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https://hackaday.com/2025/03/11/a-magic-eye-tube-does-all-the-work-in-this-kit/ | A Magic Eye Tube Does All The Work In This Kit | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"heathkit",
"magic eye tube",
"test eqiupment"
] | We’re used to low cost parts and a diversity of electronic functions to choose from in our projects, to the extent that our antecedents would be green with envy. Back when tubes were king, electronics was a much more expensive pursuit with new parts, so designers had to be much more clever in their work. [Thomas Scherrer OZ2CPU] has just such a design on his bench,
it’s a Heathkit Capaci-Tester designed in 1959
, and we love it for the clever tricks it uses.
It’s typical of Heathkits of this era, with a sturdy chassis and components mounted on tag strips. As the name suggests, it’s a capacitor tester, and it uses a magic eye tube as its display. It’s looking for short circuits, open circuits, and low equivalent resistance, and it achieves this by looking at the loading the device under test places on a 19 MHz oscillator. But here comes that economy of parts; there’s no rectifier so the circuit runs on an AC HT voltage from a transformer, and that magic eye tube performs the task of oscillator as well as display.
He finds it to be in good condition in the video below the break, though he removes a capacitor placed from one of the mains input lines to chassis. It runs, and confirms his test capacitor is still good. It can’t measure the capacitance, but we’re guessing the resourceful engineer
would also have constructed a bridge for that
. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8108062",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-03-11T20:40:10",
"content": "[seeing the name on the instrument front] Now, it would be fantastic if there’s some real backstory with Heathkit and the (Star Trek) Daystrom Institute.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,371,611.317872 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/11/a-deep-dive-into-canon-autofocus-lenses/ | A Deep Dive Into Canon Autofocus Lenses | Maya Posch | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"autofocus",
"canon"
] | Credit: Markus Kohlpaintner
Although taken for granted these days, autofocus (AF) used to be a premium feature on film- and digital cameras, with [Markus Kohlpaintner]
taking us through an exhaustive overview of Canon’s AF systems
and how they work. On Canon cameras AF became a standard feature with the introduction of its EF lenses in 1987, which are found on its
EOS SLR
(single-lens reflex) series of professional and prosumer cameras.
Over the decades, Canon has used many different AF drive mechanisms within these lenses, all with their own pros and cons. The article goes through each of them, starting with the original Arc-Form Drive (AFD) and ending with the newest Voice Coil Motor (VCM), showing their internal construction. Of note are the USM (ultrasonic motor) types of AF systems that use a piezoelectric motor, the functioning of which using a traveling wave across the stator is also detailed, including the integrated feedback control system.
Ultimately the end user is mostly concerned with how well the AF works, of course. Here the biggest difference is probably whether manual adjustment is possible, with not all AF systems supporting full-time manual adjustment. With the newer AF systems this manual adjustment is now performed digitally rather than with a direct coupling. Although few people probably give AF much thought, it’s fascinating to see how much engineering went into these complex systems before even touching upon the algorithms that decide what to focus on in a scene. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8108025",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-03-11T18:42:19",
"content": "I’m not sure what’s on Markus’ website that causes my browser to break (can’t scroll), so I can’t check this:What’s mentioned here is simply the types of motors that move the lens to do the focusing.MUCHmore... | 1,760,371,611.486081 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/11/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-batwing-typewriter/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Batwing Typewriter | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"2024 EMF badge",
"batwing typewriter",
"Clicks keyboard case",
"hexpansion",
"keyboard phone case",
"Oliver typewriter",
"paradise",
"Switzerland",
"Tildagon",
"visible typewriter"
] | [Alex] of YouTube channel [EastMakes] wrote into tell me about his
fantastic QWERTY ‘hexpansion’ board
for the 2024 EMF Tildagon badge, and [Alex], I’m super glad you did. The system works!
Let’s back up a bit. Essentially, the idea is to have a badge that can be used beyond a single camp, with the creation of expansion boards being the other main attraction.
Our own [Jenny List] covered the badge in detail back in June 2024 when she got her hands on one
.
Image by [EastMakes] via
YouTube
[Alex] started by importing the Tildagon into Fusion360 and designing a way for the keyboard to attach to it physically. He then modeled the keyboard after the Blackberry types that can be found on Ali using the official EMF buttons established in earlier badges.
This QWERTY hexpansion is based on the RP2040, which is soldered around back and visible through the 3D-printed backplate. In order for the 90°-oriented board to align with the… not-90° connector, [Alex] built a little meander into the PCB.
The default OS on the Tildagon doesn’t know natively what to do with the serial messages from the keyboard, so [Alex] wrote an application that reads them in and decodes them. Be sure to check out the build and walk-through video after the break.
More, Children, Is Just a Slot Away
[New-Concentrate6308] is cooking up something new in the form of
a 50% keyboard with a cartridge slot!
The custom layout has been dubbed Esul, and has the Esc to the left of Tab, among other other interesting features.
Image by [New-Concentrate6308] via
reddit
Inspired by
[mujimanic]’s giga 40
, the cartridges add modules to the keyboard. If you want a screen, just slot one in. You could also up the RGB, or add something useful like a knob, or even some more keys.
You may have noticed the lack of an up arrow key. It’s there, it’s just a tap away on the right Shift, which if you hold it down, becomes Shift.
This thing is not going to be for everyone, but that’s not the point. (Is it ever?) The point is that [New-Concentrate6308] wanted a fun keyboard project and found it in spades. Plus, it looks fantastic.
The Centerfold: At the Corner of Practical and Paradise
Image by [jamesvyn] via
reddit
Do I really need to say anything here?
Can we all just enjoy the beauty of Switzerland for a moment?
[jamesvyn] recently switched from two monitors to a wide boi and is loving every minute of it. I particularly like the base — something about that shape is quite pleasing.
I bet it was difficult to find a wallpaper that does the view any justice. I have almost no details here, but I can tell you that the pager-looking thing near the mouse is a Pomodoro timer. And that’s an interesting wrist rest block-thing. Not sure I could use that for an extended period of time. Could you?
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 Oliver
Today, we can not only see what we type as we type it, we can do things like correct entire words with a simple key combination (Ctrl + Backspace).
An Oliver no. 2 machine. Image via
The Antikey Chop
In the late 1800s, though, seeing what you were typing as well as we do now was a pipe dream until
the Oliver typewriter
came along. It is thought that inventor Rev. Thomas Oliver sought to create a machine that would make his sermons more legible.
Oliver typewriters were quite distinct with their three-row keyboards and so-called ‘batwing’ typebar arrangement. This style, wherein the typebars struck the platen downward instead of upward made it a partially visible typewriter. Since it would be years until fully visible Underwoods and Royals came along, this made the Oliver quite the sought-after machine.
Unfortunately, this three-row design did not stay in vogue. As the four-row, single-Shift layout became standard, the writing was on the wall for the Oliver. Adding a fourth row of keys would have meant even taller batwings and an even heavier machine.
Some Oliver models were re-badged for foreign markets and carried names such as
Courier, Stolzenberg, Jwic, Fiver,
and
Revilo.
Stateside, the No. 2 was rebranded by Sears & Roebuck as the
Woodstock
.
Finally, the Clicks Keyboard Case Comes to Android
Do you miss your Blackberry or Sidekick? I miss my Palm Centro’s bubble-poppy keyboard, and I’d love to have a Sidekick or something comparable today. Or like, anything with a keyboard.
Image by [Clicks] via
New Atlas
If you don’t mind having an even bigger phone, then
the dream is alive in the form of the Clicks keyboard case
, which has finally made its way to Android phones beginning with the the Google Pixel 9 and 9 Pro.
The Android Clicks cases will be even better than those created for the iPhone, with upgrades like larger, backlit, domed metal keys, a flexible TPU shell, and a felt lining to protect the phone. Also, there will be Qi wireless charging right through the case, which will accept magnetic accessories as well.
While
cases for the Pixel 9s are available for pre-order at $99
, there is also the option to reserve Clicks for the 2024 Motorola razr as well as the Samsung Galaxy S25.
Check out the overview video if you want to know more
, and you can also see it in action on the aforementioned phones.
Or — hear me out — we could just get devices with physical keyboards again. There’s obviously a demand. Your move, manufacturers.
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
. | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8108003",
"author": "Harperville",
"timestamp": "2025-03-11T17:39:07",
"content": "“More, children…”:Best. Hackaday. Subsection. Title. Ever.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8108101",
"author": "Bill Lee",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,371,611.372426 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/11/tiny-laptop-gets-a-new-case-and-an-unlocking/ | Tiny Laptop Gets A New Case And An Unlocking | Dan Maloney | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"bios",
"Case mod",
"laptop",
"libretto",
"notebook",
"password",
"unlock"
] | Unless you’ve got an especially small lap, calling the Toshiba Libretto a laptop is a bit of a stretch. The diminutive computers from the mid-1990s had a lot of the usual laptop features, but in an especially compact and portable case that made them a great choice for anyone with an on-the-go lifestyle.
Fast-forward thirty years or so, and the remaining Librettos haven’t fared too well. Many of them have cases that crumble at the slightest touch, which is what led [polymatt] to undertake
this meticulous case replacement
. The effort started with a complete teardown; luckily, the lower aluminum-alloy shell was in fine shape, but the upper case parts were found to be almost too deteriorated to handle. Still, with a little patience and the judicious application of tape, [polymatt] was able to scan the case pieces on a flatbed scanner and import them into his CAD package. Great tip on the blue-tack for leveling the parts for accurate scanning, by the way.
After multiple rounds of printing and tweaking, [polymatt] had a case good enough to reassemble the Libretto. Unfortunately, the previous owner left an unwanted gift: a BIOS password. Disconnecting the CMOS battery didn’t reset it, but a little research told him that shorting a few pins on the parallel port on the machine’s dock should do the trick. It was a bit involved, requiring the design and subsequent bodging of a PCB to fit into the docking port connector, but in the end he was able to wake up a machine to all its Windows 95 glory. Better get patching.
In a time when laptops were more like lap-crushers, the Libretto was an amazing little machine, and thirty years on, they’re well worth saving from the scrap heap. Hats off to [polymatt] for the effort to save this beauty, and if he needs tips on reading data from any PCMCIA cards that may have come with it,
we’ve got him covered
. | 24 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107958",
"author": "Jessica",
"timestamp": "2025-03-11T15:38:48",
"content": "I loved the Libretto when it first came out and was even using one as recently as 10 years ago to control a glass fusing kiln. I think I still have a couple in storage. I hope to someday update the machin... | 1,760,371,611.432404 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/11/trapc-a-c-extension-for-the-memory-safety-boogeyman/ | TrapC: A C Extension For The Memory Safety Boogeyman | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"Rants",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"programming languages"
] | In the world of programming languages it often feels like being stuck in a Groundhog Day-esque loop through purgatory, as effectively the same problems are being solved over and over, with previous solutions forgotten and there’s always that one jubilant inventor stumbling out of a darkened basement with the One True Solution™ to everything that plagues this world beset by the Unspeakable Horror that is the
C
programming language.
As the latest entry to pledge its fealty at the altar of the Church of the Holy Memory Safety,
TrapC promises
to fix C, while also lambasting Rust for allowing that terrible
unsafe
keyword. Of course, since this is yet another loop through purgatory, the entire idea that the problem is C and some perceived issue with this nebulous ‘memory safety’ is still a red herring,
as pointed out previousl
y.
In other words, it’s time for a fun trip back to the 1970s when many of the same arguments were being rehashed already, before the early 1980s saw the Steelman language requirements condensed by renowned experts
into the Ada programming language
. As it turns out, memory safety is a miniscule part of a well-written program.
It’s A Trap
Pretty much the entire raison d’être for new programming languages like TrapC, Rust,
Zig
, and kin is this fixation on ‘memory safety’, with the idea being that the problem with C is that it doesn’t check memory boundaries and allows usage of memory addresses in ways that can lead to Bad Things. Which is not to say that such events aren’t bad, but because they are so obvious, they are also very easy to detect both using static and dynamic analysis tools.
As a ‘proposed C-language extension’, TrapC would add:
memory-safe pointers.
constructors & destructors.
the
trap
and
alias
keywords.
Run-Time Type Information.
It would also remove:
the
goto
and
union
keywords.
The author, Robin Rowe, freely admits to this extension being ‘C++ like’, which takes us right back to 1979 when a then young Danish computer scientist (Bjarne Stroustrup) created a C-language extension cheekily called ‘C++’ to denote it as enhanced C. C++ adds many Simula features, a language which is considered the first Object-Oriented (OO) programming language and is an indirect descendant of ALGOL. These OO features include constructors and destructors. Together with (optional) smart pointers and the bounds-checked strings and containers from the Standard Template Library (STL) C++ is thus memory safe.
So what is the point of removing keywords like
goto
and
union
? The former is pretty much the most controversial keyword in the history of programming languages, even though it derives essentially directly from jumps in assembly language. In the Ada programming language you also have the
goto
keyword, with it often used to provide more flexibility where restrictive language choices would lead to e.g. convoluted loop constructs to the point where some C-isms do not exist in Ada, like the
continue
keyword.
The
union
keyword is similarly removed in TrapC, with the justification that both keywords are ‘unsafe’ and ‘widely deprecated’. Which makes one wonder how much real-life C & C++ code has been analyzed to come to this conclusion. In particular in the field of embedded- and driver programming with low-level memory (and register) access the use of
union
is
widely used
for the flexibility it offers.
Of course, if you’re doing low-level memory access you’re also free to use whatever pointer offset and type casting you require, together with very unsafe, but efficient,
memcpy()
and similar operations. There is a reason why C++ doesn’t forbid low-level access without guardrails, as sometimes it’s necessary and you’re expected to know what you’re doing. This freedom in choosing between strict memory safety and the untamed wilds of C is a deliberate design choice in C++. In embedded programming you tend to compile C++ with both RTTI & exceptions disabled as well due to the overhead from them.
Don’t Call It C++
Effectively, TrapC adds RTTI, exceptions (or ‘traps’), OO classes, safe pointers, and similar C++ features to C, which raises the question of why it’s any different, especially since the whitepaper describes TrapC and C++ code usually looking the same as a feature. Here the language seems to regard itself as being a ‘better C++’, mostly in terms of exception handling and templates, using ‘traps’ and ‘castplates’. Curiously there’s not much focus on “resource allocation is initialization” (RAII) that is such a cornerstone of C++.
Meanwhile castplates are advertised as a way to make C containers ‘typesafe’, but unlike C++ templates they are created implicitly using RTTI and one might argue somewhat opaque (C++ template-like) syntax. There are few people who would argue that C++ template code is easy to read. Of note here is that in embedded programming you tend to compile C++ with both RTTI & exceptions disabled due to the overhead from them. The extensive reliance on RTTI in TrapC would seem to preclude such an option.
Circling back on the other added keyword,
alias
, this is TrapC’s way to providing function overloading, and it works like a C preprocessor
#define
:
void puts(void* x) alias printf("{}n",x);
Then there is the new
trap
keyword that’s apparently important enough to be captured in the extension’s name. These are offered as an alternative to C++ exceptions, but the description is rather confusing, other than that it’s supposedly less complicated and does not support cascading exceptions up the stack. Here I do not personally see much value either way, as like so many C++ developers I loathe C++ exceptions with the fire of a thousand Suns and do my utmost to avoid them.
My favorite approach here is found in Ada, which not only cleanly separates functions and procedures, but also requires, during compile time, that any return value from a function is handled, and implements exceptions in a way that is both light-weight and very informative, as I found for example while extensively using the Ada
array
type in the context of a
lock-free ring buffer
. During testing there were zero crashes, just the program bailing out with an exception due to a faulty offset into the array and listing the exact location and cause, as in Ada everything is bound-checked by default.
Memory Safety
Much of the safety in TrapC would come from managed pointers, with its author describing TrapC’s memory management as ‘automatic’ in a
recent presentation at an ISO C meeting
. Pointers are lifetime-managed, but as the whitepaper states, the exact method used is ‘implementation defined’, instead of reference counting as in the C++ specification.
Yet none of this matters in the context of actual security issues. As I
noted in 2024
, the ‘red herring’ part refers to the real-life security issues that are captured in CVEs and their exploitation. Virtually all of the worst CVEs involve a lack of input validation, which allows users to access data in ‘restricted’ folders and gain access to databases and other resources. None of which involve memory safety in any way or form, and thus the onus lies on preventing logic errors, solid input validation and preventing lazy or inattentive programmers from introducing the next world-famous CVE.
As a long-time C & C++ programmer, I have come to ‘love’ the warts in these languages as well as the lack of guardrails for the freedom they provide. Meanwhile I have learned to write test cases and harnesses to strap my code into for QA sessions, because the best way to validate code is by stressing it. Along the way I have found myself incredibly fond of Ada, as its focus on preventing ambiguity and logic errors is self-evident and regularly keeps me from making inattentive mistakes. Mistakes that in C++ would show up in the next test and/or Valgrind cycle followed by a facepalm moment and recompile, yet somehow programming in Ada doesn’t feel more restrictive than writing in C++.
Thus I’ll keep postulating that the issues with C were already solved in 1983 with the introduction of Ada, and accepting this fact is the only way out of this endless Groundhog Day purgatory. | 52 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107937",
"author": "Andrzej",
"timestamp": "2025-03-11T14:53:17",
"content": "because they [unsafe memory accesses] are so obvious, they are also very easy to detect both using static and dynamic analysis toolsUm… what? No. Not really.Somecases are easy to detect withsomeanalysis t... | 1,760,371,611.08798 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/11/josephine-cochrane-invented-the-modern-dishwasher-in-1886/ | Josephine Cochrane Invented The Modern Dishwasher — In 1886 | Donald Papp | [
"Science"
] | [
"dishwasher",
"Inventor",
"patent",
"women in technology"
] | Popular Science has an excellent article on how
Josephine Cochrane transformed how dishes are cleaned
by inventing an automated dish washing machine and obtaining a patent in 1886. Dishwashers had been attempted before, but hers was the first with the revolutionary idea of using water pressure to clean dishes placed in wire racks, rather than relying on some sort of physical scrubber. The very first KitchenAid household dishwashers were based on her machines, making modern dishwashers direct descendants of her original design.
Josephine Cochrane (née Garis)
It wasn’t an overnight success. Josephine faced many hurdles. Saying it was difficult for a woman to start a venture or do business during this period of history doesn’t do justice to just how many barriers existed, even discounting the fact that her late husband was something we would today recognize as a violent alcoholic. One who left her little money and many debts upon his death, to boot.
She was nevertheless able to focus on developing her machine, and eventually hired mechanic George Butters to help create a prototype. The two of them working in near secrecy because a man being seen regularly visiting her home was simply asking for trouble. Then there were all the challenges of launching a product in a business world that had little place for a woman. One can sense the weight of it all in a quote from Josephine (shared in
a write-up by the USPTO
) in which she says “If I knew all I know today when I began to put the dishwasher on the market, I never would have had the courage to start.”
But Josephine persevered and her invention made a stir at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, winning an award and mesmerizing onlookers. Not only was it invented by a woman, but her dishwashers were used by restaurants on-site to clean tens of thousands of dishes, day in and day out. Her marvelous machine was not yet a household device, but restaurants, hotels, colleges, and hospitals all saw the benefits and lined up to place orders.
Early machines were highly effective, but they were not the affordable, standard household appliances they are today. There certainly existed a household
demand
for her machine — dishwashing was a tedious chore that no one enjoyed — but household dishwashing was a task primarily done by women. Women did not control purchasing decisions, and it was difficult for men of the time (who did not spend theirs washing dishes) to be motivated about the benefits. The device was expensive, but it did away with a tremendous amount of labor. Surely the price was justified? Yet women themselves — the ones who would benefit the most — were often not on board. Josephine reflected that many women did not yet seem to think of their own time and comfort as having intrinsic value.
Josephine Cochrane ran a highly successful business and continued to refine her designs. She died in 1913 and it wasn’t until the 1950s that dishwashers — direct descendants of her original design — truly started to become popular with the general public.
Nowadays, dishwashers are such a solved problem that not only are they
a feature in an instructive engineering story
, but we rarely see anyone building one (though
it has happened
.)
We have Josephine Cochrane to thank for that. Not just her intellect and ingenuity in coming up with it, but the fact that she persevered enough to bring her creation over the finish line. | 42 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107846",
"author": "lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-03-11T11:12:46",
"content": "As someone who lived in an apartment without a dishwasher for several years all I can say is thank goodness. Washing dishes by hand is not fun and very time consuming. I wonder when modern plumbing a... | 1,760,371,611.558916 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/11/homebrew-traffic-monitor-keeps-eyes-on-the-streets/ | Homebrew Traffic Monitor Keeps Eyes On The Streets | Tom Nardi | [
"Machine Learning",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"computer vision",
"doppler radar",
"traffic monitor"
] | How many cars go down your street each day? How fast were they going? What about folks out on a walk or people riding bikes? It’s not an easy question to answer, as most of us have better things to do than watch the street all day and keep a tally. But at the same time, this is critically important data from an urban planning perspective.
Of course, you could just leave it to City Hall to figure out this sort of thing. But what if you want to get a speed bump or a traffic light added to your neighborhood? Being able to collect your own localized traffic data could certainly come in handy, which is where
TrafficMonitor.ai from [glossyio] comes in
.
This open-source system allows the user to deploy an affordable monitoring device that will identify vehicles and pedestrians using a combination of machine learning object detection and Doppler radar. The system not only collects images of all the objects that pass by but can even determine their speed and direction. The data is stored and processed locally and presented via a number of graphs through the system’s web-based user interface.
While [glossyio] hopes to sell kits and even pre-built monitors at some point, you’ll have to build the hardware yourself for now. The documentation recommends a Raspberry Pi 5 for the brains of your monitor, backed up by a Coral AI Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) to help process the images coming in via the Pi Camera Module 3.
Technically, the OPS243-A Doppler radar sensor is listed as optional if you’re on a tight budget, but it looks like you’ll lose speed and direction sensing without it. Additionally, there’s support for adding an air quality sensor to see what all those passing cars are leaving behind.
This isn’t the first time we’ve
seen the Raspberry Pi used as an electronic traffic cop
, but it’s undoubtedly the most polished version of the concept we’ve come across. You might consider
passive radar
, too. | 63 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107792",
"author": "Ali",
"timestamp": "2025-03-11T08:19:41",
"content": "But what if you want to get a speed bump or a traffic light added to your neighborhood?Do youreallywant your house set on fire? Fine by me.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,610.996309 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/10/hacking-a-heavyweight-philco-radio/ | Hacking A Heavyweight Philco Radio | Heidi Ulrich | [
"classic hacks",
"News",
"Radio Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"AC. DC",
"Bakelite",
"midcentury",
"Philco",
"portable radio",
"radio"
] | There’s something magical about the clunk of a heavy 1950s portable radio – the solid thunk of Bakelite, the warm hum of tubes glowing to life. This is exactly why [Ken’s Lab] took on
the restoration of a Philco 52-664
, a portable AC/DC radio originally sold for $45 in 1953 (a small fortune back then!). Despite its beat-up exterior and faulty guts, [Ken] methodically restored it to working condition. His video details every crackling capacitor and crusty resistor he replaced, and it’s pure catnip for any hacker with a soft spot for analog tech. Does the name Philco ring a bell? Lately, we did cover the restoration of
a 1958 Philco Predicta television
.
What sets this radio hack apart? To begin with, [Ken] kept the restoration authentic, repurposing original capacitor cans and using era-appropriate materials – right down to boiling out old electrolytics in his wife’s discarded cooking pot. But, he went further. Lacking the space for modern components, [Ken] fabbed up a custom mounting solution from stiff styrofoam, fibreboard, and all-purpose glue. He even re-routed the B-wiring with creative terminal hacks. It’s a masterclass in patience, precision, and resourcefulness.
If this tickles your inner tinkerer, don’t miss out on
the full video
. It’s like stepping into a time machine. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107886",
"author": "Panondorf",
"timestamp": "2025-03-11T12:50:39",
"content": "Hmm… AC/DC radios. Hot chassis!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8107943",
"author": "Suppressed Carrier",
"timestamp": "2025-03-1... | 1,760,371,610.863684 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/10/satellite-imagery-you-can-play-with/ | Satellite Imagery You Can Play With | Jenny List | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"big data",
"satellite imagery"
] | Satellite imagery is in the news right now, but not all satellite constellations are the preserve of governments. Satellogic operates a series of CubeSats with Earth imaging payloads, and best of all, they maintain an open dataset. [Mark Litwintschik]
takes us through using it
.
Starting with a script to recover the locations of the satellites, he moves on to the data itself. It’s in a huge S3 bucket, for which parsing the metadata becomes a big data question rather than one of simple retrieval. After parsing he loads the resulting data into a database, from which he can then perform queries more easily. He uses Qatar as his example, and shows us the resulting imagery.
The dataset isn’t comprehensive, it’s obvious that the areas surveyed have been done at the behest of customers. But who knows, your part of the world might be one of the areas in the dataset, and now you have all the tools you need to explore. It certainly beats
low-res weather satellite imagery
. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107754",
"author": "Hugh Brown",
"timestamp": "2025-03-11T04:23:00",
"content": "Mark’s blog is great — he does a wonderful job of walking through how to make use of satellite data.His latest post (https://tech.marksblogg.com/wyvern-open-data-feed.html) is on how to use hyperspectr... | 1,760,371,611.130759 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/10/whats-wrong-with-this-antenna-tuner/ | What’s Wrong With This Antenna Tuner? | Al Williams | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"antenna tuner",
"ham radio"
] | [Tech Minds] built one of those
cheap automatic antenna tuners
you see everywhere — this one scaled up to 350 watt capability. The kit is mostly built, but you do have to add the connectors and a few other stray bits. You can see how he did it in the video below.
What was very interesting, however, was that it wasn’t able to do a very good job tuning a wire antenna across the ham bands, and he asks for your help on what he should try to make things better.
It did seem to work in some cases, and changing the length of the wire changed the results, so we would guess some of it might be a resonance on the antenna wire. However, you would guess it could do a little better. It is well known that if a wire is one of a number of certain lengths, it will have extremely high impedence in multiple ham bands and be challenging to tune. So random wires need to not be exactly random. You have to avoid those lengths.
In addition, we were surprised there wasn’t more RF protection on the power lines. We would probably have suggested winding some coax to act as a shield choke, RF beads, and even extra bypass capacitors.
Another possible problem is that the diodes in these units are often not the best. [PU1OWL] talks about that in
another video
and bypasses some of the power lines against RF, too.
If you have any advice, we are sure he’d love to hear it. As [PU1OWL] points out, a
tuner like this
can’t be any better than its SWR measurement mechanism. Of course, all of these tuners take a few watts to light them up. You can, however, tune with virtually no power
with a VNA
. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107730",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2025-03-11T02:17:44",
"content": "This device is not as interesting as I thought it would be.It turns out the operator manual is available online. The system has 7 channels, each of which selects one pre-tuned toroid and capacitor channel ... | 1,760,371,611.182376 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/10/solar-powered-e-reader-with-no-buttons/ | Solar-Powered E-Reader With No Buttons | Bryan Cockfield | [
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"display",
"e-ink",
"e-reader",
"ebook",
"kindle",
"LIC",
"Lithium Ion Capacitor",
"solar"
] | Modern e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle are incredible pieces of engineering, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement. A device custom-built to your own specifications is always going to provide a more satisfying experience than something purchased off the shelf.
That’s why [fel88] put together this custom e-reader
which offers a number of unique features, such as a solar panel on the back and button-free operation.
One issue with modern e-readers, at least as [fel88] sees it, is that they have a lot of unnecessary features. This project removes most of them, stripping down the device to its core functionality: a straightforward menu for selecting books and gesture-sensing for navigating the menu as well as changing the pages. The only physical input on the device is a small reed switch to turn the device on. A 3D printed case holds the e-ink display and encloses the inner workings, driven by an Arduino Mega 2560 and powered by three lithium-ion capacitors (LICs) and a small solar panel.
By dropping all of the unnecessary features, the device doesn’t need to waste energy with things like WiFi or Bluetooth and can get around 880 pages on a single charge, not counting any extra energy coming in through the solar panel while it’s operating. The LICs will also theoretically improve its life cycle as well. If you’re still stuck with a paperweight when you formerly had a working e-reader, though,
there are plenty of ways to bring old devices back to life
as well. | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107646",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-03-10T20:15:01",
"content": "There is an accelerometer that functions as an input device to turn pages and some other stuff. Thank you for not having a YouTube video that needed to be sifted through for that info",
"parent_id": nu... | 1,760,371,611.619899 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/10/freeing-windows/ | Freeing Windows | Al Williams | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"reactos",
"windows"
] | There have been several attempts to make an unencumbered version of Windows. ReactOS is perhaps the best-known. You could also argue that Wine and its progeny, while not operating systems in the strictest sense of the word, might be the most successful. Joining the fray is
Free95
, a GPL-3.0 system that, currently, can run simple Windows programs. The developer promises to push to even higher compatibility.
