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https://hackaday.com/2025/04/24/3d-printing-a-useful-fixturing-tool/ | 3D Printing A Useful Fixturing Tool | Lewin Day | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"3d printing",
"fixture",
"fixturing tool"
] | When you start building lots of something, you’ll know the value of accurate fixturing. [Chris Borge] learned this the hard way on a recent mass-production project, and decided to solve the problem. How? With a custom fixturing tool!
A 3D printed one, of course.
Chris’s build is simple enough. He created 3D-printed workplates covered in a grid of specially-shaped apertures, each of which can hold a single bolt. Plastic fixtures can then be slotted into the grid, and fastened in place with nuts that thread onto the bolts inserted in the base. [Chris] can 3D print all kinds of different plastic fixtures to mount on to the grid, so it’s an incredibly flexible system.
3D printing fixtures might not sound the stoutest way to go, but it’s perfectly cromulent for some tasks. Indeed, for [Chris]’s use case of laser cutting, the 3D printed fixtures are more than strong enough, since the forces involved are minimal. Furthermore, [Chris] aided the stability of the 3D-printed workplate by mounting it on a laser-cut wooden frame filled with concrete. How’s that for completeness?
We’ve seen some other great fixturing tools before, too
. Video after the break. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121761",
"author": "lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-04-24T23:14:28",
"content": "Never thought about this, really cool. Great use of plastic, wood, metal, and I guess concrete. The inverted bolt design is really clever.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,567.273378 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/24/onkyo-receiver-saved-with-an-esp32/ | Onkyo Receiver Saved With An ESP32 | Lewin Day | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"audio receiver",
"ESP32",
"onkyo",
"radio"
] | [Bill Dudley] had a problem. He had an Onkyo AV receiver that did a great job… until it didn’t. A DSP inside failed. When that happened, the main microprocessor running the show decided it wouldn’t play ball without the DSP operational. [Bill] knew the bulk of the audio hardware was still good, it was just the brains that were faulty.
Thus started a 4-month operation to resurrect the Onkyo receiver with new intelligence instead.
[Bill’s] concept was simple. Yank the dead DSP, and the useless microprocessor as well. In their place, an ESP32 would be tasked with running things. [Bill] no longer cared if the receiver had DSP abilities or even the ability to pass video—he just wanted to use it as the quality audio receiver that it was.
His project report steps through all the hard work he went through to get things operational again. He had to teach the ESP32 to talk to the front panel display, the keys, and the radio tuner. More challenging was the core audio processor—the obscure Renaisys R2A15218FP. However, by persevering, [Bill] was able to get everything up and running, and even added some new functionality—including Internet radio and Bluetooth streaming.
It’s a heck of a build, and [Bill] ended up with an even more functional audio receiver at the end of it all. Bravo, we say. We love to see older audio gear brought back to life,
particularly in creative ways
. Meanwhile, if you’ve found your own way to save a piece of vintage audio hardware, don’t hesitate to
let us know! | 23 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121739",
"author": "AggregatVier",
"timestamp": "2025-04-24T21:39:35",
"content": "Speaking of vintage, has anyone come up with a replacement for Kenwood 100W amplifier TA100 modules they can confirm working?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,567.072077 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/24/dolphingemma-seeks-to-speak-to-dolphins/ | DolphinGemma Seeks To Speak To Dolphins | Navarre Bartz | [
"Artificial Intelligence"
] | [
"ai",
"Cetacean",
"dolphin",
"languages",
"LLM",
"marine biology",
"oceanography",
"Wild Dolphin Project"
] | Most people have wished for the ability to talk to other animals at some point, until they realized their cat would mostly insult them and ask for better service, but researchers are getting closer to a
dolphin translator
.
DolphinGemma is an upcoming LLM based on the recordings from the
Wild Dolphin Project
. Using the hours and hours of dolphin sounds recorded by researchers over the decades, the hope is that the LLM will allow us to communicate more effectively with the second most intelligent species on the planet.
The LLM is designed to run in the field on Google Pixel phones, due to it being based on Google’s in-house Gemini product, which is a bit less cumbersome than hauling a mainframe on a dive. The Wild Dolphin Project currently uses the Georgia Tech developed CHAT (Cetacean Hearing Augmentation Telemetry) device which has a Pixel 6 at its heart, but the newer system will be bumped up to a Pixel 9 to take advantage of all those shiny new AI processing advances. Hopefully, we’ll have a better chance of catching when they say, “So long and thanks for all the fish.”
If you’re curious about
other mysterious languages being deciphered by LLMs
, we have you covered. | 42 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121688",
"author": "Stric",
"timestamp": "2025-04-24T18:41:18",
"content": "Man…I wish they started with dogs first :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8121787",
"author": "Reactive Light",
"timestamp": "2025-0... | 1,760,371,567.412954 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/24/a-bicycle-is-abandonware-now-clever-hack-rescues-dead-light/ | A Bicycle Is Abandonware Now? Clever Hack Rescues Dead Light | Jenny List | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bicycle",
"bike light",
"repair"
] | A bicycle is perhaps one of the most repairable pieces of equipment one can own — no matter what’s wrong with it, and wherever you are on the planet, you’ll be able to find somebody to fix your bike without too much trouble. Unfortunately as electric bikes become more popular, predatory manufacturers are doing everything they can to turn a bike into a closed machine, only serviceable by them.
That’s bad enough, but it’s
even worse if the company happens to go under
. As an example, [Fransisco] has a bike built by a company that has since gone bankrupt. He doesn’t name them, but it looks like a VanMoof to us. The bike features a light built into the front of the top tube of the frame, which if you can believe it, can only be operated by the company’s (now nonfunctional) cloud-based app.
The hack is relatively straightforward. The panel for the VanMoof electronics is removed and the works underneath are slid up the tube, leaving the connector to the front light. An off the shelf USB-C Li-Po charger and a small cell take the place of the original parts under a new 3D printed panel with a switch to run the light via a suitable resistor. If it wasn’t for the startling green color of the filament he used, you might not even know it wasn’t original.
We would advise anyone who will listen, that hardware which relies on an app and a cloud service should be avoided at all costs. We know most Hackaday readers will be on the same page as us on this one, but perhaps it’s time for a cycling manifesto to match
our automotive one
.
Thanks [cheetah_henry] for the tip. | 75 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121638",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2025-04-24T15:38:43",
"content": "The real solution is to explain to manufacturers that we don’t want cloud anything. Even if we would like some cloud functionality it should be optional. If something arrives and requires a cloud, send it... | 1,760,371,567.537998 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/24/from-postscript-to-pdf/ | From PostScript To PDF | Al Williams | [
"computer hacks",
"Featured",
"History"
] | [
"adobe",
"pdf",
"postscript"
] | There was a time when each and every printer and typesetter had its own quirky language. If you had a wordprocessor from a particular company, it worked with the printers from that company, and that was it. That was the situation in the 1970s when some engineers at Xerox Parc — a great place for innovation but a spotty track record for commercialization — realized there should be a better answer.
That answer would be Interpress, a language for controlling Xerox laser printers. Keep in mind that in 1980, a laser printer could run anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000 and was a serious investment. John Warnock and his boss, Chuck Geschke, tried for two years to commercialize Interpress. They failed.
So the two formed a company: Adobe. You’ve heard of them? They started out with the idea of making laser printers, but eventually realized it would be a better idea to sell technology into other people’s laser printers and that’s where we get
PostScript
.
Early PostScript and the Birth of Desktop Publishing
PostScript is very much like
Forth
, with words made specifically for page layout and laser printing. There were several key selling points that made the system successful.
First, you could easily obtain the specifications if you wanted to write a printer driver. Apple decided to use it on their LaserWriter. Of course, that meant the printer had a more powerful computer in it than most of the Macs it connected to, but for $7,000 maybe that’s expected.
Second, any printer maker could license PostScript for use in their device. Why spend a lot of money making your own when you could just buy PostScript off the shelf?
Finally, PostScript allowed device independence. If you took a PostScript file and sent it to a 300 DPI laser printer, you got nice output. If you sent it to a 2400 DPI typesetter, you got even nicer output. This was a big draw since a rasterized image was either going to look bad on high-resolution devices or have a huge file system in an era where huge files were painful to deal with. Even a page at 300 DPI is fairly large.
If you bought a Mac and a LaserWriter you only needed one other thing: software. But since the PostScript spec was freely available, software was possible. A company named Aldus came out with PageMaker and invented the category of desktop publishing. Adding fuel to the fire, giant Linotype came out with a typesetting machine that accepted PostScript, so you could go from a computer screen to proofs to a finished print job with one file.
If you weren’t alive — or too young to pay attention — during this time, you may not realize what a big deal this was. Prior to the desktop publishing revolution, computer output was terrible. You might mock something up in a text file and print it on a daisy wheel printer, but eventually, someone had to make something that was “camera-ready” to make real printing plates. The kind of things you can do in a minute in any word processor today took a ton of skilled labor back in those days.
Take Two
Of course, you have to innovate. Adobe did try to prompt Display PostScript in the late 1980s as a way to drive screens. The NeXT used this system. It was smart, but a bit slow for the hardware of the day. Also, Adobe wanted licensing fees, which had worked well for printers, but there were cheaper alternatives available for displays by the time Display PostScript arrived.
In 1991, Adobe released PostScript Level 2 — making the old PostScript into “Level 1” retroactively. It had all the improvements you would expect in a second version. It was faster and crashed less. It had better support for things like color separation and handling compressed images. It also worked better with oddball and custom fonts, and the printer could cache fonts and graphics.
Remember how releasing the spec helped the original PostScript? For Level 2, releasing it early caused a problem. Competitors started releasing features for Level 2 before Adobe. Oops.
They finally released PostScript 3. (And dropped the “Level”.) This allowed for 12-bit colors instead of 8-bit. It also supported PDF files.
PDF?
While PostScript is a language for controlling a printer, PDF is set up as a page description language. It focuses on what the page looks like and not how to create the page. Of course, this is somewhat semantics. You can think of a PostScript file as a program that drives a Raster Image Processor (RIP) to draw a page. You can think of a PDF as somewhat akin to a compiled version of that program that describes what the program would do.
Up to PDF 1.4, released in 2001, everything you could do in a PDF file could be done in PostScript. But with PDF 1.4 there were some new things that PostScript didn’t have. In particular, PDFs support layers and transparency. Today, PDF rules the roost and PostScript is largely static and fading.
What’s Inside?
Like we said, a PostScript file is a lot like a Forth program. There’s a comment at the front (%!PS-Adobe-3.0) that tells you it is a PostScript file and the level. Then there’s a prolog that defines functions and fonts. The body section uses words like moveto, lineto, and so on to build up a path that can be stroked, filled, or clipped. You can also do loops and conditionals — PostScript is Turing-complete. A trailer appears at the end of each page and usually has a command to render the page (showpage), which may start a new page.
A simple PostScript file running in GhostScript
A PDF file has a similar structure with a %PDF-1.7 comment. The body contains objects that can refer to pages, dictionaries, references, and image or font streams. There is also a cross-reference table to help find the objects and a trailer that points to the root object. That object brings in other objects to form the entire document. There’s no real code execution in a basic PDF file.
If you want to play with PostScript, there’s a good chance your printer might support it. If not, your printer drivers might. However, you can also grab a copy of
GhostScript
and write PostScript programs all day. Use GSView to render them on the screen or print them to any printer you can connect to. You can even create PDF files using the tools.
For example, try this:
%!PS
% Draw square
100 100 moveto
100 0 rlineto
0 100 rlineto
-100 0 rlineto
closepath
stroke
% Draw circle
150 150 50 0 360 arc
stroke
% Draw text "Hackaday" centered in the circle
/Times-Roman findfont 12 scalefont setfont % Choose font and size
(Hackaday) dup stringwidth pop 2 div % Calculate half text width
150 exch sub % X = center - half width
150 % Y = vertical center
moveto
(Hackaday) show
showpage
If you want to hack on the code or write your own, here’s
the documentation
. Think it isn’t really a programming language? [Nicolas]
would disagree
. | 35 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121616",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-04-24T14:34:50",
"content": "“Finally, PostScript allowed device independence.”So did HPGL, the ancient plotter language.It was the predecessor to PDF in several ways, I think.Back in the 80s, you converted your document by printing i... | 1,760,371,567.669547 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/24/haptic-soft-buttons-speaker-to-your-sense-of-touch/ | Haptic Soft Buttons Speak(er) To Your Sense Of Touch | Tyler August | [
"hardware",
"News"
] | [
"haptic feedback",
"haptic interface",
"touching virtual reality"
] | There’s just something about a satisfying “click” that our world of touchscreens misses out on; the only thing that might be better than a good solid “click” when you hit a button is if device could “click” back in confirmation. [Craig Shultz] and his crew of fine researchers at the Interactive Display Lab at the University of Illinois seem to agree, because they have come up with an ingenious hack to
provide haptic feedback using readily-available parts
.
An array of shapes showing some of the different possibilities for hapticoil soft buttons.
The “hapticoil”, as they call it, has a simple microspeaker at its heart. We didn’t expect a tiny tweeter to have the
oomph
to produce haptic feedback, and on its own it doesn’t, as finger pressure stops the vibrations easily. The secret behind the hapticoil is to couple the speaker hydraulically to a silicone membrane. In other words, stick the thing in some water, and let that handle the pressure from a smaller soft button on the silicone membrane. That button can be virtually any shape, as seen here.
Aside from the somewhat sophisticated electronics that allow the speaker coil to be both button and actuator (by measuring inductance changes when pressure is applied, while simultaneously driven as a speaker), there’s nothing here a hacker couldn’t very easily replicate: a microspeaker, a 3D printed enclosure, and a silicone membrane that serves as the face of the haptic “soft button”. That’s not to say we aren’t given enough info replicate the electronics; the researchers are kind enough to provide a circuit diagram in
figure eight of their paper.
In the video below, you can see a finger-mounted version used to let a user feel pressing a button in virtual reality, which raises some intriguing possibilities. The technology is also demonstrated on a pen stylus and a remote control.
This isn’t the first time we’ve featured hydraulic haptics — [Craig] was also involved with an
electroosmotic screen we covered previously
, as well as
a glove that used the same trick.
This new microspeaker technique does seem much more accessible to the hacker set, however. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121596",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2025-04-24T13:03:40",
"content": "Can a button like this be abused as a microphone?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8121610",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2025-04... | 1,760,371,567.589873 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/24/the-mohmmeter-a-steampunk-multimeter/ | The Mohmmeter: A Steampunk Multimeter | Matt Varian | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"analog multimeter",
"gift",
"multimeter",
"pi pico",
"steampunk",
"woodworking"
] | [Agatha] sent us this stunning multimeter she built as a gift for her mom. Dubbed the
Mohmmeter
— a playful nod to its ohmmeter function and her mom — this project combines technical ingenuity with heartfelt craftsmanship.
At its core, a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller reads the selector knob, controls relays, and lights up LEDs on the front panel to show the meter’s active range. The Mohmmeter offers two main measurement modes, each with two sub-ranges for greater precision across a wide spectrum.
She also included circuitry protections against reverse polarity and over-voltage, ensuring durability. There was also a great deal of effort put into ensuring it was accurate, as the device was put though its paces using a calibrated meter as reference to ensure the final product was as useful as it was beautiful.
The enclosure is a work of art, crafted from colorful wooden panels meticulously jointed together. Stamped brass plates label the meter’s ranges and functions, adding a steampunk flair. This thoughtful design reflects her dedication to creating something truly special.
Want to build a meter for mom, but she’s more of the goth type?
The blacked-out Hydameter
might be more here style. | 12 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121572",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-04-24T09:11:49",
"content": "What a nice gift and what a fun project. Really cool!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8121574",
"author": "Michael Gardi",
"timestamp": "2025-04-... | 1,760,371,567.328606 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/23/c64-assembly-in-parts/ | C64 Assembly In Parts | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Development"
] | [
"assembly language",
"commodore 64"
] | [Michal Sapka] wanted to learn a new skill, so he decided on the
Commodore 64 assembly language
. We didn’t say he wanted to learn a new skill that might land him a job. But we get it and even applaud it. Especially since he’s written a multi-part post about what he’s doing and how you can do it, too. So far, there are
four parts
, and we’d bet there are more to come.
The series starts with the obligatory “hello world,” as well as some basic setup steps. By part 2, you are learning about registers and numbers. Part 3 covers some instructions, and by part 4, he finds that there are even more registers to contend with.
One of the great things about doing a project like this today is that you don’t have to have real hardware. Even if you want to eventually run on real hardware, you can edit in comfort, compile on a fast machine, and then debug and test on an emulator. [Michal] uses VICE.
The series is far from complete, and we hear part 5 will talk about branching, so this is a good time to catch up.
We love applying
modern tools to old software development
. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121549",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2025-04-24T06:34:26",
"content": "6502.It’s called ‘6502 assembly’.I’ll grant C64 was it’s own beast, as they all were, but 6502. (aktually, lower chip count hardware…6510)It’s not a bad processor to start on.Simple.IIRC C64 system had compl... | 1,760,371,567.220852 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/23/improved-and-open-source-non-planar-infill-for-fdm/ | Improved And Open Source: Non-Planar Infill For FDM | Heidi Ulrich | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"Bambu lab",
"bambustudio",
"FDM",
"g-code",
"interlayer",
"orcaslicer",
"post-processing",
"prusa",
"PrusaSlicer",
"python",
"reinforcement",
"sine"
] | Strenghtening FDM prints has been discussed in detail over the last years. Solutions and results vary as each one’s desires differ. Now
[TenTech] shares his latest improvements
on his
post-processing script
that he first created
around January
. This script literally bends your G-code to its will – using non-planar, interlocking sine wave deformations in both infill and walls. It’s now open-source, and plugs right into your slicer of choice: PrusaSlicer, OrcaSlicer, or Bambu Studio. If you’re into pushing your print strength past the limits of layer adhesion, but
his former solution
wasn’t quite the fit for your printer, try this improvement.
Traditional
Fused Deposition Modeling
(FDM) prints break along layer lines. What makes this script exciting is that it lets you introduce alternating sine wave paths between wall loops, removing clean break points and encouraging interlayer grip. Think of it as organic layer interlocking – without
switching to resin or fiber reinforcement
. You can tweak amplitude, frequency, and direction per feature. In fact, the deformation even fades between solid layers, allowing smoother transitions. Structural tinkering at its finest, not just a cosmetic gimmick.
This thing comes without needing a custom slicer. No firmware mods. Just Python, a little G-code, and a lot of curious minds. [TenTech] is still looking for real-world strength tests, so if you’ve got a test rig and some engineering curiosity, this is your call to arms.
The script can be found in his Github.
View his full video here
,
get the script
and let us know your mileage! | 16 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121581",
"author": "strawberrymortallyb0bcea48e7",
"timestamp": "2025-04-24T10:36:14",
"content": "wow, that’s thinking outside the box!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8121601",
"author": "Ben",
"timestamp": "2025-04-2... | 1,760,371,567.837812 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/23/abusing-duckdb-wasm-to-create-doom-in-sql/ | Abusing DuckDB-WASM To Create Doom In SQL | Maya Posch | [
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"doom",
"sql"
] | These days you can run Doom anywhere on just about anything, with things like porting Doom to JavaScript these days about as interesting as writing Snake in BASIC on one’s graphical calculator. In a twist, [Patrick Trainer] had the idea to
use SQL instead of JS
to do the heavy lifting of the Doom game loop. Backed by the
Web ASM version
of the analytical DuckDB database software, a Doom-lite clone was coded that demonstrates the principle that anything in life can be captured in a spreadsheet or database application.
Rather than having the game world state implemented in JavaScript objects, or pixels drawn to a Canvas/WebGL surface, this implementation models the entire world state in the database. To render the player’s view, the SQL
VIEW
feature is used to perform raytracing (in SQL, of course). Any events are defined as SQL statements, including movement. Bullets hitting a wall or impacting an enemy result in the bullet and possibly the enemy getting
DELETE
-ed.
The role of JavaScript in this Doom clone is reduced to gluing the chunks of SQL together and handling sprite Z-buffer checks as well as keyboard input. The result is a glorious ASCII-based game of Doom which you can experience yourself with
the DuckDB-Doom project
on GitHub. While not very practical, it was absolutely educational, showing that not only is it fun to make domain specific languages do things they were never designed for, but you also get to learn a lot about it along the way.
Thanks to [Particlem] for the tip. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121476",
"author": "Jay",
"timestamp": "2025-04-23T23:05:04",
"content": "“Bullets hitting a wall or impacting an enemy result in the bullet and possibly the enemy getting DELETE-ed.” Did Strong Bad write this article?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},... | 1,760,371,567.009085 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/23/the-evertop-a-low-power-off-grid-solar-gem/ | The Evertop: A Low-Power, Off-Grid Solar Gem | Heidi Ulrich | [
"Battery Hacks",
"computer hacks",
"green hacks",
"hardware",
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"e-ink",
"emulator",
"ESP32",
"IBM xt",
"low power",
"off grid",
"prepping",
"solar",
"solar panel"
] | When was the last time you saw a computer actually outlast your weekend trip – and then some? Enter
the Evertop
, a portable IBM XT emulator powered by an ESP32 that doesn’t just flirt with low power; it basically lives
off the grid
. Designed by [ericjenott], hacker with a love for old-school computing and survivalist flair, this machine emulates 1980s PCs, runs DOS, Windows 3.0, and even MINIX, and stays powered for hundreds of hours. It has a built-in
solar panel
and 20,000mAh of battery, basically making it an old-school dream in a new-school shell.
What makes this build truly outstanding – besides the specs – is how it survives with no access to external power. It sports a 5.83-inch e-ink display that consumes zilch when static, hardware switches to cut off unused peripherals (because
why waste power on a serial port
you’re not using?), and a solar panel that pulls 700mA in full sun. And you guessed it – yes, it can hibernate to disk and resume where you left off. The Evertop is a tribute to 1980s computing, and a serious tool to gain some traction at remote hacker camps.
For the full breakdown, the original post has everything from firmware details to hibernation circuitry. Whether you’re a retro purist or an off-grid prepper, the Evertop deserves a place on your bench. Check out
[ericjenott]’s project on Github
here. | 32 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121416",
"author": "tyj5tyjtyjt",
"timestamp": "2025-04-23T20:05:05",
"content": "fuzix.org too?e-ink is not good for terminal ;(but direction is good",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8121556",
"author": "IIVQ",
... | 1,760,371,567.738655 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/23/floss-weekly-episode-830-vibes/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 830: Vibes | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"artificial intelligence",
"FLOSS Weekly",
"vibe coding"
] | This week,
Jonathan Bennett
and
Randal Schwartz
chat with
Allen Firstenberg
about Google’s AI plans, Vibe Coding, and Open AI! What’s the deal with agentic AI, how close are we to
Star Trek
, and where does Open Source fit in? Watch to find out!
https://prisoner.com/
http://spiders.com/
https://js.langchain.com/docs/introduction/
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 | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121402",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2025-04-23T19:39:24",
"content": "Hmmm… call me suspicious but only a little talk about locally-run AI and almost nothing about privacy from Google’s friends here.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"commen... | 1,760,371,567.783965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/23/open-source-commercial-synthesisers-you-will-love/ | Open Source Commercial Synthesisers You Will Love | Jenny List | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"open sourse",
"synthesiser"
] | Drumboy and Synthgirl from Randomwaves are a a pair of compact electronic instruments, a drum machine and a synthesiser. They are commercial products which were launched on Kickstarter, and if you’re in the market for such a thing you can buy one for yourself. What’s made them of interest to us here at Hackaday though is not their musical capabilities though, instead it’s that they’ve honoured their commitment t
o release them as open source in the entirety
.
So for your download, you get everything you need to build a pair of rather good 24-bit synthesisers based upon the STM32 family of microcontrollers. We’re guessing that few of you will build your own when it’s an easier job to just buy one from Randomwaves, and we’re guessing that this open-sourcing will lead to interesting new features and extensions from the community of owners.
It will be interesting to watch how this progresses, because of course with the files out there, now anyone can produce and market a clone. Will AliExpress now be full of knock-off Drumboys and Synthgirls?
It’s a problem we’ve looked at in the past
with respect to closed-source projects, and doubtless there will be enterprising electronics shops eyeing this one up. By our observation though it seems to be those projects with cheaper bills of materials which suffer the most from clones, so perhaps that higher-end choice of parts will work in their favour.
Either way we look forward to more open-source from Randomwaves in the future, and if you’d like to buy either instrument
you can go to their website
.
Thanks [Eilís] for the tip. | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121366",
"author": "Zoot",
"timestamp": "2025-04-23T17:17:41",
"content": "Very cool. While I have no need for one or both of these, since I already have a drum machine and I use virtual synths with a MIDI controller, I would think this would be a great addition to someone’s low b... | 1,760,371,567.957435 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/23/to-see-within-detecting-x-rays/ | To See Within: Detecting X-Rays | Dan Maloney | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"History"
] | [
"cadmium",
"emulsion",
"fil",
"fluoroscopy",
"gamma",
"halide",
"radiograph",
"scintigraphy",
"scintillator",
"selecnium",
"Technetium",
"x-ray"
] | It’s amazing how quickly medical science made radiography one of its main diagnostic tools. Medicine had barely emerged from its Dark Age of bloodletting and the four humours when X-rays were discovered, and the realization that the internal structure of our bodies could cast shadows of this mysterious “X-Light” opened up diagnostic possibilities that went far beyond the educated guesswork and exploratory surgery doctors had relied on for centuries.
The problem is, X-rays are one of those things that you can’t see, feel, or smell, at least mostly; X-rays cause visible artifacts in some people’s eyes, and the pencil-thin beam of a CT scanner can create a distinct smell of ozone when it passes through the nasal cavity — ask me how I know. But to be diagnostically useful, the varying intensities created by X-rays passing through living tissue need to be translated into an image. We’ve already looked at
how X-rays are produced
, so now it’s time to take a look at how X-rays are detected and turned into medical miracles.
Taking Pictures
For over a century, photographic film was the dominant way to detect medical X-rays. In fact, years before Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen’s first systematic study of X-rays in 1895, fogged photographic plates during experiments with a Crooke’s tube were among the first indications of their existence. But it wasn’t until Röntgen convinced his wife to hold her hand between one of his tubes and a photographic plate to create the first intentional medical X-ray that the full potential of radiography could be realized.
“Hand mit Ringen”
by W. Röntgen, December 1895. Public domain.
The chemical mechanism that makes photographic film sensitive to X-rays is essentially the same as the process that makes light photography possible. X-ray film is made by depositing a thin layer of photographic emulsion on a transparent substrate, originally celluloid but later polyester. The emulsion is a mixture of high-grade gelatin, a natural polymer derived from animal connective tissue, and silver halide crystals. Incident X-ray photons ionize the halogens, creating an excess of electrons within the crystals to reduce the silver halide to atomic silver. This creates a latent image on the film that is developed by chemically converting sensitized silver halide crystals to metallic silver grains and removing all the unsensitized crystals.
Other than in the earliest days of medical radiography, direct X-ray imaging onto photographic emulsions was rare. While photographic emulsions can be exposed by X-rays, it takes a lot of energy to get a good image with proper contrast, especially on soft tissues. This became a problem as more was learned about the dangers of exposure to ionizing radiation, leading to the development of screen-film radiography.
In screen-film radiography, X-rays passing through the patient’s tissues are converted to light by one or more intensifying screens. These screens are made from plastic sheets coated with a phosphorescent material that glows when exposed to X-rays. Calcium tungstate was common back in the day, but rare earth phosphors like gadolinium oxysulfate became more popular over time. Intensifying screens were attached to the front and back covers of light-proof cassettes, with double-emulsion film sandwiched between them; when exposed to X-rays, the screens would glow briefly and expose the film.
By turning one incident X-ray photon into thousands or millions of visible light photons, intensifying screens greatly reduce the dose of radiation needed to create diagnostically useful images. That’s not without its costs, though, as the phosphors tend to spread out each X-ray photon across a physically larger area. This results in a loss of resolution in the image, which in most cases is an acceptable trade-off. When more resolution is needed, single-screen cassettes can be used with one-sided emulsion films, at the cost of increasing the X-ray dose.
Wiggle Those Toes
Intensifying screens aren’t the only place where phosphors are used to detect X-rays. Early on in the history of radiography, doctors realized that while static images were useful, continuous images of body structures in action would be a fantastic diagnostic tool. Originally, fluoroscopy was performed directly, with the radiologist viewing images created by X-rays passing through the patient onto a phosphor-covered glass screen. This required an X-ray tube engineered to operate with a higher duty cycle than radiographic tubes and had the dual disadvantages of much higher doses for the patient and the need for the doctor to be directly in the line of fire of the X-rays. Cataracts were enough of an occupational hazard for radiologists that safety glasses using leaded glass lenses were a common accessory.
How not to test your portable fluoroscope. The X-ray tube is located in the upper housing, while the image intensifier and camera are below. The machine is generally referred to as a “C-arm” and is used in the surgery suite and for bedside pacemaker placements. Source:
Nightryder84
, CC BY-SA 3.0.
