Editor:“In lieu of spending a lot of spending a fair bit of money…”I couldn’t even type that without getting an angry red underline.This is only 3 paragraphs.Please take the 20 seconds to reread it at least o... | 1,760,371,624.372209 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/26/want-a-truck-with-a-short-bed-and-a-long-camper-shell/ | Want A Truck With A Short Bed And A Long Camper Shell? | Navarre Bartz | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"camper",
"camper shell",
"camping",
"ev camping",
"overlanding",
"truck"
] | Camper shells are a time-honored piece of truck gear, but with modern trucks having increasingly vestigial beds, the length of your overnight abode has increasingly shrunk as well. To combat this problem, [Ed’s Garage] built a
camper shell that extends
once you’ve arrived at your campsite.
[Ed] wanted to keep things relatively low profile while still tall enough to sit up in for convenience, leading to a small bit of the shell peeking over the truck’s roof. To keep the cold Canadian winter out, attention was paid to proper weather sealing around the sliding portion of the shell so that it stays warm and dry inside.
While this would work on any truck, the mains power plugs in the bed of some modern trucks mean that certain glamping conveniences like a heater and projector can be easily powered while you’re in camp. We get to see the camper shell in action at the
end of the video
where the pros and cons of having your sleeping space also being your storage while
en route
become apparent.
If you’re looking for something a little less conventional for your camping experience, how about this
solar camper
or this
retro bike camper
? | 37 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103339",
"author": "SpillsDirt",
"timestamp": "2025-02-26T21:46:01",
"content": "Making more space reminded me of the 1970s RQ Riley conversion of the VW bus into The Phoenix.https://retro-motoring.com/events/SkegVegas-2016/images/IMG_3837.jpg",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": ... | 1,760,371,624.304503 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/26/floss-weekly-episode-822-nand2tetris/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 822: Nand2Tetris | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"FLOSS Weekly",
"nand2tetris"
] | This week,
Jonathan Bennett
and
Rob Campbell
talk with
Shimon Schocken
about Nand2Tetris, the free course about building a computer from first principles. What was the inspiration for the course? Is there a sequel or prequel in the works? Watch to find out!
Nand2Tetris
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 | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103355",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2025-02-26T23:20:08",
"content": "There are two things I always recommend to people seeking to really understand how computers work: first, Ben Eater’s videos about building a working 8-bit microcomputer from TTL gates, and second, ... | 1,760,371,624.225899 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/26/too-smooth-football-and-the-knuckleball-problem/ | Too Smooth: Football And The “KnuckleBall” Problem | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"aerodynamics",
"brazuca",
"football",
"knuckleball",
"knuckling"
] | Picture a football (soccer ball) in your head and you probably see the cartoon ideal—a roughly spherical shape made with polygonal patches that are sewn together, usually in a familiar pattern of black and white. A great many balls were made along these lines for a great many decades.
Eventually, though, technology moved on. Footballs got rounder, smoother, and more colorful. This was seen as a good thing, with each new international competition bringing shiny new designs with ever-greater performance. That was, until things went too far, and the new balls changed the game.
Thus was borne the “knuckleball” phenomenon.
Smoother Is Better, Right?
An Adidas Telstar from the 1974 World Cup. The original Telstar design actually predates 1974, and the combination of 12 pentagonal and 20 hexagonal panels and black and white patterns had been used before, too. Regardless, the Adidas design was soon globally known, and eventually became the “default” design for a football in media. Credit:
shine2010
, CC BY 2.0
From the late industrial era onwards, footballs were traditionally made with leather panels wrapped around some form of rubber bladder. As it’s not easy to produce a seamless leather sphere, balls were instead sewn together from individual leather panels in order to create a vaguely spherical whole. Early designs had few panels, and weren’t particularly good at approximating the shape of a sphere. They often had large, wide seams that stretched far across the surface of the ball. Larger seams were by and large undesirable, as they made the ball harder to control. Ridges where the panels met could catch on the foot and lead to unpredictable behavior.
The 32-panel design persisted at the World Cup level until 2002, with the Fevernova ball. Credit: Nicola, CC BY-SA 4.0
Over time, there was a desire to create smoother, rounder balls for professional play. By the 1970s, football designs began to coalesce around a common format. The standard became 12 pentagonal and 20 hexagonal panels, which could be sewn together into a relatively good approximation of a sphere. This also allowed the construction of a ball with very fine seams, creating a more predictable ball which enabled far finer control. The format was perhaps best popularized by the Adidas Telstar as used in the 1970 and 1974 World Cups. Even though it wasn’t the first to use the 12-and-20 design, the layout and the black-and-white pattern has been firmly etched in footballing consciousness ever since. Indeed, starting at the 1970 World Cup, Adidas has made every following World Cup ball since.
For a time, it seemed as if the design of the football was settled science. Adidas stuck with the 32-panel design up until the 2006 World Cup, when it revealed the +Teamgeist design. It used 14 curved panels that were bonded instead of stitched, creating a smoother ball for yet more predictable handling. It was also intended that the design would be more waterproof, to avoid gaining weight in wet matches. The ball was criticised by some for its erratic flight patterns, but by and large was seen as fit for purpose.
The Jabulani proved controversial, with its ultra-smooth design criticised for creating its unpredictability in flight. Credit: Adidas, editorial use
With another successful World Cup under its belt, Adidas innovated further for the 2010 World Cup. It created the Jabulani, which consisted of just eight spherically-moulded panels bonded together into an ultra-smooth and cohesive sphere. If the 2006 World Cup ball was slightly controversial, the Jabulani was outrageous. The ball was referred to as “supernatural” for its tendency to suddenly change direction in flight, which pleased strikers to a degree, but frustrated goalkeepers to no end. Ultimately, though, this tendency wasn’t good for getting balls on target. Just 147 goals were scored in the 2010 World Cup, the fewest since the competition changed its tournament format in 1998.
The problem came down to a phenomenon known as “knuckling.” This happens when the ball is travelling through the air with little to no spin. At a certain speed, the seams on the ball tend to interact with the airflow, channeling it such that it creates sudden and unpredictable movements. The term first developed in baseball, but became relevant to football with the development of the 2006 and 2010 World Cup balls, which suffered this phenomenon more often in play.
The phenomenon became so well known that NASA scientists took the opportunity to
throw World Cup balls in a test chamber
to demonstrate the effects at play. Knuckling behavior tends to peak at a certain critical speed, with the effect lessened either side of the peak. The problem was that the smoother designs were “knuckling” at higher speeds than balls from previous generations. NASA researchers found that the Jabulani would undergo unpredictable flight due to knuckling at speeds of 50 to 55 mph—right around the speed at which professional strikers can deliver a ball to the net. Meanwhile, more traditional 32-panel balls tend to see a peak in knuckling around 30 mph. Since strikers were typically kicking beyond this speed, knuckling—and thus unpredictable flight—wasn’t such a problem with the older designs.
The Brazuca demonstrated a critical knuckling speed closer to a traditional 32-panel ball in NASA’s tests. “What we are looking for in the smoke patterns is at what speed the smoke patterns suddenly change,” notes Rabi Mehta, NASA’s chief of the Experimental Aero-Physics Branch. “This is when the knuckling effect is greatest.” Credit:
NASA
Being well aware of the problem after the 2010 World Cup, Adidas went back to the drawing board and developed the Brazuca for the 2014 competition. The number of panels was reduced yet further to just six. However, Adidas wasn’t intending to just go smoother yet again. Instead, the Brazuca had longer, deeper seams than the Jabulani, and panels covered in textured bumps. Through the company’s careful design efforts, this brought the critical knuckling speed back down to around 30 mph, much more akin to a traditional 32-panel ball.
By and large, the Brazuca proved far less controversial than its two predecessors. Search for articles on the 2014 ball, and you’ll find a little speculation from before the World Cup, before the story died completely once competition began. No more were unpredictable balls confounding the world’s finest footballers. Meanwhile, democratically speaking, where the +Teamgeist and Jabulani each have hundreds of words spilled on Wikipedia over controversy and criticism, the Brazuca has none.
Adidas gave the Brazuca deeper seams and a bumpy finish to improve its stability in flight. Credit:
Nicola
, CC BY-SA 4.0
The story of the Jabulani is one of unintended consequences. Adidas had intended to improve its product in a predictable and routine manner, only to find an unexpected effect at play which threw a spanner in the works. Once the effect was understood, it could be controlled and refined out with careful design. Football hasn’t suffered a “supernatural” ball since, even as the technology marches ever further into the Smart Ball era. Still, who knows what comes next at the 2026 World Cup? | 25 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103287",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2025-02-26T18:02:57",
"content": "Soccer? Football uses an oblong ball :) .",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8103305",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2025-02-26T18:... | 1,760,371,624.510117 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/26/ul-investigates-the-best-way-to-fight-ev-fires/ | UL Investigates The Best Way To Fight EV Fires | Navarre Bartz | [
"Battery Hacks",
"car hacks"
] | [
"battery fire",
"car fire",
"electric vehicle",
"electric vehicle battery",
"ev"
] | While electric vehicles (EVs) are generally less likely to catch fire than their internal combustion counterparts, it does still happen, and firefighters need to be ready. Accordingly, the UL Research Institute is working with reverse engineering experts Munro & Associates to
characterize EV fires and find the best way to fight them
.
There is currently some debate in the firefighting community over whether it’s better to try to put an EV battery fire out with water or to just let it burn. Research like this means the decision doesn’t have to fall on only anecdotal evidence. Anyone who’s worked in a lab will recognize the mix of exceedingly expensive equipment next to the borderline sketchy rigged up hacks on display, in this case the super nice thermal imagers and a “turkey burner on steroids.” The video goes through some discussion of the previous results with a Chevy Bolt, Hyundai Kona, Ford Mustang Mach E, and then we get to see them light up a Tesla Model 3. This is definitely one you shouldn’t try at home!
While the massive battery banks in modern EVs can pose unique challenges in the event of an accident, that doesn’t mean they can’t be repurposed to
backup your own home. | 51 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103274",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-02-26T17:19:33",
"content": "At the moment they’re less likely to ignite, give it another 10-20 years of aging wiring, electronics, batteries and shade tree mechanics then grab the marshmallows.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,624.629139 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/25/infill-injection-experiment-makes-stronger-parts/ | Infill Injection Experiment Makes Stronger Parts | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"Experiments",
"infill injection",
"injection molding"
] | [JanTec Engineering] was fascinated by the idea of using a 3D printer’s hot end to
inject voids and channels in the infill with molten plastic
, leading to stronger prints without the need to insert hardware or anything else. Inspiration came from two similar ideas:
z-pinning
which creates hollow vertical channels that act as reinforcements when filled with molten plastic by the hot end, and
VoxelFill
(patented by AIM3D) which does the same, but with cavities that are not uniform for better strength in different directions. Craving details? You can
read the paper on z-pinning
, and
watch VoxelFill
in (simulated) action or
browse the VoxelFill patent
.
With a prominent disclaimer that his independent experiments are not a copy of VoxelFill nor are they performing or implying patent infringement, [JanTec] goes on to use a lot of custom G-code (and suffers many messy failures) to perform some experiments and share what he learned.
Using an airbrush nozzle as a nozzle extension gains about 4 mm of extra reach.
One big finding is that one can’t simply have an empty cylinder inside the print and expect to fill it all up in one go. Molten plastic begins to cool immediately after leaving a 3D printer’s nozzle, and won’t make it very far down a deep hole before it cools and hardens. One needs to fill a cavity periodically rather than all in one go. And it’s better to fill it from the bottom-up rather than from the top-down.
He got better performance by
modifying his 3D printer’s hot end with an airbrush nozzle
, which gave about 4 mm of extra length to work with. This extra long nozzle could reach down further into cavities, and fill them from the bottom-up for better results. Performing the infill injection at higher temperatures helped fill the cavities more fully, as well.
Another thing learned is that dumping a lot of molten plastic into a 3D print risks deforming the print because the injected infill brings a lot of heat with it. This can be mitigated by printing the object with more perimeters and a denser infill so that there’s more mass to deal with the added heat, but it’s still a bit of a trouble point.
[JanTec] put
his testing hardware
to use and found that parts with infill injection were noticeably more impact resistant than without. But when it came to stiffness, an infill injected part resisted bending only a little better than a part without, probably because the test part is very short and the filled cavities can’t really shine in that configuration.
These are just preliminary results, but got him thinking there are maybe there are possibilities with injecting materials
other than
the one being used to print the object itself. Would a part resist bending more if it were infill injected with carbon-fibre filament? We hope he does some follow-up experiments; we’d love to see the results. | 28 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102986",
"author": "rmrf",
"timestamp": "2025-02-25T20:02:03",
"content": "What about concrete infill?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8102989",
"author": "SirDan",
"timestamp": "2025-02-25T20:13:57",
... | 1,760,371,624.695406 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/25/were-hiring-come-join-us-7/ | We’re Hiring: Come Join Us! | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"contributor",
"hiring"
] | You wake up in the morning, and check Hackaday over breakfast. Then it’s off to work or school, where you’ve already had to explain the Jolly Wrencher to your shoulder-surfing colleagues. And then to a hackspace or back to your home lab, stopping by the skull-and-cross-wrenches while commuting, naturally. You don’t bleed red, but rather #F3BF10. It’s time we talked.
The Hackaday writing crew goes to great lengths to cover all that is interesting to engineers and enthusiasts. We find ourselves stretched a bit thin and it’s time to ask for help. Want to lend a hand while making some extra dough to plow back into your projects? We’re looking for contributors to write a few articles per week and keep the Hackaday flame burning.
Contributors are hired as private contractors and paid for each article. You should have the technical expertise to understand the projects you write about, and a passion for the wide range of topics we feature. You’ll have access to the Hackaday Tips Line, and we count on your judgement to help us find the juicy nuggets that you’d want to share with your hacker friends.
If you’re interested,
please email our jobs line (jobs at hackaday dot com)
and include:
One example article written in the voice of Hackaday. Include a banner image, between 150 and 300 words, the link to the project, and any in-links to related and relevant Hackaday features. We need to know that you can write.
Details about your background (education, employment, interests) that make you a valuable addition to the team. What do you like, and what do you do?
Links to your blog/project posts/etc. that have been published on the Internet, if any.
Questions? Don’t hesitate to ask below. Ladies and Gentlemen, start your applications! | 29 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102959",
"author": "Clovis Fritzen",
"timestamp": "2025-02-25T18:11:17",
"content": "Nice, will apply shortly. Hope to get through this time.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8102960",
"author": "asking for a friend",
"t... | 1,760,371,624.758309 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/25/custom-frame-grabber-gets-vintage-kodak-digital-camera-back-in-the-game/ | Custom Frame Grabber Gets Vintage Kodak Digital Camera Back In The Game | Dan Maloney | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"frame grabber",
"kodak",
"megapixel",
"parallel",
"Teensy"
] | What do you do with a four-megapixel monochrome digital camera from the 90s that needed a dedicated PC with a frame grabber card to do anything useful? Easy —
you turn it into a point-and-shoot by building your own frame grabber
.
At least that’s what [Frost Sheridan] did with a vintage Kodak MegaPlus 4.2i, a camera that was aimed at the industrial and scientific market at a time when everyone was still using film for snapshots. Making this workhorse ride again meant diving into the manual, luckily still available after all these years, and figuring out what pins on the 68 pin connector would be useful. [Frost] worked out the pins for serial commands plus the 10-bit parallel interface, although he settled for the eight most significant bits to make things simpler. A Teensy with some extra RAM and a serial interface chip takes care of sending commands to the camera and pulling pixels off the parallel interface, and a 128×160 LCD provides a much-needed viewfinder.
With a battery pack mounted the whole thing is reasonably portable, if a bit of a chore to use. It’s worth the effort, though; the picture quality is fantastic, with a wide dynamic range and plenty of contrast. Hats off to [Frost] for bringing this beauty back to life without making any permanent modifications to it. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102942",
"author": "MakeItNetwork",
"timestamp": "2025-02-25T16:53:44",
"content": "Now it just needs a color wheel",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8103006",
"author": "carpetbomberz",
"timestamp": "2025-02-25... | 1,760,371,624.844383 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/25/tech-in-plain-sight-magsafe-and-how-to-roll-your-own/ | Tech In Plain Sight: Magsafe, And How To Roll Your Own | Al Williams | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"iphone hacks"
] | [
"apple",
"magnetic attachment",
"magsafe"
] | Apple likes magnets. They started out with magnetic laptop chargers and then graduated to a system that magnetically holds the phone, charges it, and can facilitate communication between the phone and a charger or other device. Even if you are like me and have no Apple devices, you can retrofit other phones to use Magsafe accessories. In fact, with a little work, you can build your own devices. Regardless, the technology is a clever and simple hack, and we are just a little sorry we didn’t think of it.
Terms
Using a magnet to attach a phone isn’t a new idea. But, historically, the phone had either a metal back or an adhesive metal plate attached that would stick to the magnet. This wouldn’t necessarily help with charging, but was perfectly fine for holding the device. The problem is, it is hard to wirelessly charge the phone through the metal.
Magsafe can do several different things. Obviously, it can attach the phone magnetically. However, since it is a ring shape, you can still have a charging coil in the middle of the ring. Better still, the Magsafe system will align the phone and charger with a satisfying click when you put them together.
In addition, a Magsafe device can have an NFC communication point just below the ring. This can allow, for example, a phone and a charger to negotiate for current or communicate charge level. For the purposes of this post, I’m mostly thinking about the magnetic attachment. Assuming you have two charging coils and two NFC points aligned, it is easy to figure out how charging and communication take place.
The Magsafe Way
Wireless charging relies on the coils in the charger and the device being reasonably well aligned, otherwise the losses increase rapidly. A simple magnet and plate system would allow you to attach the phone in a variety of ways and that won’t assure that the charging coil will line up.
If you think about how to solve the magnet and charging problem, it might make sense to move the magnets into a circle, leaving the center free for charging. That still doesn’t help with alignment, though. Magsafe actually uses two magnetic rings. One presents a north magnetic pole, and the other presents a south magnetic pole. Obviously, the mating ring has the poles swapped.
An Apple video
shows how Magsafe goes together.
Deep into an old Apple Video, you can find the adjacent image of how the whole system goes together, but it hides a lot of detail in the phrase “magnet array.”\
However, Apple has a
public document
that describes, among other things, all the requirements for working with Magsafe. We imagine there might be more details if you join their Mfi program, but that’s hardly necessary.
Section 37 of the document goes into plenty of detail, including the materials for the magnet, the dimensions, and the positioning. It even covers how to test the various parameters. It reveals that you can have a simple ring if you don’t care about orientation, or incorporate a ring and an alignment magnet to ensure the devices mate in a particular way.
The real key, though, is the cross-sectional views. These show how each ring is made of thin magnets. Keep in mind that this figure is just one part of the ring. There is an identical section across the center of the ring to the right.
A cross-section of one of the rings.
If present, the orientation magnet also has multiple magnetic faces. This alignment is perfect for wireless charging since the coils will line up directly. In addition, the NFC connection allows the phone and a compatible charger to negotiate for a faster charge rate.
No Apple, No Problem
These days, you can find cases for many phones that will provide attachment rings. You can also just buy rings. Some rings are metallic, so they’ll stick but don’t necessarily align. For alignment, you need magnets on both sides. You’ll notice that some rings are thicker than others. In general, rings that will be close to their mating ring can be thinner than rings that are made to go inside, for example, a case.
The availability of rings means that you can craft your own accessories or even faux phones (e..g., a ring on your digital meter). If you want charging, you can also get “pucks” that have everything ready to go and insert them into a 3D print like [Alien Gaming] did in the video below.
There are plenty of commercial accessories to inspire you. (Or will they tempt you to buy instead of make?) You can get a notepad and pen, for example, that snaps to the back of your phone. There are camera grips, tripods, wallets, and probably more. [Michael Vance] rounds up some of the stranger ones in the video below.
What cool ideas can you dream up for either Magsafe accessories or hosts? You could probably make a very phone-specific attachment to put a telephoto lens in front of your camera, for example. Keep in mind that you could talk WiFi or Bluetooth to the phone, too, so a satellite phone back could work. Sure, some of these wouldn’t meet the Apple spec, but they could still be done.
If you miss the old-style laptop magnetic connectors, you can
roll your own
. If you haven’t looked at the
Apple documentation
, we’ve been impressed with it | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103002",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-02-25T21:00:50",
"content": "Guess some are waiting for the patent to expire.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8103032",
"author": "Lrrr",
"timestamp": "2025-02-25T22:16:... | 1,760,371,624.807346 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/25/blackberry-keyboard-makes-this-handheld-pi-stand-out/ | BlackBerry Keyboard Makes This Handheld Pi Stand Out | Jenny List | [
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"blackberry keyboard",
"diy handheld",
"raspberry pi"
] | In the decade or more since small inexpensive Linux-capable single board computers such as the Raspberry Pi came to the mainstream, many a hardware hacker has turned their attention to making a portable computer using one. With such a plethora of devices having been made one might think that the Pi handheld was a done deal, but every so often along comes a new one of such quality to re-ignite the genre. So it is with [Taylor Hay]’s
BlackberryPi Handheld
. As you might guess from the name, it uses a BlackBerry keyboard along with a square LCD screen to create a beautifully executed Pi handheld in an almost GameBoy-like form factor.