As you might expect, the GitHub site is calling for contributors. There will be a lot to do. The src subdirectory has a number of files, but when you consider the sheer volume of stuff crammed into Windows, it is just a minimal start.
As for the “Does it run Doom?” test, we are pretty sure the answer is no, not yet. While we applaud the effort, we do think it is a long road to get from where the project is to where even ReactOS is, much less Windows itself. Besides, Windows is a rapidly moving target.
As virtualization becomes easier and faster, the need for these programs diminishes. You can easily run a Windows OS inside your host operating system. If it outperforms the original on period hardware, maybe that’s good enough. On the other hand, if you are trying to run old hardware, maybe something like this will let you get a few more years out of it, one day.
We’ve looked at
ReactOS
before. If you are just looking to reduce bloat, there are
other ways to go
. | 63 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107608",
"author": "Oliver",
"timestamp": "2025-03-10T18:46:31",
"content": "While I very strongly applaud sucb efforts, why? There alrrady exist wine and reactOS? Why bot cobtribute their instead? Whybdoes one thibg ‘I can do better, jist not the way you do it’? Sure, sometimes i... | 1,760,371,612.858686 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/10/conservationists-are-flying-microlites-to-teach-birds-how-to-migrate/ | Conservationists Are Flying Microlites To Teach Birds How To Migrate | Lewin Day | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"bird",
"ibis",
"migration",
"ultralite"
] | When it comes to what birds have and what humans don’t, your mind might first land on the ability to fly. However, birds are also pretty good at navigating from the air… assuming, that is, they know where they’re trying to go in the first place.
In recent decades, conservationists have been trying to reintroduce the northern bald ibis to central Europe. There’s just one problem—when the birds first died out on the continent, so did their handed-down knowledge of their traditional migration route. Somehow, the new generation had to be taught where to go.
Flightpaths
The northern bald ibis was once widely found all over Europe, but disappeared several centuries ago. It had the most success clinging on in Morocco, which has been a source of birds for reintroduction efforts. Credit: Len Worthington,
CC BY-SA 2.0
The population of the northern bald ibis used to be spread farther and wider than it is today. Fossil records indicate the bird once lived in great numbers across northern Africa, the Middle East, and southern and central Europe. Sadly, it vanished from Europe sometime in the 17th century, though it persisted elsewhere, most notably in Morocco. A wild population hung on in Turkey, though faced a rapid decline from the 1970s onwards, with birds failing to return from their winter migrations. In 1992, a handful of remaining birds were kept caged for part of the year to prevent these annual losses. Meanwhile, in 2002, it was revealed that a handful of birds were clinging on with isolated nests found in Syria. Numbers remain limited in the low four-figure range, with the northern bald ibis definitively listed as endangered.
With the bird’s status in danger, multiple reintroduction efforts have been pursued around the world. In particular, European efforts had boosted a conserved population up to 300 individuals by the early 2000s. However, keeping the birds alive proved challenging. Being unfamiliar with the continent, the birds would tend to fly off in random directions when their instinct kicked in to migrate for winter. Without knowing where they were going, few birds would make it to a suitably warm climate for the colder months, and many failed to return home in the summer.
The birds are kept in aviaries at times to ensure they are fit for migration and that they don’t head off in a random direction of their own accord. Credit: Baekemm, CC BY-SA 4.0
In 2002, an effort to solve this began in earnest. It hoped to not only return the birds to the wild, but to let them freely roam and migrate as they once did with abandon. The hope was to breed birds in captivity, and then train them on their traditional migration route, such that they might then pass the knowledge on to their descendants.
Of course, you can’t simply sit a northern bald ibis down with a map and show it how to get from northern Austria down to Tuscany and back. Nor can you train it on a flight simulator or give it a GPS. Instead, the conservationists figured they’d teach the birds the old fashioned way. They’d fly the route with a microlite aircraft, with the birds trained to follow along behind. Once they got the idea, the microlite would guide them on the longer migration route, and the hope was that they’d learn to repeat the journey themselves for the future.
The benefit of using ultralight air craft was simple. It allowed the birds to see their keepers and follow a familiar human in flight. In contrast, typical general aviation aircraft or larger planes wouldn’t be so familiar to the birds, and they wouldn’t be so eager to follow.
In 2003, the first migration attempt took place. The initial attempt faced challenges, with inclement weather forcing the birds to be transported much of the way by road. However, the following year found great success. The birds were guided south during the autumn, and returned the following spring. The project continued, with repeat successes over the years.
Reports from 2010
were particularly buoyant. Across August and September that autumn, the journey saw 14 birds following the microlites for an average distance of 174 km a day, winding up in Tuscany in time for the winter.
The project continues in earnest
to this day
. “We have to teach them the migration route and that’s what we do using microlight planes,” project director Johannes Fritz told
AP
. Leading the
Waldrappteam,
he’s been working for decades to train the birds on what used to come naturally. “Human foster parents raise the chicks so they are imprinted on human foster parents, and then we train them to follow the foster parents which sit on the back seat of the microlight—and it works.” The training is taking, with the team recording multiple birds independently deciding to fly the correct migration route over the years.
The hope is that the flock will grow larger and eventually become self-sustaining. Ideally, the older birds that know the route will teach younger generations, just as they learned themselves from the microlite pilots in their youth. It’s a grand tradition, passed down from pilot to bird to bird, perhaps not
quite
as nature intended!
Featured image: “
Migration 2023 Laura Pehnke
” Copyright: Waldrappteam Conservation & Research | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107588",
"author": "Paul A LeBlanc",
"timestamp": "2025-03-10T17:42:49",
"content": "Bill Lishman did this in the 90’s with Canada Geese and Whooping cranes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8107594",
"author": "Michae... | 1,760,371,612.255785 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/10/the-esp32-bluetooth-backdoor-that-wasnt/ | The ESP32 Bluetooth Backdoor That Wasn’t | Maya Posch | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"CVE",
"ESP32"
] | Recently there was a panicked scrambling after the announcement by [Tarlogic] of a ‘backdoor’ found in Espressif’s popular ESP32 MCUs. Specifically a backdoor on the Bluetooth side that would give a lot of control over the system to any attacker.
As [Xeno Kovah] explains
, much about these claims is exaggerated, and calling it a ‘backdoor’ is far beyond the scope of what was actually discovered.
To summarize
the original findings
, the researchers found a number of vendor-specific commands (VSCs) in the (publicly available) ESP32 ROM that can be sent via the host-controller interface (HCI) between the software and the Bluetooth PHY. They found that these VSCs could do things like writing and reading the firmware in the PHY, as well as send low-level packets.
The thing about VSCs is of course that these are a standard feature with Bluetooth controllers, with each manufacturer implementing a range of these for use with their own software SDK. These VSCs allow for updating firmware, report temperatures and features like debugging, and are generally documented (except for Broadcom).
Effectively, [Xeno] makes the point that VSCs are a standard feature in Bluetooth controllers, which – like most features – can also be abused. [Tarlogic] has since updated their article as well to distance themselves from the ‘backdoor’ term and instead want to call these VSCs a ‘hidden feature’. That said, if these VSCs in ESP32 chips are a security risk, then as [Xeno] duly notes, millions of BT controllers from Texas Instruments, Broadcom and others with similar VSCs would similarly be a security risk. | 40 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107543",
"author": "C",
"timestamp": "2025-03-10T15:45:48",
"content": "A better analogy is a door to a secret room. You need to be in the house to access the door to the secret room. The room does not make the house less secure (unless you disable the security system from within t... | 1,760,371,612.33226 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/10/inexpensive-repairable-laptops-with-apple-style/ | Inexpensive Repairable Laptops, With Apple Style | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"laptops hacks",
"Slider"
] | [] | Despite a general lack of real-world experience, many teenagers are overly confident in their opinions, often to the point of brashness and arrogance. In the late 90s and early 00s I was no different, firmly entrenched in a clichéd belief that Apple computers weren’t worth the silicon they were etched onto—even though I’d never actually used one. Eventually, thanks to a very good friend in college, a bit of Linux knowledge, and Apple’s switch to Intel processors, I finally abandoned this one irrational belief. Now, I maintain an array of Apple laptops for my own personal use that are not only surprisingly repairable and hacker-friendly but also serve as excellent, inexpensive Linux machines.
Of course, I will have ruffled a few feathers suggesting Apple laptops are repairable and inexpensive. This is certainly not true of their phones or their newer computers, but there was a time before 2016 when Apple built some impressively high quality, robust laptops that use standard parts, have removable batteries, and, thanks to Apple dropping support for these older machines in their latest operating systems, can also be found for sale for next to nothing. In a way that’s similar to buying a luxury car that’s only a few years old and letting someone else eat the bulk of the depreciation, a high quality laptop from this era is only one Linux install away from being a usable and relatively powerful machine at an excellent bargain.
The History Lesson
To be fair to my teenage self though, Apple used to use less-mainstream PowerPC processors which meant there was very little software cross-compatibility with x86 PCs. It was also an era before broadband meant that most people could move their work into cloud and the browser, allowing them to be more agnostic about their operating system. Using an Apple when I was a teenager was therefore a much different experience than it is today. My first Apple was from this PowerPC era though; my ThinkPad T43 broke mid-way through college and a friend of mine gave me an old PowerBook G4 that had stopped working for her. Rather than have no computer at all, I swallowed my pride and was able to get the laptop working well enough to finish college with it. Part of the reason this repair was even possible was thanks to a major hacker-friendly aspect of Apple computers:
they run Unix
. (Note for commenters: technically Apple’s OS is Unix-like but they have carried a UNIX certification since 2007.)
I had used Unix somewhat in Solaris-based labs in college but, as I mentioned
in a piece about installing Gentoo on one of my MacBooks
, I was also getting pretty deep into the Linux world at the time as well. Linux was also designed to be Unix-like, so most of the basic commands and tools available for it have nearly one-to-one analogs in Unix. The PowerBook’s main problem, along with a battery that needed a warranty replacement, was a corrupted filesystem and disk drive that I was able to repair using my new Linux knowledge. This realization marked a major turning point for me which helped tear down most of my biases against Apple computers.
MacBooks through the ages
Over the next few years or so I grew quite fond of the PowerBook, partially because I liked its 12″, netbook-like form factor and also because the operating system never seemed to crash. As a Linux user, my system crashes were mostly self-inflicted, but they did happen. As a former Windows user as well, the fact that it wouldn’t randomly bluescreen itself through no fault of my own was quite a revelation. Apple was a few years into their Intel years at this point as well, and seeing how easily these computers did things my PowerBook could never do, including running Windows, I saved up enough money to buy my first MacBook Pro, a mid-2009 model which I still use to this day. Since then I’ve acquired four other Apple laptops, most of which run Linux
or a patched version of macOS that lets older, unsupported machines run modern versions of Apple’s operating system
.
So if you’ve slogged through my coming-of-age story and are still curious about picking up an old Mac for whatever reason—a friend or family member has one gathering dust, you’re tired of looking at the bland styling of older ThinkPads while simultaneously growing frustrated with the declining quality of their newer ones, or just want to go against the grain a bit and do something different—I’ll try and help by sharing some tips and guidelines I’ve picked up through the years.
What to Avoid
Starting with broad categories of older Apple laptops to avoid, the first major red flag are any with the butterfly keyboard that Apple put on various laptops from 2015 to 2019 which were so bad that a number of lawsuits were filed against them. Apple eventually relented and instituted a replacement program for them, but it’s since expired and can cost hundreds of dollars to fix otherwise. The second red flag are models with the T2 security chips. It’s not a complete dealbreaker but does add a lot of hassle if the end goal is a working Linux machine.
Additionally, pay close attention to any laptops with discrete graphics cards. Some older MacBooks have Nvidia graphics,
which is almost always going to provide a below-average experience for a Linux user
especially for Apple laptops of this vintage. Others have AMD graphics which do have better Linux support, but
there were severe problems with the 15″ and 17″ Mac around the 2011 models
. Discrete graphics is not something to avoid completely like laptops with butterfly keyboards, but it’s worth investigating the specific model year for problems if a graphics card is included. A final note is to be aware of “Staingate” which is a problem which impacted some Retina displays between 2012 and 2015. This of course is not an exhaustive list, but covers the major difficult-to-solve problems for this era of Apple laptop.
What to Look For
As for what specific computers are the best from this era for a bit of refurbishment and use, in my opinion the best mix of performance, hackability, and Linux-ability will be from the 2009-2012 Unibody era. These machines come in all sizes and are surprisingly upgradable, with standard SODIMM slots for RAM, 2.5″ laptop drives, an optical drive (which can be changed out for a second hard drive), easily replaceable batteries if you can unscrew the back cover, and plenty of ports. Some older models from this era have Core 2 Duo processors and should be avoided if you have the choice, but there are plenty of others from this era with much more powerful Core i5 or Core i7 processors.
After 2012, though, Apple started making some less-desirable changes for those looking to maintain their computers long-term, like switching to a proprietary M.2-like port for their storage and adding in soldered or otherwise non-upgradable RAM, but these machines can still be worthwhile as many had Core i7 processors and at least 8 GB of RAM and can still run Linux and even modern macOS versions quite capably. The batteries can still be replaced without too much hassle as well.
Inside the 2012 MacBook Pro. Visible here are the 2.5″ SSD, removable battery, standard SODIMM RAM slots, optical drive, and cooling fan.
Of course, a major problem with these computers is that they all have processors that have the Intel Management Engine coprocessor installed, so they’re not the most privacy-oriented machines in existence even if Linux is the chosen operating system. It’s worth noting, though, that
some MacBooks from before the unibody era can run the open-source bootloader Libreboot
but the tradeoff,
as with any system capable of running Libreboot
, is that they’re a bit limited in performance even compared to the computers from just a few years later.
Out of the five laptops I own, four are from the pre-butterfly era including my two favorites. Topping the list is a mid-2012 13″ MacBook Pro with Intel graphics that’s a beast of a Debian machine thanks to upgrades to a solid state drive and to 16 GB of RAM. It also has one of the best-feeling laptop keyboards I’ve ever used to write with, and is also the computer I used to experiment with Gentoo.
Second place goes to a 2015 11″ MacBook Air which is a netbook-style Apple that I like for its exceptional portability even though it’s not as upgradable as I might otherwise like. It will have 4 GB of RAM forever, but this is not much of a problem for Debian. I also still have my 2009 MacBook Pro as well, which runs macOS Sonoma thanks to OpenCore Legacy Patcher. This computer’s major weakness is that it has an Nvidia graphics card so it isn’t as good of a Linux machine as the others, and occasionally locks up when running Debian for this reason. But it also has been upgraded with an SSD and 8 GB of RAM so Sonoma still runs pretty well on it despite its age. Sequoia, on the other hand, dropped support for dual-core machines so I’m not sure what I will do with it after Sonoma is no longer supported.
A 13″ MacBook Air from 2013. Not quite as upgradable as the 2012 MacBook Pro but still has a removable battery and a heat sink which can be re-pasted much more easily.
My newest Apple laptop is an M1 MacBook Air, which I was excited about when it launched because
I’m a huge fan of ARM-based personal computers for more reasons than one
. Although the M1 does have essentially no user-repairability
unless you want to go to extremes
, I have some hope that this will last me as long as my MacBook Pros have thanks to a complete lack of moving parts and also because of
Asahi Linux, a version of Fedora which is built for Apple silicon
. Whenever Apple stops providing security patches for this machine, I plan to switch it over to this specialized Linux distribution.
Why Bother?
But why spend all this effort keeping these old machines running at all? If repairability is a major concern, laptops from companies like System76 or Framework are arguably a much better option. Not to mention that, at least according to the best Internet commenters out there, Apple computers aren’t supposed to be fixable, repairable, or upgradable at all. They’re supposed to slowly die as upgrades force them to be less useful.
While this is certainly true for their phones and their more modern machines to some extent, part of the reason I keep these older machines running is to go against the grain and do something different,
like a classic car enthusiast who picks a 70s era Volkswagen to drive to and from the office every day
instead of a modern Lexus. It’s also because at times I still feel a bit like that teenager I was. While I might be a little wiser now from some life experiences, I believe some amount of teenage rebellion can be put to use stubbornly refusing to buy the latest products year after year from a trillion-dollar company which has become synonymous with planned obsolescence. Take that, Apple! | 40 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107511",
"author": "Bubz",
"timestamp": "2025-03-10T14:32:19",
"content": "Opinions. Yes, you are entitled to yours. My opinion is that the last Apple computer that was “good” (according to my own, highly subjective metrics), was the Apple II.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": ... | 1,760,371,612.620548 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/10/you-are-already-traveling-at-the-speed-of-light/ | You Are Already Traveling At The Speed Of Light | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"general relativity",
"physics"
] | Science fiction authors and readers dream of travelling at the speed of light, but Einstein tells us we can’t. You might think that’s an arbitrary rule, but [FloatHeadPhysics] shows a different way to think about it. Based on a book he’s been reading, “Relativity Visualized,” he provides a
graphic argument for relativity
that you can see in the video below.
The argument starts off by explaining how a three-dimensional object might appear in a two-dimensional world. In this world, everything is climbing in the hidden height dimension at the exact same speed.
Our 2D friends, of course, can only see the shadow of the 3D object so if it is staying in one place on the table surface, the object never seems to move. However, just as we can measure time with a clock, the flat beings could devise a way to measure height. They would see that the object was moving “through height” at the fixed speed.
Now suppose the object turns a bit and is moving at, say, a 45 degree angle relative to the table top. Now the shadow moves and the “clock speed” measuring the height starts moving more slowly. If the object moves totally parallel to the surface, the shadow moves at the fixed speed and the clock speed shadow doesn’t move at all.
This neatly explains time dilation and length contraction. It also shows that the speed of light isn’t necessarily a rule. It is simply that everything in the observable universe is moving at the speed of light and how moving through space affects it.
Doesn’t make sense? Watch the video and it will. Pretty heady stuff. We love how passionate [FloatHeadPhysics] gets about the topic. If you prefer a funnier approach,
turn to the BBC
. Or, if you like the hands-on approach, build a cloud chamber and
measure some muons
. | 40 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107468",
"author": "3eggert",
"timestamp": "2025-03-10T11:22:07",
"content": "Since is movement relative to a fixed point and the fixed point is a matter of definition, can’t we define the fixed point to a photon? Would that make me moving at the speed of light ?",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,371,612.458386 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/10/zx-spectrum-soviet-style-a-44-ic-clone-you-can-build/ | ZX Spectrum, Soviet Style: A 44-IC Clone You Can Build | Heidi Ulrich | [
"classic hacks",
"computer hacks",
"News",
"PCB Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"ic",
"keyboard",
"Leningrad-1",
"pcb",
"replica",
"soviet",
"spectrum",
"Zonov",
"ZX Spectrum"
] | If you’ve ever fancied building a ZX Spectrum clone without hunting down ancient ULAs or soldering your way through 60+ chips, [Alex J. Lowry] has just dropped an exciting build.
He has recreated the Leningrad-1
, a Soviet-built Spectrum clone from 1988, with a refreshingly low component count: 44 off-the-shelf ICs, as he wrote us. That’s less than many modern clones like the
Superfo Harlequin
, yet without resorting to programmable logic. All schematics, Gerbers, and KiCad files are open-source, listed at the bottom of [Alex]’ build log.
The original Leningrad-1 was designed by Sergey Zonov during the late Soviet era, when cloning Western tech was less about piracy and more about survival. Zonov’s design nailed a sweet spot between affordability and usability, with enough compatibility to run 90-95% of
Spectrum
software. [Alex]’ replica preserves that spirit, with a few 21st-century tweaks for builders: silkscreened component values, clever PCB stacking with nylon standoffs, and a DIY-friendly mechanical keyboard hack using transparent keycaps.
While Revision 0 still has some quirks – no SCART color output yet, occasional flickering borders with AY sound – [Alex] is planning for further improvements. Inspired to build your own?
Read [Alex]’ full project log here
. | 13 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107431",
"author": "Nikolai",
"timestamp": "2025-03-10T08:43:51",
"content": "Back in early 90s it was my main source of income, building ZX clones for sale. Including Leningrad clone. I still have one bare PCB. Maybe one day I will find some time to make one more. I have built and... | 1,760,371,612.196992 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/09/ipv4-ipv6-hey-what-happened-to-ipv5/ | IPV4, IPV6… Hey! What Happened To IPV5? | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"ipv4",
"IPv6",
"networking"
] | If you’ve ever been configuring a router or other network device and noticed that you can set up IPv4 and IPv6, you might have wondered
what happened to IPv5
. Well, thanks to [Navek], you don’t have to wonder anymore. Just watch the video below.
We will warn you of two things. First, the video takes a long time to get around to what IPv5 was. In addition, if you keep reading, there will be spoilers.
The first part of the video covers the general differences between IPv4 and IPv6, especially surrounding addressing. Then, it talks about how IP alone can’t do things you like to do for handling things like voice. For example, the IP layer doesn’t understand how much bandwidth exists between two points. It is only concerned with moving data from one point to another point.
To foster voice communications, there was a proposal for something called the stream protocol. It didn’t catch on. In fact, it was reincarnated as a proposal to move video, too, but it still didn’t catch on. However, the network header used the next number in sequence, which was… five!
So, really, the video title is a bit of a red herring. You didn’t forget IPv5; there simply was never an IPv5. There is, however, network protocol #5, which has little to do with IP and never caught on.
Still, an interesting walk down memory lane to a time when moving voice and video over the network was exotic high-tech. We love diving into the old network stuff like
finger
and
UUCP
. | 37 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107416",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-03-10T06:43:55",
"content": "You really should include IPv9 (From 1994-04-01)https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1606",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8107418",
"auth... | 1,760,371,612.148576 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/09/clock-mechanism-goes-crazy-for-arduino/ | Clock Mechanism Goes Crazy For Arduino | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock module",
"clock movement"
] | You’ve doubtless seen those ubiquitous clock modules, especially when setting clocks for daylight savings time. You know the ones: a single AA battery, a wheel to set the time, and two or three hands to show the time. They are cheap and work well enough. But [Playful Technology] wanted to
control the hands with an Arduino directly
and, in the process, he shows us how these modules work.
If you’ve never studied the inside of these clock modules, you may be surprised about how they actually work. A crystal oscillator pulses a relatively large electromagnet. A small plastic gear has a magnetic ring and sits near the electromagnet.
Each time the polarity of the electromagnet flips, the ring turns 180 degrees to face the opposite magnetic pole to the electromagnet. This turns the attached gear which is meshed with other gears to divide the rotation rate down to once per 24 hours, once per hour, and once per minute. Pretty clever.
That makes it easy to control the hands. You simply detach the electromagnet from the rest of the circuit and control it yourself. The module he used had a mechanical limitation that prevents the hands from moving well at more than about 100 times normal speed.
We wondered how he made the hands reverse and, apparently, there is a way to get the drive gear to move in reverse, but it isn’t always reliable. Of course, you could also replace the drive mechanism with something like an RC servo or other motor and it sounds like he has done this and plans to show it off in another video.
We’ve seen the
opposite trick
before, too. If you really want an easy-to-control analog clock,
try this one | 28 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107386",
"author": "NFM",
"timestamp": "2025-03-10T02:15:56",
"content": "Lokks like a good way to make a Vetinari clock.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8107413",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-03-10T06... | 1,760,371,612.523035 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/09/hackaday-links-march-9-2025/ | Hackaday Links: March 9, 2025 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"Blue Ghost",
"bricking",
"brother",
"drm",
"dvd",
"firefly",
"firmware",
"hackaday links",
"leg day",
"Moom",
"nasa",
"printer",
"right to repair",
"RUD",
"saturn v",
"SpaceX",
"starship",
"Warner"
] | It’s been a busy week in space news, and very little of it was good. We’ll start with the one winner of the week, Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, which
landed successfully on the Moon’s surface
on March 2. The lander is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program and carries ten scientific payloads, including
a GPS/GNSS receiver
that successfully tracked signals from Earth-orbiting satellites. All of the scientific payloads have completed their missions, which is good because the lander isn’t designed to withstand the long, cold lunar night only a few days away. The landing makes Firefly the first commercial outfit to successfully soft-land something on the Moon, and being the first at anything is always a big deal.
Slightly less impressive was Intuitive Machines’ attempt at a landing a day later. Their NOVA-C robotic lander
Athena
managed a somewhat controlled landing, but the spacecraft is lying on its side rather than upright, a surprisingly common failure mode for recent lunar landings. Also in the failure category is
the loss of the world’s first private asteroid mining mission
, as well as
SpaceX Starship test flight 8
, which ended in spectacular fashion this week as Starship exploded soon after booster separation. As usual, Scott Manley has t
he best analysis of the incident
, which seemed to involve a fire in the engine bay that led to a rapid loss of thrust from four of its six engines, and sent the spacecraft tumbling before tearing itself apart. The only good news from the flight was
the third successful catch of the returning booster by the chopsticks
, which just never gets old.
What does get old is stories about printer manufacturers and their anti-consumer hijinks, especially when it involves one of the only manufacturers who wasn’t playing the “buy our consumables or we brick it” game. In addition to just about every other printer maker,
Brother now stands accused
of sending firmware up to printers that turns off functionality if non-OEM cartridges are used. The accusations come from Louis Rossman, well-known for his right-to-repair advocacy and, ironically, long-time proponent of Brother printers as least likely to be bricked. His accusation that “Brother is now among the rest of them” is based on a pretty small sample of affected users, and a self-selected one at that, so take that with the requisite amount of salt. For their part,
Brother denies the claim
, stating simply that “Brother firmware updates do not block the use of third-party ink in our machines.” They don’t go much beyond that by way of an explanation of what’s happening to the users reporting problems other than to say that the users may be confused by the fact that “we like to troubleshoot with Brother Genuine supplies.” What the real story is is anyone’s guess at this point, and the best advice we can offer is either to avoid printers altogether, or just buy the cheapest one you can get and harvest it for parts once the starter cartridges are empty.
If like us you’ve accumulated a large collection of physical media films and TV shows to while away the long dark days of a post-apocalyptic nightmare where Netflix and Hulu are but a distant memory,
you might want to rethink your strategy
. Some DVD aficionados have found a troubling trend with “DVD rot,” especially with discs manufactured by Warner Brothers Discovery between 2006 and 2008. It’s not clear what’s going on, but it looks like the polycarbonate cover is delaminating from the inner Mylar layer, resulting in cloudy areas that obscure the data. Warner is aware of the problem and will replace defective discs with the same title if possible, or exchange it for a title of like value if the original is no longer available. We’re dismayed that this defect probably includes our beloved
Looney Tunes
collection, but on the upside, now we have an excuse to sit through forty straight hours of cartoons.
And finally, if you were a NASA rocket engineer in the 1960s, skipping leg day wasn’t an option. That’s because
the Saturn V full-stack shake test
on the Apollo program was a very
hands-on
feet-on process. The shake test was performed to make sure nothing was loose on the stack, and that it would be able to withstand not only the shaking induced by those five massive F-1 engines, but also the occasional hurricane that Florida is famous for. To get the rocket shaking, engineers sat on the deck of the gantry with their legs bridging the gap and their feet up against the side of the service module and gave it all they had. Other engineers literally backed them up, to provide something to push against, while another team on the uppermost platform used a rope to play tug-of-war with the command module. They were able to get the stack moving pretty good, with a meter or so of deflection at the escape tower. It does raise the question, though: what would they have done if the test failed? | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107364",
"author": "NQ",
"timestamp": "2025-03-10T00:21:11",
"content": "Who was that playing the music while the guys were shaking the rocket?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8107374",
"author": "Dave",
"time... | 1,760,371,612.381583 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/09/deep-drawing-with-ultrasonics/ | Deep Drawing With Ultrasonics | Al Williams | [
"Engineering"
] | [
"deep drawing",
"metalworking"
] | Small cylindrical parts are often formed through deep drawing — a process by which a punch forms the finished piece from a flat sheet of metal using a forming die. If it sounds like that stresses the metal, it does. But researchers at Fraunhofer have found a way to reduce friction protecting both the material and the tools that do the forming. The process — known as
VibroDraw
— uses ultrasonic vibrations at around 500 Hz.
Researchers claim a 20% reduction in friction now, and it may be possible to go even further. With less friction, it is possible to do a deeper draw in a single stage. It also creates less heat which is good for tool life and prevents overheating lubricant. The process has a
patent
if you want more details. You might need to brush up on your German, though. Unsurprisingly, the vibrations are from a piezoelectric transducer.