One ill-advised spin-off of medical fluoroscopy was the shoe-fitting fluoroscopes that started popping up in shoe stores in the 1920s. Customers would stick their feet inside the machine and peer at a fluorescent screen to see how well their new shoes fit. It was probably not terribly dangerous for the once-a-year shoe shopper, but pity the shoe salesman who had to peer directly into a poorly regulated X-ray beam eight hours a day to show every Little Johnny’s mother how well his new Buster Browns fit.
As technology improved, image intensifiers replaced direct screens in fluoroscopy suites. Image intensifiers were vacuum tubes with a large input window coated with a fluorescent material such as zinc-cadmium sulfide or sodium-cesium iodide. The phosphors convert X-rays passing through the patient to visible light photons, which are immediately converted to photoelectrons by a photocathode made of cesium and antimony. The electrons are focused by coils and accelerated across the image intensifier tube by a high-voltage field on a cylindrical anode. The electrons pass through the anode and strike a phosphor-covered output screen, which is much smaller in diameter than the input screen. Incident X-ray photons are greatly amplified by the image intensifier, making a brighter image with a lower dose of radiation.
Originally, the radiologist viewed the output screen using a microscope, which at least put a little more hardware between his or her eyeball and the X-ray source. Later, mirrors and lenses were added to project the image onto a screen, moving the doctor’s head out of the direct line of fire. Later still, analog TV cameras were added to the optical path so the images could be displayed on high-resolution CRT monitors in the fluoroscopy suite. Eventually, digital cameras and advanced digital signal processing were introduced, greatly streamlining the workflow for the radiologist and technologists alike.
Get To The Point
So far, all the detection methods we’ve discussed fall under the general category of planar detectors, in that they capture an entire 2D shadow of the X-ray beam after having passed through the patient. While that’s certainly useful, there are cases where the dose from a single, well-defined volume of tissue is needed. This is where point detectors come into play.
Nuclear medicine image, or scintigraph, of metastatic cancer.
99
Tc accumulates in lesions in the ribs and elbows (A), which are mostly resolved after chemotherapy (B). Note the normal accumulation of isotope in the kidneys and bladder.
Kazunari Mado, Yukimoto Ishii, Takero Mazaki, Masaya Ushio, Hideki Masuda and Tadatoshi Takayama
, CC BY-SA 2.0.
In medical X-ray equipment, point detectors often rely on some of the same gas-discharge technology that DIYers use to build radiation detectors at home. Geiger tubes and ionization chambers measure the current created when X-rays ionize a low-pressure gas inside an electric field. Geiger tubes generally use a much higher voltage than ionization chambers, and tend to be used more for radiological safety, especially in nuclear medicine applications, where radioisotopes are used to diagnose and treat diseases. Ionization chambers, on the other hand, were often used as a sort of autoexposure control for conventional radiography. Tubes were placed behind the film cassette holders in the exam tables of X-ray suites and wired into the control panels of the X-ray generators. When enough radiation had passed through the patient, the film, and the cassette into the ion chamber to yield a correct exposure, the generator would shut off the X-ray beam.
Another kind of point detector for X-rays and other kinds of radiation is the scintillation counter. These use a crystal, often cesium iodide or sodium iodide doped with thallium, that releases a few visible light photons when it absorbs ionizing radiation. The faint pulse of light is greatly amplified by one or more photomultiplier tubes, creating a pulse of current proportional to the amount of radiation. Nuclear medicine studies use a device called a gamma camera, which has a hexagonal array of PM tubes positioned behind a single large crystal. A patient is injected with a radioisotope such as the gamma-emitting technetium-99, which accumulates mainly in the bones. Gamma rays emitted are collected by the gamma camera, which derives positional information from the differing times of arrival and relative intensity of the light pulse at the PM tubes, slowly building a ghostly skeletal map of the patient by measuring where the
99
Tc accumulated.
Going Digital
Despite dominating the industry for so long, the days of traditional film-based radiography were clearly numbered once solid-state image sensors began appearing in the 1980s. While it was reliable and gave excellent results, film development required a lot of infrastructure and expense, and resulted in bulky films that required a lot of space to store. The savings from doing away with all the trappings of film-based radiography, including the darkrooms, automatic film processors, chemicals, silver recycling, and often hundreds of expensive film cassettes, is largely what drove the move to digital radiography.
After briefly flirting with phosphor plate radiography, where a sensitized phosphor-coated plate was exposed to X-rays and then “developed” by a special scanner before being recharged for the next use, radiology departments embraced solid-state sensors and fully digital image capture and storage. Solid-state sensors come in two flavors: indirect and direct. Indirect sensor systems use a large matrix of photodiodes on amorphous silicon to measure the light given off by a scintillation layer directly above it. It’s basically the same thing as a film cassette with intensifying screens, but without the film.
Direct sensors, on the other hand, don’t rely on converting the X-ray into light. Rather, a large flat selenium photoconductor is used; X-rays absorbed by the selenium cause electron-hole pairs to form, which migrate to a matrix of fine electrodes on the underside of the sensor. The current across each pixel is proportional to the amount measured to the amount of radiation received, and can be read pixel-by-pixel to build up a digital image. | 19 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121339",
"author": "Clyde",
"timestamp": "2025-04-23T15:29:57",
"content": "Dental digital X-ray sensors and sources are about $1600 new online (Both the sensor and source are about $800). They seem like the right size and power for electronics use (what’s inside a chip, BGA inspec... | 1,760,371,567.899856 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/23/unsolved-questions-in-astronomy-try-dark-matter/ | Unsolved Questions In Astronomy? Try Dark Matter! | Tyler August | [
"News",
"Science"
] | [
"astronomy",
"dark matter"
] | Sometimes in fantasy fiction, you don’t want to explain something that seems inexplicable, so you throw your hands up and say, “A wizard did it.” Sometimes in astronomy, instead of a wizard, the answer is dark matter (DM). If you are interested in astronomy, you’ve probably heard that dark matter solves the problem of the “missing mass” to explain galactic light curves, and the motion of galaxies in clusters.
Now [Pedro De la Torre Luque] and others are proposing that DM can solve another pair of long-standing galactic mysteries:
ionization of the central molecular zone (CMZ) in our galaxy, and mysterious 511 keV gamma-rays.
The
Central Molecular Zone
is a region near the heart of the Milky Way that has a very high density of interstellar gases– around sixty million times the mass of our sun, in a volume 1600 to 1900 light years across. It happens to be more ionized than it ought to be, and ionized in a very even manner across its volume. As astronomers cannot identify (or at least agree on) the mechanism to explain this ionization, the CMZ ionization is mystery number one.
Feynman diagram of electron-positron annihilation, showing the characteristic gamma-ray emission.
Mystery number two is a diffuse glow of gamma rays seen in the same part of the sky as the CMZ, which we know as the constellation Sagittarius. The emissions correspond to an energy of 515 keV, which is a very interesting number– it’s what you get when an electron annihilates with the antimatter version of itself. Again, there’s no universally accepted explanation for these emissions.
So [Pedro De la Torre Luque] and team asked themselves: “What if a wizard did it?” And set about trying to solve the mystery using dark matter. As it turns out, computer models including a form of light dark matter (
called sub-GeV DM in the paper, for the particle’s rest masses
) can explain both phenomena within the bounds of error.
In the model, the DM particles annihilate to form electron-positron pairs. In the dense interstellar gas of the CMZ, those positrons quickly form electrons to produce the 511 keV gamma rays observed. The energy released from this annihilation results in enough energy to produce the observed ionization, and even replicate the very flat ionization profile seen across the CMZ. (Any other proposed ionization source tends to radiate out from its source, producing an uneven profile.) Even better, this sort of light dark matter is consistent with cosmological observations and has not been ruled out by Earth-side dark matter detectors, unlike some heavier particles.
Further observations will help confirm or deny these findings, but it seems dark matter is truly the gift that keeps on giving for astrophysicists. We eagerly await what other unsolved questions in astronomy can be answered by it next, but it leaves us wondering how lazy the universe’s game master is if the answer to all our questions is: “A wizard did it.”
We can’t talk about dark matter without
remembering [Vera Rubin]
. | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121306",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-04-23T13:20:08",
"content": "There always seems to be a bit ofdeus ex machinawhen people bring dark matter into the discussion. It’s reminiscent of the Luminiferous Aether theory of the 19th century. It’s going to be interesting to s... | 1,760,371,568.776833 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/23/a-scratch-built-commodore-64-turing-style/ | A Scratch-Built Commodore 64, Turing Style | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"6502",
"6510",
"c64",
"commodore 64",
"eprom",
"finite state machine",
"sid",
"sram",
"turing",
"VIC"
] | Building a Commodore 64 is among the easier projects for retrocomputing fans to tackle. That’s because the C64’s core chipset does most of the heavy lifting; source those and you’re probably 80% of the way there. But what if you can’t find those chips, or if you want more of a challenge than plugging and chugging? Are you out of luck?
Hardly. The video below from [DrMattRegan] is the first in a series on
his scratch-built C64 that doesn’t use the core chipset
, and it looks pretty promising. This video concentrates on building a replacement for the 6502 microprocessor — actually the 6510, but close enough — using just a couple of EPROMs, some SRAM chips, and a few standard logic chips to glue everything together. He uses the EPROMs as a “rulebook” that contains the code to emulate the 6502 — derived from
his earlier Turing 6502 project
— and the SRAM chips as a “notebook” for scratch memory and registers to make a Turing-complete random access machine.
[DrMatt] has made good progress so far, with the core 6502 CPU built on a PCB and able to run the Apple II version of
Pac-Man
as a benchmark. We’re looking forward to the rest of this series, but in the meantime, a look back at
his VIC-less VIC-20 project might be informative
.
Thanks to [Clint] for the tip. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121266",
"author": "evelynmartin3022",
"timestamp": "2025-04-23T10:20:34",
"content": "Awesome project. Love seeing retro tech brought to life with pure creativity and modern components, excited for the next part in the series.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,371,568.511533 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/22/virtual-nodes-real-waves-a-colpitts-walkthrough/ | Virtual Nodes, Real Waves: A Colpitts Walkthrough | Heidi Ulrich | [
"News",
"Science",
"Software Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"digital",
"multisim",
"nodes",
"oscilloscope",
"simulation",
"sine",
"sine wave",
"sinus",
"virtual space",
"waveform"
] | If you’ve ever fumbled through circuit simulation and ended up with a flatline instead of a sine wave,
this video from [saisri]
might just be the fix. In this walkthrough she demonstrates simulating a
Colpitts oscillator
using
NI Multisim
14.3 – a deceptively simple analog circuit known for generating stable sine waves. Her video not only shows how to place and wire components, but it demonstrates why precision matters, even in virtual space.
You’ll notice the emphasis on wiring accuracy at multi-node junctions, something many tutorials skim over. [saisri] points out that a single misconnected node in Multisim can cause the circuit to output zilch. She guides viewers step-by-step, starting with component selection via the “Place > Components” dialog, through to running the simulation and interpreting the sine wave output on Channel A. The manual included at the end of the video is a neat bonus, bundling theory, waveform visuals, and circuit diagrams into one handy PDF.
If you’re into precision hacking, retro analogue joy, or just love watching a sine wave bloom onscreen, this is worth your time.
You can watch the original video here
. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121225",
"author": "MinorHavoc",
"timestamp": "2025-04-23T05:59:52",
"content": "Video seems lacking as an instructional video. It’s mostly a recording of her performing the exercise in Multisim, but she doesn’t actually walk you through it nor explain much as she does it.She says... | 1,760,371,568.308067 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/22/how-supercritical-co2-working-fluid-can-increase-power-plant-efficiency/ | How Supercritical CO2 Working Fluid Can Increase Power Plant Efficiency | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"power turbine",
"steam generator"
] | Using steam to produce electricity or perform work via steam turbines has been a thing for a very long time. Today it is still exceedingly common to use steam in this manner, with said steam generated either by burning something (e.g. coal, wood), by using spicy rocks (nuclear fission) or from stored thermal energy (e.g. molten salt). That said, today we don’t use steam in the same way any more as in the 19th century, with e.g. supercritical and pressurized loops allowing for far higher efficiencies. As covered in a
recent video
by [Ryan Inis], a more recent alternative to using water is
supercritical carbon dioxide
(CO
2
), which could boost the thermal efficiency even further.
In the video [Ryan Inis] goes over the basics of what the supercritical fluid state of CO2 is, which occurs once the critical point is reached at 31°C and 83.8 bar (8.38 MPa). When used as a working fluid in a thermal power plant, this offers a number of potential advantages, such as the higher density requiring smaller turbine blades, and the potential for higher heat extraction. This is also seen with e.g. the shift from boiling to pressurized water loops in BWR & PWR nuclear plants, and in gas- and salt-cooled reactors that can reach far higher efficiencies, as in e.g. the
HTR-PM
and
MSRs
.
In a
2019 article
in Power the author goes over some of the details, including the different power cycles using this supercritical fluid, such as various Brayton cycles (some with extra energy recovery) and the Allam cycle. Of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch, with
corrosion issues
still being worked out, and despite the claims made in the video, erosion is also an issue with supercritical CO
2
as working fluid. That said, it’s in many ways less of an engineering issue than
supercritical steam generators
due to the far more extreme critical point parameters of water.
If these issues can be overcome, it could provide some interesting efficiency boosts for thermal plants, with the caveat that likely nobody is going to retrofit existing plants, supercritical steam (coal) plants already exist and new nuclear plant designs are increasingly moving towards gas, salt and even liquid metal coolants, though secondary coolant loops (following the typical steam generator) could conceivably use CO
2
instead of water where appropriate. | 42 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121193",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-04-23T02:24:21",
"content": "Must have read my mind. The comments to that video are interesting as well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8121210",
"author": "steelman",
... | 1,760,371,568.68834 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/22/eink-pda-revisited/ | EInk PDA Revisited | Fenix Guthrie | [
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"3d printed keyboard",
"ESP32",
"pda",
"PDA hack"
] | In the dark ages, before iOS and Android phones became ubiquitous, there was the PDA. These handheld computers acted as simple companions to a computer and could often handle calendars, email, notes and more. Their demise was spelled by the smartphone, but the nostalgia of having a simple handheld and romanticizing about the 90’s and 2000’s is still there. Fortunately for the nostalgic among our readers, [Ashtf] decided to give us a
modern take on the classic PDAs
.
The device is powered by an ESP32-S3 connected to two PCBs in a mini-laptop clamshell format. It features two displays, a main eInk for slow speed interaction and a little i2c AMOLED for more tasks which demand higher refresh then an eInk can provide. Next to the eInk display is a capacitive slider. For input, there is also a QWERTY keyboard with back resin printed keycaps and white air dry clay pressed into embossed lettering in the keys and finally sealed using nail polish to create a professional double-shot looking keycap. The switches are the metal dome kind sitting on the main PCB. The clamshell is a rather stylish clear resin showcasing the device’s internals and even features a quick-change battery cover!
The device’s “operating system” is truly where the magic happens. It features several apps including a tasks app, file wizard, and text app. The main purpose of the device is on the go note taking so much time has been taken with the excellent looking text app! It also features a docked mode which displays tasks and time when it detects a USB-C cable is connected. Plans exist in the future to implement a calender, desktop sync and even Bluetooth keybaord compatibility. The device’s
previous iteration is on GitHub
with future plans to expand functionality and availability, so stay tuned for more coverage!
This is not the first time
we have covered [Ashtf’s] PDA journey
, and we are happy to see the revisions being made! | 23 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121168",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-04-22T23:53:57",
"content": "man i miss apps that would start immediately. this just makes me think of palmos.it’s a real frustration that i want a lot of features that require immense complexity (like a web browser, tcp/ip, a deeply... | 1,760,371,568.572401 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/22/diy-record-cutting-lathe-is-really-groovy/ | DIY Record Cutting Lathe Is Really Groovy | Tyler August | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"record cutter",
"sound hifi",
"vinyl lathe",
"Vinyl Record"
] | Back in the day, one of the few reasons to prefer compact cassette tape to vinyl was the fact you could record it at home in very good fidelity. Sure, if you had the scratch, you could go out and get a small batch of records made from that tape, but the machinery to do it was expensive and not always easy to come by, depending where you lived. That goes double today, but we’re in the middle of a vinyl renaissance! [ronald] wanted to make records, but was unable to find a lathe, so decided to take matters into his own hands, and build his own
vinyl record cutting lathe
.
[ronald’s] record cutting lathe looks quite professional.
It seems like it should be a simple problem, at least in concept: wiggle an engraving needle to scratch grooves in plastic. Of course for a stereo record, the wiggling needs to be two-axis, and for stereo HiFi you need that wiggling to be very precise over a very large range of frequencies (7 Hz to 50 kHz, to match the pros). Then of course there’s the question of how you’re controlling the wiggling of this engraving needle. (In this case, it’s through a DAC, so technically this is a CNC hack.) As often happens, once you get down to brass tacks (or diamond styluses, as the case may be) the “simple” problem becomes a major project.
The build log discusses some of the challenges faced–for example, [ronald] started with locally made polycarbonate disks that weren’t quite up to the job, so he has resigned himself to purchasing professional vinyl blanks. The power to the cutting head seems to have kept creeping up with each revision: the final version, pictured here, has two 50 W tweeters driving the needle.
That necessitated a better amplifier, which helped improve frequency response. So it goes; the whole project took [ronald] fourteen months, but we’d have to say it looks like it was worth it. It sounds worth it, too; [ronald] provides audio samples; check one out below. Every garage band in Queensland is going to be beating a path to [ronald’s] door to get their jam sessions cut into “real” records, unless they agree that
physical media deserved to die
.
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/01_Test-Cut-6th-April-2025-Move-For-Me.wav
Despite the supposedly well-deserved death of physical media, this isn’t the first
record cutter we have featured
. If you’d
rather copy records than cut them
, we have that too. There’s also the
other kind of vinyl cutter
, which might be more your speed. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121138",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2025-04-22T21:38:03",
"content": "I’ve heard to can record on to acetate sheets. The resulting records will only play a few times before they get worn out, but they are cheaper than vinyl blanks and work great if you just need a record for a... | 1,760,371,568.363261 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/22/british-wartime-periscope-a-peek-into-the-past/ | British Wartime Periscope: A Peek Into The Past | Heidi Ulrich | [
"classic hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"cold war",
"imperial",
"MIL-SPEC",
"military",
"night vision",
"periscope",
"photo amplifier",
"relic",
"vintage"
] | We all know periscopes serve for observation where there’s no direct line-of-sight, but did you know they can allow you to peer through history? That’s
what [msylvain59] documented
when he picked up a British military night vision periscope, snagged from a German surplus shop for just 49 euros. Despite its Cold War vintage and questionable condition, the unit begged for a teardown.
The periscope is a 15-kilo beast: industrial metal, cryptic shutter controls, and twin optics that haven’t seen action since flares were fashionable. One photo amplifier tube flickers to greenish life, the other’s deader than a disco ball in 1993. With no documentation, unclear symbols, and adjustment dials from hell, the teardown feels more like deciphering a British MoD fever dream than a Sunday project. And of course, everything’s
imperial
.
Despite corrosion, mysterious bulbs, and non-functional shutters, [msylvian59] uncovers a fascinating mix of precision engineering and
Cold War paranoia
. There’s a thrill in tracing light paths through mil-spec lenses (the number of graticules seen that are etched on the optics) and wondering what secrets they once guarded. This relic might not
see
well anymore, but it sure makes us look deeper. Let us know your thoughts in the comments or share your unusual wartime relics below. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121111",
"author": "I Alone Possess The Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-04-22T20:10:13",
"content": "See, what needs to be done is tear the guts out and put in an ESP332 and Raspberry Pie with SDR to access automated music broadcasts!Seriously, what a cool thing to be able to explore a... | 1,760,371,568.611003 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/22/game-boy-pcb-assembled-with-low-cost-tools/ | Game Boy PCB Assembled With Low-Cost Tools | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"game boy",
"hot plate",
"pinecil",
"rp2350b",
"surface mount",
"tools"
] | As computers have gotten smaller and less expensive over the years, so have their components. While many of us got our start in the age of through-hole PCBs, this size reduction has led to more and more projects that need the use of surface-mount components and their unique set of tools. These tools tend to be more elaborate than what would be needed for through-hole construction but [Tobi] has
a new project that goes into some details about how to build surface-mount projects without breaking the bank
.
The project here is interesting in its own right, too: a display module upgrade for the classic Game Boy based on an RP2350B microprocessor. To get all of the components onto a PCB that actually fits into the original case, though, surface-mount is required. For that [Tobi] is using a small USB-powered hotplate to reflow the solder, a
Pinecil
, and a healthy amount of flux. The hotplate is good enough for a small PCB like this, and any solder bridges can be quickly cleaned up with some extra flux and a quick pass with a soldering iron.
The build goes into a lot of detail about how a process like this works, so if you’ve been hesitant to start working with surface mount components this might be a good introduction. Not only that, but we also appreciate the restoration of the retro video game handheld complete with some new features that doesn’t disturb the original look of the console. One of the other benefits of using the RP2350 for this build is that it’s a lot simpler than using an FPGA,
but there are perks to taking the more complicated route as well
. | 13 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121087",
"author": "Sjaak",
"timestamp": "2025-04-22T18:54:31",
"content": "Looks like the display says ‘SHIT’ there, later realize it is prolly ‘SHUT’Love the coloring of the display on this ‘original’ gameboy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,568.836429 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/22/why-physical-media-deserved-to-die/ | Why Physical Media Deserved To Die | Maya Posch | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Original Art"
] | [
"audio cassette",
"physical media",
"vinyl records"
] | Over the course of more than a decade, physical media has gradually vanished from public view. Once computers had an optical drive except for ultrabooks, but these days computer cases that even support an internal optical drive are rare. Rather than manuals and drivers included on a data CD you now get a QR code for an online download. In the home, DVD and Blu-ray (BD) players have given way to smart TVs with integrated content streaming apps for various services. Music and kin are enjoyed via smart speakers and smart phones that stream audio content from online services. Even books are now commonly read on screens rather than printed on paper.
With these changes, stores selling physical media have mostly shuttered, with much audiovisual and software content no longer pressed on discs or printed. This situation might lead one to believe that the end of physical media is nigh, but the contradiction here comes in the form of a strong revival of primarily what used to be considered firmly obsolete physical media formats. While CD, DVD and BD sales are plummeting off a cliff, vinyl records, cassette tapes and even media like 8-track tapes are undergoing a resurgence, in a process that feels hard to explain.
How big is this revival, truly? Are people tired of digital restrictions management (DRM), high service fees and/or content in their playlists getting vanished or altered? Perhaps it is out of a sense of (faux) nostalgia?
A Deserved End
Ask anyone who ever has had to use any type of physical media and they’ll be able to provide a list of issues with various types of physical media. Vinyl always was cumbersome, with clicking and popping from dust in the grooves, and gradual degradation of the record with a lifespan in the
hundreds of plays
. Audio cassettes were similar, with especially Type I cassettes having a lot of background hiss that the best
Dolby noise reduction
(NR) systems like Dolby B, C and S only managed to tame to a certain extent.
Add to this issues like wow and flutter, and the joy of having a sticky capstan roller resulting in tape spaghetti when you open the tape deck, ruining that precious tape that you had only recently bought. These issues made CDs an obvious improvement over both audio formats, as they were fully digital and didn’t wear out from merely playing them hundreds of times.
Although audio CDs are better in many ways, they do not lend themselves to portability very well unlike tape, with anti-shock read buffers being an absolute necessity to make portable CD players at all feasible. This same issue made data CDs equally fraught with issues, especially if you went into the business of writing your own (data or audio) CDs on CD-Rs. Burning coasters was exceedingly common for years. Yet the alternative was floppies – with LS-120 and Zip disks never really gaining much market share – or early Flash memory, whether USB sticks (MB-sized) or those inside MP3 players and early digital cameras. There were no good options, but we muddled on.
On the video side VHS had truly brought the theater into the home, even if it was at fuzzy NTSC or PAL quality with astounding color bleed and other artefacts. Much like audio cassette tapes, here too the tape would gradually wear out, with the analog video signal ensuring that making copies would result in an inferior copy.
Rewinding VHS tapes was the eternal curse, especially when popping in that tape from the rental store and finding that the previous person had neither been kind, nor rewound. Even if being able to record TV shows to watch later was an absolute game changer, you better hope that you managed to appease the VHS gods and had it start at the right time.
It could be argued that DVDs were mostly perfect aside from a lack of recording functionality by default and pressed DVDs featuring unskippable trailers and similar nonsense. One can also easily argue here that DVDs’ success was mostly due to its DRM getting cracked early on when the CSS master key leaked. DVDs would also introduce region codes that made this format less universal than VHS and made things like snapping up a movie during an overseas vacation effectively impossible.
This was a practice that BDs doubled-down on, and with the encryption still intact to this day, it means that unlike with DVDs you must pay to be allowed to watch BDs which you previously bought, whether this cost is included in the dedicated BD player, or the license cost for a BD video player for on the PC.
Thus, when streaming services gave access to a very large library for a (small) monthly fee, and cloud storage providers popped up everywhere, it seemed like a no-brainer. It was like paying to have the world’s largest rental store next door to your house, or a data storage center for all your data. All you had to do was create an account, whip out the credit card and no more worries.
Combined with increasingly faster and ubiquitous internet connections, the age of physical media seemed to have come to its natural end.
The Revival
US vinyl record sales 1995-2020. (Credit:
Ippantekina
with RIAA data)
Despite this perfect landscape where all content is available all the time via online services through your smart speakers, smart TVs, smart phones and so on, the number of vinyl record sales
has surged
the past years despite its reported death in the early 2000s. In 2024 the vinyl records market
grew another few percent
, with more and more
new record pressing plants
coming online. In addition to vinyl sales, UK cassette sales
also climbed
, hitting 136,000 in 2023. CD sales meanwhile have kept plummeting, but not as strongly any more.
Perhaps the most interesting part is that most of newly released vinyl are new albums, by artists like Taylor Swift, yet even the classics like Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac keep selling. As for the ‘why’,
some suggest
that it’s the social and physical experience of physical media and the associated interactions that is a driving factor. In this sense it’s more of a (cultural) statement, as a rejection of the world of digital streaming. The sleeve of a vinyl record also provides a lot of space for art and other creative expressions, all of which provides a collectible value.
Although so far CD sales haven’t really seen a revival, the much lower cost of producing these shiny discs could reinvigorate this market too for many of the same reasons. Who doesn’t remember hanging out with a buddy and reading the booklet of a CD album which they just put into the player after fetching it from their shelves? Maybe checking the lyrics, finding some fun Easter eggs or interesting factoids that the artists put in it, and having a good laugh about it with your buddy.
As some responded when asked, they like the more intimate experience of vinyl records along with having a physical item to own, while streaming music is fine for background music. The added value of physical media here is thus less about sound quality, and more about a (social) experience and collectibles.
On the video side of the fence there is no such cheerful news, however. In 2024 sales of DVDs, BDs and UHD (4K) BDs
dropped by 23.4%
year-over-year to below $1B in the US. This compares with a $16B market value in 2005, underlining a collapsing market amidst brick & mortar stores either entirely removing their DVD & BD section, or massively downsizing it. Recently Sony also
announced
the cessation of its recordable BD, MD and MiniDV media, as a further indication of where the market is heading.
Despite streaming services repeatedly bifurcating themselves and their libraries, raising prices and constantly pulling series and movies, this does not seem to hurt their revenue much, if at all. This is true for both audiovisual services like Netflix, but also for audio streaming services like Spotify, who are seeing increasing demand (
per Billboard
), even as digital track sales are seeing a pretty big drop year-over-year (-17.9% for Week 16 of 2025).
Perhaps this latter statistic is indicative that the idea of ‘buying’ a music album or film which – courtesy of DRM – is something that you’re technically only leasing, is falling out of favor. This is also illustrated by
the end of Apple’s iPod
personal music player in favor of its smart phones that are better suited for streaming music on the go. Meanwhile many series and some movies are only released on certain streaming platforms with no physical media release, which incentivizes people to keep those subscriptions.
To continue the big next-door-rental-store analogy, in 2025 said single rental store has now turned into fifty stores, each carrying a different inventory that gets either shuffled between stores or tossed into a shredder from time to time. Yet one of them will have That New Series™, which makes them a great choice, unless you like more rare and older titles, in which case you get to hunt the dusty shelves over at EBay and kin.
It’s A Personal Thing
Humans aren’t automatons that have to adhere to rigid programming. They have each their own preferences, ideologies and wishes. While for some people the DRM that has crept into the audiovisual world since DVDs, Sony’s MiniDisc (with initial ATRAC requirement),
rootkits on audio CDs
, and digital music sales continues to be a deal-breaker, others feel no need to own all the music and videos they like and put them on their NAS for local streaming. For some the lower audio quality of Spotify and kin is no concern, much like for those who listened to 64 kbit WMA files in the early 2000s, while for others only FLACs ripped from a CD can begin to appease their tastes.
