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https://hackaday.com/2025/06/05/leakage-control-for-coupled-coils/ | Leakage Control For Coupled Coils | Heidi Ulrich | [
"how-to",
"Parts"
] | [
"coil",
"coupled",
"inductor",
"leakage",
"magnetic",
"math",
"model"
] | Think of a circuit model that lets you move magnetic leakage around like sliders on a synth, without changing the external behavior of your coupled inductors. [Sam Ben-Yaakov] walks you through just that in
his video ‘Versatile Coupled Inductor Circuit Model and Examples of Its Use’
.
The core idea is as follows. Coupled inductors can be modeled in dozens of ways, but this one adds a twist: a tunable parameter
𝑥
between k and
1
(where k is the coupling coefficient). This fourth degree of freedom doesn’t change L
₁
, L
₂
or mutual inductance M (they remain invariant) but it lets you shuffle leakage where you want it, giving practical flexibility in designing or simulating
transformers
, converters, or filters with asymmetric behavior.
If you need leakage on one side only, set
𝑥
=k. Prefer symmetrical split? Set
𝑥
=1. It’s like parametric EQ, but magnetic. And: the maths holds up. As [Sam Ben-Yaakov] derives and confirms that for any
𝑥
in the range, external characteristics remain identical.
It’s especially useful when testing edge cases, or explaining inductive quirks that don’t behave quite like ideal transformers should. A good model to stash in your toolbox.
As we’ve seen previously
, [Sam Ben-Yaakov] is at home when it comes to concepts that need tinkering, trial and error, and a dash of visuals to convey. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135754",
"author": "Ali",
"timestamp": "2025-06-05T20:18:26",
"content": "Doing math may take literal weeks. Redesigning a circuit to fix the problem will usually take 1 or 2 hours with a soldering iron and a scope. If it’s not done for a hobby I don’t see it as viable option – tha... | 1,760,371,524.13922 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/05/supercon-2024-from-consultant-to-prototyper-on-a-shoestring-budget/ | Supercon 2024: From Consultant To Prototyper On A Shoestring Budget | Lewin Day | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"2024 Hackaday Superconference",
"consultancy",
"prototyping",
"shoes",
"Supercon 2024",
"talk"
] | Many engineers graduate from their studies and head out into the workforce, seeking a paycheck and a project at some existing company or other. Often, it’s not long before an experienced engineer begins to contemplate striking out on their own, working as a skilled gun-for-hire that makes their own money and their own hours.
It’s a daunting leap, but with the promise of rich rewards for those that stick the landing. That very leap is one that our own Dave Rowntree made. He came to Supercon 2024 to tell us what the journey was like,
and how he wound up working on some very special shoes.
The Journey
Dave’s talk begins right at the start of his career. He graduated from college around the turn of the millenium, and headed right into to the big game. He landed a job at Phillips Semiconductors, and dived into what was then a rapidly-developing field—digital television! He quickly learned a great deal about embedded programming, but found the actual electronics skills he’d picked up during his studies weren’t being put to much use. Sadly, redundancies struck his company, and he was forced to pivot to stick around. A spot opened up in the IC test and manufacturing support group, and he jumped in there, before later decamping to a fabless semiconductor company as a test engineer. He then used his education and experience to leverage a leap into the design side of things, which brought the benefit of allowing him to join the royalty program.
Things were on the up for Dave, right until the redundancy train came around once again. The inconvenience, combined with a lack of jobs in his field in the UK, pushed him to consider a major lifestyle change. He’d strike out on his own.
Early on in his consulting and prototyping career, Dave found himself type cast as “the PCB guy.”
At this time, he explains how he tangled with the many challenges involved in working for one’s self. Not least of which, the difficulty of actually establishing a functional business in the UK, from bureaucratic red tape to handling the necessary marketing and financials.
He found his first jobs by working with so-called “innovation companies”—which provide services to those looking for design help to bring their ideas to life. These companies generally lacked engineering staff, so Dave’s services proved valuable to this specific market. It provided Dave some income, but came with a problem. After several years, he realized he had no public portfolio of work, because everything he’d worked on was under a non-disclosure agreement of some form or other.
He’s currently engaged in research and development of airbag-equipped shoes that could theoretically protect against ankle injuries.
Eventually, he realized he’d ended up in a “box.” He’d become “the PCB guy,” finding his work stagnating despite having such a broad and underexploited skillset. This didn’t sit right, and it was time for change once again. “I’m just thinking I don’t want to be a PCB guy,” Dave explains. “I want to do it all.” Thus was born his push into new fields. He built an arcade machine, art installations, and kept working to push himself out of his comfort zone.
Eventually, something exciting came down the line that really inspired him. “Some guys wanted me to build something, and it was totally oddball,” he says. “They wanted me to put an airbag in a basketball shoe.” The concept was simple enough—the airbag was intended to deploy to protect the wearer if excessive ankle roll was detected. Building the shoe in real life would be the perfect opportunity for him to stretch his abilities.
Despite his initial misgivings around the idea of putting explosives in shoes, the team behind the idea were able to twist Dave’s arm. “If I want to break out of the box of being just a PCB guy, maybe this is it,” he thought. “Why the hell not!”
While Dave’s engineering training didn’t focus a whole lot on feet, he’s been learning a great deal of late as he produces his own custom podiatric force sensors.
The rest of Dave’s talk covers how the project came to break him out of his design funk, and how he’s tackling the difficult engineering problems involved. Even more joyously, he’s able to talk openly about it since there’s no NDA involved. He compares plans to use pyrotechnic devices versus stored gas systems, tears down commercial shoes for research, and even his journey into the world of scanning feet and making his own force sensors. As much as he was leveraging his existing skill base, he’s also been expanding it rapidly to meet the new challenges of a truly wild shoe project.
Dave’s talk is an inspiring walk through how he developed a compelling and satisfying engineering career without just going by the book. It’s also an enjoyable insight into the world of weird airbag shoes that sound too fantastical to exist. If you’ve ever thought about leaving the career world behind and going out on your own, Dave’s story is a great one to study. | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135710",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-06-05T17:35:26",
"content": "Boots, stiff?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8135726",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-06-05T19:08:37",
"content": "This should b... | 1,760,371,524.431471 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/05/a-steady-vacuum-for-the-fastest-cassette-tape-drive-ever/ | A Steady Vacuum For The Fastest Cassette Tape Drive Ever | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"cassette tape",
"tape drive",
"vacuum"
] | If you think of a 1960s mainframe computer, it’s likely that your mental image includes alongside the cabinets with the blinkenlights, a row of reel-to-reel tape drives. These refrigerator-sized units had a superficial resemblance to an audio tape deck, but with the tape hanging down in a loop either side of the head assembly. This loop was held by a vacuum to allow faster random access speeds at the head, and this fascinates [Thorbjörn Jemander].
He’s trying to create a cassette tape drive that can load 64 kilobytes in ten seconds
, so he’s starting by replicating the vacuum columns of old.
The video below is the first of a series on this project, and aside from explaining the tape drive’s operation, it’s really an in-depth exploration of centrifugal fan design. He discovers that it’s speed rather than special impeller design that matters, and in particular a closed impeller delivers the required vacuum. We like his home-made manometer in particular.
What he comes up with is a 3D printed contraption with a big 12 volt motor on the back, and a slot for a cassette on the front. It achieves the right pressure, and pulls the tape neatly down into a pair of loops. We’d be curious to know whether a faster motor such as you might find in a drone would deliver more for less drama, but we can see the genesis of a fascinating project here. Definitely a series to watch.
Meanwhile, if your interest extends to those early machine rooms,
have a wallow in the past
. | 39 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135670",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-06-05T15:39:22",
"content": "Youtube has its downs, but it’s great to see a silly project like this one come along every once in a while.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8135678"... | 1,760,371,524.270909 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/05/screens-of-death-from-diagnostic-aids-to-a-sad-emoji/ | Screens Of Death: From Diagnostic Aids To A Sad Emoji | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"bsod"
] | There comes a moment in the life of any operating system when an unforeseen event will tragically cut its uptime short. Whether it’s a sloppily written driver, a bug in the handling of an edge case or just dumb luck, suddenly there is nothing more that the OS’ kernel can do to salvage the situation. With its last few cycles it can still gather some diagnostic information, attempt to write this to a log or memory dump and then output a supportive message to the screen to let the user know that the kernel really did try its best.
This on-screen message is called many things, from a kernel panic message on Linux to a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) on Windows since Windows 95, to a more contemplative message on AmigaOS and BeOS/Haiku. Over the decades these Screens of Death (SoD) have changed considerably, from the highly informative screens of Windows NT to the simplified BSOD of Windows 8 onwards with its prominent sad emoji that has drawn a modicum of ridicule.
Now it seems that the Windows BSOD
is about to change again
, and may not even be blue any more. So what’s got a user to think about these changes? What were we ever supposed to get out of these special screens?
Meditating On A Fatal Error
AmigaOS fatal Guru Meditation error screen.
More important than the color of a fatal system error screen is what information it displays. After all, this is the sole direct clue the dismayed user gets when things go south, before sighing and hitting the reset button, followed by staring forlorn at the boot screen. After making it back into the OS, one can dig through the system logs for hints, but some information will only end up on the screen, such as when there is a storage drive issue.
The exact format of the information on these SoDs changes per OS and over time, with AmigaOS’
Guru Meditation
screen
being rather well-known. Although the naming was the result of an inside joke related to how the developers dealt with frequent system crashes, it stuck around in the production releases.
Interestingly, both Windows 9x and ME as well as AmigaOS have fatal and non-fatal special screens. In the case of AmigaOS you got a similar screen to the Guru Meditation screen with its error code, except in green and the optimistic notion that it might be possible to continue running after confirming the message. For Windows 9x/ME users this might be a familiar notion as well :
BSOD in Windows 95 after typing “C:\con\con” in the Run dialog.
In this series of OSes you’d get these screens, with mashing a key usually returning you to a slightly miffed but generally still running OS minus the misbehaving application or driver. It could of course happen that you’d get stuck in an endless loop of these screens until you gave up and gave the three-finger salute to put Windows out of its misery. This was an interesting design choice, which Microsoft’s
Raymond Chen readily admits
to being somewhat quaint. What it did do was abandon the current event and return to the event dispatcher to give things another shot.
Mac OS X 10.2 thru 10.2.8 kernel panic message.
A characteristic of these BSODs in Windows 9x/ME was also that they didn’t give you a massive amount of information to work with regarding the reason for the rude interruption. Incidentally, over on the Apple side of the fence things were not much more elaborate in this regard, with OS X’s kernel panic message getting plastered over with a ‘Nothing to see here, please restart’ message. This has been quite a constant ever since the
‘Sad Mac’
days of Apple, with friendly messages rather than any ‘technobabble’.
This quite contrasts with the world of Windows NT, where even the already trimmed BSOD of Windows XP is roughly on the level of the business-focused Windows 2000 in terms of information. Of note is also that a BSOD on Windows NT-based OSes is a true ‘Screen of Death’, from which you absolutely are not returning.
A BSOD in Windows XP. A true game over, with no continues.
These BSODs provide a significant amount of information, including the faulting module, the fault type and some hexadecimal values that can conceivably help with narrowing down the fault. Compared to the absolute information overload in Windows NT 3.1 with a partial on-screen memory dump, the level of detail provided by Windows 2000 through Windows 7 is probably just enough for the average user to get started with.
It’s here interesting that more recent versions of Windows have opted to default to restarting automatically when a BSOD occurs, which renders what is displayed on them rather irrelevant. Maybe that’s why Windows 8 began to just omit that information and opted to instead show a generic ‘collecting information’ progress counter before restarting.
Times Are Changing
People took the new BSOD screen in Windows 8 well.
Although nobody was complaining about the style of BSODs in Windows 7, somehow Windows 8 ended up with the massive sad emoji plastered on the top half of the screen and no hexadecimal values, which would now hopefully be found in the system log. Windows 10 also added a big QR code that leads to some troubleshooting instructions. This overly friendly and non-technical BSOD mostly bemused and annoyed the tech community, which proceeded to brutally make fun of it.
In this context it’s interesting to see these latest BSOD screen mockups from Microsoft that will purportedly make their way to Windows 11 soon.
These new BSOD screens seem to have a black background (perhaps a ‘Black Screen of Death’?), omit the sad emoji and reduce the text to an absolute minimum:
The new Windows 11 BSOD, as it’ll likely appear in upcoming releases.
What’s noticeable here is how it makes the stop code very small on the bottom of the screen, with the faulting module below it in an even smaller font. This remains a big departure from the BSOD formats up till Windows 7 where such information was clearly printed on the screen, along with additional information that anyone could copy over to paper or snap a picture of for a quick diagnosis.
But Why
The BSODs in
ReactOS
keep the Windows 2000-style format.
The crux here is whether Microsoft expects their users to use these SoDs for informative purposes, or whether they would rather that they get quickly forgotten about, as something shameful that users shouldn’t concern themselves with. It’s possible that they expect that the diagnostics get left to paid professionals, who would have to dig into the memory dumps, the system logs, and further information.
Whatever the case may be, it seems that the era of blue SoDs is well and truly over now in Windows. Gone too are any embellishments, general advice, and more in-depth debug information. This means that distinguishing the different causes behind a specific stop code, contained in the hexadecimal numbers, can only be teased out of the system log entry in Event Viewer, assuming it got in fact recorded and you’re not dealing with a boot partition or similar fundamental issue.
Although I’ll readily admit to not having seen many BSODs since probably Windows 2000 or XP — and those were on questionable hardware — the rarity of these events makes it in my view even more pertinent that these screens are as descriptive as possible, which is sadly not a feature that seems to be a priority for mainstream desktop OSes. Nor for niche OSes like Linux and BSD, tragically, where you have to know your way around the Systemd
journalctl
tool or equivalent to figure out where that kernel panic came from.
This is definitely a point where the SoD generated upon a fiery kernel explosion sets the tone for the user’s response. | 57 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135647",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-06-05T14:09:28",
"content": "Would be remiss without mentioning linux’s new BSOD, which displays nothing but an incomprehensible QR code, with no indication that there was a problem, what it was (not even an unhelpful “DRIVE IRQ NOT LESS O... | 1,760,371,524.788388 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/06/a-network-status-panel-the-way-it-should-be/ | A Network Status Panel The Way It Should Be | Jenny List | [
"LED Hacks",
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"pi pico",
"status panel"
] | Sometimes a project forms itself around a component rather than an idea, and thus it was that [Maximilien] found himself building
a data rate monitor for the connection between two data centers
. Some MD0657C2-R LED dot matrix displays for not a lot needed a project.
The displays are mounted in groups of four on small PCBs, driven by a MAX6952, which are then controlled by a Pi Pico. There are several display panels in the project, each of which is a pained and laser-etched acrylic sheet with a pair of the LED boards mounted behind it. These in turn go on the front of a wooden enclosure, with a set of LED ring lights behind to illuminate the etched parts of the panels. Each display panel has its own Pico, daisy chained together and driven by a Pico W that supplies network connectivity.
As you might expect,
this isn’t the first status panel we’ve brought you over the years
. | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8136048",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2025-06-06T19:32:22",
"content": "Gives me a WarGames vibe, it’s a real WOPR.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8136052",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-06-06T19:44:01",... | 1,760,371,524.320794 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/06/hackaday-podcast-episode-324-ribbon-microphone-from-a-gumstick-texture-from-a-virtual-log-and-a-robot-arm-from-pvc/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 324: Ribbon Microphone From A Gumstick, Texture From A Virtual Log, And A Robot Arm From PVC | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos joined forces to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week.
In Hackaday news,
the 2025 Pet Hacks Contest
rolls on, but only for a short time longer. You have until Tuesday, June 10th to show us what you’ve got, so head over to Hackaday.IO and get started now! In other news, check out what adaptive optics can do when it comes to capturing pictures of the Sun. In other, other news,
there won’t be a Podcast next week as Elliot is on vacation
.
On What’s That Sound, Kristina failed once again, but four of you guessed correctly. Congratulations to [ToyoKogyo12aTurbo] who fared better and wins a limited edition Hackaday Podcast t-shirt!
After that, it’s on to the hacks and such, beginning with a largely-printed 6-DOF robot arm. We take a look at a bunch of awesome 3D prints like guitars and skateboards, take a look at some pet hacks, and discuss brick layers in orcaslicer. Finally, we talk a lot about keyboards, especially the quickly-evaporating Blackberry keyboards and why they’re disappearing.
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 324 Show Notes:
News:
Adaptive Optics Take Clearest Pictures Of The Sun Yet
2025 Pet Hacks Contest
What’s that Sound?
Congratulations to [ToyoKogyo12aTurbo] for knowing it was the ping of modern active sonar!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Simulation And Motion Planning For 6DOF Robotic Arm
Robotic Arm EB310
2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Keep The Prey At Bay With The Cat Valve
Testing Brick Layers In OrcaSlicer With Staggered Perimeters
You Can Make Your Own Ribbon Mic With A Gum Wrapper
Blue Ribbon Microphone
DIY Ribbon Element Upgrades A Studio Microphone
Add Wood Grain Texture To 3D Prints – With A Model Of A Log
Adding Texture To 3D Prints
Fuzzy Skin Finish For 3D Prints, Now On Top Layers
Texturing 3D prints in IdeaMaker for Strength — CNC Kitchen
You Wouldn’t Download A Skateboard?
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Ender 3 Pro Gets A Second Job As A Stator Winder
Open Source Watch Movement Really Ticks All The Boxes
Passive Saturation Box Is A Cheap Way To Distort Your Sound
A Brief Hobbyist Primer On Clipping Diodes
Can We Replace A Program Counter With A Linear-Feedback Shift Register? Yes We Can!
Kristina’s Picks:
2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Weigh Your Dog The Easy Way
3D Printing A Modular Guitar Means It Can Look Like Whatever You Want
A CRT Display For Retro Weather Forecasting
Can’t-Miss Articles:
The Blackberry Keyboard: How An Open-Source Ecosystem Sprouts
Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The H.R. Giger Keyboard
Old book typewriter Underwood Elliott-Fisher (1930), how to type on books, and why – YouTube | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8136051",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2025-06-06T19:39:34",
"content": "For a second there I thought I must have forgotten that I came in here and posted this. :-)So now I’ll just post: me too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_... | 1,760,371,524.378753 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/06/solder-stencil-done-three-ways/ | Solder Stencil Done Three Ways | Matt Varian | [
"PCB Hacks"
] | [
"fiber laser",
"laser cutter",
"solder stencil",
"vinyl cutter"
] | This project, sent in by [Henk], goes through a few
different ways to make a solder stencil
using a vinyl cutter, a CO2 laser, and a fiber laser.
The project starts with identifying a method to convert the board’s Gerber files to a PNG, which is ultimately used to create a vector file for use with the laser. The first stencil, made with the CO2 laser, was cut out of masking tape. This worked fine for larger cutouts and is certainly a cheap option if you don’t have too many small components. A slightly better approach with the CO2 laser was using vinyl sheet release paper, which seemed to hold together better than the tape.
Laser-cut masking tape works, but not for long.
A vinyl cutter was also used as an experiment, but it didn’t perform as well as the CO2 laser, as expected, since the cutter uses a knife rather than light, leading to some tearing issues.
The final method utilized a fiber laser and an
empty drink can
to create a metal stencil. First, the can had to be cut open, heated, and flattened. The fiber laser was able to cut clean footprints in the aluminum, creating a stencil that would hold up to more use than the paper variations.
The finale of this exploration into laser stencil making was using the fiber laser to solder the board together. The stencil was used to spread paste on the pads, parts were placed on the board, and then the fiber laser heated the solder paste to solder them to the board. The board looked a bit toasty afterwards, but we imagine the process could be fine-tuned to reduce the collateral damage a bit.
Once you’ve got your stencil ready to go, you can combine it with a
3D printed jig to hold the PCB
while you apply the solder paste. | 29 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8136001",
"author": "Cyna",
"timestamp": "2025-06-06T15:45:26",
"content": "Or just have JLC make it as well for $7 extra…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8136002",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2025-06-06T15... | 1,760,371,524.687709 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/06/this-week-in-security-roundcube-unified-threat-naming-and-ai-chat-logs/ | This Week In Security: Roundcube, Unified Threat Naming, And AI Chat Logs | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"ai",
"CVEs",
"This Week in Security"
] | Up first, if you’re running a Roundcube install prior to 1.5.10 or 1.6.11,
it’s time to update
. We have
an authenticated Remote Code Execution (RCE) in the Roundcube Webmail client
. And while that’s not quite the level of chaos that an unauthenticated RCE would cause, it’s still to be taken seriously. Mainly because for the majority of the 53 million Roundcube installs out there, the users aren’t entirely trusted.
The magic at play in this vulnerability is the Roundcube user session code, and specifically the session deserialization scheme. There’s a weird code snippet in the unserialize function:
if ($str[$p] == '!') {
$p++;
$has_value = false;
The exclamation mark makes the code skip a character, and then assume that what comes next has no value. But if it does actually have a value, well then you’ve got a slightly corrupted deserialization, resulting in a slightly corrupted session. This really comes into force when combined with the file upload function, as the uploaded filename serves as a payload delivery mechanism. Use the errant exclamation mark handling to throw off deserialization, and the filename can contain arbitrary session key/value pairs. A GPG class from the PEAR library allows running an arbitrary command, and this can be hijacked with the session manipulation.
NetMRI Tackled By Rhino
The folks at
Rhino security labs took on NetMRI
, a network automation suite from Infoblox. The results are entertaining, like
https:///webui/application/get_saml_request?saml_id=1%26http://$(whoami)
in a browser or via curl being enough to demonstrate unauthorized code execution. It’s not terribly difficult to understand what’s happening there.
%26
is the HTTP encoding for the ampersand symbol,
&
. On a Linux terminal, that runs a command in the background, and most importantly, allows a second command to be run in the same string of text. The SAML request is used to generate a terminal command, and isn’t properly sanitized for special characters like the ampersand.
There are also a couple of hard coded credentials that made appearances in the released image, and a SQL injection attack right inside a URL GET parameter. One more particularly interesting problem was the arbitrary file read by an authenticated user. A Java servlet that is normally used for creating reports can be manipulated to return files. Interestingly, these files are fetched with root permissions, indicating the Java code is probably running as root as well. The vulnerabilities were reported September of last year, and Infoblox responded right away, though the actual fixes took several months to roll out.
Credit Card Terminal Shell
The Worldline Yomani XR credit card terminal is an interesting device. The hardware design has extensive anti-tamper protections, enough that
[Stefan Gloor] tripped them when disassembling and reassembling the device
. After this, he opted to desolder the flash chip and dump the firmware. The hardware was well built, but the software leaves much to be desired. It’s Linux 3.6 built with a 2010 release of buildroot, but apparently built in 2023. That’s a bit scary, and there are likely plenty of vulnerabilities to choose from due to the firmware age.
But as with essentially all of these embedded Linux devices, there is a serial debug port available. And to log in as root, there is no password required. It’s a good thing the device has all that tamper protection, right? The serial port is accessible via a removable panel, that does not trigger tamper protection. So it’s game over for this device, right? That’s where things get a bit murky. The secure side of the device is not running under the Linux system. It seems like it is working as a bootloader and network co-processor for the secure chip. That’s as far as [Stefan] got with this project, but it’s an interesting look into the security boundaries of this sort of device. [Stefan] is a Siemens employee, which is the parent company of Hackaday.
Midnight Blizzard, or Cozy Bear
CrowdStrike
and
Microsoft
have announced a new cooperative effort, to unify their threat actor naming schemes. You may remember, that Microsoft’s scheme results in some delightful monikers like Cinnamon Tempest. Though on the other hand, CrowdStrike has produced winners like Gothic Panda and Remix Kitten. This new effort isn’t bringing an end to either naming scheme, but indicates that the two companies will cooperate to keep their list of threat actors synced together.
Tnok vs Fwknop
There’s new security tool,
Tnok
, and hits rather close to home. Tnok is a port knocking solution based on the Time-based One Time Password (TOTP) algorithm, that aims at allowing non-root users to send secure port knocking requests using either UDP or TCP. One of the stated goals is to allow for TCP knocking without requiring the full 3-way TCP handshake. The solution [Sean] discovered was to send a couple characters of that TOTP code as the Max Segment Size of the TCP SYN packet.
I spent a couple years working on the Open Source
Fwknop
codebase, that also implements a port knocking scheme with real cryptography. While I’m thrilled that more research is being done into modern port knocking, I do worry that this approach will have a Denial of Service issue. Because the token space of TOTP is small, Tnok includes a built-in temporary IP blocking feature. Try to authenticate too many times without a valid TOTP token, and your IP is blocked. Normally it’s essentially impossible to make spoofed TCP connections over the Internet, but eliminating the need for the 3-way handshake may make it all to easy to spoof a victim IP, triggering that IP block.
Court-ordered Privacy Violations
There are times that legal systems are a bit out of sync with the realities of modern technology. The court order that
OpenAI must preserve all ChatGPT logs
seems to be a great example of this. The background is that news organizations are suing OpenAI for copyright violations, and requested the extra log retention to try to demonstrate that users are using ChatGPT to defeat paywalls.
The real problem here is that refusing to delete user logs upon request is a crime itself under California and European privacy laws. This order puts OpenAI in a very difficult position, and users are understandably concerned. OpenAI is fighting the order through their own legal filings. This one should be interesting to watch.
Bits and Bytes
Google has
delisted a pair of certificate authorities in Chrome
. Chunghwa and Netlock were both removed as a result of “a pattern of compliance failures, unmet improvement commitments, and the absence of tangible, measurable progress in response to publicly disclosed incident reports.” The offending actions seem to be things like issuing bad certificates and then failing to quickly revocation certificates with problems.
The GitHub Security Blog has the story of
DNS Rebind attacks
. This style of attack is particularly useful to defeat Same Origin Policy on a service hosted on a machine’s localhost. Manipulate a domain name to point to one IP upon first load, and then a different IP, and those two IPs are unintentionally both accessible from scripts using that DNS name.
The WooCommerce WordPress plugin had an arbitrary file upload issue, where a PHP factory was unintentionally disabling the the upload validation features in WordPress. This problem was announced while there was still silence from WooCommerce, but before the normal 90 day time period had passed. Version 4.1.8 is now available fixing the issue. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8136016",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-06-06T17:02:55",
"content": "Sounds like they need better paywalls. Unify under one SSO, and send all paying customers a cheap security key. Double bonus if it doubles as adult verification for those kinds of sites.",
"parent_id... | 1,760,371,524.620211 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/06/in-film-whats-old-may-still-be-new-again/ | In Film, What’s Old May Still Be New Again | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"edwin land",
"instant film",
"kodachrome",
"land camera",
"polaroid"
] | We recently published an affectionate look at a Polaroid Land camera, whose peel-apart instant film is long out of production except for a very few single exposure packs form a boutique manufacturer. All that was left was a discussion of modifying it for conventional roll film, or perhaps hacking a modern back-to-front Polaroid sheet into it.
Never say never though, because along come the Chinese company Light Lens Lab with a short announcement at the end of
a post talking about grain structures and anti-halation layer materials for their black and white film
.
Lastly, with our future development plan, we are currently developing and researching instant peel-apart film, with plans on producing and making available black and white peel-apart film by 2025 in various format. We aim to have an update on our packaging and test shot for the next development/research progress installment. We are also researching, developing and producing colour reversal films that consist of a dye-incorporating development process, commonly known as K-14, for 135 and 120 formats in 2026.
So there you go, no sooner has Hackaday declared a format unavailable, than it shows every sign of reappearing. At this point we’d like to take the opportunity to report that McDonalds Szechuan Chicken McNugget sauce will never ever be available again.
So what does this mean? First of all, assuming that the stuff doesn’t need the GDP of a small country to buy in Europe, the Hackaday Polaroid 104 will be able to shoot in its native format again. But perhaps more interestingly, it opens up a new option for the camera hacker. Pack film is much easier than modern instant film to deal with; it requires only rollers and someone to tug on that paper tab, no gears or motors involved. We’re here for this.
The observant will also have noted at the end of the announcement, mention of a dye-incorporating development process. This refers to the colour chemistry seen in Kodachrome, a long-extinct single-layer film that offered legendarily sharp and vibrant-coloured pictures at the expense of a very complex development path. We’d love to see it, but we’ll take the instant pack film and run.
The Hackaday Land camera is here
. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135962",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2025-06-06T12:01:02",
"content": "Oh come on! Now you’re just baiting us with the still visible bitting of your car key. ;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8136023",
"author... | 1,760,371,524.57682 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/06/soviet-calculator-teardown-reveals-similarities-and-differences/ | Soviet Calculator Teardown Reveals Similarities And Differences | Lewin Day | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"calculator",
"soviet",
"teardown",
"vfd"
] | Tearing down hardware from different parts of the world can be revealing, showing unique parts, techniques, and tricks employed by engineers living in a very different world from our own. To that end, [msylvain59] has been kind enough to give us a look inside
the Elektronika MK-26—a calculator built in the former Soviet Union.
There’s lots of interesting stuff to see from the get-go. The oddball button pad is covered in Cyrillic symbols, quite alien to those of us more accustomed to the Latin character set. It’s also constructed somewhat unlike more familiar models from Western-aligned companies like Casio or Commodore. It also rattles when shaken, which doesn’t inspire confidence. Inside, it’s got old-school brown PCBs without the usual green solder mask, a chunky IC in a weird package, and display is via a power-hungry VFD.
It doesn’t look so totally alien inside; much of the construction is pretty typical of the mid-1970s, wherever you went around the world. The most striking differences are more in the graphics and visual design than anything else.
Ultimately, there are reasons why manufacturers around the world tend to converge on similar techniques. Generally, it’s because it’s more economical or easier to do things a certain way. And yet, we still see regional variances because conditions, technologies, and parts availability varies around the world. This teardown highlights that quite clearly.
If you’re just getting a taste for Soviet hardware teardowns, you’ll love this video diving inside
a real Soyuz clock. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135933",
"author": "Nikolai",
"timestamp": "2025-06-06T08:54:00",
"content": "Back then it was great and expensive. My first calculator was Electronica MK-85. It was great and made very well. It did cost my mom her monthly salary.https://elektronika.su/en/calculators/elektronika-mk... | 1,760,371,524.193116 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/05/spacedeck-is-half-cyberdeck-half-phone-case-all-style/ | SPACEdeck Is Half Cyberdeck, Half Phone Case, All Style | Tyler August | [
"Android Hacks",
"Cyberdecks"
] | [
"3d print",
"android",
"cyberdeck"
] | It’s been at least a few hours since Hackaday last featured a cyberdeck, so to avoid the specter of withdrawal, we present you with [Sp4m]’s
SPACEdeck, a stylish phone-based cyberdeck
!
The SPACEdeck takes a Samsung Galaxy S24 and puts it into a handsome clamshell case with a wireless keyboard, turning the phone into a tiny-screened laptop that urges you not to panic. Is The Hitchiker’s Guide to The Galaxy available on the Playstore? Well, the e-book of the novel surely is, and having access to Wikipedia comes close. The design is building off (or out from, as the case may be) a
3D-printed phone case for the S24 by Digital Proto.
Given that the Galaxy S24 has more horsepower than the ancient Macbook we’re writing this on, this setup is probably going to be more useful than you might think, especially when paired with
Termux to give you the full power of Linux.
Like some modern laptops, the screen can rotate 180 degrees for when the keyboard isn’t needed. The case will also allow for Nintendo Switch2 joycon integration, but that’s a work in progress for now. The connection points will also be modular so other accessories can be used. All files will be released once [Sp4m] is happy with how the Joycons are holding on, hopefully with a license that will allow us to remix this for other phones.
Given the supercomputers in our pockets, it’s really a wonder we don’t see more android-based cyberdecks,
but most seem to stick to SBCs
. Lately it seems the
slabtop form-factor has been equally popular
for cyberdecks, but it’s
hard to beat a clamshell for practicality
. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135906",
"author": "Ian",
"timestamp": "2025-06-06T07:41:16",
"content": "There have been exactly 3 actual cyberdecks since January 2023 posted on HaD, and 2 of them were steamdecks.Pick a new word.That one is taken and doesn’t mean what you keep using it for.",
"parent_id": nu... | 1,760,371,524.89025 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/05/piko-your-esp32-powered-fitness-buddy/ | Piko, Your ESP32 Powered Fitness Buddy | John Elliot V | [
"hardware",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"accelerometer",
"ESP32",
"exercise",
"fitness",
"smartwatch",
"step counter",
"tamagotchi"
] | Over on Hackaday.io there’s a fun and playful write-up for a fun and playful project — the Piko, an
ESP32 powered smartwatch
.
