url stringlengths 37 208 | title stringlengths 4 148 | author stringclasses 173 values | publish_date stringclasses 1 value | categories listlengths 0 12 | tags listlengths 0 27 | featured_image stringlengths 0 272 | content stringlengths 0 56.1k | comments_count int64 0 900 | scraped_comments_count int64 0 50 | comments listlengths 0 50 | scraped_at float64 1.76B 1.76B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/27/film-capacitors-can-go-in-the-wrong-way-round-who-knew/ | Film Capacitors Can Go In The Wrong Way Round? Who Knew! | Jenny List | [
"Parts"
] | [
"audio",
"capacitor",
"noise"
] | You can work with a part for many decades, and still learn something new about it. At least we can, and we don’t mind admitting it. Take film capacitors — we all know they aren’t a polarized part like an electrolytic capacitor is, but as [TheDannVal] points out,
that doesn’t mean both their leads are the same
.
This might sound counterintuitive, but if you consider for a moment their construction it makes sense. A film capacitor is made from two strips of foil with a strip of plastic film between then, rolled up tightly into a cylinder. One of the pieces of foil that forms one side of the capacitor ends up on the outside of the cylinder, and thus forms the shield for the other. Thus if that side isn’t connected to the lower impedance side of whichever circuitry it resides in, it can pick up noise, while the inside strip of foil can not. It’s so obvious when demonstrated, but we have to admit to never having considered it before. Some film capacitors have a line marked on them to denote the connection forming the shield, for those that don’t he provides a couple of methods for detecting it.
The full video is below the break, and maybe you too can now pay attention to your capacitors for lower noise audio circuitry. | 34 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "8089915",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-01-28T07:21:08",
"content": "Ahh yes the dropper power supply capacitorI rarely see them anywhere else",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8089925",
"author": "Cody",
"time... | 1,760,371,655.394769 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/26/making-a-mini-am-transmitter-better/ | Making A Mini AM Transmitter Better | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"am",
"AM Transmitter",
"radio transmitter"
] | The chances are that many of you will have made an FM “bug” style transmitter, a simple one-transistor oscillator usually driven by a small electret microphone. It’s also relatively straightforward to do the same for AM, and if you take a look through AliExpress you’ll find some modules which do just that. [Doz Television Workshop] has one, and he’s treated us to
a thorough run-down of its design before addressing some of its shortcomings
.
An AM transmitter is simple enough, in this case an oscillator and buffer driving a class C power amplifier. The modulation is applied by a transistor in series with the power amp, driven from an audio amplifier. Some attention has gone into the design of this one, with a proper output filter and plenty of room for tweaking to achieve proper levels and modulation density. There are some problems though — The modulator transistor is mounted upside down for the heatsink, and the frequency stability leaves something to be desired. [Doz] fixes the heatsink mounting and incorporates a DDS frequency synthesizer with an Arduino for control.
More after the break…
The resulting transmitter is better, but there’s still a problem. The limitations of AM broadcasting demanded both limiting and pre-emphasis, which he applies in software through one of the more powerful Teensy boards. We have to admit we’d have tried to do the job the analogue way, but that’s merely preference.
This board looks to be a good solution for an AM radio collector wishing to use their sets in an age of declining AM transmission. It should be legal under Part 15 for Americans, but as he points out it’s not for Brits. We suspect such a low-powered device wouldn’t attract adverse attention though. The video is below the break.
If you don’t need so much quality,
it’s possible to do the job in a much less elegant manner
. | 32 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8089259",
"author": "Julianne",
"timestamp": "2025-01-27T05:05:02",
"content": "I never built one of these because where I live you’d need a Amateur Radio license to be allowed to do so. You’d also need that license to attach a proper antenna to a low power device that just had a pi... | 1,760,371,655.831101 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/26/hackaday-links-january-26-2025/ | Hackaday Links: January 26, 2025 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"amazon",
"bioelectric",
"Bucholz",
"cable",
"crimp",
"drone",
"dupont",
"hackaday links",
"keyboard",
"mushroom",
"pipeline",
"plant",
"Prime Air",
"prtection",
"substation",
"transformer",
"uav",
"undersea",
"USV"
] | Disappointing news this week for those longing for same-hour Amazon delivery as the retail giant
tapped the brakes on its Prime Air drone deliveries
. The pause is partially blamed on a December incident at the company’s Pendleton, Oregon test facility, where two MK30 delivery drones collided in midair during light rain conditions.