Reading through the many reports about ‘the physical media’ revival, what jumps out is that on one hand it is about the exclusivity of releasing something on e.g. vinyl, which is also why sites like Bandcamp offer the purchase of a physical album, and mainstream artists more and more often opt for this. This ties into the other noticeable reason, which is the experience around physical media. Not just that of handling the physical album and operating of the playback device, but also that of the offline experience, being able to share the experience with others without any screens or other distractions around. Call it touching grass in a socializing sense.
As I mentioned already in an
earlier article
on physical media and its purported revival, there is no reason why people cannot enjoy both physical media as well as online streaming. If one considers the rental store analogy, the former (physical media) is much the same as it always was, while online streaming merely replaces the brick & mortar rental store. Except that these new rental stores do not take requests for tapes or DVDs not in inventory and will instead tell you to subscribe to another store or use a VPN, but that’s another can of worms.
So far optical media seems to be still in freefall, and it’s not certain whether it will recover, or even whether there might be incentives in board rooms to not have DVDs and BDs simply die. Here the thought of having countless series and movies forever behind paywalls, with occasional ‘vanishings’ might be reason enough for more people to seek out a physical version they can own, or it may be that the feared erasure of so much media in this digital, DRM age is inevitable.
Running Up That Hill
Original Sony Walkman TPS-L2 from 1979.
The ironic thing about this revival is that it seems influenced very much by streaming services, such as with the appearance of a portable cassette player in Netflix’s
Stranger Things
, not to mention Rocket Raccoon’s original Sony Walkman TPS-L2 in Marvel’s
Guardians of the Galaxy
.
After many saw Sony’s original Walkman in the latter movie, there was a sudden surge in EBay searches for this particular Walkman, as well as replicas being produced by the bucket load, including 3D printed variants. This would seem to support the theory that the revival of vinyl and cassette tapes is more about the experiences surrounding these formats, rather than anything inherent to the format itself, never mind the audio quality.
As we’re now well into 2025, we can quite confidently state that vinyl and cassette tape sales will keep growing this year. Whether or not new (and better) cassette mechanisms (with Dolby NR) will begin to be produced again along with Type II tapes remains to be seen, but there seems to be an inkling of hope there. It was also reported that Dolby is licensing new cassette mechanisms for NR, so who knows.
Meanwhile CD sales may stabilize and perhaps even increase again, in the midst of still a very uncertain future optical media in general. Recordable optical media will likely continue its slow death, as in the PC space Flash storage has eaten its lunch and demanded seconds. Even though PCs no longer tend to have 5.25″ bays for optical drives, even a simple Flash thumb drive tends to be faster and more durable than a BD. Here the appeal of ‘cloud storage’ has been reduced after multiple incidents of data loss & leaks in favor of backing up to a local (SSD) drive.
Finally, as old-school physical audio formats experience a revival, there just remains the one question about whether movies and series will soon only be accessible via streaming services, alongside a veritable black market of illicit copies, or whether BD versions of movies and series will remain available for sale. With the way things are going, we may see future releases on VHS, to match the vibe of vinyl and cassette tapes.
In lieu of clear indications from the industry on what direction things will be heading into, any guess is probably valid at this point. The only thing that seems abundantly clear at this point is that physical media had to die first for us to learn to truly appreciate it. | 136 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120947",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-04-22T14:16:25",
"content": "For me, it’s owning a copy of (licensed, I know) media that can’t easily be revoked obsoleted or somehow made useless to me. I’m sick of having to continually pay or lose access.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,569.017077 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/22/whats-sixty-feet-across-and-superconducting/ | What’s Sixty Feet Across And Superconducting? | Tyler August | [
"News",
"Science"
] | [
"Fusion power",
"fusion reactor",
"nuclear fusion",
"tokamak"
] | What’s sixty feet (18.29 meters for the rest of the world) across and superconducting?
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)
, and probably not much else.
The last parts of the central solenoid assembly have finally made their way to France from the United States, making both a milestone in the slow development of the world’s largest tokamak, and a reminder that despite the current international turmoil, we really can work together, even if we can’t agree on the units to do it in.
The central solenoid is in the “doughnut hole” of the tokamak in this cutaway diagram. Image: US ITER.
The central solenoid is 4.13 m across (that’s 13′ 7″ for burger enthusiasts) sits at the hole of the “doughnut” of the toroidal reactor. It is made up of six modules, each weighing 110 t (the weight of 44 Ford F-150 pickup trucks), stacked to a total height of 59 ft (that’s 18 m, if you prefer). Four of the six modules have been installed on-site, and the other two will be in place by the end of this year.
Each module was produced ITER by US, using superconducting material produced by ITER Japan, before being shipped for installation at the main ITER site in France — all to build a reactor based on a design from the Soviet Union. It doesn’t get much more international than this!
This magnet is, well, central to the functioning of a tokamak. Indeed, the presence of a central solenoid is one of the defining features of this type, compared to other toroidal rectors (like the earlier stellarator or spheromak). The central solenoid provides a strong magnetic field (in ITER, 13.1 T) that is key to confining and stabilizing the plasma in a tokamak, and inducing the 15 MA current that keeps the plasma going.
When it is eventually finished (now scheduled for initial operations in 2035) ITER aims to produce 500 MW of thermal power from 50 MW of input heating power via a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction. You can follow
all news about the project here.
While a tokamak isn’t likely something you can hack together in your back yard,
there’s always the Farnsworth Fusor
, which
you can even built to fit on your desk
. | 54 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120909",
"author": "sweethack",
"timestamp": "2025-04-22T12:10:58",
"content": "The unit mangling in your article is just not fun, it’s dumb. No one measure weight in F-150 (since there are multiple version of the vehicle). So stick with a measurement system and keep it during the ... | 1,760,371,569.115605 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/22/making-a-one-of-a-kind-lime2-sbc/ | Making A One-Of-A-Kind Lime2 SBC | Matt Varian | [
"hardware"
] | [
"BGA soldering",
"ram",
"SBC",
"u-boot"
] | Upgrading RAM on most computers is often quite a straightforward task: look up the supported modules, purchase them, push a couple of levers, remove the old, and install the new. However, this project
submitted by [Mads Chr. Olesen]
is anything but a simple.
In this project, he sets out to double the RAM on a Olimex A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 single-board computer. The Lime2 came with 1 GB of RAM soldered to the board, but he knew the A20 processor could support more and wondered if simply swapping RAM chips could double the capacity. He documents the process of selecting the candidate RAM chip for the swap and walks us through how U-Boot determines the amount of memory present in the system.
While your desktop likely has RAM on removable sticks, the RAM here is soldered to the board. Swapping the chip required learning a new skill: BGA soldering, a non-trivial technique to master. Initially, the soldering didn’t go as planned, requiring extra steps to resolve issues. After reworking the soldering, he successfully installed both new chips. The moment of truth arrived—he booted up the LIME2, and it worked! He now owns the only LIME2 with 2 GB of RAM.
Be sure to check out some other
BGA soldering projects
we’ve featured over the years. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8121147",
"author": "asheets",
"timestamp": "2025-04-22T22:18:45",
"content": "I’m impressed by the work, but would like to know the use case.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8121162",
"author": "ThoriumBR",
"t... | 1,760,371,569.166798 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/21/pox-super-fast-graphene-based-flash-memory/ | PoX: Super-Fast Graphene-Based Flash Memory | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"flash memory"
] | Recently a team at Fudan University
claimed to have developed
a picosecond-level Flash memory device (called ‘PoX’) that has an access time of a mere 400 picoseconds. This is significantly faster than the millisecond level access times of NAND Flash memory, and more in the ballpark of DRAM, while still being non-volatile. Details on the device technology were
published in
Nature
.
In the paper by [Yutong Xing] et al. they describe the memory device as using a two-dimensional Dirac graphene-channel Flash memory structure, with hot carrier injection for both electron and hole injection, meaning that it is capable of both writing and erasing.
Dirac
graphene refers to the unusual electron transport properties of typical monolayer graphene sheets.
Demonstrated was a write speed of 400 picoseconds, non-volatile storage and a 5.5 × 10
6
cycle endurance with a programming voltage of 5 V. It are the unique properties of a Dirac material like graphene that allow these writes to occur significantly faster than in a typical silicon transistor device.
What is still unknown is how well this technology scales, its power usage, durability and manufacturability. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120822",
"author": "MinorHavoc",
"timestamp": "2025-04-22T06:23:38",
"content": "Fundamental research and experimental results like this are critical for developing the technology of the future, if it’s replicable. Unfortunately, not all positive results in a lab will lead to comm... | 1,760,371,569.236867 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/21/jolly-wrencher-down-to-the-micron/ | Jolly Wrencher Down To The Micron | Ian Bos | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"3D resin printer",
"jolly wrencher",
"microreprap",
"reprap"
] | RepRap was the origin of pushing hobby 3D printing boundaries, and here we see a RepRap scaled down to the smallest detail.
[Vik Olliver] over at the RepRap blog
has been working on getting a printer working printing down to the level of micron accuracy.
The printer is constructed using 3D printed flexures similar to the
OpenFlexure microscope
. Two flexures create the XYZ movement required for the tiny movements needed for micron level printing. While still in the stages of printing simple objects, the microscopic scale of printing is incredible.
[Vik] managed to print a triangular pattern in resin at a total size of 300 µm. For comparison
SLA 3D printers struggle
at many times that scale. Other interesting possibilities from this technology could be printing small scale circuits from conductive resins, though this might require some customization in the resin department.
In addition to printing with resin, µRepRap can be seen making designs in marker ink such as our own Jolly Wrencher! At only 1.5 mm the detail is impressive especially when considering the nature of scratching away ink.
If you want to make your own µRepRap head over to
[Vik Olliver]’s GitHub
. The µRepRap project has been a long going project. From the time it started the design has changed quite a bit. Check out an older version of the µRepRap project
based around OpenFlexure
! | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120775",
"author": "notmyfault2000",
"timestamp": "2025-04-22T01:14:51",
"content": "At micron scale, it might be interesting for hobbyists, to print photoresist onto wafers. Not as efficient as lithography but probably a whole lot easier to set up more than one machine…",
"par... | 1,760,371,569.330221 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/21/trekulator-a-reproduction-of-the-1977-star-trek-themed-calculator/ | Trekulator: A Reproduction Of The 1977Star TrekThemed Calculator | John Elliot V | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"3d printed",
"calculator",
"ESP32",
"star trek",
"Trekulator"
] | A recent project over on Hackaday.io from [Michael Gardi] is
Trekulator – Where No Maker Has Gone Before
.
This is a fun build and [Michael] has done a very good job of emulating
the original device
. [Michael] used the Hackaday.io logging feature to
log his progress
. Starting in September 2024 he modeled the case, got his original hardware working, got the 7-segment display working, added support for sound, got the keypad working and mounted it, added the TFT display and mounted it, wired up the breadboard implementation, designed and implemented the PCBs, added some finishing touches, installed improved keys, and added a power socket back in March.
It is perhaps funny that where the original device used four red LEDs, [Michael] has used an entire TFT display. This would have been pure decadence by the standards of 1977. The
software
for the ESP32 microcontroller was fairly involved. It had to support audio, graphics, animations, keyboard input, the 7-segment display, and the actual calculations.
The calculations are done using double-precision floating-point values and eight positions on the display so this code will do weird things in some edge cases. For instance if you ask it to sum two eight digit numbers as 90,000,000 and 80,000,000, which would ordinarily sum to the nine digit value 170,000,000, the display will show you a different value instead, such as maybe 17,000,000 or 70,000,000. Why don’t you put one together and let us know what it actually does! Also, can you find any floating-point precision bugs?
This was a really fun project, thanks to [Michael] for writing it up and letting us know via the
tips line
! | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120709",
"author": "zxm",
"timestamp": "2025-04-21T20:08:54",
"content": "i wonder if someone removed the speaker to stop the calculator making noise. at first it would be a novelty but it would quickly get annoying i suspect.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,371,569.284478 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/21/remembering-ucsd-p-system-the-pascal-virtual-machine/ | Remembering UCSD P-System, The Pascal Virtual Machine | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Pascal",
"ucsd"
] | Long before the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) was said to take the world by storm, the p-System (pseudo-system, or virtual machine) developed at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) provided a cross-platform environment for the UCSD’s Pascal dialect. Later on, additional languages would also be made available for the UCSD p-System, such as Fortran (by Apple Computer) and Ada (by TeleSoft), not unlike the various languages targeting the JVM today in addition to Java. The p-System could be run on an existing OS or as its own OS directly on the hardware. This was extremely attractive in the fragmented home computer market of the 1980s.
After the final release of version IV of UCSD p-System (IV.2.2 R1.1) in 1987, the software died a slow death, but this doesn’t mean it is forgotten. People like [Hans Otten]
have documented
the history and technical details of the UCSD p-System, and the UCSD Pascal dialect went on to inspire Borland Pascal.
Recently [Mark Bessey]
also reminisced
about using the p-System in High School with computer programming classes back in 1986. This inspired him to look at re-experiencing Apple Pascal as well as UCSD Pascal on the UCSD p-System, possibly writing a p-System machine. Even if it’s just for nostalgia’s sake, it’s pretty cool to tinker with what is effectively the Java Virtual Machine or Common Language Runtime of the 1970s, decades before either of those were a twinkle in a software developer’s eyes.
Another common virtual runtime of the era was CHIP-8. It is also gone, but
not quite forgotten
. | 23 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120667",
"author": "Jan Prägert",
"timestamp": "2025-04-21T18:36:21",
"content": "There is a song about that.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=660ZCEhvbnw",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8120691",
"author": "_sol_",
... | 1,760,371,569.394043 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/21/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-part-picker/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Part Picker | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"bachelor pad",
"IBM Selectric Composer",
"keyboard part picker",
"Kinesis Advantage",
"spacemouse"
] | If you do a lot of 3D computer work, I hear a Spacemouse is indispensable. So
why not build a keyboard around it and make it a mouse-cropad?
Image by [DethKlawMiniatures] via
reddit
That’s exactly what [DethKlawMiniatures] did with theirs. This baby is built with mild steel for the frame, along with some 3D-printed spacers and a pocket for the Spacemouse itself to live in.
Those switches are Kailh speed coppers, and they’re all wired up to a Seeed Xiao RP2040. [DethKlawMiniatures] says that making that lovely PCB by hand was a huge hassle, but impatience took over.
After a bit of use, [DethKlawMiniatures] says that the radial curve of the macro pad is nice, and the learning curve was okay. I think this baby looks fantastic, and I hope [DethKlawMiniatures] gets a lot of productivity out of it.
Kinesis Rides Again After 15 Years
Fifteen years ago, [mrmarbury] did a lot of ergo keyboard research and longed for a
DataHand
II. Once the sticker shock wore off, he settled on a Kinesis Advantage with MX browns just like your girl is typing on right now.
Image by [mrmarbury] via
reddit
Not only did [mrmarbury] love the Kinesis to death, he learned Dvorak on it and can do 140 WPM today. And, much like my own experience, the Kinesis basically saved his career.
Anyway, things were going gangbusters for over a decade until [mrmarbury] spilled coffee on the thing. The main board shorted out, as did a thumb cluster trace. He did
the Stapelberg mod
to replace the main board, but that only lasted a little while until one of the key-wells’ flex boards came up defective. Yadda yadda yadda, he moved on and eventually got a
Svalboard
, which is pretty darn close to having a DataHand II.
But then a couple of months ago, the Kinesis fell on [mrmarbury]’s head while cleaning out a closet and
he knew he had to fix it once and for all
. He ripped out the flex boards and hand-wired it up to work with the Stapelberg mod. While the thumb clusters still have their browns and boards intact, the rest were replaced with Akko V3 Creme Blue Pros, which sound like they’re probably pretty amazing to type on. So far, so good, and it has quickly become [mrmarbury]’s favorite keyboard again. I can’t say I’m too surprised!
The Centerfold: Swingin’ Bachelor Pad
Image by [weetek] via
reddit
Isn’t this whole thing just
nice
?
Yeah it is. I really like the lighting and the monster monstera. The register is cool, and I like the way it the panels on the left wall mimic its lines. And apparently that is a good Herman Miller chair, and I dig all the weird plastic on the back, but I can’t help but think this setup would look even cleaner with an Aeron there instead. (Worth every penny!)
Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad?
Send me a picture
along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!
Historical Clackers: the IBM Selectric Composer
And what do we have here? This beauty is not a typewriter, exactly.
It’s a typesetter
. What this means is that, if used as directed, this machine can churn out text that looks like it was typeset on a printing press. You know, with the right margin justified.
Image by [saxifrageous] via
reddit
You may be wondering how this is achieved at all. It has to do with messing with the kerning of the type — that’s the space between each letter. The dial on the left sets the language of the type element, while the one one the right changes the spacing. There’s a lever around back that lets you change the pitch, or size of the type. The best part? It’s completely mechanical.
To actually use the thing, you had to type your text twice. The first time, the machine measured the length of the line automatically and then report a color and number combination (like red-5) which was to be noted in the right margin.
The IBM Selectric Composer came out in 1966 and was a particularly expensive machine. Like, $35,000 in 2025 money expensive. IBM typically rented them out to companies and then trashed them when they came back, which, if you’re younger than a certain vintage, is why you’ve probably never seen one before.
If you just want to hear one clack, check out the short video below of a 1972 Selectric Composer where you can get a closer look at the dials. In 1975, the first Electronic Selectric Composer came out. I can’t even imagine how much those must have cost.
Finally, a Keyboard Part Picker
Can’t decide what kind of keyboard to build? Not even sure what all there is to consider? Then you can’t go wrong with
Curatle, a keyboard part picker
built by [Careless-Pay9337] to help separate you from your hard-earned money in itemized fashion.
The start screen for
Curatle
made by [Careless-Pay9337].
So this is basically PCPartPicker, but for keyboards, and those are [Careless-Pay9337]’s words. Essentially, [Careless-Pay9337] scraped a boatload of keyboard products from various vendors, so there is a lot to choose from already. But if that’s not enough, you can also import products from any store.
The only trouble is that currently, there’s no compatibility checking built in. It’ll be a long road, but it’s something that [Careless-Pay9337] does plan to implement in the future.
What else would you like to see? Be sure to let [Careless-Pay9337] know over in the
reddit thread
.
Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards?
Help me out by sending in a link or two
. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to
email me directly
. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120726",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2025-04-21T21:15:14",
"content": "did I mention the Varityper 1010 to you? i think the same mechanics for justifying a column of text by counting the spaces between words in the first run and adjusting accordingly in the second to justi... | 1,760,371,569.532222 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/21/restoration-of-six-player-arcade-game-from-the-early-90s/ | Restoration Of Six-Player Arcade Game From The Early 90s | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"galaxian",
"hardware",
"laserdisc",
"namco",
"restoration",
"retrocomputing",
"video game"
] | Although the video game crash of the mid-80s caused a major decline in arcades from their peak popularity, the industry didn’t completely die off. In fact, there was a revival that lasted until the 90s with plenty of companies like Capcom, Midway, SEGA, and Konami all competing to get quarters, francs, loonies, yen, and other coins from around the world. During this time, Namco — another game company — built a colossal 28-player prototype shooter game. Eventually, they cut it down to a (still titanic) six-player game that was actually released to the world. [PhilWIP] and his associates are
currently restoring
one of the few remaining room-sized games that are still surviving.
The game is called Galaxian 3, with this particular one having been upgraded to a version called “Attack of the Zolgear”. Even though it’s “only” a six-person shooter, it’s still enormous in scale. The six players sit side-by-side in an enclosed room, each with their own controller. Two projectors handle the display, which is large even by modern standards, and a gauntlet of early-90s technology, including LaserDisc players, is responsible for all of the gameplay. When [PhilWIP] first arrived, the game actually powered on, but there were several problems to solve before it was playable. They also wanted to preserve the game, which meant imaging the LaserDiscs to copy their data onto modern storage. Some of the player input PCBs needed repairs, and there were several issues with the projectors. Eventually the team got the system working well enough to play.
[PhilWIP] and the others haven’t gotten all the issues ironed out yet. The hope is that subsequent trips will restore this 90s novelty to working order shortly. It turns out there were all kinds of unique hardware from this wild-west era that’s in need of restoring,
as we saw a few years ago with this early 3D cabinet from the same era
. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120632",
"author": "asheets",
"timestamp": "2025-04-21T17:09:57",
"content": "I’d be interested in knowing a bit more about imaging LaserDiscs to modern storage. Probably a bit more complicated than using “dd”, but I wouldn’t know how to go about performing the work…",
"parent... | 1,760,371,569.712543 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/20/low-cost-oscilloscope-gets-low-cost-upgrades/ | Low Cost Oscilloscope Gets Low Cost Upgrades | Bryan Cockfield | [
"News",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"adc",
"filter",
"low cost",
"low-pass",
"noise",
"oscilloscope",
"tool",
"upgrade"
] | Entry-level oscilloscopes are a great way to get some low-cost instrumentation on a test bench, whether it’s for a garage lab or a schoolroom. But the cheapest ones are often cheap for a reason, and even though they work well for the price they won’t stand up to more advanced equipment. But missing features don’t have to stay missing forever, as
it’s possible to augment them to get some of these features.
[Tommy’s] project shows you one way to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, at least as it relates to oscilloscopes.
Most of the problem with these lower-cost tools is their low precision due to fewer bits of analog-digital conversion. They also tend to be quite noisy, further lowering the quality of the oscilloscope. [Tommy] is focusing his efforts on the DSO138-mini, an oscilloscope with a bandwidth of 100 kHz and an effective resolution of 10 bits. The first step is to add an anti-aliasing filter to the input, which is essentially a low-pass filter that removes high frequency components of the signal, which could cause a problem due to the lower resolution of the device. After that, digital post-processing is done on the output, which removes noise caused by the system’s power supply, among other things, and essentially acts as a second low-pass filter.
In part 2 of the project,
[Tommy] demonstrates the effectiveness of these two methods with experimental data, showing that a good percentage of the noise on a test signal has been removed from the output. All the more impressive here is that the only additional cost besides the inexpensive oscilloscope itself is for a ceramic capacitor that costs around a dollar. We were also impressed: [Tommy] is a junior in high school!
Presumably, you could apply these techniques to other inexpensive equipment,
like this even cheaper oscilloscope based on the ESP32
. | 51 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120277",
"author": "fdufnews",
"timestamp": "2025-04-20T14:09:20",
"content": "You said: “Presumably, you could apply these techniques to other inexpensive equipment, like this even cheaper oscilloscope based on the ESP32.”But, in that case it is an STM32",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,569.866227 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/20/building-a-custom-zynq-7000-soc-development-board-from-the-ground-up/ | Building A Custom Zynq-7000 SoC Development Board From The Ground Up | John Elliot V | [
"ARM",
"FPGA",
"hardware",
"PCB Hacks"
] | [
"AMD Zynq-7000 SoC",
"arm",
"fpga board"
] | In this series of 23 YouTube videos [Rich]
puts the AMD Zynq-7000 SoC through its paces
by building a development board from the ground up to host it along with its peripherals. The Zynq is part FPGA and part CPU, and while it has been around for a while, we don’t see nearly as many projects about it as we’d like.
[Rich] covers everything from the power system to HDMI, USB, DDR RAM, and everything in between. By the end, he’s able to boot PetaLinux.
The Zynq SoC includes an ARM Cortex-A9 Based APU and an Artix-7 FPGA. In case you missed it,
Xilinx was recently acquired by AMD
, which is why you might have remembered this as a Xilinx part.
We’ve heard from [Rich] before. Back in 2021 we saw his
Arduino Brings USB Mouse To Homebrew Computer
. Don’t miss his follow-up playlist:
Building on my Zynq-7000
in which he takes his Zynq-7000 board even further.
If you’re interested in FPGA technology but need something more easy going to get you started, be sure to check out
how to build a 6809 CPU on an FPGA
. Or, if you need something even simpler, report for
boot camp
.
Thanks to [Alex] for the tip! | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120270",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-04-20T13:25:22",
"content": "I would like to make an FPGA board as well but sadly I do not have anything in mind that would require an FPGA",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "81... | 1,760,371,569.660428 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/20/non-planar-slicing-is-for-the-birds/ | Non-planar Slicing Is For The Birds | Tyler August | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d model slicing",
"non-planar 3D printing",
"non-planar layer FDM",
"non-planar slicer"
] | When we say non-planar slicing is for the birds, we mean [Joshua Bird], who demonstrates the versatility of his new
non-planar S4-Slicer
by printing a Benchy upside down with the
“Core R-Theta” printer we have featured here before.
S4 slicer uses the path from any point (here, Benchy’s prow) as its basis…
This non-planar slicer is built into a Jupyter notebook, which follows a relatively simple algorithm to automatically generate non-planar toolpaths for any model. It does this by first generating a tetrahedral mesh of the model and then calculating the shortest possible path through the model from any given tetrahedron to the print bed. Even with non-planar printing, you need to print from the print-bed up (or out).
Quite a lot of math is done to use these paths to calculate a deformation mesh, and we’ll leave that to [Joshua] to explain in his video below. After applying the deformation, he slices the resulting mesh in Cura, before the G-code goes back to Jupyter to be re-transformed, restoring the shape of the original mesh.
… to generate deformed models for slicing, like this.
So yes, it is G-code bending as others have demonstrated before, but in a reproducible, streamlined, and straightforward workflow. Indeed, [Josh] credits much of the work to earlier work on the
S^3-Slicer, which inspired
much of the logic and the name behind his S4 slicer. (Not S4 as in “more than S^3” but S4 as a contraction of “Simplified S^3”). Once again, open source allows for incremental innovation.
It is admittedly a computationally intensive process, and [Joshua] uses a simplified model of Benchy for this demo. This seems exactly the sort of thing we’d like to burn compute power on, though.
This sort of non-planar 3D printing is an exciting frontier,
one which we have covered befor
e. We’ve seen
techniques for non-planar infill
, or even to
print overhangs on unmodified Cartesian printers
, but this is probably the first time we’ve seen Benchy given the non-planar treatment. You can try
S4 slicer for yourself via GitHub
, or just watch the non-planar magic in action after the break. | 15 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120194",
"author": "helge",
"timestamp": "2025-04-20T09:02:31",
"content": "Printing of flat layers has proven tricky enough to get working in a consistent manner, so I take it the error will only increase as we move to coupled motion, making a non-planar ironing pass ever more imp... | 1,760,371,569.773676 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/19/rockbox-4-0-released/ | Rockbox 4.0 Released | John Elliot V | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Portable Audio Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"digital audio",
"mp3 player",
"personal media player",
"Rockbox"
] | It’s traditional to launch new software on April Fool’s Day, which is when we heard that
Rockbox 4.0 has been released
. But, in this case, the venerable MP3 firmware actually did update after a long absence. It’s great to see that good old
Rockbox
is still kicking along. We
first mentioned Rockbox
here at Hackaday approaching 20 years ago. How time flies. There used to be a whole ‘scene’ around hacking Personal Media Players (PMPs), also known as “MP3 Players”.
We tracked down Rockbox contributor [Solomon Peachy] to ask for some simple advice: If someone wants to install Rockbox on a personal media player today, what hardware should they buy? [Solomon] referred us to the
AIGO EROS Q / EROS K
, which is the only compatible hardware still being manufactured and sold. Beyond that, if you want to buy compatible hardware, you’ll need to find some secondhand somewhere, such as eBay. See the
Rockbox Wiki
for supported hardware.
Smartphones and streaming services
have subsumed the single-purpose personal media player. Will you put the new Rockbox on something? Let us know in the comments. | 24 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120152",
"author": "Ratus",
"timestamp": "2025-04-20T05:18:42",
"content": "Nice!I’ve been using Rockbox since the beginning with an Archos v2 and then a bunch of Sansa players.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8120160",
"au... | 1,760,371,569.931176 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/19/frankenflair-58-manual-roots-advanced-brew/ | Frankenflair 58: Manual Roots, Advanced Brew | Matt Varian | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"coffee machine",
"coffee maker hack",
"espresso machine",
"pcb",
"pid"
] | The user interface of things we deal with often makes or breaks our enjoyment of using a device. [Janne] thinks so, he has an espresso machine he enjoys but the default controls were not what he was looking for and so in true hacker fashion he
took what was and made it his own
.
This Kickstarter-born Flair 58 is a manual espresso machine with minimal moving parts and no electronics in its default configuration. An optional preheater was available, but it felt like an afterthought. He decided to add a bit more finesse into his solution, with a sleek touchscreen display controlling a custom heater board with closed-loop temperature control, and provisions to connect an external scale scale for precise pour measurements. We’ve seen
coffee maker hacks
before, but this one certainly stands out for adding features absent from the machine’s initial design.
To accommodate the two custom PCBs and the touchscreen, [Janne] modified the machine’s frame. The Flair 58’s swooping curves posed a challenge, but instead of using an external enclosure, he shaped the PCBs to fit seamlessly within the machine’s structure. A wonderfully done hack given the open, exposed design of the base hardware.