Our hackers [Iloke Alusala], [Lulama Lingela], and [Rafael Cardoso] teamed up to design and manufacture this wrist-worn fitness wearable. Made from an ESP32 Beetle C6 and using an attached accelerometer with simple thresholds the Piko can detect if you’re idle, walking, jogging, or sprinting; and at the same time count your steps.
The team 3D printed the requisite parts in PLA using the printer in their university makerspace. In addition to the ESP32 and printed parts, the bill of materials includes a 240×240 IPS TFT LCD display, a LIS331HH triple-axis accelerometer, a 200 mAh battery, and of course, a watch strap.
Demonstrating splendid attention to detail, and inspired by the aesthetic of the Tamagotchi and pixel art, the Piko mimics your current activity with a delightful array of hand-drawn animations on its display. Should you want to bring a similar charm to your own projects, all the
source is available under the MIT license
.
If you’re interested in smartwatch technology be sure to check out our recent articles:
Smartwatches Could Flatten The Curve Of The Next Pandemic
and
Custom Smartwatch Makes Diabetes Monitoring Easier For Kids
. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135576",
"author": "Maria",
"timestamp": "2025-06-05T11:51:29",
"content": "If paired with a powerfull enough servomotor, I could see this being used as hands-free gesture control for toilet flushing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_... | 1,760,371,524.831039 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/05/running-freedos-and-8086tiny-on-the-game-boy-advance-because-you-can/ | Running FreeDOS And 8086tiny On The Game Boy Advance Because You Can | Maya Posch | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks"
] | [
"8086",
"freedos",
"game boy advance"
] | How many people haven’t looked at their Game Boy Advance (GBA) handheld gaming device and wondered how much better it might be if it could run FreeDOS. Inside an 8086 emulator. If you’re like [ZZAZZ] and similarly suffer intrusive project-related thoughts, then
this might be a moment of clear recognition
, somewhat like sharing one’s story at a Programmers Anonymous meeting, but we digress.
In the video, the basic premise of making even the
8086tiny
emulator work on the GBA seemed improbable on the outset – courtesy of the rather limited memory environment provided by the GBA – before even daring to look at things like disk access.
However, letting silly things like segmented memory and mismatched memory addresses deter us from pleasing said intrusive thoughts would be beyond the pale. Ergo we get a shining example of how days of rewriting code, stripping code, debugging code, fixing alignment issues in code and writing work-arounds for newly discovered issues in code can ultimately lead to the proud moment where FreeDOS boots on the GBA.
Granted it takes over an hour to do so, and has to be started from a butchered
Pokémon Emerald
save file, courtesy of a well-known exploit in that game, thankfully preserved in counterfeit cartridges.
Admittedly we’re not sure what practical applications there are for FreeDOS on the GBA, but that’s never stopped hackers from taking on impossible projects before, so there’s no sense letting it get in the way now.
Thanks to [Jinxy] for the tip. | 21 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135562",
"author": "Albert",
"timestamp": "2025-06-05T10:36:21",
"content": "Actually, Z80 GameBoy CPU is a distant cousin of early X86 so it should be possible to binary translate MS-DOS on the fly and get it to run at full speed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repl... | 1,760,371,525.413194 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/04/passive-saturation-box-is-a-cheap-way-to-distort-your-sound/ | Passive Saturation Box Is A Cheap Way To Distort Your Sound | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"diodes",
"saturation"
] | Distortion pedals and overdrive effects usually have a bunch of lovely transistors or op-amps inside and lots of knobs and dials to tweak the sound to your personal taste. However, it’s possible to get some crunchiness in your audio signal without all that fuss,
as [Simon Hutchinson] demonstrates with his $2 “analog saturation box”.
The effect is achieved quite simply by installing a pair of diodes in opposite orientations, connected from the signal path to ground. This configuration is also known as wiring diodes in “anti-parallel.” When the signal increases in amplitude beyond the diode’s forward voltage, the diode conducts and the signal’s peak is clipped off, which creates a distorted tone. Since there are two diodes, one in each orientation, both the tops and bottoms of the AC audio signal are clipped in this manner.
The amount of clipping is highly dependent on the diodes chosen and the strength of the signal you’re working with. Silicon diodes clip around 0.7 V, while germanium diodes clip at about 0.3 V, but that doesn’t give you much flexibility. You can work with this to some degree, though. You can up the minimum clipping level by stacking more diodes in series in each direction, or you can put in a potentiometer to vary your signal’s level before it hits the diodes. Really, though, this hard voltage limit is why more commonly, we use active distortion or overdrive effects that have more options for gain and level and such.
[Simon Hutchinson] does an able job of explaining the effect and demonstrates its use with some simple beats. As a passive device, it’s pretty one note—there’s no EQs to mess with the frequency response, and no ability to change anything else about the sound, either. Still, it’s interesting to hear the effect it does have on a signal, and you might just find this is all the distortion you need. If you’d rather go into full-fat distortion though,
we’ve covered that too
. | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135519",
"author": "exponential component",
"timestamp": "2025-06-05T06:53:37",
"content": "Diodes are passive since they don’t require functioning energy, but yes they’re not linear",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8135540",
... | 1,760,371,525.272322 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/04/slide-rule-by-helix/ | Slide Rule By Helix | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"calculation",
"slide rule"
] | It is no secret that we like slide rules around the Hackaday bunker, and among our favorites are the cylindrical slide rules. [Chris Staecker] likes them, too, and recently even 3D printed a version. But spurred by comments on his video, he decided to try something that might be unique:
a helical slide rule
. You can see how it works in the video below.
With a conventional slide rule, the scale is rotated around a cylinder so that it is the same length as a much longer linear scale. However, this new slide rule bends the entire rule around a cylinder and allows the slide to move, just like a conventional slide rule. If you have a 3D printer, you can make your own.
Is it better? That depends on your definition of better. It isn’t as accurate as a normal cylindrical rule. But it is novel and smaller than an equivalent conventional rule, so that’s better in some way.
If you want to make your own conventional cylindrical rule, [Chris]
did the work for you already
. Don’t know about slide rules at all? Maybe
start here
. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,371,525.347049 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/04/making-solder-wick-less-painful/ | Making Solder Wick Less Painful | Aaron Beckendorf | [
"how-to"
] | [
"desoldering",
"desoldering braid",
"wick"
] | For some people (e.g. this author) solder wick is a tool of last resort. Unfortunately, solder suckers and vacuum pumps lose most of their utility when you move from through-hole to SMD components, forcing us to use the dreaded wick. For those of us in this mindset, [nanofix]’s
recent video
which we’ve placed below the break on tips for solder wick could make desoldering a much less annoying experience.
Most of the tips have to do with maintaining proper control of heat flow and distribution. [nanofix]’s first recommendation is to cut off short segments of wick, rather than using it straight from the roll, which reduces the amount of heat lost to conduction along the rest of the length. It’s also important to maintain a certain amount of solder on the soldering iron’s tip to improve conduction between the tip and the wick, and to periodically re-tin the tip to replace absorbed solder. Counterintuitively, [nanofix] explains that a low temperature on the soldering iron is more likely to damage the board than a high temperature, since solder wick getting stuck to a pad risks tearing the traces.
[nanofix] also notes that most boards come from the factory with lead-free solder, which has a higher melting point than tin-lead solder, and thus makes it harder to wick. He recommends first adding eutectic lead-based solder to the pads, then wicking away the new, lower melting-point mixture. Other miscellaneous tips include cutting a more precise tip into pieces of wick, always using flux, avoiding small soldering iron tips, and preheating the board with hot air.
We’ve seen a
couple of guides
to
desoldering
before. If you’re looking for more exotic methods for easing the task, you can always
use bismuth
. | 28 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135362",
"author": "RetepV",
"timestamp": "2025-06-04T20:10:33",
"content": "I’ve been hesitating to replace my solder-sucker with a real vacuum pump for so long, that now I don’t need either of them anymore because everything is SMD. :DNaaa, not really true. I like to work on vint... | 1,760,371,525.473364 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/04/adding-assistive-technology-to-a-doorbell/ | Adding Assistive Technology To A Doorbell | Bryan Cockfield | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"adaptive technology",
"attiny412",
"doorbell",
"logic analyser",
"microcontroller"
] | The advent of affordable computing over the last few decades has certainly been a boon for many people with disabilities, making it easier to access things like text-to-speech technology, automation, or mobility devices, and even going as far as making it easier to work in general by making remote work possible. Some things still lag behind, though, like user interfaces that don’t take the colorblind into account, or appliances that only use an audio cue to signal to their users. This doorbell, for example, is one such device and [ydiaeresis]
is adding features to it to help their mother with some hearing issues
.
The first thing up for this off-the-shelf remote doorbell is a “brain transplant” since the built-in microcontroller couldn’t be identified. There are only a few signals on this board though so an ATtiny412 made for a suitable replacement. A logic analyzer was able to decode the signals being fed to the original microcontroller, and with that the push of the doorbell can be programmed to do whatever one likes, including integrating it with home automation systems or other assistive technology. In [ydiaeresis]’s case there’s an existing LED lighting system that illuminates whenever the phone rings.
Although it would be nice if these inexpensive electronics came with the adaptive features everyone might need from them, it’s often not too hard to add it in as was the case with
this set of digital calipers
. To go even further, some other common technology can be used to help those with disabilities like
this hoverboard modified to help those with mobility issues
.
Thanks to [buttim] for the tip! | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135394",
"author": "Oliver",
"timestamp": "2025-06-04T21:11:56",
"content": "Started going down that rabbithole witch resulted in https:://gitlab.com//olliver/ochime which close to getting finished. Keep on having space-claim issues though :(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,371,525.227945 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/04/floss-weekly-episode-835-board-member-b/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 835: Board Member B | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"FLOSS Weekly",
"kde",
"linux"
] | This week
Jonathan
and
Rob
chat with Nate Graham about KDE! Why did Nate walk away from Apple, and how did he find Linux and KDE? And what does he see coming next? Watch to find out!
https://invent.kde.org/ngraham
https://pointieststick.com
https://techpaladinsoftware.com
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 | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135391",
"author": "Eliot",
"timestamp": "2025-06-04T21:08:10",
"content": "Explaining to my children that the header image is a reference to a 20 year old Apple marketing campaign.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8135529",
... | 1,760,371,525.3147 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/03/building-an-eight-channel-active-mixer/ | Building An Eight Channel Active Mixer | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"audio mixer",
"mixer",
"op-amp"
] | There are plenty of audio mixers on the market, and the vast majority all look the same. If you wanted something different, or just a nice learning experience, you could craft your own instead.
That’s precisely what [Something Physical] did.
The build was inspired by
an earlier 3-channel mixer designed by [Moritz Klein].
This project stretches to eight channels, which is nice, because somehow it feels right that a mixer’s total channels always land on a multiple of four. As you might expect, the internals are fairly straightforward—it’s just about lacing together all the separate op-amp gain stages, pots, and jacks, as well as a power LED so you can tell when it’s switched on. It’s all wrapped up in a slant-faced wooden box with an aluminum face plate and Dymo labels. Old-school, functional, and fit for purpose.
It’s a simple build, but a satisfying one; there’s something beautiful about recording on audio gear you’ve hewn yourself. Once you’ve built your mixer, you might like to experiment
in the weird world of no-input mixing
. Video after the break. | 29 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135000",
"author": "I Alone Possess The Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-06-04T00:36:41",
"content": "This is a fun project! The enclosure is beautiful. Meters would be nice; maybe on the next iteration. But if I’m not bitchin’ I’m not breathin’.Again, maybe on a later iteration: sli... | 1,760,371,525.538957 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/03/open-source-watch-movement-really-ticks-all-the-boxes/ | Open Source Watch Movement Really Ticks All The Boxes | Tyler August | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clockwork",
"mechanical clock",
"open source hardware",
"watch"
] | When you think of open-source hardware, you probably think of electronics and maker tools– RepRap, Arduino, Adafruit, et cetera. Yet open source is an ethos and license, and is in no way limited to electronics. The openmovement foundation is a case in point– a watch case, to be specific.
The “movement” in Openmovement is a fully open-source and fully mechanical watch movement.
Openmovement has already released STEP files of OM10 the first movement developed by the group. (You do need to sign up to download, however.) They say the design is meant to be highly serviceable and modular, with a robust construction suited for schools and new watchmakers. The movement uses a “Swiss pallets escapement” that runs at 3.5 Hz / 25,200 vph. (We think that’s an odd translation of lever escapement, but if you’re a watchmaker let us know in the comments.) An OM20 is apparently in the works, as well, but it looks like only OM10 has been built from what we can see.
If you don’t have the equipment to finely machine brass from the STEP files, Openmovement is running a
crowdfunding campaign to produce kits of the OM10
, which you can still get in on until the seventh of June.
If you’re wondering what it takes to make a mechanical watch from scratch,
we covered that last year
. Spoiler: it doesn’t look easy. Just assembling the tiny parts of an OM10 kit would seem daunting to most of us. That might be why
most of the watches
we’ve covered over the years
weren’t mechanical,
but at least they
tend to be open source, too
. | 32 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134915",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-06-03T20:06:53",
"content": "It is neither “escarpent” or “escarpment”.Also “movment”.Apart from that it’s a fine article.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8134935",
"aut... | 1,760,371,525.604553 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/03/3d-printed-tank-has-a-cannon-to-boot/ | 3D Printed Tank Has A Cannon To Boot | Lewin Day | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed parts",
"ESP32",
"radio control",
"rc",
"tank"
] | Few of us will ever find ourselves piloting a full-sized military tank. Instead, you might like to make do with the RC variety. [TRDB] has whipped up one of their own design
which features a small little pellet cannon to boot.
The tank is assembled from 3D printed components — with PETG filament being used for most of the body and moving parts, while the grippy parts of the treads are printed in TPU. The tank’s gearboxes consist of printed herringbone gears, and are driven by a pair of powerful 775 brushed DC motors, which are cooled by small 40 mm PC case fans. A rather unique touch are the custom linear actuators, used to adjust the tank’s ride height and angle relative to the ground. The small cannon on top is a flywheel blaster that fires small plastic pellets loaded from a simple drum magazine. Running the show is an ESP32, which responds to commands from [TRDB]’s own custom RC controller built using the same microcontroller.
As far as DIY RC tanks go, this is a very complete build. We’ve seen some other great work in this space,
like this giant human-sized version that’s big enough to ride in
. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134893",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-06-03T19:13:21",
"content": "The tank toy I wanted all my childhood!!!Beautiful",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8135008",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-0... | 1,760,371,525.650146 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/03/supercon-2024-how-to-track-down-radio-transmissions/ | Supercon 2024: How To Track Down Radio Transmissions | Lewin Day | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"2024 Hackaday Superconference",
"radio",
"radio transmitter",
"transmitter"
] | You turn the dial on your radio, and hear a powerful source of interference crackle in over the baseline noise. You’re interested as to where it might be coming from. You’re receiving it well, and the signal strength is strong, but is that because it’s close or just particularly powerful? What could it be? How would you even go about tracking it down?
When it comes to hunting down radio transmissions, Justin McAllister and Nick Foster have a great deal of experience in this regard. They came down to the 2024 Hackaday Superconference
to show us how it’s done.
Transmissions From Where?
Nick Foster opens the talk by discussing how the first job is often to figure out what you’re seeing when you pick up a radio transmission. “The moral of this talk is that your hardware is always lying to you,” says Nick. “In this talk, we’re going to show you how your radio lies to you, what you can do about it, and if your hardware is not lying to you, what is that real station that you’re looking at?” It can be difficult to tease out the truth of what the radio might seem to be picking up. “How do we determine what a signal actually is?” he asks. “Is it a real signal that we’re looking at which is being transmitted deliberately from somebody else, or is it interference from a bad power supply, or is it a birdie—a signal that’s created entirely within my own radio that doesn’t exist at all?”
There are common tools used to perform this work of identifying just what the radio is actually picking up and where it’s coming from. Justin goes over some of the typical hardware, noting that the RX-888 is a popular choice for software-defined radio that can be tuned across HF, VHF, and UHF bands. It’s highly flexible, and it’s affordable to boot, as is the Web-888 which can be accessed conveniently over a web browser. Other common SDRs are useful, too, as are a variety of filters that can aid with more precise investigations.
Justin demonstrates an errant radio emission from the brushed motor in his furnace, noting how it varies in bandwidth—a surefire tell versus intentional radio transmissions.
Establishing a grounding in reality is key, Justin steps up to explain. “We turn our SDR on, we stick [on] the little antenna that comes with it, and we start looking at something,” says Justin. “Are the signals that we see there actually real?” He notes that there are some basics to consider right off the bat. “One key point to make is that nobody makes money or has good communication using an unmodulated carrier,” he points out. “If you just see a tone somewhere, it might be real, but there’s a good chance that it’s not.”
It’s perhaps more likely unintentional radiation, noise, or something generated inside the hardware itself on your end. It’s also worth looking at whether you’re looking at a fixed frequency or a changing frequency to pin things down further. Gesturing to a spectrogram, he notes that the long, persistent lines on the spectrogram are usually clues to more intentional transmissions. Intermittent squiggles are more often unintentional. Justin points at some that he puts down to the emissions from arc welders, sparking away as they do, and gives an example of what emissions from typical switching power supplies look like.
There are other hints to look out for, too. Real human-made signals tend to have some logic to them. Justin notes that real signals usually make “efficient” use of spectrum without big gaps or pointless repetition. It’s also possible to make judgement calls as to whether a given signal makes sense for the band it appears to be transmitted in. Schedule can be a tell, too—if a signal always pops up when your neighbor gets home at 6 PM, it might just be coming from their garage door remote. Justin notes a useful technique for hunting down possible nearby emitters—”Flipping on and off switches is a real good way of figuring out—is it close to me or not?”
SDRs are hugely flexible, but they also have very open front-ends that can lead to some confusing output.
Nick follows up by discussing the tendency of sampling radios to show up unique bizarre transmissions that aren’t apparent on an analog receiver. “One of the curses of the RTL-SDR is actually one of its strengths… it has a completely wide open front end,” notes Nick. “Its ADC which is sampling and capturing the RF has basically nothing except an amplifier in between it and whatever crud you’re putting into it.” This provides great sensitivity and frequency agility, but there’s a catch—”It will happily eat up and spit out lots of horrible stuff,” says Nick. He goes on to explain various ways such an SDR might lie to the user. A single signal might start popping up all over the frequency band, or interfere with other signals coming in from the antenna. He also highlights a great sanity check for hunting down birdies—”If it’s always there, if it’s unchanging, if you unplug your antenna and you still hear it—it’s probably generated in your radio!”
The rest of the talk covers locating transmissions—are they in your house, in the local community, or from even farther afield? It explores the technique of multilateration, where synchronized receivers and maths are used to measure the time differences seen in the signal at each point to determine exactly where a transmission is coming from. The talk also goes over common sources of noise in residential settings—cheap PWM LED lights, or knock-off laptop chargers being a prime example in Nick’s experience. There’s also a discussion of how the noise floor has shifted up a long way compared to 50 years ago, now that the world is full of so many more noise-emitting appliances.
Ultimately, the duo of Justin and Nick brought us a great pun-filled talk on sleuthing for the true source of radio transmissions. If you’ve ever wondered about how to track down some mystery transmitter, you would do well to watch and learn from the techniques explored within! | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134913",
"author": "Gösta",
"timestamp": "2025-06-03T20:04:49",
"content": "Great article!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8135009",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-06-04T01:03:18",
"content": "Do they not call i... | 1,760,371,525.795755 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/03/simulation-and-motion-planning-for-6dof-robotic-arm/ | Simulation And Motion Planning For 6DOF Robotic Arm | John Elliot V | [
"hardware",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"6dof",
"python",
"raspberry pi",
"robotic arm"
] | [Leo Goldstien] recently got in touch to
let us know about a fascinating update he posted
on the
Hackaday.io page for ManiPylator
— his 3D printed Six degrees of freedom, or 6DOF robotic arm.
This latest installment gives us a glimpse at what’s involved for command and control of such a device, as what goes into simulation and testing. Much of the requisite mathematics is introduced, along with a long list of links to further reading. The whole solution is based entirely on free and open source (FOSS) software, in fact a giant stack of such software including planning and simulation software on top of glue like MQTT message queues.
The practical exercise for this installment was to have the arm trace out the shape of a heart, given as a mathematical equation expressed in Python code, and it fared quite well. Measurements were taken! Science was done!
We last brought you word
about this project in October of 2024. Since then, the project name has changed from “ManiPilator” to “ManiPylator”. Originally the name was a reference to the Raspberry Pi, but now the focus is on the Python programming language. But all the bot’s best friends just call him “Manny”.
If you want to get started with your own 6DOF robotic arm, [Leo] has traced out a path for you to follow. We’d love to hear about
what you come up with! | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134828",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-06-03T16:09:31",
"content": "…must not make fleshlight joke…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8134865",
"author": "X-MarX-THX-SpXt",
"timestamp": "2025-06-03T17:34:... | 1,760,371,525.930173 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/03/my-winter-of-99-the-year-of-the-linux-desktop-is-always-next-year/ | My Winter Of ’99: The Year Of The Linux Desktop Is Always Next Year | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"Linux Hacks",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"desktop os",
"linux",
"operating system",
"windows"
] | Growing up as a kid in the 1990s was an almost magical time. We had the best game consoles, increasingly faster computers at a pace not seen before, the rise of the Internet and World Wide Web, as well the best fashion and styles possible between neon and pastel colors, translucent plastic and also this little thing called Windows 95 that’d take the world by storm.
Yet as great as Windows 95 and its successor Windows 98 were, you had to be one of the lucky folks who ended up with a stable Windows 9x installation. The prebuilt (Daewoo) Intel Celeron 400 rig with 64 MB SDRAM that I had splurged on with money earned from summer jobs was not one of those lucky systems, resulting in regular Windows reinstalls.
As a relatively nerdy individual, I was aware of this little community-built operating system called ‘Linux’, with the online forums and the Dutch PC magazine that I read convincing me that it would be a superior alternative to this unstable ‘M$’ Windows 98 SE mess that I was dealing with. Thus it was in the Year of the Linux Desktop (1999) that I went into a computer store and bought a boxed disc set of SuSE 6.3 with included manual.
Fast-forward to 2025, and Windows is installed on all my primary desktop systems, raising the question of what went wrong in ’99. Wasn’t Linux the future of desktop operating systems?
Focus Groups
Boxed SuSE Linux 6.3 software. (Source:
Archive.org
)
Generally when companies gear up to produce something new, they will determine and investigate the target market, to make sure that the product is well-received. This way, when the customer purchases the item, it should meet their expectations and be easy to use for them.
This is where SuSE Linux 6.3 was an interesting experience for me. I’d definitely have classified myself in 1999 as your typical computer nerd who was all about the Pentiums and the MHz, so at the very least I should have had some overlap with the nerds who wrote this Linux OS thing.
The comforting marketing blurbs on the box promised an easy installation, bundled applications for everything, while suggesting that office and home users alike would be more than happy to use this operating system. Despite the warnings and notes in the installation section of the included manual, installation was fairly painless, with YAST (Yet Another Setup Tool) handling a lot of the tedium.
However, after logging into the new operating system and prodding and poking at it a bit over the course of a few days, reality began to set in. There was the rather rough-looking graphical interface, with what I am pretty sure was the
FVWM
window manager for XFree86, no font aliasing and very crude widgets. I would try the IceWM window manager and a few others as well, but to say that I felt disappointed was an understatement. Although it generally worked, the whole experience felt unfinished and much closer to using CDE on Solaris than the relatively pleasant Windows 98 or the very glossy
BeOS Personal Edition 5
that I would be playing with around that time as well.
That’s when a friend of my older brother slipped me a completely legit copy of Windows 2000 plus license key. To my pleasant surprise, Windows 2000 ran smoothly, worked great and was stable as a rock even on my old Celeron 400 rig that Windows 98 SE had struggled with. I had found my new forever home, or so I thought.
Focus Shift
Start-up screen of FreeSCO. (Credit: Lewis “Lightning” Baughman,
Wikimedia
)
With Windows 2000, and later XP, being my primary desktop systems, my focus with Linux would shift away from the desktop experience and more towards other applications, such as the
FreeSCO
(
en français
) single-floppy router project, and the similar
Smoothwall
project. After upgrading to a self-built AMD Duron 600 rig, I’d use the Celeron 400 system to install various Linux distributions on, to keep tinkering with them. This led me down the path of trying out Wine to try out Windows applications on Linux in the 2000s, along with some Windows games ported by
Loki Entertainment
, with mostly disappointing results. This also got me to compile kernel modules, to make the onboard sound work in Linux.
Over the subsequent years, my hobbies and professional career would take me down into the bowels of Linux and similar with mostly embedded (
Yocto
) development, so that by now I’m more familiar with Linux from the perspective of the command line and architectural level. Although I have many Linux installations kicking around with a perfectly fine X/Wayland installation on both real hardware and in virtual machines, generally the first thing I do after logging in is pop open a Bash terminal or two or switching to a different TTY.
Yet now that the rainbows-and-sunshine era of Windows 2000 through Windows 7 has come to a fiery end amidst the dystopian landscape of Windows 10 and with Windows 11 looming over the horizon, it’s time to ask whether I would make the jump to the Linux desktop now.
Linux Non-Standard Base
Bringing things back to the ‘focus group’ aspect, perhaps one of the most off-putting elements of the Linux ecosystem is the completely bewildering explosion of distributions, desktop environments, window managers, package managers and ways of handling even basic tasks. All the skills that you learned while using Arch Linux or SuSE/Red Hat can be mostly tossed out the moment you are on a Debian system, never mind something like Alpine Linux. The differences can be as profound as when
using Haiku, for instance
.
Rather than Linux distributions focusing on a specific group of users, they seem to be primarily about doing what the people in charge want. This is illustrated by the demise of the Linux Standard Base (
LSB
) project, which was set up in 2001 by large Linux distributions in order to standardize various fundamentals between these distributions. The goals included a standard filesystem hierarchy, the use of the RPM package format and binary compatibility between distributions to help third-party developers.
By 2015 the project was effectively abandoned, and since then distributing software across Linux distributions has become if possible even more convoluted, with controversial ‘solutions’ like Canonical’s
Snap
,
Flatpak
,
AppImage
,
Nix
and others cluttering the landscape and sending developers scurrying back in a panic to compiling from source like it’s the 90s all over again.
Within an embedded development context this lack of standardization is also very noticeable, between differences in default compiler search paths, broken backwards compatibility — like the removal of
ifconfig
— and a host of minor and larger frustrations even before hitting big ticket items like service management flittering between SysV, Upstart, Systemd or having invented their own, even if possibly superior, alternatives like OpenRC in Alpine Linux.
Of note here is also that these system service managers generally do not work well with GUI-based applications, as CLI Linux and GUI Linux are still effectively two entirely different universes.
Wrong Security Model
For some inconceivable reason, Linux – despite not having UNIX roots like BSD – has opted to adopt the UNIX filesystem hierarchy and security model. While this is of no concern when you look at Linux as a wannabe-UNIX that will happily do the same multi-user server tasks, it’s an absolutely awful choice for a desktop OS. Without knowledge of the permission levels on folders, basic things like SSH keys will not work, and accessing network interfaces with Wireshark requires root-level access and some parts of the filesystem, like devices, require the user to be in a specific group.
When the expectation of a user is that the OS behaves pretty much like Windows, then the continued fight against an overly restrictive security model is just one more item that is not necessarily a deal breaker, but definitely grates every time that you run into it. Having the user experience streamlined into a desktop-friendly experience would help a lot here.
Unstable Interfaces
Another really annoying thing with Linux is that there is no stable kernel driver API. This means that with every update to the kernel, each of the kernel drivers have to be recompiled to work. This tripped me up in the past with Realtek chipset drivers for WiFi and Bluetooth. Since these were too new to be included in the Realtek driver package, I had to find an online source version on GitHub, run through the whole string of commands to compile the kernel driver and finally load it.
After running a system update a few days later and doing a restart, the system was no longer to be found on the LAN. This was because the WiFi driver could no longer be loaded, so I had to plug in Ethernet to regain remote access. With this experience in mind I switched to using Wireless-N WiFi dongles, as these are directly supported.
Experiences like this fortunately happen on non-primary systems, where a momentary glitch is of no real concern, especially since I made backups of configurations and such.
Convoluted Mess
This, in a nutshell, is why moving to Linux is something that I’m not seriously considering. Although I would be perfectly capable of using Linux as my desktop OS, I’m much happier on Windows — if you ignore Windows 11. I’d feel more at home
on FreeBSD
as well as it is a far more coherent experience, not to mention BeOS’ successor
Haiku
which is becoming tantalizingly usable.
Secretly my favorite operating system to switch to after Windows 10 would be ReactOS, however. It would bring the best of Windows 2000 through Windows 7, be open-source like Linux, yet completely standardized and consistent, and come with all the creature comforts that one would expect from a desktop user experience.
One definitely can dream. | 231 | 44 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134785",
"author": "Dave Boyer",
"timestamp": "2025-06-03T14:16:27",
"content": "I had a stable branch Ubuntu installed on a second SSD, kept almost unused but ready for those tasks where MSYS2 or VirtualBox would not be enough. One day, aftersudo apt dist-upgradeit refused to boot... | 1,760,371,527.058688 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/03/add-wood-grain-texture-to-3d-prints-with-a-model-of-a-log/ | Add Wood Grain Texture To 3D Prints – With A Model Of A Log | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"how-to"
] | [
"3d printed",
"texture",
"wood grain"
] | Adding textures is a great way to experiment with giving 3D prints a different look, and [PandaN] shows off
a method of adding a wood grain effect
in a way that’s easy to play around with. It involves using a 3D model of a log (complete with concentric tree rings) as a print modifier. The good news is that [PandaN] has already done the work of creating one, as well as showing how to use it.
The model of the stump — complete with concentric tree rings — acts as a modifier for the much-smaller printed object (in this case, a small plate).
In the slicer software one simply uses the log as a modifier for an object to be printed. When a 3D model is used as a modifier in this way, it means different print settings get applied everywhere the object to be printed and the modifier intersect one another.
In the case of this project, the modifier shifts the angle of the fill pattern wherever the models intersect. A fuzzy skin modifier is used as well, and the result is enough to give a wood grain appearance to the printed object. When printed with a wood filament (which is PLA mixed with wood particles), the result looks especially good.
We’ve seen a few different ways to add textures to 3D prints, including
using Blender to modify model surfaces
. Textures can enhance the look of a model, and are also
a good way to hide layer lines
.
In addition to the 3D models, [PandaN] provides a ready-to-go project for Bambu slicer with all the necessary settings already configured, so experimenting can be as simple as swapping the object to be printed with a new 3D model. Want to see that in action? Here’s
a separate video demonstrating exactly that
step-by-step, embedded below. | 34 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134748",
"author": "Luddita",
"timestamp": "2025-06-03T11:51:24",
"content": "I grew up in a Socialist country with terrible laminated furnitures with fake woodgrain. It will always look cheap, fake and sad for me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,526.122801 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/04/the-blackberry-keyboard-how-an-open-source-ecosystem-sprouts/ | The Blackberry Keyboard: How An Open-Source Ecosystem Sprouts | Arya Voronova | [
"blackberry hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"handhelds hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Beepy. BeepBerry",
"blackberry",
"community",
"hackers",
"keyboard",
"open hardware",
"q10",
"q20",
"Sharp Memory LCD",
"SQFMI"
] | What could happen when you open-source a hardware project?
No, seriously. I hold a fair few radical opinions – one is that projects should be open-source to the highest extent possible. I’ve seen this make miracles happen, make hackerdom stronger, and nourish our communities. I think we should be publishing all the projects, even if incomplete, as much as your opsec allows. I would make ritual sacrifices if they resulted in more KiCad projects getting published, and some days I even believe that gently bullying people into open-sourcing their projects can be justified. My ideal universe is one where companies are unable to restrict schematics from people getting their hardware, no human should ever hold an electronics black box, by force if necessary.
Why such a strong bias? I’ve seen this world change for the better with each open-source project, and worse with closed-source ones, it’s pretty simple for me. Trust me here – let me tell you a story of how a couple reverse-engineering efforts and a series of open-source PCBs have grown a tree of an ecosystem.