Copper is soft enough to use
3D printed dies
. We don’t know if this technique would help with that or not. Then there’s
hydroforming
. If you have any results using ultrasonics with these or any other techniques, be sure to let us know. | 17 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107322",
"author": "Vik",
"timestamp": "2025-03-09T20:09:36",
"content": "Looking forward to a Hackaday article on explosive forming…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8107325",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,371,612.758395 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/09/old-chromebooks-get-second-life-as-video-wall/ | Old Chromebooks Get Second Life As Video Wall | Tom Nardi | [
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"chromebook",
"video",
"video wall"
] | What would you do with dozens and dozens of outdated Chromebooks that are no longer getting updates from the Google Mothership? It’s a situation that plenty of schools will have to deal with in the near future, and we can only help that those institutions have students as clever as [Varun Biniwale] and his friend [Aksel Salmi] to lean on — as they managed to recycle ten of these outdated laptops into an impressive video display.
There’s actually two write-ups for this particular story, with
[Varun] documenting the modification of the Chromebooks
and the software developed to play the video between them, and
[Aksel] covering how the hardware was ultimately attached to the wall
via bespoke 3D printed mounting brackets.
The general idea with this project was to strip each Chromebook down to just a motherboard and an LCD, stick them on the wall, and then play the same video on all of them at once. This sounds relatively easy, but they quickly found out that the limited hackability of ChromeOS to be a limiting factor.
So the decision was made to remove the physical write protection screws from each computer, which would allow for the installation of a standard Linux distribution. Once running stock Debian, it took some custom scripts to get each machine to boot up into Chromium and point at the appropriate web page. From there,
socket.io
is used to synchronize the playback of the carefully prepared video file.
On the other side of the project, [Aksel] shows the logistics of taking the machines apart and getting them ready for their new jig. Initial experiments focused on mounting the hardware to a laser-cut piece of acrylic, which looked good, but simply wasn’t robust enough. In the end, the solution was a highly customized 3D printed mount which holds the motherboard securely while also providing a place to attach each LCD.
End-of-life Chromebooks can be had for pennies on the dollar, and they’ll only become more common with time, so we’re eager to see what folks end up doing with them. Between the hardware and software aspects of this particular hack, we’re sure there’s a trick or two you’ll pick up from this one. | 23 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107273",
"author": "Gus Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-03-09T17:36:01",
"content": "I keep using my outdated Chromebooks, though I find that more and more websites break when I try to load them. I can no longer view a usable homepage on YouTube, anything from Reddit fails to load, Gi... | 1,760,371,612.930104 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/09/taming-the-wobble-an-arduino-self-balancing-bot/ | Taming The Wobble: An Arduino Self-Balancing Bot | Heidi Ulrich | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Robots Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"arduino",
"balance",
"control theory",
"robot",
"self balancing"
] | Getting a robot to stand on two wheels without tipping over involves a challenging dance with the laws of physics. Self-balancing robots are a great way to get into control systems, sensor fusion, and embedded programming.
This build by [mircemk]
shows how to make one with just a few common components, an Arduino, and a bit of patience fine-tuning the PID controller.
At the heart of the bot is the MPU6050 – a combo accelerometer/gyroscope sensor that keeps track of tilt and movement. An Arduino Uno takes this data, runs it through a PID loop, and commands an L298N motor driver to adjust the speed and direction of two DC motors. The power comes from two Li-ion batteries feeding everything with enough juice to keep it upright. The rest of the magic lies in the tuning.
PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) control is what makes the robot stay balanced. Kp (proportional gain) determines how aggressively the motors respond to tilting. Kd (derivative gain) dampens oscillations, and Ki (integral gain) helps correct slow drifts. Set them wrong, and your bot either wobbles like a confused penguin or falls flat on its face. A good trick is to start with only Kp, then slowly add Kd and Ki until it stabilizes. Then don’t forget to calibrate your MPU6050; each sensor has unique offsets that need to be compensated in the code.
Once dialed in, the result is a robot that looks like it defies gravity. Whether you’re hacking it for fun, turning it into a segway-like ride, or using it as a learning tool, a balancing bot is a great way to sharpen your control system skills. For more inspiration, check out
this earlier attempt from 2022
, or
these self-balancing robots
(
one with a little work
) from a year before that. You can read up on [mircemk]’s
project details here
. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107212",
"author": "Maria",
"timestamp": "2025-03-09T14:11:28",
"content": "But why this lame PID instead of something like LQR?Ardurobots with PID were exciting… in 2010.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8107215",
"au... | 1,760,371,613.032686 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/09/fixing-an-unpleasant-sd-card-slot-issue-in-a-nanovna/ | Fixing An Unpleasant SD Card Slot Issue In A NanoVNA | Maya Posch | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"microsd card",
"nanovna"
] | SD cards & the much smaller microSD cards are found on many devices, with the card often accessible from outside the enclosure. Unfortunately there’s a solid chance that especially small microSD cards will find their way past the microSD card reader slot and into the enclosure. This is
what happened to [Rob]
of the
SevenFortyOne Radios and Repairs
channel on YouTube with a NanoVNA unit. While shaking the unit, you can clearly hear the microSD card rattling inside, courtesy of the rather large gap above the card slot.
After a quick teardown and extracting the lost microSD card, the solution to prevent this is a simple bit of foam stuck on top of the microSD card slot, so that the too large opening in the enclosure is now fully blocked. It’s clearly a bit of a design fail in this particular NanoVNA unit, worsened by the tiny size of the card and having to use a fingernail to push the card into the slot as it’s so far inside the enclosure.
While [Rob] seems to blame himself for this event, we’d chalk it mostly up to poor design. It’s an issue that’s seen with certain SBC enclosures and various gadgets too, where losing a microSD card is pretty much a matter of time, and hugely fiddly at the best of times. That said, what is your preferred way of handling microSD card insertion & removal in devices like these? | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107196",
"author": "brutek",
"timestamp": "2025-03-09T12:49:25",
"content": "I pay someone to insert and remove the microSD card, just like paying someone to replace a light bulb. lol",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8107203",
... | 1,760,371,612.983208 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/09/the-coolest-batteries-youve-never-heard-of/ | The Coolest Batteries You’ve Never Heard Of | Heidi Ulrich | [
"Battery Hacks",
"green hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"cell",
"cells",
"cooling",
"electricity",
"grid",
"ice",
"storage"
] | Imagine cooling your building with the same principle that kept Victorian-era icehouses stocked with lake-frozen blocks, but in modern form. That’s
the idea behind ice batteries
, a clever energy storage hack that’s been quietly slashing cooling costs across commercial buildings. The invention works by freezing water when energy is cheap, and using that stored cold later, they turn
major power hogs
(air conditioning, we’re looking at you) into more efficient, cost-effective systems.
Pioneers like Nostromo Energy and Ice Energy are refining the tech. Nostromo’s IceBrick modules pack 25 kWh of cooling capacity each, install on rooftops, and cost around $250 per kWh—about half the price of lithium-ion storage. Ice Energy’s Ice Bear 40 integrates with HVAC systems, shifting up to 95% of peak cooling demand to off-peak hours. And for homes, the Ice Bear 20 replaces traditional AC units while doubling as a thermal battery.
Unlike lithium-ion, ice batteries don’t degrade chemically – their water is endlessly reusable. Combining the technology
with this hack
, it’s even possible in
environments where water is scarce
. But the trade-off? They only store cooling energy. No frozen kilowatts for your lightbulbs, just an efficient way to handle the biggest energy drain in most buildings.
Could ice batteries help decentralize energy storage? They’re already proving their worth in high-demand areas like California and Texas.
Read the full report here
and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Original photo by
Kelly Sikkema
on
Unsplash | 55 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107151",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-03-09T09:24:19",
"content": "and cost around $250 per kWh—about half the price of lithium-ion storage.No it’s not. That’s about twice the cost of lithium ion battery cells.https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-hit-... | 1,760,371,613.135788 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/08/retrotechtacular-better-living-through-nuclear-chemistry/ | Retrotechtacular: Better Living Through Nuclear Chemistry | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"aqueous",
"core",
"homgenous",
"reactor",
"retrotechtacular",
"uranyl sulfate"
] | The late 1950s were such an optimistic time in America. World War II had been over for less than a decade, the economy boomed thanks to pent-up demand after years of privation, and everyone was having babies — so many babies. The sky was the limit, especially with new technologies that promised a future filled with miracles, including abundant nuclear power that would be “too cheap to meter.”
It didn’t quite turn out that way, of course, but the whole “Atoms for Peace” thing did provide the foundation for a lot of innovations that we still benefit from to this day.
This 1958 film on “The Armour Research Reactor”
details the construction and operation of the world’s first privately owned research reactor. Built at the Illinois Institute of Technology by Atomics International, the reactor was a 50,000-watt aqueous-homogenous design using a solution of uranyl sulfate in distilled water as its fuel. The core is tiny, about a foot in diameter, and assembled by hand right in front of the camera. The stainless steel sphere is filled with 90 feet (27 meters) of stainless tubing to circulate cooling water through the core. Machined graphite reflector blocks surrounded the core and its fuel overflow tank (!) before the reactor was installed in “biological shielding” made from super-dense iron ore concrete with walls 5 feet (1.5 m) thick — just a few of the many advanced safety precautions taken “to ensure completely safe operation in densely populated areas.”
While the reactor design is interesting enough, the control panels and instrumentation are what really caught our eye. The
Fallout
vibe is strong, including the fact that the controls are all right in the room with the reactor. This allows technicians equipped with their
Cutie Pie meters
to insert samples into irradiation tubes, some of which penetrate directly into the heart of the core, where neutron flux is highest. Experiments included the creation of radioactive organic compounds for polymer research, radiation hardening of those new-fangled transistors, and manufacturing radionuclides for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases.
This mid-century technological gem might look a little sketchy to modern eyes, but the Armour Research Reactor had a long career. It was in operation until 1967 and decommissioned in 1972, and similar reactors were installed in universities and private facilities all over the world. Most of them are gone now, though, with only five aqueous-homogenous reactors left operating today. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107184",
"author": "DBR",
"timestamp": "2025-03-09T12:07:49",
"content": "if I’m not mistaken, properly reconstructing this reactor was part of the entrance exam for vault tech University wasn’t it? :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"commen... | 1,760,371,613.533194 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/08/fictional-computers-emerac-was-the-chatbot-of-1957/ | Fictional Computers: EMERAC Was The Chatbot Of 1957 | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"EMERAC",
"movies"
] | Movies mirror the time they were made. [ErnieTech] asserts that we can see what people thought about computers back in 1957 by watching the classic Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn movie “
Desk Set
.” What’s more, he thinks this might be the first movie appearance of a human-like computer. On a side note, in the UK this movie was known as “The Other Woman.”
The story is about an MIT computer expert computerizing a broadcasting company who, of course, finds romance and, at least towards the end, comedy.
Of course, we are interested in the computer. It was supposedly an IBM machine and while IBM apparently provided some equipment (probably typewriters and tape drives), the computer is clearly just a ton of light bulbs. It was named Emmie, which was a nickname for EMERAC. Oddly enough, it was like a modern web search engine or chatbot, answering random research questions. The difference is they had fed all the world’s knowledge into it themselves using punched cards.
The video has spoilers, but for a movie made in 1957, that’s not really an issue. The ending is pretty predictable, anyway. Like many people in 1957, there was a fear that “computers were going to take all our jobs!” [Ernie] makes the point that this was a common trope where the computer would run the
Enterprise
company and then made a big mistake, and everyone realized we still needed humans. EMERAC later guest-starred in the movie “The Fly.” It was just a background player in the chorus, though.
He also points out that many of the things people thought about the widespread adoption of computers are still true today if you replace computer with AI. Turns out, you still need to know how to reset the system.
[Ernie] did a video about
Colossus
last month, a topic we also visited last year. One of our favorite fictional computers, though, was more recent from “
The Three Body Problem
.” | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107087",
"author": "JSL",
"timestamp": "2025-03-09T03:08:39",
"content": "Never heard of this movie, but it may have inspired the Twilight Zone episode “From Agnes, With Love”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Agnes%E2%80%94With_Love",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,371,613.316913 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/08/writing-an-oled-display-driver-in-microzig/ | Writing An OLED Display Driver In MicroZig | Maya Posch | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Development"
] | [
"microzig",
"rp2040",
"zig",
"ziglang"
] | Although most people would use C, C++ or MicroPython for programming microcontrollers, there are a few more obscure options out there as well, with MicroZig being one of them. Recently [Andrew Conlin]
wrote about how to use MicroZig
with the Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU, showing the process of writing an SSD1306 OLED display driver and running it. Although
MicroZig
has since
published
a built-in version, the blog post gives a good impression of what developing with MicroZig is like.
Zig
is a programming language which seeks to improve on the C language, adding memory safety, safe pointers (via option types), while keeping as much as possible of what makes C so useful for low-level development intact. The MicroZig project customizes Zig for use in embedded projects, targeting platforms including the Raspberry Pi MCUs and STM32. During [Andrew]’s usage of MicroZig it was less the language or supplied tooling that tripped him up, and more just the convoluted initialization of the SSD1306 controller, which is probably a good sign. The resulting project code can be found on his
GitHub page
. | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107048",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-03-09T00:11:50",
"content": "Move ‘ZIG’. For Great Justice.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8107234",
"author": "oPossum",
"timestamp": "2025-03-09T15:49:03",
... | 1,760,371,613.43798 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/08/expensive-camera-cheap-3d-printed-lens/ | Expensive Camera, Cheap 3D-Printed Lens | Jenny List | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [] | If you’re a photography enthusiast, you probably own quite a few cameras, but the chances are your “good” one will have interchangeable lenses. Once you’ve exhausted the possibilities of the kit lens, you can try different focal lengths and effects, but you’ll soon find out that good glass isn’t cheap. Can you solve this problem by making your own lenses? [Billt]
has done just that
.
Given some CAD skills, it’s possible to replicate the mount on an existing lens, but he takes a shortcut by using a readily available camera cap project. There are two lenses detailed in the video below the break; the first is a plastic lens from a disposable camera, while the second takes one from a Holga toy camera. The plastic lens is inserted mid-print, giving the colour aberrations and soft focus you’d expect, while the Holga lens is mounted on a slide for focusing. There may be some room for improvement there, but the result is a pair of fun lenses for experimentation for not much outlay. Given the number of broken older cameras out there, it should be relatively easy for anyone wanting to try this for themselves to have a go.
The video is below the break, but while you’re on this path, take a look at
a previous project using disposable camera lenses
. Or, consider printing
an entire camera
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8107050",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-03-09T00:22:26",
"content": "Betteridge is right. The lens is not printed. Just the lensholder.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8107093",
"author": "Ray Morris",
... | 1,760,371,613.482797 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/08/transceiver-reveals-unusual-components/ | Transceiver Reveals Unusual Components | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"filter",
"teardown",
"transceiver"
] | [MSylvain59] likes to tear down old surplus, and in the video below, he takes apart a German transceiver known as
a U-600M
. From the outside, it looks like an unremarkable gray box, especially since it is supposed to work with a remote unit, so there’s very little on the outside other than connectors. Inside, though, there’s plenty to see and even a few surprises.
Inside is a neatly built RF circuit with obviously shielded compartments. In addition to a configurable power supply, the radio has modules that allow configuration to different frequencies. One of the odder components is a large metal cylinder marked MF450-1900. This appears to be
a mechanical filter
. There are also a number of unusual parts like dogbone capacitors and tons of trimmer capacitors.
The plug-in modules are especially dense and interesting. In particular, some of the boards are different from some of the others. It is an interesting design from a time predating broadband digital synthesis techniques.
While this transceiver is stuffed with parts, it probably performs quite well. However, transceivers
can be simple
. Even more so if you throw in
an SDR chip
. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106970",
"author": "matt",
"timestamp": "2025-03-08T18:56:09",
"content": "Can anyone else smell this?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8106977",
"author": "Mark Topham",
"timestamp": "2025-03-08T19:18:02",
... | 1,760,371,613.380521 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/08/physical-computing-used-to-be-a-thing/ | Physical Computing Used To Be A Thing | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"hardware",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"hardware",
"physical computing",
"Rant",
"software"
] | In the early 2000s, the idea that you could write programs on microcontrollers that did things in the physical world, like run motors or light up LEDs, was kind of new. At the time, most people thought of coding as stuff that stayed on the screen, or in cyberspace. This idea of writing code for physical gadgets was uncommon enough that it had a buzzword of its own: “physical computing”.
You never hear much about “physical computing” these days, but that’s not because the concept went away. Rather, it’s probably because it’s almost become the norm. I realized this as Tom Nardi and I were talking on
the podcast
about a number of apparently different trends that all point in the same direction.
We started off talking about the early days of the Arduino revolution. Sure, folks have been building hobby projects with microcontrollers built in before Arduino, but the combination of a standardized board, a wide-ranging software library, and abundant examples to learn from brought embedded programming to a
much
wider audience. And particularly, it brought this to an audience of beginners who were not only blinking an LED for the first time, but maybe even taking their first steps into coding. For many, the Arduino hello world was their coding hello world as well. These folks are “physical computing” natives.
Now, it’s to the point that
when Arya goes to visit FOSDEM, an open-source software convention, there is hardware everywhere
. Why? Because many successful software projects support open hardware, and many others run on it. People port their favorite programming languages to microcontroller platforms, and as they become more powerful, the lines between the “big” computers and the “micro” ones starts to blur.
And I think this is awesome. For one, it’s somehow more rewarding, when you’re just starting to learn to code, to see the letters you type cause something in the physical world to happen, even if it’s just blinking an LED. At the same time, everything has a microcontroller in it these days, and hacking on these devices is also another flavor of physical computing – there’s code in everything that you might think of as hardware. And with open licenses, everything being under version control, and more openness in open hardware than we’ve ever seen before, the open-source hardware world reflects the open-source software ethos.
Are we getting past the point where the hardware / software distinction is even worth making? And was “physical computing” just the buzzword for the final stages of blurring out those lines?
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
! | 71 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106917",
"author": "Gus Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-03-08T15:34:53",
"content": "I remember in the late 1990s wanting to control something extremely basic with a Windows computer. Back then, there was no obvious way to do this. Maybe you could control the lines of a parallel por... | 1,760,371,613.65008 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/08/the-pentium-processors-innovative-and-complicated-method-of-multiplying-by-three-fast/ | The Pentium Processor’s Innovative (and Complicated) Method Of Multiplying By Three,Fast | Donald Papp | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"FPU",
"pentium",
"radix-8"
] | [Ken Shirriff] has been sharing a
really
low-level look at Intel’s Pentium (1993) processor. The Pentium’s architecture was highly innovative in many ways, and one of [Ken]’s most recent discoveries is that it contains a complex circuit — containing around 9,000 transistors —
whose sole purpose is to multiply specifically by three
. Why does such an apparently simple operation require such a complex circuit? And why
this
particular operation, and not something else?
Let’s back up a little to put this all into context. One of the feathers in the Pentium’s cap was its Floating Point Unit (FPU) which was capable of much faster floating point operations than any of its predecessors.
[Ken] dove into reverse-engineering the FPU
earlier this year and a close-up look at the Pentium’s silicon die shows that the FPU occupies a significant chunk of it. Of the FPU, nearly half is dedicated to performing multiplications and a comparatively small but quite significant section of
that
is specifically for multiplying a number by three. [Ken] calls it the
x3 circuit
.
The “x3 circuit”, a nontrivial portion of the Pentium processor, is dedicated to multiplying a number by exactly three and contains more transistors than an entire Z80 microprocessor.
Why does the multiplier section of the FPU in the Pentium processor have such specialized (and complex) functionality for such an apparently simple operation? It comes down to how the Pentium multiplies numbers.
Multiplying two 64-bit numbers is done in base-8 (octal), which ultimately requires fewer operations than doing so in base-2 (binary). Instead of handling each bit separately (as in binary multiplication), three bits of the multiplier get handled at a time, requiring fewer shifts and additions overall. But the downside is that multiplying by three must be handled as a special case.
[Ken] gives an excellent explanation of exactly how all that works (which is also an explanation of the radix-8 Booth’s algorithm) but it boils down to this: there are numerous shortcuts for multiplying numbers (multiplying by two is the same as shifting left by 1 bit, for example) but multiplying by three is the only one that doesn’t have a tidy shortcut. In addition, because the result of multiplying by three is involved in numerous
other
shortcuts (x5 is really x8 minus x3 for example) it must also be done very quickly to avoid dragging down those other operations. Straightforward binary multiplication is too slow. Hence the reason for giving it so much dedicated attention.
[Ken] goes into considerable detail on how exactly this is done, and it involves carry lookaheads as a key element to saving time. He also points out that this specific piece of functionality used more transistors than an entire Z80 microprocessor. And if that is not a wild enough idea for you, then how about the fact that the Z80
has a new OS available
? | 26 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106897",
"author": "Yimin Rong",
"timestamp": "2025-03-08T13:28:01",
"content": "If they reduced the silicon to just 2x + x, decoupled the circuit from the clock for the carry to ripple on its own, and with extra bit(s) set to always carry to a READY line, would that work just as w... | 1,760,371,613.876236 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/08/get-into-meshtastic-on-the-cheap-with-this-tiny-node-kit/ | Get Into Meshtastic On The Cheap With This Tiny Node Kit | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32-S3",
"ISM",
"LoRa",
"mesh",
"Meshtastic",
"network",
"node",
"Wio-SX1262",
"Xiao"
] | There’s been a lot of buzz about Meshtastic lately, and with good reason. The low-power LoRa-based network has a ton of interesting use cases, and as with any mesh network, the more nodes there are, the better it works for everyone. That’s why we’re excited by
this super-affordable Meshtastic kit
that lets you get a node on the air for about ten bucks.
The diminutive kit, which consists of a microcontroller and a LoRa module, has actually been available from the usual outlets for a while. But [concretedog] has been deep in the Meshtastic weeds lately, and decided to review its pros and cons. Setup starts with flashing Meshtastic to the XIAO ESP32-S3 microcontroller and connecting the included BLE antenna. After that, the Wio-SX1262 LoRa module is snapped to the microcontroller board via surface-mount connectors, and a separate LoRa antenna is connected. Flash the firmware (this combo is supported by the
official web flasher
), and you’re good to go.
What do you do with your new node? That’s largely up to you, of course. Most Meshtastic users seem content to send encrypted text messages back and forth, but as
our own [Jonathan Bennett] notes
, a Meshtastic network could be extremely useful for emergency preparedness. Build a few of these nodes, slap them in a 3D printed box, distribute them to willing neighbors, and suddenly you’ve got a way to keep connected in an emergency, no license required. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106874",
"author": "Feinfinger (M-x butterfly)",
"timestamp": "2025-03-08T12:30:24",
"content": "[Reticulum Network Stack] firmware for using this as RNode seems to be surfacing quite soon too. Stay tuned.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"... | 1,760,371,613.9348 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/07/the-road-to-lucid-dreaming-might-be-paved-with-vr/ | The Road To Lucid Dreaming Might Be Paved With VR | Donald Papp | [
"Medical Hacks",
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"lucid dreaming",
"sleep",
"vr"
] | Lucid dreaming is the state of becoming aware one is dreaming while still being within the dream. To what end? That awareness may allow one to influence the dream itself, and the possibilities of
that
are obvious and compelling enough that plenty of clever and curious people have formed some sort of interest in this direction. Now there are some indications that
VR might be a useful tool in helping people achieve lucid dreaming
.
The research paper (
Virtual reality training of lucid dreaming
) is far from laying out a conclusive roadmap, but there’s enough there to make the case that VR is at least worth a look as a serious tool in the quest for lucid dreaming.
One method of using VR in this way hinges on the idea that engaging in immersive VR content can create mild dissociative experiences, and this can help guide and encourage users to perform “reality checks”. VR can help such reality checks become second nature (or at least more familiar and natural), which may help one to become aware of a dream state when it occurs.
Another method uses VR as a way to induce a mental state that is more conducive to lucid dreaming. As mentioned, engaging in immersive VR can induce mild dissociative experiences, so VR slowly guides one into a more receptive state before falling asleep. Since
sleeping in VR is absolutely a thing
, perhaps an enterprising hacker with a healthy curiosity in lucid dreaming might be inspired to experiment with combining them.
We’ve covered plenty of
lucid dreaming
hacks over the years and there’s even been serious effort at
enabling communication from within a dreaming state
. If you ask us, that’s something just
begging
to be combined with VR. | 26 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106826",
"author": "petscii",
"timestamp": "2025-03-08T07:10:11",
"content": "So I am going to ask the question I always ask when this comes up. How do you know in the dream that you are actually lucid dreaming and not just dreaming that you are lucid dreaming?",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,371,613.717658 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/07/this-laser-knows-about-gasses/ | This Laser Knows About Gasses | Al Williams | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"comb laser",
"gas detection"
] | What’s that smell? If you can’t tell, maybe a
new laser system
from CU Bolder and NIST can help. The device is simple and sensitive enough to detect gasses at concentrations down to parts per trillion.
The laser at the system’s heart is a frequency comb laser, originally made for optical atomic clocks. The laser has multiple optical frequencies in its output. The gas molecules absorb light of different wavelengths differently, giving each type of molecule a unique fingerprint.
Unlike traditional lasers, which emit a single frequency, a frequency comb laser can emit thousands or millions of colors at once. The inventor picked up the Nobel prize in 2005 for that work.
The gas is placed between two highly-reflective mirrors. The beam bounces in this optical cavity, although previous attempts were difficult because the cavity has a particular affinity for frequencies. The answer was to jiggle the mirrors to change the size of the cavity during measurments.
This is one of those things that doesn’t seem very complicated except — whoops — you need an exotic comb laser. But if those ever become widely available, you could probably figure out how to replicate this.
This could revolutionize
air quality instruments
. Small quantities of
hydrogen sulfide can be detected easily
(although, paradoxically, too much is hard to smell). | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106793",
"author": "Simon",
"timestamp": "2025-03-08T04:09:23",
"content": "Which safety glasses do we wear though 😂",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8106821",
"author": "The Eternal President Kim Il Sung",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,371,613.980521 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/07/tearing-down-a-vintage-word-processor/ | Tearing Down A Vintage Word Processor | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"daisywheel",
"word processor"
] | There was a time when the line between typewriters and word processing software was a bit fuzzy. [Poking Technology] found a
Xerox 6040
which can’t decide what it is. It looks like a typewriter but has a monitor and a floppy drive, along with some extra buttons. You can watch him tear it down in the video below.
The old device uses a daisywheel type element, which, back then, was state of the art. A wheel had many spokes with letters and the printer would spin the wheel and then strike the plastic spoke.
Inside there is a computer of sorts. Like a lot of gear from those days, there is a huge linear power supply. The video is a couple of hours long, so you’ll have plenty of chances to see the inside. There is an 8031 on the first logic board and some odd connections for external devices. As it turns out, that board wasn’t the main wordprocessing board which is under the keyboard.
On that board, there is another small CPU and some very large gate arrays. Under an odd-looking socket, however, lives an 80188, which is sort of an 8086/8088 variant.
The video is a very long deep dive into the internals, including reverse engineering of some of the ROM chips and even a surprise or two.
These
machines always look retro-chic
to us. Even then, though, we preferred
WordStar
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106757",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-03-08T00:40:27",
"content": "Can it run Doom? It’d probably run at frame rate of 1 page per minute?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8106889",
"author": "David Given",
... | 1,760,371,614.019428 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/07/trio-of-mods-makes-delta-printer-more-responsive-easier-to-use/ | Trio Of Mods Makes Delta Printer More Responsive, Easier To Use | Dan Maloney | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"BLDC",
"delta",
"hx711",
"printer",
"strain gauge",
"wheatstone"
] | Just about any 3D printer can be satisfying to watch as it works, but delta-style printers are especially hypnotic. There’s just something about the way that three linear motions add up to all kinds of complex shapes; it’s mesmerizing. Deltas aren’t without their problems, though, which led [Bruno Schwander]
to undertake a trio of interesting mods
on his Anycubic Kossel.
First up was an effort to reduce the mass of the business end of the printer, which can help positional accuracy and repeatability. This started with replacing the stock hot-end with a smaller, lighter MQ Mozzie, but that led to cooling problems that [Bruno] addressed with
a ridiculously overpowered brushless hairdryer fan
. The fan expects a 0 to 5-VDC signal for the BLDC controller, which meant he had to build an adapter to allow Marlin’s 12-volt PWM signal to control the fan.
Once the beast of a fan was tamed, [Bruno] came up with
a clever remote mount
for it. A 3D-printed shroud allowed him to mount the fan and adapter to the frame of the printer, with a flexible duct connecting it to the hot-end. The duct is made from lightweight nylon fabric with elastic material sewn into it to keep it from taut as the printhead moves around, looking a bit like an elephant’s trunk.