Certainly head over to his site and check out this beautiful solution to improving on an existing device, and check out his other cool project based around
laser fault injection
. All the hardware and software for this project is freely available over on his site so if you’d like to upgrade your machine be sure to go check it out. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120326",
"author": "Adrian",
"timestamp": "2025-04-20T16:30:53",
"content": "Great project and excellent documentation with beautiful detail shots. The only thing missing is a picture showing the complete espresso machine as it’s hard to visualize how this all fits together. Having... | 1,760,371,569.97062 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/19/chinas-tmsr-lf1-molten-salt-thorium-reactor-begins-live-refueling-operations/ | China’s TMSR-LF1 Molten Salt Thorium Reactor Begins Live Refueling Operations | Maya Posch | [
"News",
"Science"
] | [
"nuclear fission",
"thorium"
] | Although uranium-235 is the typical fuel for commercial fission reactors on account of it being fissile, it’s relatively rare relative to the fertile U-238 and thorium (Th-232). Using either of these fertile isotopes to breed new fuel from is thus an attractive proposition. Despite this, only India and China have a strong focus on using Th-232 for reactors, the former using breeders (Th-232 to U-233) to create fertile uranium fuel. China has
demonstrated its approach
— including refueling a live reactor — using a fourth-generation molten salt reactor.
The original research comes from US scientists in the 1960s. While there were tests in the MSRE reactor, no follow-up studies were funded. The concept languished until recently, with
Terrestrial Energy’s Integral MSR
and construction on China’s 2 MW
TMSR-LF1
experimental reactor
commencing in 2018
before first criticality in 2023. One major advantage of an MSR with liquid fuel (the -LF part in the name) is that it can filter out contaminants and add fresh fuel while the reactor is running. With this successful demonstration, along with the breeding of uranium fuel from thorium last year, a larger, 10 MW design can now be tested.
Since TMSR doesn’t need cooling water, it is perfect for use in arid areas. In addition, China is working on using a TMSR-derived design in
nuclear-powered container vessels
. With enough thorium around for tens of thousands of years, these low-maintenance MSR designs could soon power much of modern society, along with high-temperature pebble bed reactors, which is another concept that China has recently managed to make work
with the HTR-PM design
.
Meanwhile, reactors are getting
smaller
in general. | 33 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120085",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-04-19T23:33:02",
"content": "Thorium seems to be quite promising. From what I’ve gathered (mostly from youtube), the reason to use Uranium was chosen long ago because it can produce stuff to make bombs, and that was a big thing 50 ye... | 1,760,371,570.084243 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/19/they-hacked-a-nuclear-power-plant-whoops-dont-make-a-sound/ | They Hacked A Nuclear Power Plant! Whoops! Don’t Make A Sound! | John Elliot V | [
"Science"
] | [
"Acoustical Testing",
"Nuclear Power Plant",
"NWAA Labs"
] | What do you do with an unused nuclear reactor project? In Washington,
one of them was hacked to remove sound
, all in the name of science.
In 1977, a little way outside of Seattle, Washington Nuclear Projects 3 and 5 (WNP-3 and WNP-5) were started as part of Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS, pronounced “whoops”). They ran over budget, and in the 80s they were mothballed even though WNP-3 was nearly complete.
In 2010 when [Ron] and [Bonnie Sauro] were starting their new acoustical lab, NWAA Labs, they thought they wanted to build in a mountain, but what they found was an auxiliary reactor building. The structure was attached to a defunct nuclear power facility. With concrete and rebar walls five feet thick, it was the ideal site for their acoustical experiments and tests.
There are strict facility requirements from standards bodies such as American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for acoustical labs which help ensure that different labs achieve comparable results. For example, you need stable temperature, humidity, and reverberation. The temperature within the facility is a stable 54 degrees Fahrenheit (12 degrees Celsius) regardless of the temperature outside.
Companies use acoustical labs to inform their designs and ensure that they meet acoustic standards or requirements, particularly those related to noise emissions. Over the last fifteen years, NWAA Labs has tested carpet samples, noise-cancelling headphones, sound-dampening construction materials, noisy washing machines, and even an airplane’s crew cabin!
If there was any question about whether [Ron Sauro] qualifies as a hacker, this quote removes all doubt: “I’m a carpenter, a plumber, a welder, I can fix a car,” he says. “Anything that needs to be done, I can do. Because I have to.”
Maybe we should send
a wearable cone of silence
to [Ron] for a complete test. If you’ve ever hacked a nuclear power plant, do let us know in the comments! | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120332",
"author": "TheOnceAndFutureThingy",
"timestamp": "2025-04-20T16:59:48",
"content": "NGL, I was hoping for something with a less happy ending…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8120704",
"author": "Rick",
... | 1,760,371,570.009116 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/21/biasing-transistors-with-current-sources/ | Biasing Transistors With Current Sources | John Elliot V | [
"hardware",
"Parts"
] | [
"amplifiers",
"bipolar junction transistor",
"current mirror",
"current source"
] | Over on his YouTube channel [Aaron Danner] explains
biasing transistors with current sources
in the 29th video of his
Transistors Series
. In this video, he shows how to replace a bias resistor (and consequently an additional capacitor) with a current source for both common-emitter and common-collector amplifiers.
A current source provides electrical energy with a constant current. The implication is that if the resistance of the load changes the current source will vary the voltage to compensate. In reality, this is exactly what you want. The usual resistor biasing arrangement just simulates this over a narrow voltage range, which is generally good enough, but not as good as a true current source.
As [Aaron] explains there are various advantages to biasing transistors with current sources instead of resistors, chief among them is that it allows you to get rid of a capacitor (capacitors are expensive to make in integrated circuits and often among the lowest-quality components in a design). You can also avoid losing some of your gain through the bias resistor.
The
current source
that [Aaron] uses in this video is known as a
current mirror
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120759",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2025-04-21T23:27:49",
"content": "Current sources (or any other form of active bias) also can save atonof power vs a manufacturer recommended circuit. RF amps frequently have recommended supply voltages way higher than needed because of the d... | 1,760,371,570.128789 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/21/printed-perpetual-calendar-clock-contains-clever-cams/ | Printed Perpetual Calendar Clock Contains Clever Cams | Tyler August | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"3D printed clock",
"clock",
"electromechanical clock",
"perpetual calendar"
] | At Hackaday, it is
always
clock time, and clock time is a great time to check in with [shiura], whose
3D Printed Perpetual Calendar Clock is now at Version 2.
A 3D printed calendar clock, well, no big deal, right? Grab a few steppers, slap in an ESP32 to connect to a time server, and you’re good. That’s where most of us would probably go, but most of us aren’t [shiura], who has some real mechanical chops.
There’s also a 24-hour dial, because why not?
This clock isn’t
all
mechanical. It probably could be, but at its core it uses a commercial quartz movement — you know, the cheap ones that take a single double-A battery. The only restriction is that the length of the hour axis must be twelve millimeters or more. Aside from that, a few self-tapping screws and an M8 nut, everything else is fully 3D printed.
From that simple quartz movement, [shiura]’s clock tracks not only the day of the week, the month and date — even in Febuary, and even compensating for leap years. Except for the inevitable drift (and battery changes) you should not have to adjust this clock until March 2100, assuming both you and the 3D printed mechanism live that long. Version one actually did all this, too, but somehow we missed it; version two has some improvements to aesthetics and usability. Take a tour of the mechanism in the video after the break.
We’ve featured several of [shiura]’s innovative clocks before, from a
hybrid mechanical-analog display
, to a
splitless flip-clock
, and a fully analog
hollow face clock
. Of course [shiura] is hardly our only
clock-making contributor
, because it
it
always
clock time at Hackaday. | 11 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120548",
"author": "Lennart",
"timestamp": "2025-04-21T12:48:16",
"content": "It okay that it can’t handle the non-leap year 2100!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8120605",
"author": "IsRadioKill",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,371,570.182651 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/20/preventing-galvanic-corrosion-in-water-cooling-loops/ | Preventing Galvanic Corrosion In Water Cooling Loops | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"galvanic corrosion",
"galvanic series"
] | Water is an excellent coolant, but the flip side is that it is also an excellent solvent. This, in short, is why any water cooling loop is also a prime candidate for an interesting introduction to the galvanic metal series, resulting in severe corrosion that commences immediately. In a
recent video
by [der8aer], this issue is demonstrated using a GPU cold plate. The part is made out of nickel-plated copper and features many small channels to increase surface area with the coolant.
The surface analysis of the sample cold plate after a brief exposure to distilled water shows the deposited copper atoms. (Credit: der8auer, YouTube)
Theoretically, if one were to use distilled water in a coolant loop that contains a single type of metal (like copper), there would be no issue. As [der8auer] points out, fittings, radiators, and the cooling block are nearly always made of various metals and alloys like brass, for example. This thus creates the setup for
galvanic corrosion
, whereby one metal acts as the anode and the other as a cathode. While this is desirable in batteries, for a cooling loop, this means that the water strips metal ions off the anode and deposits them on the cathode metal.
The nickel-plated cold plate should be immune to this if the plating were perfect. However, as demonstrated in the video, even a brief exposure to distilled water at 60°C induced strong galvanic corrosion. Analysis in an SEM showed that the imperfect nickel plating allowed copper ions to be dissolved into the water before being deposited on top of the nickel (cathode). In a comparison with another sample that had a coolant with corrosion inhibitor (DP Ultra) used, no such corrosion was observed, even after much longer exposure.
This DP Ultra coolant is mostly distilled water but has glycol added. The glycol improves the pH and coats surfaces to prevent galvanic corrosion. The other element is benzotriazole, which provides similar benefits. Of course, each corrosion inhibitor targets a specific environment, and there is also the issue with organic films forming, which may require biocides to be added. As usual,
water cooling
has more subtlety than you’d expect. | 50 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120498",
"author": "moo",
"timestamp": "2025-04-21T06:39:16",
"content": "can’t you just drop a block of zinc in the reservoir or something?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8120578",
"author": "Suppressed Carrier",
... | 1,760,371,570.277958 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/20/china-hosts-robot-marathon/ | China Hosts Robot Marathon | Al Williams | [
"News",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"marathon",
"robot"
] | China played host to what, presumably, was the world’s first
robot and human half-marathon
. You can check out the action and the Tiangong Ultra robot that won in the video below. The event took place in Beijing and spanned 21.1 km. There was, however, a barrier between lanes for humans and machines.
The human rules were the same as you’d expect, but the robots did need a few concessions, such as battery swap stops. The winning ‘bot crossed the finish line in just over 160 minutes. However, there were awards for endurance, gait design, and design innovation.
Humans still took the top spots, though. We also noted that some of the robots had issues where they lost control or had other problems. Even the winner fell down once and had three battery changes over the course.
Of the 21 robots that started, only six made the finish line. We don’t know how many of the 12,000 humans finished, but we are pretty sure it was more than six, so we don’t think runners have to worry about robot overlords yet.
But they’re getting better all the time
. | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120461",
"author": "Als",
"timestamp": "2025-04-21T04:02:45",
"content": "the robot looks like it has to take a #2 soon",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8120509",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-04-21... | 1,760,371,570.379596 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/20/hackaday-links-april-20-2025/ | Hackaday Links: April 20, 2025 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"antikythera",
"biosignature",
"citation",
"crosswalk",
"deep-fake",
"DMDS",
"DMS",
"exoplanet",
"gear",
"hackaday links",
"James Webb",
"jwst",
"K2-18b",
"Kepler",
"Musk",
"Palo Alto",
"scientific fraud",
"silicon valley",
"tooth",
"vegetative electron microscopy",
"Zuckerbe... | We appear to be edging ever closer to a solid statement of “We are not alone” in the universe with this week’s announcement of
the detection of biosignatures
in the atmosphere of exoplanet K2-18b. The planet, which is 124 light-years away, has been the focus of much attention since it was discovered in 2015 using the Kepler space telescope because it lies in the habitable zone around its red-dwarf star. Initial observations with Hubble indicated the presence of water vapor, and follow-up investigations using the James Webb Space Telescope detected all sorts of goodies in the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide and methane. But more recently, JWST saw signs of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), organic molecules which, on Earth, are strongly associated with biological processes in marine bacteria and phytoplankton.
The team analyzing the JWST data says that the data is currently pretty good, with a statistical significance of 99.7%. That’s a three-sigma result, and while it’s promising, it’s not quite good enough to seal the deal that life evolved more than once in the universe. If further JWST observations manage to firm that up to five sigma, it’ll be the most important scientific result of all time. To our way of thinking, it would be much more significant than finding evidence of ancient or even current life in our solar system, since cross-contamination is so easy in the relatively cozy confines of the Sun’s gravity well. K2-18b is far enough away from our system as to make that virtually impossible, and that would say a lot about the universality of biochemical evolution. It could also provide an answer to the Fermi Paradox, since it could indicate that the galaxy is actually teeming with life but under conditions that make it difficult to evolve into species capable of making detectable techno-signatures. It’s hard to build a radio or a rocket when you live on a high-
g
water world, after all.
Closer to home, there’s speculation that
the famous Antikythera mechanism may not have worked at all
in its heyday. According to researchers from Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata in Argentina, “the world’s first analog computer” could not have worked due to the accumulated mechanical error of its gears. They blame this on the shape of the gear teeth, which appear triangular on CT scans of the mechanism, and which they seem to attribute to manufacturing defects. Given the 20-odd centuries the brass-and-iron device spent at the bottom of the Aegean Sea and the potential for artifacts in CT scans, we’re not sure it’s safe to pin the suboptimal shape of the gear teeth on the maker of the mechanism. They also seem to call into question the ability of 1st-century BCE craftsmen to construct a mechanism with sufficient precision to serve as a useful astronomical calculator, a position that Chris from Clickspring has been putting the lie to with
his ongoing effort
to reproduce the Antikythera mechanism using ancient tools and materials. We’re keen to hear what he has to say about this issue.
Speaking of questionable scientific papers, have you heard about
“vegetative electron microscopy”
? It’s all the rage, having been mentioned in at least 22 scientific papers recently, even though no such technique exists. Or rather, it didn’t exist until around 2017, when it popped up in a couple of Iranian scientific papers. How it came into being is a bit of a mystery, but it may have started with faulty scans of a paper from the 1950s, which had the terms “vegetative” and “electron microscopy” printed in different columns but directly across from each other. That somehow led to the terms getting glued together, possibly in one of those Iranian papers because the Farsi spelling of “vegetative” is very similar to “scanning,” a much more sensible prefix to “electron microscopy.” Once the nonsense term was created, it propagated into subsequent papers of dubious scientific provenance by authors who didn’t bother to check their references, or perhaps never existed in the first place. The wonders of our AI world never cease to amaze.
And finally, from the heart of Silicon Valley comes a tale of cyber hijinks as
several crosswalks were hacked to taunt everyone’s favorite billionaires
. Twelve Palo Alto crosswalks were targeted by persons unknown, who somehow managed to gain access to the voice announcement system in the crosswalks and replaced the normally helpful voice messages with deep-fake audio of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg saying ridiculous but plausible things. Redwood City and Menlo Park crosswalks may have also been attacked, and soulless city officials responded by disabling the voice feature. We get why they had to do it, but as cyberattacks go, this one seems pretty harmless. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120424",
"author": "College cynic",
"timestamp": "2025-04-20T23:24:00",
"content": "Garbage papers have remained a problem long before artificial stupidity. As long as there’s been university faculty with quotas, there’s been useless fluff papers at their least unethical, to downri... | 1,760,371,570.33035 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/20/milliforth-6502-a-forth-for-the-6502-cpu/ | MilliForth-6502, A Forth For The 6502 CPU | John Elliot V | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"6502",
"forth",
"milliForth",
"sectorforth"
] | Forth is popular on small computers because it is simple to implement, yet quite powerful. But what happens when you really need to shrink it? Well, if your target is the 6502, there’s
milliForth-6502
.
This is a port of
milliForth
, which is a fork of sectorforth. The sectorforth project set the standard, implementing a Forth so small it could fit in a 512-byte boot sector. The milliForth project took sectorforth and made it even smaller, weighing in at only 336 bytes. However, both milliForth and sectorforth are for the x86 architecture. With milliForth-6502, [Alvaro G. S. Barcellos] wanted to see how small he could make a 6502 implementation.
So how big is the milliForth-6502 binary? Our tests indicate: 1,110 bytes. It won’t quite fit in a boot sector, but it’s pretty small!
Most of the code for milliForth-6502 is assembly code in
sector-6502.s
. This code is compiled using tools from the
cc65
project. To run the code
lib6502
is used for 6502 emulation.
Emulation is all well and good as far as it goes, especially for development and testing, but we’d love to see this code running on a real 6502. Even better would be a
6502 built from scratch
! If you get this code running we’d love to
hear how it went
! | 41 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120375",
"author": "Wallace Owen",
"timestamp": "2025-04-20T20:29:39",
"content": "Didn’t fig forth have a port to the 6502?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8120386",
"author": "Garth Wilson",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,371,570.481777 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/20/the-most-printable-3d-printer-yet/ | The Most Printable 3D Printer Yet | Aaron Beckendorf | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3D printed motor",
"3d printer",
"brushed motor",
"self-replicating"
] | Despite the best efforts of the RepRap community over the last twenty years, self-replicating 3D printers have remained a stubbornly elusive goal, largely due to the difficulty of printing electronics. [Brian Minnick]’s
fully-printed 3D printer
could eventually change that, and he’s already solved an impressive number of technical challenges in the process.
[Brian]’s first step was to make a 3D-printable motor. Instead of the more conventional stepper motors, he designed a fully 3D-printed 3-pole brushed motor. The motor coils are made from solder paste, which the printer applies using a custom syringe-based extruder. The paste is then sintered at a moderate temperature, resulting in traces with a resistivity as low as 0.001 Ω mm, low enough to make effective magnetic coils.
Brushed motors are less accurate than stepper motors, but they do have a particularly useful advantage here: their speed can be controlled simply by varying the voltage. This enables a purely electromechanical control system – no microcontroller on this printer! A 3D-printed data strip encodes instructions for the printer as holes in a plastic sheet, which open and close simple switches in the motor controller. These switches control the speed, direction, and duration of the motors’ movement, letting the data strip encode motion vectors.
Remarkably, the hotend on this printer is also 3D-printed. [Brian] took advantage of the fact that PEEK’s melting point increases by about 110 ℃ when it’s annealed, which should allow an annealed hotend to print itself. So far it’s only extruded PLA, but the idea seems sound.
The video below the break shows a single-axis proof of concept in action. We haven’t been able to find any documentation of a fully-functional 3D printer, but nevertheless, it’s an impressive demonstration. We’ve covered
similar printers
before, and if you make progress in this area, be sure to send us a
tip
. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120358",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-04-20T19:15:19",
"content": "Brushed motors are less accurate than stepper motors, but they do have a particularly useful advantage here: their speed can be controlled simply by varying the voltage.Rather, it’s limited – not controlled.... | 1,760,371,570.702061 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/18/a-pi-based-lidar-scanner/ | A Pi-Based LiDAR Scanner | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"2d visualization",
"3d scanning",
"camera",
"ldrobot",
"lidar",
"raspberry pi",
"vertex color"
] | Although there are plenty of methods for effectively imaging a 3D space, LIDAR is widely regarded as one of the most effective methods. These systems use a rapid succession of laser pulses over a wide area to create an accurate 3D map. Early LIDAR systems were cumbersome and expensive but as the march of time continues on, these systems have become much more accessible to the average person.
So much so that you can quickly attach one to a Raspberry Pi and perform LiDAR imaging
for a very reasonable cost.
This software suite is a custom serial driver and scanning system for the Raspberry Pi, designed to work with LDRobot LIDAR modules like the LD06, LD19, and STL27L. Although still in active development, it offers an impressive set of features: real-time 2D visualizations, vertex color extraction, generation of 360-degree panoramic maps using fisheye camera images, and export capabilities for integration with other tools. The hardware setup includes a stepper motor for quick full-area scanning, and power options that include either a USB battery bank or a pair of 18650 lithium cells—making the system portable and self-contained during scans.
LIDAR systems are quickly becoming a dominant player for anything needing to map out or navigate a complex 3D space, from
self-driving cars
to
small Arduino-powered robots
. The capabilities a system like this brings are substantial for a reasonable cost, and we expect to see more LiDAR modules in other hardware as the technology matures further.
Thanks to [Dirk] for the tip! | 30 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119806",
"author": "Cyna",
"timestamp": "2025-04-18T21:14:12",
"content": "First suggestion: Use a newer Trinamic driver (like TMC220x) instead of the older, very noisy A4988.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8119811",
"auth... | 1,760,371,570.651593 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/18/vintage-game-rides-again-thanks-to-modern-tech/ | Vintage Game Rides Again Thanks To Modern Tech | Dan Maloney | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"RACE",
"reproduction",
"steel",
"tin",
"vintage"
] | You have to admire the lengths designers went to back in the day to create engaging games and toys. One particularly clever game of this type was called GEE-WIZ, a horse racing game from the 1920s that seems like it might have been right at home at a bar or pub, and that caught [Michael Gardi]’s imagination enough that
he built a modern version of the game
.
GEE-WIZ imitates a horse race with an extremely clever mechanism powered by a flywheel on a square shaft. Play is started by pulling a ripcord, which spins up the flywheel to shoot steel balls up six tracks in a gently sloped playing field. The balls hit tin horses riding in each track, pushing them ever further up the track until they trip a flag to indicate the winner. We can practically hear the cheers.
As with many of his other retro-reimaginings, [Mike]’s 21st-century version of GEE-WIZ focuses on capturing the look and feel of the original as accurately as possible. To that end, he put a lot of work into the 3D prints that form the playing field, as well as labels that adorned the original. But the game wouldn’t be much good without the drive mechanism, so [Mike] had to put some work into reverse-engineering the flywheel. He had that machined out of stainless steel and mounted it to the base with some chunky printed bearing blocks. You can see the final product in the brief video below.
[Mike] says that vintage toy recreations aren’t exactly his usual fare, but some might argue that
the Sol-20
and
Minivac 601
very much count as toys. Either way, we really like the simplicity of GEE-WIZ and the quality of [Mike]’s reproduction. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119776",
"author": "DavidO",
"timestamp": "2025-04-18T19:05:53",
"content": "Wonderful! Pocket-sized “Triplets of Belleville” Mafia machine:-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8119803",
"author": "Michael Gardi",
"timest... | 1,760,371,570.744661 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/18/hackaday-podcast-episode-317-quantum-diamonds-citizen-science-and-cobol-to-ai/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 317: Quantum Diamonds, Citizen Science, And Cobol To AI | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | When Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Al Williams need a break from writing posts, they hop on the podcast and talk about their favorite stories of the past week. Want to know what they were talking about? Listen in below and find out!
In an unusual twist, a listener sent in the sound for this week’s What’s This Sound competition, so it turns out Elliot and Al were both stumped for a change. See if you can do better, and you might just score a Hackaday Podcast T-shirt.
On the hacking front, the guys talked about what they hope to see as entries in the pet hacking contest, quantum diamonds (no kidding), spectrometers, and several science projects.
There was talk of a tiny robot, a space mouse—the computer kind, not a flying rodent—and even an old-fashioned photophone that let Alexander Graham Bell use the sun like a string on a paper cup telephone.
Things really heat up at the end, when there is talk about computer programming ranging from COBOL to Vibe programming. In case you’ve missed it, vibe coding is basically delegating your work to the AI, but do you really want to? Maybe, if your job is to convert all that old COBOL code.
Want to read along? The links are below. Be sure to leave your robot plans, COBOL war stories, and AI-generated Vibe limerics in the comments!
As always,
the human-generated Hackaday Podcast is available as a DRM-free MP3 download
.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 317 Show Notes:
News:
Announcing The Hackaday Pet Hacks Contest
What’s that Sound?
Want to win a Hackaday Podcast t-shirt?
Send in your guess!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Shine On You Crazy Diamond Quantum Magnetic Sensor
Quantum Sensor Uses Synthetic Diamond
Quantum Diamond Explainer
if you want to learn more
GPS Broken? Try TV!
SpaceMouse Destroyed For Science
Trinteract Mini Space Mouse Does It In 3D
3D Navigator For Blender
Spacemice Gallery
Tiny Pogo Robot Gets Wings, Does Flips
Replica Of 1880 Wireless Telephone Is All Mirrors, No Smoke
A Brief History Of Optical Communication
Hackaday Explains: Li-Fi & Visible Light Communications
Popular Electronics
DIY Scanning Spectrometer Is A Bright Idea
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Budget Schlieren Imaging Setup Uses 3D Printing To Reveal The Unseen
An Absolute Zero Of A Project
GK STM32 MCU-Based Handheld Game System
Al’s Picks:
Audio Effects Applied To Text
Tracing The #!: How The Linux Kernel Handles The Shebang
DIY Soldering Tweezers, Extra Thrifty
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Porting COBOL Code And The Trouble With Ditching Domain Specific Languages
Ask Hackaday: Vibe Coding
Why AI Usage May Degrade Human Cognition And Blunt Critical Thinking Skills | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120699",
"author": "joost (Yohst)",
"timestamp": "2025-04-21T19:49:29",
"content": "Nice episode – as always. But this time, I must protest – yep I do. AI (pick your favorite) not good for much programming as implied by your discussion is far from the truth. I have my own little c... | 1,760,371,570.783943 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/18/presence-detection-augments-1930s-home/ | Presence Detection Augments 1930s Home | Bryan Cockfield | [
"home hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"home automation",
"light switch",
"mmwave",
"presence detection",
"radar",
"sensor",
"smart home"
] | It can be jarring to see various sensors, smart switches, cameras, and other technology in a house built in the 1930s, like [Chris]’s was. But he still wanted presence detection so as to not stub any toes in the dark.
The result is a sensor that blends in with the home’s aesthetics
a bit better than anything you’re likely to find at the Big Box electronics store.
For the presence detection sensors, [Chris] chose to go with 24 GHz mmwave radar modules that, unlike infrared sensors, can detect if a human is in an area even if they are incredibly still. Paired with the diminutive ESP32-S2 Mini, each pair takes up very little real estate on a wall.
Although he doesn’t have a 3D printer to really pare down the size of the enclosure to the maximum, he found pre-made enclosures instead that are fairly inconspicuous on the wall. Another design goal here was to make sure that everything was powered so he wouldn’t have to perpetually change batteries, so a small wire leads from the prototype unit as well.
The radar module and ESP pair are set up with some code to get them running in Home Assistant, which [Chris] has provided on the project’s page. With everything up and running he has a module that can control lights without completely changing the aesthetic or behavior of his home. If you’re still using other presence sensors and are new to millimeter wave radar,
take a look at this project for a good guide on getting started with this fairly new technology
. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119734",
"author": "Jade",
"timestamp": "2025-04-18T15:48:45",
"content": "It looks like he mounted one of those little spider eye diffusers over the mmwave module. Does that affect the reception at all? I’ve been setting up some of these recently and the detection range is very fi... | 1,760,371,570.843008 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/18/this-week-in-security-no-more-cves-4chan-and-recall-returns/ | This Week In Security: No More CVEs, 4chan, And Recall Returns | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"CVEs",
"mitre",
"recall",
"This Week in Security",
"Vibes"
] | The sky is falling. Or more specifically, it was about to fall, according to the security community this week. The MITRE Corporation came within a hair’s breadth of
running out of its contract to maintain the CVE database
. And admittedly, it would be a bad thing if we suddenly lost updates to the central CVE database. What’s particularly interesting is how we knew about this possibility at all. An April 15 letter sent to the CVE board warned that the specific contract that funds MITRE’s CVE and CWE work was due to expire on the 16th. This was not an official release, and it’s not clear exactly how this document was leaked.
Many people made political hay out of the apparent imminent carnage. And while there’s always an element of political maneuvering when it comes to contract renewal, it’s worth noting that it’s not unheard of for MITRE’s CVE funding to go down to the wire like this. We don’t know how many times we’ve been in this position in years past. Regardless, MITRE has spun out another non-profit, The CVE Foundation, specifically to see to the continuation of the CVE database. And at the last possible moment, CISA has announced that it has invoked an option in the existing contract, funding MITRE’s CVE work for another 11 months.
Android Automatic Reboots
Mobile devices are in their most secure state right after boot, before the user password is entered to unlock the device for the first time. Tools like Cellebrite will often work once a device has been unlocked once, but just can’t exploit a device in the first booted state. This is why Google is rolling out a feature, where
Android devices that haven’t been unlocked for three days will automatically reboot
.
Once a phone is unlocked, the encryption keys are stored in memory, and it only takes a lock screen bypass to have full access to the device. But before the initial unlock, the device is still encrypted, and the keys are safely stored in the hardware security module. It’s interesting that this new feature isn’t delivered as an Android OS update, but as part of the Google Play Services — the closed source libraries that run on official Android phones.
4chan
4chan has been hacked
. It turns out, running ancient PHP code and out-of-date libraries on a controversial site is not a great idea. A likely exploit chain has been described, though this should be considered very unofficial at this point: Some 4chan boards allow PDF uploads, but the server didn’t properly vet those files. A PostScript file can be uploaded instead of a PDF, and an old version of Ghostscript processes it. The malicious PostScript file triggers arbitrary code execution in Ghostscript, and a SUID binary is used to elevate privileges to root.
PHP source code of the site has been leaked, and the site is still down as of the time of writing. It’s unclear how long restoration will take. Part of the fallout from this attack is the capture and release of internal discussions, pictures of the administrative tools, and even email addresses from the site’s administration.