A Bloomberg report
states that the crash, which resulted in one of the drones catching fire on the ground, was due to a software error related to the weather. As a result, they decided to ground their entire fleet, which provides 60-minute delivery to test markets in Arizona and Texas, until a software update can be issued.
While we’ve always been skeptical about the practicality of drone delivery, it sure seems like Amazon is taking it seriously and making progress. There’s plenty of money to be made catering to the impatience of consumers and the general need for instant gratification, and where there’s potential for profit, technology is never far behind. So chances are good that someone will get this right, and with an infinite bucket of money and the ability to attract top talent, this is Amazon’s contest to lose. It is a bit alarming, though, that a little rain knocked these drones out of the air. We’d love to find out exactly what happened and how they plan to fix it.
Also in drone news,
NATO has decided to deploy “drone boats”
to help protect undersea cables and pipelines. A total of 20 uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) will be deployed as part of Operation Baltic Sentry, which will include twelve crewed vessels and an unspecified number of patrol aircraft. The idea is to get eyes and ears on the infrastructure assets under the Baltic Sea, where a number of incidents have occurred over the last year or so, resulting in pipelines and undersea cables being damaged. That’s an understandable goal, but we’re keen on the USV itself. There’s not much information about them, and it’s not even clear which navy in the NATO bloc has these things. It’s also a little hard to tell how big they are, although our guess would be somewhere between a large patrol boat and a small cutter. We’d also like to know if these are remotely operated vessels or autonomous; again, our guess would be a mix of the two.
We got a tip this week about
a post over on the Arduino forum
with detailed instructions on making your own Dupont jumpers. There’s a link to a PDF with the pictorial guide, which shows exactly how to make these handy tools. Some people commented on this being a waste of time when you can buy jumpers on the cheap. But we’ve heard enough horror stories about those that rolling your own seems prudent. Plus we really liked the tips on crimping two leads into a single connector.
A few decades ago, there was a better-than-average chance that any band’s keyboardist was on mushrooms. Things have flipped, though, and now we’ve got
shrooms on the keyboards
. It comes to us from “Bionics and the Wire,” a Manchester, UK group that makes music with plants and mushrooms. There’s no detail on the equipment they use, but the business end of the instrument is a set of four solenoid-operated arms positioned over a keyboard. Electrodes are clipped to the caps of a couple of Wood Ear mushrooms, and whatever electrical signals they pick up are presumably passed to some amplifiers that figure out which notes to play. They claim the signals come from natural bioelectric activity in the fungi, but we suppose some of the signals may be coming from random electrical noise picked up by the mushrooms. Either way, the tune is pretty cool.
And finally, a while back we did
a piece on electrical substations
that took a look at all the cool stuff found in and around the big transformers that keep the grid running. One piece of gear that we read about but couldn’t find enough information on to include in the article was the Bucholz relay, a piece of protective gear that monitors the flow of dielectric oil inside these big transformers. Thankfully, the YouTube algorithm detected our frustration and suggested
this cool video
on how the Bucholz relay works. It’s remarkably simple, which is pretty much what you want for something that protects millions of dollars of irreplaceable infrastructure. The video also has a lot of nice details on the other bits and pieces inside a transformer. Enjoy! | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8089242",
"author": "rasz_pl",
"timestamp": "2025-01-27T02:47:04",
"content": "NATO has decided to deploy “drone boats”Meanwhile another fiberoptic cable connecting Latvia and Sweden got cut just yesterday.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,371,655.878583 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/26/the-esp32-c5-finally-espressif-goes-dual-band/ | The ESP32-C5, Finally Espressif Goes Dual-Band | Jenny List | [
"Parts"
] | [
"5GHz",
"ESP32-C5"
] | The ESP32 series of microcontrollers have been with us for quite a few years now, providing a powerful processor and wireless connectivity for not a huge outlay. We’ve seen a bunch of versions over the years with both Tensilica and RISC-V cores, but so far the ones with radios have all only serviced 2.4 GHz WiFi. That’s about to change to include 5GHz with the new C5 variant though, and [Andreas Spiess]
has been lucky enough to get his hands on a prototype dev kit
It’s very similar to the C6, which we’re already used to beyond the dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio from a software point of view. The C5 is so new that the company has yet to incorporate the new chip into the Arduino IDE. He shows it working and detecting both networks though, and speculates a little about its eventual marketing.