Finally, to solve his pet peeve of setting up and using the stock Z-probe, [Bruno]
turned the entire print bed into a strain-gauge sensor
. This took some doing, which the blog post details nicely, but it required building a composite spacer ring for the glass print bed to mount twelve strain gauges that are read by the venerable HX711 amplifier and an Arduino, which sends a signal to Marlin when the head touches the bed. The video below shows it and the remote fan in action. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106750",
"author": "Eric Mockler",
"timestamp": "2025-03-08T00:07:32",
"content": "I just built a remote fan as well, only I used the plastic sleeve a 3/4″ x 36″ aluminum tube came packaged in. I used a fabric covered wire management tube inside it so it keeps its shape, but am thi... | 1,760,371,614.118084 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/07/run-xbox-360-games-on-your-pc-with-xenondecomp/ | Run Xbox 360 Games On Your PC With XenonRecomp | Maya Posch | [
"Games",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"static recompilation",
"xbox 360"
] | Inspired by the N64: Recompiled project,
XenonRecomp
does something similar, except for the PowerPC-equipped Microsoft Xbox 360 game console. Based around the triple-core IBM CPU codenamed ‘
Xenon
‘, the Xbox 360 was released in 2005 and generally quite successful over its lifespan despite its Red Ring of Death issues. Although the current Xbox Series X
supports
running a number of Xbox 360 games, this is done via emulation and only 632 games out of 2,155 are supported.
This is where XenonRecomp not only promises turning the games into native (x86) software, but also allowing for a range of graphical improvements. Best of all, it allows for Xbox 360 games to be preserved instead of linked to an obsolete console. That said, much like with N64Recomp, it’s not a simple matter of running a tool over the PPC binary. You’re expected to have in-depth systems knowledge, with the tools in XenonRecomp assisting with the decompilation (into C++) and the recompilation into x86 binaries, but support for PPC instructions, VMX (vector instructions) and aspects like jump table conversion and (currently missing) MMIO support are likely to present an enterprising developer with hours of fun to implement and debug when issues arise.
After recompilation into an x86 binary, the required assets are then expected to be copied in from a (legal) copy of the original game. As a proof of concept the game
Sonic Unleashed
has been ported
in this manner, with [Modern Vintage Gamer]
running through this port
and the improvements made over the original game, as well as some issues you may encounter: | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106696",
"author": "Dave Boyer",
"timestamp": "2025-03-07T20:32:30",
"content": "Last month I decided to take on the easy task of using Ghidra to port “Tanks” from Pegasus (Terminator) to Xbox 360. Because, you know, why not challenge myself with a project that’s clearly meant to b... | 1,760,371,614.067484 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/07/open-source-hardware-how-open-do-you-want-it-to-be/ | Open Source Hardware, How Open Do You Want It To Be? | Jenny List | [
"Featured",
"hardware",
"Interest",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"OHL",
"open source",
"open source harware"
] | In our wider community we are all familiar with the idea of open source software. Many of us run it as our everyday tools, a lot of us release our work under an open source licence, and we have a pretty good idea of the merits of one such document over another. A piece of open source software has all of its code released under a permissive licence that explicitly allows it to be freely reproduced and modified, and though some people with longer beards take it a little too seriously at times and different flavours of open source work under slightly different rules, by and large we’re all happy with that.
When it comes to open hardware though, is it so clear cut? I’ve had more than one rant from my friends over the years about pieces of hardware which claim to be open-source but aren’t really, that I think this bears some discussion.
Open Source Hardware As It Should Be Done
To explore this, we’ll need to consider a couple of open source hardware projects, and I’ll start close to home with one of my own. My
Single 8 home movie cartridge
is a 3D printable film cartridge for a defunct format, and I’ve put everything necessary to create one yourself
in a GitHub repository
under the CERN OHL. If you download the file and load it into OpenSCAD you can quickly create an STL file for your slicer, or fiddle with the code and make an entirely new object. Open source at its most efficient, and everyone’s happy. I’ve even generated STLs ready to go for each of the supported ISO values.
The beautiful EMF2024 Tildagon. CC-BY-4.0
For the second example project it’s necessary instead of a single OpenSCAD file, to consider a more complex design with multiple files. The
Tildagon
was the badge at the Electromagnetic Field 2024 hacker camp, and there are repositories for
its hardware under the CERN OHL
, and
its software under an MIT licence
. Using the contents of these repositories, you can make your own Tildagon in its entirety, or rework any part of it under the terms of the licence.
Of these, the film cartridge is a simple repository. Whether you download the OpenSCAD file or the STLs, there’s only one type of file and it’s unambiguous what the project comprises. But the Tildagon is much more complex device, that has many different files describing its various parts, all of which come together to make the whole. Everything required is present, and the terms of use for it all are clearly defined. For me, it’s a great example of how a complex open-source hardware project should be presented.
Open Source Hardware As It Shouldn’t Be Done
Now, imagine that instead of the EMF folks, I was the developer of the Tildagon. Imagine that I started taking files away from the repositories. The BOM first perhaps, then the KiCAD files. If I were left with just the Gerbers and the PNG schematic, I’ve in theory provided just enough resources to make a Tildagon, and with an appropriate open-source licence I could call it an open-source hardware project.
But even though I’ve granted people the right to use and modify the files in an open-source manner, can I really claim it’s as open-source as if I had released the full set of resources? Hand-editing the source of a Gerber doesn’t really count, and I agree with a point made by some of those friends I mentioned earlier. Providing as little as possible in that way is the equivalent of releasing a compiled binary, as when the convergence factor with free-as-in-beer approaches one, maybe it’s not open-source hardware after all.
Of course, the astute among you will have gathered by now that this isn’t about the Tildagon, instead I’m using it as a metaphor for something else. Though it’s tempting to do so I am not going to name and shame, but there have been a series of high-profile commercial open source hardware projects over the years that do to a greater or lesser extent just what I have described. I even have one of them on my bench, perhaps you do too. It’s not a problem if all you want is the product, but pushing the limits of open source in this way as an empty marketing ploy is not appropriate. Either something is fully open, or it should not, in my opinion at least, be allowed to describe itself as such. There’s nothing at all wrong with a closed source product, after all.
So. What’s To Be Done?
There’s a key phrase in the CERN OHL that I think is pertinent here; the idea of the “Complete source”. It’s mentioned in clause 1.8 of the text, which goes as follows:
1.8 'Complete Source' means the set of all Source necessary to Make
a Product, in the preferred form for making modifications,
including necessary installation and interfacing information
both for the Product, and for any included Available Components.
If the format is proprietary, it must also be made available in
a format (if the proprietary tool can create it) which is
viewable with a tool available to potential licensees and
licensed under a licence approved by the Free Software
Foundation or the Open Source Initiative. Complete Source need
not include the Source of any Available Component, provided that
You include in the Complete Source sufficient information to
enable a recipient to Make or source and use the Available
Component to Make the Product.
This clause encapsulates perfectly how the release of all project files should be necessary for a project that wants to be called open-source. It’s important, because open source goes beyond mere ability to copy, and extends into modifying and extending the project. Without those extra files, as with my Tildagon-as-Gerbers example above, this becomes next-to-impossible. Perhaps it’s time as a community to take a slightly harder line with anything less, and instead of welcoming every shiny new toy at face value, probing a little to find out just how deep that open source hardware logo goes.
Otherwise, calling something open source hardware will inevitably lose its meaning. Is this what we want, in exchange for a few flashy commercial projects?
Open source hardware logo on PCB: Altzone,
CC BY-SA 3.0
. | 43 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106662",
"author": "Norbert",
"timestamp": "2025-03-07T18:21:06",
"content": "Very good article about a little-noticed topic! Even on Hackaday the only article with the tags “OHL” and “open source hardware”.I’m currently trying to choose a suitable license for my granulate extruder... | 1,760,371,614.304403 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/07/hackaday-podcast-episode-311-airtag-hack-gps-rollover-and-a-flat-pack-toaster/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 311: AirTag Hack, GPS Rollover, And A Flat-Pack Toaster | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week, Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start off the episode by announcing Arduino co-founder David Cuartielles will be taking the stage as the keynote speaker at Hackaday Europe. In his talk, we’ll hear about a vision of the future where consumer electronics can be tossed in the garden and turned into compost instead of sitting in a landfill for the next 1,000 years or so.
You’ll also hear about a particularly clever manipulation of Apple’s AirTag infrastructure, how a classic kid’s toy was turned into a unique display with the help of computer vision, and the workarounds required to keep older Global Positioning System (GPS) hardware up and running. They’ll also cover DIY toasters, extracting your data from a smart ring before the manufacturer can sell it, a LEGO interferometer, and a new feature added to the Bus Pirate 5’s already impressive list of capabilities.
Capping off the episode there’s a discussion about the surprising (or depending on how you think about it, unsurprising) amount of hardware that was on display at FOSDEM this year, and the history of one of man’s most infernal creations, the shopping cart wheel lock.
Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Download in DRM-free MP3 and listen from the comfort of your shopping cart
.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
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Spotify
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Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 311 Show Notes:
News:
Hackaday Europe 2025 Welcomes David Cuartielles, Announces Friday Night Bring-a-Hack
Skype Is Shutting Down On May 5th
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Know that sound?
Fill out this form for a chance to win a Hackaday Podcast shirt
!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Hijacking AirTag Infrastructure To Track Arbitrary Devices
AirTags, Tiles, SmartTags And The Dilemmas Of Personal Tracking Devices
Cheap Fiber Optic Wand Toy Becomes Tiny Weird Display
Bringing A Christmas Lights Show Inside
Unique LED Display Inspired By Fighter Jet Dashboard
Interposer Helps GPS Receiver Overcome Its Age
Countdown To The GPS Timepocalypse
GPS And ADS-B Problems Cause Cancelled Flights
Year 2038 problem – Wikipedia
Cheap Hackable Smart Ring Gets A Command Line Client
New Part Day: A Hackable Smart Ring
Fighting To Keep Bluetooth Thermometers Hackable
Inexpensive Powder Coating
Flat Pack Toaster Heats Up The Right To Repair
“Some Assembly Required” Makes Us Love Things More
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Speaking Computers From The 1970s
Build A Parametric Speaker Of Your Own
CNC Router And Fiber Laser Bring The Best Of Both Worlds To PCB Prototyping
A CaptionCall Phone Succumbs To Doom, Again
Building An Interferometer With LEGO
Tom’s Picks:
The Bus Pirate 5 Sure Can Glitch
Is This The Oldest HD Video Online?
Wake, Boot, Repeat: Remote OS Selection With GRUB And ESP
Can’t-Miss Articles:
FOSDEM 2025, A Hardware Hacker’s Haven
Tech In Plain Sight: Shopping Cart Locks | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106675",
"author": "Seth",
"timestamp": "2025-03-07T19:15:59",
"content": "The link to here from libsyn is broken, it goeshttps://wpshort/urihttps://wpshort/urilike it got pasted twice.For some reason the shortener interprets that as a link to this post from 2004:https://hackaday.c... | 1,760,371,614.161612 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/07/gnss-signals-tracked-on-the-moon-by-lugre/ | GNSS Signals Tracked On The Moon By LuGRE | Maya Posch | [
"Space"
] | [
"gnss",
"moon"
] | As part of the payloads on the Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 (BGM1) that recently touched down on the Moon, the Lunar GNNS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE)
has become the first practical demonstration
of acquiring and tracking Earth orbital GNSS satellites. LuGRE
consists of
a weak-signal GNSS receiver, a high-gain L-band patch antenna the requisite amplification and filter circuits, designed to track a number of GPS and Galileo signals.
Designed by NASA and the Italian Space Agency (ISA), the LuGRE payload’s goal was to demonstrate GNSS-based positioning, navigation and timing at the Moon. This successful demonstration makes it plausible that future lunar missions, whether in orbit or on the surface, could use Earth’s GNSS satellites to navigate and position themselves with. On the way to the lunar surface, LuGRE confirmed being able to track GNSS at various distances from the Earth.
Both LuGRE and
BGM1
are part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, with BGM1 delivering a total of ten payloads to the Moon, each designed to study a different aspect of the lunar environment, as well as hardware and technologies relevant to future missions. | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106639",
"author": "Sven Hapsbjorg",
"timestamp": "2025-03-07T17:04:42",
"content": "Shouldnt’re GPS satellites designed to beam signal only to earth? To send it it space would be waste of power because of ITAR height limits.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": ... | 1,760,371,614.215338 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/07/this-week-in-security-zen-jailbreak-telegram-exploit-and-vmware-hyperjack/ | This Week In Security: Zen Jailbreak, Telegram Exploit, And VMware Hyperjack | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"Crypto Heist",
"Hyperjack",
"telegram",
"This Week in Security"
] | The fine researchers at Google have
released the juicy details on EntrySign
, the AMD Zen microcode issue we
first covered about a month ago
. And to give away the punchline: cryptography is hard. It’s hard in lots of ways, but the AMD problem here is all about keeping track of the guarantees provided by cryptographic primitives.
The vulnerability is in the verification of microcode updates for AMD’s Zen processor family. To understand microcode, you have to understand that X86-64 processors are actually built out of proprietary Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) cores, that then emulate the more complex X86-64 complex instruction set computer (CISC) cores. Microcode is the firmware that controls that emulation step. For the security guarantees of modern computing, it’s rather important that CPUs only run signed microcode from the CPUs vendor. AMD has a pretty straightforward system to sign and then verify microcode patches.
Each patch includes a 2048-bit RSA public key and signature, verifying that the microcode was actually signed by the holder of the corresponding private key. The CPU hashes that public key, and compares it to a 128-bit value that was burned into the CPU at manufacture time. The intent is that if the hash matches, the public key must be the same. The problem was the hashing algorithm used for this step.
For this scheme to work, it would need a collision resistant cryptographic hashing function. The security of the scheme relies on the idea that it’s effectively impossible to find another public key that results in the same hash output. Finding a collision on that output value completely breaks the scheme.
AMD chose the AES Cipher Message Authentication Code (AES-CMAC) hash algorithm. AES-CMAC takes a message and key, and generates a Message Authentication Code (MAC). That MAC can then be used to verify that the message has not been tampered with. It can be thought of as a keyed hash with conditional collision resistance. But most importantly, if the secret key is known, none of those guarantees are valid. If the key is known, AES-CMAC fails to provide effective collision resistance in its output. And of course, the specific AES-CMAC key used in AMD Zen processors could be extracted, and turned out to be a NIST example key. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with AES-CMAC itself, it’s just the wrong algorithm for this use.
There’s one more clever trick that was needed to pull this together. The AES-CMAC collision only generates a
public
RSA key. How would an attacker take this arbitrary public key and produce the private key needed to sign these microcode updates? Isn’t one of the primary guarantees of RSA itself, that the private key can’t be derived from the public key? Only if the keypair is actually based on large prime numbers. After generating a few of these candidate public keys, one was discovered that was relatively easy to factor, as it was the product of more than just two primes. AMD’s fix replaces this hashing function with an appropriate cryptographic hash, preventing any microcode tampering.
Telegram and EvilLoader
The Telegram app
has a weird problem
deciding what to do with a
.htm
file sent as a video using the telegram API. Telegram tries to treat it as a video, and offers to open an external program to play the video. Because it’s actually HTML content, the “video” is opened in the browser, potentially running malicious JavaScript in that context.
This can be further used to trick an unsuspecting user into downloading a fake video player APK, to try to play this video, potentially leading to device compromise. This vulnerability is still unpatched as of time of writing, but
has been widely known in the expected places
. It may not be a 0-click RCE, but this one still has the potential for misuse.
More Info on The Heist
Last week we told you about the biggest heist in history, with Bybit getting hacked for cryptocurrency worth $1.5 billion. We know a bit more now, as
the Bybit CEO has published the preliminary security report
. The short story is that the North Korean Lazarus Group
compromised a Safe{Wallet} developer workstation
and gained access to an AWS or CloudFront API key. This was used to serve malicious JavaScript to Bybit, and that JavaScript disguised a malicious transaction, leading to the loss.
In retrospect there’s a glaring security problem with the Safe{Wallet} system that Bybit used: The reliance on JavaScript served from an outside server. It should take more than simple access to an AWS account to pull off a $1.5 billion heist.
Hyperjack
What happens when
a process in a Virtual Machine (VM) can escape
the virtual environment and take over the hypervisor? Nothing good. It’s known as hyperjacking, and VMware has a trio of vulnerabilities that makes it possible, across every version of ESXi, Workstation, Fusion, and Telco platforms — everything containing the ESX hypervisor.
And VMware says
the vulnerabilities are being used in-the-wild
. Patches are available, and this seems like a definite hair on fire scenario for anyone that may have untrusted tenants on VMware powered VMs.
Bits and Bytes
Have you ever wondered if a Stingray was operating in your area? That’s the cell tower simulator used to capture and analyze cell traffic, potentially breaking cell phone call encryption. EFF has released
Rayhunter
, and open source tool that captures cellular traffic and tries to detect Stingray-style traffic manipulation. The best part is that it runs on the Orbic RC400L mobile hotspot, a $20 piece of hardware.
How long does it take for your infrastructure to be probed after accidentally posting an AWS key online?
As little as 10 hours
, according to tests done by Clutch Security. Some forums are a bit friendlier, with Reddit users pointing out the leaked key and the post eventually getting deleted for the same reason.
And finally we have
the four horsemen of WordPress Backdoors
. About a thousand WordPress sites were infected with a JavaScript file, and this campaign spared no expense with adding backdoors to the sites. The infection added a malicious plugin, code into
wp-config.php
, new SSH keys, and what looks like a reverse shell. Somebody really wants to maintain access to those WordPress sites. | 7 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106663",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2025-03-07T18:22:44",
"content": "Why didn’t the AMD processors just have the correct public key burnt into them instead of a hash of it? What’s the point of the hash instead?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,614.570163 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/07/the-long-goodbye-more-instruments-shut-down-on-the-voyagers-as-end-nears/ | The Long Goodbye: More Instruments Shut Down On The Voyagers As End Nears | Maya Posch | [
"Space"
] | [
"Voyager 1",
"Voyager 2"
] | Saying farewell is hard, and in the case of the Voyager 1 & 2 spacecraft doubly so, seeing as how they have been with us for more than 47 years. From the highs of the 1970s and 1980s during their primary mission in our Solar System, to their journey into the unknown of Deep Space, every bit of information which their instruments record and send back is something unique that we could not obtain any other way. Yet with
the shutting down of two more instruments
, both spacecraft are now getting awfully close to the end of their extended missions.
Last February 25 the cosmic ray system (CRS) on
Voyager 1
was disabled, with the Low Energy Charged Particle Instrument (LECP) on
Voyager 2
to follow on March 24. With each spacecraft losing about 4 watts of available power per year from their RTGs, the next few instruments to be turned off are already known. Voyager 1’s LECP will be turned off next year, with that same year Voyager 2’s CRS also getting disabled.
This would leave both spacecraft with only their magnetometer (MAG) and plasma wave subsystem (PWS). These provide data on the local magnetic field and electron density, respectively, with at least one of these instruments on each spacecraft likely to remain active until the end of this decade, possibly into the next. With
some luck
both spacecraft will see their 50th birthday before humanity’s only presence in Deep Space falls silent.
Thanks to [Mark Stevens] for the tip. | 50 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106576",
"author": "Carl Breen",
"timestamp": "2025-03-07T13:17:41",
"content": "So can we improve upon Voyager 1/2 and the 635,266km/h fast Parker Solar Probe? Build something longer lasting and eject it from our solar system at a new record breaking speed?Is the interstellar plas... | 1,760,371,614.655776 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/07/open-safety-in-the-auto-business-renault-shares-its-battery-fire-suppression-tech/ | Open Safety In The Auto Business: Renault Shares Its Battery Fire Suppression Tech | Jenny List | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"electric vehicles",
"open source",
"renault",
"safety"
] | As consumers worldwide slowly make the switch from internal combustion vehicles to lower-carbon equivalents, a few concerns have appeared about electric vehicles. Range anxiety is ebbing away as batteries become bigger and chargers become more frequent, but a few well-publicized incidents have raised worries over fire safety.
Lithium-ion batteries can ignite in the wrong circumstances, and when they do so they are extremely difficult to extinguish. Renault has a solution, and in a rare moment for the car industry,
they are sharing it freely for all manufacturers to use
.
The innovation in question is their Fireman Access Port, a standardized means for a fire crew to connect up their hoses directly to the battery pack and attack the fire at its source. An opening is covered by an adhesive disk designed to protect the cells, but breaks under a jet of high-pressure water. Thermal runaway can then be halted much more easily.
The licensing terms not only allow use of the access port itself, but also require any enhancements be shared with the rest of the community of automakers using the system. This was the part which caught our interest, because even if it doesn’t come from the same place as the licences we’re used to, it sounds a lot like open source to us.
Oddly, this is not the first time Renault have open-sourced their technology,
in the past they’ve shared an entire car
. | 31 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106533",
"author": "Jelle",
"timestamp": "2025-03-07T09:36:47",
"content": "Interesting that they seem to use a patent as the basis of their open source. That might be problematic: in ‘normal’ open source the basis is copyright, which applies automatically and is ”owned” by the con... | 1,760,371,614.521174 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/06/why-56k-modems-relied-on-digital-phone-lines-you-didnt-know-we-had/ | Why 56k Modems Relied On Digital Phone Lines You Didn’t Know We Had | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"56 kpbs",
"56k modem",
"digital signal 0",
"modem",
"modulation",
"pcm",
"phone line"
] | If you came of age in the 1990s, you’ll remember the unmistakable auditory handshake of an analog modem negotiating its connection via the plain old telephone system. That cacophony of screeches and hisses was the result of careful engineering. They allowed digital data to travel down phone lines that were only ever built to carry audio—and pretty crummy audio, at that.
Speeds crept up over the years, eventually reaching 33.6 kbps—thought to be the practical limit for audio modems running over the telephone network. Yet, hindsight tells us that 56k modems eventually became the norm! It was all thanks to some lateral thinking which made the most of the what the 1990s phone network had to offer.
Breaking the Sound Barrier
The V.34 standard enabled transmission at up to 33.6 kbps, though many modems topped out at the lower level of 28.8 kpbs in the mid-1990s. Credit:
Raimond Spekking
, CC BY-SA 4.0
When traditional dial-up modems communicate, they encode digital bits as screechy analog tones that would then be carried over phone lines originally designed for human voices. It’s an imperfect way of doing things, but it was the most practical way of networking computers in the olden days. There was already a telephone line in just about every house and business, so it made sense to use them as a conduit to get computers online.
For years, speeds ticked up as modem manufacturers ratified new, faster modulation schemes. Speeds eventually reached 33.6 kbps which was believed to be near the theoretical maximum speed possible over standard telephone lines. This largely came down to the Shannon limit of typical phone lines—basically, with the amount of noise on a given line, and viable error correcting methods, there was a maximum speed at which data could reliably be transferred.
In the late 1990s, though, everything changed. 56 kbps modems started flooding the market as rival manufacturers vied to have the fastest, most capable product on offer. The speed limits had been smashed. The answer lay not in breaking Shannon’s Law, but in exploiting a fundamental change that had quietly transformed the telephone network without the public ever noticing.
Multiplexing Madness
Linecards in phone exchanges were responsible for turning analog signals into digital signals for further transmission through the phone network. Credit: Pdesousa359,
CC BY-SA 3.0
In the late 1990s, most home users still connected to the telephone network through analog phone lines that used simple copper wires running to their houses, serving as the critical “last mile” connection. However, by this time, the rest of the telephone network had undergone a massive digital transformation. Telephone companies had replaced most of their long-distance trunks and switching equipment with digital technology. Once a home user’s phone line hit a central office, it was usually immediately turned into a digital signal for easier handling and long-distance transmission. Using the Digital Signal 0 (DS0) encoding, phone calls became digital with an 8 kHz sample rate using 8-bit pulse code modulation, working out to a maximum data rate of 64 kbps per phone line.
Traditionally, your ISP would communicate over the phone network much like you. Their modems would turn digital signals into analog audio, and pipe them into a regular phone line. That analog audio would then get converted to a DS0 digital signal again as it moved around the back-end of the phone network, and then back to analog for the last mile to the customer. Finally, the customer’s modem would take the analog signal and turn it back into digital data for the attached computer.
This fell apart at higher speeds. Modem manufacturers couldn’t find a way to modulate digital data into audio at 56 kbps in a way that would survive the DS0 encoding. It had largely been designed to transmit human voices successfully, and relied on non-linear encoding schemes that weren’t friendly to digital signals.
The breakthrough came when modem manufacturers realized that ISPs could operate differently from end users. By virtue of their position, they could work with telephone companies to directly access the phone network in a digital manner. Thus, the ISP would simply pipe a digital data directly into the phone network, rather than modulating it into audio first. The signal remained digital all the way until it reached the local exchange, where it would be converted into audio and sent down the phone line into the customer’s home. This eliminated a whole set of digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversions which were capping speeds, and let ISPs shoot data straight at customers at up to 56 kbps.
The basic concept behind 56 kbps operation. So-called “digital modems” on the ISP side would squirt digital signals directly into the digital part of the phone network. These would then be modulated to analog just once at the exchange level to travel the last mile over the customer’s copper phone line. Credit:
ITU
, V.90 standard
This technique only worked in one direction, however. End users still had to use regular modems, which would have their analog audio output converted through DS0 at some point on its way back to the ISP. This kept upload speeds limited to 33.6 kbps.
USRobotics was one of the innovators in the 56k modem space. Note the x2 branding on this SPORTSTER modem, denoing the company’s proprietary modulation method. Credit:
Xiaowei
, CC BY 3.0
The race to exploit this insight led to a minor format war. US Robotics developed its x2 standard, so named for being double the speed of 28k modems. Rival manufacturer Rockwell soon dropped the K56Flex standard, which levied the same trick to up speeds. ISPs quickly began upgrading to work with the faster modems, but consumers were confused with the competing standards.
The standoff ended in 1998 when the International Telecommnication Union (ITU) stepped in to create the V.90 standard. It was incompatible with both x2 and K56Flex, but soon became the industry norm.. This standardization finally allowed for interoperable 56K communications across vendors and ISPs. It was soon supplanted by the updated V.92 standard in 2000, which increased upload speeds to 48 kbps with some special upstream encoding tricks, while also adding new call-waiting and quick-connect features.
Final Hurrah
Despite the theoretical 56 kbps limit, actual connection speeds rarely reached such heights. Line quality and a user’s distance from the central office could degrade performance, and power limits mandated by government regulations made 53 kbps a more realistic peak speed in practice. The connection negotiation process users experienced – that distinctive modem “handshake” – often involved the modems testing line conditions and stepping down to the highest reliable speed. Despite the limitations, 56k modems soon became the norm as customers hoped to achieve a healthy speed boost over the older 33.6k and 28k modems of years past.
The 56K modem represents an elegant solution for a brief period in telecommunications history, when analog modems still ruled and broadband was still obscure and expensive. It was a technology born when modem manufacturers realized the phone network they were now working with was not the one they started with so many decades before. The average consumer may never have appreciated the nifty tricks that made the 56k modem work, but it was a smart piece of engineering that made the Internet ever so slightly more usable in those final years before DSL and cable began to dominate all. | 51 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106273",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2025-03-06T15:26:48",
"content": "Thank you! I have wondered how a 56k modem work with a 64k digital system without any way to synchronize the samples.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "81... | 1,760,371,614.756803 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/06/the-future-we-never-got-running-a-future-we-got/ | The Future We Never Got, Running A Future We Got | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"java",
"Javastation",
"netbsd"
] | If you’re familiar with Java here in 2025, the programming language you know is a world away from what Sun Microsystems planned for it in the mid-1990s. Back then it was key to a bright coffee-themed future of write-once-run-anywhere software, and aside from your web browser using it to run applications, your computer would be a diskless workstation running Java bytecode natively on the silicon.
What we got was slow and disappointing Java applets in web pages, and a line of cut-down SPARC-based JavaStations which did nothing to change the world. [FatSquirrel] has one of these machines,
and a quarter century later, has it running NetBSD
. It’s an interesting journey both into 1990s tech, and some modern-day networking tricks to make it happen.
These machines suffer as might be expected, from exhausted memory backup batteries. Fortunately once the serial port has been figured out they drop you into an OpenBoot prompt, which, in common with Apple machines in the ’90s, gives you a Forth interpreter. There’s enough info online to load the NVRAM with a config, and the machine stuttered into life. To do anything useful takes a network with RARP and NFS to serve an IP address and disk image respectively, which a modern Linux machine is quite happy to do. The resulting NetBSD machine maybe isn’t as useful as it could be, but at risk of angering any Java enthusiasts, perhaps it’s more useful than the original JavaOS.