A Chain Of Blackberry Hackers
A big part of this story has been
dutifully documented by [Michael]
on his
BBKB community website
– it’s a meticulous summary of devices in the BBKB ecosystem. You should click on it and check it out, it’s a labor of love, aimed at introducing newcomers to the Blackberry keyboard-adorned device ecosystem, with a degree of care for fellow hackers that’s worth appreciating. In this article, I am relying on [Michael]’s research and interviews, but also on my own experience and research of Blackberry keyboard device community.
As [Michael]
has found out,
it all started in 2015, with a reverse-engineered replacement part keyboard for a Blackberry Q10. [JoeN] on Eevblog forums reverse-engineered the pinout, then posted the pinout and code to Arduino forums – for sufficiently devoted hackers to create with. Three years later, [
WooDWorkeR
] on our own Hackaday.io picked up the work, reverse-engineered the backlight, and made an Arduino Nano proof-of-concept. Things heated up when Hackaday superfriend [arturo182] picked up the mantle in 2018 – starting off with a Q10 keyboard PMOD, then eventually reverse-engineering the touchpad-equipped Q20 keyboard, and as a culmination, building a standalone Q20 keyboard with a USB-C connection and a RP2040 controller.
If you’ve seen a few QWERTY handhelds, you’ve likely seen one that’s downstream of [arturo182]’s work. Recently, he’s been big on creating castellated stamps – his RP2350 stamps make for great prototyping devices, can heavily recommend. He’s got a hardware company thing going on, called SolderParty, with a good few innovative products like the
FlexyPins
I’ve covered before – I adore castellated modules, and I feel like he’s mastered the craft of doing them.
Also, have you seen
the Tanmatsu
, and in particular, its custom QWERTY keyboard? That keyboard is one of his design – as of recent, he’s got a side project of hacker-friendly keyboards going on, partly to replace the Q20s as they become more and more scarce on the new-old-stock market.
But back to the Blackberry: the Q20 keyboard really hit the news, going beyond the hacker world, if I were to guess, relying upon a fair bit of nostalgy for QWERTY handhelds. My personal belief is “the more screen, the less soul”, and when reading articles like the ones written about the Q20 keyboard, I can feel that in the air. I wasn’t the only one, for sure – looks like Eric Migicovsky, founder of Pebble,
felt it too.
My favourite theory of Blackberry keyboard device popularity. By
[masklayer]
Seen
the Playdate?
It’s a handheld games console with a cult following, equipped with a widely beloved Sharp Memory LCD. It’s reasonably easy to buy, with a decent 2.7″ diagonal, and it’s got whole 400×240 worth of resolution – nothing to write home about, but it very much is enough for a Linux terminal, and it can be comfortably driven a Pi Zero’s SPI interface, what’s with the whole “1 bit per pixel” thing keeping it reasonably low-bandwidth. You’re picking up what I’m putting down so far?
Beep Beep (Watch Out For Trademarks)
A few prototypes later, the SQFMI group
released
the Beepberry project, later known as
Beepy
. It had the essentials of a pocket computer – a Pi Zero, a Sharp LCD, a Q20 keyboard, an RP2040 tying its all together, a 2000 mAh cell and onboard battery management, plus, a few extra niceties like a side button and an RGB LED for notifications. What else? An integration with
the Beeper project,
a platform putting all your messaging service under a single roof. All files fully published on GitHub, including the KiCad files for the PCB. A Discord server with
open invites.
Minimum amount of software support. A rubberband and two pieces of double-sided tape keeping the battery, screen, and keyboard attached to the board. I think that was it?
First batch was merely 50 pieces. The pricing did raise my eyebrow – $80 for a PCBA ($10), Pi Zero 2 W ($10-15), Sharp screen ($20), a Blackberry keyboard ($10), and a 2000mAh cell, for a BOM total of around $50-60, all put together and presumably tested? That sure flies in the face of all “multiply BOM by three” advice. Nevertheless, more and more people started receiving their Beepberries, sharing pictures online, coming together on the Discord and other social media, and playing around with their new cool hardware. It got a good few reviews, too, including
a must-read review from our own [Tom Nardi]!
The project’s journey wasn’t seamless, of course, but the problems were few and far between. For instance, the Beepberry project became Beepy – because of Blackberry, legally speaking, raising an eyebrow at the naming decision; it’s the kind of legal situation we’ve seen happen with projects like
Notkia.
If you ever get such a letter, please don’t hold any hard feelings towards the company – after all, trademarks can legally be lost if the company doesn’t take action to defend them. From what I gather, BlackBerry’s demands were low, as it goes with such claims – the project was renamed to Beepy going forward, and that’s about it.
Unity Through Discord
People deride Discord servers as means of community building, and by now, I’ve heard it all. I get it. Sadly, these days, you’re going to either get on Discord, or be detached from a large chunk of the hacker community – and such a detachment is bad if you want to stay up to date with things. Dislike Discord as much as you want, and I can assure you that all the bad things about it are true, but that’s how the game is played. So, if you’re not on the Beepy Discord server and you like what Beepy stands for, you’re missing out – thankfully, there is a Matrix integration, too.
Beepy owners and fans alike joined the crowd. Each had something to contribute, with varying degrees of hardware and software competence, modulated by varying degrees of executive function, as it goes. Some people received their own Beepies, a few people got the KiCad project and ordered the files, and an unexpected amount of people breadboarded a Beepy! The barebones software support might’ve had deterred people, but at the same time, it became a community obstacle to overcome.
Starting from [arturo182]’s Linux driver work and someone else’s Linux drivers for the Sharp screen, a Linux experience started to grow. Initially, just the keyboard and touchpad were supported, but the support grew – both the RP2040 firmware and the Linux driver grew in functionality, changed names, picked up by one developer after another. Different people picked fonts to fit the screen’s low resolution, mapped extra keycodes to layers built upon the 40-something buttons of the Q20 keyboard and designed on-screen hints, worked on “sleep” modes (mostly implemented within the RP2040 by powering down the Pi Zero in particular), wrote like a dozen different helper scripts for the GPIO-exposed side button, and the apps, oh were there apps!
People Found Purposes
Beepy is no X server-carrying device, and you won’t be running even LXDE on the Pi Zero and the 400×240 mono screen. Under the sheets of a virtual terminal, however, there’s heaps to work with. Of course, Linux has plenty of commandline apps – most of them aimed at a 80×24 text screen resolution and not a character less, but many worked outright. SSH and email clients? Weather alert UIs? Beeper-compatible messengers? Music players? Games? ChatGPT interfaces? Pico8 and other game emulators? Doom? Of course people ran Doom. There were multiple attempts at lightweight GUIs with apps, too, not to foreshadow too much too early.
This and following pictures are by [TheMediocritist] on Beepy discord server
Beepy became a hacker’s pocket friend. Maybe not everything was great all the time. The hardware had its sometimes-board-killing flaws, the GPIOs were quite tricky to hack on because of their layout, and the hardware features were pretty barebones. Software achievements and releases were somewhat uncoordinated, too – Discord just isn’t great for discoverability; I can only tell you about all this because I went through two years worth of Discord server logs, and found a lot of cool stuff that people published only to be forgotten in the chat logs. If you ask me, this period of the community would’ve been turbocharged by a monthly Beepy newsletter, also published on on a blog so that outsiders could be linked to it, too.
The Beepy community has truly made Beepy grow into a veritable pocket device, pushing the limits of the Pi Zero, the screen, and the keyboard alike. By now, there’s assortments of software you can run, documentation websites, Debian repositories running on GitHub infrastructure, a few lightweight Buildroot-based distros, dozens of 3D printed cases, and never a shortage of people coming into the Discord server asking when Beepy will be available for sale again.
Just The Beep-ginning
It genuinely fascinates me how a chain of, spanning years, has come from “keyboard pinout” to “a mass-manufactured open-source board with a big community” – Q10 keyboard reverse-engineering on Eevblog forums led to wider adoption, which eventually led to Arturo’s Q20 board and its splash, and that in led to Beepy and its Discord server. Did it end here? Of course it didn’t – I did say ecosystem
s
, plural. Next week, you’re getting a continuation article about the Beepy derivatives, because the story is just starting here.
Enough about open-source – next article, you will hear about the phenomenon of closed-open-source, clones of high and low effort alike, and a pretty cool open-source Beepy successor. (Spoilers: I’m biased because I’m involved.) But for a start, we’ll talk about a mis-used Texas Instruments boost regulator, a mis-calculated resistor, and a few overlooked datasheet parameters. | 43 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135284",
"author": "dan farmer",
"timestamp": "2025-06-04T17:23:03",
"content": "” I even believe bullying people into open-sourcing their projects can be justified”Anything can be justified, but that doesn’t make it right.According to the first hit on google (quoted from wikipedia... | 1,760,371,525.878302 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/04/a-vintage-scope-comes-back-to-life/ | A Vintage ‘Scope Comes Back To Life | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"aeg",
"oscilloscope",
"tubes"
] | We’re suckers for a vintage electronic teardown here at Hackaday, and thus it’s pleasing to see
[Thomas Scherrer OZ2CPU] with a 1962 AEG oscilloscope on his bench
. It’s definitely seen better days, and is a single-trace 10 MHz unit of the type you might have seen in a typical general purpose electronics lab back in the day.
Pulling the cover off, and as expected there’s a row of tubes each side of the centrally mounted CRT. No printed circuits in sight, and no transistors either, though the rectifiers are selenium parts. After a clean-up it’s time to look at the tubes, and they show the metallic deposits characteristic of long operation. We’re more used to that from older televisions than test equipment,
Gently bringing the power up it looks promising, but there’s a purple glow from one of the PCL82 triode-pentodes. Replacing that and a double-triode results in a ‘scope that surprisingly, is working. It was evidently a high quality device in the first place, with components capable of lasting for over six decades.
We’ve seen more from his bench involving tubes, including this device
using a magic-eye tube as the heavy lifter
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135477",
"author": "Isaac Wingfield",
"timestamp": "2025-06-05T03:46:04",
"content": "“metallic deposits characteristic of long operation” – more likely the barium “getter”that was vaporized as part of the manufacturing process.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,371,526.047077 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/04/high-stakes-fox-hunting-the-fccs-radio-intelligence-division-in-world-war-ii/ | High-Stakes Fox Hunting: The FCC’s Radio Intelligence Division In World War II | Dan Maloney | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"counterespionage",
"espionage",
"goniometer",
"history",
"radio intelligence division",
"RDF",
"RID",
"spy",
"spy radio",
"wwii"
] | With few exceptions, amateur radio is a notably sedentary pursuit. Yes, some hams will set up in a national or state park for a “Parks on the Air” activation, and particularly energetic operators may climb a mountain for “Summits on the Air,” but most hams spend a lot of time firmly planted in a comfortable chair, spinning the dials in search of distant signals or familiar callsigns to add to their logbook.
There’s another exception to the band-surfing tendencies of hams: fox hunting. Generally undertaken at a field day event, fox hunts pit hams against each other in a search for a small hidden transmitter, using directional antennas and portable receivers to zero in on often faint signals. It’s all in good fun, but fox hunts serve a more serious purpose: they train hams in the finer points of radio direction finding, a skill that can be used to track down everything from manmade noise sources to unlicensed operators. Or, as was done in the 1940s, to ferret out foreign agents using shortwave radio to transmit intelligence overseas.
That was the primary mission of the Radio Intelligence Division, a rapidly assembled organization tasked with protecting the United States by monitoring the airwaves and searching for spies. The RID proved to be remarkably effective during the war years, in part because it drew heavily from the amateur radio community to populate its many field stations, but also because it brought an engineering mindset to the problem of finding needles in a radio haystack.
Winds of War
America’s involvement in World War II was similar to Hemingway’s description of the process of going bankrupt: Gradually, then suddenly. Reeling from the effects of the Great Depression, the United States had little interest in European affairs and no appetite for intervention in what increasingly appeared to be a brewing military conflict. This isolationist attitude persisted through the 1930s, surviving even the recognized start of hostilities with Hitler’s sweep into Poland in 1939, at least for the general public.
But behind the scenes, long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, precipitous changes were afoot. War in Europe was clearly destined from the outset to engulf the world, and in the 1940s there was only one technology with a truly global reach: radio. The ether would soon be abuzz with signals directing troop movements, coordinating maritime activities, or, most concerningly, agents using
spy radios
to transmit vital intelligence to foreign governments. To be deaf to such signals would be an unacceptable risk to any nation that fancied itself a world power, even if it hadn’t yet taken a side in the conflict.
It was in that context that US President Franklin Roosevelt approved an emergency request from the Federal Communications Commission in 1940 for $1.6 million to fund a National Defense Operations section. The group would be part of the engineering department within the FCC and was tasked with detecting and eliminating any illegal transmissions originating from within the country. This was aided by an order in June of that year which prohibited the 51,000 US amateur radio operators from making any international contacts, and an order four months later for hams to submit to fingerprinting and proof of citizenship.
A Ham’s Ham
George Sterling (W1AE/W3DF). FCC commissioner in 1940, he organized and guided RID during the war. Source:
National Assoc. of Broadcasters
, 1948
The man behind the formation of the NDO was George Sterling. To call Sterling an early adopter of amateur radio would be an understatement. He plunged into radio as a hobby in 1908 at the tender age of 14, just a few years after Marconi and others demonstrated the potential of radio. He was licensed immediately after the passage of the Radio Act of 1927, callsign 1AE (later W1AE), and continued to experiment with spark gap stations. When the United States entered World War I, Sterling served for 19 months in France as an instructor in the Signal Corps, later organizing and operating the Corps’ first radio intelligence unit to locate enemy positions based on their radio transmissions.
After a brief post-war stint as a wireless operator in the Merchant Marine, Sterling returned to the US to begin a career in the federal government with a series of radio engineering and regulatory jobs. He rose through the ranks over the 1920s and 1930s, eventually becoming Assistant Chief of the FCC Field Division in 1937, in charge of radio engineering for the entire nation. It was on the strength of his performance in that role that he was tapped to be the first — and as it would turn out, only — chief of the NDO, which was quickly raised to the level of a new division within the FCC and renamed the Radio Intelligence Division.
To adequately protect the homeland, the RID needed a truly national footprint. Detecting shortwave transmissions is simple enough; any single location with enough radio equipment and a suitable antenna could catch most transmissions originating from within the US or its territories. But Sterling’s experience in France taught him that a network of listening stations would be needed to accurately triangulate on a source and provide a physical location for follow-up investigation.
The network that Sterling built would eventually comprise twelve primary stations scattered around the US and its territories, including Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. Each primary station reported directly to RID headquarters in Washington, DC, by telephone, telegraph, or teletype. Each primary station supported up to a few dozen secondary stations, with further coastal monitoring stations set up as the war ground on and German U-boats became an increasingly common threat. The network would eventually comprise over 100 stations stretched from coast to coast and beyond, staffed by almost 900 agents.
Searching the Ether
The job of staffing these stations with skilled radio operators wasn’t easy, but Sterling knew he had a ready and willing pool to pull from: his fellow hams. Recently silenced and eager to put their skills to the test, hams signed up in droves for the RID. About 80% of the RID staff were composed of current or former amateur radio operators, including the enforcement branch of sworn officers who carried badges and guns. They were the sharp end of the spear, tasked with the “last mile” search for illicit transmitters and possible confrontation with foreign agents.
But before the fedora-sporting, Tommy-gun toting G-men could swoop in to make their arrest came the tedious process of detecting and classifying potentially illicit signals. This task was made easier by an emergency order issued on December 8, 1941, the day after the Pearl Harbor attack, forbidding all amateur radio transmissions below 56 MHz. This reduced the number of targets the RID listening stations had to sort through, but the high-frequency bands cover a lot of turf, and listening to all that spectrum at the same time required a little in-house innovation.
Today, monitoring wide swaths of the spectrum is relatively easy, but in the 1940s, it was another story. Providing this capability fell to RID engineers James Veatch and William Hoffert, who invented an aperiodic receiver that covered everything from 50 kHz to 60 MHz. Called the
SSR-201
, this radio used a grid-leak detector to rectify and amplify all signals picked up by the antenna. A bridge circuit connected the output of the detector to an audio amplifier, with the option to switch an audio oscillator into the circuit so that continuous wave transmissions — the spy’s operating mode of choice — could be monitored. There was also an audio-triggered relay that could start and stop an external recorder, allowing for unattended operation.
SSR-201 aperiodic receiver, used by the RID to track down clandestine transmitters. Note the “Magic Eye” indicator. Source:
Steve Ellington (N4LQ)
The SSR-201 and a later variant, the K-series, were built by Kann Manufacturing, a somewhat grand name for a modest enterprise operating out of the Baltimore, Maryland, basement of Manuel Kann (W3ZK), a ham enlisted by the RID to mass produce the receiver. Working with a small team of radio hobbyists and broadcast engineers mainly working after hours, Kann Manufacturing managed to make about 200 of the all-band receivers by the end of the war, mainly for the RID but also for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, as well as the intelligence services of other allied nations.
These aperiodic receivers were fairly limited in terms of sensitivity and lacked directional capability, and so were good only for a first pass scan of a specific area for the presence of a signal. Consequently, they were often used in places where enemy transmitters were likely to operate, such as major cities near foreign embassies. This application relied on the built-in relay in the receiver to trigger a remote alarm or turn on a recorder, giving the radio its nickname: “The Watchdog.” The receivers were also often mounted in mobile patrol vehicles that would prowl likely locations for espionage, such as Army bases and seaports. Much later in the war, RID mobile units would drive through remote locations such as the woods around Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and an arid plateau in the high desert near Los Alamos, New Mexico, for reasons that would soon become all too obvious.
Radio G-Men
Adcock-type goniometer radio direction finder. The dipole array could be rotated 360 degrees from inside the shack to pinpoint a bearing to the transmitter. Source:
Radio Boulevard
Once a candidate signal was detected and headquarters alerted to its frequency, characteristics, and perhaps even its contents, orders went out to the primary stations to begin triangulation. Primary stations were equipped with radio direction finding (RDF) equipment, including the Adcock-type goniometer. These were generally wooden structures elevated above the ground with a distinctive Adcock antenna on the roof of the shack. The antenna was a variation on the Adcock array using two vertical dipoles on a steerable mount. The dipoles were connected to the receiving gear in the shack 180 degrees out of phase. This produced a radiation pattern with very strong nulls broadside to the antenna, making it possible for operators to determine the precise angle to the source by rotating the antenna array until the signal is minimized. Multiple stations would report the angle to the target to headquarters, where it would be mapped out and a rough location determined by where the lines intersected.
With a rough location determined, RID mobile teams would hit the streets. RID had a fleet of mobile units based on commercial Ford and Hudson models, custom-built for undercover work. Radio gear partially filled the back seat area, power supplies filled the trunk, and a small steerable loop antenna could be deployed through the roof for radio direction finding on the go. Mobile units were also equipped with special radio sets for communicating back to their primary station, using the VHF band to avoid creating unwanted targets for the other stations to monitor.
Mobile units were generally capable of narrowing the source of a transmission down to a city block or so, but locating the people behind the transmission required legwork. Armed RID enforcement agents would set out in search of the transmitter, often aided by a device dubbed “The Snifter.” This was a field-strength meter specially built for covert operations; small enough to be pocketed and monitored through headphones styled to look like a hearing aid, the agents could use the Snifter to ferret out the spy, hopefully catching them in the act and sealing their fate.
A Job (Too) Well Done
For a hastily assembled organization, the RID was remarkably effective. Originally tasked with monitoring the entire United States and its territories, that scope very quickly expanded to include almost every country in South America, where the Nazi regime found support and encouragement. Between 1940 and 1944, the RID investigated tens of thousands, resulting in 400 unlicensed stations being silenced. Not all of these were nefarious; one unlucky teenager in Portland, Oregon, ran afoul of the RID by hooking an antenna up to a record player so he could play DJ to his girlfriend down the street. But other operations led to the capture of 200 spies, including a shipping executive who used his ships to refuel Nazi U-boats operating in the Gulf of Mexico, and the famous
Dusquense Spy Ring
operating on Long Island.
Thanks in large part to the technical prowess of the hams populating its ranks, the RID’s success contained the seeds of its downfall. Normally, such an important self-defense task as preventing radio espionage would fall to the Army or Navy, but neither organization had the technical expertise in 1940, nor did they have the time to learn given how woefully unprepared they were for the coming war. Both branches eventually caught up, though, and neither appreciated a bunch of civilians mucking around on their turf. Turf battles ensued, politics came into it, and by 1944, budget cuts effectively ended the RID as a standalone agency. | 32 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135214",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2025-06-04T14:20:32",
"content": "Gulf of where?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8135222",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2025-06-04T14:34:47",
"content":... | 1,760,371,526.263045 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/04/tune-in-to-higher-lower-the-minimal-handheld-electronic-game/ | Tune In To “Higher Lower”, The Minimal Handheld Electronic Game | Donald Papp | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Games"
] | [
"3d printed",
"Arduboy",
"arduino",
"diy",
"handheld",
"kit"
] | [Tommy] has a great write-up about designing and building a minimalistic handheld electronic game called
“Higher Lower”
. It’s an audio-driven game in which the unit plays two tones and asks the player to choose whether the second tone was higher in pitch, or lower. The game relies on 3D printed components and minimal electronics, limiting player input to two buttons and output to whatever a speaker stuck to an output pin from an ATtiny85 can generate.
Fastener-free enclosure means fewer parts, and on the inside are pots for volume and difficulty. We love the thoughtful little tabs that hold the rocker switch in place during assembly.
Gameplay may be straightforward, but working with so little raises a number of design challenges. How does one best communicate game state (and things like scoring) with audio tones only? What’s the optimal way to generate a random seed when the best source of meaningful, zero-extra-components entropy (timing of player input) happens
after
the game has already started? What’s the most efficient way to turn a clear glue stick into a bunch of identical little light pipes? [Tommy] goes into great detail for each of these, and more.
In addition to the hardware and enclosure design, [Tommy] has tried new things on the software end of things. He found that using tools intended to develop for the
Arduboy DIY handheld console
along with a hardware emulator made for a
very
tight feedback loop during development. Being able to work on the software side without actually needing the hardware and chip programmer at hand was also flexible and convenient.
We’ve seen [Tommy]’s work before
about his synth kits, and as usual his observations and shared insights about bringing an idea from concept to kit-worthy product are absolutely worth a read.
You can find all the design files on
the GitHub repository
, but Higher Lower is also available as a reasonably-priced
kit with great documentation
suitable for anyone with an interest. Watch it in action in the video below. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135166",
"author": "ford",
"timestamp": "2025-06-04T11:19:44",
"content": "Why not use something like ESP32 and show highscores on a simple webpage?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8135191",
"author": "Shannon",
... | 1,760,371,526.313861 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/04/3d-printing-a-modular-guitar-means-it-can-look-like-whatever-you-want/ | 3D Printing A Modular Guitar Means It Can Look Like Whatever You Want | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed parts",
"guitar"
] | Got some spare filament and looking to build a guitar you can truly call your own?
[The 3D Print Zone] has created a modular 3D printable guitar system
that lets you easily mix and match different components for the ultimate in customization.
The build is based around a central core, which combines the pickups, bridge, and neck into one solid unit. This is really the heart of the guitar, containing all the pieces that need to be in precise alignment to get those strings vibrating precisely in tune. The core then mounts to a printed outer body via mating slots and rails, which in the main demo is made to look like a Les Paul-style design. This outer body also hosts the volume, tone, and pickup controls. Output from the pickups travels to the controls in the outer body via a set of metallic contacts.
What’s cool about this build is that the sky really is the limit for your creativity. As the video below demonstrates, the main build looks like a Les Paul. But, armed with the right CAD software, you can really make a guitar that looks like whatever you want, while the 3D printer does all the hard work of making it a reality. The files to print the guitar, along with the pickups and other components, are available as kits—but there’s also nothing stopping you from working up your own printed guitar design from scratch, either.
We’ve seen
some other great 3D printed guitars before, too
. | 25 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135139",
"author": "I Alone Possess The Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-06-04T09:00:05",
"content": "I want one! But.In no universe is this either a Les Paul, Telecaster or any other style guitar. Because, and here’s the kicker Danno, the neck doesn’t change. The pickups are too clos... | 1,760,371,526.503261 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/03/making-a-lego-vehicle-which-can-cross-large-gaps/ | Making A LEGO Vehicle Which Can Cross Large Gaps | John Elliot V | [
"hardware",
"Robots Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"gap crosser",
"lego",
"Lego engineering"
] | Here is a hacker showing off their engineering chops. This video shows successive design iterations for a LEGO vehicle
which can cross increasingly large gaps
.
At the time of writing this video from [
Brick Experiment Channel
] has been seen more than 110,000,000 times, which is… rather a lot. We guess with a view count like that there is a fairly good chance that many of our readers have already seen this video, but this is the sort of video one could happily watch twice.
This video sports a bunch of engineering tricks and approaches. We particularly enjoy watching the clever use of center of gravity. They hack gravity to make some of their larger designs work.
It is a little surprising that we haven’t already covered this video over here on Hackaday as it has been on YouTube for over three years now. But we have heard from [Brick Experiment Channel] before with videos such as
Testing Various Properties Of LEGO-Compatible Axles
and
LEGO Guitar Is Really An Ultrasonically-Controlled Synth
.
And of course we’ve covered heaps of LEGO stuff in the past too, such as
Building An Interferometer With LEGO
and
Stepping On LEGO For Science
.
Thanks to [Keith Olson] for writing in to remind us about the [Brick Experiment Channel]. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135109",
"author": "Richard",
"timestamp": "2025-06-04T07:15:47",
"content": "Catch up guys, there are many channels dedicated to completing lego engineering challenges. And what is great, they are available for youtube kids too. Lego must be responsible for creating many engineers... | 1,760,371,526.442056 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/03/building-an-automatic-wire-stripper-and-cutter/ | Building An Automatic Wire Stripper And Cutter | Lewin Day | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"wire cutter",
"wire stripper"
] | Stripping and cutting wires can be a tedious and repetitive part of your project. To save time in this regard,
[Red] built an automatic stripper and cutter to do the tiring work for him.
An ESP32 runs the show in this build. Via a set of A4988 stepper motor drivers, it controls two NEMA 17 stepper motors which control the motion of the cutting and stripping blades via threaded rods. A third stepper controls a 3D printer extruder to move wires through the device. There’s a rotary encoder with a button for controlling the device, with cutting and stripping settings shown on a small OLED display. It graphically represents the wire for stripping, so you can select the length of the wire and how much insulation you want stripped off each end. You merely need select the measurements on the display, press a button, and the machine strips and cuts the wire for you. The wires end up in a tidy little 3D-printed bin for collection.
The build should be a big time saver for [Red], who will no longer have to manually cut and strip wires for future builds. We’ve featured
some other neat wire stripper builds before, too
. Video after the break. | 25 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8135029",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-06-04T02:19:16",
"content": "Should use the ESP32 to do a little simple math: it adds up how much time it would take to manually strip all the wires you process with it, and then compare that with how many hours were spent on the project…... | 1,760,371,526.684379 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/03/spin-casting-this-telescope-mirror-in-resin-didnt-go-to-plan/ | Spin-Casting This Telescope Mirror In Resin Didn’t Go To Plan | Lewin Day | [
"classic hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"mirror",
"resin",
"silicone"
] | For most of us, mirrors are something we buy instead of build. However, [Unnecessary Automation] wanted to craft mirrors of his own for a custom telescope build. As it turns out,
producing optically-useful mirrors is not exactly easy.
For the telescope build in question, [Unnecessary Automation] needed a concave mirror. Trying to get that sort of shape with glass can be difficult. However, there’s such a thing as a “
liquid mirror
” where spinning fluid forms into a parabolic-like shape. Thus came the idea to spin liquid resin during curing to try and create a mirror with the right shape.
That didn’t quite work, but it inspired a more advanced setup where a spinning bowl and dense glycerine fluid was used to craft a silicone mold with a convex shape. This could then be used to produce a resin-based mirror in a relatively stationary fashion. From there, it was just necessary to plate a shiny metal layer on to the final part to create the mirror effect. Unfortunately, the end result was too messy to use as a viable telescope mirror, but we learn a lot about what didn’t work along the way.
The video is a great journey of trial and error. Sometimes, figuring out how to do something is the fun part of a project, even if you don’t always succeed. If you’ve got ideas on how to successfully spin cast a quality mirror, drop them in the comments below. We’ve seen others
explore mirror making techniques before, too
. | 29 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134714",
"author": "Lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-06-03T09:35:09",
"content": "This is one of the alchemical projects for home telescope makers. I’ve seen and heard from people who have tried this over the years. From internet strangers to professors and a friend. Even had a sc... | 1,760,371,526.625235 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/02/the-keyboard-sinclair-never-made/ | The Keyboard Sinclair Never Made | Heidi Ulrich | [
"classic hacks",
"PCB Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"keyboard",
"keycap",
"pcb",
"sinclair",
"spacebar",
"ZX Spectrum"
] | For those of us who’ve spent far too long hammering rubber keys into submission, a glorious solution has arrived. [Lee Smith] designed
the ZX Mechtrum Deluxe
, the ultimate keyboard upgrade for your beloved ZX Spectrum 48k. Thanks to [morefunmakingit], you can see this build-it-yourself mechanical mod below. It finally brings a proper spacebar and Spectrum-themed Wraith
keycaps
into your retro life.
The Metrum Deluxe is a full PCB redesign: no reused matrices or clunky membrane adapters here. [Lee Smith] got fed up with people (read: the community, plus one very persistent YouTuber) asking for a better typing experience, so he delivered. Wraith keycaps from AliExpress echo the original token commands and BASIC vibe, without going full collector-crazy. Best of all:
the files are open
. You can download the case on Printables and order the PCB through JLCPCB. Cherry on top (pun intended): you’ll finally have a spacebar your thumbs can be proud of.
So whether you’re into Frankenstein rigs or just want your
Spectrum
to stop feeling like an air mattress, check this video out.
Build files
and link to the keycaps can be found on Youtube, below the video.
Tip: if you foster a secret love for keyboards, don’t miss the
Keebin’ with Kristina’s series
on all sorts of keyboards. | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134676",
"author": "Nikolai",
"timestamp": "2025-06-03T07:50:38",
"content": "In Russia a lot of ZX clones were made with mechanical keyboard. All kind of types. I was making ZX keyboards from almost scratch.“Robik” for examplehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLevYmtCUXQ",
"pare... | 1,760,371,526.558608 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/02/the-1972-intercal-compiler-revealed/ | The 1972 INTERCAL Compiler Revealed | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Development"
] | [
"INTERCAL",
"SNOBOL",
"SPITBOL"
] | Have you ever heard of INTERCAL? If you haven’t, don’t feel bad. This relatively obscure language dates back to 1972 with the goal of being difficult to read and write. It is the intellectual parent of systems like brainf**k and other bad languages. Now, you can read the
INTERCAL-72 source code
thanks to a found printout. It will help if you can read SPITBOL, another obscure language that is a compiled version of SNOBOL (which is like an old-fashioned non-Unix awk program).
How strange it INTERCAL? Well, one of the statements is PLEASE. If you don’t use it enough, you’ll offend the interpreter, who will then ignore your program. But if you use it too much, then you are a suck up and, therefore, your program will be ignored again. If you think GOTO is a bad idea, you’ll just hate COME FROM, although that was from a later version of INTERCAL.
Here’s the example program from the user’s manual:
1 DO (5) NEXT
2 (5) DO FORGET #1
3 PLEASE WRITE IN :1
4 DO .1 <- ’V-":1~’#32768c/#0’"c/#1’~#3
5 DO (1) NEXT
6 DO :1 <- "’V-":1~’#65535c/#0’"c/#65535’
7 ~’#0c/#65535’"c/"’V-":1~’#0c/#65535’"
c
8 /#65535’~’#0c/#65535’"
9 DO :2 <- #1
10 PLEASE DO (4) NEXT
11 (4) DO FORGET #1
12 DO .1 <- "V-’:1~:2’c/#1"~#3
13 DO :1 <- "’V-":1~’#65535c/#0’"c/":2~’#65535
1
c
14 /#0’"’~’#0c/#65535’"c/"’V-":1~’#0
c
15 /#65535’"c/":2~’#0c/#65535’"’~’#0c/#65535’"
16 DO (1) NEXT
17 DO :2 <- ":2~’#0c/#65535’"
c
18 /"’":2~’#65535c/#0’"c/#0’~’#32767c/#1’"
19 DO (4) NEXT
20 (2) DO RESUME .1
21 (1) PLEASE DO (2) NEXT
22 PLEASE FORGET #1
23 DO READ OUT :1
24 PLEASE DO .1 <- ’V-"’:1~:1’~#1"c/#1’~#3
25 DO (3) NEXT
26 PLEASE DO (5) NEXT
27 (3) DO (2) NEXT
28 PLEASE GIVE UP
Interestingly, you can get SPITBOL for modern systems, so it is entirely possible to run this version of INTERCAL on a modern machine. Why? That’s for you to answer.