Interesting to us is the dual-band antenna, with branches for both frequencies on the same PCB. We’d be interested to see the real-world performance of this, and also whether they produce a version with separate outputs for each band. The full video is below the break. In the meantime, watch out for this chip appearing on the market.
It’s
not the only Espresif chip we’re anticipating at the moment
. | 21 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8089078",
"author": "Jan Prägert",
"timestamp": "2025-01-26T21:56:18",
"content": "Their product line is like a bingo card with a feature matrix, and every once in a while someone has a new product. BINGO!Would love to see a Bingo with more than 520k SRAM…",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,655.939793 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/26/a-waist-level-viewfinder-for-not-a-lot/ | A Waist Level Viewfinder For Not A Lot | Jenny List | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"optics",
"viewfinder"
] | Photographic accessories are often plagued by high prices, as photography is considered a rich man’s game. It doesn’t have to be that way though, and [Snappiness] is here to get you started on the route to cheaper kit with
a waist-level viewfinder project
.
If you’ve used a twin-lens reflex camera then you should be familiar with a waist level viewfinder, it’s a lens and mirror arrangement allowing the photographer to frame the shot looking down from above. Modern cameras often have no viewfinder, so this is aimed at digital compacts without flip-up screens.
It has three components, all available for relatively low prices, and mounted in a 3D printed case. There’s a prime lens, a mirror, and a Fresnel lens forming the part the photographer looks through. It’s a simple device, but still one which would cost a lot more off the shelf. The video is below the break.
It might interest you to know that
this is not the first viewfinder project we’ve brought you for digital cameras
. | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8088883",
"author": "Collie147",
"timestamp": "2025-01-26T21:16:22",
"content": "Great job. I remember the first time I looked down a medium format hassleblad when I was a kid and thought wow! Absolutely worth trying to build one myself, even if just something to show the kids.",
... | 1,760,371,655.443437 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/26/shedding-light-on-quantum-measurement-with-calcite/ | Shedding Light On Quantum Measurement With Calcite | Heidi Ulrich | [
"home hacks",
"Laser Hacks",
"News",
"Science"
] | [
"calcite",
"entanglement",
"light",
"optics",
"photons",
"quantum measurement",
"quantum mechanics"
] | Have you ever struggled with the concept of quantum measurement, feeling it’s unnecessarily abstract? You’re not alone. Enter
this guide by [Mithuna]
from Looking Glass Universe, where she circles back on the concept of measurement basis in quantum mechanics using a rather simple piece of calcite crystal. We
wrote about similar endeavours
in reflection on Shanni Prutchi’s talk at the Hackaday SuperConference in 2015. If that memory got a bit dusty in your mind, here’s a quick course to make things click again.
In essence, calcite splits a beam of light into two dots based on polarization. By aligning filters and rotating angles, you can observe how light behaves when forced into ‘choices’. The dots you see are a direct representation of the light’s polarization states. Now this isn’t just a neat trick for photons; it’s a practical window into the probability-driven nature of quantum systems.
Even with just one photon passing through per second, the calcite setup demonstrates how light ‘chooses’ a path, revealing the probabilistic essence of quantum mechanics. Using common materials (laser pointers, polarizing filters, and calcite), anyone can reproduce this experiment at home.
If this sparks curiosity, explore Hackaday’s archives for
quantum mechanics
. Or just find yourself a good slice of calcite online, steal the laser pointer from your cat’s toy bin, and get going! | 19 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8088640",
"author": "Carl Breen",
"timestamp": "2025-01-26T15:40:43",
"content": "There is no choice here. Calcite birefringence is simply that the trigonal crystal system is not isotropic in all directions. At best you can use a calcite crystal as a separator. Whilst polarization f... | 1,760,371,655.754049 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/26/prompt-injection-tricks-ai-into-downloading-and-executing-malware/ | Prompt Injection Tricks AI Into Downloading And Executing Malware | Donald Papp | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Software Hacks"
] | [] | [wunderwuzzi] demonstrates a proof of concept in which a service that enables an AI to control a virtual computer (in this case, Anthropic’s
Claude Computer Use
) is made to download and execute a piece of malware that successfully connects to a command and control (C2) server. [wonderwuzzi] makes the reasonable case that
such a system has therefore become a “ZombAI”
. Here’s how it worked.