It starts with a beautifully designed and executed case that holds a Pi and a Pimoroni HyperPixel screen. Unexpectedly this is a full-size Pi, we think a Pi 4. The keyboard is a USB enhanced Blackberry module which also has the famous trackpad, and there’s a bezel on the front to protect the screen. The power meanwhile comes from three 18650 cells inside the back of the case, with a power bank PCB. The surprise here is how simple he’s made it by careful choice of modules, the usual rats-nest of wires is missing.
The files are available so you can make your own, and he’s actively encouraging people to remix and improve it. We like this project, a lot, and after you’ve seen the video below the break, we think you will too. Oddly,
this isn’t the first time we’ve seen someone try this combination
. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102890",
"author": "Joshua Bemenderfer",
"timestamp": "2025-02-25T14:02:07",
"content": "Incidentally, this appears to use a BB Q10 keyboard from ZitaoTech, who also has a similar Pi 4 handheld.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,371,624.904642 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/25/pcb-dielectric-constant-measurements-three-ways/ | PCB Dielectric Constant Measurements, Three Ways | Dan Maloney | [
"PCB Hacks"
] | [
"dielectric",
"microwave",
"permittivity",
"resonance",
"stripline",
"time domain",
"vna"
] | FR4 is FR4, right? For a lot of PCB designs, the answer is yes — the particular characteristics of the substrate material don’t impact your design in any major way. But things get a little weird up in the microwave range, and having one of these
easy methods to measure the dielectric properties of your PCB substrate
can be pretty handy.
The RF reverse-engineering methods [Gregory F. Gusberti] are deceptively simple, even if they require some fancy test equipment. But if you’re designing circuits with features like microstrip filters where the permittivity of the substrate would matter, chances are pretty good you already have access to such gear. The first method uses a ring resonator, which is just a PCB with a circular microstrip of known circumference. Microstrip feedlines approach but don’t quite attach to the ring, leaving a tiny coupling gap. SMA connectors on the feedline connect the resonator to a microwave vector network analyzer in S21 mode. The resonant frequencies show up as peaks on the VNA, and can be used to calculate the effective permittivity of the substrate.
Method two is similar in that it measures in the frequency domain, but uses a pair of microstrip stubs of different lengths. The delta between the lengths is used to cancel out the effect of the SMA connectors, and the phase delay difference is used to calculate the effective permittivity. The last method is a time domain measurement using a single microstrip with a couple of wider areas. A fast pulse sent into this circuit will partially reflect off these impedance discontinuities; the time delay between the reflections is directly related to the propagation speed of the wave in the substrate, which allows you to calculate its effective permittivity.
One key takeaway for us is the concept of effective permittivity, which considers the whole environment of the stripline, including the air above the traces. We’d imagine that if there had been any resist or silkscreen near the traces it would change the permittivity, too, making measurements like these all the more important. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102834",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-02-25T09:18:03",
"content": "The website and youtube channel is pure goldmine!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8102901",
"author": "John benham",
"timestamp": "2025-02-... | 1,760,371,624.995801 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/24/to-test-a-smart-led/ | To Test A (Smart) LED | Al Williams | [
"LED Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [] | Adding LEDs to a project used to be enough to make it cool. But these days, you need arrays of addressable multi-color LEDs, and that typically means WS2812B or something similar. The problem is that while it was pretty easy to test garden-variety LEDs, these devices can be a bit harder to troubleshoot.
[Gokux] has the answer
, as you can see in the video below.
Testing these was especially important to [Gokux] because they usually swipe the modules from other modules or LED strips. The little fixture sends the correct pulses to push the LED through several colors when you hold it down to the pads.
However, what if the LED is blinking but not totally right? How can you tell? Easy, there’s a reference LED that changes colors in sync with the device under test. So, if the LEDs match, you have a winner. If not… well, it’s time to desolder another donor LED.
This is one of those projects that you probably should have thought of, but also probably didn’t. While the tester here uses a Xiao microcontroller, any processor that can drive the LEDs would be easy to use. We’d be tempted to breadboard the tester, but you’d need a way to make contact with the LED. Maybe some
foil tape
would do the trick. Or
pogo pins
. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102797",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2025-02-25T06:44:58",
"content": "This is super cool – funnily enough I did something very similar for testing mechanical keyboard switches, even down to using the Xiao micro controller!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,371,625.043697 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/26/hackaday-europe-2025-workshops-and-more-speakers/ | Hackaday Europe 2025: Workshops And More Speakers | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"2025 Hackaday Europe",
"fun",
"speakers",
"workshops"
] | We’re proud to announce the last round of speakers, as well as the two workshops that we’ll be running at 2025 Hackaday Europe in Berlin on March 15th and 16th — and Friday night the 14th, if you’re already in town.
The last two years that we’ve done Hackaday Europe in Berlin have been awesome, and this year promises to keep up the tradition. We can’t wait to get our hands on
the crazy selection of SAO badge addons
that are going to be in each and every schwag bag.
Tickets for the event itself are going fast, but the workshop tickets that go on sale at 8:00 AM PST sell out even faster. And you need the one to enjoy the other, so
get your tickets now
!
Giovanni Salinas
Manufacturing the Hackaday Supercon Badge
When the Hackaday community gathers for Supercon, curious makers dig into their swag bag looking for the undisputed most sought-after piece of swag: the Supercon Badge. In this talk we will explore how idealistic manufacturing principles crash face-first with capricious electronic designs and unreasonable deadlines, and how through love, collaboration and ingenuity, the Hackaday community rises to the challenge and saves the day.
Rehana Al-Soltane
Make PCBs Bend Over Backwards for You
PCBs-as-we-know-them are usually flat and rigid, but what if you could create flexible boards in the shape of anything your heart desires? In this talk, I’ll explain how I created a flexible PCB in the shape of a crown while at MIT, using a Javascript- and web-based open-source tool. Discussing code-based techniques and pitfalls, there will be helpful points for you to consider when embarking on your own journey when creating flexible PCBs.
Christel Sanders
HEU1993 to WHY2025: Dutch hacker camps from the past and the future
This history lesson will go in depth in the history of the Dutch Hacker Camps, their culture, influence and the projects through the years.
Francis Stokes
More Than Motors: Decoding the Software Behind Pen Plotters and CNC Devices
When it comes to building CNC-type devices, much of the information out there emphasises the mechanical and electrical assembly; The gears, belts, motors, and wires. But what about the firmware that brings these machines to life? This talk covers the often-overlooked software magic that drives pen plotters, 3D printers, and CNC mills!
Workshops
Matthew Venn
Tiny Tapeout
In this workshop, you will get the opportunity to design and manufacture your own design on an ASIC! You will learn the basics of digital logic, how semiconductors are designed and made, how to use an online digital design tool to build and simulate a simple design, and how to create the GDS files for manufacture on the open-source Sky130 PDK. Participants will have the option to submit their designs to be manufactured on the next shuttle as part of the Tiny Tapeout project.
Satisfying-Senseless-Sonic Add-On (SSSAO)
Want to build a cool noise-making device, leverage the I2C proto-petal badge add-on from your hackaday swag bag AND get to grips with low-cost open-hardware RISC-V microcontrollers? In this workshop we’ll do all three. It goes like this: solder a motor circuit to your proto petal, add your choice of a few sonically-resonating-items to be actuated by the motor, program the onboard microcontroller from one of our pre-configured laptops, then go join the badge-orchestra!
If you
still
don’t haven’t yet,
go get your tickets to Hackaday Europe
. We’ll be announcing a keynote speaker next week, and then we’ll see you all in Berlin! | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,371,624.952088 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/26/new-camera-does-realtime-holographic-capture-no-coherent-light-required/ | New Camera Does Realtime Holographic Capture, No Coherent Light Required | Donald Papp | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Machine Learning",
"Science"
] | [
"camera",
"hologram",
"holographic",
"liquid lens",
"wavefront"
] | Holography is about capturing 3D data from a scene, and being able to reconstruct that scene — preferably in high fidelity. Holography is not a new idea, but engaging in it is not exactly a point-and-shoot affair. One needs coherent light for a start, and it generally only gets touchier from there. But now researchers describe
a new kind of holographic camera
that can capture a scene better and faster than ever. How much better? The camera goes from scene capture to reconstructed output in under 30 milliseconds, and does it using plain old incoherent light.
The camera and liquid lens is tiny. Together with the computation back end, they can make a holographic capture of a scene in under 30 milliseconds.
The new camera is a two-part affair: acquisition, and calculation. Acquisition consists of a camera with a custom electrically-driven liquid lens design that captures a focal stack of a scene within 15 ms. The back end is a deep learning neural network system (FS-Net) which accepts the camera data and computes a high-fidelity RGB hologram of the scene in about 13 ms. How good are the results? They beat other methods, and reconstruction of the scene using the data looks really, really good.
One might wonder what makes this different from, say, a 3D scene captured by a stereoscopic camera, or with an RGB depth camera (like the
now-discontinued Intel RealSense
). Those methods capture 2D imagery from a single perspective, combined with depth data to give an understanding of a scene’s physical layout.
Holography by contrast
captures a scene’s wavefront information
, which is to say it captures not just where light is coming from, but how it bends and interferes. This information can be used to optically reconstruct a scene in a way data from other sources cannot; for example allowing one to shift perspective and focus.
Being able to capture holographic data in such a way significantly lowers the bar for development and experimentation in holography — something that’s traditionally been
tricky to pull off for the home gamer
. | 31 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103199",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-02-26T12:07:52",
"content": "All these camera posts are giving HaD a real Gernsbackian feel and I like it. I remember being amazed by holograms as a child. It’s cool seeing progress like this being made on the technology.",
"pa... | 1,760,371,625.19685 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/26/a-ten-band-sdr-transceiver-for-homebrewers/ | A Ten Band SDR Transceiver For Homebrewers | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"ham radio",
"HF",
"sdr",
"transceiver"
] | Making a multi-band amateur radio transceiver has always been a somewhat challenging project, and making one that also supported different modes would for many years have been of almost impossible complexity best reserved for expensive commercial projects. [Bob W7PUA] has tackled both in the form of
a portable 10-band multi-mode unit
, and we can honestly say he’s done a very good job indeed.
As you might expect in 2025 it’s a software defined radio (SDR), but to show how powerful the silicon available today is, it’s all implemented on a microcontroller. There’s a Teensy 4 with an audio codec board that does all the signal processing heavy lifting, and an RF board that takes care of the I/Q mixing and the analogue stuff.
Band switching is handled using a technique from the past; interchangeable plug-in coil and filter units, that do an effective job. The result is a modestly-powered but extremely portable rig that doesn’t look to have broken the bank, and since the write-up goes into detail on the software side we hope it might inform other SDR projects too. We might have gone for old-school embossed Dymo labels on that brushed aluminium case just for retro appeal, but we can’t fault it.
It’s not the first time we’ve looked at
a small multi-band SDR
here, but we think this one ups the game somewhat.
Thanks [Pete] for the tip! | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103169",
"author": "FLDan",
"timestamp": "2025-02-26T09:56:04",
"content": "The missing link:https://www.janbob.com/electron/TinyTen/TinyTen.htm",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8103184",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
... | 1,760,371,625.243098 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/25/diy-open-source-star-tracker-gets-you-those-great-night-shots/ | DIY Open-Source Star Tracker Gets You Those Great Night Shots | Donald Papp | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Space"
] | [
"3d printed",
"astrophotography",
"diy",
"photography",
"star tracker"
] | What does one do when frustrated at the lack of affordable, open source portable trackers? If you’re [OG-star-tech],
you design your own
and give it modular features that rival commercial offerings while you’re at it.
What’s a star tracker
? It’s a method of determining position based on visible stars, but when it comes to astrophotography the term refers to a sort of hardware-assisted camera holder that helps one capture stable long-exposure images. This is done by moving the camera in such a way as to cancel out the effects of the Earth’s rotation. The result is long-exposure photographs without the stars smearing themselves across the image.
Interested? Learn more about the design by casting an eye over the bill of materials at the
GitHub repository
, browsing the
3D-printable parts
, and maybe check out
the assembly guide
. If you like what you see, [OG-star-tech] says you should be able to build your own very affordably if you don’t mind 3D printing parts in ASA or ABS. Prefer to buy a kit or an assembled unit? [OG-star-tech]
offers them for sale
.
Frustration with commercial offerings (or lack thereof) is a powerful motive to design something or contribute to an existing project, and if it leads to more people enjoying taking photos of the night sky and all the wonderful things in it, so much the better. | 15 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103214",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2025-02-26T13:30:42",
"content": "Very cool project! I will have to build one of these.I appreciate the work that went into the design and construction (and that awesome assembly video!), and I’m sure it works fine, but I think a few cha... | 1,760,371,625.390269 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/25/import-gpu-python-programming-with-cuda/ | Import GPU: Python Programming With CUDA | Bryan Cockfield | [
"News"
] | [
"CUDA",
"developer",
"gpu",
"graphics processing",
"NVIDIA",
"parallel processing",
"python",
"pytorch",
"torch"
] | Every few years or so, a development in computing results in a sea change and a need for specialized workers to take advantage of the new technology. Whether that’s COBOL in the 60s and 70s, HTML in the 90s, or SQL in the past decade or so, there’s always something new to learn in the computing world. The introduction of graphics processing units (GPUs) for general-purpose computing is perhaps the most important recent development for computing, and if you want to develop some new Python skills to take advantage of the modern technology
take a look at this introduction to CUDA
which allows developers to use Nvidia GPUs for general-purpose computing.
Of course CUDA is a proprietary platform and
requires one of Nvidia’s supported graphics cards
to run, but assuming that barrier to entry is met it’s not too much more effort to use it for non-graphics tasks. The guide takes a closer look at the open-source library PyTorch which allows a Python developer to quickly get up-to-speed with the features of CUDA that make it so appealing to researchers and developers in artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, and other frontiers in computer science. The guide describes how threads are created, how they travel along within the GPU and work together with other threads, how memory can be managed both on the CPU and GPU, creating CUDA kernels, and managing everything else involved largely through the lens of Python.
Getting started with something like this is almost a requirement to stay relevant in the fast-paced realm of computer science, as machine learning has taken center stage with almost everything related to computers these days. It’s worth noting that strictly speaking, an Nvidia GPU is not required for GPU programming like this; AMD has a GPU computing platform called ROCm but despite it being open-source is still behind Nvidia in adoption rates and arguably in performance as well. Some other learning tools for GPU programming we’ve seen in the past include
this puzzle-based tool
which illustrates some of the specific problems GPUs excel at. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103138",
"author": "azeem",
"timestamp": "2025-02-26T06:23:04",
"content": "this is cool but just learn openCL. works on alot more compute devices and is much more performant. i like python because it’s simple but openCL is faster.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repl... | 1,760,371,625.332829 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/25/taking-cues-from-a-gramophone-to-make-a-better-marble-music-machine/ | Taking Cues From A Gramophone To Make A Better Marble Music Machine | Donald Papp | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"centrifugal governer",
"flyball governor",
"marble machine",
"music",
"speed control",
"speed governor",
"wintergatan"
] | [Martin] of [Wintergatan] is on a quest to create the ultimate human-powered, modern marble music machine. His fearless mechanical exploration and engineering work, combined with considerable musical talent, has been an ongoing delight as he continually refines his designs. We’d like to highlight this older video in which he demonstrates how to dynamically regulate the speed of a human-cranked music machine by taking inspiration from gramophones:
he uses a flyball governor
(or centrifugal governor).
The faster the shaft turns, the harder the disk brake is applied.
These devices are a type of mechanical feedback system that was invented back in the 17th century but really took off once applied to steam engines. Here’s how they work: weights are connected to a shaft with a hinged assembly. The faster the shaft spins, the more the weights move outward due to centrifugal force. This movement is used to trigger some regulatory action, creating a feedback loop. In a steam engine, the regulator adjusts a valve which keeps the engine within a certain speed range. In a gramophone it works a wee bit differently, and this is the system [Wintergatan] uses.
To help keep the speed of his music machine within a certain narrow range, instead of turning a valve the flyball governor moves a large disk brake. The faster the shaft spins, the harder the brake is applied. Watch it in action in the video (embedded below) which shows [Wintergatan]’s prototype, demonstrating how effective it is.
[Wintergatan]’s marble machine
started out great
and has only gotten better over the years, with [Martin] tirelessly documenting his improvements on everything. After all, when every note is the product of multiple physical processes that must synchronize flawlessly, it makes sense to spend time doing things like
designing the best method of dropping balls
.
One final note: if you are the type of person to find yourself interested and engaged by these sorts of systems and their relation to obtaining better results and tighter tolerances,
we have a
great
book recommendation for you
. | 13 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103065",
"author": "Brad Granath",
"timestamp": "2025-02-26T00:47:07",
"content": "Someday he’ll realize he’s building a clock…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8105223",
"author": "Bert",
"timestamp": "2025-03... | 1,760,371,625.543623 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/25/reverse-engineering-sks-airspy-tire-pressure-sensors-for-custom-firmware/ | Reverse-Engineering SKS Airspy Tire Pressure Sensors For Custom Firmware | Maya Posch | [
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"air pressure",
"nRF52832"
] | Although a somewhat common feature on cars these days, tire pressure sensors (TPS) are also useful on bicycles. The SKS Airspy range of TPS products is one such example, which enables remote monitoring of the air pressure either to a special smartphone app (SKS MYBIKE) or to a Garmin device. Of course, proprietary solutions like this require reverse-engineering to liberate the hardware from nasty proprietary firmware limitations, which is exactly what
[bitmeal] did with a custom firmware project
.
Rather than the proprietary and closed communication protocol, the goal was to use the open
ANT+
sensor instead, specifically the
(non-certified) TPS profile
which is supported by a range of cycling computers. Before this could happen the Airspy TPS hardware had to be first reverse-engineered so that new firmware could be developed and flashed. These devices use the nRF52832 IC, meaning that development tools are freely available. Flashing the custom firmware requires gaining access to the SWD interface, which will very likely void the warranty on a $160 – 240 device.
The SWD programmer is then attached to the 1.27 mm spaced SWD holes per the instructions on the GitHub page. After flashing the provided
.hex
file you can then connect to the TPS as an ANT+ device, but instructions are also provided for developing your own firmware. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8103026",
"author": "Jan Prägert",
"timestamp": "2025-02-25T21:59:14",
"content": "I like that very much.Full drama athttps://github.com/bitmeal/sks_airspy_ant_community_fw/blob/master/doc/HARDWARE_PROTO.md",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"com... | 1,760,371,625.44181 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/24/hackable-cities/ | Hackable Cities | Navarre Bartz | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cities",
"city planning",
"tactical urbanism",
"urban planning"
] | There are many ways to hack the world. Graduate students at Parsons The New School for Design developed a guide for hacking the biggest piece of technology humans have developed –
the city
.
One of the things we love here at Hackaday is how hacking gives us a tool to make the world a better place for ourselves and those around us. Even if it’s a simple Arduino-based project, we’re (usually) trying to make something better or less painful.
Taking that same approach of identifying a problem, talking to the end user, and then going through design and execution can also apply to projects at a larger scale. Even if you live in an already great neighborhood, there’s likely some abandoned nook or epic vista that could use some love to bring people out from behind their screens to enjoy each other’s company. This guide walks us through the steps of improving public space, and some of the various ways to interact with and collate data from the people and organizations that makeup a community. This could work as a framework for growing any nascent hacker or makerspaces as well.
Hacking your neighborhood can include anything:
a roving playground
,
a light up seesaw
, or a
recycling game
. If you’ve seen any cool projects in this regard, send them
to the tipsline
! | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102730",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-02-25T03:09:05",
"content": "Actually meeting my neighbors has directly lead to all of us hanging out watching the kids play out front, outdoors. Best hack. Rediscovered to be sure.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replie... | 1,760,371,625.492873 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/24/3d-print-an-instant-camera/ | 3D Print An Instant Camera | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"instant film",
"Instax",
"pinhole camera"
] | Instant photography occupies a niche in film photography that has endured despite its relatively high cost and the ease of newer digital technologies. There are two main manufacturers, Polaroid and Fujifilm, as well as a few smaller boutique camera makers. Into this comes [Toast], with
an entirely 3D printed instant camera
, not a Polaroid as he calls it, but one for Fuji Instax Mini film.
Currently available instant film comes in cartridges in which each picture is a layered design with a sachet of developing chemicals at the end. Once the film part has been exposed it is developed by passing through a set of rollers which squeeze the chemicals evenly over the film, allowing it to develop. The camera in the video below the break is simple enough, a pinhole box camera design, but the huge challenge and the interesting part of the video comes in the developer attachment which has those rollers. It’s considerably more challenging than it might at first appear, and he goes through many iterations before getting it right with some steel rollers.
The 3D print files are available but only at a price, and despite that we think there’s enough in the video below for anyone who wants to experiment for themselves. For the rest of us it’s an insight into a technology we all know about, but maybe have never looked closely at.
Instax has appeared here before,
usually as an instant back for older cameras
, but sometimes for
far tastier projects
. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102720",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-02-25T01:58:53",
"content": "Howdy doodly do! How’s it going?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8102967",
"author": "Tom",
"timestamp": "2025-02-25T19:00:14",
... | 1,760,371,625.582222 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/24/harvesting-water-with-high-voltage/ | Harvesting Water With High Voltage | Maya Posch | [
"High Voltage",
"Science"
] | [
"electrostatic precipitator",
"Plasma Channel"
] | Atmospheric water harvesting is a way to obtain fresh water in arid regions, as there is always some moisture in the air, especially in the form of morning fog. The trick lies in capturing this moisture as efficiently as possible, with a range of methods available that start at ancient low-tech methods involving passive fog droplet capture all the way to variants of what are effectively large dehumidifiers.