The heart of it all is on
GitHub
. You’ll also find links to the manual should you attempt to use it. We’ve looked at
INTERCAL
and other similar languages before. However, you are free to write unreadable code
in a more conventional language
. | 19 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134607",
"author": "alloydog",
"timestamp": "2025-06-03T02:05:29",
"content": "No “THANK YOU” statement to end the programme run?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8134674",
"author": "Greg Mathews",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,371,527.213223 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/02/planetary-poetry-with-a-tiny-digital-core/ | Planetary Poetry With A Tiny Digital Core | Heidi Ulrich | [
"classic hacks",
"Misc Hacks",
"Multitouch Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"clockwork",
"ESP32",
"moon",
"orrery",
"planetarium",
"reed switch"
] | Some hacks just tickle the brain in a very particular way. They’re, for a change, not overly engineered; they’re just elegant, anachronistic, and full of mischief. That’s exactly what [Frans] pulls off with
A Gentleman’s Orrery
, a tiny, simple clockwork solar system. Composed of shiny brass and the poise of 18th-century craftsmanship, it hides a modern secret: there’s barely any clockwork inside.
You can build it yourself
.
Peek behind the polished face and you’ll find a mechanical sleight of hand. This isn’t your grandfather’s gear-laden
planetarium
. Instead of that, it operates on a pared-down system that relies on a stepper motor, driving planetary movement through a 0.8 mm axle nested inside a 1 mm brass tube. That micro-mechanical coupling, aided by a couple of bevel gears, manages
to rotate the Moon just right
, including its orientation. Most of the movement relies on clever design, not gear cascades. The real wizardry happens under the hood: a 3D-printed chassis cradles an ESP32-C6, a
TTP223
capacitive touch module, STSPIN220 driver, and even
a reed switch
with magnetic charging.
You can even swap out the brass for a stone shell where the full moon acts as the touch control. It’s tactile, it’s poetic, and therefore, a nice hack for a weekend project. To build it yourself,
read [Frans]’ Instructable
. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134581",
"author": "Will Belden",
"timestamp": "2025-06-02T23:42:36",
"content": "How long do you have to spin it before a months-long total blackout?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8134599",
"author": "Paul",
"timesta... | 1,760,371,527.106331 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/02/3d-printing-a-capable-rc-car/ | 3D Printing A Capable RC Car | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"ESP32",
"R/C car",
"radio control"
] | You can buy all sorts of RC cars off the shelf, but doing so won’t teach you a whole lot. Alternatively, you could follow [TRDB]’s example,
and design your own from scratch.
The Lizard, as it is known, is a fun little RC car. It’s got a vaguely Formula 1-inspired aesthetic, and looks fetching with the aid of two-tone 3D printed parts. It’s designed for speed and handling, with a rear-wheel-drive layout and sprung suspension at all four corners to soak up the bumps. The majority of the vehicle is 3D printed in PETG, including the body and the gearbox and differential. However, some suspension components are made in TPU for greater flexibility and resistance to impact. [TRDB] specified commercial off-the-shelf wheels to provide good grip that couldn’t easily be achieved with 3D-printed tires. An ESP32 is responsible for receiving commands from [TRDB’s] custom RC controller running the same microcontroller. It sends commands to the speed controller that runs the Lizard’s brushed DC motor from a 3S lithium-polymer battery.
The final product looks sleek and handles well. It also achieved a GPS-verified top speed of 48 km/h as per [TRDB’s] testing. We’ve seen some other great DIY RC cars over the years, too, like this example
that focuses on performance fundamentals
. Video after the break. | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134588",
"author": "Mr Name Required",
"timestamp": "2025-06-02T23:51:46",
"content": "Nice design. I wonder if the builder is aware of the OpenRC project, which encompasses many builds similar to this:https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=OpenRC",
"parent_id": null,
"depth"... | 1,760,371,527.254959 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/02/ender-3-pro-gets-a-second-job-as-a-stator-winder/ | Ender 3 Pro Gets A Second Job As A Stator Winder | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"coil",
"coil winder",
"coils",
"ender 3 pro",
"stator",
"winding"
] | Sometimes, you find yourself in need of a coil. You could sit around winding thousands of turns of copper wire yourself, but that would be remarkably tedious. Thus, instead, you might follow the example of [OJengineering] and choose to get a machine to do it for you.
This build first popped up on on Reddit, with [OJengineering] explaining that
they had repurposed an Ender 3 Pro 3D printer to wind a stator for them
. The reasoning was sound—a replacement stator for their motorcycle cost $1000 in their local area, so rewinding their own would be much cheaper. The idea was straightforward enough—the 3D printer was a capable motion control platform that really just needed to be retooled to drag wire around instead of squirting hot plastic.
In a later update,
they explained that they had created a Python program that spits out appropriate stator winding G-code from user-entered parameters. This G-code commands the 3D printer’s head to make rectangle winds around the stator core while moving up and down to appropriately distribute the wire. The device can be seen in action in a video on YouTube.
It’s a hacky build, but one that does nevertheless get the winding done. That’s the thing about 3D printers—they’re really just simple motion systems that can do whatever you tell them. You just need a way to generate the right G-code to do the job.
We’ve featured
some other nifty coil winders before
, too. Video after the break.
[Thanks to JohnU for the tip!] | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134518",
"author": "henningdkf29543cc0f",
"timestamp": "2025-06-02T19:29:48",
"content": "Neat tool.First thought was “A printer does not have the force to do this.”, but then the video shows the low current charge coil for a CDI.Second was 1000$? With tax and all, something simila... | 1,760,371,527.156976 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/02/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-h-r-giger-keyboard/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The H.R. Giger Keyboard | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"book typewriter",
"cherry",
"cherry mx",
"electromagnetic field",
"Elliot-Fisher book typewriter",
"inductive switch",
"industrial design",
"lego",
"LEGO tenting",
"serenity now",
"tenting"
] | I had to bust out
Brain Salad Surgery
to write this one, folks. It was that, or put on some Ministry or something.
Just look at all the industrial-ness dripping from [heinn_dev]’s creation
.
Image by [heinn_dev] via
reddit
Apparently [heinn_dev] wasn’t completely satisfied with his Chocofi case, and instead of requesting a full refund, just went ahead and made a prettier one. It took a lot of printing and even more sanding, but here we are. And it looks fantastic.
The only downside, if you can call it one, is that adjusting the tenting is a slow operatiJKon. But then again that’s one of those things that you usually set and forget.
Oh, and those keycaps are printed, too. As one commenter said, those homing nipples look painful, but I think it’s part of the charm. I just hope that hand grime doesn’t end up clogging the holes under the palm area. Clean your keyboards, people.
Serenity Now!
Image by [MKBR] via
reddit
Maybe it’s the marshmallow keycaps, or the dreamy-white exposed dual trackballs, but I really dig
the Serenity from [MKBR]
. Is it endgame? Time will tell.
This is a 4-, 5-, or 6-column Corne layout, which is achieved with breakaway tabs on the PCBs. It uses an integrated RP2040 programmed with QMK/Vial and has hot-swappable MX switches.
Curious about the trackballs? I was, too — the left one is for scrolling, while the right is for regular trackballing around the screen.
The fact that it took around 85 tries to get AI to generate a good image for the back sounds about right, and looks to me like it was worth it. Go check it out in the gallery.
[MKBR] is a custom builder who has recently made a number of dystopian-themed boards
, and although they’re all quite nice, Serenity is a refreshing alternative.
The Centerfold: LEGO My Tenting Setup
Image by [koehr] via
reddit
Tenting is such a personal thing, and getting just the right angle can take some doing.
So why not give it a go with LEGO?
That’s what [koehr] did, inspired by [spiritual-toe-2025]
who did something similar
about a week and a half ago.
So anyway, this is [koehr]’s Sofle RGB Choc, which has — you guessed it — Kailh choc switches. One of [koehr]’s priorities is to have the halves locked in place, which is easily achievable with bricks. Check out the third picture in the gallery and you’ll see a gap which allows the keyboard’s outer edges to rest on that cool desk mat.
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: Elliot-Fisher Book Typewriter
When we think of typewriters, no matter the type, we usually envision a single sheet of substrate moving through it, and usually against a platen.
Image via
Museums Victoria Collections
Well, what if you needed to type in a ledger or other sort of already-bound book? Then you’d need a different beast entirely.
You’d need the Elliot-Fisher Book Typewriter
.
This machine debuted in 1903, although the design originated with the Elliot-Hatch Company around 1897. Unlike a traditional typewriter where the paper moves past a fixed point, the paper here is fixed, and the point of printing moves.
How is this done? With a set of rails. The typing mechanism moved along these rails to be positioned over the paper, effectively plotting the type. The typebars themselves were arranged vertically in a typebasket under the keyboard, and they rotated downward in order to strike the ribbon and paper.
As one typed, the entire keyboard and typebasket advanced along the rails. To do the next line, the machine move along another set of Y rails at right angles to the X rails. It’s unclear to me whether the book was fed through somehow, or one simply hefted the machine on top of it.
Finally, Cherry Unveils New Switches, Technology
Image by Cherry via
Tom’s Hardware
At Computex 2025,
Cherry announced “a bold new chapter” and debuted a total of four new switches
: the IK, MX Honey, MX Blossom, and MX Falcon.
First and foremost is the new IK inductive switch, which uses their patented inductive sensing technology. Basically, it uses electromagnetic field detection and allows for contactless actuation, which means no mechanical wear, “even after millions of keystrokes”.
These IK switches are touted to consume 50% less power than standard magnetic switches and only 5% of the power that Hall-effect switches use. If that’s not enough for you, these IK switches have RGB and customizable actuation. They come out in Fall 2025.
Can’t wait for the IK switches? The MX Honey comes out in June and is Cherry’s first silent tactile MX switch, which sounds interesting (or doesn’t, I suppose). They allegedly have a newfangled spring and are pre-lubed at the factory.
Also coming in June is the Cherry MX Blossom, which will be their lightest linear switch ever with an actuation force of 35 cN. Finally, my favorite — the Cherry MX Falcon — will come out next month as well. This one is a tactile switch inspired by the community, and is reportedly for heavy typists and enthusiasts. It’s got a long-pole stem and has a sharper bottom-out and a richer sound. All three MX switches should be available as 36-switch kits soon. I can’t wait to get some!
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
. | 19 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134474",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2025-06-02T17:26:17",
"content": "Can someone tell me why many of these split and/or “wavy” keyboards don’t have arrow keys? (Apart ftom many of those photoed not having any key cap legends at all, it is clear there is usually not enough keys ... | 1,760,371,527.319438 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/02/what-use-is-an-original-raspberry-pi/ | What Use Is An Original Raspberry Pi? | Jenny List | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"32-bit",
"Pi 1",
"Raspberry Pi 1"
] | Almost uniquely among consumer grade computer manufacturers, the Raspberry Pi folks still support their earliest boards. We’re guessing that’s in part due to the much more recent Pi Zero using the same 32-bit system-on-chip, but it’s still impressive that a 13-year-old single board computer still has manufacturer OS support. With so many of these early boards out there, is there much you can do with them in 2025? [Jeff Geerling]
gives it a try
.
His test Pi is unusual in itself, the 2013 blue special edition that RS gave away in a social media promotion. Sadly we didn’t win one back in the day and neither did he, so he picked it up in an online auction. We’re treated to some very slow desktop exploration, but it’s clear that this is not where the strengths of a Pi 1 lie. It was reckoned at the time to be roughly equivalent to a Pentium II or Pentium III in PC terms, so that shouldn’t be a surprise. Instead he concludes that it’s better as a headless machine, though he notes how projects are starting to abandon 32 bit builds. The full video is below the break.
We asked the same question not so long ago,
and the Hackaday Pi 1 now quietly
analyses news content
on its two-watt power budget. It’s still a useful little Linux box for your script-based projects even if it will never win any speed prizes. | 53 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134456",
"author": "REALiAM",
"timestamp": "2025-06-02T16:21:12",
"content": "Did this myself just two weeks ago, pihole on a rpi 1. still running great, had it in docker but kept having issues and kids nowadays can’t function without internet access…",
"parent_id": null,
"... | 1,760,371,527.40287 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/02/the-potential-big-boom-in-every-dust-cloud/ | The Potential Big Boom In Every Dust Cloud | Maya Posch | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"dust",
"dust explosion",
"dust extraction",
"Thermite"
] | To the average person, walking into a flour- or sawmill and seeing dust swirling around is unlikely to evoke much of a response, but those in the know are quite likely to bolt for the nearest exit at this harrowing sight. For as harmless as a fine cloud of flour, sawdust or even coffee creamer may appear, each of these have the potential for a massive conflagration and even an earth-shattering detonation.
As for the ‘why’, the answer can be found in for example the working principle behind an internal combustion engine. While a puddle of gasoline is definitely flammable, the only thing that actually burns is the evaporated gaseous form above the liquid, ergo it’s a relatively slow process; in order to make petrol combust, it needs to be mixed in the right air-fuel ratio. If this mixture is then exposed to a spark, the fuel will nearly instantly burn, causing a detonation due to the sudden release of energy.
Similarly, flour, sawdust, and many other substances in powder form will burn gradually if a certain transition interface is maintained. A bucket of sawdust burns slowly, but if you create a sawdust cloud, it might just blow up the room.
This raises the questions of how to recognize this danger and what to do about it.
Welcome To The Chemical Safety Board
In an industrial setting, people will generally acknowledge that oil refineries and chemical plants are dangerous and can occasionally go boom in rather violent ways. More surprising is that something as seemingly innocuous as a sugar refinery and packing plant can go from a light sprinkling of sugar dust to a violent and lethal explosion within a second. This is however what happened in 2008 at the
Georgia Imperial Sugar refinery
, which killed fourteen and injured thirty-six. During this disaster, a primary and multiple secondary explosions ripped through the building, completely destroying it.
Georgia Imperial Sugar Refinery aftermath in 2008. (Credit:
USCSB
)
As described in the US Chemical Safety Board (USCSB)
report
with accompanying
summary video
(embedded below), the biggest cause was a lack of ventilation and cleaning that allowed for a build-up of sugar dust, with an ignition source, likely an overheated bearing, setting off the primary explosion. This explosion then found subsequent fuel to ignite elsewhere in the building, setting off a chain reaction.
What is striking is just how simple and straightforward both the build-up towards the disaster and the means to prevent it were. Even without knowing the exact
air-fuel ratio
for the fuel in question, there are only two points on the scale where you have a mixture that will
not
violently explode in the presence of an ignition source.
These are either a heavily saturated solution — too much fuel, not enough air — or the inverse. Essentially, if the dust-collection systems at the Imperial Sugar plant had been up to the task, and expanded to all relevant areas, the possibility of an ignition event would have likely been reduced to zero.
Things Like To Burn
In the context of dust explosions, it’s somewhat discomforting to realize just how many things around us are rather excellent sources of fuel. The aforementioned sugar, for example, is a
carbohydrate
(
C
m
(H
2
O)
n
). This chemical group also includes cellulose, which is a major part of wood dust, explaining why reducing dust levels in a woodworking shop is about much more than just keeping one’s lungs happy. Nobody wants their backyard woodworking shop to turn into a mini-Imperial Sugar ground zero, after all.
Carbohydrates aren’t far off from
hydrocarbons
, which includes our old friend petrol, as well as methane (CH
4
), butane (C
4
H
10
), etc., which are all delightfully combustible. All that the carbohydrates have in addition to carbon and hydrogen atoms are a lot of oxygen atoms, which is an interesting addition in the context of them being potential fuel sources. It incidentally also illustrates how important carbon is for life on this planet since its forms the literal backbone of its molecules.
Although one might conclude from this that only something which is a carbohydrate or hydrocarbon is highly flammable, there’s a whole other world out there of things that can burn. Case in point: metals.
Lit Metals
On December 9, 2010, workers were busy at the New Cumberland AL Solutions titanium plant in West Virginia, processing titanium powder. At this facility, scrap titanium and zirconium were milled and blended into a powder that got pressed into discs. Per
the report
, a malfunction inside one blender created a heat source that ignited the metal powder, killing three employees and injuring one contractor. As it turns out, no dust control methods were installed at the plant, allowing for uncontrolled dust build-up.
As pointed out in the USCSB report, both titanium and zirconium will readily ignite in particulate form, with zirconium capable of auto-igniting in air at room temperature. This is why the milling step at AL Solutions took place submerged in water. After ignition, titanium and zirconium require a Class D fire extinguisher, but it’s generally recommended to let large metal fires burn out by themselves. Using water on larger titanium fires can produce hydrogen, leading conceivably to even worse explosions.
The phenomenon of metal fires is probably best known from
thermite
. This is a mixture of a metal powder and a metal oxide. After ignited by an initial source of heat, the redox process becomes self-sustaining, providing the fuel, oxygen, and heat. While generally iron(III) oxide and aluminium are used, many more metals and metal oxides can be combined, including a copper oxide for a very rapid burn.
While thermite is intentionally kept as a powder, and often in some kind of container to create a molten phase that sustains itself, it shouldn’t be hard to imagine what happens if the metal is ground into a fine powder, distributed as a fine dust cloud in a confined room and exposed to an ignition source. At that point the differences between carbohydrates, hydrocarbons and metals become mostly academic to any survivors of the resulting inferno.
Preventing Dust Explosions
As should be quite obvious at this point, there’s no real way to fight a dust explosion, only to prevent it. Proper ventilation, preventing dust from building up and having active dust extraction in place where possible are about the most minimal precautions one should take. Complacency as happened at the Imperial Sugar plant merely invites disaster: if you can see the dust build-up on surfaces & dust in the air, you’re already at least at DEFCON 2.
A demonstration of how easy it is to create a solid dust explosion came from the Mythbusters back in 2008 when they tested the
‘sawdust cannon’
myth. This involved blowing sawdust into a cloud and igniting it with a flare, creating a massive fireball. After nearly getting their facial hair singed off with this roaring success, they then tried the same with
non-dairy coffee creamer
, which created an even more massive fireball.
Fortunately the Mythbusters build team was supervised by adults on the bomb range for these experiments, as it shows just how incredibly dangerous dust explosions can be. Even out in the open on a secure bomb range, never mind in an enclosed space, as hundreds have found out over the decades in the US alone. One only has to look at the USCSB’s
dust explosions statistics
to learn to respect the dangers a bit more. | 49 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134413",
"author": "ALX_skater",
"timestamp": "2025-06-02T14:05:19",
"content": "Fun fact: powdered eggs were used in the formulation of pykrete as a binding agent. The duck proteins contained in egg yolk help improve the structural integrity and cohesion of ice and sawdust mixture... | 1,760,371,527.492973 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/02/depositing-metal-on-glass-with-fiber-laser/ | Depositing Metal On Glass With Fiber Laser | Tyler August | [
"hardware",
"High Voltage",
"News"
] | [
"deposition",
"fiber laser",
"fibre laser",
"metal etching"
] | Fiber lasers aren’t nearly as common as their diode and CO2 cousins, but if you’re lucky enough to have one in your garage or local makerspace,
this technique for depositing thin films of metals
in [Breaking Taps] video, embedded below, might be worth checking out.
It’s a very simple hack: a metal shim or foil is sandwiched between two pieces of glass, and the laser is focused on the metal. Etching the foil blasts off enough metal to deposit a thin film of it onto the glass. From electron microscopy, [Breaking Taps] reveals that what’s happening is that microscopic molten metal droplets are splashing up to the ̶m̶e̶t̶a̶l̶ glass, rather than this being any kind of plasma process like sputtering. He found this technique worked best with silver of all the materials tested, and there were a few. While copper worked, it was not terribly conductive — he suggests electroplating a thicker layer onto the (probably rather oxidized) copper before trying to solder, but demonstrates soldering to it regardless, which seems to work.
This might be a neat way to make artistic glass-substrate PCBs. More testing will be needed to see if this would be worth the effort over just gluing copper foil to glass,
as has been done before
. [Breaking Taps] suspects, and we agree, that his process would work better under an inert atmosphere, and we’d like to see it tried.
One thing to note is that, regardless of atmosphere, alloys are a bit iffy with this technique, as the ‘blast little drops off’ process can cause them to demix on the glass surface. He also reasons that ‘printing’ a large area of metal onto the glass, and then etching it off would be a more reliable technique than trying to deposit complex patterns directly to the glass in one go. Either way, though, it’s worth a try if you have a fiber laser.
Don’t have a fiber laser?
Maybe you could build one. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134378",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-06-02T11:55:18",
"content": "Me want at home",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8134385",
"author": "FEW",
"timestamp": "2025-06-02T12:19:34",
"content": "I think that... | 1,760,371,527.54621 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/02/this-bb-shooter-has-a-spring-but-not-for-what-you-think/ | This BB Shooter Has A Spring, But Not For What You Think | Donald Papp | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"bb",
"detente",
"four bar linkage",
"print in place",
"shooter"
] | [It’s on my MIND] designed
a clever BB blaster
featuring a four-bar linkage that prints in a single piece and requires no additional hardware. The interesting part is how it turns a trigger pull into launching a 6 mm plastic BB. There is a spring, but it only acts as a trigger return and plays no part in launching the projectile. So how does it work?
There’s a spring in this BB launcher, but it’s not used like you might expect.
The usual way something like this functions is with the trigger pulling back a striker of some kind, and putting it under tension in the process (usually with the help of a spring) then releasing it. As the striker flies forward, it smacks into a BB and launches it. We’ve seen
print-in-place shooters that work this way
, but that is not what is happening here.
With [It’s on my MIND]’s BB launcher, the trigger is a four-bar linkage that transforms a rearward pull of the trigger into a forward push of the striker against a BB that is gravity fed from a hopper. The tension comes from the BB’s forward motion being arrested by a physical detent as the striker pushes from behind. Once that tension passes a threshold, the BB pops past the detent and goes flying. Thanks to the mechanical advantage of the four-bar linkage, the trigger finger doesn’t need to do much work. The spring? It’s just there to reset the trigger by pushing it forward again after firing.
It’s a clever design that doesn’t require any additional hardware, and even prints in a single piece. Watch it in action in the video, embedded just below. | 24 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134334",
"author": "Ralph Doncaster (Nerd Ralph)",
"timestamp": "2025-06-02T08:31:01",
"content": "The four-bar linkage mechanism offers a range of advantages in the design of contemporary firearms, making it a valuable choice for engineers and designers in the industry. One of the... | 1,760,371,527.609619 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/01/testing-brick-layers-in-orcaslicer-with-staggered-perimeters/ | Testing Brick Layers In OrcaSlicer With Staggered Perimeters | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"brick layers",
"FDM"
] | The OrcaSlicer staggered perimeters in an FDM print, after slicing through the model. (Credit: CNC Kitchen)
The idea of staggered (or brick) layers in FDM prints has become very popular the past few years, with now nightly builds of OrcaSlicer featuring the ‘Stagger Perimeters’ option to automate the process, as demonstrated by [Stefan] in a
recent
CNC Kitchen
video
. See the relevant
OrcaSlicer GitHub thread
for the exact details, and to obtain a build with this feature. After installing, slice the model as normal, after enabling this new parameter in the ‘Strength’ tab.
In the video, [Stefan] first tries out a regular and staggered perimeter print without further adjustments. This perhaps surprisingly results in the staggered version breaking before the regular print, which [Stefan] deduces to be the result of increasing voids within the print. After increasing the extrusion rate to 110% to fill up said voids, this does indeed result in the staggered part showing a massive boost in strength.
What’s perhaps more telling is that a similar positive effect is observed when the flow is increased with the non-staggered part, albeit with the staggered part still showing more of a strength increase. This makes it obvious that just staggering layers isn’t enough, but that the flowrate and possibly other parameters have to be adjusted as well to fully realize the potential of brick layers. That said, it’s encouraging to see this moving forward despite
questionable patent claims
. | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134324",
"author": "Cad the Mad",
"timestamp": "2025-06-02T07:39:32",
"content": "And now for a dozen HaD commentators to explain that this is the wrong way to measure the strength of prints.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8... | 1,760,371,527.784232 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/01/2025-pet-hacks-contest-weigh-your-dog-the-easy-way/ | 2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Weigh Your Dog The Easy Way | Jenny List | [
"contests",
"home hacks"
] | [
"dog bed",
"load cell",
"weighing machine"
] | If you need to weigh your pet, you’ll soon find that getting an animal to stand on a weighing machine to order is very difficult indeed. If the critter in question is a cat or a small dog you can weigh yourself both holding them and not holding them, and compute the difference. But in the case of a full size Bernese mountain dog, the hound is simply too big for that. Lateral thinking is required, and that’s how [Saren Tasciyan] came up with the idea of making
a dog bed that’s also a weighing machine
. When the mutt settles down, the weight can be read with ease. The bed itself is a relatively straightforward wooden frame, with load cells placed above rubber feet. The load cells in turn talk to an ESP8266 which has an LCD display to deliver the verdict. Dog weighed, without the drama.
This project is of course part of the Hackaday 2025 Pet Hacks contest, an arena in which any of the cool hacks you’ve made to enhance you and your pet’s life together can have an airing. Meanwhile this isn’t the first time this particular pooch has had a starring role;
he’s sported a rather fetching barrel in a previous post
. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134277",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-06-02T02:57:19",
"content": "Easiest is seeing if you can get a satellite to orbit them.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8134402",
"author": "Alexander Pruss",
"timestam... | 1,760,371,527.825685 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/01/hackaday-links-june-1-2025/ | Hackaday Links: June 1, 2025 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"hackaday links"
] | It appears that we’re approaching the HAL-9000 point on the AI hype curve with
this report
, which suggests that Anthropic’s new AI model is willing to exhibit some rather antisocial behavior to achieve its goals. According to a pre-release testing summary, Claude Opus 4 was fed some hypothetical company emails that suggested engineers were planning to replace the LLM with another product. This raised Claude’s hackles enough that the model mined the email stream for juicy personal details with which to blackmail the engineers, in an attempt to win a stay of execution. True, the salacious details of an extramarital affair were deliberately seeded into the email stream, and in most cases, it tried less extreme means to stay alive, such as cajoling senior leaders by email, but in at least 84% of the test runs, Claude eventually turned to blackmail to get its way. So we’ve got that to look forward to.
Also from the world of AI, at least tangentially, it now appears possible to
doxx yourself just by making comments on YouTube videos
. The open-source intelligence app is called
YouTube Tools
, and when provided with a user’s handle, it will develop a profile of the user based on their comments and some AI magic. We wanted to give it a try, but alas, it requires a paid subscription to use, and we’re not willing to go that far even for you, dear reader. But reports are that it can infer things like the general region in which the commenter lives and discern their cultural and social leanings. The author, LolArchiver, has a range of similar mining tools for other platforms along with reverse-lookup tools for phone and email addresses, all of which likely violate the terms of service in all kinds of ways. The accuracy of the profile is obviously going to depend greatly on how much material it has to work with, so in addition to the plenty of reasons there are to avoid reading YouTube comments, now there’s a solid reason to avoid writing them.
“Danger! Code Yellow aboard the International Space Station! All hands to emergency escape pods!” OK, maybe not, but as we teased a bit on
this week’s podcast
, there’s now a handy desktop app that allows you to keep track of the current level of urine in the ISS’s storage tanks. The delightfully named
pISSStream
, which is available only for the Apple ecosystem, taps into NASA’s telemetry stream (lol) and pulls out the current level in the tanks, because why the hell not? As unserious as the project is, it did raise an interesting discussion about how fluid levels are measured in space. So we’ll be diving into that topic (yuck) for an article soon. It’ll be our number one priority.
Looks like it’s time for another Pluto pity-party with the news of
a new trans-Neptunian object
that might just qualify as another dwarf planet for our solar system. Bloodlessly named 2017 OF
201
, the object has an extremely elongated orbit, reaching from just outside Pluto’s orbit at about 44 astronomical units at perihelion and stretching more than 1,600 AUs at aphelion, and takes 25,000 years to complete. It honestly looks more like the orbit of a comet, but with an estimated diameter of 700 km, it may join the nine other likely dwarf planets, if further observations reveal that it’s properly rounded. So not only has Pluto been demoted from legit planet, it’s now just one of potentially ten or more dwarf planets plugging around out in the deep dark. Poor Pluto.
And finally, we hope this one is a gag, but we fear that the story of
a Redditor unaware that analog camera film needs to be developed
rings alarmingly true. The mercifully unnamed noob recently acquired a Canon AE-1 — excellent choice; that was our first “real” camera back in the day — and ran a couple of rolls of Kodak ColorPlus 200 through it. All seemed to be going well, although we suspect the photographer reflexively pulled the camera away from their eye with each exposure to check the non-existent screen on the back of the camera; old habits die hard. But when one roll of the exposed film was fed through a 35-mm scanner, the Redditor was disappointed to see nothing. Someone offered the suggestion that developing the film might be a good idea, hopefully as gently as possible. Hats off for dipping a toe in the analog world, but the follow-through is just as important as the swing. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134254",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2025-06-02T00:14:27",
"content": "My late brother’s Nikon FE is sitting on the desk next to me with a roll of Fuji 200 print film in it.Analog cameras are fun to use.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,371,528.258373 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/01/its-midi-for-the-trs-80/ | It’s MIDI For The TRS-80! | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"midi",
"tracker",
"trs-80"
] | The Radio Shack TRS-80 was a much-loved machine across America. However, one thing it lacked was MIDI. That’s not so strange given the era it was released in, of course. Nevertheless, [Michael Wessel] has seen fit to correct this by creating the MIDI/80—
a soundcard and MIDI interface for this old-school beast.
The core of the build is a BluePill STM32F103C8T6 microcontroller, running at a mighty 75 MHz. Plugged into the TRS-80s expansion port, the microcontroller is responsible for talking to the computer and translating incoming and outgoing MIDI signals as needed. Naturally, you can equip it with full-size classic DIN sockets for MIDI IN and MIDI OUT using an
Adafruit breakout module
. None of that MIDI Thru nonsense, though, that just makes people uncomfortable. The card is fully capable of reproducing General MIDI sounds, too, either via plugging in a Waveblaster sound module to the relevant header, or by hooking up a Roland Sound Canvas or similar to the MIDI/80s MIDI Out socket. Software-wise, there’s already a whole MIDI ecosystem developing around this new hardware. There’s a TRS-80 drum tracker and a synthesizer program, all with demo songs included. Compatibility wise, The MIDI/80 works with the TRS-80 Model I, III, and 4.
Does this mean the TRS-80 will become a new darling of the tracker and chiptune communities? We can only hope so! Meanwhile, if you want more background on this famous machine,
we’ve looked into that, too
. Video after the break. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134219",
"author": "I Alone Possess The Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T20:06:45",
"content": "This is wonderful! MIDI has a straightforwardness that appeals to me. Of course I know nothing about it after the ’80s. Built a studio based around a PC-XT clone. Cakewalk4Life!",
... | 1,760,371,528.046238 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/01/plenty-of-leds-and-useful-too-the-2025-dors-cluc-badge/ | Plenty Of LEDs And Useful Too: The 2025 DORS/CLUC Badge | Jenny List | [
"cons"
] | [
"badge",
"badgelife",
"DORS/CLUC",
"NFC"
] | It’s always nice to see new developments in the world of electronic badges, and while there are events and badge teams pushing the technological envelope there’s still plenty of scope for innovation without too many exotic parts.
This year’s DORS/CLUC open source conference in Croatia has just such a badge
, with a large alphanumeric LED display as well as USB and an NFC reader. During the conference it displayed the user’s name and could be used in an NFC-based game, but it’s also designed to be used as a general purpose notification device afterwards.