Referring to the malware as a “support tool” and embedding instructions into the body of the web page is what got the binary downloaded and executed, compromising the system.
After setting up a web page with a download link to the malicious binary, [wunderwuzzi] attempts to get
Claude
to download and run the malware. At first,
Claude
doesn’t bite. But that all changes when the content of the HTML page gets rewritten with instructions to download and execute the “Support Tool”. That new content gets interpreted as orders to follow; being essentially a form of
prompt injection
.
Claude
dutifully downloads the malicious binary, then autonomously (and cleverly) locates the downloaded file and even uses
chmod
to make it executable before running it. The result? A compromised machine.
Now, just to be clear,
Claude Computer Use
is experimental and this sort of risk is absolutely and explicitly called out in Anthropic’s documentation. But what’s interesting here is that the methods used to convince
Claude
to compromise the system it’s using are essentially the same one might take to convince a person. Make something nefarious look innocent, and obfuscate the true source (and intent) of the directions. Watch it in action from beginning to end in a video, embedded just under the page break.
This is a demonstration of the importance of security and caution when using or designing systems like this. It’s also a reminder that large language models (LLMs) fundamentally mix instructions and input data together in the same stream. This is a big part of what makes them so fantastically useful at communicating naturally, but it’s also why prompt injection is so tricky to truly solve. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8088633",
"author": "Jeff",
"timestamp": "2025-01-26T15:05:33",
"content": "I acknowledge that this proof of concept captures my attention, but I see it as no different from any other niche software vulnerability. I recognize that an attacker must still meet very specific conditions... | 1,760,371,655.301957 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/26/steam-brick-makes-your-steam-deck-headless/ | Steam Brick Makes Your Steam Deck Headless | Navarre Bartz | [
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"portable",
"steam deck"
] | Handhelds are designed to be portable, but what if you need something smaller than OEM? The Steam Brick pulls basically everything off of a Steam Deck to
make it as portable as possible
.
[crastinator-pro] found they rarely used the controller or screen on their Steam Deck, and the form factor was too bulky to conveniently chuck into their bag, negating the advantage of owning a portable console. As to be expected from any self-respecting hacker, they did a couple quick tests with components unplugged then got to work with the rotary tool.
After excising the main board from its handheld bonds and trimming unnecessary bits from the aluminum frame around the mainboard, they designed a case that can be tossed in a bag without any special treatment. The case was printed in polycarbonate to better withstand the heat of the console running at full tilt, and the colorful details were added in PLA with a 3D pen.
We’ve discussed using a
Steam Deck as a single-board computer
before, but if you want to keep it in one piece, you could also get it
setup in a slick keyboard case
. | 44 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8088547",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2025-01-26T11:01:58",
"content": "I’m not much of a gamer, so while cunning the main work of shrinking the steam deck doesn’t interest me so much. The use of a 3D pen to add colour to the case however is a great idea, and I’d be interested in w... | 1,760,371,655.526588 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/25/capacitor-decoupling-chaos-and-why-you-should-abandon-100-nf/ | Capacitor Decoupling Chaos, And Why You Should Abandon 100 NF | Maya Posch | [
"hardware"
] | [
"capacitor",
"decoupling",
"decoupling capacitors"
] | Everyone knows that the perfect capacitor to decouple the power rails around ICs is a 100 nF ceramic capacitor or equivalent, yet where does this ‘fact’ come from and is it even correct? These are the questions that
[Graham] set out to answer once and for all
. He starts with an in-depth exploration of the decoupling capacitor (and related) theory. [Graham] then dives into the way that power delivery is affected by the inherent resistance, capacitance, and inductance of traces. This is the problem that decoupling capacitors are supposed to solve.