A less common way involves high-voltage and found itself the subject of a
recent
Plasma Channel
video
on YouTube. The inspiration for the build was a
2018 paper by [Maher Damak] et al.
(
PDF
) titled
Electrostatically driven fog collection using space charge injection
.
One of the two stakes that make up the electrostatic precipitator system for atmospheric water harvesting. (Credit: Plasma Channel, YouTube)
Rather than passively waiting for dew to collect on the collector, as with many of the methods detailed in
this review article
by [Xiaoyi Liu] et al., this electrostatic approach pretty much does what it says on the tin. It follows the principle of electrostatic precipitators with a high-voltage emitter electrode to ionize the air and grounded collector wires. In the video a small-scale version (see top image) was first constructed, demonstrating the effectiveness. Whereas the passive grid collected virtually none of the fog from an ultrasonic fog maker, with 35 kV applied the difference was night and day. No water was collected with the first test, but with power applied a significant 40 mL was collected in 5 minutes on the small mesh.
With this scale test complete, a larger version could be designed and tested. This simplifies the emitter to a single wire connected between two stakes, one of which contains the 20 kV HV generator and battery. The mesh is placed right below it and grounded (see image). With an extreme fog test inside a terrarium, it showed a very strong effect, resulting in a harvest of 14 mL/Wh for this prototype. With a larger scale version in a real-life environment (i.e. desert) planned, it’ll be interesting to see whether this method holds up in a more realistic scenario. | 51 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102648",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-02-24T22:29:20",
"content": "Appropriate matching with hydroponics perhaps?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8102755",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-02-2... | 1,760,371,625.668589 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/24/old-ipad-to-new-screen/ | Old IPad To New Screen | Jenny List | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"ipad",
"ipad display",
"lcd driver"
] | Turning surplus LCD panels into stand-alone monitors with the help of a driver board is an established hack, and a search of eBay or AliExpress will turn up boards for almost any widely available panel.
[Drygol] has a couple of old iPad screens, and has done exactly this with them
. What makes these two projects stand aside from the crowd is their attention to detail, instead of creating a hacky monitor this is almost something you might buy as a product.
For a start, both screens sit in very smart 3D printed cases. Behind them is the LCD driver, and perhaps this is where many people might leave it. But the point of an iPad is portability, so the first one receives a suitably large lithium polymer battery and its associated electronics. As such a thing is of limited use without a battery level monitor, so one is mounted flush with the case on the outside. The final touch is a Bluetooth audio board and speaker, making an all-in-one peripheral we’d be happy to carry with us.
The second screen is a slimmer version of the first case, with a different board that has an onboard audio channel. It’s mounted in a stand with a MiSter FPGA emulator, for a very neat and compact desktop set-up.
This project shows what can be done with these screens, and raises the bar. All the files are included, so it should be possible to make your own. We expect someone might stick a Raspberry Pi in there, to make… something like an iPad.
This
isn’t the first time we’ve seen an iPad screen mod
. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102615",
"author": "HappyDad",
"timestamp": "2025-02-24T21:05:54",
"content": "blog post FTW!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8102762",
"author": "itsemast",
"timestamp": "2025-02-25T05:24:14",
"content": "Battery m... | 1,760,371,625.707507 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/24/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-all-the-green-keyboards/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With All The Green Keyboards | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"because cats",
"Ford typewriter",
"micro journal",
"purple",
"red cedar",
"writerdeck"
] | Okay, you have to see the gallery to appreciate it, but
this keyboard was designed to resemble a red cedar tree
with the green shell and wood bottom and the copper PCB showing through the tree cutouts on the sides.
Image by [WesternRedCdar] via
reddit
But you know why I chose this picture — those PS2 buttons. According to [WesternRedCdar] they are just for fun, although they do allow for pressing Ctrl and Alt at the same time with a single thumb.
Oh, and are those Nintendo Switch joysticks above the PS2 buttons? Those are for the mouse and vertical/horizontal scrolling. Honestly, this seems like a great amount of thumb controls. The basics are there (presumably), and there isn’t any thumb-extending excess, like keys on the insides by the mouse.
This bad mama jama runs on an RP2040 and has 50 hand-wired Cherry Brown switches plus the PS2 buttons. In
the build guide
, you can read all about [WesternRedCdar]’s troubles with integrating those. The Nintendo Switch joysticks weren’t terribly easy, either, since the ribbon connector can’t be soldered directly.
The final issue was one of weight. Since many of the switches stand quite tall, it sort of jostles the keyboard to actuate them. [WesternRedCdar] opined that that the ideal solution would have been to use metal base plates instead of wood, but took care of the issue by adding layers of 1/8″ steel flat bar inside the case.
Gone in 60 Seconds: the Micro Journal Rev. 7 From Tindie
Don’t know what took me so long to find r/writerDeck, but here we go!
[WorkingAmbition7014] was quite excited to announce there that [Background_Ad_1810] aka [Un Kyu Lee]’s Micro Journal rev. 7 was up on Tindie
. It’s already
sold out
,
but that’s okay
because
previous versions are already open-source
, and it’s just a matter of time before this new revision makes its way to the ole GitHub.
Nearly NSFW image by [Un Kyu Lee] via
Tindie
You may remember
our coverage of the third iteration from about a year ago
. Look how far it has come since then! Although the overall portability has kind of taken a dive, it sure does look great from where I’m sitting. Maybe it’s just that lovely color scheme, but to me it has sort of a softened-up mil-spec look.
This distraction-free machine is based on the ESP32-S3 microcontroller. It starts up right away, and you can start typing pretty much immediately on the ePaper screen. There are a pair of knobs that go a long way toward its typewriter looks; the left one wipes the screen and puts the machine to sleep, and the right knob clears the screen in the case of too much ghosting.
Files are saved on the SD card that sits behind the screen, or you can send them to Google Drive. Now, it doesn’t come with that cool clip light, but it doesn’t have a backlight, either, so you’ll probably want to bring your own. You will also have to source your own 18650. Be sure to check out the overview after the break.
The Centerfold: Purple Paradise
Image by [Majestic-Fox-550] via
reddit
Isn’t this cozy and fresh? Some might say it’s too cool-toned overall, but I think the peach parts help it strike a balance. Again, I don’t know much, but that keyboard is a Feker Galaxy 80, and the desk mat is from The Mousepad Company. I don’t think those cloud wrist rests are too hard to find; I’ve even seen them at Five Below before.
I love these setup pictures, but I have to wonder, does anyone really keep their desk this clean and tidy?
Of course not, it’s for the shot
, you’re saying. But that’s my point. Why does everyone always tidy up so hard first? I want to see battle stations in their true forms sometimes. I feel like we got sorta close last week in the one with all the screens. So do I need to inspire centerfold submissions by showing my own battle station one of these times? I don’t know if y’all really want that.
Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad?
Send me a picture
along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!
Historical Clackers: the Ford Typewriter
Isn’t this machine a beauty? And no, inventor Eugene A. Ford bore no relation to Henry Ford the automobile maker. But wouldn’t this look grand while perched briefly on the running board of your Model T for a quick daguerreotype?
Image via
The Martin Howard Collection
Lovely as she was,
the 1895 Ford
was no fun for the typist. The Space bar-placed Shifts required real pressure to properly operate, and the keys are evidently springy and wobbly. “Springy” sounds intriguing; “wobbly” does not.
Additionally, the advancing lever doesn’t allow going backwards or forwards a line at a time. But the one great thing about the Ford was that it’s a visible writer, whereas most machines of the time were blind writers, meaning you were unable to see what you were typing without stopping and doing something first. It wasn’t the first visible writer, but it might be the easiest to look at.
What it did do first is use aluminium in its construction, although there were two versions, one with an all-aluminium frame and carriage, and the other with a black, enameled cast iron frame and and an aluminium carriage.
The cast iron went for $75, and the lighter-weight aluminium machine for $85
. Both were lateral thrust machines, which means that the type bars are spread out like a fan and move horizontally to strike the platen.
Eugene Ford had quite the career. After putting his typewriter on the market in 1895, he worked with IBM for the rest of his life, and became chief development engineer of the New York laboratories in 1911. During his tenure, he developed improvements to various punched card accounting machines, sorters, and counters.
Finally, a Keyboard for Cat Lovers
Cats and keyboards go together like peanut butter and jelly. When they’re not straight up walking across it, they’re fluffing it up.
Well, why not admit defeat and get this cozy cat-themed keyboard?
This is
the Dry Studio Petbrick 65
, which comes in calico and black, which is called the odd-eyed design, presumably because the kitty on the Escape key has heterochromia.
Image via
Dry Studio
Now that’s just the keyboard itself that comes in calico and black; soon you’ll be able to get all kinds of fuzzy bezels, which attach with magnets and are hand-washable, thankfully.
The Petbrick 65 isn’t just some cutesy little thing. This is a serious mechanical keyboard with a sandblasted POM plate, a specially-tuned (what? how?) cotton poron switch pad, PET film for the sake of acoustics,
and
two layers of sound-dampening foam.
The switches are custom-made ‘crystal pinks’ that were developed in-house and look pretty slick. If you don’t like them, the PCB is hot-swappable. And they didn’t stop there — the keycaps have dye-sublimated legends for longevity.
Would I type on this? I would, at least until it became uncomfortable for my RSI situation. I’m interested to try these crystal pink switches and feel the fluffiness of the frame on the heels of my hands.
Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards?
Help me out by sending in a link or two
. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to
email me directly
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102605",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-02-24T20:50:47",
"content": "Do you have an up-to-date count of how many keyboards you own? I’m curious, it’s gotta be a lot",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8102833",
"author": "D... | 1,760,371,625.811929 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/24/line-power-with-no-transformer/ | Line Power With No Transformer | Al Williams | [
"Parts"
] | [
"AC power",
"diode",
"transformer",
"zener diode"
] | Normally, when you want a low DC voltage from the AC line, you think about using a transformer of some kind. [RCD66] noticed that an AC monitor meter must have some sort of power supply but had no transformers in sight. That led to an
exploration of how those work
and how you can use them, too. You can watch the work in the video below.
Sensibly, there is a transformer in the test setup — an isolation transformer to make it safe to probe the circuit. But there’s no transformer providing voltage changes. Isolation is important even if you are taking apart something commercial that might be trasformerless.
The circuit is simple enough: it uses a capacitor, a resistor, and a pair of diodes (one of them a zener diode). He uses this basic circuit to drive simple regulators with input and output filter capacitors. We’ve seen many variations on this design over the years.
You can’t draw a lot of power through this arrangement. But sometimes it is all you need. However, this is pretty dangerous, as we’ve
discussed before
. Be sure you
understand exactly what the risks are
before you decide to build something like this. | 44 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102502",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-02-24T16:47:29",
"content": "Why does a transformer count as isolation, but not a capacitor? Both are open circuits to DC, and both have the “dangerous” side and the “safe” side directly adjacent to each other in the same package, ... | 1,760,371,625.894276 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/24/the-importance-of-current-balancing-with-multi-wire-power-inputs/ | The Importance Of Current Balancing With Multi-Wire Power Inputs | Maya Posch | [
"Current Events",
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Slider"
] | [
"current draw",
"post-mortem"
] | In an ideal world, devoid of pesky details like contact resistance and manufacturing imperfections, you would be able to double the current that can be provided to a device by doubling the number of conductors without altering the device’s circuitry, as each conductor would carry the exact same amount of current as its neighbors. Since we do not actually live inside a simplified physics question’s scenario, multi-wire powering of devices comes with a range of headaches, succinctly summarized in the well-known rule that electricity always seeks the path of least resistance.
As recently shown by NVidia with their newly released RTX 50-series graphics cards, failure to provide current balancing between said different conductors will quickly turn it into a practical physics demonstration of this rule. Initially pinned down as an issue with the new-ish 12VHPWR connector that was supposed to replace the 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connectors, it turns out that a lack of current balancing is plaguing NVidia GPUs, with predictably melty results when combined with low safety margins.
So what exactly changed that caused what seems to be a new problem, and why do you want multi-wire, multi-phase current balancing in your life when pumping hundreds of watts through copper wiring inside your PC?
Resistance Is Not Futile
Smoke coming off a 12VHPWR connector on NVidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition GPU. (Credit:
Gamers Nexus,
YouTube)
In the absence of cheap room-temperature superconducting wires, we have to treat each conductor as a combination of a resistor, inductor and capacitor. These parameters set limitations on properties such as how much current a conductor can carry without changing phase from solid to gaseous. The contact resistance between the conductors of both sides in a connector adds another variable here, especially when a connector wears out or the contacts become corroded.
In the case of the 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connector, these are based on the
Molex Mini-Fit
series, with the commonly used
Mini-Fit Plus HCS
(high current system) rated for 100 mating cycles in tin plating or 250 cycles in gold, and a current rating of 8.5 A to 10 A per pin depending on whether 18 AWG or 16 AWG wire is used. The much smaller connector of the 12-pin
12VHPWR
, and equivalent 12V-2×6, standard is rated for only 30 mating cycles, and 9.5 A per pin. It is based on the Molex Micro-Fit+ connector.
Hot spot of a 12VHPWR connector on NVidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition GPU. (Credit:
Gamers Nexus
, YouTube)
The smaller pin size and lower endurance increases the possibility of poor contact, as first demonstrated with the 12VHPWR connector back in 2022 when NVidia RTX 40-series cards experienced run-away thermal events where this power connector on the GPU side melted. Subsequent research
by the team at
Gamers Nexus
showed this to be
due to poor contact
within the connector with resulting high resistance and thus a massive thermal hot spot. Following this event, the 12V-2×6 update to 12VHPWR increased the length of the power pins and decreased that of the four sense pins.
The idea behind this change is that by extending the length of the power and ground pins by 0.25 mm and shortening the sense pins by 1.5 mm there’s a higher chance of there being an actual good contact on the ground and power pins when the sense lines signal the GPU that it can start drawing hundreds of watts.
This change did only affect the male side of the connector, and not the cable itself. This made it very surprising to some when after the much higher wattage RTX 5090 GPUs were released and suddenly cables began burning up,with clear melting visible on the GPU and power supply side. What was going on here?
Multi-Phase Balance
Melted RTX 5090, PSU and cable power connectors. (Credit: der8auer, YouTube)
Shortly after the first
melting cable event
involving an RTX 5090 Founders Edition (FE) GPU popped up on the internet, Roman [Der8auer] Hartung reached out to this lucky person and – since both live quite close – borrowed the damaged GPU, PSU and cable for
an investigative video
. Involved were not only an RTX 5090 FE GPU, but also the PSU with its 12VHPWR connector. On each side the plastic around one pin was completely melted, with the cable having to be forcibly removed.
Shunt resistor comparison of NVidia GPUs. (Credit: Buildzoid, YouTube)
During Roman’s testing with another RTX 5090 FE and 12VHPWR cable he found that two of the six 12V wires were significantly warmer than the rest, courtesy of these carrying over 22 A versus around 2 A for the others while the PSU-side connector side hit a blistering 150 °C. This result was replicated by some and seems to be fully due to how the NVidia RTX 5090 FE card handles the incoming power, by tying all incoming power lines together. This is a practice that began with the RTX 4090, but the RTX 5090 is the first to pull close to the rated 600 watts of the 12VHPWR/12V-2×6 connector. This was explained quite comprehensively in a
comparison video by Buildzoid
.
Because with the RTX 4090 and 5090 FE GPUs – as well as some GPUs by third-party manufacturers – these 12V lines are treated as a singular line, it is essential that the resistance on these lines is matched quite closely. If this is not the case, then physics does what it’s supposed to and the wires with the lowest resistance carry the most current. Because the 12V-2×6 connector on the GPU side sees only happy sense pins, it assumes that everything is fine and will pull 575 watts, or more, through a single 16 AWG wire if need be.
Meanwhile the Asus RTX 5090 Astral GPU does have individual shunt resistors to measure the current on the individual 12V lines, but no features to balance current or throttle/shutdown the GPU to prevent damage. This is actually a feature that used to be quite common, as demonstrated by this EVGA RTX 3090 Ti GPU:
EVGA RTX 3090 Ti GPU with triple phase distribution marked. Yellow is PCIe slot power. (Credit:
taka
, TechPowerUp forums)
On the top right the triple sense resistors (shunts) are visible, each of which is followed by its own filter coil and feeding its own set of power phases, marked in either red, green or blue. The yellow phases are for the RAM, and are fed from the PCIe slot’s 75 Watt. The bottom right controller controls the phases and based on the measured currents can balance the current per channel by shifting the load between parts of the phases.
This is a design that is completely omitted in the RTX 5090 FE design, which – as Igor Wallossek at
Igor’s Lab
describes it
– has been minimized to the point where crucial parts have begun to be omitted. He also covers an MSI RTX 3090 Ti Suprim card which does a similar kind of phase balancing before the RTX 4090 and RTX 5090 versions of MSI’s GPUs begin to shed such features as well. It would seem that even as power demands by GPUs have increased, crucial safety features such as current balancing have been sacrificed. As it turns out, safety margins have also been sacrificed along with these features.
Safety Margins
The ugly truth about the switch from 8-pin PCIe connectors to 12-pin 12VHPWR connectors is that while the former is rated officially for 150 watts, this power level would be hit easily even by the cheapest implementation using crummy 18 AWG wiring. With the HCS connectors and 16 AWG wiring, you are looking at 10 A × 12 V × 3 = 360 watts, or a safety margin of 2.4. With cheaper connectors and a maximum of 7 A per wire it would still be a safety margin of 1.68.
Meanwhile, the 12VHPWR/12V-2×6 with the required 16 AWG wiring is rated for 9.5 A × 12 V × 6 = 684 watts, or a safety margin of 1.14. In a situation where one or more wires suddenly decide to become higher-resistance paths this means that the remaining wires have to pick up the slack, which in the case of a 575 watt RTX 5090 GPU means overloading these wires.
Meanwhile a 8-pin PCIe connector would be somewhat unhappy in this case and show elevated temperatures, but worst case even a single wire could carry 150 watts and be happier than the case demonstrated by [Der8auer] where two 12V-2×6 connector wires were forced to carry 260 watts each for the exact same wire gauge.
This is also the reason why [Der8auer]’s Corsair PSU 12V-2×6 cable is provided with two 8-pin PCIe-style connectors on the PSU side. Each of these is rated at 300 watts by Corsair, with Corsair PSU designer Jon Gerow, of JonnyGuru PSU review fame,
going over the details
on his personal site for the HCS connectors. As it turns out, two 8-pin PCIe connectors are an easy match for a ‘600 watt’ 12VHPWR connector, with over 680 watt available within margins.
There’s a good chance that this was the reason why [Der8auer]’s PSU and cable did not melt, even though it clearly really wanted to do so.
Balance Is Everything
Although it is doubtful that we have seen the last of this GPU power connector saga, it is telling that so far only GPUs with NVidia chips have gone full-in on the 12VHPWR/12V-2×6 connectors, no doubt also because the reference boards provided to board partners come with these connectors. Over in the Intel and AMD GPU camps there’s not even a tepid push for a change from PCIe power connectors, with so far just one still-to-be-released AMD GPU featuring the connector.
That said, the connector itself is not terrible by itself, with
Jon Gerow making the case here
quite clearly too. It’s simply a very fiddly and somewhat fragile connector that’s being pushed far beyond its specifications by PCI-SIG. Along the way it has also made it painfully clear that current balancing features which used to exist on GPUs have been quietly dropped for a few years now.
Obviously, adding multiple shunts and associated monitoring and phase balancing is not the easiest task, and will eat up a chunk of board real-estate while boosting BOM size. But as we can see, it can also prevent a lot of bad publicity and melting parts. Even if things should work fine without it – and they usually will – eating into safety margins and cutting components tends to be one of those things that will absolutely backfire in a spectacular fashion that should surprise absolutely nobody.
Featured image:
[ivan6953]’s burnt cables
. | 88 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102460",
"author": "Sok Puppette",
"timestamp": "2025-02-24T15:30:13",
"content": "Maybe UL-listing-style requirements need to be applied to field-exhangeable internal DC components if they’re going to draw crazy currents like that.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"rep... | 1,760,371,626.157067 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/24/where-no-e-coli-has-gone-before/ | Where No E. Coli Has Gone Before | Navarre Bartz | [
"Space"
] | [
"bacteria",
"E coli",
"exoplanets",
"SETI",
"seti@home",
"xenobiology"
] | While we’re still waiting for ET to give us a ring, many worlds might not have life that’s discovered the joys of radio yet. Scientists ran a two-pronged study to see
how bacteria might fare on other worlds
.
We currently define the Habitable Zone (HZ) of a planet by the likelihood that particular planet can host liquid water due to its peculiar blend of atmosphere and distance from its star. While this doesn’t guarantee the presence of life, its a good first place to start. Trying to expand on this, the scientists used a climate model to refine the boundaries of the HZ for atmosphere’s dominated by H
2
and CO
2
gases.
Once they determined these limits, they then mixed up some example atmospheres and subjected
E. coli
to the environments. Their findings “indicate that atmospheric composition significantly affects bacterial growth patterns, highlighting the importance of considering diverse atmospheres in evaluating exoplanet habitability and advancing the search for life beyond Earth.”