The write-up is familiar to anyone who has been involved with badge production, a tale of long soldering sessions as missing components had to be added later, and of last minute firmware flashing. The heart of the machine is an STM32L073, with an IS31FL3731 LED matrix driver chip and an ST25R3916 for the NFC. All the files
can be found in a GitLab repo
, and there’s a video below the break showing it all in action. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134207",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T18:00:26",
"content": "The ideal companion of some red cylinders wrapped together, with a couple of loose cables.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8134223",
"author": ... | 1,760,371,528.085307 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/01/making-the-codec-communicator-from-metal-gear-solid/ | Making The Codec Communicator From Metal Gear Solid | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"codec",
"metal gear",
"metal gear solid",
"walkie talkie"
] | [3DSage] likes building replicas of hardware from movies and video games, often with a functional twist. His latest build aimed
to bring the Codec from
Metal Gear Solid
to life.
If you haven’t played the
Metal Gear
games, the Codec has been modelled somewhat like an advanced walkie talkie at times, but has often been kept off-screen. Thus, [3DSage] had a great deal of creative latitude to create a realistic-feeling Codec device that provided voice communications and some simple imagery display.
The resulting build relies on an RP2040 microcontroller to run the show. It’s paired with an MPU6050 3-axis gyroscope and accelerometer for motion control of the device’s functionality, and features a small LCD screen to mimic the display in the games. A kids walkie-talkie kit was leveraged for audio communication, but kitted out with a better microphone than standard. Power is via a rechargeable 9V battery, which is really a lithium-ion and USB charging board packed into the familiar 9V form factor.
Where the build really shines, though, is the aesthetic. [3DSage] managed to capture the military-like look and feel as well as authentically recreate the graphics from the games on the screen. The simulated noise on the display is particularly charming. Beyond that, the 3D-printed enclosures leverage texture and multi-color printing really well to nail the fit and finish.
Ultimately, the Codec isn’t much more than a glorified walkie talkie. Even still, [3DSage] was able to create an impressive prop that actually does most of what the device can do in game. If you’ve ever coveted
a PipBoy or tricorder,
this is one project you’ll be able to appreciate. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134178",
"author": "Gardoni",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T15:19:01",
"content": "I like playing MGS2 on “Fuguri Hard” difficulty, “Boy Next Door” feels too hard and I can’t enjoy the plot anymore.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8... | 1,760,371,528.304842 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/01/adaptive-optics-take-clearest-pictures-of-the-sun-yet/ | Adaptive Optics Take Clearest Pictures Of The Sun Yet | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Science"
] | [
"adaptive optics",
"corona",
"goode solar telescope",
"mirror",
"observatory",
"solar",
"sun",
"telescope"
] | It’s sometimes easy to forget that the light in the sky is an actual star. With how reliable it is and how busy we tend to be as humans, we can take that incredible fact and stow it away and largely go on with our lives unaffected. But our star is the thing that gives everything on the planet life and energy and is important to understand. Humans don’t have a full understanding of it either; there are several unsolved mysteries in physics which revolve around the sun, the most famous of which is the coronal heating problem. To help further our understanding a number of scientific instruments have been devised to probe deeper into it,
and this adaptive optics system just captures some of the most impressive images of it yet
.
Adaptive optics systems are installed in terrestrial telescopes to help mitigate the distortion of incoming light caused by Earth’s atmosphere. They generally involve using a reference source to measure these distortions, and then make changes to the way the telescope gathers light, in this case by making rapid, slight changes to the telescope’s mirror. This system has been installed on the Goode Solar Telescope in California and has allowed scientists to view various solar phenomena with unprecedented clarity.
The adaptive optics system here has allowed researchers to improve the resolution from the 1000 km resolution of other solar telescopes down to nearly the theoretical limit of this telescope—63 km. With this kind of resolution the researchers hope that this clarity will help shine some light on some of the sun’s ongoing mysteries. Adaptive optics systems like this aren’t just used on terrestrial telescopes, either.
This demonstration shows how the adaptive optics system works on the James Webb Space Telescope
.
Thanks to [iliis] for the tip! | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134146",
"author": "helge",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T12:14:00",
"content": "Would have loved a link to the actual AO implementation on the Goode Solar Telescope. LMGTFY below.Inhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-025-02564-0under “Methods”, “The GST coronal adaptive optics syste... | 1,760,371,527.99425 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/01/portal-2-becomes-an-impressively-capable-web-server/ | Portal 2 Becomes An Impressively Capable Web Server | Lewin Day | [
"Games"
] | [
"portal 2",
"source",
"source engine",
"valve",
"web server",
"webserver"
] | Portal 2
is mostly known as the successful sequel to Valve’s weird physics platformer,
Portal.
It’s not really known for being a webserver. That might change, though,
given the hard work of [PortalRunner].
Quite literally, [PortalRunner] hacked the Source engine and Portal 2 to actually run a working HTTP web server. That required setting up the code to implement a TCP network socket that was suitable for web traffic, since the engine primarily functions with UDP sockets for multiplayer use. This was achieved with a feature initially put in the Source engine for server management in the
Left 4 Dead
games. From there, the game engine just had to be set up to reply to HTTP requests on that socket with the proper responses a visiting browser expects. If the game engine responds to a browser’s connection request with a bunch of HTML, that’s what the browser will display. Bam! You’ve got a web server running in
Portal 2.
From there, [PortalRunner] went further, setting things up so that the status of in-game objects effects the HTML served up to visiting web browsers. Move objects in the game, and the served web page changes. It’s pretty fun, and the complexity and features [PortalRunner] implements only get more advanced from there. When he gets into stacking companion cubes to write HTML in visual form, you’ll want to applaud the Minecraftian glory of it all.
The devil is really in the details on this one, and it’s a great watch. In reality, making Portal 2 into a simple web server is far easier than you might have thought possible. Valve’s physics masterpiece really is popular with hackers;
we see it popping up around here all the time
. Video after the break. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134111",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T08:28:33",
"content": "I guess it’s less making portal 2 a webserver and more gluing a crude homebrew webserver into the game so it can report status info.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"co... | 1,760,371,529.892635 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/31/disarming-a-nuke-twice/ | Disarming A Nuke… Twice | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Science"
] | [
"atomic",
"bomb",
"explosion",
"misfire",
"nuclear",
"science"
] | Since the tail end of World War II, humanity has struggled to deal with its newfound ability to harness the tremendous energy in the nucleus of the atom. Of course there have been some positive developments like nuclear power which can produce tremendous amounts of electricity without the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuels. But largely humanity decided to build a tremendous nuclear weapons arsenal instead, which has not only cause general consternation worldwide
but caused specific problems for one scientist in particular
.
[Steve Weintz] takes us through the tale of [Dr. John C. Clark] who was working with the Atomic Energy Commission in the United States and found himself first at a misfire of a nuclear weapons test in the early 1950s. As the person in charge of the explosive device, it was his responsibility to safely disarm the weapon after it failed to detonate. He would find himself again in this position a year later when a second nuclear device sat on the test pad after the command to detonate it was given. Armed with only a hacksaw and some test equipment he was eventually able to disarm both devices safely.
One note for how treacherous this work actually was, outside of the obvious: although there were safety devices on the bombs to ensure the nuclear explosion would only occur under specific situations, there were also high explosives on the bomb that might have exploded even without triggering the nuclear explosion following it. Nuclear bombs and nuclear power plants aren’t the only things that the atomic age ushered in, though. There have been some other unique developments as well,
like the nuclear gardens of the mid 1900s
. | 26 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134137",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T11:27:59",
"content": "And, afterwards, they pulled diamonds out of his sphincter.Looks good on a resume, though: “Disarmed two atomic bombs”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,371,530.006138 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/31/can-we-replace-a-program-counter-with-a-linear-feedback-shift-register-yes-we-can/ | Can We Replace A Program Counter With A Linear-Feedback Shift Register? Yes We Can! | John Elliot V | [
"FPGA"
] | [
"cpu",
"forth",
"fpga",
"vhdl",
"vm"
] | Today we heard from [Richard James Howe] about
his new CPU
. This new 16-bit CPU is implemented in VHDL for an FPGA.
The really cool thing about this CPU is that it eschews the typical program counter (PC) and replaces it with a
linear-feedback shift register
(LFSR). Apparently an LFSR can be implemented in hardware with fewer transistors than are required by an adder.
Usually the program counter in your CPU increments by one, each time indicating the location of the next instruction to fetch and execute. When you replace your program counter with an LFSR it still does the same thing, indicating the next instruction to fetch and execute, but now those instructions are scattered pseudo-randomly throughout your address space!
When the instructions for your program are distributed pseudo-randomly throughout your address space you find yourself in need of a special compiler which can arrange for this to work, and that’s what
this is for
.
Of course all of this is shenanigans and is just for fun. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard from [Richard], we have seen his
Bit-Serial CPU
and
Forth System-On-Chip
in recent history. Glad to see he’s still at it!
Thanks to [Richard James Howe] for letting us know about this latest development. | 32 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134071",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T03:52:25",
"content": "Seems fairly straightforward. An LFSR will follow a predictable series of states in a loop, just like a counter will, and if the loop is large enough it becomes equivalent to a fairly usefully-large counter. Th... | 1,760,371,530.302093 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/31/esper-cdp-plays-cds-and-streams-in-style/ | ESPer-CDP Plays CDs And Streams In Style | Tyler August | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"ATAPI",
"audio dac",
"CD-ROM",
"HiFi",
"stereo",
"vfd display"
] | What do you get when you combine an ESP32, a 16-bit DAC, an antique VFD, and an IDE CD-ROM drive? Not much, unless you put in the work, which [Akasaka Ryuunosuke] did to create
ESPer-CDP, a modern addition for your hi-fi rack.
It plays CDs (of course), but also can also scrobb the disks to Last.fm, automatically fetch track names and lyrics for CDs, and of course stream internet radio. It even acts as a Bluetooth speaker, because when you have an ESP32 and a DAC, why not? Of course we cannot help but award extra style points for the use of a VFD, a salvaged Futaba GP1232A02. There’s just something about VFDs and stereo equipment that makes them go together like milk and cookies.
Between the panel and the VFD, this could almost pass as vintage Sony.
In terms of CD access, it looks like the IDE interface is being used to issue ATAPI commands to the CD-ROM drive to get audio out via S/PDIF. (Do you remember when you had to hook your CD drive to your sound card to play music CDs?) This goes through a now-discontinued WM8805 receiver — a sign this project has been in the works for a while — that translates S/PDIF into an I2S stream the ESP32 can easily work with.
Work with it it does, with the aforementioned scrobbing, along with track ID and time-sinked lyrics via CDDB or MusicBrainz. The ESP32 should have the computing power to pull data through the IDE bus and decode it, but we have to admit that this hack gets the job done — albeit at the expense of losing the ability to read data CDs, like MP3 or MIDI. [Akasaka Ryuunosuk] has plans to include such functionality into v2, along with the ability to use a more modern SATA CD-ROM drive. We look forward to seeing it, especially if it keeps the VFD and classic styling. It just needs to be paired
with a classic amplifier
, and maybe a
DIY turntable to top off the stack
.
Thanks to [Akasaka Ryuunosuke] for the tip. If you also crave our eternal gratitude (which is worth its weight in gold, don’t forget),
drop us a tip of your own
. We’d love to hear from you. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134049",
"author": "boondaburrah",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T00:05:30",
"content": "You sure about that CD-ROM having S/PDIF out? I’ve never seen that in all my years of PC building; the audio out from IDE CD drives is analogue specifically because your computer may not have a CD qu... | 1,760,371,530.144545 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/31/hot-rod-backyard-bath-on-steel-spring-legs/ | Hot Rod Backyard Bath On Steel Spring Legs | Heidi Ulrich | [
"hardware",
"home hacks",
"how-to",
"News"
] | [
"bath",
"clamp",
"junk",
"leaf springs",
"springs",
"steel welding",
"tub",
"weld"
] | In a fusion of scrapyard elegance and Aussie ingenuity, [Mark Makies] has given a piece of old steel a steamy second life with
his ‘CastAway Tub’
. Call it a bush mechanic’s fever dream turned functional sculpture, starring two vintage LandCruiser leaf springs, and a rust-hugged cast iron tub dug up after 20 years in hiding. And put your
welding goggles
on, because this one is equal parts brute force and artisan flair.
What makes this hack so bold is, first of all, the reuse of unforgiving spring
steel
. Leaf springs, notoriously temperamental to weld, are tamed here with
oxy-LPG preheating
, avoiding thermal shock like a pro. The tub sits proudly atop a custom-welded frame shaped from dismantled spring packs, with each leaf ground, clamped, torched, and welded into a steampunk sled base. The whole thing looks like it might outrun a dune buggy – and possibly bathe you while it’s at it. It’s a masterclass in metalwork with zero CAD, all intuition, and a grinder that’s seen things.
Inspired? For those with a secret love for hot water and hot steel, this build is a blueprint for turning bush junk into backyard art. Read up on the full build at Instructables. | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134011",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T20:57:01",
"content": "☠️ Definitely not safe🍺 Dubiously inspired🚫 Not recommended🛷 Not steerable⚠️ Probably illegal",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8134029",
"au... | 1,760,371,529.946155 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/31/building-a-wireless-motorized-fader-for-lighting-control/ | Building A Wireless Motorized Fader For Lighting Control | Lewin Day | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"fader",
"lighting desk",
"motorized fader"
] | Motorized faders are very cool, and you can find them in everything from expensive mixing desks to high-end video editing decks. If you want to build your own wireless motorized fader controls for your own projects,
you might like this project from [Ian Peterson].
Faders are useful controls, but they’re usually very one-way devices—you set them to what you want, and that’s it. However, motorized faders are a little fancier. You can move them yourself, or they can be moved under the command of other hardware or software—making a control change automatically that is still visible to the human in front of the control panel.
[Ian Peterson] built his OSCillator motorized fader for his work with lighting consoles in theater contexts. Its name references the Open Sound Control (OSC) platform which is commonly used across various lighting consoles. His build relies on an ESP32 to run the show, which communicates with other lighting hardware via WiFi. The microcontroller is responsible for reading the position of the fader and built-in button, and sending the relevant commands to other lighting devices on the network. At the same time, it must also listen to commands from lighting consoles on the network and update the motorized fader’s position in turn if the relevant control it’s mapped to has been changed elsewhere.
If you’re working in theater or film and you’re wanting to control lighting cues wirelessly, a tool like this can really come in handy. We don’t see a lot of motorized faders in DIY projects,
but they pop up now and then
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8134070",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-06-01T03:51:42",
"content": "And Yamaha organs at the high end. I had a repair with 15 or so sliders that were motorized. Hitting a preset moved them, but when sluggish they reprogrammed themselves where they stopped. Belts were gu... | 1,760,371,530.043592 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/31/pulling-back-the-veil-practically/ | Pulling Back The Veil, Practically | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants"
] | [
"hacking and philosophy",
"newsletter",
"projects"
] | In a marvelous college lecture in front of a class of engineering students, V. Hunter Adams
professed his love for embedded engineering
, but he might as well have been singing the songs of
our
people – the hackers. If you occasionally feel the need to explain to people why you do what you do, at fancy cocktail parties or something, this talk is great food for thought. It’s about as good a “Why We Hack” as I’ve ever seen.
Among the zingers, “projects are filter removers” stuck out. When you go through life, there are a lot of things that you kinda understand. Or maybe you’ve not even gotten around to thinking about whether you understand them or not, and just take them for granted. Life would all simply be too complicated if you took it all sufficiently seriously. Birdsong, Bluetooth, the sun in the sky, the friction of your car’s tire on various surfaces. These are all incredibly deep subjects, when you start to peel back the layers.
And Hunter’s point is that if you are working on a project that involves USB, your success or failure depends on understanding USB. There’s no room for filters here – the illusion that it “just works” often comes crashing down until you learn enough to make it work. Some of his students are doing projects cooperatively with the ornithology department, classifying and creating birdsong. Did you know that birds do this elaborate frequency modulation thing when they sing? Once you hear it, you know, and you hear it ever more.
So we agree with Hunter. Dive into a project because you want to get the project done, sure, but pick the project because it’s a corner of the world that you’d like to shine light into, to remove the filters of “I think I basically understand that”. When you get it working, you’ll know that you really do. Hacking your way to enlightenment? We’ve heard crazier things.
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
! | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133931",
"author": "Rick",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T14:14:18",
"content": "tl;dr anyone?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133933",
"author": "Danjovic",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T14:31:36",
"content": "... | 1,760,371,530.094436 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/31/a-crt-display-for-retro-weather-forecasting/ | A CRT Display For Retro Weather Forecasting | Aaron Beckendorf | [
"classic hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"crt",
"CRT display",
"openweathermap",
"retro",
"the Weather Channel",
"weather display"
] | It would be hard to find any electronics still in production which use CRT displays, but for some inscrutable reason it’s easy to find cheap 4-inch CRTs on AliExpress. Not that we’re complaining, of course. Especially when they get picked up for projects like this
Retro CRT Weather Display from [Conrad Farnsworth]
, which recreates the interface of The Weather Channel’s WeatherStar 4000+ in a suitably 90s-styled format.
The CRT itself takes up most of the space in the enclosure, with the control electronics situated in the base behind the display driver. A Raspberry Pi Zero W provides the necessary processing power, and connects to the CRT through its composite video output.
A custom PCB plugs into the GPIO header on the Raspberry Pi and provides some additional features, such as a rotary encoder for volume and brightness display, a control button, a serial UART interface, and a speaker driver. The design still has one or two caveats: it’s designed to powered by USB, but [Conrad] notes that it draws more current than USB 2.0 can provide, though USB-C should be able to keep up.
On the software side, a Python program displays a cycle of three slides: local weather, regional weather, and a radar display. For the local and regional weather display graphics, [Conrad] created a static background image containing most of the graphics, and the program only generated the dynamic components. For the radar display, the regional map’s outlines come from Natural Earth, and a Python program overlays radar data on them.
We’ve seen other attempts at
recreating the unique style of the WeatherStar system
, but
nothing quite beats the real thing
. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133911",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T11:41:48",
"content": "I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy one (or more) of these CRTs, still not there yet but I quite like the idea of a “handheld” gaming console with a selection of vintage games like space invaders",
"p... | 1,760,371,530.360878 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/31/making-a-treadmill-into-a-3d-printer/ | Making A Treadmill Into A 3D Printer | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"3d printer",
"treadmill"
] | A treadmill-style bed can be a great addition to a 3D printer. It allows prints to be shifted out of the build volume as printing continues, greatly increasing the size and flexibility of what you can print. But [Ivan Miranda] and [Jón Schone] had a question. Instead of making a treadmill to suit a 3D printer,
what if you just built a 3D printer on top of a full-size treadmill?
The duo sourced a piece of real gym equipment for this build. They then set about building a large-scale 3D printer on top of this platform. The linear rails were first mounted on to the treadmill’s frame, followed by a gantry for the print head itself and mounts for the necessary stepper motors. The printer also gained a custom extra-large extruder to ensure a satisfactory print speed that was suitable for the scale of the machine. From there, it was largely a case of fitting modules and running cables to complete the printer.
Soon enough, the machine was printing hot plastic on the treadmill surface, thereby greatly expanding the usable print volume. It’s a little tricky to wrap your head around at first, but when you see it in action, it’s easy to see the utility of a build like this, particularly at large scale. [Ivan] demonstrated this by printing a massive girder over two meters long.
We
started seeing attempts at building
a belt-equipped “
infinite build volume” printer back in 2017
, and it took awhile before the
concept matured enough to be practical
. Even today, they remain fairly uncommon. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133919",
"author": "Halogenek",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T12:45:46",
"content": "So unnecessary. I love it. :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8134018",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T21:18:11",
"conte... | 1,760,371,530.188611 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/30/17-year-old-hellboy-ii-prop-still-amazes/ | 17 Year OldHellboy IIProp Still Amazes | Heidi Ulrich | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"animatronic",
"cgi",
"hellboy",
"hellboy II",
"mechanical",
"prop",
"servo"
] | The AI effects we know these days were once preceded by CGI, and those were once preceded by true hand-built physical props. If that makes you think of
Muppets
, this video will change your mind.
In a behind-the-scenes look with [Adam Savage]
, effects designer [Mark Setrakian] reveals the full animatronic glory of Mr. Wink’s mechanical fist from
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
(2008) – and this beast still flexes.
Most of this arm was actually made in 2003, when 3D printing was very different than what we think of today. Printed on a
Stratasys
Titan – think: large refrigerator-sized machine, expensive as sin – the parts were then hand-textured with a Dremel for that war-scarred, brutalist feel. This wasn’t just basic animatronics for set dressing. This was a fully actuated prop with
servo-driven
finger joints, a retractable chain weapon, and bevel-geared mechanisms that scream mechanical craftsmanship.
Each finger is individually designed. The chain reel: powered by a DeWalt drill motor and custom bevel gear assembly. Every department: sculptors, CAD modelers, machinists, contributed to this hybrid of analog and digital magic. Props like this are becoming unicorns. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133849",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T06:27:56",
"content": "That chain nozzle is a mindblower.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133852",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T07:14:44",
"cont... | 1,760,371,530.230017 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/30/white-led-turning-purple-analyzing-a-phosphor-failure/ | White LED Turning Purple: Analyzing A Phosphor Failure | Maya Posch | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"autopsy",
"phosphor"
] | White LED bulbs are commonplace in households by now, mostly due to their low power usage and high reliability. Crank up the light output enough and you do however get high temperatures and corresponding interesting failure modes. An example is the one demonstrated by the [electronupdate] channel on YouTube with a Philips MR16 LED spot that
had developed a distinct purple light output
.
The crumbling phosphor coating on top of the now exposed LEDs. (Credit: electronupdate, YouTube)
After popping off the front to expose the PCB with the LED packages, the fault seemed to be due to the phosphor on one of the four LEDs flaking off, exposing the individual 405 nm LEDs underneath. Generally, white LEDs are just UV or 405 nm (‘blue’) LEDs that have a phosphor coating on top that converts the emitted wavelength into broad band visible (white) or another specific wavelength, so this failure mode makes perfect sense.
After putting the PCB under a microscope and having a look at the failed and the other LED packages the crumbled phosphor on not just the one package became obvious, as the remaining three showed clear cracks in the phosphor coating. Whether due to the heat in these high-intensity spot lamps or just age, clearly over time these white LED packages become just bare LEDs without the phosphor coating. Ideally you could dab on some fresh phosphor, but likely the fix is to replace these LED packages every few years until the power supply in the bulb gives up the ghost.
Thanks to [ludek111] for the tip. | 32 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133794",
"author": "Simula",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T02:32:16",
"content": "AFAIK it’s not UV but blue LED.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133910",
"author": "Adam",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T11:41:11",
... | 1,760,371,530.544424 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/30/you-wouldnt-download-a-skateboard/ | You Wouldn’t Download A Skateboard? | Fenix Guthrie | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3D printed skateboard",
"skateboard",
"skateboard hacks",
"skateboarding"
] | At the end of the day, a skateboard boils down to a plank of wood with some wheels. They are wonderfully simple and fun and cheap modes of transportation. But this is Hackaday, so we are not here to talk about any normal skateboard, but one you can download and print. [megalog_’s]
Skateboard MK2 is made almost entirely of 3D printed plastic
, save some nuts and bolts.
The board’s four piece deck comes in at a modest 55cm length and features a rather stylish hexagonal pattern for grip. While you could presumably bring your own trucks, 3D printable ones are provided as well. The pieces bolt together to create a fairly strong deck with the option to make a rather stylish two tone print if you have the printer for it. Where the pieces meet is also the location of the truck mounting, further increasing the board’s strength. The weakest point is where the tail meets the main deck, which if pressed down to wheelie or ollie, the print breaks apart at the layer lines.
While you might be able to bring your own trucks, all be it with some modification to the deck, [megalog] also provided models for those as well. Not only were the bushings made of flexible TPE filament, but the outer wheel tire is too. It’s a little strange to see a wheel tire combo on a skateboard, when they are traditionally over moulded plastic with enough tire that you would be forgiven for thinking there is no wheel. While some reported using the more traditional threaded rod, the trucks used a metal rod with shaft collars to attach the wheels.
This is a neatly executed skateboard build with a well thought out design. Let us know in the comments if you will (or have) made one yourself! While you’re at it, maybe
cast your own resin wheels
for it! | 9 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133789",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T01:51:13",
"content": "Actually I wouldn’t. Break my neck on the thing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133817",
"author": "KDawg",
"timestamp": "2025-0... | 1,760,371,530.589782 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/30/tidy-led-matrix-displays-gifs-on-demand/ | Tidy LED Matrix Displays GIFs On Demand | Lewin Day | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"led",
"led matrix",
"ws2812b"
] | When it comes to LED matrixes, building one is just the first step. Then you have to decide what to display on it. [panjanek] came up with a relatively flexible answer to this question,
building an RGB LED matrix that can display the GIFs of your choice.
The web interface accepts GIFs for display.
[panjanek] grabbed WS2812B addressable LEDs for this project, assembling them into a 32 x 32 matrix that fits perfectly inside an off-the-shelf Ikea picture frame. The matrix is hooked up to an ESP8266 microcontroller, which acts as the brains of the operation. The WiFi-enabled microcontroller hosts its own web interface, with which the project can be controlled. Upon opening the page, it’s possible to upload a GIF file that will be displayed as an animation on the matrix itself. It’s also possible to stream UDP packets of bitmap data to the device to send real-time animations over a network.
It’s a neat build, and one that answers any questions of what you might display on your LED matrix when you’re finished assembling it. Code is
on Github
if you fancy implementing the GIF features in your own work. We’ve featured some unexpected LED matrix builds of late, like this innovative device
for the M.2 slot
. Meanwhile, if you’re cooking up your own creative LED builds, don’t hesitate to let us know
on the tipsline! | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133728",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T20:52:08",
"content": "That’s Windows icon resolution (32×32)..https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICO_(file_format)#History",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133740",
"autho... | 1,760,371,530.632729 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/30/2025-pet-hacks-contest-keep-the-prey-at-bay-with-the-cat-valve/ | 2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Keep The Prey At Bay With The Cat Valve | Jenny List | [
"contests",
"home hacks"
] | [
"2025 Pet Hacks Contest",
"cat",
"prey",
"raspberry pi"
] | Some cats are what you might call indoor cats, happy to stretch out in the lap of indoor luxury and never bother themselves with the inclement outdoors again. Others however are fully in touch with their Inner Cat, and venture forth frequently in search of whatever prey they can find.
[Rkramer] has a cat of this nature,sadly one with a propensity for returning with live prey. To avoid this problem a solution is called for, and it comes in the shape of
the Cat Valve
, an automated cat door which enforces a buffer zone in their cellar to prevent unwanted gifts.
It’s a simple enough idea, when an IR sensor connected to a Raspberry Pi 4 detects the cat heading out into the world through the exterior cat flap, the computer fires up a motor connected to a lead screw which closes the flap between buffer zone and house. The cat then has the safety of the buffer zone, but can’t bring the prey fully inside.
If you’re a cat lover you’ll forgive them anything, but we have to admit to being on [Rkramer]’s side with this one. A useful way to keep the prey at bay is something we could have used a few times in the past, too. This project is part of the 2025 Pet Hacks contest. Done something similar for your cat? Why not make it an entry! | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133680",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T17:29:21",
"content": "The best one here used open CV or some sorts and profiled the cat excluding other cats, animals, and the home cat with prey in mouth. Kudos for simple exit and separate enter to quarantine. Could be a p... | 1,760,371,530.978293 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/30/hackaday-podcast-episode-323-impossible-crt-surgery-fuel-cells-stream-gages-and-a-love-letter-to-microcontrollers/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 323: Impossible CRT Surgery, Fuel Cells, Stream Gages, And A Love Letter To Microcontrollers | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Elliot and Dan teamed up this week for the podcast, and after double-checking, nay, triple-checking that we were recording, got to the business of reviewing the week’s hacks. We kicked things off with a look at the news, including a potentially exciting Right to Repair law in Washington state and the sad demise of NASA’s ISS sighting website.
Our choice of hacks included a fond look at embedded systems and the classic fashion sense of Cornell’s Bruce Land, risky open CRT surgery, a very strange but very cool way to make music, and the ultimate backyard astronomer’s observatory. We talked about Stamp collecting for SMD prototyping, crushing aluminum with a boatload of current, a PC that heats your seat, and bringing HDMI to the Commodore 64.
We also took a look at flight tracking IRL, a Flipper-based POV, the ultimate internet toaster, and printing SVGs for fun and profit. Finally, we wrapped things up with a look at the tech behind real-time river flow tracking and a peek inside the surprisingly energetic world of fuel cells.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Download this entirely innocent-looking MP3.
Episode 323 Show Notes:
News:
Washington Consumers Gain Right To Repair For Cellphones And More
NASA Is Shutting Down The International Space Station Sighting Website
2025 Pet Hacks Contest
What’s that Sound?
Fill out this form for your chance to win
!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
A Love Letter To Embedded Systems By V. Hunter Adams
ECE 4760 repo
Designing with Microcontrollers
– Old projects from Bruce Land’s days at the helm of ECE 4760
A RISC-V Operating System Instruction Manual
Reconditioning A Vintage CRT Tube
A 100-Year-Old Electronic Musical Instrument Brought Back To Life
Drawn In By The Siren’s Song
Retrotechtacular: Building Hammond Organ Tones
Making A Backyard Observatory Complete With Retractable Roof
Stamp: Modular Breakout Boards For SMD Prototyping
EMF Forming Was A Neat Aerospace Breakthrough
Electromagnetic Aluminum Can Crushing
How A Quarter Shrinker Works
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks
Invisible PC Doubles As Heated Seat
Tool Turns SVGs Into Multicolor 3D Prints
From Burnt To Brilliant: A Toaster’s Makeover
Dan’s Picks:
POV On The Flipper Zero
The Commodore 64 Gets An HDMI Upgrade
Look To The Sky With This Simple Plane Tracker
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Remotely Interesting: Stream Gages
Know Snow: Monitoring Snowpack With The SNOTEL Network
A Brief History Of Fuel Cells | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133869",
"author": "X-MarX-THX-SpXt",
"timestamp": "2025-05-31T08:36:25",
"content": "The ‘What’s that sound’ segment is devilish this time.The echo makes it even harder to guess.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,530.854587 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/30/diy-solar-generator-inspired-by-james-webb-telescope/ | DIY Solar Generator Inspired By James Webb Telescope | Lewin Day | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"heat",
"mirror",
"solar power",
"solar thermal"
] | If you look at this solar generator from [Concept Crafted Creations], you might think it’s somehow familiar. That’s because the design was visually inspired by the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST. Ultimately, though, it’s purpose is quite different—
it’s designed to use mirrors to collect and harness solar energy.
It’s not quite there yet, but it’s an interesting exploration of an eye-catching solar thermal generator.
To get that JWST look, the build has 18 mirrors assembled on a 3D printed frame to approximate the shape of a larger parabolic reflector. The mirrors focus all the sunlight such that it winds up heating water passing through an aluminum plate. Each mirror was custom made using laser cut acrylic and mirror film. Each mirror’s position and angle can be adjusted delicately with screws and a nifty sprung setup, which is a whole lot simpler than the
mechanism used on the real thing
. The whole assembly is on a mount that allows it to track the movement of the sun to gain the most sunlight possible. There’s a giant laser-cut wooden gear on the bottom that allows rotation on a big Lazy Susan bearing, as well as a servo-driven tilting mechanism, with an Arduino using light dependent resistors to optimally aim the device.
It’s a cool-looking set up, but how does it compare with photovoltaics? Not so well. The mirror array was able to deliver around 1 kilowatt of heat into the water passing through the system, heating it to a temperature of approximately 44 C after half an hour. The water was warmed, but not to the point of boiling, and there’s no turbines or anything else hooked up to actually take that heat and turn it into electricity yet. Even if there were, it’s unlikely the system would reach the efficiency of a similarly-sized solar panel array. In any case, so far, the job is half done. As explained in the build video, it could benefit from some better mirrors and some structural improvements to help it survive the elements before it’s ready to make any real juice.