We remember the promise of a Java-based future too, and tasted the bitter disappointment of stuttering Java applets in our web pages. However, given that so much of what we use now quietly runs Java in the background without our noticing it, perhaps the shade of Sun Microsystems had the last laugh after all. This isn’t the first ’90s machine that’s been taught new tricks here,
some of them have received Java for the first time
. | 39 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106251",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2025-03-06T13:37:03",
"content": "“Fortunately once the serial port has been figured out they drop you into an OpenBoot prompt, which, in common with Apple machines in the ’90s, gives you a Forth interpreter.”I have an old ibook g3 ppc wit... | 1,760,371,614.875045 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/06/rackmount-all-the-things-hi-fi-edition/ | Rackmount All The Things, Hi-Fi Edition | Heidi Ulrich | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"19-inch",
"19-inch rack",
"1u",
"2U",
"openscad",
"rackmount"
] | For those who love systems and structure, owning a 19-inch rack with just one slot filled is just not it. But what if the rest of your gear isn’t 19-inch? Well, then you go out and make it so, just
like [Cal Bryant] did recently
.
The goal was to consolidate multiple devices — DAC, input selector, streamer, and power routing — into a single 2U rackmount unit. His first attempts involved drilling 1U panels to attach gear with removable faceplates. That worked, but not all devices played nice. So his next step became a fully custom enclosure with CAD-modeled brackets and front panels.
OpenSCAD turned out to be a lifesaver, letting [Cal] design modular mounting solutions. Exporting proper circles for CNC turret punching however appeared to be a nightmare. It was FreeCAD to the rescue for post-processing. After some sanding and auto-shop painting, the final faceplate looked factory-made.
Custom switch boxes for power and audio routing keep things tidy, housing everything from USB to XLR inputs. A 4-pole switch even allows seamless swapping between his DAC and DJ controller, while UV-printed graphics bring the finishing touch to this project. For those looking to clean up their Hi-Fi setup (or just love modding for the sake of it), there’s a lot to learn from this build.
If buying a rack is not within your budget, you could
start with well-known IKEA LACK furniture
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106189",
"author": "Jens",
"timestamp": "2025-03-06T09:14:07",
"content": "That is a neat solution! I hate how a lot of modern equipment comes in oddly sized plastic boxes, that are often lightweight enough so that any movement to a cable throws them off the shelf, or pulls them aw... | 1,760,371,614.803736 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/05/a-tv-with-contrast-you-havent-seen-for-years/ | A TV With Contrast You Haven’t Seen For Years | Jenny List | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"dlp",
"lcd",
"tv"
] | It’s something of a surprise, should you own a CRT TV to go with your retrocomputers, when you use it to view a film or a TV show. The resolution may be old-fashioned, but the colors jump out at you, in a way you’d forgotten CRTs could do. You’re seeing black levels that LCD screens can’t match, and which you’ll only find comparable on a modern OLED TVs. Can an LCD screen achieve decent black levels?
[DIY Perks] is here with a modified screen that does just that
.
LCD screens work by placing a set of electronic polarizing filters in front of a bright light. Bright pixels let through the light, while black pixels, well, they do their best, but a bit of light gets through. As a result, they have washed-out blacks, and their images aren’t as crisp and high contrast as they should be. More modern LCDs use an array of LEDs as the backlight which they illuminate as a low resolution version of the image, an approach which improves matters but leaves a “halo” round bright spots.
The TV in the video below the break is an older LCD set, from which he removes the backlight and places the electronics in a stand. He can show an image on it by placing a lamp behind it, but he does something much cleverer. An old DLP projector with its color wheel removed projects a high-res luminance map onto the back of the screen, resulting in the coveted high contrast image. The final result uses a somewhat unwieldy mirror arrangement to shorten the distance for the projector, but we love this hack.
It’s not the first backlight hack we’ve seen
, but perhaps it give the best result.
Thanks [Keith Olson] for the tip! | 42 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106148",
"author": "Cad the Mad",
"timestamp": "2025-03-06T06:42:05",
"content": "Oh that’s really clever.HD and even 4K TVs with dead blacklights are easy enough to come by. This could be worth replicating.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,615.05119 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/05/ptychography-for-high-resolution-microscopy/ | Ptychography For High Resolution Microscopy | Al Williams | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"microscopy",
"ptychography"
] | Nowadays, if you have a microscope, you probably have a camera of some sort attached. [Applied Science] shows how you can add an array of tiny LEDs and some compute power to produce
high-resolution images
— higher than you can get with the microscope on its own. The idea is to illuminate each LED in the array individually and take a picture. Then, an algorithm constructs a higher-resolution image from the collected images. You can see the results and an explanation in the video below.
You’d think you could use this to enhance a cheap microscope, but the truth is you need a high-quality microscope to start with. In addition, color cameras may not be usable, so you may have to find or create a monochrome camera.
The code for the project is on GitHub. The LEDs need to be close to a point source, so smaller is better, and that determines what kind of LEDs are usable. Of course, the LEDs go through the sample, so this is suitable for transmissive microscopes, not metallurgical ones, at least in the current incarnation.
You can pull the same stunt
with electrons
. Or
blood
. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106147",
"author": "Estatic",
"timestamp": "2025-03-06T06:40:58",
"content": "Could this be used with the openflexure microscope?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8106936",
"author": "Filip",
"timestamp": "2025... | 1,760,371,615.397544 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/05/designing-a-toy-conveyor-belt-for-fun-and-profit/ | Designing A Toy Conveyor Belt For Fun And Profit | Kristina Panos | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"conveyor belt",
"factorio"
] | [Hope This Works] wants to someday build a tiny factory line in the garage, with the intent of producing some simple widget down the line.
But what is a tiny factory without tiny conveyor belts?
Not a very productive one, that’s for sure.
As you may have noticed, this is designed after the transporter belts from the game Factorio. [Hope This Works] ultimately wants something functional that’s small enough to fit in one hand and has that transporter belt aesthetic going. He also saw this as a way to level up his CAD skills from approximately 1, and as you’ll see in the comprehensive video after the break, that definitely happened.
And so [Hope This Works] started by designing the all-important sprockets. He found a little eight-toothed number on McMaster-Carr and used the drawing for reference. From there, he designed the rest of the parts around the sprockets, adding a base so that it can sit on the desk or be held in the hand.
For now, this proof-of-concept is hand-cranked. We especially love that [Hope This Works] included a square hole for the crank handle to stand in when not in use. Be sure to check out the design/build video after the break to see it in action.
How happy would you be to see Factorio come up in a job interview?
Thanks for the tip, [foamyguy]! | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106068",
"author": "dianea",
"timestamp": "2025-03-06T00:28:03",
"content": "Having maintained manufacturing plants for 30 years, I have to admit I want to do this and am envious",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8106378",
"a... | 1,760,371,615.108798 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/05/piggyback-board-brings-touch-sensing-to-usb-soldering-iron/ | Piggyback Board Brings Touch Sensing To USB Soldering Iron | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"capactive",
"piggyback",
"soldering",
"touch",
"TTP223",
"usb"
] | The current generation of USB-powered soldering irons have a lot going for them, chief among them being portability and automatic start and stop. But an iron that turns off in the middle of soldering a joint is a problem, one that
this capacitive-touch replacement control module
aims to fix.
The iron in question is an SJ1 from Awgem, which [DoganM95] picked up on Ali Express. It seems well-built, with a sturdy aluminum handle, a nice OLED display, and fast heat-up and cool-down. The problem is that the iron is triggered by motion, so if you leave it still for more than a second or two, such as when you’re soldering a big joint, it turns itself off. To fix that,[DoganM95] designed a piggyback board for the OEM controller with a TTP223 capacitive touch sensor. The board is carefully shaped to allow clearance for the existing PCB components and the heater cartridge terminals, and has castellated connections so it can connect to pads on the main board. You have to remove one MOSFET from the main board, but that’s about it for modifications. A nickel strip makes contact with the inside of the iron’s shell, turning it into the sensor plate for the TTP223.
[DoganM95] says that the BA6 variant of the chip is the one you want, as others have a 10-second timeout, which would defeat the purpose of the mod. It’s a very nice bit of design work, and we especially like how the mod board nests so nicely onto the OEM controller. It reminds us a little of those
Quansheng handy-talkie all-band mods
. | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106065",
"author": "g",
"timestamp": "2025-03-06T00:21:20",
"content": "Absolutely most definitely a resounding “yes” to that.We will all be thanking you.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8106073",
"author": "Tim",
"time... | 1,760,371,617.29701 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/06/repairing-a-1955-classic-radio/ | Repairing A 1955 Classic Radio | Al Williams | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"am radio",
"repair",
"silvertone"
] | We used to say that fixing something was easier than bringing up a design for the first time. After all, the thing you are fixing, presumably, worked at one time or another. These days, that’s not always true as fixing modern gear can be quite a challenge. Watching [Ken’s]
repair of an old 1955 Silvertone radio
reminded us of a simpler time. You can watch the action on the video below.
If you’ve never had the pleasure of working on an AM radio, you should definitely try it. Some people would use an amplifier to find where the signal dies out. Others will inject a signal into the radio to find where it stops. A good strategy is to start at the volume control and decide if it is before or after that. Then split the apparently bad section roughly in half and test that portion—sort of a hardware binary search. Of course, your first step should probably be to verify power, but after that, the hunt is on.
There’s something very satisfying about taking a dead radio and then hearing it come to life on your bench. In this case, some of the problems were from a previous repair.
Troubleshooting
is an art all by itself.
Restoring old radios
is also great fun. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106525",
"author": "Joe",
"timestamp": "2025-03-07T08:27:03",
"content": "(Let’s try again. It didn’t post the first time.)“Of course, your first step should probably be to verify power”If by that, you mean power it on, you are most definitely wrong. You should at least replace the... | 1,760,371,617.191442 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/06/combined-crypto-anglo-american-style/ | Combined Crypto, Anglo-American Style | Al Williams | [
"History"
] | [
"cryptography"
] | If you think about military crypto machines, you probably think about the infamous Enigma machine. However, as [Christos T.] reminds us, there were many others and, in particular, the production of a
“combined cipher” machine
for the US and the UK to use for a variety of purposes.
The story opens in 1941 when ships from the United States and the United Kingdom were crossing the Atlantic together in convoys. The US wanted to use the M-138A and M-209 machines, but the British were unimpressed. They were interested in the M-134C, but it was too secret to share, so they reached a compromise.
Starting with a British Typex, a US Navy officer developed an attachment with additional rotors and converted the Typex into a CCM or Combined Cipher Machine. Two earlier verisons of the attachment worked with the M-134C. However the CSP 1800 (or CCM Mark III) was essentially the same unit made to attach to the Typex. Development cost about $6 million — a huge sum for the middle of last century.
By the end of 1943, there were enough machines to work with the North Atlantic convoys. [Christos] says at least 8,631 machines left the factory line. While the machine was a marvel, it did have a problem. With certain settings, the machine had a very low cipher period (338 compared to 16,900 for Enigma). This wasn’t just theoretical, either. A study showed that bad settings showed up seven times in about two months on just one secure circuit.
This led to operational changes to forbid certain settings and restrict the maximum message length. The machine saw service at the Department of State until 1959. There were several variations in use within NATO as late as 1962. It appears the Germans didn’t break CCM during the war, but the Soviets may have been able to decode traffic from it in the post-war period.
You can see a CCM/Typex combo in the video below from the
Cryptomuseum
. Of course, the
Enigma
is perhaps the most famous of these machines. These days, you can
reproduce one
easily. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106536",
"author": "IanS",
"timestamp": "2025-03-07T09:48:09",
"content": "“… the video below …”MIA!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8106991",
"author": "IanS",
"timestamp": "2025-03-08T20:12:13",
"con... | 1,760,371,616.976841 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/06/the-strange-afterlife-of-the-xbox-kinect/ | The Strange Afterlife Of The Xbox Kinect | Dave Rowntree | [
"Kinect hacks"
] | [
"art",
"ghost hunting",
"Kinect",
"obsolete hardware",
"robotics",
"structured light"
] | The tale of the Microsoft Xbox Kinect is one of those sad situations where a great product was used in an application that turned out to be a bit of a flop and was discontinued because of it, despite its usefulness in other areas. This
article from the Guardian is a quick read
on how this handy depth camera has found other uses in somewhat niche areas, with not a computer game in sight.
It’s rather obvious that a camera that can generate a 3D depth map, in parallel with a 2D reference image, could have many applications beyond gaming, especially in the hands of us hackers. Potential uses include autonomous roving robots, 3D scanning, and complex user interfaces—there are endless possibilities. Artists producing interactive art exhibits would sit firmly in that last category, with the Kinect used in countless installations worldwide.
Apparently, the Kinect also has quite the following in ghost-hunting circles, which as many a dubious TV show would demonstrate, seem almost entirely filmed under IR light conditions. The Kinect’s IR-based structured light system is well-suited for these environments. Since its processing core runs a machine learning application specifically trained to track human figures, it’s no surprise that the device can pick up those invisible, pesky spirits hiding in the noise. Anyway, all of these applications depend on the used-market supply of Kinect devices, over a decade old, that can be found online and in car boot sales, which means one day, the Kinect really will die off, only to be replaced with specialist devices that cost orders of magnitude more to acquire.
In the unlikely event you’ve not
encountered non-gaming applications for the Kinect, here’s an old project to
scan an entire room
to get you started
. Just to be perverse, here’s a
gaming application that Microsoft didn’t think of
, and to round out, the bad
news that Microsoft has really has abandoned the product. | 32 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106441",
"author": "Jc",
"timestamp": "2025-03-07T00:05:20",
"content": "Talking about the Kinect and Not a mention of the VR sandbox?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8106562",
"author": "DOugl",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,371,617.095816 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/06/plastic-gear-repair/ | Plastic Gear Repair | Al Williams | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"cast in place",
"gear"
] | We’ve seen several methods of repairing plastic gears. After all, a gear is usually the same all the way around, so it is very tempting to duplicate a good part to replace a damaged part. That’s exactly what [repairman 101] does in the video below. He uses hot glue to form a temporary mold and
casts a resin replacement in place
with a part of a common staple as a metal reinforcement.
The process starts with using a hobby tool to remove even more of the damaged gear, making a V-shaped slot to accept the repair. The next step is to create a mold. To do that, he takes a piece of plastic and uses hot glue to secure it near a good part of the gear. Then, he fills the area with more hot glue and carefully removes it.
He uses WD-40 as a mold release. He moves the mold to the damaged area and cuts a bit of wire to serve as a support, using a soldering iron to melt it into the gear’s body. Some resin fills the mold, and once it is cured, the gear requires a little rework, but then it seems to work fine.
We would be tempted to use some 3D printing resin with UV curing, since we have it on hand. Then again, you could easily scan the gear, repair it digitally on the computer and just print a new one. That would work, too.
We’ve seen the same process using
candle wax and epoxy
. If you want to see an example of just
printing an entire replacement
, we’ve seen that, too. | 33 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106416",
"author": "Claudius",
"timestamp": "2025-03-06T21:27:57",
"content": "AI voice is a hard “no” for me, sorry.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8106532",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-03-07T09:36:0... | 1,760,371,617.927742 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/06/custom-touchpad-pcbs-without-the-pain/ | Custom Touchpad PCBs Without The Pain | Jenny List | [
"PCB Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"openscad",
"pcb",
"TouchPad"
] | Many of us use touch pads daily on our laptops, but rarely do we give much thought about what they really do. In fact they are a PCB matrix of conductive pads, with a controller chip addressing it and sensing the area of contact. Such a complex and repetitive pattern can be annoying to create by hand in an EDA package, so
[Timonsku] has written a script
to take away the work.
It starts with an OpenSCAD script (originally written by Texas Instruments, and released as open source) that creates a diamond grid, which can be edited to the required dimensions and resolution. This is then exported as a DXF file, and the magic begins in a Python script. After adjustment of variables to suit, it finishes with an Eagle-compatible board file which should be importable into other EDA packages.
We’ve never made a touchpad ourselves, but having dome other such repetitive PCB tasks we feel the pain of anyone who has. Looking at this project we’re struck by the thought that its approach could be adapted for other uses, so it’s one to file away for later.
This isn’t the first
home-made touchpad project
we’ve brought you. | 11 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106412",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-03-06T20:49:54",
"content": "The key takeaway from this is that the Eagle board file is just a text file, and the geometry description for the elements is in a pretty straightforward format. It’s easy to generate arbitrary shapes and l... | 1,760,371,617.02706 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/06/hackaday-europe-2025-welcomes-david-cuartielles-announces-friday-night-bring-a-hack/ | Hackaday Europe 2025 Welcomes David Cuartielles, Announces Friday Night Bring-a-Hack | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"News"
] | [
"2025 Hackaday Europe",
"arduino",
"keynote"
] | If you’re coming to Hackaday Europe 2025, you’ve got just over a week to get your bags packed and head on out to Berlin. Of course
you have tickets already
, right? And if you were
still
on the fence, let us tempt you with our keynote talk and some news about the Friday night meetup, sponsored by Crowd Supply.
But first, the keynote! You might know David Cuartielles as one of the four founders of Arduino. As a telecommunications engineer and doctor in design, he has devoted the last 25 years to experimenting with different educational models centered on the creation of interactive artifacts and platforms.
His talk, “
What if the future (of electronics) was compostable?
”, asks the question of whether or not we can take our physical projects and make them more ecologically friendly, and looking at Arduino’s approach of bio-degradable electronics and AI-enabled industrial technologies.
Bring a Hack
Come join us for informal Bring-a-Hack drinks starting up at 18:00 Friday night, March 14th, at the
Jockel Biergarten, Ratiborstraße 14C
. It’s always a great time to hang out a little bit while there are no presentations to feel like you’re missing out on. If you’ve got a project that fits in your backpack, brink it along and show us all. And if you just feel like relaxing over a beverage and some Biergarten fare, that’s great too! We’ll see you there. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106429",
"author": "Cuartielles David",
"timestamp": "2025-03-06T22:52:50",
"content": "When you say May, you mean March, or am I mistaken?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8106689",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
... | 1,760,371,617.23891 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/06/hacking-digital-calipers-for-automated-measurements-and-sorta-micron-accuracy/ | Hacking Digital Calipers For Automated Measurements And Sorta-Micron Accuracy | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"calipers",
"encoder",
"level shifter",
"metrology",
"raspberry pi",
"serial"
] | We’ll take a guess that most readers have a set of digital calipers somewhere close to hand right now. The cheapest ones tend to be a little unsatisfying in the hand, a bit crusty and crunchy to use. But as [Matthias Wandel] shows us,
these budget tools are quite hackable and a lot more precise than they appear to be
.
[Matthias] is perhaps best known around these parts for making machine tools using mainly wood. It’s an unconventional material for things like
the CNC router he loves to hate
, but he makes it work through a combination of clever engineering and a willingness to work within the limits of the machine. To assess those limits, he connected some cheap digital calipers to a Raspberry Pi by hacking the serial interface that seems to be built into all of these tools. His particular calipers output a pair of 24-bit words over a synchronous serial connection a couple of times per second, but at a level too low to be read by the Pi. He solved this with a clever resistor ladder to shift the signals to straddle the 1.8 volt transition on the Pi, and after solving some noise problems with a few strategically placed capacitors and some software debouncing, he was gathering data on his Pi.
Although his setup was fine for the measurements he needed to make, [Matthias] couldn’t help falling down the rabbit hole of trying to milk better resolution from the calipers. On paper, the 24-bit output should provide micron-ish resolution, but sadly, the readings seem to fluctuate rapidly between two levels, making it difficult to obtain an average quickly enough to be useful. Still, it’s a good exercise, and overall, these hacks should prove handy for anyone who wants to dip a toe into automated metrology on a budget.
Thanks to [Dragan] for the tip. | 14 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106330",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2025-03-06T17:01:07",
"content": "It is using the ‘pigpio’ library, which is rasbperry specific:https://github.com/Matthias-Wandel/caliper-interface/blob/master/decode_caliper.c#L16gcc -o decode_caliper decode_caliper.c -lpigpioMaybe using... | 1,760,371,617.355534 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/05/floss-weekly-episode-823-tuxcare-10-years-without-rebooting/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 823: TuxCare, 10 Years Without Rebooting! | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"FLOSS Weekly",
"TuxCare"
] | This week,
Jonathan Bennett
and
Aaron Newcomb
talk with
Joao Correia
about TuxCare! What’s live patching, and why is it so hard? And how is this related to .NET 6? Watch to find out!
https://tuxcare.com/blog/
https://tuxcare.com/endless-lifecycle-support/net-eol-support/
https://enterpriselinuxsecurity.show/
Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show right on
our YouTube Channel
? Have someone you’d like us to interview? Let us know, or contact the guest and have them contact us!
Take a look at the schedule here
.
Direct Download
in DRM-free MP3.
If you’d rather read along,
here’s the transcript for this week’s episode
.
Places to follow the FLOSS Weekly Podcast:
Spotify
RSS
Theme music: “Newer Wave” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under
Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,371,616.930605 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/05/haptic-displays-bring-sports-to-the-vision-impaired/ | Haptic Displays Bring Sports To The Vision Impaired | Lewin Day | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Misc Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"accessibility",
"haptic",
"onecourt",
"vibration"
] | When it comes to the majority of sports broadcasting, it’s all about the visual. The commentators call the plays, of course, but everything you’re being shown at home is on a screen. Similarly, if you’re in the stadium, it’s all about getting the best possible view from the best seats in the house.
Ultimately, the action can be a little harder to follow for the vision impaired. However, one company is working hard to make sports more accessible to everyone. Enter
OneCourt
, and their haptic sports display technology.
Haptic, Fantastic
If you can see, following just about any sport is relatively straightforward. Your eyes pick out the players and the lines on the field, and you can follow the ball or puck wherever it may land. Basically, interpreting a sport is just taking in a ton of positional data—the state of the game is represented by the position of the people and the fundamental game piece involved.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by OneCourt Technologies, Inc. (@onecourt.io)
But how do you represent the state of a game to somebody who can’t see? Audio helps, but it’s hard for even the fastest commentator to explain the entire state of the game all at once. As it turns out, touch can be a great tool in this regard. Imagine if you could place your hands down on a football field, and instinctively feel the position of all the players and the ball. That would be impractical, of course, because the field is too big. But if there was a small surface that
represented
the field in a touchable manner, that might just work.
This is precisely what OneCourt has created. The company realized that many modern professional sports already had high-quality data streams that represented the positions of players and the ball in real time. With the data on hand, they just needed a way to “display” it in a touchable, feelable form. To that end, they created a range of haptic displays that use vibrations to represent the action on the field in a compact tablet-like device. They receive game data over a 5G or WiFi link, and translate it into vibrations across a miniature replica of the playing surface.
OneCourt created a range of devices to suit different sports. A basketball version is marked out with raised lines matching those on the court, and trackable vibrations on the surface tell the user where the ball is going. The company has teamed up to offer devices to spectators going to see the
Sacramento Kings
and the
Portland Trail Blazers
at their home games throughout the season. Those visiting the stadium can request to use one of the devices during the game via guest services, and get a greater insight into the play.
The company has also demonstrated a similar device for use at baseball games, with the characteristic diamond laid out on the haptic surface. The devices were demoted at Dallas’s Glove Life Field
last year.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by OneCourt Technologies, Inc. (@onecourt.io)
On a technological level, the hardware appears relatively straightforward. The OneCourt devices just pack an array of vibration motors into a rectangular surface, and they’re controlled based on a feed of gamestate data already collected by the professional leagues. However, for the vision impaired, it’s a gamechanger—allowing them to independently “watch” the game in far greater detail than before.
The Portland Trail Blazers were the first NBA team to get on board with the OneCourt devices. Credit: Portland Trail Blazers,
press release
For now, the devices are very much in a pilot rollout phase. OneCourt is running activations with individual sports teams to offer the devices to vision impaired spectators at their stadiums. However, the intention is that this technology could also be just as useful for fans tuning into a sports broadcast at home. The company hopes to start pre-orders for individual customers
in the near future.
Accessible technology doesn’t always have to be highly advanced or complicated to be useful—or, indeed, fun! Devices like these can open up a whole new world of perception to those that otherwise might find sports difficult or frustrating to follow. Ultimately, that’s a good thing—and something we hope to see more of in future! | 3 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8106054",
"author": "Derek Tombrello",
"timestamp": "2025-03-05T23:13:43",
"content": "You know.. there used to be a time when the ONLY way to experience a sportsball game (short of actually GOING to see it) was via RADIO… no visuals. 🤷♂️Before you all get your collective panties ... | 1,760,371,617.144067 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/05/is-this-the-oldest-hd-video-online/ | Is This The Oldest HD Video Online? | Jenny List | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"analog tv",
"hdtv",
"high definition",
"tv"
] | Take a look at
this video from [Reely Interesting]
, showing scenes from traditional Japanese festivals. It’s well filmed, and as with any HD video, you can see real detail. But as you watch, you may see something a little out of the ordinary. It’s got noise, a little bit of distortion, and looking closely at the surroundings, it’s clearly from the 1980s. Something doesn’t add up, as surely we’d expect a video like this to be shot in glorious 525 line NTSC. In fact, what we’re seeing is a very rare demo reel from 1985, and it’s showing off the first commercial HDTV system. This is analogue video in 1035i, and its background as listed below the video makes for a very interesting story.
Most of us think of HDTV arriving some time in the 2000s when Blu-ray and digital broadcasting supplanted the NTSC or PAL systems. But in fact the Japanese companies had been experimenting since the 1960s, and these recordings are their first fruits. It’s been digitized from a very rare still-working Sony
HDV-1000
reel-to-reel video recorder, and is thus possibly the oldest HD video viewable online. They’re looking for any HDV-1000 parts, should you happen to have one lying around. Meanwhile, the tape represents a fascinating window into a broadcast history very few of us had a chance to see back in the day.
This
isn’t the first time we’ve touched on vintage reel-to-reel video
. | 35 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105950",
"author": "Bootdsc",
"timestamp": "2025-03-05T16:55:20",
"content": "Analog typically includes film and 35mm quality stock is roughly equal to a 5K digital video in resolution so no this wouldn’t be the highest res old footage but still a cool find. I like watching those d... | 1,760,371,617.498629 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/05/big-chemistry-glass/ | Big Chemistry: Glass | Dan Maloney | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [] | Humans have been chemically modifying their world for far longer than you might think. Long before they had the slightest idea of what was happening chemically, they were turning clay into bricks, making cement from limestone, and figuring out how to mix metals in just the right proportions to make useful new alloys like bronze. The chemical principles behind all this could wait; there was a world to build, after all.
Among these early feats of chemical happenstance was the discovery that glass could be made from simple sand. The earliest glass, likely accidentally created by a big fire on a sandy surface, probably wasn’t good for much besides decorations. It wouldn’t have taken long to realize that this stuff was fantastically useful, both as a building material and a tool, and that a pinch of this and a little of that could greatly affect its properties. The chemistry of glass has been finely tuned since those early experiments, and the process has been scaled up to incredible proportions, enough to make glass production one of the largest chemical industries in the world today.
Sand++
When most of us use the word “glass,” we’ve got a pretty clear mental picture of what the term refers to. But from a solid-state chemistry viewpoint, glass means more than the stuff that fills the holes in your walls or makes up that beer bottle in your hand. Glasses, or more correctly glassy solids, are a class of amorphous solids that undergo a glass transition. Unpacking that, amorphous refers to the internal structure of the material, which lacks the long-range structural regularity characteristic of a crystalline solid. Long range in this context is a relative term, and refers to distances of more than a few nanometers.
As for the glass transition bit, that simply refers to the material changing from a brittle, hard solid state to a viscous liquid as it is heated past its glass transition temperature. Coupled together, these properties mean that many materials can be glassy solids, including plastics and metals. For our purposes, though, glass refers to glassy solids made primarily of silicates, with other materials added to change the properties of the finished material.
To understand the amorphous structure of glass, we need to look at the starting material for manufacturing glass: quartz. Quartz is a crystalline solid made from silicon dioxide (SiO
2
), or silica. Inside the crystal, each silicon atom is bonded to four oxygen atoms, each of which forms a bridge to a neighboring silicon. This results in a tetrahedral unit cell, giving both natural and synthetic quartz many of their useful properties.
When quartz sand is ground up finely and heated above its melting point of 1,700C, the rigidly ordered crystal structure is disrupted and a thick, syrupy liquid forms. Cooling that liquid slowly would allow the crystal structure to reform, with the silicon atoms connected by a regular grid of bridging oxygen atoms. Glass production, though, uses faster cooling, which makes it harder for all the oxygen atoms to form bridges between the silicon atoms. The result is a disrupted pattern, with some silicon atoms bonded to four oxygens and some bonded to only two or three. This disrupts the long-range ordering seen in the original quartz crystals and results in the properties we normally associate with glassy solids, such as brittleness, low electrical conductivity, and a high melting temperature.
The crystal structure of silicates is disrupted by sodium, calcium, and aluminum, lowering the melting point and viscosity of soda-lime glass. Source:
Mrmw
, CC0.