If you want to look more into what might be out there, how about analyzing the
WOW Signal
or looking at what the
Drake Equation
is all about. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102420",
"author": "Shoe",
"timestamp": "2025-02-24T13:15:54",
"content": "So they tested standard air, 90% N2 + 10% CO2, 100% CO2, 80% methane + 15% N2 + 5% CO2, and 100% H2 atmospheres. I don’t think it is terribly surprising that they got growth in all of them, as we already kn... | 1,760,371,625.998556 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/24/unhacked-mattress-phones-home/ | Unhacked Mattress Phones Home | Al Williams | [
"home hacks",
"internet hacks"
] | [
"bed",
"internet of things"
] | [Dylan] has a fancy bed that can be set to any temperature. Apparently this set him back about $2,000, it only works if it has Internet, and the bed wants $19 a month for anything beyond basic features. Unsurprisingly, [Dylan] decided to try to
hack the mattress firmware
and share what he learned with us.
Oddly enough, it was easy to just ask the update URL for the firmware and download it. Inside, it turned out there was a mechanism for “eng@eightsleep.com” to remotely SSH into any bed and — well — do just about anything. You may wonder why anyone wants to gain control of your bed. But if you are on the network, this could be a perfect place to launch an attack on the network and beyond.
Of course, they can also figure out when you sleep, if you sleep alone or not, and, of course, when no one is in the bed. But if those things bother you, maybe don’t get an Internet-connected bed.
Oddly enough, the last time we saw
a bed hack
, it was from [Dillan], not [Dylan]. Just because you don’t want Big Sleep to know when you are in bed doesn’t mean it isn’t useful
for your private purposes
. | 30 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102378",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2025-02-24T10:55:46",
"content": "as long as people buy these things, people will make them. apparently consumers don’t care",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8102390",
"aut... | 1,760,371,628.064499 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/23/does-the-12vhpwr-connector-really-wear-out-after-30-mating-cycles/ | Does The 12VHPWR Connector Really Wear Out After 30 Mating Cycles? | Maya Posch | [
"hardware"
] | [
"12VHPWR"
] | When PCI-SIG introduced the 12VHPWR power connector as a replacement for the 6- and 8-pin PCIe power connectors, it created a wave of controversy. There were enough cases of melting GPUs, PSUs, and cables to set people on edge. Amidst this controversy, [JayzTwoCents]
decided to do some scientific experimentation
, Mythbusters-style, specifically: do these 12VHPWR (or the 12V-2×6 successor) wear out upon hitting the often cited 30 mating cycles? If this is the case, it could explain why people see wildly different current loads between the wires in their GPU power cables. Perhaps reviewers and hardware enthusiasts should replace their GPU power cables more often.
Like many Mythbuster experiments, the outcome is less than clear, as can be observed in the below graph from one data set. Even after 100 mating cycles, there was no observable change to the contact resistance. One caveat: this was only performed on the GPU side of the connector. The first cable tested was a newer connector type that uses a single-split leaf spring design. Initially, most of the 12VHPWR connectors had a double- or triple-dimple design to contact the pin, so [Jayz] tested one of these, too.
The amazing thing with the 2022-era cable that got pulled new out of packaging and tested was that it looked terrible under the microscope in terms of tolerances and provided a very uneven load, but it got better over time and also lasted 100 cycles. However, it must be said that ‘lasted’ is a big word here, as the retention tab wore off by this point, and the connector was ready to fall out with a light breeze.
Perhaps the ‘mating cycles’ specification is more about the connector as a whole, as well as how the connector is (ab)used, at which point good (long-term) contact is no longer assured. Along with the different types of Molex Mini- and Micro-Fit style connectors, it’s worth keeping an eye on with more applications than just GPUs.
We have certainly seen some
burned connectors
. Particularly in
3D printers
. | 50 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102335",
"author": "ford",
"timestamp": "2025-02-24T06:34:41",
"content": "Why reinvent the wheel when there are welding cables with connectors good for at least 250 amps.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8102342",
"au... | 1,760,371,628.461036 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/23/learn-assembly-the-ffmpeg-way/ | Learn Assembly The FFmpeg Way | Al Williams | [
"Software Development"
] | [
"assembly language",
"ffmpeg"
] | You want to learn assembly language. After all, understanding assembly unlocks the ability to understand what compilers are doing and it is especially important for time-critical code. But most tutorials are — well — boring. So you can print “Hello World” super fast. Who cares?
But decoding video data is something where assembly can really pay off, so why not study a real project like FFmpeg to see how they do things? Sounds like a pain, but thanks to the
FFmpeg asm-lessons
repository, it’s actually quite accessible.
According to the repo, you should already understand C — especially C pointers. They also expect you to understand some basic mathematics. Most of the FFmpeg code that uses assembly uses the single instruction multiple data (SIMD) opcodes. This allows you to do something like “add 5 to these 200 data items” very quickly compared to looping 200 times.
There are three lessons so far. Of course, some of the material is a little introductory, but they do jump in quickly to SIMD including upcoming instruction sets like AVX10 and older instructions like MMX and AVX512. It is no surprise that FFmpeg needs to understand all these variations since it runs on behalf of (their words) “billions of users.”
We enjoyed their link to
a simplified instruction list
. Not to mention the
visual organizer
for SIMD instructions.
The course’s goal is to prepare developers to contribute to FFmpeg. If you are more interested in using FFmpeg,
you might enjoy this browser-based GUI
. Then again, not all video playback
needs high performance
. | 26 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102322",
"author": "Pedro",
"timestamp": "2025-02-24T03:44:55",
"content": "You want to learn assembly language.You grab a PIC16 and get coding. Wrestling with modern x86 assembly is like fisting, only less pleasurable.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,628.305 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/23/hackaday-links-february-23-2025/ | Hackaday Links: February 23, 2025 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"ai",
"AI Pin",
"astronomy",
"brick",
"chatbot",
"cognitive decline",
"dementia",
"failure",
"hackaday links",
"LLM",
"Montreal Cognitive Assesment",
"radio quiet",
"reflection",
"wearable"
] | Ho-hum — another week,
another high-profile bricking
. In a move anyone could see coming, Humane has announced that their pricey AI Pin widgets will cease to work in any meaningful way as of noon on February 28. The company made a splash when it launched its wearable assistant in April of 2024, and from an engineering point of view, it was pretty cool. Meant to be worn on one’s shirt, it had a little bit of a
Star Trek: The Next Generation
comm badge vibe as the primary UI was accessed through tapping the front of the thing. It also had a display that projected information onto your hand, plus the usual array of sensors and cameras which no doubt provided a rich stream of user data. Somehow, though, Humane wasn’t able to make the numbers work out, and as a result they’ll be shutting down their servers at the end of the month, with refunds offered only to users who bought their AI Pins in the last 90 days.
How exactly Humane thought that offering what amounts to a civilian badge cam was going to be a viable business model is a bit of a mystery. Were people really going to be OK walking into a meeting where Pin-wearing coworkers could be recording everything they say? Wouldn’t wearing a device like that in a gym locker room cause a stir? Sure, the AI Pin was a little less obtrusive than something like the Google Glass — not to mention a lot less goofy — but all wearables seem to suffer the same basic problem: they’re too obvious. About the only one that comes close to passing that hurdle is the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, and those still have the problem of obvious cameras built into their chunky frames. Plus, who can wear Ray-Bans all the time without looking like a tool?
Good news for everyone worried about a world being run by LLMs and chatbots. It looks like all we’re going to have to do is wait them out, if a
study finding that older LLMs are already showing signs of cognitive decline
pans out. To come to that conclusion, researchers gave the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test to a bunch of different chatbots. The test uses simple questions to screen for early signs of impairment; some of the questions seem like something from a field sobriety test, and for good reason. Alas for the tested chatbots, the general trend was that the older the model, the poorer they did on the test. The obvious objection here is that the researchers aren’t comparing each model’s current score with results from when the model was “younger,” but that’s pretty much what happens when the test is used for humans.
You’ve got to feel sorry for astronomers. Between light pollution cluttering up the sky and an explosion in radio frequency interference, astronomers face observational challenges across the spectrum. These challenges are why astronomers prize areas like dark sky reserves, where light pollution is kept to a minimum, and
radio quiet zones
, which do the same for the RF part of the spectrum. Still, it’s a busy world, and noise always seems to find a way to leak into these zones. A case in point is the recent discovery that TV signals that had been plaguing the Murchison Wide-field Array in Western Australia for five years were
actually bouncing off airplanes
. The MWA is in a designated radio quiet zone, so astronomers were perplexed until someone had the bright idea to use the array’s beam-forming capabilities to trace the signal back to its source. The astronomers plan to use the method to identify and exclude other RFI getting into their quiet zone, both from terrestrial sources and from the many satellites whizzing overhead.
And finally, most of us are more comfortable posting our successes online than our failures, and for obvious reasons. Everyone loves a winner, after all, and admitting our failures publicly can be difficult. But Daniel Dakhno finds value in his failures, to the point where
he’s devoted a special section of his project portfolio to them
. They’re right there at the bottom of the page for anyone to see, meticulously organized by project type and failure mode. Each failure assessment includes an estimate of the time it took; importantly, Daniel characterizes this as “time invested” rather than “time wasted.” When you fall down, you should pick something up, right? | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102294",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2025-02-24T00:20:54",
"content": "The LLM cognitive decline stuff just seems like pseudo-science click bait. I high doubt there is any real data that would support LLM degradation over time… Wish HaD would pick it apart rather than just pass... | 1,760,371,627.701229 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/23/over-the-counter-glucose-monitor-dissected/ | Over The Counter Glucose Monitor Dissected | Al Williams | [
"Medical Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"cgm",
"continuous glucose monitor",
"diabetes"
] | If you deal with diabetes, you probably know how to prick your finger and use a little meter to read your glucose levels. The meters get better and better which mostly means they take less blood, so you don’t have to lacerate your finger so severely. Even so, taking your blood several times a day is hard on your fingertips. Continuous monitoring is available, but — until recently — required a prescription and was fairly expensive. [Andy] noticed the recent introduction of a relatively inexpensive over-the-counter sensor, the
Stelo CGM
. Of course, he had to find out what was inside, and thanks to him, you can see it, too.
If you haven’t used a continuous glucose monitor (CGM), there is still a prick involved, but it is once every two weeks or so and occurs in the back of your arm. A spring drives a needle into your flesh and retracts. However, it leaves behind a little catheter. The other end of the catheter is in an adhesive-backed module that stays put. It sounds a little uncomfortable, but normally, it is hardly noticeable, and even if it is, it is much better than sticking your finger repeatedly to draw out a bunch of blood.
So, what’s in the module? Plenty. There is a coin cell, of course. An nRF52832 microcontroller wakes up every 30 seconds to poll the sensor. Every 5 minutes it wakes up to send data via Bluetooth to your phone. There are antennas for Bluetooth and NFC (the phone or meter reads the sensor via NFC to pair with it). There are also a few custom chips of unknown function.
[Andy] makes the point that the battery could last much longer than the two-week span of the device, but we would guess that a combination of the chemicals involved, the adhesive stickiness, the need to clean the site (you usually alternate arms), and accounting for battery life during storage, two weeks might be conservative, but not ridiculous.
It’s amazing that we live in a time when this much electronics can be considered disposable. CGM is a
hard problem
. What we really want is an
artificial pancreas
. | 37 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102259",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-02-23T21:47:27",
"content": "This is disposable? What a waste!Still very cool tech.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8102280",
"author": "Bobtato",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,371,627.934507 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/23/behind-the-lens-tearing-down-a-rare-soviet-zenit-19759926/ | Behind The Lens: Tearing Down A Rare Soviet Zenit 19 | Heidi Ulrich | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"camera",
"PAPO 074",
"shutter",
"SLR",
"soviet-era",
"USSR",
"zenit",
"Zenit 19"
] | If you’re into Soviet-era gear with a techy twist, you’ll love
this teardown of a rare Zenit 19 camera
courtesy of [msylvain59]. Found broken on eBay (for a steal!), this 1982 made-in-USSR single-lens reflex camera isn’t the average Zenit. It features, for example, electronically controlled shutter timing – quite the upgrade from its manual siblings.
The not-so-minor issue that made this Zenit 19 come for cheap was a missing shutter blade. You’d say – one blade gone rogue! Is it lost in the camera’s guts, or snapped clean off? Add to that some oxidized battery contacts and a cracked viewfinder, and you’ve got proper fixer-upper material. But that’s where it gets intriguing: the camera houses a rare hybrid electronic module (PAPO 074), complete with epoxy-covered resistors. The shutter speed dial directly adjusts a set of resistors, sending precise signals to the shutter assembly: a neat blend of old-school mechanics and early electronics.
Now will it shutter, or stutter? With its vertical metal shutter – uncommon in Zenits – and separate light metering circuitry, this teardown offers a rare glimpse into Soviet engineering flair. Hungry for more? We’ve covered
a Soviet-era computer
and
a radio
in the past. If you’re more into analog camera teardowns, you might like this
analog Pi upgrade attempt
, or
this bare minimum analog camera project
. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102329",
"author": "Stuart Cox",
"timestamp": "2025-02-24T05:46:56",
"content": "I once owned a ZenitB. Back in 1967. Great little manual SLR. Ah, simplicity.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8102333",
"author": "Nikolai",
... | 1,760,371,628.109573 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/23/how-rutherford-proved-that-atoms-are-mostly-empty-space/ | How Rutherford Proved That Atoms Are Mostly Empty Space | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"atomic structure"
] | By the beginning of the 20th century scientists were only just beginning to probe the mysteries of the atomic world, with the exact nature of these atoms subject to a lot of speculation and theory. Recently [The Action Lab] on YouTube
replicated one of the most famous experiments
performed at the time, commonly known as Rutherford’s gold-foil experiment.
A part of
Rutherford’s scattering experiments
, this particular experiment involved shooting alpha particles at a piece of gold foil with the source, foil, and detector placed in a vacuum vessel. Rutherford’s theoretical model of the atom that he developed over the course of these experiments differed from the contemporary Thomson model in that Rutherford’s model postulated that atoms consisted of a single large charged nucleus at the core of the atom, with the electrons spread around it.
As can be seen in the video, the relatively large alpha particles from the Americium-241 source, available from many smoke detectors, will most of the time zip right through the foil, while suffering a pretty major deflection in other times when a nucleus is hit. This is consistent with Rutherford’s model of a small nucleus surrounded by what is effectively mostly just empty space.
While Rutherford used a screen that would light up when hit with alpha particles, this experiment with a Geiger counter is an easy way to replicate the experiment, assuming that you have access to a large enough vacuum chamber. | 26 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102184",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-02-23T15:46:44",
"content": "When a guy is 11-12 orders of magnitude out when he states a number (“10 to the 26th atoms in this bead”), and doesn’t instantly realize it’s unreasonable, it’s hard to trust the rest of what he says or show... | 1,760,371,627.994062 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/23/lcd-stackup-repair-not-for-the-faint-of-heart/ | LCD Stackup Repair: Not For The Faint Of Heart | Elliot Williams | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"lcd",
"polarizer",
"repair",
"retrocomputer"
] | Coming straight to the point: [Ron Hinton] is significantly braver than we are. Or maybe he was just in a worse situation. His historic Acer K385s laptop suffered what we learned is called vinegar syndrome, which is a breakdown in the polarizers that make the LCD work. So he bit the bullet and decided to
open up the LCD stack and replace what he could
.
Nothing says “no user serviceable parts inside” quite like those foil-and-glue sealed packages, but that didn’t stop [Ron]. Razor blades, patience, and an eye ever watchful for the connectors that are seemingly everywhere, and absolutely critical, got the screen disassembled. Installation of the new polarizers was similarly fiddly.
In the end, it looks like the showstopper to getting a perfect result is that technology has moved on, and these older screens apparently used a phase correction layer between the polarizers, which might be difficult to source these days. (Anyone have more detail on that? We looked around and came up empty.)
This laptop may not be in the pantheon of holy-grail retrocomputers, but that’s exactly what makes it a good candidate for practicing such tricky repair work, and the result is a readable LCD screen on an otherwise broken old laptop, so that counts as a win in our book.
If you want to see an even more adventurous repair effort that ended in glorious failure, check out
[Jan Mrázek]’s hack where he tries to convert a color LCD screen to monochrome
, inclusive of scraping off the liquid crystals! You learn a lot by taking things apart, of course, but you learn even more by building it up from first principles. If you haven’t seen
[Ben Krasnow]’s series on a completely DIY LCD screen, ITO-sputtering and all
, then you’ve got some quality video time ahead of you. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102143",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-02-23T13:22:35",
"content": "Kudos to Ron for this repair, definitely not one for the faint hearted.I recently successfully disassembled, cleaned and reassembled a TFT television that had been thrown away because, somehow, there was a c... | 1,760,371,627.855022 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/23/handheld-compass-cnc-lets-teensy-do-the-driving/ | Handheld Compass CNC Lets Teensy Do The Driving | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"CNC router",
"optical flow",
"router",
"Shaper Origin",
"teensy microcontroller"
] | If somebody asked you to visualize a CNC router, you’d probably think of some type of overhead gantry that moves a cutting tool over a stationary workpiece. It’s a straightforward enough design, but it’s not without some shortcomings. For one thing, the scale of such a machine can quickly become an issue if you want to work on large pieces.
But what if you deleted the traditional motion system, and instead let the cutting tool roam freely?
That’s the idea behind the open source Compass Handheld CNC
. Looking a bit more like a combat robot than a traditional woodworking tool, the Compass tracks its movement over the workpiece using a Teensy 4.1 microcontroller and four PMW3360 optical flow sensors. With a pair of handles that look like a flight yoke and a display that shows the router’s current position versus where it should be, the user can “drive” the tool to cut or carve the desired design.
Admittedly, the Compass doesn’t pack quite the same punch as a more traditional setup. Rather than a beefy spindle motor or a full-sized consumer router clamped up in the gantry, the Compass uses a Dremel 3000. It’s fine for routing out an engraving and other fine work, but you wouldn’t want to use it for cutting thick stock. To help keep the work area clear and prevent dust and chips from jamming up the works, the 3D printed body for the tool includes a connection for a dust collection system.
If this all seems familiar, you may be remembering a tool we first covered nearly a decade ago — the
Shaper Origin
. That router, which is still on the market incidentally, utilizes optical tracking and fiducial markers to keep track of its position. We’d be interested in seeing how well the Compass compares over large distances without similar reference points. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102107",
"author": "Ewald",
"timestamp": "2025-02-23T11:11:21",
"content": "Looks interesting; For those interested, there is a more in depth article on:https://makezine.com/projects/get-your-bearings-with-compass-handheld-cnc-router/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"r... | 1,760,371,628.365825 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/22/nema-releases-standard-for-vehicle-to-grid-applications/ | NEMA Releases Standard For Vehicle-to-Grid Applications | Navarre Bartz | [
"Battery Hacks",
"car hacks",
"green hacks"
] | [
"grid battery",
"grid storage",
"storage",
"V2G",
"vehicle-grid-integration",
"vehicle-to-grid",
"VGI"
] | Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) has been hailed as one of the greatest advantages of electrifying transportation, but has so far remained mostly in the lab. Hoping to move things forward, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) has released the
Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) Power Export Permitting Standard
.
The new standards will allow vehicle manufacturers and charger (EVSE) suppliers to have a unified blueprint for sending power back and forth to the grid or the home, which has been a bit of a stumbling block so far toward adoption of a seemingly simple, but not easy, technology. As renewables make up a larger percentage of the grid, using the increasing number of EVs on the road as battery backup is a convenient solution.
While the standard will simplify the technology side of bidirectional charging, getting vehicle owners to opt into backing up the grid will depend on utilities and regulators developing attractive remuneration plans. Unfortunately, the standard itself is paywalled, but NEMA says the standard “could put money back in electric vehicle owners’ pockets by making it easier for cars to store energy at night or when turned off and then sell power back to grids at a profit during peak hours.”
We’ve covered some of the
challenges
and
opportunities
of V2G systems in the past and if you want something a little smaller scale, how about using a battery that was once in a vehicle to
backup your own home
? | 70 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102055",
"author": "Hussien",
"timestamp": "2025-02-23T07:01:09",
"content": "Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) has been hailed as one of the greatest advantages of electrifying transportation, but has so far remained mostly in the lab.Reducing lifetime of your vehicle’s battery to profit grid... | 1,760,371,628.235179 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/22/cyanotype-prints-on-a-resin-3d-printer/ | Cyanotype Prints On A Resin 3D Printer | Tom Nardi | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"classic hacks"
] | [
"cyanotype",
"openscad",
"python",
"resin 3d printer"
] | Not that it’s the kind of thing that pops into your head often, but if you ever
do
think of a cyanotype print, it probably doesn’t conjure up thoughts of modern technology. For good reason — the monochromatic technique was introduced in the 1840s, and was always something of a niche technology compared to more traditional photographic methods.
The original method is simple enough: put an object or negative between the sun and a UV-sensitive medium, and the exposed areas will turn blue and produce a print.
This modernized concept created by [Gabe]
works the same way, except both the sun and the negative have been replaced by a lightly modified resin 3D printer.
A good chunk of the effort here is in the software, as [Gabe] had to write some code that would take an image and turn it into something the printer would understand. His proof of concept was a clever bit of Python code that produced an OpenSCAD script, which ultimately converted each grayscale picture to a rectangular “pixel” of variable height. The resulting STL files could be run through the slicer to produce the necessary files to load into the printer. This was eventually replaced with a new Python script capable of converting images to native printer files through
UVtools
.