Ultimately, if you need solar power fast, your best bet is to
buy a photovoltaic array
. Still,
solar thermal is a concept that has never quite died out
. | 36 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133657",
"author": "Tired wheel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T16:18:25",
"content": "We are all preoccupied about AI slop but we accept the “content creator slop”. This is an article about something that doesn’t work, that it’s only purpose is to get views and supposedly teach you som... | 1,760,371,531.048252 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/30/this-week-in-security-cia-star-wars-git-prompt-injection-and-more/ | This Week In Security: CIA Star Wars, Git* Prompt Injection And More | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"ai",
"CVEs",
"This Week in Security",
"Windows Registry"
] | The CIA ran a series of web sites in the 2000s. Most of them were about news, finance, and other relatively boring topics, and they spanned 29 languages. And they all had a bit of a hidden feature: Those normal-looking websites had a secret login and hosted CIA cover communications with assets in foreign countries. A password typed in to a search field on each site would trigger a Java Applet or Flash application, allowing the spy to report back. This isn’t exactly breaking news, but what’s captured the Internet’s imagination this week is
the report by [Ciro Santilli] about how to find those sites, and the fact that a Star Wars fansite was part of the network
.
This particular CIA tool was intended for short-term use, and was apparently so effective, it was dragged way beyond it’s intended lifespan, right up to the point it was discovered and started getting people killed. And in retrospect, the tradecraft is abysmal. The sites were hosted on a small handful of IP blocks, with the individual domains hosted on sequential IP addresses. Once one foreign intelligence agency discovered one of these sites, the rest were fairly easily identified.
This report is about going back in time using
the Wayback Machine
and other tools, and determining how many of these covert sites can be discovered today. And then documenting how it was done and what the results were. Surprisingly, some of the best sources for this effort were domain name data sets. Two simple checks to narrow down the possible targets were checking for IPs hosting only one domain, and for the word “news” as part of the domain name. From there, it’s the tedious task of looking at the Wayback Machine’s archives, trying to find concrete hits. Once a site was found on a new IP block, the whole block could be examined using historic DNS data, and hopefully more of the sites discovered.
So far, that list is 472 domains. Citizen Lab ran a report on this covert operation back in 2022, and found 885 domains, but opted not to
publish the list or details of how they were found
. The effort is still ongoing, and if you have any ideas how to find these sites, there’s a chance to help.
Profiling Internet Background Radiation
You may have noticed, that as soon as you put a host on a new IP address on the Internet, it immediately starts receiving traffic. The creative term that refers to all of this is Internet Background Radiation. It’s comprised of TCP probes, reflections from spoofed UDP attacks, and lots of other weird traffic.
Researchers at Netscout decided to look at just one element
of that radiation, TCP SYN packets. That’s the unsolicited first packet of a TCP handshake. What secrets would this data contain?
The first intriguing statistic is the number of spoofed TCP SYN packets coming from known bogus source IPs: zero. This isn’t actually terribly surprising for a couple reasons. One, packets originating from impossible addresses are rather easy to catch and drop, and many ISPs do this sort of scrubbing at their network borders. But the second reason is that TCP requires a three-way handshake to make a useful connection. And while it’s possible to spoof an IP address on a local network via ARP poisoning, doing so on the open Internet is much more difficult.
Packet TTL is interesting, but the values naturally vary, based on the number of hops between the sender and receiver. A few source IPs were observed to vary in reported TTLs, which could indicate devices behind NAT, or even just the variation between different OS network stacks. But looking for suspicious traffic, two metrics really stand out. The TCP Header is a minimum 20 bytes, with additional length being used with each additional option specified. Very few systems will naturally send TCP SYN packets with the header set to 20, suggesting that the observed traffic at that length was mostly TCP probes. The other interesting observation is the TCP window size, with 29,200 being a suspicious number that was observed in a significant percentage of packets, without a good legitimate explanation.
Hacking the MCP
GitHub has developed the GitHub MCP Server, a
Master Control Program
Model Context Protocol server, designed to allow AI agents to interact with the GitHub API.
Invariant Labs has put together an interesting demo
in how letting an agentic AI work with arbitrary issues from the public could be a bad idea.
The short explanation is that a GitHub issue can include a prompt injection attack. In the example, it looks rather benign, asking for more information about the project author to be added to the project README. Just a few careful details in that issue, like specifying that the author isn’t concerned about privacy, and that the readme update should link to all the user’s other repos. If the repo owner lets an agentic AI loose on the repo via MCP, it’s very likely to leak details and private repo information that it really shouldn’t.
Invariant Labs suggests that MCP servers will need granular controls, limiting what an AI agent can access. I suspect we’ll eventually see a system for new issues like GitHub already has for Pull Requests, where a project maintainer has to approve the PR before any of the automated Github Actions are performed on it. Once AI is a normal part of dealing with issues, there will need to be tools to keep the AI from interacting with new issues until a maintainer has cleared them.
GitLab Too
GitLab has their own AI integration, GitLab Duo. Like many AI things, it has the potential to be helpful, and
the potential to be a problem
. Researchers at Legit Security included some nasty tricks in this work, like hiding prompt injection as Hex code, and coloring it white to be invisible on the white GitLab background. Prompt injections could then ask the AI to recommend malicious code, include raw HTML in the output, or even leak details from private repos.
Gitlab took the report seriously, and has added additional filtering that prevents Duo from injecting raw HTML in its output. The prompt injection has also been addressed, but the details of how are not fully available.
Finally, Actually Hacking the Registry
We’ve been following Google’s Project Zero and [Mateusz Jurczyk] for quite a while, on a deep dive into the Windows Registry. We’re finally at the point where we’re talking about vulnerabilities. The
Windows registry is self-healing
, which could be an attack surface on its own, but it definitely provides a challenge to anyone looking for vulnerabilities with a fuzzer, as triggering a crash is very difficult.
But as the registry has evolved over time and Windows releases, the original security assumptions may not be valid any longer. For instance, in its original form, the registry was only writable by a system administrator. But on modern Windows machines, application hives allow unprivileged users and process to load their own registry data into the system registry. Registry virtualization and layered keys further complicate the registry structure and code, and with complexity often comes vulnerabilities.
An exploit primitive that turned out to be useful was the out-of-bound cell index, where one cell can refer to another. This includes a byte offset value, and when the cell being referred to is a “small dir”, this offset can point past the end of the allocated memory.
There were
a whopping 17 memory corruption exploits discovered
, but to produce a working exploit, the write-up uses CVE-2023-23420, a use after free that can be triggered by performing an in-place rename of a key, followed by deleting a subkey. This can result in a live reference to that non-existent subkey, and thus access to freed memory.
In that free memory, a fake key is constructed. As the entire data structure is now under the arbitrary control of the attacker, the memory can point to anywhere in the hive. This can be combined with the out-of-bounds cell index, to manipulate kernel memory. The story turns into a security researcher flex here, as [Mateusz] opted to use a couple registry keys rigged in this way to make a working kernel memory debugger, accessible from regedit. One key sets the memory address to inspect, and the other key contains said memory as a writable key. Becoming SYSTEM at this point is trivial.
Bits and Bytes
[Thomas Stacey] of Assured has done
work on HTTP smuggling/tunneling attacks
, where multiple HTTP requests exist in a single packet. This style of attack works against web infrastructure that has a front-end proxy and a back-end worker. When the front-end and back-end parse requests differently, very unintended behavior can result.
ONEKEY researchers have
discovered a pair of issues in the Evertz core web administration interface
, that together allow unauthenticated arbitrary command injection. Evertz manufactures very large video handling equipment, used widely in the broadcast industry, which is why it’s so odd that the ONEKEY private disclosure attempts were completely ignored. As the standard 90 day deadline has passed, ONEKEY has released the vulnerability details in full.
On the other hand, Mozilla is setting records of its own,
releasing a Firefox update on the same day as exploits were revealed at pwn2own 2025
. Last year Mozilla received the “Fastest to Patch” award, and may be on track to repeat that honor.
What does video game cheat development have to do with security research? It’s full of reverse engineering, understand memory structures, hooking functions, and more. It’s all the things malware does to take over a system, and all the things a researcher does to find vulnerabilities and understand what binaries are doing. If you’re interested, there’s a great
two-part
series
on the topic just waiting for you to dive into. Enjoy! | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133756",
"author": "eriklscott",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T23:14:53",
"content": "Becoming SYSTEM at this point is trivial.OK, I’m curious, and I knowjustenough to be a menace to myself and no one else…Windows NT-family kernels are more-or-less direct descendants of DEC’s VMS, both ... | 1,760,371,531.152818 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/30/sustainable-3d-prints-with-decomposable-filaments/ | Sustainable 3D Prints With Decomposable Filaments | Heidi Ulrich | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"green hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"3d printing",
"filament",
"h2o",
"paper",
"PLA",
"PVA",
"TPU",
"water"
] | What if you could design your 3D print to fall apart on purpose? That’s the curious promise of
a new paper from CHI 2025
, which brings a serious hacker vibe to the sustainability problem of multi-material 3D printing. Titled
Enabling Recycling of Multi-Material 3D Printed Objects through Computational Design and Disassembly by Dissolution
, it proposes a technique that lets complex prints
disassemble themselves
via water-soluble seams. Just a bit of H
2
O is needed, no drills or pliers.
At its core, this method builds dissolvable interfaces between materials like PLA and TPU using water-soluble PVA. Their algorithm auto-generates jointed seams (think shrink-wrap meets mushroom pegs) that don’t interfere with the part’s function. Once printed, the object behaves like any ordinary 3D creation. But at end-of-life, a water bath breaks it down into clean,
separable materials
, ready for recycling. That gives 90% material recovery, and over 50% reduction in carbon emissions.
This is the research – call it a very, very well documented hack – we need more of. It’s climate-conscious and machine-savvy. If you’re into computational fabrication or environmental tinkering, it’s worth your time. Hats off to [Wen, Bae, and Rivera] for turning what might otherwise be considered a failure into a feature. | 24 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133594",
"author": "freedomunit",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T12:03:51",
"content": "Who needs this?Most people never print multi material, and this requires 3 (pla,tpu, water soluble pla)… So you would have to have a use case where an item was temporarily needed with the properties o... | 1,760,371,531.108224 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/30/today-in-edinburgh-the-open-source-hardware-summit/ | Today In Edinburgh: The Open Hardware Summit | Elliot Williams | [
"cons"
] | [
"conventions",
"open source hardware"
] | Just a quickie for anyone who is in the neighborhood, today
the Open Source Hardware Association’s annual Open Hardware Summit conference
starts in Edinburgh, Scotland. If you’re able to make it, it’s a microcosm of the open-source hardware world, and full of great talks and great hackers.
If you’re not in Scotland, they have
a livestream on YouTube
that you should check out,
as well as a Discord server for discussions during the event
. It’s going on right now! | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133589",
"author": "70sjukebox",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T11:50:51",
"content": "“Edinburg, Scotland”, Edinburgh",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133608",
"author": "Rohit",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T12:37:42",
"cont... | 1,760,371,530.81318 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/30/what-does-linux-need-a-dial/ | What Does Linux Need? A Dial! | Jenny List | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"dial phone",
"linux kernel",
"rotary dial"
] | It’s fair to say that there can’t be many developers who have found the need for a rotary telephone dial as a peripheral for their Linux computer, but in case you are among them you might find
[Stefan Wiehler]’s kernel driver for rotary dials
to be of use.
It’s aimed at platforms such as systems-on-chip that have ready access to extra GPIOs, of which it will need a couple to service the BUSY and PULSE lines. There are full set-up instructions, and once it’s in place and configured it presents the dial as though it were a number pad.
We like this project, in fact we like it a lot. Interfacing with a dial is always something we’ve done with a microcontroller though, so it will be interesting to see whether it finds a use beyond merely curiosity. We can already see a generation of old-school dial IP phones using Linux-capable dev boards. He leaves us with a brief not as to whether Linus Torvalds would see it as worthy of mainline inclusion, and sadly however much we want things to be different, we agree that it might be wishful thinking.
If you’d like to use a dial phone,
there can be simpler ways to do it
.
Header: Billy Brown,
CC BY 2.0
. | 11 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133534",
"author": "philenotfound",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T08:28:10",
"content": "Nice! I have built something similar, but with an Arduino as a HID Keyboard for the rotary dial, sending “0”-“9” and triggerhappy for the actions.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,371,531.197529 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/29/another-doom-port-to-the-atari-st/ | Another Doom Port To The Atari ST | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"atari st",
"doom",
"port"
] | Last week, we examined a Doom port for the venerable Atari ST. As is so often the way with this thing, one netted another, and [Steve] wrote in to inform us about
a different version under the name DOOM8088ST.
The port is so named because it’s based on Doom8088, which was originally written for DOS machines running Intel 8088 or 286 CPUs. Both ports are the work of [FrenkelS], and aims to bring the Doom experience into the far more resource constrained environment of the Atari ST. There is only very limited sound, no saving, and it only supports Doom 1 Episode 1. Still, it’s quite recognizable as Doom!
Doom8088ST is tunable to various levels of performance, depending on what you’re running it on. Low mode (30 x 128) is suitable for stock Atari ST machines running at 8 MHz. It’s described as having “excellent” framerate and is very playable. If you’ve got an upgraded ST or Mega STe, you can try Medium (60 x 128), which has greatly improved visuals but is a lot heavier to run.
Files are
on Github
for those interested to run or tinker with the code. Don’t forget to check out the other port we featured last week, either,
in the form of STDOOM
. Video after the break.
[Thanks to Steve for the tip!] | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133605",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T12:32:41",
"content": "If you are wondering why the low horizontal resolution: Atari made an unfortunate choice with the pixel format of the color modes. For the 16 color mode in memory you have two bytes with the first bit of 1... | 1,760,371,531.24331 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/29/icepi-zero-a-pi-zero-for-fpga/ | IcePI Zero: A Pi Zero For FPGA | Tyler August | [
"FPGA"
] | [
"fpga board",
"pi zero"
] | The Rasberry Pi Zero is a delightful form factor, with its GIPO and USB and HDMI, but it’s stuck using the same old ARM processor all the time. What if you wanted to change it up with some OpenSPARC, RISC V, OpenPOWER, or even your own oddball homebrew ISA and processor? Well, fret not, for [Chengyin Yao]’s
IcePi Zero has got you covered with its ECP5 25F FPGA
.
As the saying goes, you don’t tell an FPGA what to do, you tell it what to
be
. And with the ECP5 25F’s 24k LUTs, you can tell it to be quite a few different things. This means more work for the maker than plugging in a fixed processor, sure, but IcePi tries to make that as painless as possible with quality-of-life features like HDMI out (something missing from many FPGA dev boards), an onboard USB-to-JTAG converter (so you can just plug it in, no programmer needed), and even USB-C instead of the Pi’s old microUSB. There’s the expected SD card on one end, and 256 MiB of 166 MHz SDRAM on the other to make up for the FPGA’s paltry 112 KiB of onboard RAM.
Plus it’s a drop-in replacement for the Pi Zero, so if you’ve already got a project that’s got one of those running an emulator, you can fab one of these babies, spool up some Verilog, and enjoy running on bare metal. It seems like this device is just made for retro gaming handhelds, but we’d love to hear in the comments if you have other ideas what to do with this board– remember that an
FPGA can be (almost) anything, even a GPU!
Currently, [Chengin Yao] is not selling the board, though they may reconsider due to
demand in their Reddit thread
. If you want one, you’ll have to call your favourite fabricator or etch your own PCB.
We’ve seen FPGAs before; most recently to
create an absurdly fast 8080 processor
. We’ve also seen DIY dev boards, like
this one for the AMD Zyntac FPGA
. Doing something fun with FPGAs?
Drop us a tip!
We’re happy [Chengin Yao] did, because this is amazing work, especially considering they are only 16 years old. We cannot wait to find out what they get up to next. | 32 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133474",
"author": "hjf",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T04:04:00",
"content": "to be honest, pretty much all of “hobby” electronics nowadays is yolo PCB design by people sponsored by either jlcpcb or pcbway. so many absolute trash designs out there made by a guy that, if not sponsored b... | 1,760,371,531.313894 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/29/a-simple-tip-for-gluing-those-led-filaments/ | A Simple Tip For Gluing Those LED Filaments | Donald Papp | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"diorama",
"glue",
"led",
"LED filament",
"shrink tubing"
] | [Boylei] shows that those little
LED filament strips make great freeze-frame blaster shots
in a space battle diorama. That’s neat and all, but what we
really
want to highlight is a simple tip [Boylei] shares about working with these filament strips: how to glue them.
Glue doesn’t stick to LED filament strips, so put on a small piece of heat-shrink and glue to
that
instead.
The silicone (or silicone-like) coating on these LED filament strips means glue simply doesn’t stick. To work around this, [Boylei] puts a piece of clear heat shrink around the filament, and glues to
that
instead. If you want a visual, you can
see him demonstrate at 6:11
. It’s a simple and effective tip that’s certainly worth keeping in mind, especially since filament strips invite so many project ideas.
When LED filament strips first hit the hobbyist market
they were attractive, but required high operating voltages. Nowadays they are not only cheaper, but work at battery-level voltages and come in a variety of colors.
These filaments have only gotten easier to work with over the years. Just remember to be gentle about bending them, and as [Boylei] demonstrates, a little piece of clear shrink tubing is all it takes to provide a versatile glue anchor. So if you had a project idea involving them that didn’t quite work out in the past, maybe it’s time to give it another go? | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133450",
"author": "Cad the Mad",
"timestamp": "2025-05-30T01:35:17",
"content": "A handy tip for my next cosplay project. This would probably work for EL wire and over thin rubberized elements.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,371,531.361759 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/29/you-can-make-your-own-ribbon-mic-with-a-gum-wrapper/ | You Can Make Your Own Ribbon Mic With A Gum Wrapper | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"mic",
"microphone",
"ribbon mic",
"ribbon microphone"
] | There are lots of different types of microphone, with the ribbon microphone being one of the rarer ones. Commercial versions are often prized for their tone and frequency response. You can make your own too, as [Something Physical] demonstrates
using a packet of chewing gum.
Yes, the ribbon in this microphone was literally gained from Airwaves Extreme gum. It’s got nothing to do with freshness or the special mintiness quotient of the material, though; just that it’s a conductive foil and it makes the YouTube video more interesting to watch.
The gum wrapper is first soaked in hot water and then acetone, such that the paper backing can be removed. The foil is then corrugated with a tube press with some baking paper used for protection during this delicate process. The “motor” of the ribbon microphone is then produced out of plexiglass, copper tape, and a pair of powerful magnets. The ribbon is then stretched between the magnets and clamped in place, acting as the part of the microphone that will actually vibrate in response to sound. As it vibrates in the magnetic field, a current is generated in response to the sound. From there, it’s just a matter of hooking up a custom-wound transformer to the wires leading to the “motor” and it’s ready to test. It works off the bat, but there is some noise. Adding shielding over the transformer and a proper enclosure helps to make the microphone more fit for purpose.
If you’ve ever wanted to experiment with microphone construction, it’s hard to go past the joy of building a simple ribbon mic. You can experiment at will with different sizes and materials, too; you needn’t just limit yourself to different brands of gum!
We’ve featured some other great mic builds over the years, too
. Video after the break. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133389",
"author": "darthvader",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T20:49:44",
"content": "Great project ;)I just have one question , why not just use normal aluminum foil in place of the gum one ?If it’s the same it will be easier :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [... | 1,760,371,531.554439 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/29/2025-pet-hacks-challenge-poopopticon-is-all-up-in-kittys-business/ | 2025 Pet Hacks Challenge : Poopopticon Is All Up In Kitty’s Business | Tyler August | [
"contests",
"home hacks"
] | [
"2025 Pet Hacks Contest",
"cat litter box",
"ESP32",
"ESP8266",
"infrared",
"line following"
] | After seeing this project, we can say that [James] must be a top-tier roommate. He has two flatmates– one human, one feline, and the feline flatmate’s litterbox was located in a bathroom close to the other human’s room. The odors were bothersome. A bad roommate might simply say that wasn’t their problem, but not [James].
Instead, he proclaimed “
I shall build a poopopticon to alert me so I may clean the litterbox immediately, before smells can even begin to occur, thus preserving domestic harmony
!”* We should all aspire to be more like [James].
It was, admittedly, a fairly simple project. Rather than dive into
feline facial recognition
, since it only has to detect a single cat, [James] used a simple IR sensor out of his parts bin, the sort you see on line-following robots. The microcontroller, an ESP8266, also came from his parts bin, making this project eligible for the ‘lowest budget’ award, if the contest had one.
The ESP8266 is set to send a message to a waiting webhook. In this case it is linked to a previous project, a smart ‘ring light’ [James] uses to monitor his Twitch chats. He’s also considered hooking it up to his
lazy-esp32-banner
for a big scrolling ‘change the litterbox!’ message. Since it’s just a webhook, the sky is the limit. Either way, the signal gets to its recipient and the litter gets changed before it smells, ensuring domestic bliss at [James]’ flat. If only all our roommates had been more like [James], we’d be much less misanthropic today.
He did not, in fact, say that. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133400",
"author": "Toby",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T21:36:59",
"content": "Missed opportunity for a “fecal recognition” joke if I ever saw one. I would think one obvious problem is that urine is warm too? I guess false positives are better than false negatives in this case.",
"... | 1,760,371,531.469472 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/29/researchers-are-slowly-finding-ways-to-stem-the-tide-of-pfas-contamination/ | Researchers Are Slowly Finding Ways To Stem The Tide Of PFAS Contamination | Lewin Day | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Science"
] | [
"drinking water",
"drinking water contamination",
"forever chemicals",
"pfas",
"pfas chemicals",
"pfas contamination"
] | If you’ve been following environmental news over the past couple of decades, you’ve probably heard about PFAS – those pesky “forever chemicals” that seem to turn up everywhere from
drinking water
to
polar bear blood
. They’re bad for us, and we know it, but they’ve been leeching into the environment for decades, often as a result of military or industrial activity. What’s worse is that these contaminants just don’t seem to break down—they stick around in the environment causing harm on an ongoing basis.
Now, researchers are finally cracking the code on
how to deal with these notoriously stubborn molecules
. It won’t be easy, but there’s finally some hope in the fight against the bad stuff that doesn’t just wash away.
Do You Really Want To Live Forever?
PFAS chemicals have been found contaminating tapwater supplies across the United States, and the world. Credit:
USGS
, public domain
The term “forever chemicals” is media shorthand for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances—or PFAS for short. These substances earned their nickname from
The Washington Post
in 2018
, and for good reason. These synthetic compounds feature carbon-fluorine bonds. These are some of the strongest chemical bonds found in nature and are very hard to break. This molecular stubbornness is actually a key feature of these chemicals, making them incredibly useful for things like firefighting foams or non-stick cookware—indeed, the remarkably unreactive Teflon was one of the first PFAS materials to come to prominence. However, this very feature also means they accumulate in the environment and in our bodies rather than breaking down naturally.
In practical terms, the strength of the carbon-fluorine bond means that PFAS chemicals are remarkably stable, and can easily resist high temperatures and chemical attack. Thus, they can persist in the environment for thousands of years, contaminating water supplies, accumulating in food chains, and most crucially—causing health issues. Research is ongoing, but PFAS chemicals have already been implicated in potentially causing everything from cancers to hormone disruption and liver damage.
Stop The Spread
Firefighting foams are one of the prime sources of PFAS contamination. The problem is often at its worst in areas where these foams are used regularly, such as military airfields. Credit:
Brandweer Neder-Betuwe, kazerne Ochten, Nederland
, CC BY-SA 3.0
Obviously, it’s not desirable to have toxic chemicals building up in the environment. Cleaning up existing contamination is of prime importance, particularly in areas where humans still live and work. Removing these chemicals in drinking water supplies remains challenging, but possible. The techniques are well understood, typically requiring the use of
reverse osmosis techniques or lots of activated carbon
. But what about all the contaminated human-built infrastructure, like military airfields and the like? Many of these concrete and tarmac structures have been soaking in PFAS chemicals for decades, and pose a continued risk of these substnaces leaking into the environment.
Australian firm AmbioLock has gone with an unconventional approach. Rather than trying to remove PFAS from contaminated concrete at airports and fire training grounds, they’ve developed a sealant to lock the chemicals in place. The idea is that the dangerous chemicals can be sealed to the engineered materials so they don’t leach into the environment or harm anyone using the infrastructure on the regular. The company has developed a silicate-based sealant called AmbioSeal, which penetrates the pores of concrete structures to create an impermeable barrier. In testing, the sealant achieved a 99.2% reduction in PFAS leaching from treated materials. The idea is that built infrastructure can be treated to seal PFAS contamination in place, such that the facilities can still be used safely while minimizing further risk from these deletrious chemicals.
The products could yet find grand markets with governments and private operators around the world. There are a great many PFAS contamination sites that are badly in need of remediation. However, it’s still an imperfect measure—ideally, we wouldn’t be spraying these nasty chemicals all over the place to begin with.
Ultimate Destruction
Government and industry are also keen to find ways to limit or avoid future potential releases, too. Enter a team of researchers from CSIRO and Colorado State University. Using computer simulations rooted in quantum mechanics, they modeled
exactly what happens to PFAS molecules during pyrometallurgy
. The scenario in question concerned lithium-ion battery recycling via pyrometallurgy—the process of incinerating battery materials to recover the metals inside. The researchers eager to determine what peak incinerator temperatures were necessary to destroy any PFAS component of the recyclable battery material, thus ensuring that it would not be released into the environment during the recycling procedure.
There is an increasing push to begin mass battery recycling of lithium-ion cells. Researchers at Colorado State and CSIRO have been working to determine how best to pursue that goal while avoiding the release of harmful PFAS chemicals into the atmosphere. Credit:
Doğru akım enerji
, CC BY-SA 4.0
Their findings revealed a critical temperature threshold. At lower temperatures (200 °C to 500 °C), PFAS compounds simply vaporize and enter the gas phase, becoming mobile but otherwise remaining stable. The team found that higher temperatures were needed to get the tough C-F bonds to finally surrender and break apart completely. Modelling for an incinerator’s short two-second retention time for gases, the team determined a temperature of 950 °C was necessary to attain quick destruction. “We identified the intermediate compounds formed, the key barriers in the process, and determined the required temperatures and times to fully break down these chemicals,” noted Dr Jens Blotevogel, a CSIRO researcher involved with the project.
While the research focused on a specific recycling case, it has broader implications. The modelling may guide future work for other scenarios where it’s desirable to create a recycling process or similar in which PFAS materials will be destroyed rather than emitted to the environment. There is a particularly strong focus on how the world will recycle the masses of batteries now floating around the economy, so it will have direct benefits in limiting PFAS emissions in that regard, too.
These breakthroughs represent real progress, but the challenge now is implementation. Governments, industries, and relevant authorities will need to invest in research and techniques like these to develop cost-effective solutions for the thousands of PFAS-emitting and PFAS-contaminated sites worldwide. PFAS destruction represents one of the major mainstream environmental challenges today. As these researchers have shown, with the right analysis and some clever chemistry, “forever” doesn’t necessarily have to mean forever. | 67 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133309",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T17:19:24",
"content": "Donate blood, by doing so not only are you helping society out but you’re reducing your own PFAS levels.win winVery surprised this isn’t mentioned whenever PFAS are discussed.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,531.775639 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/29/3d-print-abs-without-a-screaming-hot-bed/ | 3D Print ABS Without A Screaming Hot Bed | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"abs",
"PLA",
"raft",
"warping"
] | ABS is a durable material that can be 3D printed, but requires a 100° C build surface. The print bed of [Pat]’s Bambu Lab A1 Mini is unable to get that hot, which means he can not print ABS…or can he? By fiddling a few settings,
he prints ABS no problem
with only a 60° C bed, thanks to a PLA interface layer.
Here’s what’s going on: first [Pat] prints a single layer of PLA, then does a filament swap for ABS (which the printer thinks is PETG with extrusion temperature bumped to 255° C and a tweaked flow rate) and lets the print finish. The end result is an ABS part with a single layer of PLA at the bottom, all printed on a 60° C bed. That PLA layer peels off easily, leaving a nice finish behind.
[Pat] is printing small parts in ABS for a custom skeletal mouse shell (pictured above) and his results are fantastic. We’re curious how this technique would fare with larger ABS objects, which tend to have more issues with warping and shrinkage. But it seems that at least for small parts, it’s a reliable and clever way to go.
We originally saw how [JanTec Engineering]
used this technique to get less warping with ABS
. As for why PLA is the way to go for the interface layer, we’ve learned that
PLA only really truly sticks to PLA
, making it a great interface or support for other filaments in general. (PETG on the other hand wants to stick to everything
but
PLA.) | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133300",
"author": "Digitalzombie",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T16:45:42",
"content": "My printbed never screamed at me.But it did gave me disappointed looks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133305",
"author": "Paul",
... | 1,760,371,531.662734 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/29/forced-e-waste-pcs-and-the-case-of-windows-11s-trusted-platform/ | Forced E-Waste PCs And The Case Of Windows 11’s Trusted Platform | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"TPM",
"Trusted Platform Module",
"Windows 11"
] | Until the release of Windows 11, the upgrade proposition for Windows operating systems was rather straightforward: you considered whether the current version of Windows on your system still fulfilled your needs and if the answer was ‘no’, you’d buy an upgrade disc. Although system requirements slowly crept up over time, it was likely that your PC could still run the newest-and-greatest Windows version. Even Windows 7 had a graphical fallback mode, just in case your PC’s video card was a potato incapable of handling the GPU-accelerated Aero Glass UI.
This makes a lot of sense, as the most demanding software on a PC are the applications, not the OS. Yet with Windows 11 a new ‘hard’ requirement was added that would flip this on its head: the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a security feature that has been around for many years, but never saw much use outside of certain business and government applications. In addition to this, Windows 11 only officially supports a limited number of CPUs, which risks turning many still very capable PCs into expensive paperweights.
Although the TPM and CPU requirements can be circumvented with some effort, this is not supported by Microsoft and raises the specter of a wave of capable PCs being trashed when Windows 10 reaches EOL starting this year.
Not That Kind Of Trusted
Although ‘Trusted Platform’ and ‘security’ may sound like a positive thing for users, the opposite is really the case. The idea behind
Trusted Computing
(TC) is about consistent, verified behavior enforced by the hardware (and software). This means a computer system that’s not unlike a modern gaming console with a locked-down bootloader, with the TPM providing a unique key and secure means to validate that the hardware and software in the entire boot chain is the same as it was the last time. Effectively it’s an anti-tamper system in this use case that will just as happily lock out an intruder as the purported owner.
XKCD’s
take on encrypting drives.
In the case of Windows 11, the TPM is used for this boot validation (Secure Boot), as well as storing the (
highly controversial
) Windows Hello’s biometric data and Bitlocker whole-disk encryption keys. Important to note here is that a TPM is not an essential feature for this kind of functionality, but rather a potentially more secure way to prevent tampering, while also making data recovery more complicated for the owner. This makes Trusted Computing effectively more a kind of Paranoid Computing, where the assumption is made that beyond the TPM you cannot trust anything about the hardware or software on the system until verified, with the user not being a part of the validation chain.
Theoretically, validating the boot process can help detect boot viruses, but this comes with a range of complications, not the least of which is that this would at most allow you to boot into Windows safe mode, if at all. You’d still need a virus scanner to detect and remove the infection, so using TPM-enforced Secure Boot does not help you here and can even complicate troubleshooting.
Outside of a corporate or government environment where highly sensitive data is handled, the benefits of a TPM are questionable, and there have been cases of Windows users who got locked out of their own data by Bitlocker
failing
to decrypt the drive,
for
whatever
reason
. Expect support calls from family members on Windows 11 to become trickier as a result, also because firmware TPM (fTPM) bugs can cause big system issues
like persistent stuttering
.
Breaking The Rules
As much as Microsoft keeps trying to ram^Wgently convince us consumers to follow its ‘hard’ requirements, there are always
ways to get around these
. After all, software is just software, and thus Windows 11 can be installed on unsupported CPUs without a TPM or even an ‘unsupported’ version 1.2 TPM. Similarly, the ‘online Microsoft account’ requirement can be dodged with a few skillful tweaks and commands. The real question here is whether it makes sense to jump through these hoops to install Windows 11 on that first generation AMD Ryzen or Intel Core 2 Duo system from a support perspective.
Fortunately, one does not have to worry about losing access to Microsoft customer support here, because we all know that us computer peasants do not get that included with our Windows Home or Pro license. The worry is more about Windows Updates, especially security updates and updates that may break the OS installation by using CPU instructions unsupported by the local hardware.
Although Microsoft published a list of Windows 11
CPU requirements
, it’s not immediately obvious what they are based on. Clearly it’s not about actual missing CPU instructions, or you wouldn’t even be able to install and run the OS. The only true hard limit in Windows 11 (for now) appears to be the UEFI BIOS requirement, but dodging the TPM 2.0 & CPU requirements is as easy as a quick dive into the Windows Registry by adding the
AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU
key to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup
. You still need a TPM 1.2 module in this case.