Recall is Back
Microsoft is back at it,
working to release Recall in a future Windows 11 update
. You may
remember our coverage of this
, castigating the security failings, and pointing out that Recall managed to come across as creepy. Microsoft wisely pulled the project before rolling it out as a full release.
If you’re not familiar with the Recall concept, it’s the automated screenshotting of your Windows machine every few seconds. The screenshots are then locally indexed with an LLM, allowing for future queries to be run against the data. And once the early reviewers got over the creepy factor, it turns out that’s genuinely useful sometimes.
On top of the security hardening Microsoft has already done, this iteration of Recall is an opt-in service, with an easy pause button to temporarily disable the snapshot captures. This is definitely an improvement. Critics are still sounding the alarm, but for a much narrower problem: Recall’s snapshots will automatically extract information from security focused applications. Think about Signal’s disappearing messages feature. If you send such a message to a desktop user, that has Recall enabled, the message is likely stored in that user’s Recall database.
It seems that Microsoft has done a reasonably good job of cleaning up the Recall feature, particularly by disabling it by default. It seems like the privacy issues could be furthered addressed by giving applications and even web pages a way to opt out of Recall captures, so private messages and data aren’t accidentally captured. As Recall rolls out, do keep in mind the potential extra risks.
16,000 Symlinks
It’s been recently discovered that
over 16,000 Fortinet devices are compromised with a trivial backdoor
, in the form of a symlink making the root filesystem available inside the web-accessible language folder. This technique is limited to devices that have the SSL VPN enabled. That system exposes a web interface, with multiple translation options. Those translation files live in a world-accessible folder on the web interface, and it makes for the perfect place to hide a backdoor like this one. It’s not a new attack, and Fortinet believes the exploited devices have harbored this backdoor since the 2023-2024 hacking spree.
Vibes
We’re a little skeptical on the whole vibe coding thing. Our own
[Tyler August] covered one of the reasons why
. LLMs are likely to hallucinate package names, and vibe coders may not check closely, leading to easy typosquatting (LLMsquatting?) attacks. Figure out the likely hallucinated names, register those packages, and profit.
But what about
Vibe Detections
? OK, we know, letting an LLM look at system logs for potentially malicious behavior isn’t a new idea. But [Claudio Contin] demonstrates just how easy it can be, with the new
EDV
tool. Formally not for production use, this new gadget makes it easy to take Windows system events, and feed them into Copilot, looking for potentially malicious activity. And while it’s not perfect, it did manage to detect about 40% of the malicious tests that Windows Defender missed. It seems like LLMs are going to stick around, and this might be one of the places they actually make sense.
Bits and Bytes
Apple has pushed updates to their entire line,
fixing a pair of 0-day vulnerabilities
. The first is a wild vulnerability in CoreAudio, in that playing audio from a malicious audio file can lead to arbitrary code execution. The chaser is the flaw in the Pointer Authentication scheme, that Apple uses to prevent memory-related vulnerabilities. Apple has acknowledged that these flaws were used in the wild, but no further details have been released.
The Gnome desktop has
an interesting problem
, where the
yelp
help browser can be tricked into reading the contents of arbitrary filesystem files. Combined with the possibility of browser links automatically opening in
yelp
, this makes for a much more severe problem than one might initially think.
And for those of us following along with Google Project Zero’s deep dive into the Windows Registry,
part six of that series is now available
. This installment dives into actual memory structures, as well as letting us in on the history of why the Windows registry is called the hive and uses the
0xBEE0BEE0
signature. It’s bee themed,
because one developer hated bees
, and another developer thought it would be hilarious. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119710",
"author": "Not-Q",
"timestamp": "2025-04-18T14:58:39",
"content": "I’ve been poking around about the 4chan hack and found no answer , so I’ll toss it out here: Did they doxx Q? As much as I hate doxxing on principle, I am more than willing to indulge in some bald faced hyp... | 1,760,371,570.891219 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/18/d20-shaped-quasicrystal-makes-high-strength-alloy-printable/ | D20-shaped Quasicrystal Makes High-Strength Alloy Printable | Tyler August | [
"Science"
] | [
"3d printed metal",
"crystallography",
"materials science",
"quasicrystal"
] | When is a crystal not a crystal? When it’s a
quasi-crystal, a paradoxical form of metal recently found in some 3D printed metal alloys
by [A.D. Iams et al] at the American National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST).
As you might remember from chemistry class, crystals are made up of blocks of atoms (usually called ‘unit cells’) that fit together in perfect repetition — baring dislocations, cracks, impurities, or anything else that might throw off a theoretically perfect crystal structure. There are only so many ways to tessellate atoms in 3D space; 230 of them, to be precise. A quasicrystal isn’t any of them. Rather than repeat endlessly in 3D space, a quasicrystal
never
repeats perfectly, like a 3D dimensional
Penrose tile
. The discovery of quasicrystals dates back to the 1980s, and was awarded
a noble prize in 2011
.
Penrose tiling– the pattern never repeats perfectly. Quasicrystals do this in 3D. (Image by Inductiveload, Public Domain)
Quasicrystals aren’t exactly common in nature, so how does 3D printing come into this? Well, it turns out that, quite accidentally, a particular Aluminum-Zirconium alloy was forming small zones of quasicrystals (the black spots in the image above) when used in powder bed fusion printing. Other high strength-alloys tended to be very prone to cracking, to the point of unusability, and this Al-Zr alloy,
discovered in 2017
, was the first of its class.
You might imagine that the non-regular structure of a quasicrystal wouldn’t propagate cracks as easily as a regular crystal structure, and you would be right! The NIST researchers obviously wanted to investigate why the printable alloy had the properties it does. When their crystallographic analysis showed not only five-fold, but also three-fold and two-fold rotational symmetry when examined from different angles, the researchers realized they had a quasicrystal on their hands. The unit cell is in the form of a 20-sided icosahedron, providing the penrose-style tiling that keeps the alloy from cracking.
You might say the original team that developed the alloy rolled a nat-20 on their crafting skill. Now that we understand why it works, this research opens up the doors for other metallic quasi-crystals to be developed on purpose, in aluminum and perhaps other alloys.
We’ve written about
3D metal printers
before, and
highlighted a DIY-able plastic SLS kit
, but the high-power powder-bed systems needed for aluminum aren’t often found in makerspaces. If you’re building one or know someone who is,
be sure to let us know. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119691",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-04-18T13:46:40",
"content": "“Other high strength-alloys tended to be very prone to cracking, to the point of usability”Not quite sure what this means or if I’m being slow or its a typo… Should that be “to the point of unusability”? Or ... | 1,760,371,572.647205 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/18/track-your-circuits-a-locomotive-pcb-badge/ | Track Your Circuits: A Locomotive PCB Badge | Matt Varian | [
"PCB Hacks"
] | [
"ATmega32",
"badge",
"charlieplexing",
"pcb",
"train"
] | This fun PCB from [Nick Brown] features a miniature railroad implemented with 0805-sized LEDs. With an eye towards designing his own
fun interactive PCB badge
, the Light-Rail began its journey. He thoroughly documented his process, from shunting various late-night ideas together to tracking down discrepancies between the documentation of a part and the received part.
Inspired by our very own
Supercon 2022 badge
, he wanted to make a fun badge with a heavy focus on the aesthetics of the final design. He also wanted to challenge himself some in this project, so even though there are over 100 LEDs, they are not laid out in a symmetrical or matrix pattern. Instead, it’s an organic, winding railroad with crossings and stations throughout the board. Designed in KiCad the board contains 144 LEDS, 3 seven-segment displays, and over a dozen buttons that all come together in use for the built in game.
The challenges didn’t stop at just the organic layout of all those LEDs. He decided to use Rust for this project, which entailed writing his own driver for the seven-segment displays as well as creating a tone library for the onboard buzzer. As with all projects, unexpected challenges popped up along the way. One issue with how the oscillator was hooked up meant he wasn’t able to use the ATmega32U4, which was the brains of the entire railroad. After some experimenting, he came up with a clever hack: using a pogo pin jig to connect the clock where it needed to go while programming the board.
Be sure to check out all the details of this journey in his build log. If you love interactive badges also check out some of the other
creative boards
we’ve featured. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119697",
"author": "rnjacobs",
"timestamp": "2025-04-18T14:05:24",
"content": "This fills me with joy",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8119743",
"author": "KenN",
"timestamp": "2025-04-18T16:07:50",
"co... | 1,760,371,572.59658 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/19/hydroplaning-rc-jet-boat-steers-clear-of-convention/ | Hydroplaning RC Jet Boat Steers Clear Of Convention | Seth Mabbott | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"hydroplane",
"jet boat",
"rc boat"
] | [CovaConcepts], who has a background in motorsports, has been busy designing an
unconventional radio-controlled watercraft she calls the HydraJet
.
There are two key design decisions that make the HydraJet what it is. First, she chose to propel the boat by pushing against the air via an electric ducted fan (EDF) rather than the water via a traditional water propeller. This simplified construction and made it more affordable, partly because she already had the fan on hand.
Her other design choice was to use wings underneath the boat to lift it out of the water. Not as hydrofoils, where the wings ride below the surface of the water, but for hydroplaning where the wings ride on the surface of the water. Lifting the vehicle out of the water, of course, reduces drag, improving performance as we’ve often seen with high speed watercraft (including
RC models
) as well as slower
bicycle-powered ones
. The choice to rely on hydroplaning also reduces the complexity of the design. Certain hydrofoil designs need to make adjustments in order to keep the vehicle at a steady level, whereas a hydroplaning wings can use a static angle.
Hydrofoils also must overcome challenges to maintain stability
.
[CovaConcepts] hopes to eventually scale the HydraJet up large enough to carry human passengers and we’re looking forward to the opportunity to take it for a spin around the lake.
Thanks to [John Little] for the tip! | 19 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8120031",
"author": "Kenneth Welles",
"timestamp": "2025-04-19T17:32:14",
"content": "This is brilliant! Would love to know:Mass of boattop speedwattage at top speed",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8120034",
"author": "capt... | 1,760,371,572.885065 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/19/vibing-ai-style/ | Vibing, AI Style | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"ai",
"LLM",
"programming",
"vibe coding"
] | This week, the hackerverse was full of “
vibe coding
”. If you’re not caught up on your AI buzzwords, this is the catchy name coined by [Andrej Karpathy] that refers to
basically just YOLOing it with AI coding assistants
. It’s the AI-fueled version of typing in what you want to StackOverflow and picking the top answers. Only, with the current state of LLMs, it’ll probably work after a while of iterating back and forth with the machine.
It’s a tempting vision, and it probably works for a lot of simple applications, in popular languages, or generally
where the ground is already well trodden
. And where the stakes are low, as [Al Williams] pointed out while we were talking about vibing on the podcast. Can you imagine vibe-coded ATM software that
probably
gives you the right amount of money? Vibe-coding automotive ECU software?
While vibe coding seems very liberating and hands-off, it really just changes the burden of doing the coding yourself into making sure that the LLM is giving you what you want, and when it doesn’t, refining your prompts until it does. It’s more like editing and auditing code than authoring it. And while we have no doubt that a stellar programmer like [Karpathy] can verify that he’s getting what he wants, write the correct unit tests, and so on, we’re not sure it’s the panacea that is being proclaimed for folks who
don’t
already know how to code.
Vibe coding should probably be reserved for people who already are expert coders, and for trivial projects. Just the way you wouldn’t let grade-school kids use calculators until they’ve mastered the basics of math by themselves, you shouldn’t let junior programmers vibe code: It simultaneously demands too much knowledge to corral the LLM, while side-stepping any of the learning that would come from doing it yourself.
And then there’s the
security side of vibe coding
, which opens up a whole attack surface. If the LLM isn’t up to industry standards on simple things like input sanitization, your vibed code probably shouldn’t be anywhere near the Internet.
So should
you
be vibing? Sure! If you feel competent overseeing what [Dan] described as
“the worst summer intern ever”
, and the states are low, then it’s absolutely a fun way to kick the tires and see what the tools are capable of. Just go into it all with reasonable expectations.
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
! | 48 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119997",
"author": "thatkat",
"timestamp": "2025-04-19T14:48:31",
"content": "“Vibe coding” is for losers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8120080",
"author": "Narcolapser",
"timestamp": "2025-04-19T22:50:09",... | 1,760,371,573.03201 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/19/will-it-run-llama-2-now-dos-can/ | Will It Run Llama 2? Now DOS Can | Tyler August | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"ai",
"dos 6.22",
"i386",
"llama.2c",
"LLM",
"retrocomputing"
] | Will a 486 run
Crysis
? No, of course not. Will it run a large language model (LLM)? Given the huge buildout of compute power to do just that, many people would scoff at the very notion. But [Yeo Kheng Meng]
is not many people.
He has set up various DOS computers to run a stripped down version of the
Llama 2 LLM, originally from Meta
. More specifically, [Yeo Kheng Meng] is implementing [Andreq Karpathy]’s Llama2.c library, which we have seen here before,
running on Windows 98
.
Llama2.c is a wonderful bit of programming that lets one inference a trained Llama2 model in only seven hundred lines of C. It it is seven hundred lines of
modern
C, however, so porting to DOS 6.22 and the outdated i386 architecture took some doing. [Yeo Kheng Meng] documents that work, and benchmarks a few retrocomputers. As painful as it may be to say — yes, a 486 or a Pentium 1 can now be counted as “retro”.
The models are not large, of course, with TinyStories-trained 260 kB model churning out a blistering 2.08 tokens per second on a generic 486 box. Newer machines can run larger models faster, of course. Ironically a Pentium M Thinkpad T24 (was that
really
21 years ago?) is able to run a larger 110 Mb model faster than [Yeo Kheng Meng]’s modern Ryzen 5 desktop. Not because the Pentium M is going blazing fast, mind you, but because a memory allocation error prevented that model from running on the modern CPU. Slow and steady finishes the race, it seems.
This port will run on any 32-bit i386 hardware, which leaves the 16-bit regime as the next challenge. If one of you can get an Llama 2 hosted locally on an 286 or a 68000-based machine, then we may have to stop asking
“Does it run
DOOM
?”
and start asking “Will it run an LLM?” | 21 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119977",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-04-19T13:30:43",
"content": "In principle, it would also be possible to use an 64-Bit DOS Extender and run it on an AMD Athlon 64 or similar PC.i386 aka x86_32 architecture has the conveniance of V86, but it’s not required.Concurrent ... | 1,760,371,573.102694 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/19/open-source-dmr-radio/ | Open Source DMR Radio | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"codec2",
"dmr",
"ham radio"
] | While ham radio operators have been embracing digital mobile radio (DMR), the equipment is most often bought since — at least in early incarnations — it needs a proprietary CODEC to convert speech to digital and vice versa. But [QRadioLink] decided to tackle a homebrew and open source
DMR modem
.
The setup uses a LimeSDR, GNU Radio, and Codec2. There are some other open DMR projects, such as
OpenRTX
. So we are hopeful there are going to be more choices. The DMR modem, however, is only a proof-of-concept and reuses the MMDVMHost code to do the data link layer.
[QRadioLink] found several receiver implementations available, but only one other DMR transmitter — actually, a transceiver. Rather than use an AMBE hardware device or the potentially encumbered mbelib codec, the project uses Codec2 which is entirely open source.
There’s a lot of explanation about the data collection to prepare for the project, and then a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of the implementation. You might enjoy the video below to see things in action.
If you just want to listen to DMR,
it’s easy
. If Codec2 sounds familiar, it is part of
M17
. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119937",
"author": "Woj SP5WWP",
"timestamp": "2025-04-19T11:24:28",
"content": "OpenRTX is not an “open DMR project”. It’s an open-source firmware for amateur transceivers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8119953",
"author... | 1,760,371,572.549153 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/18/restoring-an-abandoned-game-boy-kiosk/ | Restoring An Abandoned Game Boy Kiosk | Maya Posch | [
"Games",
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"Nintendo Game Boy",
"restoration"
] | Back in the olden days, there existed physical game stores, which in addition to physical games would also have kiosks where you could try out the current game consoles and handhelds. Generally these kiosks held the console, a display and any controllers if needed. After a while these kiosks would get scrapped, with only a very few ending up being rescued and restored. One of the lucky ones is a Game Boy kiosk, which
[The Retro Future] managed to snag
after it was found in a construction site. Sadly the thing was in a very rough condition, with the particle board especially being mostly destroyed.
Display model Game Boy, safely secured into the demo kiosk. (Credit: The Retro Future, YouTube)
These Game Boy kiosks also featured a special Game Boy, which – despite being super rare – also was hunted down. This led to the restoration, which included recovering as much of the original particle board as possible, with a professional furniture restore ([Don]) lending his expertise. This provides a master class in how to patch up damaged particle board, as maligned as this wood-dust-and-glue material is.
The boards were then reassembled more securely than the wood screws used by the person who had found the destroyed kiosk, in a way that allows for easy disassembly if needed. Fortunately most of the plastic pieces were still intact, and the Game Boy grey paint was easily matched. Next was reproducing a missing piece of art work, with fortunately existing versions available as reference. For a few missing metal bits that held the special Game Boy in place another kiosk was used to provide measurements.
After all this, the kiosk was powered back on, and it was like 1990 was back once again, just in time for playing Tetris on a dim, green-and-black screen while hunched half into the kiosk at the game store. | 8 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119865",
"author": "Mause",
"timestamp": "2025-04-19T06:13:38",
"content": "Is it true that it does not work outside the kiosk? And what that circuit board does? Is it only a power supply or it injects some signal that makes the gameboy run?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,... | 1,760,371,572.934804 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/18/haircuts-in-space-how-to-keep-your-astronauts-looking-fresh/ | Haircuts In Space: How To Keep Your Astronauts Looking Fresh | Maya Posch | [
"Space"
] | [
"haircut",
"international space station"
] | NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman gives ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli a haircut in the Kibo laboratory on the ISS in 2011. (Credit: NASA)
Although we tend to see mostly the glorious and fun parts of hanging out in a space station, the human body will not cease to do its usual things, whether it involves the digestive system, or even something as mundane as the hair that sprouts from our heads. After all, we do not want our astronauts to return to Earth after a half-year stay in the ISS looking as if they got marooned on an uninhabited island. Introducing the
onboard barbershop on the ISS
, and the engineering behind making sure that after a decade the ISS doesn’t positively look like it got the 1970s shaggy wall carpet treatment.
The basic solution is rather straightforward: an electric hair clipper attached to a vacuum that will whisk the clippings safely into a container rather than being allowed to drift around. In a way this is similar to the vacuums you find on routers and saws in a woodworking shop, just with more keratin rather than cellulose and lignin.
On the Chinese Tiangong space station they use
a similar approach
, with the video showing how simple the system is, little more than a small handheld vacuum cleaner attached to the clippers. Naturally, you cannot just tape the vacuum cleaner to some clippers and expect it to get most of the clippings, which is where both the ISS and Tiangong solutions seems to have a carefully designed construction to maximize the hair removal. You can see the ISS system in action in
this 2019 video
from the Canadian Space Agency.
Of course, this system is not perfect, but amidst the kilograms of shed skin particles from the crew, a few small hair clippings can likely be handled by the ISS’ air treatment systems just fine. The goal after all is to not have a massive expanding cloud of hair clippings filling up the space station. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119857",
"author": "jcj",
"timestamp": "2025-04-19T04:13:13",
"content": "The Suck Kut is real!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8119872",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2025-04-19T07:14:59",
"conten... | 1,760,371,572.709173 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/18/robot-picks-fruit-and-changes-light-bulbs-with-measuring-tape/ | Robot Picks Fruit And Changes Light Bulbs With Measuring Tape | Tyler August | [
"Parts",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"agricultural robot",
"end effector",
"robot gripper",
"robotic gripper"
] | How far can you stretch a measuring tape before it buckles? The answer probably depends more on the tape than the user, but it does show how sturdy the coiled spring steel rulers can be. [Gengzhi He et. al.] may have been playing that game in the lab at UC San Diego when they hit upon the idea for a new kind of
low-cost robotic gripper
.
Four motors, four strips of measuring tape (doubled up)– one robot hand.
With the lovely backronym “GRIP-tape” — standing for Grasping and Rolling in Plane — you get a sense for what this effector can do. Its two “fingers” are each made of loops of doubled-up measuring tape bound together with what looks suspiciously like duck tape. With four motors total, the fingers can be lengthened or shortened by spooling the tape, allowing a reaching motion, pivot closer or further apart for grasping,
and
move-in-place like conveyor belts, rotating the object in their grasp.
The combination means it can reach out, grab a light bulb, and screw it into a socket. Or open and decant a jar of spices. Another video shows the gripper reaching out to pick a lemon, and gently twist it off the tree. It’s quite a performance for a device with such modest components.
At the moment, the gripper is controlled via remote; the researchers plan on adding sensors and AI autonomous control. Read all the
details in the preprint
, or check below the fold to watch the robot in action.
This is hardly the first time we’ve
highlighted a grabby robot
. We’ve
seen belts
, we’ve
seen origami
— but this is the first time we’ve seen a measuring tape. Have you seen a cool robot? Toss us a tip. We’d love to hear from you.
Tip of the hat to reader [anonymouse] for pointing this one out. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119835",
"author": "Craig",
"timestamp": "2025-04-19T00:33:25",
"content": "Yes, but a 3 year old can’t work non-stop for hours. Robots don’t need to be even half as agile as humans to be valuable. They just need to be able to do the same thing without needing a lunch break or slee... | 1,760,371,572.503701 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/17/modernizing-an-enigma-machine/ | Modernizing An Enigma Machine | Matt Varian | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"De Bruijn sequence",
"encryption",
"enigma",
"enigma machine",
"Pogo pin"
] | This project by [Miro] is awesome, not only did he build a replica Enigma machine using modern technologies, but after completing it, he went back and revised several components to make it more usable. We’ve featured Enigma machines here before; they are complex combinations of mechanical and electrical components that form one of the most recognizable encryption methods in history.
His first Enigma machine
was designed closely after the original. He used custom PCBs for the plugboard and lightboard, which significantly cleaned up the internal wiring. For the lightboard, he cleverly used a laser printer on semi-transparent paper to create crisp letters, illuminated from behind. For the keyboard, he again designed a custom PCB to connect all the switches. However, he encountered an unexpected setback due to error stack-up. We love that he took the time to document this issue and explain that the project didn’t come together perfectly on the first try and how some adjustments were needed along the way.
The real heart of this build is the thought and effort put into the design of the encryption rotors. These are the components that rotate with each keystroke, changing the signal path as the system is used. In a clever hack, he used a combination of PCBs, pogo pins, and 3D printed parts to replicate the function of the original wheels.
Enigma machine connoisseurs will notice that the wheels rotate differently than in the original design, which leads us to the second half of this project. After using the machine for a while, it became clear that the pogo pins were wearing down the PCB surfaces on the wheels. To solve this, he undertook
an extensive redesign
that resulted in a much more robust and reliable machine.
In the redesign, instead of using pogo pins to make contact with pads, he explored several alternative methods to detect the wheel position—including IR light with phototransistors, rotary encoders, magnetic encoders, Hall-effect sensors, and more. The final solution reduced the wiring and addressed long-term reliability concerns by eliminating the mechanical wear present in the original design.
Not only did he document the build on his site, but he also created a video that not only shows what he built but also gives a great explanation of the logic and function of the machine. Be sure to also
check out some of the other
cool
enigma machines we’ve featured over the years
. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119409",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-04-17T14:32:04",
"content": "Cool project and cool to see how various methods were tried to achieve the goal.Looking at the project page (https://joo.kie.sk/?page_id=999) I can’t help seeing four cat faces in the image (rotors_ir.jpg) of... | 1,760,371,572.825345 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/16/using-a-mig-welder-acetylene-torch-and-air-hammer-to-remove-a-broken-bolt/ | Using A MIG Welder, Acetylene Torch, And Air Hammer To Remove A Broken Bolt | John Elliot V | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"Acetylene Torch",
"Air Hammer",
"Bolt Removal",
"Broken Bolt",
"mig welder"
] | If your shop comes complete with a MIG welder, an acetylene torch, and an air hammer, then you have more options than most when it comes to
removing broken bolts
.
In this short video [Jim’s Automotive Machine Shop, Inc] takes us through the process of removing a broken manifold bolt: use a MIG welder to attach a washer, then attach a suitably sized nut and weld that onto the washer, heat the assembly with the acetylene torch, loosen up any corrosion on the threads by tapping with a hammer, then simply unscrew with your wrench! Everything is easy when you know how!
Of course if your shop
doesn’t
come complete with a MIG welder and acetylene torch you will have to get by with the old Easy Out screw extractor like the rest of us. And if you are faced with a nasty bolt situation keep in mind that
lubrication can help
. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119336",
"author": "Steve Gunnell",
"timestamp": "2025-04-17T06:53:59",
"content": "If this process interests you then have a look at any of the groups restoring WW2 tanks. It is a very common task to have to remove sheared, corroded or stuck bolts and studs. Also Engels Coach Shop... | 1,760,371,573.212675 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/16/an-absolute-zero-of-a-project/ | An Absolute Zero Of A Project | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"absolute zero",
"Charles's Law",
"thermocouple",
"thermodynamics",
"time of flight",
"TOF"
] | How would you go about determining absolute zero? Intuitively, it seems like you’d need some complicated physics setup with lasers and maybe some liquid helium. But as it turns out,
all you need is some simple lab glassware and a heat gun
. And a laser, of course.
To be clear, the method that [Markus Bindhammer] describes in the video below is only an estimation of absolute zero via Charles’s Law, which describes how gases expand when heated. To gather the needed data, [Marb] used a 50-ml glass syringe mounted horizontally on a stand and fitted with a thermocouple. Across from the plunger of the syringe he placed a VL6180 laser time-of-flight sensor, to measure the displacement of the plunger as the air within it expands.
Data from the TOF sensor and the thermocouple were recorded by a microcontroller as the air inside the syringe was gently heated. Plotting the volume of the gas versus the temperature results shows a nicely linear relationship, and the linear regression can be used to calculate the temperature at which the volume of the gas would be zero. The result: -268.82°C, or only about four degrees off from the accepted value of -273.15°. Not too shabby.
[Marb] has been on a tear lately with science projects like these; check out
his open-source blood glucose measurement method
or
his all-in-one electrochemistry lab
. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119323",
"author": "MinorHavoc",
"timestamp": "2025-04-17T04:36:51",
"content": "I love experiments like this. It shows how some perhaps mysterious scientific principles and concepts can be derived and illustrated using materials, tools, and techniques well within the grasp of hob... | 1,760,371,573.357278 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/16/gk-stm32-mcu-based-handheld-game-system/ | GK STM32 MCU-Based Handheld Game System | Maya Posch | [
"Games"
] | [
"diy handheld",
"stm32"
] | These days even a lowly microcontroller can easily trade blows with – or surpass – desktop systems of yesteryear, so it is little wonder that DIY handheld gaming systems based around an MCU are more capable than ever. A case in point is the
GK handheld gaming system
by [John Cronin], which uses an MCU from relatively new and very capable STM32H7S7 series, specifically the 225-pin
STM32H7S7L8
in TFBGA package with a single Cortex-M7 clocked at 600 MHz and a 2D NeoChrom GPU.
Coupled with this MCU are 128 MB of XSPI (hexa-SPI) SDRAM, a 640×480 color touch screen, gyrometer, WiFi network support and the custom gkOS in the firmware for loading games off an internal SD card. A USB-C port is provided to both access said SD card’s contents and for recharging the internal Li-ion battery.
As can be seen in
the demonstration video
, it runs a wide variety of games, ranging from
DOOM
(of course),
Quake
, as well as
Command and Conquer: Red Alert
and emulators for many consoles, with the Mednafen project used to emulate Game Boy, Super Nintendo and other systems at 20+ FPS. Although there aren’t a lot of details on how optimized the current firmware is, it seems to be pretty capable already. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119272",
"author": "Timo",
"timestamp": "2025-04-17T00:43:34",
"content": "But does it run Doom (Eternal)? (gotta set a new bar for these high powered things…)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8119278",
"author": "Davi... | 1,760,371,573.498597 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/16/making-a-variable-speed-disc-sander-from-an-old-hard-drive/ | Making A Variable Speed Disc Sander From An Old Hard Drive | John Elliot V | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"Circular Sander",
"disc sander",
"Hard Disk Drive",
"hdd"
] | This short video from [ProShorts 101] shows us
how to build a variable speed disc sander
from not much more than an old hard drive.
We feel that as far as hacks go this one ticks all the boxes. It is clever, useful, and minimal yet comprehensive; it even has a speed control! Certainly this hack uses something in a way other than it was intended to be used.
Take this ingenuity and add an old hard drive from your junkbox, sandpaper, some glue, some wire, a battery pack, a motor driver, a power socket and a potentiometer, drill a few holes, glue a few pieces, and voilà! A disc sander! Of course the coat of paint was simply icing on the cake.
The little brother of this hack was done by the same hacker
on a smaller hard drive and without the speed control
, so check that out too.
One thing that took our interest while watching these videos is what tool the hacker used to cut sandpaper. Here we witnessed the use of both wire cutters and a craft knife. Perhaps when you’re cutting sandpaper you just have to accept that the process will wear out the sharp edge on your tool, regardless of which tool you use. If you have a hot tip for the best tool for the job when it comes to cutting sandpaper please let us know in the comments! (Also, did anyone catch what type of glue was used?)