On the hardware side, all [Gabe] had to do was remove the vat that would usually hold the resin, and replace that with a wooden lid to both hold the UV-sensitized paper in place and protect the user’s eyes. [Gabe] says there’s still some room for improvement, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at some of the gorgeous prints he’s produced already.
No word yet on whether or not future versions of the project will support
direct-to-potato imaging
. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102035",
"author": "Vik",
"timestamp": "2025-02-23T04:54:58",
"content": "Robert Murray Smith has also been doing this but without modifying his printer. Being British he also fixes the image (they eventually fade in the light) by the expedient method of dunking it in some tea.http... | 1,760,371,628.524396 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/22/datasaab-swedens-lesser-known-history-in-computing/ | DataSaab: Sweden’s Lesser-Known History In Computing | Heidi Ulrich | [
"History",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"datasaab",
"home computer",
"minicomputer",
"Saab",
"sweden",
"univac",
"Viggen"
] | Did you know that the land of flat-pack furniture and Saab automobiles played a serious role in the development of minicomputers, the forerunners of our home computers? If not, read on for a bit of history. You can also go ahead and
watch the video below
, which tells it all with a ton of dug up visuals.
Sweden’s early computer development was marked by significant milestones, beginning with the relay-based Binär Aritmetisk Relä-Kalkylator (BARK) in 1950, followed by the vacuum tube-based Binär Elektronisk SekvensKalkylator (BESK) in 1953. These projects were spearheaded by the Swedish Board for Computing Machinery (Matematikmaskinnämnden), established in 1948 to advance the nation’s computing capabilities.
In 1954, Saab ventured into computing by obtaining a license to replicate BESK, resulting in the creation of Saab’s räkneautomat (SARA). This initiative aimed to support complex calculations for the Saab 37 Viggen jet fighter. Building on this foundation, Saab’s computer division, later known as Datasaab, developed the D2 in 1960 – a transistorized prototype intended for aircraft navigation. The D2’s success led to the CK37 navigational computer, which was integrated into the Viggen aircraft in 1971.
Datasaab also expanded into the commercial sector with the D21 in 1962, producing approximately 30 units for various international clients. Subsequent models, including the D22, D220, D23, D5, D15, and D16, were developed to meet diverse computing needs. In 1971, Datasaab’s technologies merged with Standard Radio & Telefon AB (SRT) to form Stansaab AS, focusing on real-time data systems for commercial and aviation applications. This entity eventually evolved into Datasaab AB in 1978, which was later acquired by Ericsson in 1981, becoming part of Ericsson Information Systems.
Parallel to these developments, Åtvidabergs Industrier AB (later Facit) produced the FACIT EDB in 1957, based on BESK’s design. This marked Sweden’s first fully domestically produced computer, with improvements such as expanded magnetic-core memory and advanced magnetic tape storage. The FACIT EDB was utilized for various applications, including meteorological calculations and other scientific computations. For a short time, Saab even partnered with the American Unisys called Saab-
Univac
– a well-known name in computer history.
These pioneering efforts by Swedish organizations laid the groundwork for the country’s advancements in computing technology, influencing both military and commercial sectors. The video below has lots and lots more to unpack and goes into greater detail on collaborations and (missed) deals with great names in history. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8102003",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2025-02-23T00:32:21",
"content": "You can also go ahead and watch the video below, which tells it all with a ton of dug up visuals.What happened to “by [Asianometry]”?Usually HaD articles mention the name/nick/handle of the primary “source... | 1,760,371,628.724082 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/22/kicad-9-moves-up-in-the-pro-league/ | KiCad 9 Moves Up In The Pro League | Arya Voronova | [
"News",
"PCB Hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"design tool",
"eda",
"KiCAD",
"pcb layout"
] | Do you do PCB design for a living? Has KiCad been just a tiny bit insufficient for your lightning-fast board routing demands? We’ve just been graced with
the KiCad 9 release
(blog post, there’s
a FOSDEM talk
too), and it brings features of the rank you expect from a professional-level monthly-subscription PCB design suite.
Of course, KiCad 9 has delivered a ton of polish and features for all sorts of PCB design, so everyone will have some fun new additions to work with – but if you live and breathe PCB track routing, this release is especially for you.
One of the most flashy features is multichannel design – essentially, if you have multiple identical blocks on your PCB, say, audio amplifiers, you can now route it once and then replicate the routing in all other blocks; a stepping stone for design blocks, no doubt.
Other than that, there’s a heap of additions – assigning net rules in the schematic, dragging multiple tracks at once, selectively removing soldermask from tracks and tenting from vias, a zone fill manager, in/decrementing numbers in schematic signal names with mousewheel scroll, alternate function display toggle on symbol pins, improved layer selection for layer switches during routing, creepage and acute angle DRC, DRC marker visual improvements, editing pad and via stacks, improved third-party imports (specifically, Eagle and Altium schematics), and a heap of other similar pro-level features big and small.
Regular hackers get a load of improvements to enjoy, too. Ever wanted to add a table into your schematic? Now that’s doable out of the box. How about storing your fonts, 3D models, or datasheets directly inside your KiCad files? This, too, is now possible in KiCad. The promised Python API for the board editor is here, output job templates are here (think company-wide standardized export settings), there’s significantly more options for tweaking your 3D exports, dogbone editor for inner contour milling, big improvements to footprint positioning and moving, improvements to the command line interface (picture rendering in mainline!), and support for even more 3D export standards, including STL. Oh, add to that, export of silkscreen and soldermask into 3D models – finally!
Apart from that, there’s, of course, a ton of bugfixes and small features, ~1500 new symbols, ~750 footprints, and, documentation has been upgraded to match and beyond. KiCad 10 already has big plans, too – mostly engine and infrastructure improvements, making KiCad faster, smarter, and future-proof, becoming even more of impressive software suite and a mainstay on an average hacker’s machine.
For example, KiCad 10 will bring delay matching, Git schematic and PCB integrations, PNG plot exports, improved diffpair routers, autorouter previews, design import wizard, DRC and length calculation code refactoring, part height support, and a few dozen other things!
We love that KiCad updates yearly now. Every FOSDEM, we get an influx of cool new features into the stable KiCad tree. We’re also pretty glad about the ongoing consistent funding they get – may they get even more, in fact. We’ve been consistently seeing hackers stop paying for proprietary PCB software suites and switching to KiCad, and hopefully some of them have redirected that money into a donation towards their new favorite PCB design tool.
Join the pro club, switch to the new now-stable KiCad 9! If you really enjoy it and benefit from it,
donate
, or even get some
KiCad merch.
Want to learn more about the new features? Check out
the release blog post
(many cool animations and videos there!), or
the running thread on KiCad forums
describing the new features&fixes in length, maybe if you’re up for video format, check out
the KiCad 9 release talk recording
(29m48s) from this year’s FOSDEM, it’s worth a watch. | 30 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8101973",
"author": "Tommy",
"timestamp": "2025-02-22T22:34:52",
"content": "My process for getting Kicad PCB models into OpenSCAD is a hacky mess with lots of utility functions, way-more-than-I’d-like manual number fiddling, and seemingly inescapable silkscreen SVG wrangling…So I’m... | 1,760,371,629.060346 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/22/a-web-based-graphics-editor-for-tiny-screens/ | A Web-Based Graphics Editor For Tiny Screens | Tom Nardi | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"lcd",
"minimal user interface",
"oled",
"user interface"
] | These days, adding a little LCD or OLED to your project is so cheap and easy that you can do it on a whim. Even if your original idea didn’t call for a display, if you’ve got I2C and a couple bucks burning a hole in your pocket, why not add one? Surely you’ll figure out what to show on it as the project develops.
But that’s where it can get a little tricky — in terms of hardware, adding a screen just takes running a few extra wires, but the software side is another story. Not only do you have to contend with the different display libraries, but just creating the image assets to display on the screen can be a hassle if it’s not something you do regularly. Enter Lopaka, a
graphics and user interface editor for electronic projects
created by [Mikhail Ilin].
Using this web-based tool is pretty simple, you simply load it up, pick the display type you’ve got, and then start using the visual tools to do things like draw shapes and add text. As you work, a window on the bottom will start filling with the source code that you’ll ultimately copy and paste into your project to re-create what you’re seeing.
You can import your own images and have them converted to arrays of data, though there’s also a selection of icons that you can select from which might meet your needs. In fact, there’s even a gallery of editable screens and user interfaces that have been created with Lopka if you don’t want to start from scratch.
In playing around with the tool, the only annoyance we really noticed was the fact that the source code window isn’t editable. That is, we occasionally tried to code to modify what we were seeing in the visual preview, but it doesn’t work that way. We were somewhat concerned when we saw that the tool also features a paid “Plus” mode, but in truth, the features and capabilities available in the free mode (and what gets unlocked when you cough up the $5.95 a month)
seem more than fair
.
If Lopaka looks similar, it could be because it’s the evolution of a tool offered up specifically for the Flipper Zero
that we covered back in 2022
. [Mikhail] saw an opportunity to open the tool up to the wider maker and hardware hacker community by adding support for other display types and libraries, which we think was a brilliant move. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8101895",
"author": "ethzero",
"timestamp": "2025-02-22T19:02:52",
"content": "Perfectly timed article!Just about to start a prop replica project and I e of the tedious bits is the constant code>compile>upload>no-quite-right cycle of making displays. Sure, you can use a paint packag... | 1,760,371,628.789766 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/22/multitasker-or-many-monotaskers/ | Multitasker Or Many Monotaskers? | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"home hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"home automation",
"newsletter",
"Rant",
"simplicity"
] | In
Al Williams’s marvelous rant
he points out a number of the problems with speaking to computers. Obvious problems with voice control include things like multiple people talking over each other, discerning commands from background conversations, and so on. Somehow, unlike on the bridge in Star Trek, where the computer seems to understand everyone just fine, Al sometimes can’t even get the darn thing to play his going-to-sleep playlist, which should be well within the device’s capabilities.
In the comments, [rclark] suggests making a single button that plays his playlist, no voice interaction required, and we have to admit that it’s a great solution to this one particular problem. Heck, the “bedtime button” would make fun project in and of itself, and it’s such a limited scope that it could probably only be an weekend’s work for
anyone who has touched the internals of their home automation system, like Al certainly has
. We love the simplicity of the idea.
But it ignores the biggest potential benefit of a voice control system: that it’s a one-size-fits-all solution for everything. Imagine how many other use cases Al would need to make a single button device for, and how many coin cell batteries he’d be signing himself up to change out over the course of the year. The trade-off is that the general purpose solution tends not to be as robust as a single-tasker like the button, but also that it can potentially simplify the overall system.
I suffer this in my own home. It’s much more a loosely-coupled web of individual hacks than an overall
system
, and that has pros and cons. Each individual part is easier to maintain and hack on, but the overall system is less coordinated than it could be. If we change the WiFi password on the home automation router, for instance, I’m going to have to individually log into about eight ESP8266s and change their credentials. Yuck!
It’s probably a matter of preference, but I’ll still take
the loose, MQTT-based system that I’ve got now
over an all-in-one. Like [rclark], I value individual device simplicity and reliability above the overall system’s simplicity, but because our stereo isn’t even hooked up to the network, I can’t play myself to sleep like Al can. Or at least like he can when the voice recognition is working.
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
! | 21 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8101855",
"author": "ziggurat29",
"timestamp": "2025-02-22T16:05:13",
"content": "there is charm in the diversity of hodgepodge",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8101865",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2025-02-22T16:25... | 1,760,371,628.67112 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/22/the-perfect-pi-pico-portable-computer/ | The Perfect Pi Pico Portable Computer | Adam Fabio | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"pi pico",
"picovision",
"rp2040"
] | [Abe] wanted the perfect portable computer. He has a DevTerm, but it didn’t quite fit his needs. This is Hackaday after all, so he loaded up his favorite CAD software and started designing. The obvious choice here would be a Raspberry Pi. But [Abe] didn’t want to drop in a Linux computer —
he was going for something a bit smaller
.
An RP2040 Pico would be a perfect fit. Driving a display with the Pico can be eat a lot of resources though. The solution was a PicoVision from Pimoroni. PicoVision uses two RP2040 chips. One drives an HDMI port, while the other is free to run application software. This meant a standard HDMI screen could be used.
The keyboard was a bit harder. After a lot of searching, [Abe] found an IR remote designed for smart TVs. The QWERTY keyboard was the perfect size but didn’t have an interface he could use. He fixed that with an adapter PCB including an I2C GPIO expander chip. A bit of I2C driver software later, and he had a working input keyboard.
Hardware doesn’t do anything without software though. The software running on the handheld is called Slime OS, and the
source is available at [Abe’s] GitHub
. It’s a launcher, with support for applications written in python. [Abe] has a few basic demos working, but he’s looking for help to get more features up and running.
Although it wasn’t quite what [Abe] was after, our own [Donald Papp] came away fairly impressed when
he gave the DevTerm a test drive back in 2022
. Something to consider if you’re looking for a Linux handheld and not quite ready to build one yourself. | 26 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8101732",
"author": "lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-02-22T12:20:46",
"content": "Everything about this is great. The slimeos project confuses me a bit though. Pico’s don’t have a lot of resources how are they running python? Or is it micro python?Either way I love the keyboard an... | 1,760,371,628.864528 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/22/tricked-out-miter-fence-has-all-the-features/ | Tricked Out Miter Fence Has All The Features | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"angle",
"detent",
"fence",
"Machine tool",
"miter gauge",
"protractor",
"table saw",
"woodwoorking"
] | “World’s best” is a mighty ambitious claim, regardless of what you’ve built. But from the look of
[Marius Hornberger]’s tricked-out miter fence
, it seems like a pretty reasonable claim.
For those who have experienced the torture of using the standard miter fence that comes with machine tools like a table saw, band saw, or belt sander, any change is likely to make a big difference in accuracy. Miter fences are intended to position a workpiece at a precise angle relative to the plane of the cutting tool, with particular attention paid to the 90° and 45° settings, which are critical to creating square and true joints.
[Marius] started his build with a runner for the T-slot in his machine tools, slightly undersized for the width of the slot but with adjustment screws that expand plastic washers to take up the slack. An aluminum plate equipped with a 3D printed sector gear is attached to the runner, and a large knob with a small pinion mates to it. The knob has 120 precisely positioned slots in its underside, which thanks to a spring-loaded detent provide positive stops every 0.5°. A vernier scale also allows fine adjustment between positive stops, giving a final resolution of 0.1°.
Aside from the deliciously clicky goodness of the angle adjustment, [Marius] included a lot of thoughtful touches. We particularly like the cam-action lock for the angle setting, which prevents knocking your fine angle adjustment out of whack. We’re also intrigued by the slide lock, which firmly grips the T-slot and keeps the fence fixed in one place on the machine. As for the accuracy of the tool, guest meteorologist and machining stalwart [Stefan Gotteswinter] gave it a thumbs-up.
[Marius] is a veteran tool tweaker, and we’ve featured some of his projects before. We bet this fence will see some use on
his much-modified drill press
, and many of the parts for this build were made on
his homemade CNC router
. | 3 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8101679",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-02-22T11:13:38",
"content": "Metrologist or meteorologist?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8101740",
"author": "Htf",
"timestamp": "2025-02-22T12:36:59",
"... | 1,760,371,629.209473 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/21/retrotectacular-ham-radio-as-it-was/ | Retrotectacular: Ham Radio As It Was | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"ham radio",
"Retrotechtacluar"
] | We hear a lot about how ham radio isn’t what it used to be. But what was it like? Well, the ARRL’s film “
The Ham’s Wide World
” shows a snapshot of the radio hobby in the 1960s, which you can watch below. The narrator is no other than the famous ham [Arthur Godfrey] and also features fellow ham and U.S. Senator [Barry Goldwater]. But the real stars of the show are all the vintage gear: Heathkit, Swan, and a very oddly placed Drake.
The story starts with a QSO between a Mexican grocer and a U.S. teenager. But it quickly turns to a Field Day event. Since the film is from the ARRL, the terminology and explanations make sense. You’ll hear real Morse code and accurate ham lingo.
Is ham radio really different today? Truthfully, not so much. Hams still talk to people worldwide and set up mobile and portable stations. Sure, hams use different modes in addition to voice. There are many options that weren’t available to the hams of the 1960s, but many people still work with old gear and older modes and enjoy newer things like microwave communications, satellite work, and even merging radio with the Internet.
In a case of history repeating itself, there is an example of hams providing communications during a California wildfire. Hams still provide emergency communication in quite a few situations. It is hard to remember that before the advent of cell phones, a significant thing hams like [Barry Goldwater] did was to connect servicemen and
scientists
overseas to their families via a “phone patch.” Not much of that is happening today, of course, but you can still
listen in to ham radio
contacts that are partially over the Internet right in your web browser. | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8101571",
"author": "Ken C",
"timestamp": "2025-02-22T08:52:19",
"content": "BAJO JAJO, BAJO JAJOJa ci kurwa dambajo jajoThat’s 95% of what goes on the air nowdays. (And the rest is lots of religious zealtory.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,629.309651 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/21/genetic-algorithm-runs-on-atari-800-xl/ | Genetic Algorithm Runs On Atari 800 XL | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"atari",
"basic",
"genetic algorithm",
"machine learning"
] | For the last few years or so, the story in the artificial intelligence that was accepted without question was that all of the big names in the field needed more compute, more resources, more energy, and more money to build better models. But simply throwing money and GPUs at these companies without question led to them getting complacent, and ripe to be upset by an underdog with fractions of the computing resources and funding. Perhaps that should have been more obvious from the start, since people have been building various machine learning algorithms on extremely limited computing platforms
like this one built on the Atari 800 XL
.
Unlike other models that use memory-intensive applications like
gradient descent
to train their neural networks, [Jean Michel Sellier] is using a genetic algorithm to work within the confines of the platform. Genetic algorithms evaluate potential solutions by evolving them over many generations and keeping the ones which work best each time. The changes made to the surviving generations before they are put through the next evolution can be made in many ways, but for a limited system like this a quick approach is to make small random changes. [Jean]’s program, written in BASIC, performs 32 generations of evolution to predict the points that will lie on a simple mathematical function.
While it is true that the BASIC program relies on stochastic methods to train, it does work and proves that it’s effective to create certain machine learning models using limited hardware, in this case an 8-bit Atari running BASIC.
In previous projects he’s also been able to show how similar computers can be used for other complex mathematical tasks as well
. Of course it’s true that an 8-bit machine like this won’t challenge OpenAI or Anthropic anytime soon, but looking for more efficient ways of running complex computation operations is always a more challenging and rewarding problem to solve than buying more computing resources. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8101506",
"author": "fluffy",
"timestamp": "2025-02-22T03:31:49",
"content": "Genetic algorithms are so much fun. I was playing around with them on the Commodore 128 back in the day, as an experiment for enhancing the gameplay for a type-in game from RUN Magazine. It’s a shame they ... | 1,760,371,629.116962 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/21/hacking-flux-paths-the-surprising-magnetic-bypass/ | Hacking Flux Paths: The Surprising Magnetic Bypass | Heidi Ulrich | [
"High Voltage",
"Science"
] | [
"circuit",
"flux",
"high voltage",
"LTSpice",
"magnetic",
"short circuit",
"transformer",
"winding"
] | If you think shorting a transformer’s winding means big sparks and fried wires: think again. In
this educational video, titled The Magnetic Bypass
, [Sam Ben-Yaakov] flips this assumption. By cleverly tweaking a reluctance-based magnetic circuit, this hack channels flux in a way that breaks the usual rules. Using a simple free leg and a switched winding, the setup ensures that shorting the output doesn’t spike the current. For anyone who is obsessed with magnetic circuits or who just loves unexpected engineering quirks, this one is worth a closer look.
So, what’s going on under the hood? The trick lies in flux redistribution. In a typical
transformer
, shorting an auxiliary winding invites a surge of current. Here, most of the flux detours through a lower-reluctance path: the magnetic bypass. This reduces flux in the auxiliary leg, leaving voltage and current surprisingly low. [Sam]’s simulations in LTspice back it up: 10 V in yields a modest 6 mV out when shorted. It’s like telling flux where to go, but without complex electronics. It is a potential stepping stone for safer high-voltage applications, thanks to its inherent current-limiting nature.
The original video walks through the theory, circuit equivalences, and LTspice tests. Enjoy! | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8101504",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2025-02-22T02:54:48",
"content": "I think old (iron and copper) neon sign transformers were current limited in some way similar to this? Thoughts?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "81015... | 1,760,371,629.251028 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/20/3d-print-yourself-a-split-flap-display/ | 3D Print Yourself A Split Flap Display | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"flap",
"split flap",
"split-flap display"
] | Split flap displays! They’re mechanical, clickety-clackity, and largely commercially irrelevant in our screen-obsessed age. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a ball making one of your own, though!
[Morgan Manly] did just that, with tidy results.
An ESP32 C3 SuperMini serves as the boss of the operation, running the whole display. The display is designed to be modular, so you can daisy chain multiple characters together to spell longer words. Each module has 37 characters, so it can display the alphabet, numerals 0 to 9, and a blank. Each module contains a 28BYJ-48 stepper motor for controlling the flaps, and a ULN2003 driver board to run it and a PCF8575 IO expander to handle communciation. An A3144 hall effect sensor is also used for positional feedback to ensure the display always shows the right character. The flap mechanism itself is relatively straightforward—a drum with all 37 flaps is until the correct character is reached, with the blank flaps hosting a magnet to trigger the aforementioned hall effect sensor. The flaps themselves are 3D-printed, with filament changes used to color the characters against the background.