Glass made from pure silica sand is called fused quartz, and while it’s commercially valuable, especially in situations requiring extreme temperature resistance and transparency over a wide range of the optical spectrum, it also has some drawbacks. First, the extreme temperatures needed to melt pure quartz sand require a lot of energy, making fused quartz expensive to produce in bulk. Also, the liquid glass is extremely viscous, making it difficult.
Luckily, these properties can be altered by adding a few impurities to the melt. Adding about 13% sodium oxide (Na
2
O), 10% calcium oxide (CaO), and a percent or so of aluminum oxide (Al
2
O
3
) dramatically changes the physical and chemical properties of the mix. The sodium oxide generally comes from sodium carbonate (Na
2
CO
3
), which is known as soda, and the calcium carbonate comes from lime, which is limestone that has been heated. Together, the sodium and the calcium bind to some of the oxygen atoms in the silicates, blocking them from bridging to other silicates. This further disrupts any long-range interactions, lowering the melting point of the mix and decreasing its viscosity. The result is soda-lime glass, which accounts for about 90% of the 130 million tonnes of glass manufactured each year.
If You Can’t Stand the Heat…
Soda-lime glass is used for everything from food and beverage containers to window glass, with only slight adjustments to the mix of impurities to match the properties of the finished glass to the job. But if there’s one place where plain soda-lime glass falls short, it’s resistance to thermal shock. Thanks to the disruption of long-range interactions between silicates by sodium and calcium, soda-lime glass has a much higher coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) than fused silica. This makes heating soda-lime glass risky, since the stress caused by expansion or contraction can cause the glass to shatter.
To lower the CTE of soda-lime glass, a small amount of boron trioxide (BO
3
) is added to the melt. The boron atoms bind to two oxygen atoms, which forms a bridge between adjacent silicates, albeit slightly longer than an oxygen-only bridge. This would seem to raise the CTE, but boron has another trick up its sleeve. Boron normally only accepts three bonds, but in the presence of alkali metals like sodium, it will accept one more. That means the sodium atoms will bond to the boron, keeping them from blocking more bridging oxygens. The result is borosilicate glass, which has a viscosity low enough to ease manufacturing and a low CTE to withstand thermal shock.
Borosilicate glass has been around for more than a century, most recognizably under the trade name Pyrex. It quickly became a fixture in kitchens around the world as the miracle cookware that could go from refrigerator to oven without shattering. Sadly, Corning no longer sells borosilicate glass cookware in the North American market, opting to sell tempered soda-lime glassware under the Pyrex brand since about 1998. True borosilicate Pyrex glass is most limited to the laboratory and industrial market now, although Pyrex cookware is still available in Europe.
The Glassworks
In a way, glass is a bit like electricity, which is largely consumed the instant it’s produced since there aren’t many practical ways to store it at a grid scale. Similarly, glass really can’t be manufactured and stored in bulk the way other materials like aluminum and steel can, and shipping tankers of molten glass from one factory to another is a practical impossibility. So a glasswork generally has a complete manufacturing process under one roof, with raw materials coming in one end and finished products going out the other. This also makes glassworks very large facilities, especially ones that make float glass.
Another way in which glass manufacturing is similar to electric generation is that both are generally continuous processes. Large base load generators are most efficient when they are kept rotating continuously, and spinning them up from a standing start is a long and tedious process. Similarly, glass furnaces, which are often classified by the number of metric tons of melt they can supply per day, can take days or weeks to get up to working temperature. That means the entire glass factory has to be geared around keeping the furnace fed with raw material and ensuring the output is formed into finished products immediately and continuously.
On the supply side of the glassworks is the batch house, which serves as a warehouse for raw material. Sand, soda, lime, and other bulk ingredients arrive by truck or rail and are stored in silos or piled onto the batch house floor. It’s vitally important that the raw ingredients stay clean and dry; the results of a wet mix being dumped into a furnace full of 1,500° molten glass don’t bear thinking. An important raw material is cullet, which is broken glass either from recycling or from the production process; adding cullet to the mix reduces the energy needed to melt the batch. Ingredients are weighed and mixed in the batch house and transported by conveyors to the dog house, an area directly adjacent to the inlet of the furnace where the mix is prewarmed to remove any remaining moisture before being pushed into the furnace by a pusher arm.
The furnace is made from refractory bricks and usually has a long and broad but fairly shallow pool covered by an arched roof. Most furnaces are heated with natural gas, although some electric arc furnaces are used. The furnace often has two zones, the melting tank and the working tank, which are separated by a wall with narrow openings. The temperatures of the two chambers are maintained at different levels, with the melting tank generally hotter than the working tank. The working tank also sometimes has chlorine gas bubbled through it to consolidate any impurities into a slag that floats to the surface of the melt, where it can be skimmed off and added to the cullet in the batch house.
Float, Blow, Press, Repeat
After the furnace, the liquid glass enters the cold end of the glassworks. This is a relative term, of course, since the glass is still incandescent at this point. How it exits the furnace and is formed depends on the finished product. For sheet glass such as architectural glass, the float process is generally used. Liquid glass exiting the furnace is floated on top of a pool of molten tin, which is denser than the glass. The liquid glass spreads out over the surface of the tin, forming wide sheets of perfectly flat glass. The thickness and width of the sheet can be controlled by rollers at the edge of the tin pool, which grab the glass sheet and pull it along.
Float baths can be up to four meters wide and 50 meters or more long, over which length the temperature is gradually reduced from about 1,100° to 600°. At that point, the glass rolls off the tin bath onto rollers and enters a long annealing oven called a lehr, which drops the temperature over 100 meters or more before the sheets are cut. The edges, which were dimpled by the rollers in the float bath, are cut off by scoring with diamond wheels and snapping with rollers, with the off-cuts added to the cullet in the batch house. The glass ribbon is cut to length by a scoring wheel set at an angle matched to the speed of the conveyor to make straight scores across the sheet and snapped by a conveyor belt that raises up at just the right time to snap the sheet.
Float glass often goes through additional post-processing modifications, such as tempering. While it’s still quite hot, float glass can be rapidly cooled with jets of air from above and below. This creates thin layers on both faces that have solidified while the core of the sheet is still fluid, putting the faces into tension relative to the core, which is in compression. This dramatically toughens the glass compared to plain annealed glass, and when it does break, the opposed forces within the glass force it to shatter into small fragments rather than large shards.
For hollow glass products, the arrangement of the cold end forming machines is a bit different. Rather than flowing horizontally out of the furnace, melted glass drops through holes in the bottom of the tank. Large shears close at intervals to cut the stream of molten glass into precisely sized pieces called gobs, which drop into curved chutes. The chutes rotate to direct the gobs into an automatic molding machine.
Molding something like a bottle is a multistage process, with gobs first formed into a rough hollow shape called a parison. The parison can be formed either by pressing the gob into an upside-down mold with a plunger to form a cavity, or by blowing compressed air into the mold from below. Either way, the parisons are flipped rightside-up by the molding machine and moved to a second mold, where the final shape of the bottle is formed by compressed air before being pushed onto a conveyor that takes the bottles to an annealing lehr. The entire process from furnace to formed bottle only takes a few seconds, and never stops.
Some glass hollowware products, such as pie plates, baking dishes, and laboratory beakers, do not need to be blown at all. Rather, these are press molded by dropping gob directly into one half of a mold and pressing it with a matching mold. The mold halves squeeze the molten glass into its final shape before the mold opens and the formed item is whisked away for annealing
No matter what the final form of the glass being produced, the degree of coordination required to keep a glass factory running smoothly is pretty amazing. The speed with which ingredients are added to the furnace has to match the speed of finished products being taken off the line at the end, and temperatures have to be rigidly controlled all along the way. Also, all the machinery has to be engineered to withstand lava-like temperatures without breaking down; imagine the mess that would result if a furnace broke down with a couple of tonnes of molten glass in it. Also, molding machines have to deal with the fact that molds only last a few shifts before they need to be resurfaced, lest imperfections creep into the finished products. This means taking individual molding stations out of service while the rest stay in production, all while maintaining overall throughput. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105960",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2025-03-05T17:29:35",
"content": "The history of flat glassmaking is interesting in itself. Originating from the Indus valley area, through to trade it became known in the Levant and later the Greek and Roman empires, but in the 16th century... | 1,760,371,617.554435 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/05/china-claims-commercial-nuclear-fusion-by-2050-as-germany-goes-stellarator/ | China Claims Commercial Nuclear Fusion By 2050 As Germany Goes Stellarator | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"nuclear fusion"
] | Things are heating up in the world of nuclear fusion research, with most fundamental issues resolved and an increasing rate of announcements being made regarding commercial fusion power. China’s CNNC is one of the most recent voices here, with their statement that they expect to
have commercial nuclear fusion plants online by 2050
. Although scarce on details, China is one of the leading nations when it comes to nuclear fusion research, with multiple large tokamaks, including the HL-2M and the upcoming CFETR which
we covered a few years ago
.
Stellaris stellarator. (Credit: Proxima Fusion)
In addition to China’s fusion-related news, a German startup called Proxima Fusion
announced
their
Stellaris
commercial fusion plant design concept, with a targeted grid connection by the 2030s. Of note is that this involves a stellarator design, which has the
major advantage of inherent plasma stability
, dodging the confinement mode and Greenwald density issues that plague tokamaks. The
Stellaris
design is an evolution of the famous
Wendelstein 7-X research stellarator
at the Max Planck Institute.
While Wendelstein 7-X was not designed to produce power, it features everything from the complex coiled design and cooled divertors plus demonstrated long-term operation that a commercial reactor would need. This makes it quite likely that the coming decades we’ll be seeing the end spurt for commercial fusion power, with conceivably stellarators being the unlikely winner long before tokamaks cross the finish line. | 49 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105869",
"author": "strawberrymortallyb0bcea48e7",
"timestamp": "2025-03-05T13:07:16",
"content": "Electricity won’t be cheaper, so it’s pointless.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8105885",
"author": "hammarbytp",
... | 1,760,371,617.750687 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/05/speaking-computers-from-the-1970s/ | Speaking Computers From The 1970s | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"AY-3-8910",
"general instruments",
"speech synthesis"
] | Talking computers are nothing these days. But in the old days, a computer that could speak was quite the novelty. Many computers from the 1970s and 1980s used an AY-3-8910 chip and
[InazumaDenki] has been playing with one of these venerable chips
. You can see (and hear) the results in the video below.
The chip uses PCM, and there are different ways to store and play sounds. The video shows how different they are and even looks at the output on the oscilloscope. The chip has three voices and was produced by General Instruments, the company that initially made PIC microcontrollers. It found its way into many classic arcade games, home computers, and games like Intellivision, Vectrex, the MSX, and ZX Spectrum. Soundcards for the TRS-80 Color Computer and the Apple II used these chips. The Atari ST used a variant from Yamaha, the YM2149F.
There’s some code for an ATmega, and the video says it is part one, so we expect to see more videos on this chip soon.
General instruments had other speech chips, and some of them are still around in
emulated form
. In fact, you can
emulate the AY-3-8910
with little more than a Raspberry Pi. | 24 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105797",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-03-05T09:14:20",
"content": "Always thought it was amazing how much money it took to produce a single word of synth speech in Berzerk back in 1980:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Berzerk_(video_game)#Features_section:_Synthesis_&_Compr... | 1,760,371,617.658471 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/04/build-a-parametric-speaker-of-your-own/ | Build A Parametric Speaker Of Your Own | Jenny List | [
"hardware"
] | [
"directional speaker",
"parametric speaker",
"ultrasonic speaker"
] | The loudspeaker on your home entertainment equipment is designed to project audio around the space in which it operates, if it’s not omnidirectional as such it can feel that way as the surroundings reflect the sound to you wherever you are. Making a directional speaker to project sound over a long distance is considerably more difficult than making one similar to your home speaker, and [Orange_Murker] is here with a solution. At the recent Hacker Hotel conference in the Netherlands, she presented
an ultrasonic parametric speaker
. It projects an extremely narrow beam of sound over a significant distance, but it’s not an audio frequency speaker at all.
Those of you familiar with radio will recognize its operation; an ultrasonic carrier is modulated with the audio to be projected, and the speaker transfers that to the air. Just like the diode detector in an old AM radio, air is a nonlinear medium, and it performs a demodulation of the ultrasound to produce an audio frequency that can be heard. She spends a while going into modulation schemes, before revealing that she drove her speaker with a 40 kHz PWM via an H bridge. The speaker itself is an array of in-phase ultrasonic transducers, and she demonstrates the result on her audience.
This project is surprisingly simple, should you wish to have a go yourself. There’s a video below the break, and
she’s put all the files in a GitHub repository
. Meanwhile
this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a project like this
. | 16 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105794",
"author": "Thopter",
"timestamp": "2025-03-05T09:02:51",
"content": "Is this something that can be coupled with a camera and a computer to do facial recognition and target the audio to one specific person? I’m getting quite annoyed by a coworker always using a large speake... | 1,760,371,618.191623 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/04/smartwatches-could-flatten-the-curve-of-the-next-pandemic/ | Smartwatches Could Flatten The Curve Of The Next Pandemic | Navarre Bartz | [
"Medical Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"COVID",
"Disease",
"epidemiology",
"flu",
"health",
"illness",
"smartwatch",
"virus"
] | While we’d like to think that pandemics and lockdowns are behind us, the reality is that a warming climate and the fast-paced travel of modern life are a perfect storm for nasty viruses. One thing that could help us curb the spread of the next pandemic
may already be on your wrist
.
Researchers at Aalto University, Stanford University, and Texas A&M have found that the illness detection features common to modern smartwatches are advanced enough to help people make the call to stay home or mask up and avoid getting others sick. They note we’re already at 88% accuracy for early detection of COVID-19 and 90% for the flu. Combining data from a number of other studies on smartwatch accuracy, epidemiology, behavior, and biology, the researchers were able to model the possible outcomes of this early detection on the spread of future diseases.
“Even just a 66-75 percent reduction in social contacts soon after detection by smartwatches — keeping in mind that that’s on a par with what you’d normally do if you had cold symptoms — can lead to a 40-65 percent decrease in disease transmission compared to someone isolating from the onset of symptoms,” says Märt Vesinurm.
We’ve got you covered if you’re looking for a smartwatch that looks a bit like
a hospital wristband
and we’ve also covered
one that’s alive.
That way, you’ll have a slimy friend when you’re avoiding other humans this time around. And when it’s time to develop a vaccine for whatever new bug is after us, how do
MRNA vaccines
work anyway? | 72 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105721",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2025-03-05T03:45:46",
"content": "“Smartwatches Could Flatten The Curve Of The Next Pandemic” Yeah OK – now just do it without compromising my right to privacy as stated in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,618.051557 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/04/shortwave-resurrection-a-sticky-switch-fix-on-a-hallicrafters/ | Shortwave Resurrection: A Sticky Switch Fix On A Hallicrafters | Heidi Ulrich | [
"classic hacks",
"Radio Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"am radio",
"fix",
"Hallicrafters",
"radio",
"repair",
"shortwave",
"tubes"
] | Shortwave radio has a charm all its own: part history, part mystery, and a whole lot of tech nostalgia. The Hallicrafters S-53A is a prime example of mid-century engineering, but when you get your hands on one, chances are it won’t be in mint condition. Which was exactly the case for
this restoration project by [Ken’s Lab]
, where the biggest challenge wasn’t fried capacitors or burned-out tubes, but a stubborn band selector switch that refused to budge.
What made it come to this point? The answer is: time, oxidation, and old-school metal tolerances. Instead of forcing it (and risking a very bad day), [Ken]’s repair involved careful disassembly, a strategic application of lubricant, and a bit of patience. As the switch started to free up, another pleasant surprise emerged: all the tubes were original Hallicrafters stock. A rare find, and a solid reason to get this radio working without unnecessary modifications. Because some day,
owning a shortwave radio could be a good decision
.
Once powered up, the receiver sprang to life, picking up shortwave stations loud and clear. Hallicrafters’ legendary durability proved itself once before, in
this fix that we covered last year
. It’s a reminder that sometimes, the best repairs aren’t about drastic changes, but small, well-placed fixes.
What golden oldie did you manage to fix up? | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105725",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-03-05T03:55:13",
"content": "I have one of those stashed away and I just checked the band switch and it clicks! A similar model with series tubes I have at work was last on every day for the Christian Science Monitor’s 2 hour globa... | 1,760,371,618.14255 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/04/interposer-helps-gps-receiver-overcome-its-age/ | Interposer Helps GPS Receiver Overcome Its Age | Arya Voronova | [
"gps hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"gps",
"rollover",
"rp2040",
"symmetricom"
] | We return to [Tom Verbeure]
hacking on Symmetricom GPS receivers
. This time, the problem’s more complicated, but the solution remains the same – hardware hacking. If you recall, the previous frontier was
active antenna voltage compatibility
– now, it’s rollover. See, the GPS receiver chip has its internal rollover date set to 18th of September 2022. We’ve passed this date a while back, but the receiver’s firmware isn’t new enough to know how to handle this. What to do? Build an interposer, of course.
You can bring the module up to date by sending some extra init commands to the GPS chipset during bootup, and, firmware hacking just wasn’t the route. An RP2040 board, a custom PCB, a few semi-bespoke connectors, and a few zero-ohm resistors was all it took to make this work. From there, a MITM firmware wakes up, sends the extra commands during power-on, and passes all the other traffic right through – the system suspects nothing.
Everything is open-source, as we could expect. The problem’s been solved, and, as a bonus, this implant gives a workaround path for any future bugs we might encounter as far as GPS chipset-to-receiver comms are concerned. Now, the revived S200 serves [Tom] in his hacking journeys, and we’re reminded that interposers remain a viable way to work around firmware bugs. Also, if the firmware (or the CPU) is way too old to work with, an interposer is a great first step to
removing it out of the equation completely
. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105652",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-03-04T21:18:19",
"content": "“You can bring the by sending some extra init commands to the GPS chipset during bootup, and, firmware hacking just wasn’t the route.”Would you care to clarify this sentence?",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,371,618.092931 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/04/inexpensive-powder-coating/ | Inexpensive Powder Coating | Al Williams | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"fluid bed",
"powder coating"
] | [Pete] had a friend who would powder coat metal parts for him, but when he needed 16 metal parts coated, he decided he needed to develop a way to do it himself. Some research turned up the
fluid bed method
and he decided to go that route. He 3D printed a holder and you can see how it all turned out in the video below.
A coffee filter holds the powder in place. The powder is “fluidized” by airflow, which, in this case, comes from an aquarium pump. The first few designs didn’t work out well. Eventually, though, he had a successful fluid bed. You preheat the part so the powder will stick and then, as usual, bake the part in an oven to cure the powder. You can expect to spend some time getting everything just right. [Pete] had to divert airflow and adjust the flow rate to get everything to work right.
With conventional powder coating, you usually charge the piece you want to coat, but that’s not necessary here. You could try a few other things as suggested in the video comments: some suggested ditching the coffee filter, while others think agitating the powder would make a difference. Let us know what you find out.
This seems neater than the
powder coating guns
we’ve seen. Of course, these wheels had a great shape for powder coating, but sometimes it is
more challenging
. | 17 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105698",
"author": "David Kindltot",
"timestamp": "2025-03-05T00:20:12",
"content": "I researched the material used by our contracted powder coater and discovered the “coating” was similar to the toner in an office copier. I then offended the powder coat company owner by referring... | 1,760,371,618.248315 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/04/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-schreibmaschine/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Schreibmaschine | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"because cats",
"IBM Selectric",
"Kailh chocs",
"Kanzler typewriter",
"Kinesis Advantage",
"macro pad",
"macropad",
"Schreibmaschine"
] | Image by [Sasha K.] via
reddit
Remember that lovely Hacktric centerfold from a couple Keebins ago with the Selectric keycaps?
Yeah you do. Well, so does [Sasha K.], who saw the original reddit post and got inspired. [Sasha K.] has more than one IBM Selectric lying around, which is a nice problem to have, and decided to strip one of its keycaps and get to experimenting.
The result is a nice adapter that allows them to be used with Kailh chocs
— you can find the file on
Thingiverse
, and check out the video after the break to see how they sound on a set of clicky white chocs.
Those white chocs are attached to a ThumbsUp! v8 keyboard, a line that [Sasha K.] designed. His daily driver boards are on v9 and v10, but the caps were getting jammed up because of the spacing on those. So instead, he used v8 which has Cherry MX spacing but also supports chocs.
As you can see, there is not much to the adapter, which essentially plugs the Selectric keycap’s slot and splits the force into the electrical outlet-style pair of holes that chocs bear This feels like an easier problem to solve than making an adapter for MX-style switches. What do you think?
Desk-Mounted Macro Pad Does Not Control Desk Height
Image by [CloffWrangler] via
reddit
But it sure is a nice-looking
first design
, isn’t it? Especially with that colorway and the ISO Return. Mmm. Reminds me of the Data General Dasher, and for good reason — those are Drop’s Dasher key caps.
So why the number scheme? It means nothing more than that it is representative of the keycaps that [CloffWrangler] had lying around. They are currently used for volume control, toggling mic and webcam in Zoom, and some other stuff that [CloffWrangler] hasn’t landed on just yet.
This hand-wired, 3D-printed beauty is ruled by a Raspberry Pi Pico and contains Gateron Oil Kings switches. I sure would like to have something similar, but I think I would hit it with my chair quite a bit unless I put it way over there to the right or something. But then I wonder, would it be as useful? If it were at arm’s length, I might be tempted to rotate the thing 90° to the right so it wouldn’t be awkward to use.
The Centerfold: A Cat Person Lives Here
Image by [moobel] via
reddit
Don’t these friendly keycaps look nice and soft? Apparently they’re not, according to [moobel]. That’s unfortunate. But they do feel nice to type on nonetheless.
So, that’s not too many keys, is it? That’s because this isn’t technically
a
keyboard. It’s a pair of
Taipo keyboards
, which are meant for to be used to chord with either one or both hands. I really appreciate that [moobel] discovered the Taipo and decided to make a pair in order to learn the layout.
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: Der Kanzler
Image by [DonaldDutchie] via
reddit
How quickly can you type on a typewriter? To a certain extent, it depends on the machine.
Der Kanzler Schreibmaschine
was a fine piece of German engineering that allowed one to type quickly for an interesting reason: it could print 88 characters using only 11 type bars with 8 characters each.
How did that work? Well, each key changed the position of the linkages, moving the slug either up or down. The top row articulates the deepest, while the home row doesn’t move at all. Makes sense.
The Kanzler was designed by Paul Gruetzmann, and the Kanzler model 1B shown here hit the market in 1903. With the Kanzler line, Gruetzmann was trying to produce a machine that was faster and more stable than others. The company claimed that 200 WPM was technically achievable. Can you imagine typing that fast on your best day, on your favorite keyboard? No chording allowed! :P
Finally, Some 3D-Printed keycaps for the Kinesis Advantage
If you’re a Kinesis Advantage owner, one of the first things you notice is that you might not really like the ABS keycaps and will probably want something different. But then you find out that although you can get fun keycap sets in ergo layouts, they’re never gonna be contoured like the factory set, and that’s something you’ll have to get used to that, in my opinion, degrades the Kinesis experience. Right now, it seems like the best option is to just
print your own
.
Image by [SimplifyAndAddCoffee] via
reddit
And here are the files
. If you’re wondering about
E
, that is the original Maltron layout where this whole idea of the concave curvy girl got its start.
According to [SimplifyAndAddCoffee], these lovely keycaps were printed in Siraya Tech Blue Obsidian Black resin on an MSLA printer.
After printing, those inset legends were filled with white epoxy putty. [SimplifyAndAddCoffee] then scraped away the excess and completed the process by wiping them all with an isopropyl alcohol-soaked rag.
Personally, I suffer with the original ABS caps on my daily driver Kinesis, but my go-somewhere board has blank PBT caps for ultimate intrigue. I’d love to have a set of printed ones, but I’d have to have them made somewhere since I don’t have any type of resin printer around.
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
. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105676",
"author": "Bartz0r",
"timestamp": "2025-03-04T22:21:54",
"content": "That cat keyboard reminds me of eXistenZ somehow, I don’t like it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8106053",
"author": "S O",
"time... | 1,760,371,618.302578 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/04/its-2025-and-heres-a-new-film-format/ | It’s 2025, And Here’s A New Film Format | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"analog photography",
"film cartridge",
"film photography"
] | We love camera hacking here at Hackaday, and it’s always fascinating to see new things being done in photography. Something rather special has come our way from [Camerdactyl], who hasn’t merely made a camera, instead he’s created an entirely new analogue film format. Move over 35mm and 120, here’s
the RA-4 cartridge
!
RA-4 is the colour print chemistry many of you will be familiar with from your holiday snaps back in the day. Normally a negative image is projected onto it from the negative your camera took, and the positive image is developed on the paper as the reverse of that. It can also be developed as a reversal process similar to slide film, in which the negative image is developed and bleached away leaving an unexposed positive image, which can then be exposed to light and developed to reveal a picture. This means that with carefully chosen colour correction filters it can be shot in a camera to make normal colour prints with this reversal process.
The new film format is a 3D printed cartridge system holding a long roll of RA-4 paper, which slots into a back for standard 5 by 4 inch cameras. He’s also made a modular developing machine for the process, and can get over 100 shots on a roll. A portion of the video below deals with how he wants to release it; since it has taken a huge amount of development resources he intends to release the files to the public in stages as he reaches sales milestones with his work. It’s an unusual strategy that we hope works for him, though we suspect that many camera hackers would be prepared to pay him directly for the files.
Either way, it’s a reminder that there’s still plenty of fun to be had with analogue film, and also that reversal development of RA-4 is possible. Some of us here at Hackaday
have been known to hack a few cameras
, we guess it’s another one to add to the “one day” list.
Thanks [Chuck] for the tip! | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105548",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-03-04T16:39:12",
"content": "Darn, I sure wish I knew that RA-4 reversal trick back in the day. Here I was trying to make direct large-format prints with Cibachrome, which was a fundamentally unsatisfying (and expensive) process — way ... | 1,760,371,618.345705 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/04/ltas-pathfinder-1-the-dawn-of-a-new-age-of-airships/ | LTA’s Pathfinder 1: The Dawn Of A New Age Of Airships? | Maya Posch | [
"Current Events",
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Slider",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"airship"
] | Long before the first airplanes took to the skies, humans had already overcome gravity with the help of airships. Starting with crude hot air balloons, the 18th century saw the development of more practical dirigible airships, including hydrogen gas balloons. On 7 January 1785, French inventor, and pioneer of gas balloon flight
Jean-Pierre Blanchard
would cross the English Channel in such a hydrogen gas balloon, which took a mere 2.5 hours. Despite the primitive propulsion and steering options available at the time, this provided continued inspiration for new inventors.
With steam engines being too heavy and cumbersome, it wasn’t until the era of internal combustion engines a century later that airships began to develop into practical designs. Until World War 2 it seemed that airships had a bright future ahead of them, but amidst a number of accidents and the rise of practical airplanes, airships found themselves mostly reduced to the not very flashy role of advertising blimps.
Yet despite popular media having declared rigid airships such as the German Zeppelins to be dead and a figment of a historic fevered imagination, new rigid airships
are being constructed today
, with improvements that would set the hearts of 1930s German and American airship builders aflutter. So what is going on here? Are we about to see these floating giants darken the skies once more?
A Simple Concept
Both balloons and airships are a type of aerostat, meaning an aircraft that is lighter than air and thus capable of sustained buoyancy. Much like a ship or a submarine, it uses this buoyancy to establish equilibrium with the surrounding air and thus maintain its position. In order to change their buoyancy, ships and submarines have ballast tanks, while airships can use mechanisms such as a
ballonet
. These are air-filled balloons inside the outer balloon which is filled with a lifting gas. Inflating the ballonet with more air or vice versa thus changes the buoyancy of the airship.
In the case of rigid airships like Zeppelins the concept of ballonet is somewhat reversed, in that the outer envelope contains air, while the lifting gas is inside gas bags attached to the upper part. If the rigid airship changes altitude using dynamic lift (i.e. using its propulsion and control surfaces), or by dropping ballast, the air pressure inside this outer envelope drops and the gas bags expand, which reduces the volume of air inside the outer envelope and thus adjusts the buoyancy.
This property makes both non-rigid (i.e. blimps, with ballonets) and rigid airships very stable platforms in most conditions with no real range limit beyond the fuel and food capacity for respectively the engines and onboard crew & passengers.
Why Airships Failed
The main issue with airships is that they are relatively large, and as a result cumbersome to handle, slow when moving, and susceptible to adverse weather conditions. In the list of
airship accidents on Wikipedia
one can get somewhat of an impression of the issues that airship crews had to deal with. Although there is some overlap with aircraft accidents, unique to airships is their large size which make them susceptible to strong winds and gusts, which can overpower the airship’s controls and cause it to crash.