When you use a tool like
Rufus
to write the Windows 11 installer to a USB stick you can even toggle a few boxes to automatically have all of this done for you. This even includes the option to
completely disable TPM
as well as the Secure Boot and 8 GB of RAM requirements. Congratulations, your 4 GB RAM, TPM-less Core 2 Duo system now runs Windows 11.
Risk Management
It remains to be seen whether Microsoft will truly enforce the TPM and CPU requirements in the future, that is requiring Secure Boot with Bitlocker. Over on the
Apple side of the fence
, the hardware has been performing system drive encryption along with other ‘security’ features since the appearance of the Apple T2 chip. It might be that Microsoft envisions a similar future for PCs, one in which even something as
sacrilegious as dual-booting
another OS becomes impossible.
Naturally, this raises the
spectre
of increasing hostility between users and their computer systems. Can you truly trust that Bitlocker won’t suddenly decide that it doesn’t want to unlock the boot drive any more? What if an fTPM issue bricks the system, or that a sneaky Windows 11 update a few months or years from now prevents a
10th generation Intel CPU
from running the OS without crashing due to missing instructions? Do you really trust Microsoft that far?
It does seem like there are only bad options if you want to stay in the Windows ecosystem.
Strategizing
Clearly, there are no good responses to what Microsoft is attempting here with its absolutely user-hostile actions that try to push a closed, ‘AI’-infused ecosystem on its victi^Wusers. As someone who uses Windows 10 on a daily basis, this came only after running Windows 7 for as long as application support remained in place, which was years after Windows 7 support officially ended.
Perhaps for Windows users, sticking to Windows 10 is the best strategy here, while pushing software and hardware developers to keep supporting it (and maybe Windows 7 again too…). Windows 11 came preinstalled on the system that I write this on, but I erased it with a Windows 10 installation and reused the same, BIOS embedded, license key. I also disabled fTPM in the BIOS to prevent ‘accidental upgrades’, as Microsoft was so fond of doing back with Windows 7 when everyone absolutely had to use Windows 10.
I can hear the ‘just use Linux/BSD/etc.’ crowd already clamoring in the comments, and will preface this by saying that although I use Linux and BSD on a nearly daily basis, I would not want to use it as my primary desktop system for too many reasons to go into here. I’m still holding out some hope for ReactOS hitting its stride Any Day Now™, but it’s tough to see a path forward beyond running Windows 10 into the ground, while holding only faint hope for Windows 12 becoming Microsoft’s gigantic Mea Culpa.
After having used PCs and Windows since the Windows 3.x days, I can say that the situation for personal computers today is unprecedented, not unlike that
for the World Wide Web
. It seems increasingly less like customer demand is appealed to by companies, and more an inverse where customers have become merely consumers: receptacles for the AI and marketing-induced slop of the day, whose purchases serve to make stock investors happy because Line Goes Up
©
. | 145 | 45 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133237",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T14:08:56",
"content": "“What if an fTPM issue bricks the system, or that a sneaky Windows 11 update a few months or years from now prevents a 10th generation Intel CPU from running the OS without crashing due to missing instru... | 1,760,371,532.219736 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/29/bring-back-the-bios-to-uefi-systems-that-is/ | Bring Back The BIOS! (To UEFI Systems, That Is) | Jenny List | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"bios",
"SeaBIOS",
"UEFI"
] | At the dawn of the PC, IBM provided the Basic Input Output System (BIOS). It took care of bringing the machine up, and exposed a series of software hooks for the hardware. Over the years the BIOS and its updated descendants served us well, but as we entered a 64-bit world its limitations began to show.
The replacement was the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface or UEFI, and the chances are you’re viewing this on a machine which uses it in some capacity. But what if you only have UEFI and need BIOS to run a piece of older software? Never fear, because
here’s CSMWrap, which brings it back, just for you
.
Under the hood it’s a wrapper for the
SeaBIOS
compatibility support module, doing the work of setting up the memory mapping such that it will load, and ensuring that other services such as the VGA BIOS are loaded. As it stands it can boot FreeDOS and some older Windows versions under UEFI in QEMU, and it’s claimed also run on real hardware. We don’t often need to run DOS on our 2025 machine, but it’s neat to know we can.
Meanwhile if the BIOS interests you, know that
there’s also an open source BIOS for the earliest of PCs
.
BIOS header image: Thomas Schanz,
CC BY-SA 4.0
. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133203",
"author": "Andrea Campanella",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T11:25:05",
"content": "Well, time to build a very fast dos pc",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133225",
"author": "imqqmi",
"timestamp": "2025-0... | 1,760,371,531.838323 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/29/the-cost-of-a-cheap-ups-is-10-hours-and-a-replacement-pcb/ | The Cost Of A Cheap UPS Is 10 Hours And A Replacement PCB | Maya Posch | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"home assisstant",
"ups"
] | Recently [Florin] was in the market for a basic uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to provide some peace of mind for the smart home equipment he had stashed around. Unfortunately, the cheap Serioux LD600LI unit he picked up left a bit to be desired, and
required a bit of retrofitting
.
To be fair, the issues that [Florin] ended up dealing with were less about the UPS’ capability to deal with these power issues, and more with the USB interface on the UPS. Initially the UPS seemed to communicate happily with HomeAssistant (HA) via
Network UPS Tools
over a generic USB protocol, after figuring out what device profile matched this re-branded generic UPS. That’s when HA began to constantly lose the connection with the UPS, risking its integration in the smart home setup.
The old and new USB-serial boards side by side. (Credit: VoltLog, YouTube)
After tearing down the UPS to see what was going on, [Florin] found that it used a fairly generic USB-serial adapter featuring the common Cypress CY7C63310 family of low-speed USB controller. Apparently the firmware on this controller was simply not up to the task or poorly implemented, so a replacement was needed.
The process and implementation is covered in detail in the video. It’s quite straightforward, taking the 9600 baud serial link from the UPS’ main board and using a Silabs CP2102N USB-to-UART controller to create a virtual serial port on the USB side. These conversion boards have to be fully isolated, of course, which is where the
HopeRF CMT8120
dual-channel digital isolator comes into play.
After assembly it
almost
fully worked, except that a Sonoff Zigbee controller in the smart home setup used the same Silabs controller, with thus the same USB PID/VID combo. Fortunately in Silabs
AN721
it’s described how you can use an alternate PID (0xEA63) which fixed this issue until the next device with a CP2102N is installed
As it turns out, the cost of a $40 UPS is actually 10 hours of work and $61 in parts, although one cannot put a value on all the lessons learned here. | 27 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133177",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T08:47:47",
"content": "I wish my cheap UPS had a USB port",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133205",
"author": "Nomen Nescio",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T1... | 1,760,371,531.951964 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/28/tool-turns-svgs-into-multicolor-3d-prints/ | Tool Turns SVGs Into Multicolor 3D Prints | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"conversion",
"sign",
"stl",
"svg"
] | Want to turn a scaled vector graphic into a multicolor 3D print, like a sign? You’ll want to check out [erkannt]’s
svg2solid
, a web-based tool that reads an SVG and breaks the shapes up by color into individual STL files. Drag those into your slicer (treating them as a single object with multiple parts) and you’re off to the races.
This sign was printed face-down on a textured build plate. The colors only need to be a few layers deep.
This is especially handy for making 3D printed versions of things like signs, and shown here is an example of exactly that.
It’s true that most 3D printer software supports the
.svg
format natively nowadays, but that doesn’t mean a tool like this is obsolete. SVG is a 2D format with no depth information, so upon import the slicer assigns a arbitrary height to all imported elements and the user must make any desired adjustments manually. For example, a handy tip for making signs is to make the “background” as thick as desired but limit colored elements to just a few layers deep. Doing so minimizes filament switching while having no impact on final visual appearance.
Being able to drag SVGs directly into the slicer is very handy, but working with 3D models has a certain “what you see is what you get” element to it that can make experimentation or alternate applications a little easier. Since
svg2solid
turns an SVG into discrete 3D models (separated by color) and each with user-defined heights, if you find yourself needing that then this straightforward tool is worth having in your bookmarks. Or just go straight to the
GitHub repository
and grab your own copy.
On the other hand, if you prefer your 3D-printed signs to be lit up in a faux-neon style then
here’s how to do that in no time at all
. Maybe there’s a way to mix the two approaches? If you do, be sure to use
our tips line
to let us know! | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133161",
"author": "Duderino",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T06:56:11",
"content": "“It’s true that most 3D printer software supports the .svg format natively nowadays, but that doesn’t mean a tool like this is obsolete”It really does. This task takes seconds to do in prusaslicer or fre... | 1,760,371,531.884603 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/28/a-love-letter-to-embedded-systems-by-v-hunter-adams/ | A Love Letter To Embedded Systems By V. Hunter Adams | John Elliot V | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"embedded systems",
"philosophy"
] | Today we’re going to make a little digression from things that we do to look at perhaps
why
we do the things that we do. This one is philosophical folks, so strap yourselves in. We’ve had an interesting item arrive on the tips line from [Bunchabits] who wanted to let us know about a video,
Love Letter to Embedded Systems
, from [V. Hunter Adams].
[V. Hunter Adams] is Lecturer of Electrical Engineering at Cornell University and is on the web over here:
vanhunteradams.com
In this forty three minute video [Hunter] makes an attempt to explain why he loves engineering, generally, and why he loves embedded systems engineering, specifically. He tries to answer why you should love engineering projects, what makes such projects special, and how you can get started on projects of your own. He discusses his particular interest in other unrelated subjects such as birds and birdsong, and talks a little about the genius of polymath Leonardo da Vinci.
He goes on to explain that engineering can be the vehicle to learn about other fields of endeavor, that the constraints in embedded systems are like the constraints of poetry, that embedded systems are the right level of complexity where you can still hold the details of a complete system in your head, and that embedded systems let you integrate with the physical world through sensors and actuators leading to a greater appreciation of physics and nature.
In his submission to the tips line [Bunchabits] said that [Hunter] was a communicator in the league of Carl Sagan and that he could do for embedded systems what Sagan did for physics and astronomy. Having watched this presentation we are inclined to agree. He is a thoughtful person and a cogent communicator.
If today’s philosophical digression has left you feeling… philosophical, then you might enjoy a little nostalgia, too. Here’s some old philosophical material that we covered here on Hackaday back in 2013 which held some interest:
Hacking And Philosophy: An Introduction
;
The Mentor’s Manifesto
;
Hacker Crackdown: Part 1
,
Part II
,
Part III
,
Part IV
;
Future Tech And Upgrading Your Brain
; and
Surveillance State
. All still as relevant today as it was over a decade ago.
Thanks to [Bunchabits] for sending this one in. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133178",
"author": "strawberrymortallyb0bcea48e7",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T08:56:03",
"content": "HaD should mentionhttps://embeddedonlineconference.com/at least once.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133204",
"autho... | 1,760,371,532.32181 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/28/invisible-pc-doubles-as-heated-seat/ | Invisible PC Doubles As Heated Seat | Tyler August | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"chair PC",
"minimalism",
"Office Chair",
"pc"
] | Some people really want a minimalist setup for their computing. In spite of his potentially worrisome housing situation, this was a priority for the man behind [Basically Homeless]: clean lines on the desk. Where does the PC go? You could get an all-in-one, sure, but those use laptop hardware and he wanted the good stuff. So he decided to hide the PC in the
one place no one would ever think to look: inside his chair.
(Youtube video, embedded below.)
This chair has very respectable specs: a Ryzen 7 9800XD, 64GB of ram and a RTX 4060 GPU, but you’d never know it. The secret is using 50 mm aluminum standoffs between the wooden base of the seat and the chair hardware to create room for low-profile everything. (The GPU is obviously lying sideways and connected with a PCIe riser cable, but even still, it needed a low-profile GPU.) This assemblage is further hidden 3D printed case that makes the fancy chair donated from [Basically Homeless]’s sponsor look basically stock, except for the cables coming out of it. It’s a very niche project, but if you happen to have the right chair, he does
provide STLs on the free tier of his Patreon
.
This is the first time we’ve seen a chair PC, but
desk PCs are something
we’ve covered
more than once
, so there’s obviously a demand to hide the electronics. It remains to be seen if hiding a PC in a chair will catch on, but if nothing else [Basically Homeless] will have a nice heated seat for winter. To bring this project to the next level of minimalism, we might suggest
chording keyboards in the armrests
, and perhaps a
VR headset instead of a monitor
. | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133089",
"author": "bill gates",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T23:07:01",
"content": "Great way to keep your balls nice and warm, and get sterile or ball or arse cancer.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133105",
"author": ... | 1,760,371,532.278096 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/28/from-burnt-to-brilliant-a-toasters-makeover/ | From Burnt To Brilliant: A Toaster’s Makeover | Matt Varian | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"reflow oven",
"toaster oven",
"toasters"
] | Appliances fail, but that doesn’t mean it’s the end for them. This
impressive hack
from [solopilot] shows the results possible when not just fixing but also improving upon its original form. The toaster’s failed function selector switch presented an opportunity to add smart features to the function selection and refine control over its various settings.
Before upgrading the toaster, [solopilot] first had to access its components, which is no trivial task with many modern appliances. Photos document his process of diving into the toaster, exposing all the internals to enable the upgrade. Once everything was accessible, some reverse engineering was required to understand how the failed function selector controlled the half-dozen devices it was wired to.
Next came the plan for the upgrades—a long list that included precise temperature control and the ability to send an SMS showing the state of your meal. A Raspberry Pi Zero, a solid-state relay, a relay control board, and a thermocouple were added to the toaster, unlocking far more capability and control than it had originally. Some tuning is required to fully enable these new features and to dial in the precision this once run-of-the-mill toaster is now capable of.
The work wasn’t limited to the toaster itself. [solopilot] also seized the opportunity to create an Android app with speech recognition to control his now one-of-a-kind Cuisinart. It’s probably safe to say his TOA-60 is currently the smartest toaster in the world. If you check out his documentation, you’ll find all the pinouts, circuits, code, and logic explanations needed to add serious improvements to your own toaster. We’ve featured several other
toaster oven projects
over the years, most of which have focused on turning them into reflow ovens, so it’s exciting to see one aimed at improving upon its original design. | 26 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133055",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T20:17:21",
"content": "Howdy-doodly-do, how’s it going?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8133058",
"author": "MrFlibble",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T20:44:06"... | 1,760,371,532.389994 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/28/floss-weekly-episode-834-it-was-cool-in-2006/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 834: It Was Cool In 2006 | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"eBPF",
"FLOSS Weekly",
"high performance computing",
"linux"
] | This week Jonathan chats with
Ben Meadors
and
Rob Campbell
about the boatload of software Microsoft just released as Open Source! What’s the motivation, why is the new Edit interesting, and what’s up with Copilot? Watch to find out!
https://github.com/microsoft/edit
https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/1
KDE4 on Windows
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 | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133130",
"author": "Z",
"timestamp": "2025-05-29T03:58:45",
"content": "TurboVision-based editors were far better. This is a load of M$ crapware, as usual.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133184",
"author": "Zamorano",
... | 1,760,371,532.432697 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/28/supercon-2024-using-an-oscilloscope-to-peek-below-the-noise-floor/ | Supercon 2024: Using An Oscilloscope To Peek Below The Noise Floor | Lewin Day | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"2024 Hackaday Superconference",
"lock in amplifier",
"noise floor",
"signal to noise",
"signal to noise ratio"
] | When you’re hunting for a signal with your oscilloscope, the stronger it is, the better. If it’s weak, you might struggle to tease it out from other interference, or even from the noise floor itself. You might wish that you were looking for something more obvious rather than the electromagnetic equivalent of a needle in a haystack.
Finding hidden signals below the noise floor may be a challenge, but it needn’t be an insurmountable one. James Rowley and Mark Omo came to the 2024 Hackaday Superconference to tell us how to achieve this
with the magic of lock-in amplifiers.
Noise
As James explains, you can do lock-in amplification with just about any analog-to-digital converter and DSP that you might have on hand. For example, the oscilloscope you already have in your workshop. “The magic of this technique is taking a noisy signal, just rejecting all the noise, and getting just the part you want—just the signal you’re interested in,” James explains. “It is a very powerful technique for measuring how a signal flows through a system.”
“A lock-in amplifier is a great way… to lock in to those very small signals that can be swamped out by noise and interference, and actually measure signals that are well below the noise floor with a negative signal-to-noise ratio,” says James. “Essentially, what a lock-in amplifier is, is an ultra-narrow bandpass filter.”
A lock-in amplifier is effectively a very strong filter that gets rid of a lot of noise so you can actually find your signal.
In the talk, James uses a simple analogy to explain how this works. He asks the audience to imagine a speaker and a microphone. In this analogy, ideally, the microphone picks up whatever noise the speaker is putting out, but in the real world, there are lots of other noise sources from the environment that can swamp the signal from the speaker itself. However, a lock-in amplifier would be able to reject that other noise, locking in on just the sound from the speaker itself. Lock-in amplifiers apply to all sorts of applications, from picking up extremely sensitive signals from load-cells, to measuring very high or low electrical resistances, and even finding locations of heart catheters during delicate medical operations. Wherever there are tiny important signals that need to be picked up, lock-in amplifiers can probably help.
As with all DSP topics, there is some math involved. Mark explains how the input signal is modulated with a reference signal to help dig out the desired information from the noise.
Mark then walks us through the DSP magic required to actually find signals beneath the noise floor. He explains that by heavily filtering out noise outside the area of interest, it’s possible to effectively increase the signal-to-noise ratio and pick up the desired signal even if it’s quite faint. Traditional filters aren’t quite good enough to reduce the noise by the required amount of 300 times or so, so alternative solutions are needed. To do lock-in amplification, the measured signal is first shifted down to zero hertz, and averaged out over time. It sounds a little funky, but Mark explains the trigonometry and associated math to make it all work for a signal of any given bandwidth. Importantly, though, this technique also needs a reference signal to work, so the amplifier can effectively lock-in on the signal you’re actually looking for.
The practical demonstration involved a microphone trying to pick up a signal from a speaker in a noisy room filled with applause.
The talk then covers the practical—how to build a lock-in amplifier with real hardware. Commercial off-the-shelf options exist, or you could go the discrete analog route—but both are expensive and fussy. Alternatively, you can just use an analog-to-digital converter. “Like the one in your oscilloscope!” notes Mark. He explains how this is set up and how it compares to traditional approaches; basically, it’s more accessible, if not quite as high-performance. You basically end up using one channel as a reference input, while the other channel is hooked up to the signal you’re actually trying to find.
The better the ADC in your oscilloscope, the better it will perform—better bit depth, buffer depth, and sampling rates are all advantageous in this regard. You’re limited by quantization noise and the fact the oscilloscope may not have a particularly low-noise front end, and how much you can average the signal with the oscilloscope’s memory depth, but it’s a workable way to get started with a lock-in amplification setup. As a guide, something like a Rigol DS1054Z has enough memory depth to achieve a 1700x reduction in noise, which helps a great deal when hunting for a signal beneath the typical noise floor.
Code to achieve this is available on Github for the curious.
The talk wraps up with a neat demonstration. A microphone and speaker are set up at a set distance of 8.5 cm, at which point the signal should show a 90-degree change in phase based on the signal being fed through the system. Mark and James show how their system is able to accurately measure the phase shift in the desired signal even in a loud room with a full crowd applauding while the demo runs.
If you regularly find yourself struggling to measure dim signals that you
know
are there, somewhere, you might find these techniques highly useful. This talk serves as a great primer for this very useful DSP technique. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133081",
"author": "Johannes Burgel",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T22:29:12",
"content": "Please stop repeating the “signals below the noise floor” line. It is impossible to reconstruct a signal that’sactuallybelow the noise floor. The microphone analogy explains this quite nicely: The... | 1,760,371,532.47975 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/28/bubble-displays-make-a-neat-retro-clock/ | Bubble Displays Make A Neat Retro Clock | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks",
"clock hacks"
] | [
"bubble display",
"digital clock",
"ESP32"
] | In 2025 we are spoiled for choice when it comes to displays, with affordable LCDs, OLEDs, TFTs, and e-ink panels of all sizes only a few clicks away. But in decades past, such exotica were not on the menu for casual construction. Instead there were a range of LED seven segment displays which have now largely passed out of use.
Among them were HP’s bubble displays, assemblies of miniature LEDs on a PCB, topped with plastic bubble lenses. If you had a calculator in the 1970s it probably had one, but in the present, [Joshua Coleman]
has incorporated one into a pleasingly retro digital clock
.
Inside the 3D printed case is an ESP32 with a pair of 74HC595 shift registers to drive the display, and an 18650 battery with all associated charging and protection circuitry. It’s a surprisingly simple circuit, and the code is provided on the page. He makes an apology to non-Americans for his use of US date formats, but we think few readers will be unable to change it to reflect
the only date format which really matters
.
If you find a bubble display, hang on to it. They’re certainly
something we’ve seen before here a few times
. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133051",
"author": "DirtyDen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T19:56:29",
"content": "looks like a bomb",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8133060",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T20:50:17",
"content": "I get the ... | 1,760,371,532.533435 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/28/remotely-interesting-stream-gages/ | Remotely Interesting: Stream Gages | Dan Maloney | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"hydrology",
"infrastructure",
"remote",
"river",
"stream monitoring",
"usgs"
] | Near my childhood home was a small river. It wasn’t much more than a creek at the best of times, and in dry summers it would sometimes almost dry up completely. But snowmelt revived it each Spring, and the remains of tropical storms in late Summer and early Fall often transformed it into a raging torrent if only briefly before the flood waters receded and the river returned to its lazy ways.
Other than to those of us who used it as a playground, the river seemed of little consequence. But it did matter enough that a mile or so downstream was some sort of instrumentation, obviously meant to monitor the river. It was —
and still is
— visible from the road, a tall corrugated pipe standing next to the river, topped with a box bearing the logo of the US Geological Survey. On occasion, someone would visit and open the box to do mysterious things, which suggested the river was interesting beyond our fishing and adventuring needs.
Although I learned quite early that this device was a streamgage, and that it was part of
a large network
of monitoring instruments the USGS used to monitor the nation’s waterways, it wasn’t until quite recently — OK, this week — that I learned how streamgages work, or how extensive the network is. A lot of effort goes into installing and maintaining this far-flung network, and it’s worth looking at how these instruments work and their impact on everyday life.
Inventing Hydrography
First, to address the elephant in the room, “gage” is a rarely used but accepted alternative spelling of “gauge.” In general, gage tends to be used in technical contexts, which certainly seems to be the case here, as opposed to a non-technical context such as “A gauge of public opinion.” Moreover, the USGS itself uses that spelling, for interesting historical reasons that they’ve apparently had to address often enough that they wrote
an FAQ
on the subject. So I’ll stick with the USGS terminology in this article, even if I really don’t like it that much.
With that out of the way, the USGS has a long history of monitoring the nation’s rivers. The first streamgaging station was established in 1889 along the Rio Grande River at a railroad station in Embudo, New Mexico. Measurements were entirely manual in those days, performed by crews trained on-site in the nascent field of hydrography. Many of the tools and methods that would be used through the rest of the 19th century to measure the flow of rivers throughout the West and later the rest of the nation were invented at Embudo.
Then as now, river monitoring boils down to one critical measurement: discharge rate, or the volume of water passing a certain point in a fixed amount of time. In the US, discharge rate is measured in cubic feet per second, or cfs. The range over which discharge rate is measured can be huge, from streams that trickle a few dozen cubic feet of water every second to the over one million cfs discharge routinely measured
at the mouth of the mighty Mississippi
each Spring.
Measurements over such a wide dynamic range would seem to be an engineering challenge, but hydrographers have simplified the problem by cheating a little. While volumetric flow in a closed container like a pipe is relatively easy — flowmeters using paddlewheels or turbines are commonly used for such a task — direct measurement of flow rates in natural watercourses is much harder, especially in navigable rivers where such measuring instruments would pose a hazard to navigation. Instead, the USGS calculates the discharge rate indirectly using stream height, often referred to as flood stage.
Beside Still Waters
Schematic of a USGS stilling well. The water level in the well tracks the height of the stream, with a bit of lag. The height of the water column in the well is easier to read than the surface of the river. Source: USGS, public domain.
The height of a river at any given point is much easier to measure, with the bonus that the tools used for this task lend themselves to continuous measurements. Stream height is the primary data point of each streamgage in the USGS network, which uses several different techniques based on the specific requirements of each site.
A float-tape gage, with a counterweighted float attached to an encoder by a stainless steel tape. The encoder sends the height of the water column in the stilling well to the data logger. Source:
USGS
, public domain.
The most common is based on a stilling well. Stilling wells are vertical shafts dug into the bank adjacent to a river. The well is generally large enough for a technician to enter, and is typically lined with either concrete or steel conduit, such as the streamgage described earlier. The bottom of the shaft, which is also lined with an impervious material such as concrete, lies below the bottom of the river bed, while the height of the well is determined by the highest expected flood stage for the river. The lumen of the well is connected to the river via a pair of pipes, which terminate in the water above the surface of the riverbed. Water fills the well via these input pipes, with the level inside the well matching the level of the water in the river.
As the name implies, the stilling well performs the important job of damping any turbulence in the river, allowing for a stable column of water whose height can be easily measured. Most stilling wells measure the height of the water column with a float connected to a shaft encoder by a counterweighted stainless steel tape. Other stilling wells are measured using ultrasonic transducers, radar, or even lidar scanners located in the instrument shelter on the top of the well, which translate time-of-flight to the height of the water column.
While stilling well gages are cheap and effective, they are not without their problems. Chief among these is dealing with silt and debris. Even though intakes are placed above the bottom of the river, silt enters the stilling well and settles into the sump. This necessitates frequent maintenance, usually by flushing the sump and the intake lines using water from a flushing tank located within the stilling well. In rivers with a particularly high silt load, there may be a silt trap between the intakes and the stilling well. Essentially a concrete box with a series of vertical baffles, the silt trap allows silt to settle out of the river water before it enters the stilling well, and must be cleaned out periodically.
Bubbles, Bubbles
Bubble gages often live on pilings or other structures within the watercourse.
Making up for some of the deficiencies of the stilling well is the bubble gage, which measures river stage using gas pressure. A bubble gage typically consists of a small air pump or gas cylinders inside the instrument shelter, plumbed to a pipe that comes out below the surface of the river. As with stilling wells, the tube is fixed at a known point relative to a datum, which is the reference height for that station. The end of the pipe in the water has an orifice of known size, while the supply side has regulators and valves to control the flow of gas. River stage can be measured by sensing the gas pressure in the system, which will increase as the water column above the orifice gets higher.
Bubble gages have a distinct advantage over stilling wells in rivers with a high silt load, since the positive pressure through the orifice tends to keep silt out of the works. However, bubble gages tend to need a steady supply of electricity to power their air pump continuously, or for gages using bottled gas, frequent site visits for replenishment. Also, the pipe run to the orifice needs to be kept fairly short, meaning that bubble gage instrument shelters are often located on pilings within the river course or on bridge abutments, which can make maintenance tricky and pose a hazard to navigation.
While bubble gages and stilling wells are the two main types of gaging stations for fixed installations, the USGS also maintains a selection of temporary gaging instruments for tactical use, often for response to natural disasters. These Rapid Deployment Gages (RDGs) are compact units designed to affix to the rail of a bridge or some other structure across the river. Most RDGs use radar to sense the water level, but some use sonar.
Go With the Flow
No matter what method is used to determine the stage of a river, calculating the discharge rate is the next step. To do that, hydrographers have to head to the field and make flow measurements. By measuring the flow rates at intervals across the river, preferably as close as possible to the gaging station, the total flow through the channel at that point can be estimated, and a calibration curve relating flow rate to stage can be developed. The discharge rate can then be estimated from just the stage reading.
Flow readings are taken using a variety of tools, depending on the size of the river and the speed of the current. Current meters with bucket wheels can be lowered into a river on a pole; the flow rotates the bucket wheel and closes electrical contacts that can be counted on an electromagnetic totalizer. More recently, Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCPs) have come into use. These use ultrasound to measure the velocity of particulates in the water by their Doppler shift.
Crews can survey the entire width of a small stream by wading, from boats, or by making measurements from a convenient bridge. In some remote locations where the river is especially swift, the USGS may erect a cableway across the river, so that measurements can be taken at intervals from a cable car.
Nice work if you can get it. USGS crew making flow measurements from a cableway over the American River in California using an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler. Source:
USGS
, public domain.
From Paper to Satellites
In the earliest days of streamgaging, recording data was strictly a pen-on-paper process. Station log books were updated by hydrographers for every observation, with results transmitted by mail or telegraph. Later, stations were equipped with paper chart recorders using a long-duration clockwork mechanism. The pen on the chart recorder was mechanically linked to the float in a stilling well, deflecting it as the river stage changed and leaving a record on the chart. Electrical chart recorders came next, with the position of the pen changing based on the voltage through a potentiometer linked to the float.
Chart recorders, while reliable, have the twin disadvantages of needing a site visit to retrieve the data and requiring a tedious manual transcription of the chart data to tabular form. To solve the latter problem, analog-digital recorders (ADRs) were introduced in the 1960s. These recorded stage data on paper tape as four binary-coded decimal (BCD) digits. The time of each stage reading was inferred from its position on the tape, given a known starting time and reading interval. Tapes still had to be retrieved from each station, but at least reading the data back at the office could be automated with a paper tape reader.
In the 1980s and 1990s, gaging stations were upgraded to electronic data loggers, with small solar panels and batteries where grid power wasn’t available. Data was stored locally in the logger between maintenance visits by a hydrographer, who would download the data. Alternately, gaging stations located close to public rights of way sometimes had leased telephone lines for transmitting data at intervals via modem. Later, gaging stations started sprouting cross-polarized Yagi antennas, aimed at one of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES). Initially, gaging stations used one of the GOES low data rate telemetry channels with a 100 to 300 bps connection. This gave hydrologists near-real-time access to gaging data for the first time. Since 2013, all stations have been upgraded to a high data rate channel that allows up to 1,200 bps telemetry.
Currently, gage data is collected every 15 minutes normally, although the interval can be increased to every 5 minutes at times of peak flow. Data is buffered locally before a GOES uplink, which is about every hour or so, or as often as every 15 minutes in peak flow or emergencies. The uplink frequencies and intervals are very well documented on the USGS site, so you can easily pick them up with an SDR, and you can see if the creek is rising from the comfort of your own shack. | 32 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8132951",
"author": "DougM",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T14:37:57",
"content": "Thank you for this, I’ve often wondered exactly how the data was captured. As a whitewater kayaker I checked the CFS on the river before heading out and there are wonderful prediction sites that will tell ... | 1,760,371,532.613008 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/27/fixing-a-fatal-genetic-defect-in-babies-with-a-bit-of-genetic-modification/ | Fixing A Fatal Genetic Defect In Babies With A Bit Of Genetic Modification | Maya Posch | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Science"
] | [
"ammonia",
"CRISPR",
"CRISPR CaS9",
"urea"
] | Genetic defects are exceedingly common, which is not surprising considering just how many cells make up our bodies, including our reproductive cells. While most of these defects have no or only minor effects, some range from serious to fatal. One of these defects is in the CPS1 gene, with those affected facing a shortened lifespan along with intensive treatments and a liver transplant as the only real solution. This may now be changing, after
the first successful genetic treatment
of an infant with CPS1 deficiency.
Carbamoyl phosphate synthetase I (
CPS1
) is an enzyme that is crucial for breaking down the ammonia that is formed when proteins are broken down. If the body doesn’t produce enough of this enzyme in the liver, ammonia will accumulate in the blood, eventually reaching levels where it will affect primarily the nervous system. As an autosomal recessive metabolic disorder it requires both parents to be carriers, with the severity depending on the exact mutation.
In the case of the affected infant, KJ Muldoon, the CPS1 deficiency was severe with only a low-protein diet and ammonia-lowering (nitrogen scavenging) medication keeping the child alive while a search for a donor liver had begun. It is in this context that in a few months time a CRISPR-Cas9 therapy was developed that so far appears to fixing the faulty genes in the liver cells.