If you’re interested in a sander but need something with a smaller form factor check out
how to make a sander from a toothbrush
! | 60 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119203",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2025-04-16T20:09:39",
"content": "I cut up sandpaper with wrecked scissors, like the pair that someone apparently tried to cut wire with or the pair I dropped and bent the tip of one scis so I ground them down like kids’ safety scis... | 1,760,371,573.452976 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/16/floss-weekly-episode-829-this-machine-kills-vogons/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 829: This Machine Kills Vogons | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Bufferbloat",
"Dave Taht",
"FLOSS Weekly"
] | This week,
Jonathan Bennett
chats with
Herbert Wolverson
and
Frantisek Borsik
about LibreQOS, Bufferbloat, and
Dave Taht’s
legacy. How did Dave figure out that Bufferbloat was the problem? And how did LibreQOS change the world? Watch to find out!
Dave’s blog:
https://blog.cerowrt.org
http://the-edge.taht.net/
https://libreqos.io
https://x.com/LibreQoS
https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/
https://libreqos.io/2025/04/01/in-loving-memory-of-dave/
And Dave’s speech,
Uncle Bill’s Helicopter
seems especially fitting. I particularly like the unintentional prediction of the Ingenuity Helicopter.
Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show right on
our YouTube Channel
? Have someone you’d like us to interview? Let us know, or contact the guest and have them contact us!
Take a look at the schedule here
.
Direct Download
in DRM-free MP3.
If you’d rather read along,
here’s the transcript for this week’s episode
.
Places to follow the FLOSS Weekly Podcast:
Spotify
RSS
Theme music: “Newer Wave” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under
Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8140418",
"author": "Marc Blanchet",
"timestamp": "2025-06-19T17:57:48",
"content": "Hello, about deep space networking, I’m the one that initially talked to Dave about it, as I’ve been working on this for quite some time. If you want to talk, happy to!",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,573.534932 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/16/spacemouse-destroyed-for-science/ | SpaceMouse Destroyed For Science | Fenix Guthrie | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"analog joystick",
"Joystick",
"light meter",
"space mouse"
] | The SpaceMouse is an interesting gadget beloved by engineers and artists alike. They function almost like joysticks, but with six degrees of freedom (6DoF). This can make them feel a bit like magic, which is why [Thought Bomb Design] decided to
tear one apart and figure out how it works
.
The movement mechanism ended up being relatively simple; three springs soldered between two PCBs with one PCB being fixed to the base and the other moving in space. Instead of using a potentiometer or even hall effect sensor as you might expect from a joystick, the space mouse contained a set of six LEDs and light meters.
The sensing array came nestled inside a dark box made of PCBs. An injection molded plastic piece with slits would move to interrupt the light coming from the LEDs. The mouse uses the varying values coming from the light meter to decode Cartesian motion of the space mouse. It’s very simple and a bit hacky, just how we like it.
Looking for a similar input device, but want to take the DIY route?
We’ve seen a few homebrew versions of this concept
that might
provide you with the necessary inspiration
. | 33 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119110",
"author": "eMpTy-10",
"timestamp": "2025-04-16T15:41:33",
"content": "That’s pretty neat! It also would seem that these things are absurdly expensive for what they actually are…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "811912... | 1,760,371,573.611547 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/17/tiny-hackable-telepresence-robot-for-under-100-meet-goby/ | Tiny, Hackable Telepresence Robot For Under $100? MeetGoby | Donald Papp | [
"Crowd Funding",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"ESP32",
"FPV",
"goby",
"telepresence",
"telepresence robot",
"tinypresence",
"WebRTC"
] | [Charmed Labs] are responsible for bringing numerous open-source hardware products to fruition over the years, and their latest device is
an adorably small robotic camera platform called
Goby
, currently crowdfunding for its initial release.
Goby
has a few really clever design features and delivers a capable (and hackable) platform for under 100 USD.
Goby
embraces its small size, delivering what its creators dub “tinypresence” — or the feeling of being there, but on a very small scale. Cardboard courses, LEGO arenas, or even tabletop gaming scenery hits different when experienced from a first-person perspective.
Goby
is entirely reprogrammable with nothing more than a USB cable and the Arduino IDE, while costing less than most Arduino starter kits.
Recharging happens by driving over the charger, then pivoting down so the connectors (the little blunt vampire fangs under and to each side of the camera) come into contact with the charger.
One of the physical features we really like is the tail-like articulated caster at the rear. Flexing this pivots
Goby
up or down (and can even flip
Goby
completely over), allowing one to pan and tilt the view without needing to mount the camera on a gimbal. It also comes into play for recharging;
Goby
simply moves over the disc-shaped charger and pivots down to make contact.
At
Goby
‘s heart is an ESP32-S3 and OmniVision OV2640 camera sensor streaming a live video feed (and driving controls) with WebRTC. Fitting the WebRTC stack onto an ESP32 wasn’t easy, but opens up possibilities beyond just media streaming.
Goby
is set up to make launching an encrypted connection as easy as sharing a URL or scanning a QR code. The link is negotiated between bot and client with the initial help of an external server, and once a peer-to-peer connection is established, the server’s job is done and it is out of the picture. [Charmed Labs]’s code for this functionality — named
BitBang
— is in beta and destined for an open release as well. While
BitBang
is being used here to make it effortless to access
Goby
remotely, it’s more broadly intended to make web access for any ESP32-based device easier to implement.
As far as tiny remote camera platforms go, it might not be as small as
rebuilding a Hot Wheels car into a micro RC platform
, but it’s definitely more accessible and probably cheaper, to boot. Check it out at the Kickstarter (see the first link in this post) and watch it in action in the video, embedded just below the page break. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119622",
"author": "Tim Andersson",
"timestamp": "2025-04-18T06:05:18",
"content": "I could see this being used as miniature FPV anti personel mine (something like PFM-1 but on wheels). Could be good for destroying enemy units stationed in buildings or urban environments.",
"pa... | 1,760,371,573.663304 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/17/rise-of-the-robots-how-robots-are-changing-dairy-farms/ | Rise Of The Robots: How Robots Are Changing Dairy Farms | Maya Posch | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"automation",
"dairy"
] | Running a dairy farm used to be a rather hands-on experience, with the farmer required to be around every few hours to milk the cows, feed them, do all the veterinarian tasks that the farmer can do themselves, and so on. The introduction of milking machines in the early 20th century however began a trend of increased automation whereby a single farmer could handle a hundred cows by the end of the century instead of only a couple. In a recent article in
IEEE Spectrum
covers the
continued progress here is covered
, including cows milking themselves, on-demand style as shown in the top image.
The article focuses primarily on Dutch company Lely’s recent robots, which range from said self-milking robots to a manure cleaning robot that looks like an oversized Roomba. With how labor-intensive (and low-margin) a dairy farm is, any level of automation that can improve matters will be welcomed, with so far Lely’s robots receiving a mostly positive response. Since cows are pretty smart, they will happily guide themselves to a self-milking robot when they feel that their udders are full enough, which can save the farmer a few hours of work each day, as this robot handles every task, including the cleaning of the udders prior to milking and sanitizing itself prior to inviting the next cow into its loving embrace.
As for the other tasks, speaking as a genuine Dutch dairy farm girl who was born & raised around cattle (and sheep), the idea of e.g. mucking out stables being taken over by robots is something that raises a lot more skepticism. After all, a farmer’s children have to earn their pocket money somehow, which includes mucking, herding, farm maintenance and so on. Unless those robots get really cheap and low maintenance, the idea of fully automated dairy farms may still be a long while off, but reducing the workload and making cows happier are definitely lofty goals.
Top image: The milking robot that can automatically milk a cow without human assistance. (Credit: Lely) | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119604",
"author": "the gambler",
"timestamp": "2025-04-18T03:31:24",
"content": "Not to be that guy but self milking/robot setups have been part of the dairy community for a long time now. I’m not sure how this is a hack, recent news, or anything really.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,573.717304 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/17/a-blacksmith-shows-us-how-to-choose-an-anvil/ | A Blacksmith Shows Us How To Choose An Anvil | Jenny List | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"anvil",
"anvil shaped object"
] | No doubt many readers have at times wished to try their hand at blacksmithing, but it’s fair to say that acquiring an anvil represents quite the hurdle. For anyone not knowing where to turn
there’s a video from [Black Bear Forge]
, in which he takes us through a range of budget options.
He starts with a sledgehammer, the simplest anvil of all, which we would agree makes a very accessible means to do simple forge work. He shows us a rail anvil and a couple of broken old anvils, before spending some time on a cheap Vevor anvil and going on to some much nicer more professional ones. It’s probably the Vevor which is the most interesting of the ones on show though, not because it is particularly good but because it’s a chance to see up close one of these very cheap anvils.
Are they worth taking the chance? The one he’s got has plenty of rough parts and casting flaws, an oddly-sited pritchel and a hardy hole that’s too small. These anvils are sometimes referred to as “Anvil shaped objects”, and while this one could make a reasonable starter it’s not difficult to see why it might not be the best purchase.
It’s a subject we have touched on before in our blacksmithing series
, so we’re particularly interested to see his take on it. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119559",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-04-17T23:13:46",
"content": "Another one who knows all about Anvils is Wile E. Coyote.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8119566",
"author": "H",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,371,573.823285 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/17/designing-an-fm-drum-synth-from-scratch/ | Designing An FM Drum Synth From Scratch | Dan Maloney | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"drum",
"filter",
"fm",
"synth",
"synthesizer",
"VCA",
"vco"
] | How it started: a simple repair job on a Roland drum machine. How it ended: a
scratch-built FM drum synth module
that’s completely analog, and completely cool.
[Moritz Klein]’s journey down the analog drum machine rabbit hole started with a Roland TR-909, a hybrid drum machine from the mid-80s that combined sampled sounds with analog synthesis. The unit [Moritz] picked up was having trouble with the decay on the kick drum, so he spread out the gloriously detailed schematic and got to work. He breadboarded a few sections of the kick drum circuit to aid troubleshooting, but one thing led to another and he was soon in new territory.
The video below is on the longish side, with the first third or so dedicated to recreating the circuits used to create the 909’s iconic sound, slightly modifying some of them to simplify construction. Like the schematic that started the whole thing, this section of the video is jam-packed with goodness, too much to detail here. But a few of the gems that caught our eye were the voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA) circuit that seems to make appearances in multiple places in the circuit, and the dead-simple wave-shaper circuit, which takes some of the harmonics out of the triangle wave oscillator’s output with just a couple of diodes and some resistors.
Once the 909’s kick and toms section had been breadboarded, [Moritz] turned his attention to adding something Roland hadn’t included: frequency modulation. He did this by adding a second, lower-frequency voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) and using that to modulate the drum section. That resulted in a weird, metallic sound that can be tuned to imitate anything from a steel drum to a bell. He also added a hi-hat and cymbal section by mixing the square wave outputs on the VCOs through a funky XOR gate made from discrete components and a high-pass filter.
There’s a lot of information packed into this video, and by breaking everything down into small, simple blocks, [Moritz] makes it easy to understand analog synths and the circuits behind them. | 14 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119538",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-04-17T20:59:48",
"content": "haha it’s a cool project, or it would be if it was documented off of youtube. but i would recommend revising the hackaday style guide to ban ‘from scratch’. the body of the article clearly states the des... | 1,760,371,573.770714 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/17/bicycle-gearbox-does-it-by-folding/ | Bicycle Gearbox Does It By Folding | Fenix Guthrie | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bike",
"bike hacks",
"derailleur",
"folding gear",
"gearbox"
] | If you’ve spent any time on two wheels, you’ve certainly experienced the woes of poor bicycle shifting. You hit the button or twist the knob expecting a smooth transition into the next gear, only to be met with angry metallic clanking that you try to push though but ultimately can’t. Bicycle manufacturers collectively spent millions attempting to remedy this issue with the likes of gearboxes, electronic shifting, and even belt-driven bikes. But Praxis believes to have a better solution in
their prototype HiT system.
Rather then moving a chain between gears, their novel solution works by folding gears into or away from a chain. These gears are made up of four separate segments that individually pivot around an axle near the cog’s center. These segments are carefully timed to ensure there is no interference with the chain making shifting look like a complex mechanical ballet.
While the shift initialization is handled electronically, the gear folding synchronization is mechanical. The combination of electronic and mechanical systems brings near-instant shifting under load at rotational rates of 100 RPM. Make sure to scroll through the product page and watch the videos showcasing the mechanism!
The HiT gearbox is a strange hybrid between a derailleur and a gearbox. It doesn’t contain a clutch based gear change system or even a
CVT as seen in the famous Honda bike
of old. It’s fully sealed with more robust chains and no moving chainline as in a derailleur system. The prototype is configurable between four or sixteen speeds, with the four speed consisting of two folding gear pairs connected with a chain and the sixteen speed featuring a separate pair of folding gears. The output is either concentric to the input, or above the input for certain types of mountain bikes.
Despite the high level of polish, this remains a prototype and we eagerly await what Praxis does next with the system. In the meantime, make sure to check out this
chainless e-drive bicycle. | 52 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119425",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2025-04-17T15:49:31",
"content": "I imagine it’s going to cost a lot too. Bicycling being the affordable hobby it is.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8119427",
"author": "d... | 1,760,371,573.920118 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/17/supercon-2024-exploring-the-ocean-with-open-source-hardware/ | Supercon 2024: Exploring The Ocean With Open Source Hardware | Tom Nardi | [
"cons",
"Featured",
"hardware",
"Slider"
] | [
"2024 Hackaday Supercon",
"buoy",
"iridium",
"research buoy"
] | If you had to guess, what do you think it would take to build an ocean-going buoy that could not only survive on its own without human intervention for more than two years, but return useful data the whole time? You’d probably assume such a feat would require beefy hardware, riding inside an expensive and relatively large watertight vessel of some type — and for good reason, the ocean is an unforgiving environment, and has sent far more robust hardware to the briny depths.
But as Wayne Pavalko found back in 2016, a little planning can go a long way. That’s when he launched the first of what he now calls Maker Buoys: a series of solar-powered drifting buoys that combine a collection of off-the-shelf sensor boards with an Arduino microcontroller and an Iridium Short-Burst Data (SBD) modem in a relatively simple watertight box.
He guessed that first buoy might last a few weeks to a month, but when he finally lost contact with it after 771 days, he realized there was real potential for reducing the cost and complexity of ocean research.
Wayne recalled the origin of his project and updated the audience on where it’s gone from there during his 2024 Supercon talk,
Adventures in Ocean Tech: The Maker Buoy Journey
. Even if you’re not interested in charting ocean currents with homebrew hardware, his story is an inspirational reminder that sometimes a fresh approach can help solve problems that might at first glance seem insurmountable.
DIY All the Way
As Dan Maloney commented when he
wrote-up that first buoy’s journey in 2017
, the Bill of Materials for a Maker Buoy is tailored for the hobbyist. Despite being capable of journeys lasting for several thousand kilometers in the open ocean, there’s no marine-grade unobtainium parts onboard. Indeed, nearly all of the electronic components can be sourced from Adafruit, with the most expensive line item being the RockBLOCK 9603 Iridium satellite modem at $299.
Even the watertight container that holds all the electronics is relatively pedestrian. It’s the sort of plastic latching box you might put your phone or camera in on a boat trip to make sure it stays dry and floats if it falls overboard. Wayne points out that the box being clear is a huge advantage, as you can mount the solar panel internally. Later versions of the Maker Buoy even included a camera that could peer downward through the bottom of the box.
Wayne says that first buoy was arguably over-built, with each internal component housed in its own waterproof compartment. Current versions instead hold all of the hardware in place with a 3D printed internal frame. The bi-level framework puts the solar panel, GPS, and satellite modem up at the top so they’ve got a clear view of the sky, and mounts the primary PCB, battery, and desiccant container down on the bottom.
The only external addition necessary is to attach a 16 inch (40 centimeter) long piece of PVC pipe to the bottom of the box, which acts as a passive stabilizer. Holes drilled in the pipe allow it to fill with water once submerged, lowering the buoy’s center of gravity and making it harder to flip over. At the same time, should the buoy find itself inverted due to wave action, the pipe will make it top-heavy and flip it back over.
It’s simple, cheap, and incredibly effective. Wayne mentions that data returned from onboard Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) have shown that Maker Buoys do occasionally find themselves going end-over-end during storms, but they always right themselves.
Like Space…But Wetter
The V1 Maker Buoy was designed to be as reliable as possible.
Early on in his presentation, Wayne makes an interesting comparison when talking about the difficulties in developing the Maker Buoy. He likens it to operating a spacecraft in that your hardware is never coming back, nobody will be able to service it, and the only connection you’ll have to the craft during its lifetime is a relatively low-bandwidth link.
But one could argue that the nature of Iridium communications makes the mission of the Maker Buoy even more challenging than your average spacecraft. As the network is really only designed for short messages — at one point Wayne mentions that even sending low-resolution images of only a few KB in size was something of an engineering challenge — remotely updating the software on the buoy isn’t an option. So even though the nearly fifty year old
Voyager 1 can still receive the occasional software patch
from billions of miles away, once you drop a Maker Buoy into the ocean, there’s no way to fix any bugs in the code.
Because of this, Wayne decided to take the extra step of adding a hardware watchdog timer that can monitor the buoy’s systems and reboot the hardware if necessary. It’s a bit like unplugging your router when the Internet goes out…if your Internet was coming from a satellite low-Earth orbit and your living room happened to be in the middle of the ocean.
From One to Many
After publishing information about his first successful Maker Buoy online, Wayne says it wasn’t long before folks started contacting him about potential applications for the hardware. In 2018, a Dutch non-profit expressed interest in buying 50 buoys from him to study the movement of floating plastic waste in the Pacific. The hardware was more than up to the task, but there was just one problem: up to this point, Wayne had only built a grand total of four buoys.
Opportunities like this, plus the desire to offer the Maker Buoy in kit and ready to deploy variants for commercial and educational purposes, meant Wayne had to streamline his production. When it’s just a personal project, it doesn’t really matter how long it takes to assemble or if everything goes together correctly the first time. But that approach just won’t work if you need to deliver functional units in quantities that you can’t count on your fingers.
As Wayne puts it, making something and making something that’s easily producible are really two very different things. The production becomes a project in its own right. He explains that investing the time and effort to make repetitive tasks more efficient and reliable, such as developing jigs to hold pieces together while you’re working on them, more than pays off for itself in the end. Even though he’s still building them himself in his basement, he uses an assembly line approach that allows for the consistent results expected by paying customers.
A Tale Well Told
While the technical details of how Wayne designed and built the different versions of the Maker Buoy are certainly interesting, it’s hearing the story of the project from inception to the present day that really makes watching this talk worthwhile. What started as a simple “What If” experiment has spiraled into a side-business that has helped deploy buoys all over the planet.
Admittedly, not every project has that same potential for growth. But hearing Wayne tell the Maker Buoy story is the sort of thing that makes you want to go dust off that project that’s been kicking around in the back of your head and finally give it a shot. You might be surprised by the kind of adventure taking a chance on a wild idea can lead to. | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119460",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2025-04-17T18:01:58",
"content": "I like the ocean which is why I can confidently say that we should not be making advances in exploring it, especially if it makes it cheaper to do so. The problem is that if we do make advances then the pe... | 1,760,371,573.972656 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/17/budget-schlieren-imaging-setup-uses-3d-printing-to-reveal-the-unseen/ | Budget Schlieren Imaging Setup Uses 3D Printing To Reveal The Unseen | Tyler August | [
"Science"
] | [
"3d print",
"Schlieren",
"Schlieren photography",
"shadowgraph"
] | We’re suckers here for projects that let you see the unseeable, and [Ayden Wardell Aerospace] provides that on a budget with their
$30 Schlieren Imaging Setup
. The unseeable in question is differences in air density– or, more precisely, differences in the refractive index of the fluid the imaging set up makes use of, in this case air. Think of how you can see waves of “heat” on a warm day– that’s lower-density hot air refracting light as it rises. Schlieren photography takes advantage of this, allowing to analyze fluid flows– for example, the mach cones in a DIY rocket nozzle, which is what got [Ayden Wardell Aerospace] interested in the technique.
Examining exhaust makes this a useful tool for [Aerospace].
This is a ‘classic’ mirror-and-lamp Schlieren set up. You put the system you wish to film near the focal plane of a spherical mirror, and camera and light source out at twice the focal distance. Rays deflected by changes in refractive index miss the camera– usually one places a razor blade precisely to block them, but [Ayden] found that when using a smart phone that was unnecessary, which shocked this author.
While it is possible that [Ayden Wardell Aerospace] has technically constructed a
shadowgraph
, they claim that carefully positioning the smartphone allows the sharp edge of the case to replace the razor blade. A shadowgraph, which shows the second derivative of density, is a perfectly valid technique for flow visualization, and is superior to Schlieren photography in some circumstances– when looking at shock waves, for example.
Regardless, the great thing about this project is that [Ayden Wardell Aerospace] provides us with STLs for the mirror and smartphone mounting, as well as providing a BOM and a clear instructional video. Rather than arguing in the comments if this is “truly” Schlieren imaging, grab a mirror, extrude some filament, and test it for yourself!
There are
many ways to do Schlieren images
. We’ve highighted
background-oriented techniques
, and seen how to do it
with a moiré pattern
, or even a selfie stick. Still, this is the first time 3D printing has gotten involved and the build video below is quick and worth watching for those sweet, sweet Schlieren images. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119377",
"author": "psuedonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-04-17T11:51:49",
"content": "I can see a smartphone Schlieren setup being able to avoid using an external stop just by the entrance pupil for the camera being so danged tiny to start with.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,371,574.271364 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/16/porting-cobol-code-and-the-trouble-with-ditching-domain-specific-languages/ | Porting COBOL Code And The Trouble With Ditching Domain Specific Languages | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"cobol",
"FORTRAN",
"gnucobol"
] | Whenever the topic is raised in popular media about porting a codebase written in an ‘antiquated’ programming language like Fortran or COBOL, very few people tend to object to this notion. After all, what could be better than ditching decades of crusty old code in a language that only your grandparents can remember as being relevant? Surely a clean and fresh rewrite in a modern language like Java, Rust, Python, Zig, or NodeJS will fix all ailments and make future maintenance a snap?
For anyone who has ever had to actually port large codebases or dealt with ‘legacy’ systems, their reflexive response to such announcements most likely ranges from a shaking of one’s head to mad cackling as traumatic memories come flooding back. The old idiom of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, purportedly
coined in 1977
by Bert Lance, is a feeling that has been shared by countless individuals over millennia. Even worse, how can you ‘fix’ something if you do not even fully understand the problem?
In the case of languages like COBOL this is doubly true, as it is a domain specific language (DSL). This is a very different category from general purpose system programming languages like the aforementioned ‘replacements’. The suggestion of porting the DSL codebase is thus to effectively reimplement all of COBOL’s functionality, which should seem like a very poorly thought out idea to any rational mind.
Sticking To A Domain
The term ‘domain specific language’ is pretty much what it says it is, and there are many of such DSLs around, ranging from PostScript and SQL to the shader language
GLSL
. Although it is definitely possible to push DSLs into doing things which they were never designed for, the primary point of a DSL is to explicitly limit its functionality to that one specific domain. GLSL, for example, is based on C and could be considered to be a very restricted version of that language, which raises the question of why one should not just write shaders in C?
Similarly, Fortran (Formula translating system) was designed as a DSL targeting scientific and high-performance computation. First used in 1957, it still ranks in the top 10 of the TIOBE index, and just about any code that has to do with high-performance computation (HPC) in science and engineering will be written in Fortran or strongly relies on libraries written in Fortran. The reason for this is simple: from the beginning Fortran was designed to make such computations as easy as possible, with subsequent updates to the language standard adding updates where needed.
Fortran’s latest standard update was published in November 2023, joining the COBOL 2023 standard as two DSLs which are both still very much alive and very current today.
The strength of a DSL is often underestimated, as the whole point of a DSL is that you can teach this simpler, focused language to someone who can then become fluent in it, without requiring them to become fluent in a generic programming language and all the libraries and other luggage that entails. For those of us who already speak C, C++, or Java, it may seem appealing to write everything in that language, but not to those who have no interest in learning a whole generic language.
There are effectively two major reasons why a DSL is the better choice for said domain:
Easy to learn and teach, because it’s a much smaller language
Far fewer edge cases and simpler tooling
In the case of COBOL and Fortran this means only a fraction of the keywords (‘verbs’ for COBOL) to learn, and a language that’s streamlined for a specific task, whether it’s to allow a physicist to do some fluid-dynamic modelling, or a staff member at a bank or the social security offices to write a data processing application that churns through database data in order to create a nicely formatted report. Surely one could force both of these people to learn C++, Java, Rust or NodeJS, but this may backfire in many ways, the resulting code quality being one of them.
Tangentially, this is also one of the amazing things in the hardware design language (HDL) domain, where rather than using (System)Verilog or VHDL, there’s an amazing growth of alternative HDLs, many of them implemented in generic scripting and programming languages. That this prohibits any kind of skill and code sharing, and repeatedly, and often poorly, reinvents the wheel seems to be of little concern to many.
Non-Broken Code
A very nice aspect of these existing COBOL codebases is that they generally have been around for decades, during which time they have been carefully pruned, trimmed and debugged, requiring only minimal maintenance and updates while they happily keep purring along on mainframes as they process banking and government data.
One argument that has been made in favor of porting from COBOL to a generic programming language is ‘ease of maintenance’, pointing out that COBOL is supposedly very hard to read and write and thus maintaining it would be far too cumbersome.
Since it’s easy to philosophize about such matters from a position of ignorance and/or conviction, I recently decided to take up some COBOL programming from the position of both a COBOL newbie as well as an experienced C++ (and other language) developer. Cue the
‘Hello Business’ playground
project.
For the tooling I used the
GnuCOBOL
transpiler, which converts the COBOL code to C before compiling it to a binary, but in a few weeks the GCC 15.1 release will bring a brand new COBOL frontend (
gcobol
) that I’m dying to try out. As language reference I used a combination of the
Wikipedia entry
for COBOL, the IBM ILE
COBOL language reference
(PDF) and the IBM
COBOL Report Writer Programmer’s Manual
(PDF).
My goal for this ‘Hello Business’ project was to create something that did actual practical work. I took the
FileHandling.cob
example from the
COBOL tutorial
by Armin Afazeli as starting point, which I modified and extended to read in records from a file,
employees.dat
, before using the standard Report Writer feature to create a report file in which the employees with their salaries are listed, with page numbering and totaling the total salary value in a report footing entry.
My impression was that although it takes a moment to learn the various divisions that the variables, files, I/O, and procedures are put into, it’s all extremely orderly and predictable. The compiler also will helpfully tell you if you did anything out of order or forgot something. While data level numbering to indicate data associations is somewhat quaint, after a while I didn’t mind at all, especially since this provides a whole range of meta information that other languages do not have.
The lack of semi-colons everywhere is nice, with only a single period indicating the end of a scope, even if it concerns an entire loop (
perform
). I used the modern free style form of COBOL, which removes the need to use specific columns for parts of the code, which no doubt made things a lot easier. In total it only took me a few hours to create a semi-useful COBOL application.
Would I opt to write a more extensive business application in C++ if I got put on a tight deadline? I don’t think so. If I had to do COBOL-like things in C++, I would be hunting for various libraries, get stuck up to my gills in complex configurations and be scrambling to find replacements for things like Report Writer, or be forced to write my own. Meanwhile in COBOL everything is there already, because it’s what that DSL is designed for. Replacing C++ with Java or the like wouldn’t help either, as you end up doing so much boilerplate work and dependencies wrangling.
A Modern DSL
Perhaps the funniest thing about COBOL is that since version 2002 it got a whole range of features that push it closer to generic languages like Java. Features that include object-oriented programming, bit and boolean types, heap-based memory allocation, method overloading and asynchronous messaging. Meanwhile the simple English, case-insensitive, syntax – with allowance for various spellings and acronyms – means that you can rapidly type code without adding symbol soup, and reading it is obvious even as a beginner, as the code literally does what it says it does.
True, the syntax and naming feels a bit quaint at first, but that is easily explained by the fact that when COBOL appeared on the scene, ALGOL was still highly relevant and the C programming language wasn’t even a glimmer in Dennis Ritchie’s eyes yet. If anything, COBOL has proven itself – much like Fortran and others – to be a time-tested DSL that is truly a testament to Grace Hopper and everyone else involved in its creation. | 80 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119087",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2025-04-16T14:25:28",
"content": "i don’t think this description of domain specific languages really gets to the concepts that matter. fortran is a good example. it’s not that the features of the language are good for scientific programm... | 1,760,371,574.22212 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/16/homemade-vna-delivers-high-frequency-performance-on-a-budget/ | Homemade VNA Delivers High-Frequency Performance On A Budget | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"adc",
"fpga",
"RF",
"test equipment",
"vector network analyzer",
"vna"
] | With vector network analyzers, the commercial offerings seem to come in two flavors: relatively inexpensive but limited capabilities, and full-featured but scary expensive. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground, especially if you want something that performs well in the microwave bands.