Comparison of the LZ 129 Hindenburg with a number of very large airplanes. (Source: Wikimedia)
Other accidents involved the loss of lifting gas or a conflagration involving hydrogen lifting gas. The fatal accident involving the
LZ 129 Hindenburg
is probably the event which is most strongly etched onto people’s minds here, although ultimately the cause of what came to be called the
Hindenburg
disaster
was never uncovered. This accident is often marked as ‘the end of the airship era’, although that seems to be rather exaggerated in the light of continued use of airships throughout World War 2 and beyond.
What is undeniably true, however, is that the rise of airplanes during the first half of the 20th century provided strong competition for airships when it came to passenger and cargo transport. Workhorses like the Douglas DC-3 airplane came to define travel by air, while airships saw themselves reduced to mostly military, observational and commercial use where aspects like speed were less important than endurance.
Meanwhile the much smaller and simpler non-rigid blimps were a popular choice for especially stationary applications, ranging from advertising and military monitoring and reconnaissance, to recording platforms for televised sport matches. Effectively airships didn’t go away, they just stopped being
Hindenburg
-class sized giants.
A Fresh Try
Zeppelin NT D-LZZR during low level flight, 2003 (Credit: Hansueli Krapf,
Wikimedia
)
Despite this reduced image of airships in people’s minds, the allure of these gentle giants quietly moving through the skies never went away. Beyond flashes of nostalgia and simple tourism, multiple start-ups have or are currently trying to come up with new business models that would reinvigorate the airship industry.
Notable mentions here include the semi-rigid Zeppelin NT, the hybrid Airlander 10, and more recently LTA’s rigid Pathfinder 1, which as the name suggests is a pathfinder airship. Of these the
Zeppelin NT
is the only one which is currently actively in production and flying. As a
semi-rigid
airship it doesn’t have the full supportive skeleton as a rigid airship, but instead only has a singular keel. Ballonets are further used as typical with a non-rigid design. So far seven of these have been built, for purposes ranging from tourism, aerial photography, and scientific studies.
The obvious advantage of a semi-rigid design is that it makes disassembling them for transport a lot easier. In comparison a
hybrid airship
like the
Airlander 10
blends the airship design with that of an airplane by adding wings and other design elements which make it in many ways closer to a blended wing design, just with the ability to also float.
Unfortunately for the Airlander 10, it seems to be struggling to enter production
since we last looked at it
in 2021, with a tentative year of 2028 currently penciled in.
So in this landscape, what is the business model of
LTA
(Lighter Than Air), a company started and funded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin?
As reported most recently by LTA
, in October of 2024 they achieved the first untether flight of Pathfinder 1. Construction of Pathfinder 1 incidentally took place at Hangar Two at
Moffett airfield
, which some people may recognize as one of the filming locations for Mythbuster episodes, and which is a a WW2-era airship hangar.
Pathfinder 1 in Hangar 2 at Moffett Airfield. (Credit: LTA)
The rigid Pathfinder 1 uses many new technologies and materials, including titanium hubs and carbon fiber reinforced polymer tubes for the internal frame, LIDAR sensors and an outer skin made of laminated polyvinyl fluoride (
PVF
, trade name Tedlar). It also uses a landing gear adapted from the Zeppelin NT, with LTA having a working relationship with the company behind that airship.
Finally, it uses 13 helium bags made of ripstop nylon fabric with urethane coating, which should mean that leakage of the lifting gas is significantly less than with Hindenburg-era airships, which were originally designed to use helium as well. The use of titanium and carbon fiber also offer obvious advantages over the duralumin
aluminium-copper alloy
that was the peak of materials research in the 1930s.
From reading the press releases and the industry commentary to LTA’s efforts it is clear that there’s no clear-cut business model yet, and that Pathfinder 1 along with the upcoming Pathfinder 3 – which will be one-third larger – are pretty much what the name says. As a start-up bankrolled by someone with very deep pockets, the immediate need to attract funding is less severe, which should allow LTA to trial multiple of these prototype airships as they figure out what does and what does not work, also in terms of constructing these massive airships.
Perhaps
much like the humble hovercraft
which saw itself overhyped last century before seemingly vanishing by the late 90s from public view, there is a niche for even these large rigid airships. Whether this will be in the form of mostly tourist flights, perhaps something akin to cruise ships but in the sky, or something more serious is hard to say.
Who knows, maybe the idea of a flying aircraft carrier like the 1930s-era
USS
Macon
(ZRS-5) will be revived once more, after that humble airship’s impressive list of successes. | 32 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105510",
"author": "deepdark103",
"timestamp": "2025-03-04T15:14:30",
"content": "I’d like to see more about economically viable applications.There’s advertising, and logging, and I don’t know what else. Maybe sightseeing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,618.425316 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/04/cheap-hackable-smart-ring-gets-a-command-line-client/ | Cheap Hackable Smart Ring Gets A Command Line Client | Arya Voronova | [
"Reverse Engineering",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"ring",
"Smart ring",
"wearable electronics",
"wearable ring",
"Wearables"
] | Last year, we’ve featured a super cheap smart ring – BLE, accelerometer, heart sensor, and a battery, all in a tiny package that fits on your finger. Back when we covered it, we expected either reverse-engineering of stock firmware, or development of a custom firmware outright. Now, you might be overjoyed to learn that [Wesley Ellis]
has written a Python client
for the ring’s stock firmware.
Thanks to lack of any encryption whatsoever, you can simply collect the data from your ring, no pairing necessary, and
[Wesley]’s work
takes care of the tricky bits. So, if you want to start collecting data from this ring right now, integrate it into anything you want, such as your smart home or exoskeleton project, this client is enough. A few firmware secrets remain – for instance, the specific way that the ring keep track of day phases, or SPO2 intricacies. But there’s certainly enough here for you to get started with.
This program will work as long as your ring uses the QRing app – should be easy to check right in the store listing. Want to pick up the mantle and crack open the few remaining secrets? Everything is open-source, and there’s
a notepad
that follows the OG reverse-engineering journey, too. If you need a reminder on what this ring is cool for, here’s
our original article on it. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105465",
"author": "heliumwaste",
"timestamp": "2025-03-04T12:36:11",
"content": "Interested. The ring is a good form factor for something like this for someone who already wears a watch pretty much 24/7",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comme... | 1,760,371,618.491255 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/04/cnc-router-and-fiber-laser-bring-the-best-of-both-worlds-to-pcb-prototyping/ | CNC Router And Fiber Laser Bring The Best Of Both Worlds To PCB Prototyping | Dan Maloney | [
"cnc hacks",
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"fiber laser",
"pcb",
"prototyping",
"smd",
"stencil"
] | Jack of all trades, master of none, as the saying goes, and that’s especially true for PCB prototyping tools. Sure, it’s possible to use a CNC router to mill out a PCB, and ditto for a fiber laser. But neither tool is perfect; the router creates a lot of dust and the fiberglass eats a lot of tools, while a laser is great for burning away copper but takes a long time to burn through all the substrate.
So, why not put both tools to work?
Of course, this assumes you’re lucky enough to have both tools available, as [Mikey Sklar] does. He doesn’t call out which specific CNC router he has, but any desktop machine should probably do since all it’s doing is drilling any needed through-holes and hogging out the outline of the board, leaving bridges to keep the blanks connected, of course.
Once the milling operations are done, [Mikey] switches to his xTool F1 20W fiber laser. The blanks are placed on the laser’s bed, the CNC-drilled through holes are used as fiducials to align everything, and the laser gets busy. For the smallish boards [Mikey] used to demonstrate his method, it only took 90 seconds to cut the traces. He also used the laser to cut a solder paste stencil from thin brass shim stock in only a few minutes. The brief video below shows the whole process and the excellent results.
In a world where professionally made PCBs are just a few mouse clicks (and a week’s shipping) away, rolling your own boards seems to make little sense. But for the truly impatient, adding the machines to
quickly and easily make your own PCBs
just might be worth the cost. One thing’s for sure, though — the more we see what the current generation of desktop fiber lasers can accomplish, the more we feel like skipping a couple of mortgage payments to afford one. | 22 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105412",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-03-04T09:09:21",
"content": "Nice PCB holding jig !",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8105416",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2025-03-04T09:17:54",
"content": "“But oft... | 1,760,371,618.552928 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/03/its-ssb-but-maybe-not-quite-as-you-know-it/ | It’s SSB, But Maybe Not Quite As You Know It | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"polar modulation",
"sdr",
"ssb"
] | Single Sideband, or SSB, has been the predominant amateur radio voice mode for many decades now. It has bee traditionally generated by analogue means, generating a double sideband and filtering away the unwanted side, or generating 90 degree phase shifted quadrature signals and mixing them. More recent software-defined radios have taken this into the CPU,
but here’s [Georg DG6RS] with another method
. It uses SDR techniques and a combination of AM and FM to achieve polar modulation and generate SSB. He’s provided a fascinating in-depth technical explanation to help understand how it works.
The hardware is relatively straightforward; an SI5351 clock generator provides the reference for an ADF4351 PLL and VCO, which in turn feeds a PE4302 digital attenuator. It’s all driven from an STM32F103 microcontroller which handles the signal processing. Internally this means conventionally creating I and Q streams from the incoming audio, then an algorithm to generate the phase and amplitude for polar modulation. These are fed to the PLL and attenuator in turn for FM and AM modulation, and the result is SSB. It’s only suitable for narrow bandwidths, but it’s a novel and surprisingly simple deign.
We like being presented with new (to us at least) techniques, as it never pays to stand still. Meanwhile for more conventional designs,
we’ve got you covered
. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105392",
"author": "Christoph",
"timestamp": "2025-03-04T07:02:55",
"content": "As Georg states himself, the modulation technique is based on usdx (and trusdx), which uses EER (envelope elimination and restauration). It allows using a highly efficient class e power amplifier for S... | 1,760,371,618.627015 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/03/hijacking-airtag-infrastructure-to-track-arbitrary-devices/ | Hijacking AirTag Infrastructure To Track Arbitrary Devices | Arya Voronova | [
"Mac Hacks",
"Security Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"AirTag",
"airtags",
"Apple AirTag",
"apple airtags"
] | In case you weren’t aware, Apple devices around you are constantly scanning for AirTags. Now, imagine you’re carrying your laptop around – no WiFi connectivity, but BLE’s on as usual, and there’s a little bit of hostile code running at user privileges, say, a third-party app. Turns out, it’d be possible to
make your laptop or phone pretend to be a lost AirTag
– making it and you trackable whenever an iPhone is around.
The
nroottag
website
isn’t big on details, but the paper ought to detail more; the hack does require a bit of GPU firepower, but nothing too out of the ordinary. The specific vulnerabilities making this possible have been patched in newer iOS and MacOS versions, but it’s still possible to pull off as long as an outdated-firmware Apple device is nearby!
Of course, local code execution is often considered a game over, but it’s pretty funny that you can do this while making use of the Apple AirTag infrastructure, relatively unprivileged, and, exfiltrate location data without any data connectivity whatsoever, all as long as an iPhone is nearby. You might also be able to exflitrate other data, for what it’s worth – here’s how you can use AirTag infrastructure to
track new letter arrivals in your mailbox
! | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105354",
"author": "Needleroozer",
"timestamp": "2025-03-04T03:53:35",
"content": "They’re linking the paper from their main site now:https://cs.gmu.edu/~zeng/papers/2025-security-nrootgag.pdfThe gist seems to be that, on systems where you have local execution but can’t change the ... | 1,760,371,619.024474 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/03/make-your-own-air-knife-and-air-amplifier/ | Make Your Own Air Knife And Air Amplifier | Maya Posch | [
"Science",
"Teardown"
] | [
"air amplifier",
"air knife"
] | Want to make your own air knife to cut things with? Unfortunately that’s not what these devices are intended for, but [This Old Tony]
will show you how to make your own
, while explaining what they are generally intended for. His version deviates from the commercial version which he got his hands on in that he makes a round version instead of the straight one, but the concept is the same.
In short, an
air knife
is a laminar pressurized airflow device that provides a very strong and narrow air pattern, using either compressed air or that from a blower. Generally air knives will use the
Coandă effect
to keep the laminar flow attached to the device for as long as possible to multiply the air pressure above that from the laminar flow from the air knife itself. These are commonly used for cleaning debris and dust off surfaces in e.g. production lines.
As [Tony] shows in the disassembly of a commercial device, they are quite basic, with just two aluminium plates and a thin shim that creates the narrow opening through which the air can escape. The keyword here is ‘thin shim’, as [Tony] discovers that even a paper shim is too thick already. Amusingly, although he makes a working round air knife this way, it turns out that these are generally called an air amplifier, such as those
from Exair
and are often used for cooling and ventilation, with some having an adjustable opening to adjust the resulting airflow.
Some may recognize this principle for those fancy ‘bladeless’ fans that companies like Dyson sell, as they use essentially the same principle, just with a fan providing the pressure rather than a compressor. | 20 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105319",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-03-04T01:24:35",
"content": "I wonder how much power you have to dump into it before it actually cuts things",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8105337",
"author": "Nik282000",... | 1,760,371,618.875021 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/03/heres-a-spy-movie-grade-access-card-sniffing-implant/ | Here’s A Spy Movie-Grade Access Card Sniffing Implant | Arya Voronova | [
"Reverse Engineering",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"wiegand"
] | Some of our devices look like they’re straight out of hacker movies. For instance, how about a small board you plant behind an RFID reader, collecting access card data and then replaying it when you next walk up the door? [Jakub Kramarz] brings us
perhaps the best design on the DIY market
, called
The Tick
– simple, flexible, cheap, tiny, and fully open-source.
Take off the reader, tap into the relevant wires and power pins (up to 25V input), and just leave the board there. It can do BLE or WiFi – over WiFi, you get a nice web UI showing you the data collected so far, and letting you send arbitrary data. It can do Wiegand like quite a few open-source projects, but it can also do arbitrary clock+data protocols, plus you can just wire it up quickly, and it will figure out the encoding.
We could imagine such a board inside a Cyberpunk DnD rulebook or used in Mr Robot as a plot point, except that this one is real and you can use it today for red teaming and security purposes. Not to say all applications
would be
NSA-catalog-adjacent
pentesting – you could use such a bug to
reverse-engineer your own garage door opener
, for one. | 17 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105241",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-03-03T21:54:55",
"content": "Simple replay attacks don’t work on any modern ‘real’ access card system any more, which use a credential and key exchange and crypto processor in the card.So, using one of these, how long would it take to c... | 1,760,371,618.816233 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/03/sensory-substitution-device-tingles-back-of-your-hand/ | Sensory Substitution Device Tingles Back Of Your Hand | Arya Voronova | [
"Science"
] | [
"sensory substitution",
"tactile",
"tactile feedback"
] | A team from the University of Chicago brings us a new spin on sensory substitution,
the “Seeing with the Hands” project
, turning external environment input into sensations. Here specifically, the focus is on substituting vision into hand sensations, aimed at blind and vision disabled. The prototype is quite inspiration-worthy!
On the input side, we have a wrist-mounted camera, sprinkled with a healthy amount of image processing, of course. As for the output, no vibromotors or actuators are in use – instead, tactile receptors are stimulated by passing small amounts of current through your skin, triggering your touch receptors electrically. An 5×6 array of such “tactile” pixels is placed on the back of the hand and fingers. The examples provided show it to be a decent substitution.
This technique depends on the type of image processing being used, as well as the “resolution” of the pixels, but it’s a fun concept nevertheless, and the study preprint has some great stories to tell. This one’s far from the first sensory substitution devices we’ve covered, though, as quite a few of them were
mechanical in nature
– the less moving parts, the better, we reckon! | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105224",
"author": "JayCop",
"timestamp": "2025-03-03T20:53:08",
"content": "I built a dev kit to do this and (what’s apparently called) sensory weaving a few years back as an experiment. It was nothing more than an nrf52 breakout with a few dozen pwm outputs to sma connectors (and... | 1,760,371,618.761108 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/03/deep-space-dx-hack-chat/ | Deep Space DX Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hack Chat"
] | Join us on Wednesday, March 5 at noon Pacific for the
Deep Space DX Hack Chat
with
David Prutchi
!
In the past 70-odd years, the world’s space-faring nations have flung a considerable amount of hardware out into the Void. Most of it has fallen back into Earth’s gravity well, and a lot of what remains is long past its best-by date, systems silenced by time and the harsh conditions that rendered these jewels of engineering into little more than space flotsam.
Luckily, though, there are still a few spacecraft plying the lonely spaces between the planets and even beyond that still have active radios, and while their signals may be faint, we can still hear them. True, many of them are reachable only using immense dish antennas.
Not every deep-space probe needs the resources of a nation-state to be snooped on, though. David Prutchi has been listening to them for years using a relatively modest backyard antenna farm and a lot of hard-won experience. He’s been able to bag some serious DX, everything from rovers on Mars to probes orbiting Jupiter. If you’ve ever wanted to give deep space DX a try, here’s your chance to get off on the right foot.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, March 5 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
. | 5 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105199",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2025-03-03T19:39:23",
"content": "Not sure what you mean by that. Not every hack can be done in every situation. But surely radio stuff can be done in the countryside with foil, a cheap radio module + laptop and lots of knowledge and determi... | 1,760,371,619.068928 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/03/12vhpwr-watchdog-protects-you-from-nvidia-fires/ | 12VHPWR Watchdog Protects You From Nvidia Fires | Arya Voronova | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"12VHPWR",
"NVIDIA",
"thermistor"
] | The 12VHPWR connector is a hot topic once again – Nvidia has really let us down on this one. New 5080 and 500 GPUs come with this connector, and they’re once again fire-prone. Well, what if you’re stuck with a newly-built 5080, unwilling to give it up, still hoping to play the newest games or run LLMs locally? [Timo Birnschein] has
a simple watchdog solution for you
, and it’s super easy to build.
All it takes is an Arduino, three resistors, and three thermistors. Place the thermistors onto the connector’s problematic spots,
download the companion software from GitHub
, and plug the Arduino into your PC. If a temperature anomaly is detected, like one of the thermistors approaching 100C, the Arduino will simply shut down your PC. The software also includes a tray icon, temperature graphing, and stability features. All is open-source — breadboard it, flash it. You can even add more thermistors to the mix if you’d like!
This hack certainly doesn’t just help protect you from Nvidia’s latest creation – it can help you watch over any sort of potentially hot mod, and it’s very easy to build. Want to watch over connectors on your 3D printer? Build one of these!
We’ve seen 12VHPWR have plenty of problems
in the past
on Nvidia’s cards – it looks like there are
quite a few lessons
Nvidia is yet to learn. | 72 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105132",
"author": "Janez Dolinar",
"timestamp": "2025-03-03T16:53:27",
"content": "Even wilder option would be soldering a DS18S20 directly to memory module flash if they’re still there..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "810513... | 1,760,371,619.182307 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/03/fosdem-2025-a-hardware-hackers-haven/ | FOSDEM 2025, A Hardware Hacker’s Haven | Arya Voronova | [
"cons",
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"convention",
"FOSDEM"
] | Have you been to FOSDEM? It’s a yearly two-day megaconference in Brussels, every first weekend of February. Thousands of software and hardware hackers from all across Europe come here each year, make friends, talk software and hardware alike, hold project-specific meetups to drink beer and talk shop, and just have a fun weekend surrounded by like-minded people.
In particular, FOSDEM has free admission – drop by for the weekend, no need to buy entry tickets, just sort out your accomodation, food, travel, and visit for a day or two.
I’ve covered FOSDEM quite extensively in 2023
, so if you want to know more about how it works, I invite you to check out that article – plenty of stories, cool facts about FOSDEM, showcases, and so on. This year, I’ve also been to FOSDEM, it’s been pretty great, and I’d like to tell you about cool things I’ve seen happen during FOSDEM 2025.
FOSDEM is often described as an open software conference, and you might’ve had been fooled by this if you simply have checked the Wikipedia page. However, let me assure you – there’s always plenty of hardware, large amounts of it! This year, I feel like hardware has taken the spotlight in particular – let me show you at least some of it, so that you know what kinds of cool stuff you can expect and plan for in 2026.
Even Software Was Hardware
Really, the kinds of software FOSDEM hosts, can’t exist without a healthy dose of hardware. Yes, there was no shortage of purely software-specific stands – if you wanted a Debian t-shirt, some Fedora or Jenkins stickers, or a selfie with the Postgresql elephant, they were always at an arm’s reach. Pure software was a surprisingly small part of FOSDEM this year, and I have some theories about it.
This year, it felt like half of all stands were hardware-based, hardware-related, or hardware-dependent in one way or another. First off, of course, hardware is flashy, it makes for effective demos. For instance, if you wanted to drop by, you’d find a Jenkins cluster running on a gaggle of SBCs mounted to a 3D-printed frame – a new and vastly improved build from the version we’ve covered in 2023!
A number of project stands –
PostmarketOS
, CalyxOS, FuriLabs, – had desks full of smartphones demoing their phone OS offerings. You’d see SteamDecks being used as software demo machines, the FreeCAD table had a laptop running the newest FreeCAD install you could poke and probe (with even a surprise MNT Reform appearance), SBCs common and obscure running demo playback and presentations – making the software world tangible.
Really, if you’re demoing an open-source smart home system, like OpenHAB did, what’s better than bringing a smart-home-in-a-briefcase? And if you’re bringing an open-source game engine, what’s better than demoing it on a SteamDeck? Software has the disadvantage of being quite intangible, and hardware “grounds” it enough that anyone can interact it, conveying code as colours, shapes, and objects in the real world – which is perfect if what you’re starting with is a Git repository, and what you need to create is a conference table people would be interested in.
And Hardware Was Extra Hardware
Of course, we’ve met the usual open-source suspects of the hardware world, too. KiCad and FreeCAD split a table this year. They had logos familiar enough to the crowd that they really didn’t need extra hardware to stand out – instead, they brought merch and stickers. Nevertheless, on the FreeCAD-KiCad split of the table, you’d find a guest exhibit from the
Libre Space Foundation
, a model of the Picobus V2 satellite launching system, which was incidentally designed with help of both FreeCAD and KiCad.
Next to them, you’d find MicroPython, Espruino, and TinyGo, all promoting high-level languages for microcontrollers, for those of us unemburdened by obligations of memory safety and static typing. In the H building, OpenFlexure had a desk all to themselves, and a Prusa printer was helping them crank out designs to be immediately demoed. Sadly, this year, Pine64 stand was missing – but Pine64 folks could still be found around!
One thing you’d see a ton this year? LoRa, in all forms. Of course, there was the Meshtastic table, with plenty of stickers and demo devices alike, but you’d also regularly find LoRa-equipped devices on tables. This wasn’t the only form of wireless tech, either – the AW building had desks with SDR setups,
plenty of HAM tech
, and outside on the grass, a group of hackers with radio equipment and a dish antenna setup.
I’ve seen a couple tables being crashed with cool tech, too! For instance, you could meet [arturo182] and his creations (including a hacker-friendly keyboard module series) on Saturday in the AW building, taking up part of the TinyGo table – not scheduled, but definitely most welcome! On one of the desks in the K building, you could find
two MNT Reform demo units
, one full-sized and one Pocket, on the Genode table – unsurprisingly, there was always a crowd around that table, so if you didn’t notice it, that’s why!
One more recommendation, which doesn’t apply just to FOSDEM – you might want to get a FOSSAsia LED matrix name badge. Nowadays, I tend to go to events in friend groups, and I’ve been surprised how many my friends have gotten themselves the FOSSAsia name badges.
The FOSSAsia community is a mainstay at tech events in Europe, so if you’re visiting one and you see these badges around, just look for the FOSSAsia desk to get one. These badges are respectably flashy — you pick the colour! — great for meeting new people in the crowds, and quite cheap! I’ve also learned that FOSSAsia have been improving the badge’s firmware over the years – as far as I can tell, if you’ve ever bought a nametag from FOSSAsia, simply update its firmware with help of your smartphone, and get a number of new features.
Eagerly Awaiting FOSDEM 26
There’s always more to FOSDEM, but this year, I’d like to simply show you all the hardware there was to see. Want to learn more?
Check back to the FOSDEM 23 coverage,
detailing how FOSDEM operates, talking about their volunteer-rooted structure, the principles and tricks FOSDEM uses to keep the open software world ever so closer together, or perhaps the impressive video recording infrastructure making sure that talks are livestreamed dutifully and published nigh-instantly… Plenty to learn about FOSDEM’s MO! Apart from that,
FreeCAD
,
PostmarketOS
,
Meshtastic
and a good few open-source orgs have made post-FOSDEM blog posts, check them out if you’d like to hear how FOSDEM and your favourite projects meshed together.
FOSDEM is undoubtedly the time and place to celebrate open software in Europe, and at the same time, it’s also a super friendly spot for those of us of Hackaday upbringing. If you’re looking for somewhere to go next February, as a hardware hacker, my understanding is that you won’t be disappointed! | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105118",
"author": "machinehum",
"timestamp": "2025-03-03T16:27:48",
"content": "Awesome meeting up this year",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8105195",
"author": "Charles",
"timestamp": "2025-03-03T19:27:56",
"conte... | 1,760,371,619.305171 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/03/a-micropython-interpreter-for-flipper-zero/ | A MicroPython Interpreter For Flipper Zero | Arya Voronova | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Security Hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"flipper",
"flipper zero",
"micropython"
] | Got a Flipper Zero? Ever wanted to use a high-level but powerful scripting language on it? Thanks to [Oliver] we now have
a MicroPython application for the Flipper,
complete with a library for hardware and software feature support. Load it up, start it up, connect over USB, and you’ve got the ever-so-convenient REPL at your disposal. Or, upload a Python script to your Flipper and run them directly from Flipper’s UI at your convenience!
In the API docs,
we’re seeing support for every single primitive you could want – GPIO (including the headers at the top, of course), a healthy library for LCD and LCD backlight control, button handling, SD card support, speaker library for producing tones, ADC and PWM, vibromotor, logging, and even infrared transmit/receive support. Hopefully, we get support for Flipper’s wireless capabilities at some point, too!
Check out
the code examples
, get the latest release
from the Flipper app portal
or
GitHub
, load it up, and play! Mp-flipper has existed for the better half of a year now, so it’s a pretty mature application, and it adds
quite a bit
to Flipper’s
use cases in our
world of
hardware
hacking. Want to develop an app for the Flipper in Python or otherwise? Check out
this small-screen UI design toolkit
or
this editor
we’ve featured recently! | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105050",
"author": "sweethack",
"timestamp": "2025-03-03T13:11:14",
"content": "So, TLDR, who win between the dolphin and the python?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8105208",
"author": "Mr. Bill",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,371,619.242564 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/03/wake-boot-repeat-remote-os-selection-with-grub-and-esp/ | Wake, Boot, Repeat: Remote OS Selection With GRUB And ESP | Heidi Ulrich | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"boot",
"ESP",
"ESP8266",
"grub",
"HTTP",
"linux",
"network",
"wake on lan",
"WOL"
] | What do you do when you need to choose an OS at boot but aren’t physically near your machine?
[Dakhnod]’s inventive solution
is a mix of GRUB, Wake-on-LAN (WOL), and a lightweight ESP8266 running a simple HTTP server. In the past, [dakhnod] already enlightened us with
another smart ESP hack
. This one’s a clever combination of network booting and remote control that opens up possibilities beyond the usual dual-boot selector.
At its core, the hack modifies GRUB to fetch its boot configuration over HTTP. The ESP8266 (or any low-power device) serves up a config file defining which OS should launch. The trick lies in adding a custom script that tells GRUB to source an external config:
#!/usr/bin/env cat
net_dhcp
source (http,destination_ip_or_host:destination_port)/grub/config
Since GRUB itself makes the HTTP request, the system needs a running web server. That could be a Raspberry Pi, another machine, or the ESP itself. From there, a WOL-enabled ESP button can wake the PC and set the boot parameters remotely.
Is it secure? Well, that depends on your network. An open, unauthenticated web server dishing out GRUB configs is risky, but within a controlled LAN or a VLAN-segmented environment, it’s an intriguing option. Automation possibilities are everywhere — imagine remotely booting test rigs, toggling between OS environments for debugging, or even setting up kiosk machines that reconfigure themselves based on external triggers.
For those looking to take it further, using
configfile
instead of
source
allows for more dynamic menu entries, although it won’t persist environment variables. You could even combine it with
this RasPi hack
to control the uptime of the HTTP server. The balance between convenience and security is yours to strike.
If you’ve got your own wild GRUB customisation, let’s hear it! | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8105005",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2025-03-03T10:48:43",
"content": "You could also configure Grub to output on a serial port, and connect that serial port to an ESP866/ESP32 with esplink firmware, and its web interface:http://www.zoobab.com/esp8266-serial2wifi-bridgeThe ES... | 1,760,371,619.356544 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/02/flat-pack-toaster-heats-up-the-right-to-repair/ | Flat Pack Toaster Heats Up The Right To Repair | Navarre Bartz | [
"cooking hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"kitchen",
"kitchen gadget",
"repair",
"right to repair",
"toaster"
] | The toaster is a somewhat modest appliance that is often ignored until it stops working. Many cheap examples are not made to be easily repaired, but [Kasey Hou] designed a
repairable flat pack toaster
.