If you’ve ever dreamed of building a flap-display clock or ticker, you needn’t dream of finding the perfect vintage example. You can just build your own! The added bonus is that you can make it as big or as small as you like. We’ve seen some
interesting variations on the split flap concept
recently, too. If you’re cooking up your own kooky electromechanical displays, don’t hesitate to
let us know! | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8101089",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-02-21T07:58:39",
"content": "Should have used “A BANANA” for scale.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8101099",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-02-21T08:53:33",
"con... | 1,760,371,629.161681 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/20/microsoft-again-claims-topological-quantum-computing-with-majorana-zero-mode-anyons/ | Microsoft (Again) Claims Topological Quantum Computing With Majorana Zero Mode Anyons | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"majorana",
"quantum computing",
"qubit"
] | As the fundamental flaw of today’s quantum computers, improving qubit stability remains the focus of much research in this field. One such stability attempt involves so-called topological quantum computing with the use of anyons, which are two-dimensional quasiparticles. Such an approach has been
claimed by Microsoft in a recent paper
in
Nature
. This comes a few years
after an earlier claim
by Microsoft for much the same feat, which was found to be based on faulty science and hence retracted.
The claimed creation of anyons here involves
Majorana
fermions, which differ from the much more typical Dirac fermions. These Majorana fermions are bound with other such fermions as a Majorana zero mode (MZM), forming anyons that are intertwined (braided) to form what are in effect logic gates. In the
Nature
paper the Microsoft researchers demonstrate a superconducting indium-arsenide (InAs) nanowire-based device featuring a read-out circuit (quantum dot interferometer) with the capacitance of one of the quantum dots said to vary in a way that suggests that the nanowire device-under-test demonstrates the presence of MZMs at either end of the wire.
Microsoft has a
dedicated website
to their quantum computing efforts, though it remains essential to stress that this is not a confirmation until their research is replicated by independent researchers. If confirmed, MZMs could provide a way to create more reliable quantum computing circuitry that does not have to lean so heavily on error correction to get any usable output. Other, competing efforts here include such things as
hybrid mechanical qubits
and
antimony-based qubits
that should be more stable owing to their eight spin configurations. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8101183",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-02-21T11:22:21",
"content": "If this pans out, the real result might be the observation of Majorana fermions. That would be some new fundamental physics.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"commen... | 1,760,371,629.350354 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/20/open-source-random-numbers/ | Open-Source Random Numbers | Bryan Cockfield | [
"hardware"
] | [
"avalanche breakdown",
"avalanche noise",
"electron avalance",
"entropy",
"hardware",
"noise",
"open source",
"random number",
"random number generator",
"randomness",
"rng",
"zener diode"
] | Whether it’s a game of D&D or encrypting top-secret information, a wide array of methods are available for generating the needed random numbers with high enough entropy for their use case. For a tabletop game this might be a single die but for more sensitive applications a more robust method of generating random numbers is needed. Programmers might reach for a rand() function of some sort, but these pseudorandom numbers don’t cut the mustard for encryption. For that you’ll need a true random number generator (RNG),
and this open-source hardware RNG uses one of the better methods we’ve seen
.
The device, called RAVA, is based on a property found in many electronic devices called avalanche breakdown. Avalanche breakdown occurs when a high voltage (in this case approximately 25V) is applied in the reverse bias direction, with this device using a pair of Zener diodes. When this high voltage is applied, an “avalanche” of electrons occurs which allows the diodes conduct in the opposite direction that they would when they are forward biased. This isn’t a constant current flow, though; there are slight variations over time which can be amplified and used as the random number generator. The noise is amplified over a series of op amps and then fed to an ATmega32U4 microcontroller which can provide the user with 136.0 Kbit/s of random data.
Unlike other random number generators
, this device is based on a method generally accepted to be truly random. Not only that, but since it’s based on discrete hardware it can be accessed directly for monitoring and replacement in case of faults, unlike other methods which are more “black boxes” and are more opaque in their processes which are thus harder to audit. We also appreciate it’s open-source nature as well, and for some more information on it
be sure to check out the paper on it in IEEE
. If you’re looking for something to generate random numbers but will also bring some extra flair to the next game night,
take a look at this radioactive dice replacement
. | 27 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8101011",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2025-02-21T01:40:10",
"content": "@Bryan Cockfield said: “Whether it’s a game of D&D or encrypting top-secret information, a wide array of methods are available for generating the needed random numbers with high enough entropy for their use... | 1,760,371,629.570918 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/20/diy-yagi-antenna-sends-lora-signals-farther/ | DIY Yagi Antenna Sends LoRa Signals Farther | Lewin Day | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"antenna",
"LoRa",
"yagi",
"yagi antenna"
] | LoRa gear can be great for doing radio communications in a light-weight and low-power way. However, it can also work over great distances if you have the right hardware—and the right antennas in particular. [taste_the_code] has been experimenting in this regard, and whipped up a simple Yagi antenna that can
work at distances of up to 40 kilometers
.
The basic mathematics behind the Yagi antenna are well understood. To that end, [taste_the_code] used
a simple online calculator
to determine the correct dimensions to build a Yagi out of 2 mm diameter wire that was tuned for the relevant frequency of 868 MHz. The build uses a 3D printed boom with holes for inserting each individual wire element in the right spot—with little measuring required once the wires are cut, since the print is dimensionally accurate. It was then just a matter of wiring it up to the right connector to suit the gear.
The antenna was tested with a Reyas RYLR998 module acting as a base station, with the DIY Yagi hooked up to a RYLR993 module in the field. In testing, [taste_the_code] was able to communicate reliably from 40 kilometers away.
We’ve featured some other unique LoRa antenna builds before, too. | 26 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8100943",
"author": "Kryptylomese",
"timestamp": "2025-02-20T21:20:17",
"content": "Further – Unless my Dad is extending the signal range!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8101098",
"author": "Carl Breen",
"time... | 1,760,371,629.441879 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/20/unix-archaeology-turns-up-1972-v2-beta/ | UNIX Archaeology Turns Up 1972 “V2 Beta” | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"DEC",
"PDP-11/20",
"unix"
] | In 1997 a set of DEC tapes were provided by Dennis Ritchie, as historical artifacts for those interested in the gestation of the UNIX operating system. The resulting archive files have recently been analysed by [Yfeng Gao],
who has succeeded in recovering a working UNIX version from 1972
. What makes it particularly interesting is that this is not a released version, instead it’s a work in progress sitting somewhere between versions 1 and 2. He’s therefore taken the liberty of naming it “V2 Beta”.
If you happen to have a PDP-11/20 you should be able to run this operating system for yourself, and for those of us without he’s provided information on which emulator will work. The interesting information for us comes in the README accompanying
the tapes themselves
, and in
those accompanying the analysis
. Aside from file fragments left over from previous users of the same tape, we learn about the state of UNIX time in 1972. This dates from the period when
increments were in sixtieths of a second due to the ease of using the mains power frequency in a PDP
, so with a 32-bit counter they were facing imminent roll-over. The 1970-01-01 epoch and one second increments would be adopted later in the year, but meanwhile this is an unusual curio.
If you manage to run this OS, and especially if you find anything further in the files, we’d love to hear. Meanwhile,
this is not the oldest UNIX out there
.
Featured image: “
PDP-11/20 Rocker Switches
” by Don DeBold | 20 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8100948",
"author": "Kryptylomese",
"timestamp": "2025-02-20T21:24:59",
"content": "Linux has superseded Unix, and a pure RUST written OS may replace Linux! Just as long as the model/ethos is maintained then the world will keep spinning – affiliation/bias is not required!",
"par... | 1,760,371,629.501985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/20/pico-gets-a-speed-bump/ | Pico Gets A Speed Bump | Al Williams | [
"Microcontrollers",
"News"
] | [] | The release notes for the
2.1.1 Raspberry Pi Pico SDK
have a late holiday present: The RP2040 chip is now certified to run at 200 MHz if you use at least 1.15V as the supply voltage.
Previously, the certified speed was 125 MHz, although it was well-known you could overclock the device. By default, the 125 MHz figure is still what you’ll get, though. If you want a higher frequency, you need to set SYS_CLK_MHZ to 200 before doing a build.
They hint that more speed increases may happen in the future. If you want do go as fast as they’ll allow, you can set PICO_USE_FASTEST_SUPPORTED_CLOCK=1 instead. This will always pick the highest frequency which is currently 200 MHz.
There are other updates, too, of course. We noted several bug fixes and a new version of TinyUSB. There are also some new examples, including a few that they forgot to mention in version 2.1.0. We were particularly interested in the mqtt examples, a PIO/DMA UART example, and the multi CDC USB example,
something we’ve struggled to work around
before on other projects.
So what will you do with a faster Pico? We doubt we are going to see a practical 1 GHz overclock. The emphasis is on the word
practical
. But we have seen
312 MHz
. | 28 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8100923",
"author": "Daid",
"timestamp": "2025-02-20T19:48:26",
"content": "This will always pick the highest frequency which is currently 250 MHz.From the release notes:Added PICO_USE_FASTEST_SUPPORTED_CLOCK and PLL configuration for 200Mhz on RP2040250Mhz isn’t mentioned anywhere ... | 1,760,371,629.63288 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/20/microwave-motion-detector-notifies-your-smart-phone/ | Microwave Motion Detector Notifies Your Smart Phone | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"microwave presence sensor",
"presence sensor",
"sensor"
] | Your garden variety motion detector uses IR, but these days, there are fancier technologies for achieving similar goals. If so desired, you can source yourself a microwave-based presence sensor instead. Indeed, like [N-08 Labs], you might like to whip one up into a basic intrusion detection system.
The idea is simple enough—take a
RCWL-0516 microwave presence sensor
, and set it up to detect motion and warn you when it happens.
It’s a simple part to use
—it simply drives a 3.3 volt logic output high if it detects someone or something. It basically just emits a microwave signal and detects a change in phase when someone or something—usually something fleshy—is in front of it. [N-08 Labs] simply hooked one up to an IO pin on an ESP8266, with the microcontroller board set up to communicate wirelessly with a Blynk IoT app, which then in turn fires off a smartphone notification that the sensor picked something up. The whole thing is built inside the shell of an AC adapter that provides power and let it easily hide in plain sight.
A project like this doesn’t just have to be for security purposes. You might even just use it to determine when your pet (or a racoon) is using the cat door, or similar. Indeed,
we’ve seen great solutions to that particular problem, too.
Video after the break. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8100866",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2025-02-20T16:37:17",
"content": "This is pretty cool. The IR based ones don’t seem to detect mice: they’re too small. This may do better, although as I recall, microwaves have a wavelength in the same order of magnitude as the si... | 1,760,371,629.822197 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/19/floss-weekly-episode-821-rocky-linux/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 821: Rocky Linux | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"FLOSS Weekly",
"Rocky Linux"
] | This week,
Jonathan Bennett
talks Rocky Linux with
Gregory Kurtzer
and
Krista Burdine
! Where did the project come from, and what’s the connection with CIQ and RESF? Listen to find out!
CentOS primer
Migration from CentOS
Rocky Linux
RESF FAQ
CIQ Open Source Ethos
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 | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8100792",
"author": "Sykobee",
"timestamp": "2025-02-20T13:23:11",
"content": "Going through a centos to rocky migration at work (datacentre), but i keep thinking of rocky road treats rather than rocky (stallone) or rocky (rocks) :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repl... | 1,760,371,629.67543 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/19/retrotechtacular-yamming-crt-yokes/ | Retrotechtacular: Yamming CRT Yokes | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrotechtacular",
"Slider"
] | [
"automation",
"cathode ray tube",
"crt",
"deflection",
"factory",
"retrotechtacular",
"yamming",
"yoke"
] | Those of us who worked in TV repair shops, back when there was such a thing, will likely remember the cardinal rule of TV repair: Never touch the yoke if you can help it. The complex arrangement of copper wire coils and ferrite beads wrapped around a plastic cone attached to the neck of the CRT was critical to picture quality, and it took very little effort to completely screw things up. Fixing it would be a time-consuming and frustrating battle with the cams, screws, and spacers that kept the coils in the right orientation, both between themselves and relative to the picture tube. It was best to leave it the way the factory set it and to look elsewhere for solutions to picture problems.
But how exactly did the factory set up a deflection yoke? We had no idea at the time, only learning just recently about the wonders of
automated deflection yoke yamming
. The video below was made by Thomson Consumer Electronics, once a major supplier of CRTs to the television and computer monitor industry, and appears directed to its customers as a way of showing off their automated processes. They never really define yamming, but from the context of the video, it seems to be an industry term for the initial alignment of a deflection yoke during manufacturing. The manual process would require a skilled technician to manipulate the yoke while watching a series of test patterns on the CRT, slowly tweaking the coils to bring everything into perfect alignment.
Automating this process would have been a huge competitive advantage for a company like Thomson. Being able to provide correctly aligned CRT assemblies to a manufacturer would have been a productivity booster, especially since Thomson claimed to be able to adjust the process to the customer’s assembly line needs. They also say that the automated yamming process took just 30 seconds per tube thanks to a series of sensors and cameras watching the screen. The human element wasn’t completely eliminated, though; at the 3:50 mark, some unlucky QA tech is shown watching an endless carousel of tubes flashing a few test patterns to confirm the process. And you think your job sucks.
It’s not exactly clear when this video was made. The title suggests it was 1995, and that seems about right from the technology in the video, which includes a computer running a version of Windows from around that timeframe. Ironically, the LCD monitor on that touchscreen display was a harbinger of things to come for Thomson, which was
out of the CRT business in the US
less than a decade later. | 28 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8100429",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2025-02-19T17:11:34",
"content": "The giant calendar on the wall over the shoulder of Bill Miller is December 1994 January,Febuary 1995. Confirmed by the perpetual calendar in my pocket ref book (calendar 1&2)",
"parent_id": null,
"... | 1,760,371,629.990094 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/19/be-careful-what-you-ask-for-voice-control/ | Be Careful What You Ask For: Voice Control | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"computer speech",
"rants",
"speech recognition",
"voice command"
] | We get it. We also watched Star Trek and thought how cool it would be to talk to our computer. From Kirk setting a self-destruct sequence, to Scotty talking into a mouse, or Picard ordering Earl Grey, we intuitively know that talking to a computer is better than typing, right? Well, computers talking back and forth to us is no longer science fiction, and maybe we aren’t as happy about it as we thought we’d be.
We weren’t able to pinpoint the first talking computer in fiction. Asimov and van Vogt had talking computers in the 1940s. “I, Robot” by Eando Binder, and not the more famous Asimov story, had a fully speaking robot in 1939. You could argue that “The Machine” in E. M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” was probably speaking — the text is a little vague — and that was in 1909. The robot from Metropolis (1927) spoke after transforming, but you could argue that doesn’t count.
Meanwhile, In Real Life
In real life, computers weren’t as quick to speak. Before the middle of the twentieth century, machine-generated speech was an oddity. In 1779, a mechanical contrivance by Wolfgang von Kempelen, famous for the
mechanical Turk
chess-playing automaton, could form simple words. By 1939, Bell Labs could do even better speech synthesis electronically but with a human operator. It didn’t sound very good, as you can see in the video below, but it was certainly expressive.
Speech recognition would wait until 1952, when Bell Labs showed a system that required training to understand someone speaking numbers. IBM could recognize 16 different utterances in 1961 with “Shoebox,” and, of course, that same year, they made an IBM 704 sing “Daisy Bell,” which would later inspire HAL 9000 to do the same.
Recent advances in neural network systems and other AI techniques mean that now computers can generate and understand speech at a level even most fiction didn’t anticipate. These days, it is trivially easy to interact with your phone or your PC by using your voice. Of course, we sometimes question if every device needs AI smarts and a voice.
We can maybe do without a smart toaster, for instance
.
So What’s the Problem?
Patrick Blower’s famous cartoon about Amazon buying Whole Foods is both funny and tragically possible. In it, Jeff Bezos says, “Alexa, buy me something from Whole Foods.” To which Alexa replies, “Sure, Jeff. Buying Whole Foods.” Misunderstandings are one of the problems with voice input.
Every night, I say exactly the same phrase right before I go to sleep: “Hey, Google. Play my playlist sleep list.” About seven times out of ten, I get my playlist going. Two times out of ten, I get children’s lullabies or something even stranger. Occasionally, for variety, I get “Something went wrong. Try again later.” You can, of course, make excuses for this. The technology is new. Maybe my bedroom is noisy or has lousy acoustics. But still.
That’s not the only problem. Science fiction often predicts the future and, generally, newer science fiction is closer than older science fiction. But Star Trek sometimes turns that on its head. Picard had an office. Kirk worked out of his quarters at a time when working from home was almost unheard of. Offices are a forgotten luxury for many people, and if you are working from home, that’s fine. But if you are in a call center, a bullpen, or the bridge of the Enterprise, all this yakking back and forth with your computer will drive everyone crazy. Even if you train the computer to only recognize the user’s voice, it will still annoy you to have to hear everyone else’s notifications, messages, and alerts.
Today, humans are still better at understanding people than computers are. We all have a friend who consistently mispronounces “Arduino,” but we still know what he means. Or the colleague with a very thick accent, like Checkov trying to enter authorization code “wictor wictor two” in the recent movie. You knew what he meant, too.
Some of the problems are social. I can’t tell you the number of times I’m in the middle of dictating an e-mail, and someone just comes up and starts talking to me, which then shows up in the middle of my sentence. Granted, that’s not a computer issue. But it is another example of why voice input systems are not always as delightful as you’d think.
Solutions?
Probably got great battery life.
Sure, maybe you could build a cone of silence over each station, but that has its own problems. Then again, Spock and Uhura sometimes wore the biggest Bluetooth Earbud ever, so maybe that’s half of the answer. The other half could be subvocalization, but that’s mostly science fiction, although
not entirely
.
What do you think? Even telepathy probably has some downsides. You’d have to be careful what you think, right? What is the ideal human-computer interface? Or will future Star Fleet officers be typing on
molecular keyboards
? Or will it wind up
all in our brains
? Tell us what you think in the comments. | 71 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "8100383",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-02-19T15:29:31",
"content": "Why would less than 100% recognition mean something is still not right?Do two human beings talking to one another hear each other correctly 100% of the time?Maybe it’s not an achievable task.Yes, cowork... | 1,760,371,630.098475 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/19/in-a-world-without-usb/ | In A World Without USB… | Al Williams | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"access.bus",
"i2c"
] | It is easy to forget that many technology juggernauts weren’t always the only game in town. Ethernet seems ubiquitous today, but it had to fight past several competing standards. VHS and Blu-ray beat out their respective competitors. But what about USB? Sure, it was off to a rocky start in the beginning, but what was the real competition at that time? SCSI? Firewire? While those had plusses and minuses, neither were really in a position to fill the gap that USB would inhabit. But [Ernie Smith] remembers
ACCESS.bus
(or, sometimes, A.b) — what you might be using today if USB hadn’t taken over the world.
Back in the mid-1980s, there were several competing serial bus systems including Apple Desktop Bus and some other brand-specific things from companies like Commodore (the IEC bus) and Atari (SIO). The problem is that all of these things belong to one company. If you wanted to make, say, keyboards, this was terrible. Your Apple keyboard didn’t fit your Atari or your IBM computer. But there was a very robust serial protocol already in use — one you’ve probably used yourself. IIC or I2C (depending on who you ask).
I2C is robust, simple, and cheap to implement with reasonable licensing from Philips. It just needed a little tweaking to make it suitable for peripheral use, and that was the idea behind ACCESS.bus. [Ernie] tracked down a 1991
article that covered the technology
and explained a good bit of the how and why. You can also find a comparison of A.b, I2C, and SMBus in this
old datasheet
. You can even find the
3.0 version of the spec
online. While DEC was instrumental in the standard, some of their equipment used SERIAL.bus, which was identical except for using 12 V power and having a slightly different pinout.
The DEC Station 5000 was an early adopter of ACCESS.bus. From the user’s guide:
In theory, one ACCESS.bus port could handle 125 devices. It didn’t have a hub architecture like USB, but instead, you plugged one device into another. So your mouse plugs into your keyboard, which plugs into your printer, and finally connects to your PC.
The speed wasn’t that great — about 100 kilobits per second. So if ACCESS.bus had won, it would have needed to speed up when flash drives and the like became popular. However, ACCESS.bus does sort of live even today. Computer monitors that support DDC — that is, all of them in modern times — use a form of ACCESS.bus so the screen you are reading this on is using it right now so the monitor and PC can communicate things like refresh rates.
We love to read (and write) these deep dives into obscure tech. The
Avatar Shark
comes to mind. Or drives that
used photographic film
. | 26 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8100343",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-02-19T12:57:27",
"content": "ADB was fantastic, and I always wondered why PCs didn’t have anything similar. A a kid the way things daisy chained blew my mind!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,371,630.236789 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/19/mit-demonstrates-fully-3d-printed-active-electronic-components/ | MIT Demonstrates Fully 3D Printed, Active Electronic Components | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"3d printed",
"active component",
"circuit",
"conductive filament",
"diy",
"resettable fuse",
"transistor"
] | One can 3D print with conductive filament, and therefore plausibly create passive components like resistors. But what about
active
components, which typically require semiconductors? Researchers at MIT demonstrate
working concepts for a resettable fuse and logic gates
, completely 3D printed and semiconductor-free.