Unless, of course,
you build your own vector network analyzer (VNA)
. That’s what [Henrik Forsten] did, and we’ve got to say we’re even more impressed by the results than we were with
his earlier effort
. That version was not without its problems, and fixing them was very much on the list of goals for this build. Keeping the build affordable was also key, which resulted in some design compromises while still meeting [Henrik]’s measurement requirements.
The Bill of Materials includes dual-channel broadband RF mixer chips, high-speed 12-bit ADCs, and a fast FPGA to handle the torrent of data and run the digital signal processing functions. The custom six-layer PCB is on the large side and includes large cutouts for the directional couplers, which use short lengths of stripped coaxial cable lined with ferrite rings. To properly isolate signals between stages, [Henrik] sandwiched the PCB between a two-piece aluminum enclosure. Wisely, he printed a prototype enclosure and lined it with aluminum foil to test for fit and function before committing to milling the final version. He did note some leakage around the SMA connectors, but a few RF gaskets made from scraps of foil and solder braid did the trick.
This is a pretty slick build, especially considering he managed to keep the price tag at a very reasonable $300. It’s more expensive than
the popular NanoVNA
or its clones, but it seems like quite a bargain considering its capabilities. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119061",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-04-16T12:29:29",
"content": "Damn that’s impressive, I have no need of much more than a NanoVNA for my purposes, but I want one of Henrik’s",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8119064",... | 1,760,371,574.094799 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/16/binner-makes-workshop-parts-organization-easy/ | Binner Makes Workshop Parts Organization Easy | Matt Varian | [
"home hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"barcode",
"component storage",
"database",
"organization",
"workshop"
] | We’ve all had times where we knew we had some part but we had to go searching for it all over as it wasn’t where we thought we put it. Organizing the numerous components, parts, and supplies that go into your projects can be a daunting task, especially if you use the same type of part at different times for different projects. It helps to have a framework to keep track of all the small details.
Binner is an open source project
that aims to allow you to easily maintain a database that can be customized to your use.
In a recent video for DigiKey, [Byte Sized Engineer] used Binner to track the locations of his components and parts in his freshly organized workshop. Binner already has the ability to read the labels used by well-known electronics suppliers via a barcode scanner, and uses that information to populate your inventory. It even grabs quantities and links in a datasheet for your newly added part. The barcode scanner can also be used to retrieve the contents of a location, so with a single scan Binner can bring up everything residing at that location.
Binner can be run locally so there isn’t the concern of putting in all the effort to build up your database just to have an internet outage make it inaccessible. Another cool feature is that it allows you to print labels, you can customize the fields to display the values you care about.
The project already has future plans to tie into a “smart bin” system to light up the location of your component —
a clever feature we’ve seen implemented in previous setups
. | 29 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8119005",
"author": "Nikolai",
"timestamp": "2025-04-16T08:58:02",
"content": "There was a project with a Resistor Drawer Storage where the drawer requested resistor will lit. And I believe the feed was from the PCB CAD.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,574.72536 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/15/something-is-very-wrong-with-the-ay-3-8913-sound-generator/ | Something Is Very Wrong With The AY-3-8913 Sound Generator | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"AY-3-8910",
"ay-3-8913",
"mockingboard"
] | The General Instruments AY-3-8910 was a quite popular Programmable Sound Generator (PSG) that saw itself used in a wide variety of systems, including Apple II soundcards such as the Mockingboard and various arcade systems. In addition to the Yamaha variants (e.g. YM2149), two cut-down were created by GI: these being the AY-3-8912 and the AY-3-8913, which should have been differentiated only by the number of GPIO banks broken out in the IC package (one or zero, respectively). However,
research by [fenarinarsa]
and others have shown that the AY-3-8913 variant has some actual hardware issues as a PSG.
With only 24 pins, the AY-3-8913 is significantly easier to integrate than the 40-pin AY-3-8910, at the cost of the (rarely used) GPIO functionality, but as it turns out with a few gotchas in terms of timing and register access. Although the
Mockingboard
originally used the AY-3-8910, latter revisions would use two AY-3-8913 instead, including the MS revision that was the Mac version of the
Mindscape Music Board
for IBM PCs.
The first hint that something was off with the AY-3-8913 came when [fenarinarsa] was experimenting with effect composition on an Apple II and noticed very poor sound quality, as demonstrated in an
example comparison video
(also embedded below). The issue was very pronounced in bass envelopes, with an oscilloscope capture showing a very distorted output compared to a YM2149. As for why this was not noticed decades ago can likely be explained by that the current chiptune scene is pushing the hardware in very different ways than back then.
As for potential solutions, the [French Touch] project has
created an adapter
to allow an AY-3-8910 (or YM2149) to be used in place of an AY-3-8913.
Top image: Revision D PCB of Mockingboard with GI AY-3-8913 PSGs. | 14 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118995",
"author": "Richard",
"timestamp": "2025-04-16T08:01:51",
"content": "Perhaps this is due to my lackadaisical use of hearing protection when young, but I can’t hear a difference between the two",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comme... | 1,760,371,574.471717 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/15/replica-of-1880-wireless-telephone-is-all-mirrors-no-smoke/ | Replica Of 1880 Wireless Telephone Is All Mirrors, No Smoke | Tyler August | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"Alexander Graham Bell",
"analog telephony",
"steampunk",
"telephone",
"wireless"
] | If we asked you to name Alexander Graham Bell’s greatest invention, you would doubtless say “the telephone”; it’s probably the only one of his many, many inventions most people could bring to mind. If you asked Bell himself, though, he would tell you his greatest invention was the photophone, and if the prolific [
Nick Bild] doesn’t agree he’s at least intrigued enough to produce a replica of this
1880-vintage wireless telephone
. Yes,
18
80. As in, only four years after the telephone was patented.
It obviously did not catch on, and is not the sort of thing that comes to mind when we think “wireless telephone”. In contrast to the RF of the 20th century version, as you might guess from the name the photophone used light– sunlight, to be specific. In the original design, the transmitter was totally passive– a tube with a mirror on one end, mounted to vibrate when someone spoke into the open end of the tube. That was it, aside from the necessary optics to focus sunlight onto said mirror. [Nick Bild] skips this and uses a laser as a handily coherent light source, which was obviously not an option in 1880. As [Nick] points out, if it was, Bell certainly would have made use of it.
The photophone receiver, 1880 edition. Speaker not pictured.
The receiver is only slightly more complex, in that it does have electronic components– a selenium cell in the original, and in [Nick’s] case a modern photoresistor in series with a 10,000 ohm resistor. There’s also an optical difference, with [Nick] opting for a lens to focus the laser light on his photoresistor instead of the parabolic mirror of the original. In both cases vibration of the mirror at the transmitter disrupts line-of-sight with the receiver, creating an AM signal that is easily converted back into sound with an electromagnetic speaker.
The photophone never caught on, for obvious reasons — traditional copper-wire telephones worked beyond line of sight
and
on cloudy days–but we’re greatful to [Nick] for dredging up the history and for letting us know about it
via the tip line
. See his video about this project below.
The name [Nick Bild]
might look familiar
to
regular readers
. We’ve
highlighted a few
of
his projects
on Hackaday before. | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118965",
"author": "Wallace Owen",
"timestamp": "2025-04-16T02:16:02",
"content": "Bell labs invented the laser. Just sayin.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8118967",
"author": "Seth",
"timestamp": "2025-04-1... | 1,760,371,574.591517 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/15/diy-ai-butler-is-simpler-and-more-useful-than-siri/ | DIY AI Butler Is Simpler And More Useful Than Siri | Donald Papp | [
"Artificial Intelligence"
] | [
"AI assistant",
"digital assistant",
"diy",
"LLM",
"sqlite"
] | [Geoffrey Litt] shows that getting an effective digital assistant that’s tailored to one’s own needs just needs a little DIY, and thanks to the kinds of tools that are available today, it doesn’t even have to be particularly complex. Meet
Stevens
, the AI assistant who provides the family with useful daily briefs
. The back end? Little more than one SQLite table and a few cron jobs.
A sample of Stevens’ notebook entries, both events and things to simply remember.
Every day,
Stevens
sends a daily brief via Telegram that includes calendar events, appointments, weather notes, reminders, and even a fun fact for the day.
Stevens
isn’t just send-only, either. Users can add new entries or ask questions about items through Telegram.
It’s rudimentary, but [Geoffrey] already finds it far more useful than Siri. This is unsurprising, as it has been astutely observed that big tech’s
digital assistants are designed to serve their makers rather than their users
. Besides, it’s also fun to have the freedom to give an assistant its own personality, something existing offerings sorely lack.
Architecture-wise, the assistant has a notebook (the single SQLite table) that gets populated with entries. These entries come from things like reading family members’ Google calendars, pulling data from a public weather API, processing delivery notices from the post office, and Telegram conversations. With a notebook of such entries (along with a date the entry is expected to be relevant), generating a daily brief is simple. After all, LLMs (Large Language Models) are amazingly good at handling and formatting natural language. That’s something even a
locally-installed LLM
can do with ease.
[Geoffrey] says that even this simple architecture is super useful, and it’s not even a particularly complex system. He encourages anyone who’s interested to
check out his project
, and see for themselves how useful even a minimally-informed assistant can be when it’s designed with ones’ own needs in mind. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118941",
"author": "Maria",
"timestamp": "2025-04-15T23:33:18",
"content": "AI doing creepy things episode 2137.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8118992",
"author": "Josiah Bryan",
"timestamp": "2025-04-16T07:... | 1,760,371,574.52469 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/15/making-parts-feeders-work-where-they-werent-supposed-to/ | Making Parts Feeders Work Where They Weren’t Supposed To | Lewin Day | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"manncorp",
"pick and place",
"siemens"
] | [Chris Cecil] had a problem. He had a Manncorp/Autotronik MC384V2 pick and place, and needed more feeders. The company was reluctant to support an older machine and wanted over $32,000 to supply [Chris] with more feeders. He contemplated the expenditure… but then came across another project which gave him pause.
Could he make Siemens feeders work with his machine?
It’s one of those “standing on the shoulders of giants” stories, with [Chris] building on the work from
[Bilsef] and the OpenPNP project
. He came across SchultzController, which could be used to work with Siemens Siplace feeders for pick-and-place machines. They were never supposed to work with his Manncorp machine, but it seemed possible to knit them together in some kind of unholy production-focused marriage. [Chris] explains how he hooked up the Manncorp hardware to a Smoothieboard and then Bilsef’s controller boards to get everything working, along with all the nitty gritty details on the software hacks required to get everything playing nice.
For an investment of just $2,500, [Chris] has been able to massively expand the number of feeders on his machine. Now, he’s got his pick and place building more Smoothieboards faster than ever, with less manual work on his part.
We feature a lot of one-off projects and home production methods, but it’s nice to also get a look at methods of more serious production in bigger numbers, too.
It’s a topic we follow with interest
. Video after the break.
[Editor’s note: Siemens is the parent company of Supplyframe, which is Hackaday’s parent company. This has nothing to do with this story.] | 21 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118934",
"author": "drenehtsral",
"timestamp": "2025-04-15T22:24:38",
"content": "I’ve seen this all too often in the industrial automation space. When doing consulting with some friends/coworkers we had a customer who had a giant (and expensive) machine on their factory floor tha... | 1,760,371,574.653081 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/15/a-new-kind-of-bike-valve/ | A New Kind Of Bike Valve? | Fenix Guthrie | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bicycle",
"bike",
"bike hacks",
"Schrader valve"
] | If you’ve worked on a high-end mountain or road bike for any length of time, you have likely cursed the Presta valve. This humble century-old invention is the bane of many a home and professional mechanic. What if there is a better option? [Seth] decided to find out by
putting four valves on a single rim
.
The contenders include the aforementioned Presta, as well as Schrader, Dunlop and the young gun, Clik. Schrader and Dunlop both pre-date Presta, with Schrader finding prevalence in cruiser bicycles along with cars and even aircraft. Dunlop is still found on bicycles in parts of Asia and Europe. Then came along Presta some time around 1893, and was designed to hold higher pressures and be lower profile then Schrader and Dunlop. It found prevalence among the weight conscious and narrow rimmed road bike world and, for better or worse, stuck around ever since.
But there’s a new contender from industry legend Schwalbe called Clik. Clik comes with a wealth of nifty modern engineering tricks including its party piece, and namesake, of a clicking mechanical locking system, no lever, no screw attachment. Clik also fits into a Presta valve core and works on most Presta pumps. Yet, it remains to be seen whether Clik is just another doomed standard, or the solution to many a cyclists greatest headache.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen clever
engineering
going into a bike valve. | 52 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118889",
"author": "Sam",
"timestamp": "2025-04-15T19:12:05",
"content": "It’s mentioned in the comments to that video and worth repeating here that issues with Presta valves are often the result of over loosening the nut. You only need to give them about one full turn to add/remov... | 1,760,371,574.817668 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/15/announcing-the-hackaday-pet-hacks-contest/ | Announcing The Hackaday Pet Hacks Contest | Elliot Williams | [
"contests",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"2025 Pet Hacks Contest",
"contest",
"pet hacks",
"pets"
] | A dog may be man’s best friend, but many of us live with cats, fish, iguanas, or even wilder animals. And naturally, we like to share our hacks with our pets. Whether it’s a robot ball-thrower, a hamster wheel that’s integrated into your smart home system, or even just an automatic feeder for when you’re not home, we want to see what kind of projects that your animal friends have inspired you to pull off.
The three top choices will take home $150 gift certificates from DigiKey, the contest’s sponsor, so that you can make even more pet-centric projects. You have until May 27th to
get your project up on Hackaday.io, and get it entered into Pet Hacks.
Honorable Mention Categories
Of course, we have a couple thoughts about fun directions to take this contest, and we’ll be featuring entries along the way. Just to whet your whistle, here are our four honorable mention categories.
Pet Safety:
Nothing is better than a hack that helps your pet stay out of trouble. If your hack contributes to pet safety, we want to see it.
Playful Pets:
Some hacks are just for fun, and that goes for our pet hacks too. If it’s about amusing either your animal friend or even yourself, it’s a playful pet hack.
Cyborg Pets:
Sometimes the hacks aren’t for your pet, but on your pet. Custom pet prosthetics or simply ultra-blinky LED accouterments belong here.
Home Alone:
This category is for systems that aim to make your pet more autonomous. That’s not limited to vacation feeders – anything that helps your pet get along in this world designed for humans is fair game.
Inspiration
We’ve seen an amazing number of pet hacks here at Hackaday, from simple to wildly overkill. And we love them all! Here are a few of our favorite pet hacks past, but feel free to chime in the comments if you have one that didn’t make our short list.
Let’s start off with a fishy hack. Simple aquariums don’t require all that much attention or automation, so they’re a great place to start small with maybe a light controller or something that turns off your wave machine every once in a while. But when you get to the point of multiple setups, you might also want to spend a little more time on the automation. Or at least that’s how we imagine that
[Blue Blade Fish] got to the point of a system with multiple light setups, temperature control, water level sensing, and more.
It’s a 15-video series, so buckle in.
OK, now let’s talk cats. Cats owners know they can occasionally bring in dead mice, for which
a computer-vision augmented automatic door is the obvious solution
. Or maybe your cats spend all their time in the great outdoors? Then you’ll need
a weather-proof automatic feeder for the long haul
. Indoor cats, each with a special diet?
Let the Cat-o-Matic 3000 keep track of who has been fed
. But for the truly pampered feline, we leave for your consideration
the cat elevator
and
the sun-tracking chair
.
Dogs are more your style? We’ve seen a number of
automatic ball launchers
for when you just get tired of playing fetch. But what tugged hardest at our heartstrings was [Bud]’s
audible go-fetch toy
that he made for his dog [Lucy] when she lost her vision, but not her desire to keep playing. How much tech is too much tech?
A dog-borne WiFi hotspot
, or a
drone set up to automatically detect and remove the dreaded brown heaps
?
Finally, we’d like to draw your attention to some truly miscellaneous pet hacks. [Mr. Goxx] is a hamster who
trades crypto
, [Mr. Fluffbutt] runs in
a VR world simulation hamster wheel
, and
[Harold] posts his workouts over MQTT
– it’s the Internet of Hamsters after all. Have birds? Check out
this massive Chicken McMansion
or this great vending machine that
trains crows to clean up cigarette butts in exchange for peanuts
.
We had a lot of fun looking through Hackaday’s back-catalog of pet hacks, but we’re still missing yours! If you’ve got something you’d like us all to see,
head on over to Hackaday.io and enter it in the contest.
Fame, fortune, and a DigiKey gift certificate await! | 14 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118915",
"author": "Rich",
"timestamp": "2025-04-15T20:51:33",
"content": "Meow",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8118927",
"author": "threeve",
"timestamp": "2025-04-15T21:49:19",
"content": "may we all hope the Acou... | 1,760,371,574.879509 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/15/new-brymen-bluetooth-bm788bt-digital-multimeter-coming-soon/ | New Brymen Bluetooth BM788BT Digital Multimeter Coming Soon | John Elliot V | [
"Reviews",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"BM780 Series",
"BM788BT",
"Brymen",
"digital multimeter"
] | If you’re into electronics you can never have too many digital multimeters (DMMs). They all have different features, and if you want to make multiple measurements simultaneously, it can pay to have a few. Over on his video blog [joe smith] reviews the new Brymen BM788BT, which is a new entry into the Bluetooth logging meter category.
This is a two-part series: in the first
he runs the meter through its measurement paces
, and in the second
he looks at the Bluetooth software interface
. And when we say “new” meter, we mean
brand new
, this is a review unit that you can’t yet get in stores.
According to a post on the EEVblog,
this Bluetooth variant was promised five years ago
, and back then Brymen even had the Bluetooth module pin header on the PCB, but it has taken a long time to get the feature right. If you scroll through the thread you will find that Brymen has made its
protocol specification available
for the BM780 series meters.
It looks like some Bluetooth hacking might be required to get the best out of this meter. Of course we’re no strangers to hacking DMMs around here. We’ve taken on the
Fluke 77
for example, and
these DMM tweezers
. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118845",
"author": "coup on Vill",
"timestamp": "2025-04-15T15:49:40",
"content": "I’ll say no to it just from the unbranded second hand looking cardboard box and the recycled looking piece of bubble packing material. And no test leads?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,574.931811 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/15/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-john-lennons-typewriter/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With John Lennon’s Typewriter | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"chorded keyboard",
"John Lennon",
"mid-century",
"mpu6050",
"Odell",
"Odell index typewriter",
"Odell typewriter",
"Palm Springs",
"wearable keyboard",
"wooden typewriter"
] | Image by [akavel] via
GitHub
Reader [akavel] was kind enough to notify me about
Clawtype
, which is a custom wearable chorded keyboard/mouse combo based on
the Chordite
by [John W. McKown].
First of all, I love the brass rails — they give it that lovely circuit sculpture vibe. This bad boy was written in Rust and currently runs on a SparkFun ProMicro RP2040 board. For the mouse portion of the program, there’s an MPU6050 gyro/accelerometer.
[akavel]’s intent was to pair it with XR glasses, which sounds like a great combination to me. While typing is still a bit slow, [akavel] is improving at a noticeable pace and does some vim coding during hobby time.
In the future, [akavel] plans to try a BLE version, maybe even running off a single AA Ni-MH cell, and probably using an nRF52840. As for the 3D-printed shape, that was designed and printed by [akavel]’s dear friend [Cunfusu],
who has made the files available over at Printables
. Be sure to check it out in the brief demo video after the break.
Wooden You Like To Use the Typewriter?
Image by [bilbonbigos] via
reddit
I feel a bit late to the party on this one, but that’s okay, I made an nice entrance.
The Typewriter
is [bilbonbigos]’ lovely distraction-free writing instrument that happens to be primarily constructed of wood. In fact, [bilbonbigos] didn’t use any screws or nails — the whole thing is glued together.
The Typewriter uses a Raspberry Pi 3B+, and [bilbonbigos] is FocusWriter to get real work done on it. it runs off of a 10,000 mAh power bank and uses a 7.9″ Waveshare display.
The 60% mechanical keyboard was supposed to be Bluetooth but turned out not to be when it arrived, so that’s why you might notice a cable sticking out.
The whole thing all closed up is about the size of a ream of A4, and [bilbonbigos] intends to add a shoulder strap in order to make it more portable.
That cool notebook shelf doubles as a mousing surface, which is pretty swell and rounds out the build nicely. Still, there are some things [bilbonbigos] would change — a new Raspi, or a lighter different physical support for the screen, and a cooling system.
The Centerfold: A Keyboard For Your House In Palm Springs
Image by [the_real_jamied] via
reddit
Can’t you feel the space age Palm Springs breezes just looking at this thing?
No? Well, at least admit that it looks quite atomic-age with that font and those life-preserver modifier keycaps. This baby would look great on one of those giant Steelcase office desks. Just don’t spill your La Croix on it, or whatever they drink in Palm Springs.
Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad?
Send me a picture
along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!
Historical Clackers: the Odell Typewriter
First of all,
the machine pictured here
is not the true Odell number 1 model, which has a pair of seals’ feet at each end of the base and is referred to as the “
Seal-Foot Odell
“. Ye olde Seal-Foot was only produced briefly in 1889.
Image via
The Antikey Chop
But then inventor Levi Judson Odell completely redesigned the thing into what you see here — model 1b, for which he was awarded a patent in 1890. I particularly like the markings on the base. The nickel-plated, rimless model you see here was not typical; most had gold bases.
These babies cost 1/5th of a standard typewriter, and were quite easy to use to boot. With everything laid out in a line, it was far easier to use a slide mechanism than your ten fingers to select each character. On top of everything else, these machines were small enough to take with you.
No matter their appearance, or whether they typed upper case only or both, Odells were all linear index typewriters. The print element is called a type-rail. There is a fabric roller under the type-rail that applies ink to the characters as they pass. Pinch levers on the sides of the carriage did double duty as the carriage advance mechanism and the escapement.
Round-based Odells went by the wayside in 1906 and were replaced by square-based New American No. 5 models. They functioned the same, but looked quite different.
Finally, John Lennon’s Typewriter Is For Sale
Image via
Just Collecting
Got an extra ten grand lying around?
You could own an interesting piece of history
.
This image comes courtesy of Paul Fraser Collectibles,
who are selling this typewriter once owned and used by the legendary Beatle himself
. While Lennon composed poems and songs on the machine, it’s unclear whether he secretly wanted to be a paperback writer.
This machine, an SCM (Smith-Corona Marchant) Electra 120, is an interesting one; it’s electric, but the carriage return is still manual. I myself have an SCM Secretarial 300, which looks very much the same, but has a frightening ‘Power Return’ that sends the carriage back toward the right with enough power to shake the floor, depending upon the fortitude of your table.
Apparently Lennon would use the machine when traveling, but gave it to a close friend in the music industry when he upgraded or otherwise no longer needed it. A booking agent named Irwin Pate worked with this friend and obtained the typewriter from him, and Irwin and his wife Clarine held on to it until they sold it to Paul Fraser Collectibles. I find it interesting that this didn’t go to auction at Christie’s — I think it would ultimately go for more, but I’m a writer, not an auction-ologist.
Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards?
Help me out by sending in a link or two
. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to
email me directly
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118822",
"author": "Mac Cody",
"timestamp": "2025-04-15T14:27:53",
"content": "“While Lennon composed poems and songs on the machine, it’s unclear whether he secretly wanted to be a paperback writer.”I see what you did there!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYvkICbTZIQ",
"parent... | 1,760,371,574.982747 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/15/shine-on-you-crazy-diamond-quantum-magnetic-sensor/ | Shine On You Crazy Diamond Quantum Magnetic Sensor | Dan Maloney | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"diamond",
"laser",
"magnetic",
"microwave",
"N-V",
"nitrogen vacancy center",
"PLL",
"quantum",
"sensor",
"spin"
] | We’re probably all familiar with the Hall Effect, at least to the extent that it can be used to make solid-state sensors for magnetic fields. It’s a cool bit of applied physics, but there are other ways to sense magnetic fields, including leveraging the weird world of quantum physics with
this diamond, laser, and microwave open-source sensor
.
Having never heard of quantum sensors before, we took the plunge and read up on the topic using some of the material provided by [Mark C] and his colleagues at Quantum Village. The gist of it seems to be that certain lab-grown diamonds can be manufactured with impurities such as nitrogen, which disrupt the normally very orderly lattice of carbon atoms and create a “nitrogen vacancy,” small pockets within the diamond with extra electrons. Shining a green laser on N-V diamonds can stimulate those electrons to jump up to higher energy states, releasing red light when they return to the ground state. Turning this into a sensor involves sweeping the N-V diamond with microwave energy in the presence of a magnetic field, which modifies which spin states of the electrons and hence how much red light is emitted.
Building a practical version of this quantum sensor isn’t as difficult as it sounds. The trickiest part seems to be building the diamond assembly, which has the N-V diamond — about the size of a grain of sand and actually not that expensive — potted in clear epoxy along with a loop of copper wire for the microwave antenna, a photodiode, and a small fleck of red filter material. The electronics primarily consist of an ADF4531 phase-locked loop RF signal generator and a 40-dB RF amplifier to generate the microwave signals, a green laser diode module, and an ESP32 dev board.
All the
design files and firmware
have been open-sourced, and everything about the build seems quite approachable. The write-up emphasizes Quantum Village’s desire to make this quantum technology’s “Apple II moment,” which we heartily endorse. We’ve seen
N-V sensors
detailed before, but this project might make it easier to play with quantum physics at home. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118768",
"author": "Esaki",
"timestamp": "2025-04-15T11:33:05",
"content": "Is this similar action to a tunnel diode?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8118770",
"author": "evelynmartin3022",
"timestamp": "2025-04-15T11:5... | 1,760,371,575.041019 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/15/this-potato-virtual-assistant-is-fully-baked/ | This Potato Virtual Assistant Is Fully Baked | Seth Mabbott | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Artificial Intelligence"
] | [
"home-assistant",
"portal",
"portal 2",
"raspberry pi",
"ReSpeaker",
"smart speaker"
] | There are a number of reasons you might want to build your own smart speaker virtual assistant. Usually, getting your weather forecast from a snarky, malicious AI potato isn’t one of them, unless you’re a huge
Portal
fan like [Binh Pham].
[Binh Pham] built the
potato incarnation of GLaDOS
from the
Portal 2
video game with the help of a
ReSpeaker Light kit
, an ESP32-based board designed for speech recognition and voice control, and as an interface for home assistant running on a Raspberry Pi.
He resisted the temptation to use a real potato as an enclosure and wisely opted instead to print one from a 3D file he found on Thingiverse of the original GLaDOS potato. Providing the assistant with the iconic synthetic voice of GLaDOS was a matter of repackaging an existing voice model for use with Home Assistant.
Of course all of this attention to detail would be for naught if you had to refer to the assistant as “Google” or “Alexa” to get its attention. A bit of custom modelling and on-device wake word detection, and the cyborg tuber was ready to switch lights on and off with it’s signature sinister wit.
We’ve seen a number of
projects
that brought
Portal
objects
to life
for fans of the franchise to enjoy, even an
assistant based on another version of the GLaDOS the character
. This one adds a dimension of absurdity to the collection. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118748",
"author": "Carl Breen",
"timestamp": "2025-04-15T09:12:45",
"content": "Nice project! It brings back fond memories, especially of how good video games were back then. Subscriptions and season passes really did a number on gaming.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,575.086997 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/14/building-a-diy-tornado-tower/ | Building A DIY Tornado Tower | Lewin Day | [
"Science"
] | [
"flow visualization",
"tornado",
"tornado tower",
"vortex"
] | A tornado can be an awe-inspiring sight, but it can also flip your car, trash your house, and otherwise injure you with flying debris. If you’d like to look at swirling air currents in a safer context,
you might appreciate this tornado tower build from [Gary Boyd].
[Gary]’s build was inspired by museum demonstrations and
the tornado machine designs of [Harald Edens].
His build generates a vortex that spans 1 meter tall in a semi-open cylindrical chamber. A fan in the top of the device sucks in air from the chamber, and exhausts it through a vertical column of holes in the wall of the cylinder. This creates a vortex in the air, though it’s not something you can see on its own. To visualize the flow, the cylindrical chamber is also fitted with an ultrasonic mist generator in the base. The vortex in the chamber is able to pick up this mist, and it can be seen swirling upwards as it is sucked towards the fan at the top.
It’s a nice educational build, and one that’s as nice to look at as it is to study. It produces a thick white vortex that we’re sure someone could turn into an admirable lamp or clock or something, this being Hackaday, after all. In any case,
vortexes are well worth your study.
If you’re cooking up neat projects with this physical principle, you should absolutely
let us know! | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118717",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2025-04-15T06:08:38",
"content": "NO video, who cares",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8118720",
"author": "boo",
"timestamp": "2025-04-15T06:56:27",
"content": ... | 1,760,371,575.467606 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/14/diy-scanning-spectrometer-is-a-bright-idea/ | DIY Scanning Spectrometer Is A Bright Idea | Tyler August | [
"News"
] | [
"arduino",
"photospectrometer",
"spectometry",
"spectrometer"
] | Spectroscopy seems simple: split a beam of light into its constituent wavelengths with a prism or diffraction grating, and measure the intensity of each wavelength. The devil is in the details, though, and what looks simple is often much harder to pull of in practice. You’ll find lots of details in [Gary Boyd]’s write-up of his
optical scanning spectrometer project
, but no devils.