[Hou] originally planned to design a repairable toaster to help people more easily form an emotional attachment with the device, but found the process of disassembly for existing toasters to be so painful that she wanted to go a step further. By inviting the toaster owner into the process of assembling the appliance, [Hou] reasoned people would be less likely to throw it out as well as more confident to repair it since they’d already seen its inner workings.
Under the time constraints of the project, the final toaster has a simpler mechanism for ejecting toast than
most commercial models
, but still manages to get the job done. It even passed the
UK Portable Appliance Test
! I’m not sure if she’d read the IKEA Effect before running this project, but her results with user testing also proved that people were more comfortable working on the toaster after assembling it.
It turns out that Wikipedia
couldn’t tell you who invented the toaster
for a while, and if you have an expensive toaster, it
might still be a pain to repair
. | 89 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104948",
"author": "baltar",
"timestamp": "2025-03-03T07:06:08",
"content": "I don’t get why toasters are so popular in the US and perhaps western EU. Is your basic bread really so bad that you can’t or don’t want to eat it without Maillarding every single slice?If there’s one thin... | 1,760,371,619.686148 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/02/making-the-alarmo-customizable-by-any-means-necessary/ | Making The Alarmo Customizable, By Any Means Necessary | Arya Voronova | [
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"alarm clock",
"nintendo",
"Nintendo Alarmo"
] | Last year, Nintendo has released the Alarmo, a bedside-style alarm clock with a colourful display. Do you own one? You deserve full control over your device, of course. [KernelEquinox] has been
reverse-engineering an Alarmo
ever since getting one, and there’s no shortage of cool stuff you’ll be able to do with an Alarmo thanks to this work.
Now, just how can you improve upon the Alarmo? Looking through
the Alarmo dev community site
and threads on
the subreddit
, there are plenty of ideas, from
themes
to a ton of possible behaviour tweaks! In particular, Nintendo has already changed Alarmo’s behaviour
in a way that is jarring to some users
– a third-party development community will help us all make sure our Alarmos work exactly like we expect them to. Want to
replace the sound files,
tie your Alarmo
into your smart home setup, write
your apps
,
tweak the UI
or
default behaviour
, fix
a bug that irks you real bad
, or access a debug menu? Or, ensure that Alarmo
doesn’t contribute to light pollution in your room
? All appears to be doable.
Like the Alarmo, but don’t own one yet? They’re limited-release for now, but it will be more widely available this March; we thank [KernelEquinox] for the work in making Alarmo hacker-friendly. If you’ve forgotten, this project started off thanks to the efforts of [Gary] last year. We
covered it back then
— cat pictures included! | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104916",
"author": "R",
"timestamp": "2025-03-03T03:45:41",
"content": "it’ll be interesting to see if the “heavy hand of nintendo” is going to attempt to DMCA or otherwise litigate these new ‘features’ to death or not.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}... | 1,760,371,619.40298 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/02/hackaday-links-march-2-2025/ | Hackaday Links: March 2, 2025 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"2024 YR4",
"asteroid",
"citibank",
"city killer",
"Frank Whittle",
"hackaday links",
"jet engine",
"LRO",
"lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter",
"near miss",
"photobomb",
"prank",
"ssid",
"Torino",
"trillionaire"
] | It’s been quite a week for asteroid 2024 YR4, which looked like it was going to live up to its “city killer” moniker only to be demoted to
a fraction of a percent risk of hitting us
when it swings by our neighborhood in 2032. After being discovered at the end of 2024, the 55-meter space rock first popped up on the (figurative) radar a few weeks back as a potential risk to our home planet, with estimates of a direct strike steadily increasing as more data was gathered by professional and amateur astronomers alike. The James Webb Space Telescope even got in on the action, with four precious hours of
“director’s discretionary” observation time
dedicated to characterizing the size and shape of the asteroid before it gets too far from Earth. The result of all this stargazing is that 2024 YR4 is now at a Level 1 on
the Torino Scale
of NEO collision risk, with a likely downgrade to 0 by the time the asteroid next swings through again in 2028. So, if like us you were into the whole “Fiery Space Rock 2032” thing, you’ll just have to find something else to look forward to.
On the other hand, if you’re going to go out in a fiery cataclysm, going out as a trillionaire wouldn’t be a bad way to go. One lucky Citibank customer could have done that if only an asteroid had hit during the several hours it took to correct
an $81 trillion credit to their account
back in April, a mistake that only seems to be coming to light now. You’d think a mistake
80% the size of the global economy
would have caused an overflow error somewhere along the way, or that somebody would see all those digits and think something was hinky, but apparently not since it was only the third person assigned to review the transaction that caught it. The transaction, which falls into the “near-miss” category, was reversed before any countries were purchased or fleets of space yachts were commissioned, which seems a pity but also points out the alarming fact that this happens often enough that banks have a “near-miss” category — kind of like a
Broken Arrow
.
We all know that near-Earth space is getting crowded, with everyone and his brother launching satellite megaconstellations to monetize our collective dopamine addiction. But it looks like things are even starting to get crowded around the Moon, at least judging by
this lunar photobomb
. The images were captured by the Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter, which has been orbiting the Moon and studying the landscape for the last 16 years but stretched its capabilities a bit to capture images of the South Korean Danuri. The two probes are in parallel orbits but opposite directions and about 8 kilometers apart at the time, meaning the relative velocity between the two was an unreasonably fast 11,500 km/h. The result is a blurred streak against the lunar surface, which isn’t all that much to look at but is still quite an accomplishment. It’s not the first time these two probes have played peek-a-boo with each other; back in 2023, Danuri took a similar picture when LRO was 18 kilometers below it.
We don’t do much air travel, but here’s a tip: if you want to endear yourself to fellow travelers, it might be best to avoid
setting up a phone hotspot named “I Have a Bomb.”
That happened last week on American Airlines flight 2863 from Austin, Texas to Charlotte, North Carolina, with predictable results. The prank was noticed while the flight was boarding, causing law enforcement officers to board the plane and ask the prankster to own up to it. Nobody volunteered, so everyone had to deplane and go back through screening, resulting in a four-hour delay and everyone missing their connections. We’re all for fun SSIDs, mind you, but there’s a time and a place for everything.
And finally, we wanted to share this fantastic piece from Brian Potter over at Construction Physics on
“Why it’s so hard to build a jet engine.”
The answer might seem obvious — because it’s a jet engine, duh — but the article is a fascinating look at the entire history of jet propulsion, from their near-simultaneous invention by the principal belligerents at the end of World War II right through to their modern incarnations. The article is an exploration into the engineering of complex systems, and shows how non-obvious the problems were that needed to be solved to make jet engines practical. It’s also a lesson in the difficulties of turning a military solution into a practical commercial product. Enjoy! | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104944",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2025-03-03T06:54:14",
"content": "oh man, just a esp32 with that ssid glued to a ground support vehicle. the carnage…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8105038",
"author": "Stephe... | 1,760,371,619.443777 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/02/on-sensory-weaver-building/ | On Sensory Weaver Building | Arya Voronova | [
"classic hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"linear actuator",
"linear actuators",
"sensory substitution",
"sensory weaving",
"thermal imaging"
] | What is a sensory weaver? [Curiosiate]
tells us:
“A device which takes sensory data feeds in and converts it in various ways on the body as information streams as though a native sensory input.” As an example,
they’ve built one
.
This one, called “MK2 Lockpick” is a wrist-mounted array of linear actuators, with
a lengthy design/build log
to peek into. We don’t get PCB files (blame EasyEDA’s sharing), but we do at least get a schematic and more than enough pictures for anyone interested to reproduce the concept – the levels of bespoke-ness here warrant a new PCB for any newcomers to sensory weaver building, anyway. We also get
a story of a proof-of-concept thermal input sensory weaver
. The team even includes a lessons learned da, and plenty of inspiration throughout the posts on the blog.
This kind of tech is getting more and more popular, and we are sure there will be more to come — especially as we keep getting cool new gadgets like linear actuators in form of replacement parts. For instance, the actuators in this sensory weaver are harvested from Samsung S23 smartphones, and you could probably find suitable ones as iPhone replacement parts, too. Looking to start out in this area but want a quick build? Look no further than
the venerable compass belt
. | 23 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104877",
"author": "Tony M",
"timestamp": "2025-03-02T23:10:57",
"content": "Everything is a sensory weaver.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8104890",
"author": "Curiosiate",
"timestamp": "2025-03-03T00:36:03"... | 1,760,371,619.745373 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/02/make-ice-spheres-in-a-copper-press/ | Make Ice Spheres In A Copper Press | Navarre Bartz | [
"cooking hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"casting",
"copper",
"copper casting",
"ice press",
"ice sphere",
"lathe",
"lost pla casting",
"metalwork",
"sand casting"
] | Perfectly clear ice spheres are nifty but can be a bit tricky to make without an apparatus. [Seth Robinson] crafted a copper ice press to make his own.
Copper is well-known for its thermal conductivity, making it a perfect material for building a press to melt ice into a given shape. Like many projects, a combination of techniques yields the best result, and in this case we get to see 3d printing, sand casting, lost PLA casting, lathe turning, milling, and even some good old-fashioned sanding.
The most tedious part of the process appears to be dip coating of ceramic for the lost PLA mold, but the finished result is certainly worth it. That’s not to say that any of the process looks easy if you are a metal working novice. Taking over a week to slowly build up the layers feels a bit excruciating, especially compared to 3D printing the original plastic piece. If you’re ever feeling discouraged watching someone else’s awesome projects, you might want to stick around to the end when [Robinson] shows us his first ever casting. We’d say his skill has improved immensely over time.
If you’re looking for something else to do with casting copper alloys, be sure to checkout this
bronze river table
or [Robinson’s]
copper levitation sphere
.
Thanks to [DjBiohazard] for the tip! | 12 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104799",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-03-02T18:11:03",
"content": "I’ve said it before and will say it again. Check out my method for making ice spheres with no special equipment. Published on academics website. It is not at all tricky nor does it require anything more t... | 1,760,371,619.792032 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/02/a-captioncall-phone-succumbs-to-doom-again/ | A CaptionCall Phone Succumbs ToDoom, Again | Arya Voronova | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"captioncall",
"desk phone",
"does it run doom",
"doom",
"Embedded Linux",
"serial port"
] | Pour one out for yet another device conquered. This one’s a desk phone for conferences and whatnot, a colour display, a numpad, and a bog standard handset with a speaker and mic. Naturally, also running Linux. You know what to expect – [Parker Reed]
has brought Doom to it
, and you’d be surprised how playable it looks!
This is the second time
a CaptionCall device has graced our pages running Doom — CaptionCall patched out the previous route, but with some firmware dumping and hashcat, root has been acquired once again. [Parker] has upgraded this impromptu gaming setup, too – now, all the buttons are mapped into Doom-compatible keyboard events coming from a single input device,
thanks to a C program and an Xorg config snippet.
Feel free to yoink for your own Doom adventures or just general CaptionCall hacking!
If you’re interested in the hacking journey,
get into the exploitee.rs Discord server
and follow the hack timeline from password recovery,
start
to
finish
, to
Doom,
to
the state of affairs shown in the video
. Now, as the CPU speeds have risen, should the hackerdom
switch away from Doom as the go-to?
Our community remains divided. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104808",
"author": "asheets",
"timestamp": "2025-03-02T18:24:55",
"content": "Firing the gun with the switchhook? I love it!WHy does it look like its running Win95? I’d be more interested in that hack, TBH.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,619.931593 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/02/some-assembly-required-makes-us-love-things-more/ | “Some Assembly Required” Makes Us Love Things More | Navarre Bartz | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"assembly",
"business",
"flat pack",
"ikea",
"IKEA effect",
"lego",
"manufacturing"
] | For the maker looking to turn their project into a business, trying to price your widget can be a bit of a conundrum. You want to share your widget with the world without going broke in the process. What if you could achieve both,
letting the end user finish assembly
? [PDF]
While over a decade has passed since Harvard Business School released this study on what they dub “The IKEA Effect,” we suspect that most of it will still be relevant given the slow pace of human behavior change. In short, when you make someone become part of the process of manufacturing or assembling their stuff, it makes them value it more highly than if it was already all put together in the box.
Interestingly, the researchers found “that consumers believe that their self-made products rival those of experts,” and that this is true regardless of whether these people consider themselves to be DIY enthusiasts or not. This only holds if the person is successful though, so it’s critical
to have good instructions
. If you have a mass market item in the works, you probably don’t want to require someone with no experience to solder something, but as IKEA has shown, nearly anybody can handle some hex screws and Allen wrenches.
If you’re looking for more advice on how to get your invention in people’s hands, how about this
Supercon talk by Carrie Sundra
about manufacturing on a shoestring budget or this
video from Simone Giertz
on her experiences with manufacturing from idea to finished product. You might want to steer clear of people promising patents for pennies on commercials, though. | 36 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104721",
"author": "Tom Thomson",
"timestamp": "2025-03-02T12:36:02",
"content": "This same phenomenon is why Betty Crocker cake mix require cracking in an egg. Originally the mix contained powdered egg protein and didn’t require adding an actual raw egg, but focus groups found peo... | 1,760,371,619.865682 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/02/skype-is-shutting-down-on-may-5th/ | Skype Is Shutting Down On May 5th | Maya Posch | [
"News"
] | [
"microsoft",
"skype"
] | In a move that could have been seen coming from at least a decade away,
Microsoft has confirmed
that the Skype service will be shutting down on May 5. This comes after an intrepid person stumbled over a curious string in the latest Skype for Windows preview. This string seemed intended to notify the user about the impending shutdown, telling them to migrate to Teams instead.
Skype
was originally created in 2003 by a group of European developers, where it saw some success, with the service being acquired by Microsoft in 2011. Much like other messaging services, each Skype user has a unique ID, but there is also integration with phone services around the world. When Microsoft overhauled the user interface in 2017, this caused a split between ‘classic’ UI fans and the heretics who liked the new interface.
With Microsoft not really finding a way to stop the bleeding of users by this time, and with its nascent Teams service enjoying success despite any complaints anyone might have about it, it seems that now the time has come where Skype will be put out to pasture. For the handful of Skype users still left today, the options are to either download your data before it’s erased, or to move your user account to Teams. | 32 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104660",
"author": "Jouni",
"timestamp": "2025-03-02T09:07:33",
"content": "The original Skype was technically very interesting. I remember it was developed in Delphi and contained multi-layer protection (crypting of the binary code) of the original protocol which was really hard t... | 1,760,371,620.001507 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/01/this-gesture-sensor-is-precise-cheap-well-hidden/ | This Gesture Sensor Is Precise, Cheap, Well-Hidden | Arya Voronova | [
"Multitouch Hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"e-field",
"gesture sensor",
"microchip"
] | In today’s “futuristic tech you can get for $5”, [RealCorebb] shows us
a gesture sensor, one of the sci-fi kind.
He was doing a desktop clock build, and wanted to add gesture control to it – without any holes that a typical optical sensor needs. After some searching,
he’s found
Microchip’s MGC3130, a gesture sensing chip that works with “E-fields”, more precise than the usual ones, almost as cheap, and with a lovely twist.
The coolest part about this chip is that it needs no case openings. The 3130 can work even behind obstructions like a 3D-printed case. You do need a PCB the size of a laptop touchpad, however — unlike the optical sensors easy to find from the usual online marketplaces. Still, if you have a spot, this is a perfect gesture-sensing solution. [RealCorebb] shows it off to us in
the demo video
.
This PCB design
is available as gerbers+bom+schematic PDF. You can still order one from the files in the repo. Also, you need to use Microchip’s tools to program your preferred gestures into the chip. Still, it pays off, thanks to the chip’s reasonably low price and on-chip gesture processing. And,
[RealCorebb] provides all the explanations you could need
, has
Arduino examples for us, links all the software
, and even provides some Python scripts! Touch-sensitive technology
has been getting more and more steam
in hacker circles – for instance, check out this
open-source 3D-printed trackpad
. | 22 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104626",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2025-03-02T06:20:08",
"content": "Looks like another application of mm waves",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8104679",
"author": "loled",
"timestamp": "2025-03-02T10:25:... | 1,760,371,620.060854 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/01/using-four-rolls-of-film-to-make-one-big-photo/ | Using Four Rolls Of Film To Make One Big Photo | Lewin Day | [
"Art",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"film",
"film camera",
"film photography",
"panorama",
"panoramic camera",
"photography",
"sprocket hole"
] | Typically, if you’re shooting 35 mm film, you’re using it in an old point-and-shoot or maybe a nice SLR. You might even make some sizeable prints if you take a particularly good shot. But you can get altogether weirder with 35 mm if you like, as [Socialmocracy] demonstrates with his
“extreme sprocket hole photography” project
(via
Petapixel
).
The concept is simple enough. [Socialmocracy] wanted to expose four entire rolls of 35 mm film all at the same time in one single shot. To be absolutely clear, we’re not talking about exposing a
frame
on each of four rolls at once. We’re talking about a single exposure covering the entire length of all four films, stacked one on top of the other.
To achieve this, an old-school Cirkut No.6 Outfit camera was pressed into service. It’s a large format camera, originally intended for shooting panoramas. As the camera rotated around under the drive of a clockwork motor, it would spool out more film to capture an image.
[Socialmocracy] outfitted the 100-year-old camera with a custom 3D-printed spool that could handle four rolls of film at once, rather than its usual wide single sheet of large format film. This let the camera shoot its characteristic panoramas, albeit spread out over multiple rolls of film, covering the sprocket holes and all. Hence the name—”extreme sprocket hole photography.”
It’s a neat build, and one that lets [Socialmocracy] use more readily available film to shoot fun panoramas with this old rig. We’ve featured some other great film camera hacks over the years, too,
like this self-pack Polaroid-style film
. Video after the break.
[Thanks to naMretupmoC for the tip!] | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104605",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-03-02T04:29:43",
"content": "As a young kid I remember seeing some 60 to 90 cm long photographs (two to three feet), that were taken sometime after 1900, usually taken of all the students and teachers of an entire school standing outsi... | 1,760,371,620.348495 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/01/the-bus-pirate-5-sure-can-glitch/ | The Bus Pirate 5 Sure Can Glitch | Arya Voronova | [
"Reverse Engineering",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"bus pirate",
"Bus Pirate 5",
"chip glitching",
"glitching",
"power glitching"
] | Own a Bus Pirate 5? Now, it can do power glitching,
thanks to [Matt Brugman’s] demo
and contributions to the stock code. This is also a great demo of Bus Pirate’s capabilities and programmability! All you need is the Bus Pirate and a generic Arduino – load a glitch-vulnerable code example into the Arduino, get yourself a generic FET-based glitching setup, and you too can play.
The Arduino board outputs data over UART, and that’s used as a trigger for the Bus Pirate’s new glitch feature – now mainline, thanks to [Matt]’s pull request. It’s pretty feature-complete, too — all parameters are configurable, it can vary the glitching interval, as one would want, and the code checks for success conditions so that it can retry glitching automatically.
In this demo, it only took six consecutive attempts to successfully glitch the ATMega328P – wouldn’t you know it, the code that got glitched was pulled almost wholesale from an IoT device. Glitching remains an underappreciated vector for reverse-engineering, and there’s really no shortage of hacks it allows you to do – get yourself a FET, a Bus Pirate, or maybe
just an ESP8266
, and join the glitching-aware hackers club!
Want to know more about the Bus Pirate 5? Check out our
hands-on review of the hacker multi-tool
from last year. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104751",
"author": "William Payne",
"timestamp": "2025-03-02T14:54:24",
"content": "ESP32 c compiler and hardware platforms issues with Arduino Board Manage caused esp32 board driver urLS reporting bad links.Latest attempt to get a esp32 platform working resulted in Arduino crashin... | 1,760,371,620.189244 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/01/why-are-cassette-and-cd-players-so-big-now/ | Why Are Cassette And CD Players So Big Now? | Navarre Bartz | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"audio cassette",
"battery",
"bluetooth",
"car",
"cassette",
"cd player",
"CdS",
"compact disk",
"music",
"stereo",
"tape",
"tape deck"
] | The early 2000s were the halcyon days of physical media. While not as svelte as MP3 players became, why are those early 2000s machines smaller than
all the new models popping up
amidst the retro audio craze?
We’ve bemoaned the
end of the electromechanical era
before, and the Verge recently interviewed the people at We Are Rewind and Filo to get the skinny on just why these newer cassette and CD players aren’t as small as their predecessors. It turns out that all currently produced cassette players use the same mechanism with some small tweaks in materials (like metal flywheels in these higher quality models) because the engineering required to design a smaller and better sounding alternative isn’t warranted by the niche nature of the cassette resurgence.
A similar fate has befallen the laser head of CD mechanisms, which is why we don’t have those smooth, rounded players anymore. Economies of scale in the early 2000s mean that even a cheap player from that era can outperform a lot of the newer ones, although you won’t have newer features like Bluetooth to scandalize your audiophile friends. A new
Minidisc player
is certainly out of the question, although production of discs only
ended this February
.
If you’re looking to get back into cassettes,
this masterclass is a good place to start
. If you don’t fancy any of the players the Verge looked at, how about
rolling your own incarnation
with the guts from a vintage machine or
just going for the aesthetic
if cassettes aren’t your jam? | 65 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104469",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-03-01T21:12:06",
"content": "2000? The Sony WM-10, even smaller than the circa 2000 EX-910 player shown there, was introduced in1983. A delicate, precious little thing though, not something you casually handed to friends to play with... | 1,760,371,620.290988 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/01/steamvr-controller-controlling-addressable-leds/ | SteamVR Controller Controlling Addressable LEDs | Lewin Day | [
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"openvr",
"SteamVR",
"virtual reality",
"vr"
] | [Chris] had an idea. When playing VR games like BeatSaber, he realized that spectators without headsets weren’t very included in the action. He wanted to create some environmental lighting that would make everyone feel more a part of the action. He’s taken the first steps towards that goal,
interfacing SteamVR controllers with addressable LEDs.
Armed with Python, OpenVR, and some help from ChatGPT, [Chris] got to work. He was soon able to create a mapping utility that let him create a virtual representation of where his
WLED-controlled
LED strips were installed in the real world. Once everything was mapped out, he was able to set things up so that pointing the controller to a given location would light the corresponding LED strips. Wave at the windows, the strips on that wall light up. Wave towards the other wall, the same thing happens.
Right now, the project is just a proof of concept. [Chris] has enabled basic interactivity with the controllers and lights, he just hasn’t fully built it out or gamified it yet. The big question is obvious, though—can you use this setup while actually playing a game?
“I just found the OpenVR function/object that allows it to act as an overlay, meaning it can function while other games are working,” [Chris] told me. “My longer term goals would be trying to interface more with a game directly such as BeatSaber, and the light in the room would correspond with the game environment.”
We can’t wait to see where this goes next. We fully expect flashy LED room setups to become the norm at VR cafes hosting BeatSaber competitions in future. We’ve featured
plenty of other coverage of VR lately, too
. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104400",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2025-03-01T18:34:20",
"content": "I had a similar (but simpler) idea already quite some time ago. The idea is to put photo diodes on gadgets (lights, switches, roller blinds etc) and then shine on them with a modified laser pointer, that ... | 1,760,371,620.446961 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/01/practice-while-you-work/ | Practice While You Work | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"newsletter",
"Practice",
"precision"
] | This week, I had to do something I haven’t done in a long, long time: make myself a custom PCB the old-fashioned way, with laser toner and etchant. The reason? I bought a horrible K40 laser cutter, and the motion controller doesn’t seem to be able to do acceleration control, which means the machine rams full speed into and out of 90 degree corners, for instance. It sounds awful, and it dramatically limits how fast the laser cutter can run.
The plan, then, is to use
a controller based on the wonderful FluidNC
, but that meant making an adapter board for the flat-flex cable that connects to the X carriage, and the connector has 2 mm pin spacings instead of the usual 2.54 mm, and it just doesn’t fit into any prototyping boards that I have lying around. Besides, a custom PCB adapter board just looks neater.
I wasn’t confident that I could align and drill the dozen small holes for the flat-flex connector; they didn’t have much extra space around them for the copper pads. These holes had to be dead on, or risk ripping them up. And this is where I heard the voice of my old Jedi master.
When you have a tricky operation coming up that requires more precision than you’re immediately comfortable with, you can practice on the other parts of the project that
don’t
demand that much precision. Pretending that they do, and taking all the care that you can, gets you in shape to tackle the truly critical bits, and if you mess up a little on the easy stuff, it’s not a problem. I had more than a few pin-headers and other random holes to drill for practice anyway.
Now of course, you could always be giving all of your projects 100% all of the time, if time is never of the essence and effort is free. In the real world, you don’t always want to work at maximum precision. Good enough is often good enough.
But there’s also a time and a place for practicing precision, especially when you see a need for it up ahead. Drilling the big holes dead center got me back in the swing of things, and they needed to get drilled one way or the other. I find it useful to think about the job first, plan ahead where the tricky bits are going to be, and then treat the “easy” stuff along the way as practice for the more demanding operations. Hope you do too!
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
! | 20 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104360",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2025-03-01T15:18:09",
"content": "Ditch the flex cable. I considered what you’ve done, and it was much easier just to extend the motor and end switch cables. The fluidnc controller is an unbelievable transformation!",
"parent_id": nu... | 1,760,371,620.406786 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/01/making-a-pcr-machine-crypto-sign-its-results/ | Making A PCR Machine Crypto Sign Its Results | Arya Voronova | [
"Medical Hacks",
"Science",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"cryptographic signature",
"hsm",
"PCR",
"polymerase chain reaction",
"signing"
] | Money, status, or even survival – there’s no shortage of incentives for faking results in the scientific community. What can we do to prevent it, or at least make it noticeable? One possible solution is cryptographic signing of measurement results.
Here’s
a proof-of-concept
from [Clement Heyd] and [Arbion Halili]. They took a ThermoFisher Scientific 7500 Fast PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) machine, isolated its daughter-software, and confined it into a pipeline that automatically signs each result with help of a HSM (Hardware Security Module).
A many machines do, this one has to be paired to a PC, running bespoke software. This one’s running Windows XP, at least! The software got shoved into a heavily isolated virtual machine running XP, protected by TEE (Trusted Execution Environment). The software’s output is now piped into a data diode virtual serial port out of the VM, immediately signed with the HSM, and signed data is accessible through a read-only interface. Want to verify the results’ authenticity? Check them against the system’s public key, and you’re golden – in theory.
This design is just a part of the puzzle, given a typical chain of custody for samples in medical research, but it’s a solid start – and it happens to help make the Windows XP setup more resilient, too.
Wondering what PCR testing is good for? Tons of things all over the medical field, for instance,
we’ve talked about PCR in a fair bit of detail
in this article about COVID-19 testing. We’ve also
covered
a number
of hacker-built
PCR and PCR-enabling
machines, from deceivingly simple to reasonably complex! | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104315",
"author": "lightislight",
"timestamp": "2025-03-01T12:38:01",
"content": "Great project. There are a lot of ways to fix this in modern instrumentation without all the work arounds. It’s definitely best done at the manufacturer level and I applaud them for what they’ve done... | 1,760,371,620.567899 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/01/building-a-nerf-like-rocket-launcher-with-airburst-capability/ | Building A Nerf-like Rocket Launcher With Airburst Capability | Lewin Day | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"blaster",
"foam",
"nerf",
"nerf blaster",
"rocket launcher"
] | Nerf blasters typically fire small foam darts or little foam balls. [Michael Pick] wanted to build something altogether more devastating. To that end,
he created a rocket launcher with an advanced air burst capability,
intended to take out enemies behind cover.
Unlike Nerf’s own rocket launchers, this build doesn’t just launch a bigger foam dart. Instead, it launches an advanced smart projectile that releases lots of smaller foam submunitions at a set distance after firing.
The rocket launcher itself is assembled out of off-the-shelf pipe and 3D printed components. An Arduino Uno runs the show, hooked up to a Bluetooth module and a laser rangefinder. The rangefinder determines the distance to the target, and the Bluetooth module then communicates this to the rocket projectile itself so it knows when to release its foamy payload after launch. Releasing the submunitions is achieved with a small microservo in the projectile which opens a pair of doors in flight, scattering foam on anyone below. The rockets are actually fired via strong elastic bands, with an electronic servo-controlled firing mechanism.
We’ve featured some great Nerf builds over the years,
like this rocket-blasting robot
. | 25 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8104304",
"author": "Rock Erickson",
"timestamp": "2025-03-01T11:15:56",
"content": "Nice AI thumbnail in the video, I’m pleased not to watch it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8104316",
"author": "lightislight",
... | 1,760,371,620.50879 |
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