Now just to be absolutely clear — these are still just proofs of concept. To say they are big and perform poorly compared to their semiconductor equivalents would be an understatement. But they do work, and they are 100% 3D printed active electronic components, using commercially-available filament.
How does one make a working resettable fuse and transistor out of such stuff? By harnessing thermal expansion, essentially.
The conductive filament the researchers used is
Electrifi
by Multi3D, which is PLA combined with copper micro-particles. A segment printed in this filament is normally very conductive due to the densely-packed particles, but as temperature increases (beginning around 40° C) the polymer begins to soften and undergoes thermal expansion. This expansion separates the copper particles, causing a dramatic increase in electrical resistance as electrical pathways are disrupted. That’s pretty neat, but what really ties it together is that this behavior is self-resetting, and reversible. As long as the PLA isn’t straight up
melted
(that is to say, avoids going over about 150° C) then as the material cools it contracts and restores the conductive pathways to their original low-resistance state. Neat!
So where does the heat required come from? Simply passing enough current through the junction will do the job. By carefully controlling the size and shape of traces (something even hobbyist filament-based 3D printers are very good at) this effect can be made predictable and repeatable.
The simpler of the two test components uses the resistance spike as a self-resetting fuse. The printed component is designed such that current above a threshold triggers a surge in resistance, preventing damage to some theoretical circuitry downstream. As long as the component is not destroyed by heating it to the point that it melts, it self-resets as it cools.
The transistor is a bit more interesting. By designing two paths so that they intersect each other, one can be used as a control path and the other as a signal path. Applying a voltage to the control path electrically controls the resistance of the signal path, effectively acting as a transistor. Researchers combined these basic transistors into NOT, AND, and OR gates. One is shown here.
This whole system is scalable, low-cost, and highly accessible to just about anyone with some basic equipment. Of course, it has some drawbacks. The switching speed is slow (seconds rather than nanoseconds) and being thermally-driven means power consumption is high. Still, it’s pretty nifty stuff.
Check out the research paper
for all the nitty-gritty details.
We’ve seen
3D printed triboelectric generators
so it’s pretty exciting to now see printed active electronic components. Maybe someday they can be combined? | 27 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8100289",
"author": "strawberrymortallyb0bcea48e7",
"timestamp": "2025-02-19T09:47:46",
"content": "why?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8100330",
"author": "Jeremiasz Rebelka",
"timestamp": "2025-02-19T12:11:4... | 1,760,371,630.474143 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/18/belfry-openscad-library-bosl2-brings-useful-parts-and-tools-aplenty/ | Belfry OpenSCAD Library (BOSL2) Brings Useful Parts And Tools Aplenty | Donald Papp | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"3d model",
"cad",
"openscad",
"part design"
] | OpenSCAD has a lot of fans around these parts — if you’re unaware, it’s essentially a code-based way of designing 3D models. Instead of drawing them up in a CAD program, one writes a script that defines the required geometry. All that is made a little easier with the
Belfry OpenSCAD Library
(BOSL2).
Designing a part like this is a cinch with BOSL2.
BOSL2 has an extensive library of base shapes, advanced functions for manipulating models, and some really nifty tools for creating attachment points on parts and aligning components with one another. If that sounds handy for designing useful objects, you’re in for even more of a treat when you see their functions for
gears
,
hinges
,
screws
, and more.
There’s even one that covers bottle necks and caps. (Those are all standardized by the way, so it’s never been easier to
interface to existing bottles or caps
in a project.)
OpenSCAD really is very versatile software. It powers useful tools like this
screw, washer, and nut generator
as well as having more unusual applications like
a procedural terrain generator
. It’s free, so if you’ve never looked into it,
check it out
! | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8100328",
"author": "drgerg",
"timestamp": "2025-02-19T12:08:04",
"content": "Thanks! That looks useful.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8100349",
"author": "Christopher Dubea",
"timestamp": "2025-02-19T13:14:33",
"... | 1,760,371,630.299454 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/18/vacuum-forming-with-3d-printed-moulds-and-sheets/ | Vacuum Forming With 3D Printed Moulds And Sheets | Jenny List | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed vacuum forming",
"vacuum forming"
] | Vacuum forming is perhaps one of the less popular tools in the modern maker arsenal, something which surprises us a bit because it offers many possibilities. We’ve created our own vacuum forms on 3D printed moulds for ages, so it’s interesting to see [Pisces Printing] following the same path. But what you might not realize at first is that the
vacuum forming sheets themselves are also 3D printed
.
The full video is below the break, and in it he details making a mould from PETG, and in particular designing it for easy release. The part he’s making is a belt guard for a table top lathe, and the PETG sheet he’s forming it from is also 3D printed. He makes the point that it’s by no means perfect, for example he shows us a bit of layer separation, but it seems promising enough for further experimentation. His vacuum forming setup seems particularly small, which looks as though it makes the job of making a sheet somewhat simpler.
The cost of a vacuum forming sheet of whichever polymer is hardly high, so we can’t see this technique making sense for everyday use. But as we’ve seen in previous experiments, the printed sheets so make it easy to
add color and texture to the final product
, which obviously adds some value to the technique.
Thanks [Tomas Harvie Mudrunka] for the tip. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8100199",
"author": "trash hunter",
"timestamp": "2025-02-19T03:25:03",
"content": "Surprising indeed, I just saved a vacuum cleaner from the trash the other day so that I can soon add that tool to my collection.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,371,630.402587 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/18/space-monitor-points-out-celestial-objects/ | Space Monitor Points Out Celestial Objects | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Space"
] | [
"display",
"orbit",
"satellite tracker"
] | Logically we understand that the other planets in the solar system, as well as humanity’s contributions to the cosmos such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station, are zipping around us
somewhere
— but it can be difficult to conceptualize. Is Jupiter directly above your desk? Is the ISS currently underneath you?
If you’ve ever found yourself wondering such things, you might want to look
into making something like Space Monitor.
Designed by [Kevin Assen], this little gadget is able to literally point out the locations of objects in space. Currently it’s limited to the ISS and Mars, but adding new objects to track is just a matter of loading in the appropriate orbital data.
In addition to slewing around its 3D printed indicator, the Space Monitor also features a round LCD that displays the object currently being tracked, as well as the weather. Reading through the list of features and capabilities of the ESP32-powered device, we get the impression that [Kevin] is using it as a sort of development platform for various concepts. Features like remote firmware updates and the ability to point smartphones to the device’s configuration page via on-screen QR aren’t necessarily needed on a personal-use device, but its great practice for when you do eventually send one of your creations out into the scary world beyond your workbench.
If you’re interested in something a bit more elaborate, check out this impressive
multi-level satellite tracker we covered back in 2018
. | 22 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8099835",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-02-18T12:14:01",
"content": "Now that’s interesting, I wonder if it would be strong enough to point a yagi antenna…Thinks Ham thoughts",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8099860",
... | 1,760,371,630.357323 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/17/get-ready-for-kicad-9/ | Get Ready For KiCAD 9! | Jenny List | [
"News",
"Software Development"
] | [
"eda",
"KiCAD",
"KiCAD 9"
] | Rev up your browsers, package managers, or whatever other tool you use to avail yourself of new software releases, because the KiCAD team have announced that barring any major bugs being found in the next few hours,
tomorrow should see the release of version 9 of the open source EDA suite
. Who knows, depending on where you are in the world that could have already happened when you read this.
Skimming through
the long list of enhancements brought into this version
there’s one thing that strikes us; how this is now a list of upgrades and tweaks to a stable piece of software rather than essential features bringing a rough and ready package towards usability. There was a time when using KiCAD was a frustrating experience of many quirks and interface annoyances, but successive versions have improved it beyond measure. We would pass comment that we wished all open source software was as polished, but the fact is that much of the commercial software in this arena is not as good as this.
So head on over and kick the tires on this new KiCAD release, assuming that it passes those final checks. We look forward to the community’s verdict on it. | 58 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "8099806",
"author": "laowai",
"timestamp": "2025-02-18T08:27:40",
"content": "Awesome that they’re still improving it.I wonder if it can import other electronic CAD format files?The main thing keeping me from using KiCAD is a library of stuff in the proprietary ‘service’ software.",... | 1,760,371,630.565369 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/17/integrated-micro-lab-keeps-track-of-ammonia-in-the-blood/ | Integrated Micro Lab Keeps Track Of Ammonia In The Blood | Dan Maloney | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"ammonia",
"Berthelot",
"cirrhosis",
"liver",
"reactor",
"reagent"
] | We’ve all got our health-related crosses to bear, and even if you’re currently healthy, it’s only a matter of time before entropy catches up to you. For [Markus Bindhammer], it caught up to him in a big way: liver disease, specifically cirrhosis. The disease has a lot of consequences, none of which are pleasant, like abnormally high ammonia concentration in the blood. So naturally, [Markus] built
an ammonia analyzer to monitor his blood
.
Measuring the amount of ammonia in blood isn’t as straightforward as you think. Yes, there are a few cheap MEMS-based sensors, but they tend to be good only for qualitative measurements, and other solid-state sensors that are more quantitative tend to be pretty expensive since they’re mostly intended for industrial applications. [Marb]’s approach is based on the so-called Berthelot method, which uses a two-part reagent. In the presence of ammonia (or more precisely, ammonium ions), the reagent generates a dark blue-green species that absorbs light strongly at 660 nm. Measuring the absorbance at that wavelength gives an approximation of the ammonia concentration.
[Marb]’s implementation of this process uses a two-stage reactor. The first stage heats and stirs the sample in a glass tube using a simple cartridge heater from a 3D printer head and a stirrer made from a stepper motor with a magnetic arm. Heating the sample volatilizes any ammonia in it, which mixes with room air pumped into the chamber by a small compressor. The ammonia-laden air moves to the second chamber containing the Berthelot reagent, stirred by another stepper-powered stir plate. A glass frit diffuses the gas into the reagent, and a 660-nm laser and photodiode detect any color change. The video below shows the design and construction of the micro lab along with some test runs.
We wish [Markus] well in his journey, of course, especially since he’s been an active part of our community for years. His chemistry-related projects run the gamut from
a homebrew gas chromatograph
to
chemical flip flops
, with a lot more to boot. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8099799",
"author": "Menno",
"timestamp": "2025-02-18T07:58:36",
"content": "And before you accuse Markus of being an alcoholic: cirrhosis can have multiple causes, from hepatitis to NASH (nonalcoholic steatohepatitis).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,630.61203 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/17/a-forgotten-consumer-pc-becomes-a-floating-point-powerhouse/ | A Forgotten Consumer PC Becomes A Floating Point Powerhouse | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"8087",
"intel",
"math coprocessor"
] | [Michael Wessel] found some of his old DOS 3D graphics software and tried to run it on an 8088 PC. The tale of adding an 8087 co-processor to speed up the rendering was anything but straightforward,
resulting in a useful little project
.
There was a point around the end of the 1980s when the world of PCs had moved on to the 386, but the humble 8086 and 8088 hung around at the consumer end of the market. For Europeans that meant a variety of non-standard machines with brand names such as Amstrad and Schneider, and even surprisingly, later on Sinclair and Commodore too.
Of these the Schneider Euro PC was an all-in-one design reminiscent of an Amiga or Atari ST, packing a serviceable 8088 PC with a single 3.5″ floppy drive. A cheap machine like this was never thought to need an 8087, and lacked the usual socket on the motherboard, so he made a small PCB daughter board for the 8088 socket with space for both chips.
It’s a surprisingly simple circuit, as obviously the two chips were meant to exist together. It certainly had the desired effect on his frame rate, though we’re not sure how many other Euro PC users will need it. It does make us curious though, as to how quickly a modern microcontroller could emulate an 8087 for an even faster render time. Meanwhile if you’re curious about the 8087,
of course [Ken Shirriff] has taken a look at it
. | 24 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8099331",
"author": "targetdrone",
"timestamp": "2025-02-18T00:33:38",
"content": "Iirc that’s how 8087 (and 80287) upgrades were frequently sold, as a daughter board that occupied the original CPU socket, and you moved the CPU to the daughter board.",
"parent_id": null,
"de... | 1,760,371,630.671053 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/17/probably-the-most-esoteric-commodore-64-magazine/ | Probably The Most Esoteric Commodore 64 Magazine | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"commodore 64",
"disk magazine",
"floppy disk"
] | The world of computer enthusiasts has over time generated many subcultures and fandoms, each of which has in turn spawned its own media. [Intric8] has shared the tale of his falling down a rabbit hole as he traced one of them,
a particularly esoteric disk magazine for the Commodore 64
. The disks are bright yellow, and come with intricate home-made jackets and labels. Sticking them into a 1541 drive does nothing, because these aren’t standard fare, instead they require GEOS and a particularly upgraded machine. They appear at times in Commodore swap meets, and since they formed a periodical there are several years’ worth to collect that extend into the 2000s, long after the heyday of the 64.
Picking up nuggets of information over time, he traces them to Oregon, and the Astoria Commodore User Group, and to [Lord Ronin], otherwise known as David Mohr. Sadly the magazine ended with his death in 2009, but until then he produced an esoteric selection of stories, adventure games, and other software for surely one of the most exclusive computer clubs in existence. It’s a fascinating look into computer culture from before the Internet, even though by 2009 the Internet had well and truly eclipsed it, when disks like these were treasured for the information they contained. So if you find any of these yellow Penny Farthing disks, make sure that they or at least their contents are preserved.
Surprisingly,
this isn’t the only odd format disk magazine we’ve seen. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8099302",
"author": "Steven-X",
"timestamp": "2025-02-17T23:11:21",
"content": "I used Geos on my C64. It was interesting to have a “Mac like” desktop, except you used your joystick to move the cursor around!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,630.713091 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/17/measuring-local-variances-in-earths-magnetic-field/ | Measuring Local Variances In Earth’s Magnetic Field | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Science"
] | [
"compass",
"earth",
"experiment",
"field strength",
"gauss",
"magnet",
"magnetic field"
] | Although the Earth’s magnetic field is reliable enough for navigation and is also essential for blocking harmful solar emissions and for improving radio communications, it’s not a uniform strength everywhere on the planet. Much like how inconsistencies in the density of the materials of the planet can impact the local gravitational force ever so slightly, so to can slight changes impact the strength of the magnetic field from place to place.
And it doesn’t take too much to measure this impact on your own, as [efeyenice983] demonstrates here
.
To measure this local field strength, the first item needed is a working compass. With the compass aligned to north, a magnet is placed with its poles aligned at a right angle to the compass. The deflection angle of the needle is noted for varying distances of the magnet, and with some quick math the local field strength of the Earth’s magnetic field can be calculated based on the strength of the magnet and the amount of change of the compass needle when under its influence.
Using this method, [efeyenice983] found that the Earth’s magnetic field strength at their location was about 0.49 Gauss, which is well within 0.25 to 0.65 Gauss that is typically found on the planet’s surface. Not only does the magnetic field strength vary with location, it’s been generally decreasing in strength on average over the past century or so as well, and the poles themselves aren’t stationary either.
Check out this article which shows just how much the poles have shifted over the last few decades
. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8099256",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-02-17T19:47:29",
"content": "The hack here is not “measuring variances in Earth’s magnetic field”, it’s how to measure the magnetic field with nothing but a compass and another magnet.It produces a measure of the Earth’s field, relative... | 1,760,371,630.780296 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/17/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-cutting-board-keyboard/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Cutting Board Keyboard | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"casio",
"casio calculator",
"cutting board",
"flashing keyboards",
"holy grail",
"IBM Selectric",
"Nintendo Switch",
"QMK",
"Selectric II"
] | Doesn’t this look fantastic? Hard to believe it, but
the base of this keyboard began life as a cutting board
, and there’s a gallery to prove it. This is actually [androidbrick]’s second foray into this type of upcycling.
This time, [androidbrick] used a FiiO KB3 and replaced the bottom half of the plastic shell with a hand-routed kitchen cutting board. The battery has been disabled and it works only in wired mode, which is fine with me, because then you get to use a curly cord if you want.
Image by [androidbrick] via
reddit
The switches are mostly Gateron EF Currys, though [androidbrick] left some of the original Gateron G Pro 3.0 on the stabilized keys just for comparison. As you might imagine, the overall sound is much deeper with a wooden bottom. You can check out the sound test on
YouTube
if you’d like, though it’s pretty quiet, so turn it up.
Those keycaps look even nicer from top-down, which you’ll see in the sound test video linked above. Just search ‘JCM MOA GMK’ on Ali and you’ll find them in a bunch of colorways for around $20. Apparently, [androidbrick] was saving them for months, just waiting for this build.
Via
reddit
Why You Should Always Re-flash New Keyboards
About a month ago, [Artistic-Art-3985] bought the cheapest Corne available on Ali and
posted a breakdown of the security and electronics
.
Image by [Artistic-Art-3985] via
reddit
The firmware turned out to be different from the current release in the original repo, which of course is a concern. When asked about it, the seller went silent. So did some other sellers when asked these types of questions.
In a follow-up post
, [Artistic] does a great job outlining why you should always re-flash your new keyboards, especially the cheap ones. Although it may seem like a long shot, the threat is real, and he points to a couple examples of shenanigans, like keyloggers.
In a comment to his original post
, [Artistic] explains that this particular Ali Corne comes with QMK Vial, which allows you to change the layout on a whim and have it update instantly. This means you don’t have to flash it, but you should, and it’s easy to do and either stick with Vial, or move to straight QMK. He also outlines how it’s done.
The Centerfold: the Hackaday Every Day Carry
Image by [devpew] via
reddit
Did I do it?
Did I find the ideal Hackaday centerfold?
I’ll totally forgive the lack of desk mat, or just pretend that it’s really big and resembles the surface of the moon.
So what we’ve got here is a
Skeletyl
keyboard along with some friends, like a Flipper Zero and a
Pwnagotchi
. Who knows why the knife, but then again knives are useful I suppose. I really dig the cute little
trackball
, though it seems like it would be fiddly to actually use. This series of posts by [devpew] kicked off a whole everyday carry thing on reddit, which was enjoyable.
Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad?
Send me a picture
along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!
Historical Clackers: My Own Personal Holy Grail
So your girl did some wheeling and dealing this weekend and traded four machines plus some cash for her holy grail typewriter, a blue correcting IBM Selectric II. She also got a typewriter table and a dust cover in the deal. It was quite a weekend, really. Got a surprise band saw for late-Christmas, too.
Here’s the best part. When I bought Selectric Blue (it was between that and calling her “Bertha the Bluegirl”), she was in a tan case. A grail for sure, but not the
holy
grail. I was happy enough to get a working II, mind you. But on a whim, I asked the guy if he ever saw any green ones come across his bench. I don’t know why I didn’t ask about blue; it’s my favorite color after all. But then he tells me he has blue and black cases available right then, though they probably wouldn’t fit the machine I bought. But then we figured out that they did, and I met up with him the following day to turn her blue. Now she’s all I ever wanted. I even got the type ball of my dreams —
Adjutant
.
(Note: I still love my IBM Wheelwriter 5, which is basically the 80s version of the Selectric. I just love them differently, is all, like having a pair of cats. The Wheelwriter is plastic, for one thing, and the Selectric is almost solid steel. But the Wheelwriter is so snappy and types so crisply, so…)
So, you probably want to know things about the Selectric II. It is the sequel to the Selectric I, which was only called the I after the II came out. The original Selectric wowed the world with its spinning golf ball type element, which replaced the swinging type bars of most typewriters and hearkened back to. My machine is in a way the Selectric II.5, as the first IIs introduced in 1971 didn’t have correction built in — that came along in 1973.
So much has been written about Selectrics. But did you know
they were part of Cold War-era espionage?
ICYMI: Casio Calculator Gets New Keyboard
Image by [Poking Technology] via
YouTube
Do you recall the 1985 Casio FX-451 calculator? It was a pocket-sized foldout scientific wonder, with both hard keys and a set of membrane keys built into the case.
[Poking Technology] had one with a broken membrane keyboard and decided to
upgrade it to a mechanical keyboard
. Of course, it’s no longer pocket-sized, but who’s counting?
If you like build detail, you’re in for a treat, because there are two videos covering the entire process. It was a challenge to disassemble the thing, and soldering wires to the keyboard was no picnic, either — some lines are on the back of PCB and go under the main IC on their way to the top. Excellent work, [Poking]!
Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards?
Help me out by sending in a link or two
. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to
email me directly
. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8099371",
"author": "LambdaMikel",
"timestamp": "2025-02-18T03:55:16",
"content": "Some really beautiful creations, love it!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8099816",
"author": "metalman",
"timestamp": "2025-02-18T09:50:... | 1,760,371,630.82748 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/18/a-unique-linear-position-sensor-using-magnetostriction/ | A Unique Linear Position Sensor Using Magnetostriction | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"coil",
"magnet",
"magnetostriction",
"magnetostrictive",
"nickel",
"torsion",
"Windenmann"
] | To the extent that you’re familiar with magnetostriction, you probably know that it’s what makes big transformers hum, or that it’s what tips you off if you happen to walk out of a store without paying for something. But magnetostriction has other uses, too, such as in
this clever linear position sensor
.