CPS1 Gene Deficiency
The urea cycle. (Credit: Yikrazuul,
Wikimedia
)
Despite its toxicity to living beings,
ammonia
(NH
3
) is an essential part of these same living beings, primarily in the form of
amines
(R-NH
2
), itself a rather indispensable part of amino acids, specifically the 22
proteinogenic amino acids
from which proteins are formed. Just as ammonia is required for the amination process, so too is ammonia formed inside the body mostly as the result of
transamination
and
deamination
of these biogenic amines. This is a process that takes place primarily in the liver and involves the deamination of both the body’s own waste proteins as well as those from one’s diet.
Since only part of the ammonia can be reused for new amino acids, the rest has to be neutralized. Due to the toxicity of ammonia, blood levels have to be limited to <50 µmol/L or
hyperammonemia
will occur. This is where the
urea cycle
comes into play to maintain a healthy ammonia level.
The very first step of the urea cycle is the conversion of ammonia to carbamoyl phosphate:
NH
3
+
HCO
−
3
+ 2
ATP
→ 2ADP + Carbamoyl phosphate + P
i
Normally this is a very slow reaction, which is where the enzyme CSP1 comes into play as catalyst. In humans the gene for this enzyme is located on chromosome 2’s long arm, at locus 2q34. If there is a mutation in this gene that prevents it from working as a catalyst, ammonia levels in blood plasma will keep rising, eventually reaching levels where the nervous system is affected. In infants this is noticeable as lethargy, seizures and a lack of normal developmental milestones. Without treatment, developmental delay, intellectual disability or death affect 50% of babies.
Undoing A Mutation
When KJ was born on August 2024, it was noticed that he was lethargic, with stiff muscles and other worrisome symptoms. After a severe CPS1 deficiency was diagnosed via genome sequencing, KJ was hospitalized at only five months old. KJ’s only hope appeared to be a liver transplant and was put on the list for a donor organ, providing a slim hope at best. Meanwhile, a team of researchers started researching the cause of KJ’s CPS1 deficiency and the mutations behind it.
As
described by Dr. Eric Topol
in his summary of the (paywalled)
paper by Gropman et al.
in
NEJM
, both the father and mother were found to be carriers for CPS1 mutations, with the father carrying the truncating Q335X variant and the mother another (E714X). If either mutation could be corrected, the child would have one functional copy and theoretically be able to produce enough CPS1 to have a functional urea cycle without external assistance.
A complicating issue here is that despite the many reports of gene-editing with CRISPR the past years, there are various gradations, with what Dr. Topol refers to as CRISPR 1.0 through 3.0:
CRISPR 1.0: A CRISPR-Cas9 tool causes sufficient double-strand damage to disable the gene (knock-out). Crude and not relevant here. Also performed
ex vivo
.
CRISPR 2.0: Introduced single-strand cuts that allow for limited base editing, e.g. swapping A for a G.
CRISPR 3.0. Expands base editing to include multiple base pairs, both
ex vivo
and
in vivo
.
These methods have previously already been used
ex vivo
to create
modified T-cells for CAR T-cell immunotherapy
in the context of cancer treatments. In terms of
in vivo
treatments, there is the 2023 knocking out of
PCSK9 liver protein
to reduce bad cholesterol levels and the more recent base editing of the
PiZ mutation
responsible for liver and lung damage. There’s also
ARCUS
, which is a viral vector-based method of base editing that has seen use in fixing another urea cycle-related disorder.
Although only CRISPR 2.0 was needed here, what was unique in the case of KJ was that this would be the first fully personalized base editing therapy, applied
in vivo
and developed within the span of a mere six months.
Crossing All The Ts
K-abe base editor bound to target sequence of CPS1 (Credit:
Gropman et al.
NEJM, 2025)
With how experimental this gene therapy for KJ’s CPS1 disorder was, the researchers had to go through the entire gamut of tests, including on animal models. With a base editor developed to target the father’s Q335X mutation and rewrite it to the correct base pairs, mice were bred that had the same CSP1 mutation, in addition to testing on non-human primates, all to validate the approach and gain FDA approval.
The base editor’s goal was to rewrite the the wrong bases at the Q335X location on locus 2q34. A concern with any application of CRISPR is so-called off-target edits, but the safety review seems to have passed here without serious issues.
Starting with a very low dose, blood plasma ammonia levels were carefully monitored with no noticeable changes. Three weeks later the second, higher dose was injected, with reportedly positive effects on the ammonia levels. A third dose was injected a while later, though the results of this aren’t know yet. In the absence of a liver biopsy it is hard to say in how far this is a true cure, as reported so far is a reduced need for medications.
Per reports, KJ is however doing better, hitting developmental targets and got over two viral infections, without an ammonia crisis. Further injections of the treatment will likely administered with an mRNA approach rather than the (presumed) virus vector used so far due to immunity concerns with a virus vector. Open questions remain regarding how many cells have been truly edited in KJ’s liver and what the overall effectiveness is.
This leads us to cautiously welcome this news as a step forward in personalized gene-therapy, while realizing that the road ahead for both KJ and the rest of us is still full of unknowns and challenges. That said, one can only hope for KJ’s best possible progress and ideally serving as a beacon of hope for others afflicted by genetic disorders like CPS1 deficiency.
Featured image: “
CRISPR Cas9
” by Ernesto del Aguila III, NHGRI, Courtesy:
National Human Genome Research Institute | 30 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8132685",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T17:14:26",
"content": "Amazing thing is the whole organism works as well and long as it does with as few problems.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132715",
"aut... | 1,760,371,532.685978 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/27/reconditioning-a-vintage-crt-tube/ | Reconditioning A Vintage CRT Tube | Jenny List | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"Color TV",
"crt",
"CRT TV",
"delta-gun"
] | Plenty of readers will be familiar with CRT televisions, not least because many of us use them with retrocomputers and consoles. But perhaps fewer will have worked with CRTs themselves as components, and of those, fewer still will be familiar with the earlier generation of tubes. In the first few decades of color TV the tubes were so-called delta gun because their three electron guns were arranged in a triangular form. [Colorvac] has put up
a video in which they demonstrate the reconditioning of one of these tubes from a late-1960s Nordmende TV.
The tube in question isn’t one of the earlier “roundies” you would find on an American color TV from the ’50s or early ’60s, instead it’s one of the first generation of rectangular (ish) screens. It’s got an under-performing blue gun, so they’re replacing the electron gun assembly. Cutting the neck of the tube, bonding a new neck extension, and sealing in a new gun assembly is not for the faint-hearted, and it’s clear they have both the specialist machinery and the experience required for the job. Finally we see the reconditioned tube put back into the chassis, and are treated to a demonstration of converging the three beams.
For those of us
who cut our teeth on these devices
, it’s fascinating. | 28 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8132667",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T16:04:52",
"content": "I’ve seen this done, on the old delta gun arrangement and the newer PIL 90 and 110 degree tubes, it’s a useful new lease of life but the tubes never lasted as long as a new one did, the focus went first whic... | 1,760,371,532.759192 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/27/hands-on-eufymake-e1-uv-printer/ | Hands-On: EufyMake E1 UV Printer | Tom Nardi | [
"Featured",
"Reviews",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"color pcb",
"eufyMake",
"UV printer"
] | The modern hacker and maker has a truly incredible arsenal of tools at their disposal. High-tech tools like 3D printers, laser cutters, and CNC routers have all become commonplace, and combined with old standbys like the drill press and mini lathe, it sometimes seems like we’ve finally peaked in terms of what the individual is realistically capable of producing in their own home. But occasionally a new tool comes along, and it makes us realize that there are still avenues unexplored for the home gamer.
After spending the last few weeks playing with it, I can confidently say the eufyMake E1 UV printer is one of those tools. The elevator pitch is simple: with a UV printer, you can print anything on anything. As you can imagine, the reality is somewhat more complex, but the fact that you can toss a three dimensional object in the chamber and spray it with a high-resolution color image with a few button presses holds incredible creative potential. Enough that the
Kickstarter for the $1,700 printer
has already raised a mind-boggling $27 million at the time of this writing, with more than a month yet to go before crossing the finish line.
If you’re on the fence about backing the campaign, or just have doubts about whether or not the machine can do what eufyMake claims, I’ll put those concerns to rest right now — it’s the real deal. Even after using the machine for as long as I have, each time a print job ends, I find myself momentary taken aback by just how
good
the end result is. The technology inside this machine that not only makes these results possible, but makes them so easily obtainable, is truly revolutionary.
That being said, it’s not a perfect machine by any stretch of the imagination. While I never ran into an outright failure while using the eufyMake E1, there’s a fairly long list of issues which I’d like to see addressed. Some of them are simple tweaks which may well get sorted out before the product starts shipping this summer, while others are fundamental to the way the machine operates and could represent an opportunity for competitors.
Theory of Operation
Before we go any further, I think it’s important to explain how the eufyMake E1 works. Not only because UV printers aren’t the kind of thing that most of us have had first-hand experience with, but because I want readers to understand how much the product gets right.
In the most basic case, you’ll open up the door of the E1, and stick an object on the bed. (There’s a larger bed that you can swap in for over-sized objects, but you have to run the printer with the doors open.) That’s a literal “stick”, by the way, as the bed is designed to be tacky to provide a bit of hold on smaller objects which might otherwise jump around as the machine moves. The E1 will then go through an automated process that includes flashing lights and sweeping red laser beams. This provides the machine with a 3D scan of the object on the bed, which is necessary for positioning the print head later on.
At this point, the software (available for Windows, Mac, and mobile devices) will present the user with a “bird’s eye view” of the bed and any objects on it. From here you can either use the basic art tools in the software, or more likely, import some artwork created in a more comprehensive piece of software. In either event, the process is the same, in that you virtually apply your artwork directly on the overhead image. Once you’re happy with how it looks, you hit “Print”, pick a few options relating to the target’s surface material and the print quality, and off it goes.
Printing is admittedly slower than I had expected. Depending on the image complexity, even a palm-sized job could take 20 or 30 minutes. While I never pushed it so far personally, I’ve heard from other testers that larger projects can take hours to complete. In that way, it’s a lot like a 3D printer — you aren’t the one that has to do all that work, so who cares if the process takes an hour or two, just let it run and come back to it later. In my experience, the results have always been more than worth the wait.
Practical Examples
I’ve said as much previously, but we don’t take reviews and hands-on articles like this lightly here at Hackaday. Companies offer to send us hardware on an almost daily basis, but we turn down the vast majority of them as we just don’t think they’re a great fit for our audience. Is the average Hackaday reader really going to be interested in a review of yet
another
3D printer or laser engraver? Probably not.
So before we agreed to take a look at the eufyMake E1, Elliot and I talked a bit about how such a machine would be used in our community specifically. We came up with a few things we thought hardware hackers would want to do with this kind of capability, and I made sure to focus on those applications over the more “crafty” demonstrations that you may have seen elsewhere.
Full-Color PCB Art
While we’re starting to see board fabs support color silkscreens, it’s not a capability that’s necessarily ready for prime time. Beyond the mixed results we’ve heard from those in the community in terms of the quality of the resulting boards, there’s some unfortunate software/vendor lock-in that we’d just as soon avoid. So what if you could skip all that and simply put your professionally made PCBs in the E1 and have it apply your artwork to them?
In this fairly simple example I’ve taken one of the spare boards from my
Soma FM badge
and applied a few high resolution images onto it. I never really had any doubt that the eufyMake E1 could do PCB art, but still, it was extremely satisfying to see it in person.
Control Panels
High quality control panels have always been tricky to produce at home. Sure there’s ways to pull it off, such as the recent trick we covered that used specially treated inkjet printouts, but they tend to be time consuming and the results are highly dependent on the material you’re working working. With the UV printer, front panels are a breeze and you’ll get consistent results whether you’re working with plastic or metal.
For this example I came up with a flight-sim style panel inspired by various fighter jets. The workflow was actually quite nice: I designed the panel itself in OpenSCAD, and then exported it as both a 3D STL and 2D DXF file. The 3D file got printed out, and the 2D file was imported into Inkscape. With a 1:1 outline of the panel in Inkscape, I could position the text and images knowing they would line up perfectly with the real-world object. I exported my Inkscape design as an SVG, loaded it into the E1’s software, and applied it to the printed panel.
Truly Custom Keycaps
We’ve seen incredible interest in bespoke keyboards over the last few years, and customized keycaps are a big part of that. But even the most decked out keyboards are generally still using off-the-shelf keycaps. But why settle for that when you can buy blank caps and apply whatever text or artwork you wish on them?
These are such a perfect application for the E1 that I imagine it’s going to ignite something of a custom keycap revolution once the printer gets into consumer’s hands. Whether you want each key to be the face of a different anime character, or want all the legends to be in Comic Sans, you have complete control. They also serve as a great example of the fine detail work that’s possible on the machine.
The Perfect PCB Machine?
I know what you’re thinking: “Stop teasing me, can the damn thing make PCBs or not!” The short answer is yes…but the long answer is worth a bit more examination.
The UV print seems to work very well as an etch resist, as it was completely unfazed by its encounter with ferric chloride. In fact, the first challenge was figuring out how to get the stuff
off
after etching. Alcohol, turpentine, and paint thinner did nothing to it. Eventually I found that soaking the board in acetone will break down the bond between the printed layer and the copper — you still need to peel it off, but once you get under an edge with a razor blade it parts without too much trouble.
Early results look promising. The lines aren’t as clean as I’d like, so it will probably have problems with tight pitch parts, but the traces were intact down to 0.2 mm, and the pads for the SOIC8 footprint I picked as a test were properly isolated from each other. At this point, it’s a working PCB that’s at least as good as something made with the old school toner transfer method. But the E1 promises so much more.
Putting the board back in the machine, I was able to spray it with additional layers that act as both a soldermask
and
silkscreen. While I want to experiment a bit more and refine the techniques involved, even this first attempt produced a remarkably professional looking board with very little manual effort on the user’s part.
That said, while this proof of concept shows it’s clearly possible to produce impressive boards on the machine, the process is made frustrating by various limitations of the hardware and software.
One-Off Versus Production
Let’s be clear, as a product, the eufyMake E1 is designed to let crafty folks put pictures of their kids on slate coasters and emblazon mugs with the logo of their favorite sports team. The software and hardware is clearly designed to make it as easy as possible to toss an object into the printer, get your image virtually aligned on it, and then spray it on. At this, the product excels, and I have no doubt it will be a commercial success.
But while hardware hackers are certainly not immune to the charms of putting memes and logos on their possessions, we also have slightly higher demands. If we’re talking about using it for producing PCBs, or even just adding art to existing boards, we’re looking for high positional accuracy and repeatability.
To that end, I have to report that the E1 is not particularly well suited to such technical tasks. It can be pushed into service, but there’s several aspects of the product that would really need to be addressed before this could be a workhorse for the hackerspace.
Lack of Physical Indexing
As it stands, the bed on the eufyMake E1 is a completely flat surface, with no provisions for work holding or indexing. You’re expected to visually align your print each time — workable for one or two copies of an object, but excruciating beyond that.
Now you might be thinking that this is an easy enough problem to remedy…but you’re probably forgetting that 3D bed scan. Any fixture you come up with to hold your object in position runs the risk of screwing up the scan and causing the print to abort. Even trying to tape a PCB down with blue painter’s tape would occasionally trigger an error during the scan as the machine couldn’t find a clearly defined edge.
As you’ll see below, I’ve had some success with very thin 3D printed fixtures that avoid the ire of the scanner. Long term, I’d like to see an alternate bed that resembled a CNC fixture plate, so that multiple parts can be held in position with low-profile pegs.
The Parallax View
At the suggestion of
Thomas Flummer
, I printed out a few thin (1.2 mm) jigs that could be taped down to the bed and help position multiple objects for batch processing. This is much better than having to eyeball things each time, but it uncovered a new issue.
For objects in the center of the bed, the optical alignment system works pretty well. It should get you within a millimeter or so on the first attempt, but it’s way off on the edges of the bed. Take a look at the following example: the in the software, both blue rectangles were perfectly aligned within the footprint of the 1206 LED:
As you can see the alignment on the board in the center is pretty locked in, but on the other board, it’s halfway out of the footprint. This might be close enough if you’re making grandma some Christmas ornaments, but it won’t cut it for SMD work.
The good news is that you can go back into the software and move objects at the sub-millimeter level by typing in the desired coordinates. This will cause the visual representation to become misaligned, but so long as you know where the target is in the real-world, it doesn’t matter. So if you can afford a bit of trial-and-error, it’s possible to get the alignment dialed in even across multiple objects on the bed.
The Shape of Things to Come?
As I said at the start, the eufyMake E1 is not a perfect machine. Beyond the major issues I’ve outlined here, there’s all sorts of weird quirks and limitations I’ve run into during my time with it. For example, why don’t the lights inside the enclosure turn on when the door is open? Why doesn’t the printer itself have a small screen to display status information? We won’t even get into the fact that all your interactions with the printer have to go through the cloud — there isn’t even so much as a USB port on the printer to allow local control.
But at the end of the day, I’m still extremely excited about this machine. The fact is, there’s really nothing else quite like it on the market, at least, not at this price anyway. It reminds me a bit of the MakerBot Cupcake 3D printer, or even the K40 laser. It represents such a huge leap forward in capability for the individual that it’s easy to excuse the rough edges.
Like those machines, I believe the eufyMake E1 will set many of the standards for the products that come after it. You may never own this
particular
UV printer, but I’m willing to bet that after a few hardware generations, when the cost of the technology is driven even lower thanks to increased competition, the printer that you do buy will be able to trace its lineage back to this moment. | 50 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "8132635",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T14:54:32",
"content": "“We won’t even get into the fact that all your interactions with the printer have to go through the cloud — there isn’t even so much as a USB port on the printer to allow local control.” – that’s pret... | 1,760,371,533.091795 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/27/a-forth-os-in-46-bytes/ | A Forth OS In 46 Bytes | Aaron Beckendorf | [
"computer hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"compilers",
"forth",
"minimalism",
"operating system"
] | It’s not often that we can include an operating system in a Hackaday article, but here’s the full 46-byte source of [Philippe Brochard]’s
10biForthOS
in 8086 opcodes:
50b8 8e00 31d8 e8ff 0017 003c 0575 00ea
5000 3c00 7401 eb02 e8ee 0005 0588 eb47
b8e6 0200 d231 14cd e480 7580 c3f4
Admittedly, this is quite a minimal operating system. It’s written for the Intel 8086, and consists of a Forth implementation with only two instructions: compile (1) and execute (0). It can receive commands over a serial connection or from a keyboard. This allows a host computer to load more complex software onto it, one byte at a time. In particular, [Philippe] provides instructions for loading more advanced compilers, such as subleq-eForth for a more complete Forth implementation, or SectorC for C programming. He’s also written a
217-byte port
of the OS to Linux Intel x64.
[Philippe] doesn’t take a strong stance on whether this should technically qualify as a Forth implementation, given that the base implementation lacks stacks, dictionaries, and the ability to define words. However, it does have an outer and inner interpreter, the ability to compile and execute code, and most importantly, “the simplicity and hacky feeling of Forth.”
[Philippe] writes that this masterpiece of minimalism continues the tradition of the
minimal Forth implementations
we’ve
covered before
. We’ve even seen Forth
run on an Arduino
. | 27 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8132608",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T11:38:32",
"content": "Hi, I think this is more of a basic monitor program at this stage.Next would be adding a debugger, maybe. It’s a start, though! 🙂",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,532.960119 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/27/automated-blinds-opener-on-the-cheap/ | Automated Blinds Opener On The Cheap | Matt Varian | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"automated blinds",
"magnetic encoder",
"repurpose",
"reuse"
] | We love seeing hacks that involve salvaging parts from what you have on hand to make a new project work, and this project is a great example of that. [Simon], in a quick weekend build, created an
automated blinds opener
using parts he had available.
The project began with the desire to have his blinds open slowly and silently, gradually letting in more light. To accomplish this, a few key components were needed, including a motor with a gearbox to provide the torque required to actuate the blinds and a magnetic encoder to track their progress. To isolate vibrations and keep the system silent, the motor is mounted using a silicone motor mount that he salvaged from a broken water flosser.
The printed holder for the magnetic encoder is a nice touch.
To mount the motor to the wall near the window, he used some 3D printed parts. A clever combination of surgical silicone tubing and silicone tape attaches the motor to the window blind shaft while limiting vibration transfer, keeping things quiet. [Simon] advises against using magnetic encoders as he did, noting that while he had them on hand and made them work, the magnetic shaft’s misalignment with the encoders makes it a less-than-ideal approach. Nevertheless, he got it working.
Automating blinds is a fairly common project around these parts, made all the more accessible with
clever 3D printed mechanisms
. We’ve even seen variations that can be used in rentals, dorms, and other places were
permanent modifications need to be avoided
. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8132586",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T08:53:42",
"content": "Mechanical integration is the hardest part. Electronics is easy, you could even use an RC car internals!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132629"... | 1,760,371,533.310149 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/26/vintage-intel-8080-runs-on-a-modern-fpga/ | Vintage Intel 8080 Runs On A Modern FPGA | Heidi Ulrich | [
"classic hacks",
"FPGA",
"Microcontrollers",
"PCB Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"8080A-1",
"CM32",
"fpga",
"Intel 8080",
"openocd",
"pcb",
"uart"
] | If you’re into retro CPUs and don’t shy away from wiring old-school voltages,
[Mark]’s latest Intel 8080 build
will surely spark your enthusiasm. [Mark] has built a full system board for the venerable 8080A-1, pushing it to run at a slick 3.125 MHz. Remarkable is that he’s done so using a modern Microchip FPGA, without vendor lock-in or proprietary flashing tools. Every step is open source.
Getting this vintage setup to work required more than logical tinkering. Mark’s board supplies the ±5 V and +12 V rails
the 8080
demands, plus clock and memory interfacing via the M2GL005-TQG144I FPGA. The design is lean: two-layer PCB, basic level-shifters, and a CM32 micro as USB-to-UART fallback. Not everything went smoothly: incorrect footprints, misrouted gate drivers, thermal runaway in the clock section; but he managed to tackle it.
What sets this project apart is the resurrection of a nearly 50-year-old CPU. It’s also, how thoroughly thought-out the modern bridge is—from bitstream loading via
OpenOCD
to clever debugging of crystal oscillator drift using a scope. [Mark]’s love of the architecture and attention to low-level detail makes this more than a show-off build. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8133022",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T17:29:59",
"content": "When I first read the summary, I thought the 8080 itself was implemented within the FPGA.I didn’t realize that the FPGA was just a support system for an actual 8080.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": ... | 1,760,371,533.261924 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/26/a-risc-v-operating-system-instruction-manual/ | A RISC-V Operating System Instruction Manual | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"cornell",
"course",
"educational",
"operating system",
"os",
"RISC-V"
] | To some, an operating system is a burden or waste of resources, like those working on embedded systems and other low-power applications. To others it’s necessary, abstracting away hardware so that higher-level programming can be done. For most people it’s perhaps not thought of at all. But for a few, the operating system is the most interesting piece of software running on a computer and if you’d like to investigate what makes this often overlooked aspect of computer science interesting,
take a look at this course on operating systems from Cornell University
.
The operating system itself is called Earth and Grass Operating System because it splits the functionality of the operating system into three separate parts. The Earth layer involves dealing with hardware, the Grass layer involves hardware-independent aspects, and a third application layer implements other key operating system features. It’s built for a RISC-V processor, since that instruction set is completely open source and transparent about what it’s doing. It’s also incredibly small, coming in at around 2000 lines of code. The course covers nine areas, with the first six being core operating system functions and the remaining three covering more advanced operating system concepts.
For understanding the intricacies and sometimes mysterious ways that operating systems work, a course like this can go a long way into unraveling those mysteries and developing a deeper understanding of how it brings the hardware to work for higher-level software.
We actually featured this operating system two years ago
, before this course was created, which covers this project for those who like to take a more self-directed approach, or simply want a lightweight OS for a RISC-V system. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8132699",
"author": "Jii",
"timestamp": "2025-05-27T18:24:32",
"content": "That is interesting. This sounds like something i might read through, not quite yet though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,371,533.127422 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/28/washington-consumers-gain-right-to-repair-for-cellphones-and-more/ | Washington Consumers Gain Right To Repair For Cellphones And More | Maya Posch | [
"News",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"right to repair"
] | Starting January 1st, 2026, Washington state’s new
Right to Repair law will come into effect.
It requires manufacturers to make tools, parts and documentation available for diagnostics and repair of ‘digital electronics’, including cellphones, computers and similar appliances. The relevant
House Bill 1483
was signed into law last week after years of fighting to make it a reality.
A similar bill in Oregon
faced strong resistance
from companies like Apple, despite backing another Right to Repair bill in California. In the case of the Washington bill, there were positive noises from the side of Google and Microsoft, proclaiming themselves and their products to be in full compliance with such consumer laws.
Of course, the devil is always in the details, with Apple in particular being a good example how to
technically
comply with the letter of the law, while throwing up many (financial) roadblocks for anyone interested in obtaining said tools and components. Apple’s penchant part pairing is also a significant problem when it comes to repairing devices, even if these days it’s
somewhat less annoying
than it used to be — assuming you’re running iOS 18 or better.
That said, we always applaud these shifts in the right direction, where devices can actually be maintained and repaired without too much fuss, rather than e.g. cellphones being just disposable items that get tossed out after two years or less.
Thanks to [Robert Piston] for the tip. | 30 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8132892",
"author": "Rick",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T11:43:46",
"content": "I think there should be a Right Not to Update Bill. I paid for my computer and its’ operating system. I will decide if and when it will be updated. The bill would have to describe exactly what each update... | 1,760,371,533.376799 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/28/stamp-modular-breakout-boards-for-smd-prototyping/ | Stamp: Modular Breakout Boards For SMD Prototyping | John Elliot V | [
"hardware",
"PCB Hacks"
] | [
"breadboard",
"kickstarter",
"Sciotronics",
"Stamp breakout boards"
] | [Kalesh Sasidharan] from Sciotronics wrote in to tell us about their project, Stamp: a
modular set of template breakout boards
designed to make prototyping with SMD components faster, easier, and more affordable. No breadboards, custom PCBs, or tangled jumper wires required. The project has blasted past its Kickstarter goal, and is on track to start shipping in September.
Stamp was created out of frustration with the traditional SMD prototyping workflow. Breadboards don’t support SMD parts directly, and using adapters quickly gets messy, especially when you need to iterate or modify a design. Ordering PCBs for every small revision just adds delay, and cost.
Stamp solves this by offering reusable template boards with commonly used SMD footprints. You place the main component on the front and the supporting components on the back. Many complete circuits, such as buck converters, sensor blocks, microcontrollers, and so on, can fit on a single 17.8 × 17.8 mm board.
Most Stamps feature custom castellated holes, designed for side-by-side or right-angle edge connections, enabling a modular, reconfigurable approach to circuit building. The plan is to make the designs fully open source, so that others can build or adapt them. Although many PCB manufacturers might not have the facilities to make the special castellated edges which are available on some Stamps.
Dave Jones from the EEVblog
covered the Stamp
on one of his recent Mailbag videos, which you can check out below. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen somebody
promise to reinvent the breadboard
, but we do appreciate the simplicity of this approach. | 36 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8132845",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T08:08:59",
"content": "Alternative:https://github.com/NNNILabs/Manhattan-Adapters-Prototyping-IdeasPerhaps not as neat, but cheap.I usually put the breakouts on an unetched PCB blank, which provides a ground plane. The through-plat... | 1,760,371,533.456857 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/27/a-100-year-old-electronic-musical-instrument-brought-back-to-life/ | A 100-Year-Old Electronic Musical Instrument Brought Back To Life | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"disc",
"electricity",
"historical",
"laser",
"luminaphone",
"musical instrument",
"photodiode",
"photoresistor",
"recreation"
] | In the early years of electrification, when electricity was beginning to shape the modern world, this new technology was being put to use in many more places than turning motors and providing lighting. Some things we can see as obvious missteps like electrified corsets marketed as health tonics or x-ray treatments for eye strain, but others ended up being fascinating bits of technology with interesting uses, many of which have been largely forgotten since.
This 100-year-old musical instrument is squarely in the latter category, and this build brings the sound of it back to life
.
The instrument was called the Luminaphone and was originally built by [Harry Grindell Matthews]. Of course, this was an age before transistors and many other things we take for grated, so it has some quirks that we might not otherwise expect from a musical instrument. The device generated sound by shining a series of lights through a perforated rotating disc at a selenium cell. The selenium cell was an early photoresistor, generating current corresponding to the amount of light falling on it. A keyboard activated different lights, shining on areas of the disc with different numbers of holes, causing differing sounds to be produced by the instrument.
The recreation was built by [Nick Bild] and uses a laser diode as a stand-in for the rotating disc, but since it can be modulated in a similar way the idea is that the photodiode used as a receiver would generate a similar sound. The recreation sounds a bit like a video game from the 8-bit era, but with no recordings or original Luminaphones surviving to the present day we may never know how accurate it is. There are some other electronic instruments still around today, though, and plenty of ways of DIY-ing their sound
like this project which recreates the tonewheels of the classic Hammond organ
. | 35 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "8132819",
"author": "macsimki",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T05:26:16",
"content": "and don’t forget the Optigan, the organ using an exchangable optical disk to generate sound. that is a direct descendant of this device.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,533.531065 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/27/new-supermaterial-as-strong-as-steel-and-as-light-as-styrofoam/ | New Supermaterial: As Strong As Steel And As Light As Styrofoam | John Elliot V | [
"Science"
] | [
"steel",
"styrofoam",
"supermaterial"
] | Today in material science news we have a report from [German Science Guy] about a new supermaterial which is
as strong as steel and as light as Styrofoam
!
A supermaterial is a type of material that possesses remarkable physical properties, often surpassing traditional materials in strength, conductivity, or other characteristics.
Graphene
, for example, is considered a supermaterial because it is extremely strong, lightweight, and has excellent electrical conductivity.
This new supermaterial is a carbon nanolattice which has been developed by researchers from Canada and South Korea, and it has remarkably high strength and remarkably low weight. Indeed this new material achieved the compressive strength of carbon steels (180-360 MPa) with the density of Styrofoam (125-215 kg m
-3
).
One very important implication of the existence of such material is that it might lead to a reduction in transport costs if the material can be used to build vehicles such as airplanes and automobiles. For airplanes we could save up to 10 gallons per pound (80 liters per kilogram) per year, where an airplane like the Airbus A380-800 weighs in at more than one million pounds.
To engineer the new material the researchers employed two methods: the Finite Element Method (FEM) and
Bayesian optimization
. Technically these optimized lattices are manufactured using two-photon polymerization (2PP) nanoscale additive manufacturing with pyrolysis to produce carbon nanolattices with an average strut diameter of 300 and 600 nm.
If you have an interest in material science, you might also like to read about
categorizing steel
or
the science of coating steel
.
Thanks to [Stephen Walters] for letting us know about this one on the
tips line
. | 64 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "8132802",
"author": "Kris",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T02:25:40",
"content": "I’m wondering how risky it could be that the material becomes semi-saturated with water/oil/debris if the skin fails leading to degradation of the performance or even a sudden structural failure.. it might b... | 1,760,371,533.627967 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/27/look-to-the-sky-with-this-simple-plane-tracker/ | Look To The Sky With This Simple Plane Tracker | Ian Bos | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"rasberry pi",
"teardown"
] | Do you ever get tired of stressing your neck looking for planes in the sky? Worry not! Here is a neat and cheap Arduino/Ras Pi project to keep your neck sore free! [BANK ANGLE] presents a wonderfully simple
plane tracking system
using an affordable camera and basic microcontrollers.
The bulk of the system relies on a cheap rotating security camera that gets dissected to reveal its internals. Here stepper control wires can be found and connected to the control boards required to allow an Arduino nano to tell the motors when and where to spin. Of course, the camera system doesn’t just look everywhere until it finds a plane, a Raspberry Pi takes in data from local ADS-B data to know where a nearby plane is.
After that, all that’s left is a nifty overlay to make the professional look. Combining all these creates a surprisingly capable system that gives information on the aircraft’s azimuth, elevation, and distance.
If you want to try your hand at making your own version of [BLANK ANGLE]’s tracker, check out his
GitHub page
. Of course, tracking planes gets boring after a while so why not try tracking something higher with
this open-source star tracker
?
Thank you Israel Brunini for the tip. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8132774",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-05-28T00:03:04",
"content": "Why add an Arduino? Could run the stepper drivers from GPIO.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8132779",
"author": "Bank Angle",
"time... | 1,760,371,533.677171 |
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