Schematic diagram of [Gary Boyd]’s Czerny-Turner type scanning spectrometer.
A scanning spectrometer is opposed to the more usual
camera-type spectrometer
we see on these pages in that it uses a single-pixel sensor that sweeps across the spectrum, rather than spreading the spectrum across an imaging sensor.
Specifically, [Gary] has implemented a Czerny-Turner type spectrometer, which is a two-mirror design. The first concave mirror collimates the light coming into the spectrometer from its entrance slit, focusing it on a reflective diffraction grating. The second concave mirror focuses the various rays of light split by the diffraction grating onto the detector.
In this case [Gary] uses a cheap VEML 7700 ambient light sensor mounted to a small linear stage from amazon to achieve a very respectable 1 nm resolution in the range from 360 nm to 980 nm. That’s better than the human eye, so nothing to sneeze at — but [Gary] includes some ideas in his blog post to extend that even further. The whole device is controlled via an Arduino Uno that streams data to [Gary]’s PC.
[Gary] documents everything very well, from his optical mounts to the Arduino code used to drive the stepper motor and take measurements from the VEML 7700 sensor. The LED and laser “turrets” used in calibration are great designs as well. He also shares the spectra this device is capable of capturing– everything from the blackbody of a tungsten lamp used in calibration, to a cuvette of tea, to the sun itself as you can see here. If you have a couple minutes,
[Gary]’s full writeup is absolutely worth a read.
This isn’t the
first spectrometer
we’ve highlighted– you might say
we’ve shown a whole spectrum of them. | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118486",
"author": "Owlman",
"timestamp": "2025-04-14T11:12:27",
"content": "“culminates the light” Interesting usage, I suspect it collimates the light though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8118518",
"author": "Lig... | 1,760,371,575.353371 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/14/a-tricky-commodore-pet-repair-and-a-lesson-about-assumptions/ | A Tricky Commodore PET Repair And A Lesson About Assumptions | Maya Posch | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Retrocomputing",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"Commodore PET",
"computer repair"
] | The PET opened, showing the motherboard. (Credit: Ken Shirriff)
An unavoidable part of old home computer systems and kin like the Commodore PET is that due to the age of their components they will develop issues that go far beyond what was covered in the official repair manual, not to mention require unconventional repairs. A case in point is the
2001 series Commodore PET that [Ken Shirriff] recently repaired
.
The initial diagnosis was quite straightforward: it did turn on, but only displayed random symbols on the CRT, so obviously the ICs weren’t entirely happy, but at least the power supply and the basic display routines seemed to be more or less functional. Surely this meant that only a few bad ICs and maybe a few capacitors had to be replaced, and everything would be fully functional again.
Initially two bad MOS MPS6540 ROM chips had to be replaced with 2716 EPROMs using an adapter, but this did not fix the original symptom. After a logic analyzer session three bad RAM ICs were identified, which mostly fixed the display issue, aside from a quaint 2×2 checkerboard pattern and completely bizarre behavior upon running BASIC programs.
Using the logic analyzer capture the 6502 MPU was identified as writing to the wrong addresses. Ironically, this turned out to be due to a wrong byte in one of the replacement 2716 EPROMs as the used programmer wasn’t quite capable of hitting the right programming voltage. Using a better programmer fixed this, but on the next boot another RAM IC turned out to have failed, upping the total of failed silicon to four RAM & two ROM ICs, as pictured above, and teaching the important lesson to test replacement ROMs before you stick them into a system. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118493",
"author": "Christopher",
"timestamp": "2025-04-14T11:54:06",
"content": "This is dedication",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8118495",
"author": "RetepV",
"timestamp": "2025-04-14T12:04:53",
"content": "In r... | 1,760,371,575.560625 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/13/introducing-infrared-remote-control-protocols/ | Introducing Infrared Remote Control Protocols | John Elliot V | [
"Reverse Engineering",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"HS0038 Infrared Receiver Module",
"infrared",
"ir",
"remote control",
"Rigol DS1102 Oscilloscope"
] | Over on his YouTube channel [Electronic Wizard] has released a video that explains how infrared (IR) remote controllers work:
IR Remote Controllers protocol: 101 to advanced
.
This video covers the NEC family of protocols, which are widely used in typical consumer IR remote control devices, and explains how the 38 kHz carrier wave is used to encode a binary signal. [Electronic Wizard] uses his Rigol DS1102 oscilloscope and a breadboard jig to sniff the signal from an example IR controller.
There is also an honorable mention of the HS0038 integrated-circuit which can interpret the light waves and output a digital signal. Of course if you’re a tough guy you don’t need no stinkin’ integrated-circuit IR receiver implementation because you can
build your own
!
Before the video concludes there is a brief discussion about how to interpret the binary signal using a combination of long and short pulses. If this looks similar to Morse Code to you that’s because it
is
similar to Morse Code! But not entirely the same, as you will learn if you watch the video! | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118435",
"author": "Weasel",
"timestamp": "2025-04-14T07:06:16",
"content": "Oh yes, its surprising how simple this stuff is. I remember we built a small device that froze the projektor every now and then. Drove our prof nuts. Good times",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,575.421987 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/13/the-prostar-the-portable-gaming-system-and-laptop-from-1995/ | The ProStar: The Portable Gaming System And Laptop From 1995 | Maya Posch | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"game controller",
"portable game system"
] | Whilst recently perusing the fine wares for sale at the Vintage Computer Festival East, [Action Retro] ended up
adopting a 1995 ProStar laptop
. Unlike most laptops of the era, however, this one didn’t just have the typical trackpad and clicky mouse buttons, but also a D-pad and four suspiciously game controller looking buttons. This makes it rather like the 2002
Sony VAIO PCG-U
subnotebook, or the
2018 GPD Win 2
, except that inexplicably the manufacturer has opted to put these (serial-connected) game controls on the laptop’s palm rest.
Sony VAIO PCG-U101. (Credit: Sony)
Though branded ProStar, this laptop was manufactured by Clevo, who to this day produces generic laptops that are rebranded by everyone & their dog. This particular laptop is your typical (120 MHz) Pentium-based unit, with two additional PCBs for the D-pad and buttons wired into the mainboard.
Unlike the sleek and elegant VAIO PCG-U and successors, this Clevo laptop is a veritable brick, as was typical for the era, which makes the ergonomics of the game controls truly questionable. Although the controls totally work, as demonstrated in the video, you won’t be holding the laptop, meaning that using the D-pad with your thumb is basically impossible unless you perch the laptop on a stand.
We’re not sure what the Clevo designers were thinking when they dreamed up this beauty, but it definitely makes this laptop stand out from the crowd. As would you, if you were using this as a portable gaming system back in the late 90s.
Our own [Adam Fabio] was at VCF East this year as well, and was
impressed by an expansive exhibit dedicated to Windows 95
. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118408",
"author": "I Alone Possess The Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-04-14T02:06:28",
"content": "In what universe does it make sense to put the buttons at the base of the monitor (Sony Vaio) so the user has to constantly avoid bumping the keyboard keys?",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,575.512264 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/13/hackaday-links-april-13-2025/ | Hackaday Links: April 13, 2025 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"autonomous",
"dragon",
"driving",
"Fram2",
"hackaday links",
"logic",
"logical fallacies",
"pet",
"polyethylene terephthalate",
"robotaxi",
"soda bottle",
"SpaceX",
"Spock",
"star trek",
"The Engineer Guy",
"Waymo",
"x-ray"
] | It’s been a while since we’ve dunked on an autonomous taxi foul-up, mainly because it seemed for a while there that most of the companies field testing driverless ride-sharing services had either ceased operation or curtailed them significantly. But that appears not to be the case after
a Waymo robotaxi got stuck in a Chick-fil-A drive-through
. The incident occurred at the chicken giant’s Santa Monica, California location at about 9:30 at night, when the autonomous Jaguar got stuck after dropping off a passenger in the parking lot. The car apparently tried to use the drive-through lane to execute a multi-point turn but ended up across the entrance, blocking other vehicles seeking their late-evening chicken fix. The drive-through-only restaurant ended up closing for a short time while Waymo figured out how to get the vehicle moving again.
To be fair, drive-through lanes are challenging even for experienced drivers. Lanes are often narrow, curve radii are sometimes tighter than a large vehicle can negotiate smoothly, and the task-switching involved with transitioning from driver to customer can lead to mistakes. Drive-throughs almost seem engineered to make tempers flare, especially at restaurants where hangry drivers are likely to act out at the slightest delay. This is probably doubly so when drivers are stuck behind a driverless car, completely eliminating even the minimal decency that would likely be extended to a human driver who got themselves in a pickle. If people are willing to honk at and curse out the proverbial little old lady from Pasadena, they’re very unlikely to cooperate with a robotaxi and give it the room it needs to maneuver out of a tight spot. Perhaps that argues for a change in programming that accounts for real-world driving experiences as well as the letter of the law.
The big news from space this week was the private
Fram2
mission
, which took an all-civilian crew on the world’s first crewed polar flight. The four-person crew took off from Florida in a SpaceX Crew Dragon and rather than heading east towards Africa, took off due north and entered a retrograde orbit at 90° inclination, beating the previous record of 65° inclination by
Valentina Tereshkova
aboard
Vostok 6
back in 1963. The
Fram2
team managed a couple of other firsts, from
the first medical X-rays taken in space
to
the first amateur radio contacts made from the Dragon
.
It’s been a while, but Bill “The Engineer Guy” Hammack is back with
a new video extolling the wonders of plastic soda bottles
. If you think that’s a subject too mundane to hold your interest, then you’ve never seen Bill at work. The amount of engineering that goes into creating a container that can stand up to its pressurized content while being able to be handled both by automation machines at the bottling plant and by thirsty consumers is a lesson in design brilliance. Bill explains the whole blow-molding process, amazingly using what looks like an actual Coca-Cola production mold. We would have thought such IP would be fiercely protected, but such is Bill’s clout, we guess. The video is also a little trip down memory lane for some of us, as Bill shows off both the two-piece 2-liter bottles that used to grace store shelves and the ponderous glass versions that predated those. Also interesting is the look at the differences between hot-fill bottles and soda bottles, which we never appreciated before.
And finally, if you’ve ever been confused by which logical fallacy is clouding your thinking, why not turn to the most famous fictional logician of all time to clarify things?
“Star Trek Logical Reasoning”
is a YouTube series by CHDanhauser that uses clips from the Star Trek animated series to illustrate nearly 70 logical fallacies. Each video is quite short, with most featuring Commander Spock eavesdropping on the conversations of his less-logical shipmates and pointing out the flaws in their logic. Luckily, the 23rd century seems to have no equivalent of human(oid) resources, because Spock’s logical interventions are somewhat toxic by today’s standards, but that’s a small price to pay for getting your logical ducks in a row. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118398",
"author": "scott_tx",
"timestamp": "2025-04-14T00:22:31",
"content": "Spock has issues with your logic.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8118406",
"author": "Piecutter",
"timestamp": "2025-04-14T01:23:37",
"... | 1,760,371,575.837878 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/13/3d-printed-milling-machine-is-solid-as-a-rock/ | 3D Printed Milling Machine Is Solid As A Rock | Tyler August | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"3D printed CNC mill",
"3D printed mill",
"cast concrete",
"CNC mill"
] | There are no shortage of CNC machines in the DIY space these days, but sometimes you just need to do things your own way. That’s what [Chris Borges] decided when he put together this rock-solid,
concrete-filled CNC milling machine
.
The concrete body of this machine is housed inside a 3D printed shell, which makes for an attractive skin as well as a handy mold. Within the concrete is a steel skeleton, with the ‘rebar’ being made of threaded rods and a length of square tubing to hold the main column. You can see the concrete being poured in around the rebar in the image, or watch it happen in the build video embedded below.
In goes the concrete, up goes the rigidity.
All three axes slide on linear rails, and are attached to lead screws driven by the omnipresent NEMA 17 steppers. The air-cooled spindle, apparently the weak-point of the design, is attached to a pivoting counterweight, but make no mistake: it is on rails. All-in-all, it looks like a very rigid, and very capable design — [Chris] shows it cutting through aluminum quite nicely.
Given that [Chris] has apparently never used a true mill before, this design came out remarkably well. Between the Bill of Materials and 45 page step-by-step assembly instructions, he’s also done a fantastic job documenting the build for anyone who wants to put one together for themselves.
This isn’t the first concrete-filled project we’ve highlighted from [Chris], you may remember
seeing his lathe on these pages
. It certainly
isn’t the first CNC mill we’ve covered, either
. | 59 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118345",
"author": "p",
"timestamp": "2025-04-13T20:22:13",
"content": "He seems to use a steel square tube, so the 3D printed part doesn’t seem to contribute much mechanically and is mostly aesthetic. The machine does look good though!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,371,575.94589 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/13/the-spade-hardware-description-language/ | The Spade Hardware Description Language | John Elliot V | [
"FPGA",
"hardware"
] | [
"ASIC",
"fpga",
"Hardware Description Language",
"hdl",
"Spade Language",
"verilog",
"vhdl"
] | Spade
is an open-source hardware description language (HDL) developed at Linköping University, Sweden.
Other HDLs you might have heard of include Verilog and VHDL. Hardware engineers use HDLs to define hardware which can be rendered in silicon. Hardware defined in HDLs might look like software, but actually it’s not software, it’s hardware description. This hardware can be realized myriad ways including in an FPGA or with an ASIC.
You have probably heard that your CPU processes instructions in a pipeline. Spade has first-class support for such pipelines. This means that design activities such as re-timing and re-pipelining are much easier than in other HDLs where the designer has to implement these by hand. (Note:
backward justification is NP-hard
, we’re not sure how Spade supports this, if it does at all. If you know please enlighten us in the comments!)
Spade implements a type system for strong and static typing inspired by the Rust programming language and can do type inference. It supports pattern matching such as you might see in a typical functional programming language. It boasts having user-friendly and helpful error messages and tooling.
Spade is a work in progress so please expect missing features and breaking changes. The documentation is in
The Spade Book
. If you’re interested you can follow development on
GitLab
or
Discord
.
So now that you know about the Spade language, are you planning to take it for a spin? You will find plenty of Verilog/VHDL designs at Hackaday which you could re-implement using Spade, such as an easy one like
Breathing LED Done With Raw Logic Synthesized From A Verilog Design
(see
benchmarks
) or a much more challenging one like
Game Boy Recreated In Verilog
. If you give Spade a go we’d love to see what you come up with! | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118330",
"author": "rey54y45y",
"timestamp": "2025-04-13T18:51:48",
"content": "please make a cpuhttps://tic80.com/and gpu, sound accelarators.simple computer, many program for testing and one battery for a working demo for whole week.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,371,575.744384 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/14/plasmonic-modulators-directly-convert-terahertz-waves-to-optical-signals/ | Plasmonic Modulators Directly Convert Terahertz Waves To Optical Signals | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"plasmoid",
"plasmonics"
] | A major bottleneck with high-frequency wireless communications is the conversion from radio frequencies to optical signals and vice versa. This is performed by an electro-optic modulator (EOM), which generally are limited to GHz-level signals. To reach THz speeds, a new approach was needed, which researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland claim to
have found in the form of a plasmonic phase modulator
.
Although sounding like something from a
Star Trek
episode,
plasmonics
is a very real field, which involves the interaction between optical frequencies along metal-dielectric interfaces. The original 2015 paper by [Yannick Salamin] et al.
as published
in
Nano Letters
provides the foundations of the achievement, with
the recent paper
in
Optica
by [Yannik Horst] et al. covering the THz plasmonic EOM demonstration.
The demonstrated prototype can achieve 1.14 THz, though signal degradation begins to occur around 1 THz. This is achieved by using plasmons (quanta of electron oscillators) generated on the gold surface, who affect the optical beam as it passes small slots in the gold surface that contain a nonlinear organic electro optic material that ‘writes’ the original wireless signal onto the optical beam. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118741",
"author": "metalman",
"timestamp": "2025-04-15T08:11:52",
"content": "Plasmodic phase modulators, dont just sound like something off of star treck, they make star treck sound dated, or mythical.The reality is that things like plasmodic phase modulators will contribute to a... | 1,760,371,575.791024 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/14/elastic-bands-enable-touchable-volumetric-display/ | Elastic Bands Enable Touchable Volumetric Display | Aaron Beckendorf | [
"hardware",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"3d",
"elastic band",
"POV",
"volumetric",
"volumetric display"
] | Amazing as volumetric displays are, they have one major drawback: interacting with them is complicated. A 3D mouse is nice, but unless you’ve done a lot of CAD work, it’s a bit unintuitive. Researchers from the Public University of Navarra, however, have developed a touchable volumetric display, bringing touchscreen-like interactions to the third dimension (
preprint paper
).
At the core, this is a swept-volume volumetric display: a light-diffusing screen oscillates along one axis, while from below a projector displays cross-sections of the scene in synchrony with the position of the screen. These researchers replaced the normal screen with six strips of elastic material. The finger of someone touching the display deforms one or more of the strips, allowing the touch to be detected, while also not damaging the display.
The actual hardware is surprisingly hacker-friendly: for the screen material, the researchers settled on elastic bands intended for clothing, and two modified subwoofers drove the screen’s oscillation. Indeed, some aspects of the design actually cite
this Hackaday article
. While the citation misattributes the design, we’re glad to see a hacker inspiring professional research.) The most exotic component is a very high-speed projector (on the order of 3,000 fps), but the previously-cited project deals with this by hacking a DLP projector, as does
another project
(also cited in this paper as source 24) which we’ve covered.
While interacting with the display does introduce some optical distortions, we think the video below speaks for itself. If you’re interested in other volumetric displays, check out
this project
, which displays images with a levitating styrofoam bead.
[Thanks to Xavi for the tip!] | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118665",
"author": "D",
"timestamp": "2025-04-14T23:50:28",
"content": "While this is very cool, it feels more like a novelty art piece than a practical device. It’s hard to imagine building a daily-use device with the low resolution, material wear, and sound pollution this probabl... | 1,760,371,575.99832 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/14/esp32-powered-clock-brings-aviation-style-to-your-desk/ | ESP32-Powered Clock Brings Aviation Style To Your Desk | Lewin Day | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"aviation",
"clock",
"gauges"
] | There’s something cool about the visual design language used in the aviation world. You probably don’t get much exposure to it if you’re not regularly flying a plane, but there are other ways you can bring it into your life. A great example would be building an aviation-themed clock,
like this stylish timepiece from [oliverb.]
The electronic heart of the build is an ESP32. This wireless-capable microcontroller is a popular choice for clock builds these days. This is because it can contact network time servers out of the box, which allows you to build an incredibly capable and accurate clock without any additional parts. No real-time-clock needed—just have the ESP32 buzz the Internet for an accurate update on the regular!
As for the display itself, three gauges show hours, minutes, and seconds on aviation-like gauges. They’re 3D-printed, which means you can build them from scratch. That’s a touch easier than having to go out and source actual surplus aviation hardware. Each gauge is driven by a NEMA17 stepper motor. There’s also an ATMEGA328 on hand to drive a 7-segment gauge on the seconds display, and a PIR sensor which shuts the clock down when nobody is around to view it.
It’s a tidy build, and one with a compelling aesthetic at that. We’ve seen
some similar builds before using real aviation gauges, too.
Video after the break. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118647",
"author": "El Gru",
"timestamp": "2025-04-14T22:33:49",
"content": "There is just one major design flaw:Aviators use the 24 hour format.(And those that do not, should be grounded forever.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,371,576.053795 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/14/converting-the-c64-mini-into-a-c64c/ | Converting The C64 Mini Into A C64C | Lewin Day | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"c64",
"commodore 64",
"retrocomputing"
] | The C64 Mini is a beautiful and functional replica of the most popular computer ever made, except at 50% size and without a working keyboard. For maximum nostalgia, it was modeled after the brown breadbox C64 case which so characterized the model. However, [10p6] wanted to build a tiny C64C instead,
so set about making a conversion happen.
The build is primarily about the case design. [10p6] created a nice 50% scale duplicate of the C64C, with an eye to making it work with the internals of the popular C64 Mini. The case was paired with a custom PETSCII keyboard PCB and keycaps designed by [Bleugh]. This was a key element, since it wouldn’t really feel like a functional C64C without a functional keyboard. The build also scored a bonus USB hub for more flexibility. For the best possible finish, the case, power button, and keycaps were all printed using a resin printer, which provides a more “production-like” result than FDM printers are capable of.
It’s funny how retro computers remain popular to this day,
particularly amongst the hacker set
. In contrast, we don’t see a whole lot of people trying to replicate Pentium II machines from the mid-1990s. If you do happen to have a crack at it, though,
the tipsline
is always open. Video after the break. | 14 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118611",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2025-04-14T21:00:31",
"content": "Needs banana for scale.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8118624",
"author": "I Alone Possess The Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-04-14T2... | 1,760,371,576.118727 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/14/linux-fu-stopping-a-runaway/ | Linux Fu: Stopping A Runaway | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Linux Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"autokey",
"linux",
"Linux Fu",
"PSS"
] | The best kind of Hackaday posts are the ones where there was some insurmountable problem with an elegant solution devised through deep analysis of the problem and creativity. This is not one of those posts. I’m sure you are familiar with bit rot. You know, something works for a long time and then, for no apparent reason, stops working. Well, that has been biting me, and lacking the time for the creative, elegant solution, I decided to attack it with a virtual chainsaw.
It all started with
a 2022 Linux Fu about using autokey
.
The Problem
I use autokey to give me emacs-style keystrokes in Web browsers and certain other programs. It intercepts keystrokes and translates them into other keystrokes. The problem is, the current Linux community hates autokey. Well, that’s not strictly true. They just love Wayland more. One reason I won’t switch from X11 is that I haven’t found a way to do something like I do with autokey. But since most of the powers-that-be have decided that X11 is bad and Wayland is good, X11 development is starting to show cracks.
In particular, autokey isn’t in the normal repositories for my distro anymore (KDE Neon). Of course, I’ve installed the latest version myself. I’m perfectly capable of doing that or even building from source. But lately, I’ve noticed my computer hangs, especially after sleeping for a long time. Also, after a long time, I notice that autokey just quits working. It is running but not working and I have to restart it. The memory consumption seems high when this happens.
You know how it is. Your system has quirks; you just live with them for a while. But eventually those paper cuts add up. I finally decided I needed to tackle the issue. But I don’t really have time to go debug autokey, especially when it takes hours for the problem to manifest.
The Chainsaw
I’ll say it upfront: Finding the memory leak would be the right thing to do. Build with debug symbols. Run the code and probe it when the problem comes up. Try to figure out what combination of X11, evdev, and whatever other hocus pocus it uses is causing this glitch.
But who’s got time for that? I decided that instead of launching autokey directly, I’d launch a wrapper script. I already had autokey removed from the KDE session so that I don’t try to start it myself and then get the system restaring it also. But now I run the wrapper instead of autokey.
So what does the wrapper do? It watches the memory consumption of autokey. Sure enough, it goes up just a little bit all the time. When the script sees it go over a threshold it kills it and restarts it. It also restarts if autokey dies, but I rarely see that.
What’s Memory Mean?
The problem is, how do you determine how much memory a process is using? Is it the amount of physical pages it has? The virtual space? What about shared libraries? In this case, I don’t really care as long as I have a number that is rising all the time that I can watch.
The /proc file system has a directory for each PID and there’s a ton of info in there. One of them is an accounting of memory. If you look at /proc/$PID/smaps for some program you’ll see something like this:
00400000-00420000 r--p 00000000 fd:0e 238814592 /usr/bin/python3.12
Size: 128 kB
KernelPageSize: 4 kB
MMUPageSize: 4 kB
Rss: 128 kB
Pss: 25 kB
Pss_Dirty: 0 kB
Shared_Clean: 128 kB
Shared_Dirty: 0 kB
Private_Clean: 0 kB
Private_Dirty: 0 kB
Referenced: 128 kB
Anonymous: 0 kB
KSM: 0 kB
LazyFree: 0 kB
AnonHugePages: 0 kB
ShmemPmdMapped: 0 kB
FilePmdMapped: 0 kB
Shared_Hugetlb: 0 kB
Private_Hugetlb: 0 kB
Swap: 0 kB
SwapPss: 0 kB
Locked: 0 kB
THPeligible: 0
VmFlags: rd mr mw me sd
00420000-00703000 r-xp 00020000 fd:0e 238814592 /usr/bin/python3.12
Size: 2956 kB
KernelPageSize: 4 kB
MMUPageSize: 4 kB
Rss: 2944 kB
Pss: 595 kB
Pss_Dirty: 0 kB
Shared_Clean: 2944 kB
Shared_Dirty: 0 kB
Private_Clean: 0 kB
Private_Dirty: 0 kB
. . .
Note that there is a section for each executable and shared object along with lots of information. You can get all the PSS (proportional set size) numbers for each module added together like this (among other ways):
cat /proc/$PID/smaps | grep -i pss | awk '{Total+=$2} END { print Total}'
Building the Chainsaw
So armed with that code, it is pretty easy to just run the program, see if it is eating up too much memory, and restart it if it is. I also threw in some optional debugging code.
#!/bin/bash
#- Run autokey, kill it if it gets too big
#- what's too big? $MLIMIT
MLIMIT=500000
#- how often to check (seconds)
POLL=10
#- Print debug info if you want
function pdebug {
#- comment out if you don't want debugging. Leave in if you do
#- echo $1 $2 $3 $4
}
while true # do forever
do
PID=$(pgrep autokey-qt) # find autokey
pdebug "PID",$PID
if [ ! -z "$PID" ] # if it is there
then
# get the memory size
PSS=$(cat /proc/$PID/smaps | grep -i pss | awk '{Total+=$2} END { print Total}')
pdebug "PSS", $PSS
echo $PSS >>/tmp/autokey-current.log
# too big?
if [ "$PSS" -gt "$MLIMIT" ]
then
pdebug "Kill"
echo Killed >>/tmp/autokey-current.log
# save old log before we start another
cp /tmp/autokey-current.log /tmp/autokey-$PID.log
kill $PID
PID=
sleep 2
fi
fi
if [ -z $PID ]
then
# if died, relaunch
pdebug "Launch"
autokey-qt & 2>&1 >/tmp/autokey-current.log
fi
pdebug "Sleep"
sleep $POLL
done
In practice, you’ll probably want to remove the
cp
command that saves the old log, but while troubleshooting, it is good to see how often the process is killed. Running this once with a big number gave me an idea that PSS was about 140,000 but rising every 10 seconds. So when it gets to 500,000, it is done. That seems to work well. Obviously, you’d adjust the numbers for whatever you are doing.
Bad Chainsaw
There are lots of ways this could have been done. A
systemd timer
, for example. Maybe even a cgroup. But this works, and took just a few minutes. Sure, a chainsaw is a lot to just cut a 2×4, but then again, it will go through it like a hot knife through butter.
I did consider just killing autokey periodically and
restarting it
. The problem is I work odd hours sometimes, and that means I’d have to do something like tie it to the screensaver. But I agree there are dozens of ways to do this, including to quit using autokey. What would your solution be? Let us know in the comments. Have you ever resorted to a trick this dirty? | 34 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118567",
"author": "the_morgan",
"timestamp": "2025-04-14T17:28:21",
"content": "I use lintalisthttps://lintalist.github.io/on windows. A lot. For many apps like word and outlook, and Windows Explorer tasks. Also web browser URL and quick password entries that are repetitious. Lint... | 1,760,371,576.19313 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/14/a-cheap-yellow-display-makes-a-video-walkie-talkie/ | A Cheap Yellow Display Makes A Video Walkie Talkie | Jenny List | [
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"Cheap Yellow Display",
"ESP32",
"videophone",
"walkie talkie"
] | The ESP32 series of microprocessors with their cheap high-power cores and built-in wireless networking have brought us a wide variety of impressive projects over the years. We’re not sure we’ve quite seen the like of [Jonathan R]’s
video walkie talkie
before though, a pair of units which as you might guess, deliver two-way video and audio communications.
The trick involves not one but two ESP32s: an ESP32-S3 based camera module, and a more traditional Tensilica ESP32 in a screen module. It’s an opportunity for an interesting comparison, as one device uses the Cheap Yellow Display board, and the other uses an Elecrow equivalent. The audio uses ESP-NOW, while the video uses WiFi, and since the on-board audio amplifiers aren’t great, there’s a small amp module.
The video below has a comprehensive run-down including the rationale behind the design choices, as well as a demonstration. There’s a small lag, but nothing too unacceptable for what is after all an extremely cheap device. Perhaps after all this time,
the video phone has finally arrived
! | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8118549",
"author": "Cheese Whiz",
"timestamp": "2025-04-14T16:08:39",
"content": "How I would have loved such a pair of devices as a kid!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8118914",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestam... | 1,760,371,576.235393 |
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