Magnetostriction is just the tendency for magnetic materials to change size or shape slightly while undergoing magnetization, thanks to the tiny magnetic domains shifting within the material while they’re aligning. [Florian B.]’s sensor uses a side effect of magnetostriction known as the Wiedenmann effect, which causes a wire to experience a twisting force if a current pulse is applied to it in a magnetic field. When the current pulse is turned off, a mechanical wave travels along the wire to a coil, creating a signal. The difference in time between sending the pulse and receiving the reflection can be used to calculate the position of the magnet along the wire.
To turn that principle into a practical linear sensor, [Florian B.] used nickel wire stretched tightly down the middle of a PVC tube. At one end is a coil of copper magnet wire, while the other end has a damper to prevent reflections. Around the tube is a ring-shaped cursor magnet, which can move up and down the tube. An exciter circuit applies the current pulse to the wire, and an oscilloscope is used to receive the signal from the wire.
This project still appears to be in the prototype phase, as evidenced by the Fischertechnik test rig. [Florian] has been working on the exciter circuit most recently, but he’s done quite a bit of work on optimizing the cursor magnet and the coil configuration, as well as designs for the signal amplifier. It’s a pretty neat project, and we’re looking forward to updates.
If you need a deeper dive into magnetostriction,
[Ben Krasnow] points the way
. | 16 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8100174",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2025-02-19T01:13:45",
"content": "Everything old is new again. The Summagraphics tablets made in the 1980s uses this principle, in two dimensions. Actually, it had a set of parallel nickel ribbons stretched one direction, and it u... | 1,760,371,631.145059 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/18/auto-download-your-kindle-books-before-february-26th-deadline/ | Auto-Download Your Kindle Books Before February 26th Deadline | Navarre Bartz | [
"Kindle hacks"
] | [
"amazon",
"bun",
"drm",
"ebooks",
"enshittification",
"kindle",
"typescript"
] | With the news that Amazon will no longer be allowing users to download their Kindle books after February 26th, many are scrambling to download their books before it’s too late. The most up-to-date project for automating this process appears to be
Amazon Kindle Bulk Downloader
.
As the company that famously removed
1984
from thousands of devices without users permission, this is a move that shouldn’t be surprising, but is still disappointing, especially for those of us that were somewhat early adopters of ebooks with Kindles that don’t have a WiFi connection. (Yes, you can tell us about how you bought a Sony reader before the Kindle even came out in the comments.)
The Typescript-coded tool runs inside bun which can be installed in any of the big three OSes and even has a handy Docker image if that’s more your speed. Whether you use this tool or not, if you have any Kindle books we’d implore you to download them now.
Once you’ve downloaded those books, how about cracking the DRM either
with LEGO
or with
software
like Calibre. You could load it on a completely
Open Source Reader
then. | 86 | 34 | [
{
"comment_id": "8100066",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-02-18T21:21:20",
"content": "How on Earth are you supposed to read them if you can’t download them? Are Kindles going to start doing some sort of remote desktop type of protocol to access books? That’s the only way you could really... | 1,760,371,631.403773 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/18/let-there-be-light-the-engineering-of-optical-hdmi/ | Let There Be Light: The Engineering Of Optical HDMI | Heidi Ulrich | [
"hardware",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"data transmission",
"hdmi",
"optical",
"optics",
"photodiode",
"TDMS",
"VCSEL",
"video",
"wavelength"
] | In a recent video, [Shahriar] from The Signal Path has unveiled the intricate design and architecture of
optical HDMI cables
, offering a cost-effective solution to extend HDMI 2.0 connections beyond the limitations of traditional copper links. This exploration is particularly captivating for those passionate about innovative hardware hacks and signal transmission technologies.
[Shahriar] begins by dissecting the fundamentals of HDMI high-speed data transmission, focusing on the Transition Minimized Differential Signaling (TMDS) standard. He then transitions to the challenges of converting from twisted-pair copper to optical lanes, emphasizing the pivotal roles of Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) and PIN photodiodes. These components are essential for transforming electrical signals into optical ones and vice versa, enabling data transmission over greater distances without significant signal degradation.
A standout aspect of this teardown is the detailed examination of the optical modules, highlighting the use of free-space optics and optical confinement techniques with lasers and detectors. [Shahriar] captures the eye diagram of the received high-speed lane and confirms the VCSELs’ optical wavelength at 850 nm. Additionally, he provides a microscopic inspection of the TX and RX chips, revealing the intricate VCSEL and photodetector arrays. His thorough analysis offers invaluable insights into the electronic architecture of optical HDMI cables, shedding light on the complexities of signal integrity and the innovative solutions employed to overcome them.
For enthusiasts eager to take a deeper look into the nuances of optical
HDMI technology
, [Shahriar]’s comprehensive teardown serves as an excellent resource. It not only gives an insight in the components and design choices involved, but also inspires further exploration into enhancing data transmission methods. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8099995",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-02-18T20:32:11",
"content": "Ah, cool, I saw one of these last week, and wondered what was in the cable. I thought it was pretty thick for just a single fiber, but figured they hardened it for the typical target environment.I also wond... | 1,760,371,631.192876 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/18/hackaday-europe-2025-speakers-lightning-talks-and-more/ | Hackaday Europe 2025: Speakers, Lightning Talks, And More! | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"Featured",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"2025 Hackaday Europe",
"lightning talks",
"speakers"
] | If you’ve been waiting for news from our upcoming Hackaday Europe event in March, wait no longer. We’re excited to announce the first slice of our wonderful speakers lineup!
Get your tickets now
,
Hackaday Europe is going down again in Berlin this year on March 15th and 16th at
MotionLab
. It’s Hackaday, but in real life, and it’s too much fun. The badge is off-the-scale cool, powered by the incredible creativity of
our community who entered the Supercon SAO contest
last fall, and we’re absolutely stoked to be tossing the four winning entries into your schwag bag in Europe.
If you already know you’ll be attending and would like to give a seven-minute Lightning Talk on Sunday, we’re also opening up the call for talks there.
Tell us now what you’d like to talk about so we can all hear it on Sunday morning
.
We’re looking forward to the talks and to seeing you all there! We’re getting the last few speakers ironed out, have a keynote talk to announce, and, of course, will open up workshop signups. So stay tuned!
Bunnie Huang
Seeing Through Silicon with IRIS Imaging
IRIS (InfraRed, In-Situ) is a technique for imaging silicon chips in CSP-type packages without removing them from the circuit board. In this short talk, I’ll go over the basics of how the technique works, show a couple of ways to implement it, and share some images of chips.
Sera Evcimen
Hardware Startup/Product Pitfalls
This talk is designed to demystify what causes failures and help hardware startups and innovation projects navigate the complex journey of hardware development by identifying and avoiding common pitfalls. With a focus on providing some examples and actionable strategies, it aims to equip teams to overcome challenges and build a strong foundation for success.
Erik Bosman
Creating light sculptures for fun and, … mostly for fun.
This talk will be about solving interesting problems that I created for myself in the process of creating light sculptures:
– Calculating polyhedral shapes
– Turning those into laser-cut pieces, or oddly-shaped PCBs
– Various methods of routing and driving LEDs
– and creating software that takes advantage of the sculptural nature of the light installation.
Niklas Roy
Vectors, Pixels, Plotters and Public Participation
In his talk, Niklas will highlight some of his latest projects that use DIY machines to involve communities in creating art together. From a graffiti robot to a giant mosaic that was designed by an entire neighborhood with the help of a mobile arcade machine, he’ll share the stories behind his inventions. He will discuss his sources of inspiration, the creative process and thoughts about inclusiveness guiding the development of the machines, and the joy of watching diverse people interact with and contribute to these unconventional art pieces.
Daniel Büchele and Andre Zibell
Developing a NFC-based decentralized payment system for a music festival
For a small volunteer-run music festival we designed and built a custom decentralized NFC payment system. Due to the nature of the festival, the design of the system and hardware had some unique requirements: It had to be fully decentralized and not rely on network connection, which created some interesting security challenges. We also developed custom hardware terminals (based on ESP32) to be used at point-of-sale.
Andy Geppert, Anders Nielsen, and Pierre Muth
The Core64 – NeonPixels – 65uino collaboration
Join us to learn how three unique Hackaday projects came together to create something new for 1975, thanks to international collaboration. (Yes, that’s 50 years ago!)
Alun Morris
Half-size Hacking: 0.05″ Matrix Boards Under the Microscope
How do you make a prototype really tiny without designing a PCB? What you need to get started. How do you connect to standard modules with 0.1″ headers? And the world’s smallest multi-channel voltmeter.
Daniel Dakhno
Hacking a pinball machine
This talk explains how we modernized a classic pinball machine by replacing the mechanical guts with a Raspberry Pi, multiple STM32, and a CAN bus, creating infrastructure that can be exploited far beyond the realm of our project. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8101456",
"author": "davedarko",
"timestamp": "2025-02-21T23:35:48",
"content": "err, wrong chat? or at least wrong article you’ve posted on, mate.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,631.08886 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/18/it-works-for-locomotives-why-not-series-hybrid-semi-trucks/ | Series Hybrid Semi-Trucks: It Works For Locomotives So Why Not? | Maya Posch | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"diesel-electric",
"electric semi-truck",
"series hybrid"
] | The current Edison Motors semi-truck prototype. (Credit: Edison Motors)
Canadian start-up Edison Motors may not seem like much at first glance — consisting of fewer than two dozen people in a large tent — but their idea of bringing series hybrid technology to semi-trucks may just have wheels. The concept and Edison Motors’ progress is explained in
a recent video
by
The Drive
on Youtube, starting off with the point that diesel-electric technology is an obvious fit for large trucks like this. After all, it works for trains.
In a series hybrid, there are two motors: a diesel generator and an electric motor (
diesel-electric
). This was first used in ships in the 1900s and would see increasing use in railway locomotives starting in the early 20th century. In the case of Edison Motors’ current prototype design there is a 9.0 liter Scania diesel engine which is used solely as a generator at a fixed RPM. This is a smaller engine than the ~15 liter engine in a conventional configuration and also doesn’t need a gearbox.
Compared to a battery-electric semi-truck, like the
Tesla Semi,
it weighs far less. And unlike a hydrogen-fuel cell semi-truck it actually exists and doesn’t require new technologies to be invented. Instead a relatively small battery is kept charged by the diesel generator and power fed back into the battery from regenerative braking. This increases efficiency in many ways, especially in start-stop traffic, while not suffering a weight penalty from a heavy battery pack and being able to use existing service stations, and jerry cans of diesel.
In addition to full semi-trucks Edison Motors also works on conversion kits for existing semi-trucks, pick-up trucks and more. Considering how much of the North American rolling stock on its rail systems is diesel-electric, it’s more amazing that it would have taken so long for the same shift to series hybrid on its road. Even locomotives occasionally used direct-drive diesel, but the benefits of diesel-electric hybrids quickly made that approach obsolete. | 71 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8099905",
"author": "Bob the builder",
"timestamp": "2025-02-18T16:53:09",
"content": "I don’t know why but hybrid trucks were a big thing in the EU about 10 years ago, but it looks like the manufacturers stopped producing them. The Volvo FE Hybrid for example was a great truck, but... | 1,760,371,631.528154 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/18/hack-on-self-one-minute-blitz/ | Hack On Self: One Minute Blitz | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"lifehack",
"task list"
] | Have you yet stumbled upon the principle of “consistently applied small amounts of work can guarantee completion of large projects”? I have, and it’s worked out well for me – on days when I could pay attention to them, that is.
A couple times, I’ve successfully completed long-term projects by making sure to do only a little bit of it, but I do it every day. It helps a lot with the feeling you get when you approach a large project – say, cleaning up your desk after a few days of heavy-duty hacking. If you’re multi-discipline, and especially if you happen to use multiple desks like me, a desk can stay occupied for a while.
Can you do one minute of desk cleaning today? Sure doesn’t feel like much time, or much effort. In a week’s time, however, you might just have a clean desk. Cleaning discrete messes is where this concept applies pretty well – you couldn’t wash floors like this, but you could wipe off the dust from a few surfaces for sure.
Now, I want to make this a habit – use it on like, seven different things a day. I wrote a script to make it possible – here’s how it works for me right now.
Building Upon The Seen-Before
I relied on a few previously-discussed things for this one. Main one is
the Headphone Friend project
– a pocketable Linux device, streaming audio from my laptop as I walk around my room. As a reminder, the headphones also have a button that emits HID events when pressed/released, and I have a small piece of software that can map actions to combinations of short-medium-long presses of that button.
Another necessity was a bit of software – dodging my questing system “away from laptop = system breaks” mistake, I wanted to put everything into my headphones, even the task names, trying to reach a “flow” through a series of 1-minute tasks. Of course, I reused the old sound library, but I also needed TTS generation on the fly! I went for PicoTTS with a simple wrapper – it’s not the best TTS system, but it’s damn fast, and perfectly suited for a prototype.
For the button-to-action mapping script, I had to expose some sort of API, to avoid merging the button scanning code and the task switching code. After a little deliberation, I picked websockets – they work decently well, and they’re quite portable, so I could run the button monitoring itself on the Headphone Friend device, and the main software on my laptop, for prototyping purposes.
Now, the more interesting question – how do I build the algorithm?
Can Be More, Can’t Be Less
The main thing about the one-minute timers like these is that you can spend longer on the task if you really get into it, you just can’t spend less than one minute. So, the one-minute upper bound is not enforced – only the lower bound is, really, which means that a “next task” button is a requirement.
At the script’s core, I wrote a little state machine describing the “sprints”, and tied my tiny notification-sound-playback library into it. It goes through the five tasks I’ve defined, making a little “beep” after a minute has passed, and waiting for me to press the “next” keypress signaling that I’m done with the task. After five tasks are done, it stops, and waits for the “start” magic keypress sequence – maybe the next sprint is tomorrow, maybe it’s a couple days later, but I get there eventually.
So far, I’ve only had to modify the code a little bit – each task now has a name in the system, but also an actually TTS-pronounceable string, since the picoTTS model does mis-pronounce here and there. Other than that, the very simple prototype works. I’ve tried to upgrade it from picoTTS, compiling
piper
that can do a good few different voices and languages, but I’ve been firmly stuck on
cmake
intricacies so far.
Middle-Of-Project Lull
Currently, I’m starting with five tasks – kitchen counter cleaning, hardware desk cleaning, sorting the clothes (in whichever way they need sorting), and cleaning the floors in two rooms. That makes for five minutes minimum, and oftentimes, it’s really just five minutes – to me, feels like it’s important not to get into the flow too much, otherwise the five-minute blitz might become a twenty-minute one, and it gets into “kind a bother to do” mental territory.
The result is, my cooking and hacking surfaces are a little more cleaner and more ready to go on average, and it’s easier to get clothes washing done if there isn’t an unsorted pile to deal with already. I think I most enjoy the movement of it – it’s become a nice way to spend 5-10 minutes moving around the house, breaking the rut. I do need to add some sort of “stop”/”pause” mechanism – sometimes I get too involved in a particular task and could really use a break. My state machine isn’t yet involved enough for this, and maybe soon this might need an overhaul.
At the moment, I’m also looking to tie this into my questing system – I haven’t attached logging to this one yet, but since the questing system includes that, it’d be two-birds-with-one-stone approach. For the questing system, I’m still using the text file backend, which does limit things, but I’ve been meaning to add external action support to it anyway – tying task completion to quest progression is a no-brainer!
Currently, this script and I are in the honeymoon phase: it’s working but I’m waiting for it to fail in more ways, and seeing whether it survives long-term. Based on lessons I’ve been trying to pull from the questing system, I’m trying not to overstretch it – five tasks is enough. For now, it’s pretty nice to be on the island of success in a sea of older solutions that withered away. This time, I’m writing before the full end-conclusion phase, because it’s nice and reassuring when projects work out, and I’d just like to share in that a little bit. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8099900",
"author": "David M",
"timestamp": "2025-02-18T16:29:09",
"content": "I’ve been using a variation of this for years to trick myself into doing things I really don’t feel like doing – forcing myself to do at least ten minutes of whatever task. Inevitably it turns into an hou... | 1,760,371,631.631579 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/18/give-your-animal-crossing-villagers-the-gift-of-linux/ | Give YourAnimal CrossingVillagers The Gift Of Linux | Tom Nardi | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"animal crossing",
"Embedded Linux",
"emulator",
"linux"
] | If you’ve played any of the versions of Nintendo’s
Animal Crossing
over the years, you’ll know that eventually you get to the point where you’ve maxed out your virtual house and filled it with all the furniture you could possibly want — which is arguably as close to “winning” the game as you can get.
But now thanks to the work of [decrazyo] there’s a piece of furniture that you can add to your
Animal Crossing
house that will never get old:
an x86 emulator that boots Linux
. As explained in the video below, this trick leverages the fact that Nintendo had already built a highly accurate Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator into
Animal Crossing
on the GameCube, which could be used to run a handful of classic games from within the player’s virtual living room. But it turns out that you can get that emulator to load a user-provided ROM from the GameCube’s memory card, which opens the doors to all sorts of mischief.
In this case, all [decrazyo] had to do was prepare an NES ROM that booted into Linux. That might seem like a tall order, but considering he had
already worked on a port of Unix to the classic console
, it’s not like he was going in blind. He identified the minimal
Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset (ELKS)
as his target operating system, but wanted to avoid the hassle of re-writing the whole thing for the 8-bit CPU in the NES. That meant adding
another
emulator to the mix.
If porting Linux to the NES sounded tough, running an x86 emulator on the console must be pure madness. But in reality, it’s not far off from several projects we’ve seen in the past. If you can
boot Linux on an ATmega328
via an emulated RISC-V processor, why not x86 on the NES? In both cases, the only problem is performance: the emulated system ends up running at only a tiny fraction of real-speed, meaning booting a full OS could take hours.
As if things couldn’t get complicated enough, when [decrazyo] tried to boot the x86 emulator ROM,
Animal Crossing
choked. It turned out (perhaps unsurprisingly) that his ROM was using some features the emulator didn’t support, and was using twice as much RAM as normal. Some re-writes to the emulator sorted out the unsupported features, but there was no getting around the RAM limitation. Ultimately, [decrazyo] had to create a patch for
Animal Crossing
that doubled the memory of the in-game emulator.
Still with us? So the final setup is a patched
Animal Crossing
, which is running an in-game NES emulator, which is running a ROM that contains an x86 emulator, which is finally booting a minimal Linux environment at something like 1/64th normal speed. Are we having fun yet?
Despite its age and cutesy appearance, the original Animal Crossing has turned out to be a
surprisingly fertile playground for hackers
. | 11 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8099850",
"author": "Tony Moncter",
"timestamp": "2025-02-18T13:33:19",
"content": "yes, but can it run Doom?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8099855",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-02-18T13:55:23",
... | 1,760,371,631.582381 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/20/youve-got-all-year-to-print-this-marble-machine-ornament-for-your-christmas-tree/ | You’ve Got All Year To Print This Marble Machine Ornament For Your Christmas Tree | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"marble machine",
"marbles",
"motor",
"steel ball"
] | Most Christmas ornaments just hang there and look pretty. [Sean Hodgins] decided to whip up something altogether fancier and more mechanical. It’s
a real working marble machine that hangs from the tree!
The build is simple enough, beginning with a translucent Christmas ornament shell readily available from most craft stores. Inside, a small motor spins a pinion, which turns a larger gear inside the body. As the larger gear spins, magnets embedded inside pick up steel balls from the base of the ornament and lift them up to the top. As they reach their zenith, they’re plucked off by a scoop, and then they roll down a spiral inside. As for power, [Sean] simply handled that with a couple of wires feeding the motor from a USB power bank. Just about any small battery pack would do fine.
The build is beautiful to watch and to listen to, with a gentle clacking as the balls circulate around. Files are on
MakerWorld
for the curious. We’ve featured some great
Christmas decorations before, too
. Video after the break. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8100825",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-02-20T15:20:18",
"content": "xmas is early this year",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8100843",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-02-20T15:50:18",
"content": "hah i’m... | 1,760,371,631.734604 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/20/reconstructing-3d-objects-with-a-tiny-distance-sensor/ | Reconstructing 3D Objects With A Tiny Distance Sensor | Lewin Day | [
"News"
] | [
"3d scan",
"3d scanning",
"time of flight",
"Time of Flight Sensor"
] | There are a whole bunch of different ways to create 3D scans of objects these days. Researchers at the [UW Graphics Lab] have demonstrated
how to use a small, cheap time-of-flight sensor to generate scans effectively.
Not yet perfect, but the technique does work…
The key is in how time-of-flight sensors work. They shoot out a distinct pulse of light, and then determine how long that pulse takes to bounce back. This allows them to perform a simple ranging calculation to determine how far they are from a surface or object.
However, in truth, these sensors aren’t measuring distance to a single point. They’re measuring the intensity of the received return pulse over time, called the “transient histogram”, and then processing it. If you use the full mathematical information in the histogram, rather than just the range figures, it’s possible to recreate 3D geometry as seen by the sensor, through the use of some neat mathematics and a neural network. It’s all explained in great detail
in the research paper.
The technique isn’t perfect; there are some inconsistencies with what it captures and the true geometry of the objects its looking at. Still, the technique is young, and more work could refine its outputs further.
If you don’t mind getting messy, there are other neat scanning techniques out there—
like using a camera and some milk. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8100754",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-02-20T12:02:59",
"content": "I may be speaking out of my ass here but isn’t this a strictly DSP problem? I don’t see any point in including neural networks but then again, I’m not familiar with this.",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,371,631.684907 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.