Effectively, the decoupling capacitor provides a low-impedance path at high frequencies and a high-impedance path at low frequencies. Ideally, a larger value capacitor would be better, but since this is the real world and capacitors have ESL and ESR parameters, we get to look at impedance graphs. This is the part where we can see exactly what decoupling effect everyone’s favorite 100 nano-farad capacitors have, which as it turns out is pretty miserable.
Meanwhile, a 1 µF (ceramic) capacitor will have much better performance, as shown with impedance graphs for MLCC capacitors. As a rule of thumb, a single large decoupling capacitor is better, while two MLCC side-by-side can worsen noise. Naturally, one has to keep in mind that although ‘more capacity is better for decoupling’, there is still such a thing as ‘inrush current’ so don’t go too crazy with putting 1,000 µF decoupling capacitors everywhere. | 64 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "8088473",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2025-01-26T07:12:40",
"content": "It would have been interesting for the simulation to include board-level capacitors and typical traces there (50-100 mm). 100 nF locally isn’t that “miserable”, because at the board level there are often larg... | 1,760,371,655.696937 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/25/does-a-radome-affect-radio/ | Does A Radome Affect Radio? | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"geodesic dome",
"Radio Astronomy",
"radome"
] | Not too far away from where this is being written is one of Uncle Sam’s NATO outposts, a satellite earth station for their comms system. Its most prominent feature is a radome, a huge golf-ball-like structure visible for miles, that protects a large parabolic antenna from the British weather. It makes sense not just for a superpower to protect its antennas from the elements, and [saveitforparts] is doing the same with a geodesic dome for his radio telescope experiments. But what effect does it have on the received signal?
He’s made a video to investigate
.
The US military radome is likely constructed of special RF-transparent materials, but this smaller version has a fibreglass skin and an aluminium frame. When he compares internal and external sky scans made with a small motorised satellite TV antenna he finds that the TV satellites are just as strong, but that the noise floor is higher and the frame is visible in the scan. It’s particularly obvious with such small dish, and his planned larger array should improve matters.
We would be curious to know whether an offset-fed dish constructed to minimise ground noise reaching the LNB, would improve matters further. It’s no surprise that the frame doesn’t impede the TV satellites though, as it is many wavelengths wide at that frequency. The video is below the break, and meanwhile,
we featured the antenna he’s using here
in 2023. | 24 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8088391",
"author": "Vik",
"timestamp": "2025-01-26T03:46:57",
"content": "The now defunct Waihopai spy dishes in New Zealand were covered in inflatable radomes, which we know because some subversive types deflated them with scythes in 2008.As I say, not needed now. The GCSB snoops ... | 1,760,371,655.590299 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/25/software-lets-you-paint-surface-patterns-on-3d-prints/ | Software Lets You Paint Surface Patterns On 3D Prints | Adam Fabio | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"materials",
"surface finish"
] | Just when you think you’ve learned all the latest 3D printing tricks, [TenTech] shows up with an update to their Fuzzyficator post-processing script. This time, the GPL v3 licensed program has
gained early support for “paint-on” textures
.
Fuzzyficator works as a plugin to OrcaSlicer, Bambu Studio, and PrusaSlicer. The process starts with an image that acts as a displacement map. Displacement map pixel colors represent how much each point on the print surface will be moved from its original position. Load the displacement map into Fuzzyficator, and you can paint the pattern on the surface right in the slicer.
This is just a proof of concept though, as [TenTech] is quick to point out. There are still some bugs to be worked out. Since the modifications are made to the G-code file rather than the model, the software has a hard time figuring out if the pattern should be pressed into the print, or lifted above the base surface. Rounded surfaces can cause the pattern to deform to fit the surface.
If you’d like to take the process into your own hands, we’ve previously shown how
Blender can be used to add textures to your 3D prints
. | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8088364",
"author": "AZdave",
"timestamp": "2025-01-26T01:04:27",
"content": "Wouldn’t the surface() operator in OpenSCAD do pretty much the same thing? Except the result would be in the .stl file and not need any mods to the gcode. I suppose it would only work on flat surfaces, ... | 1,760,371,656.005847 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/25/soviet-wired-radio-how-it-worked/ | Soviet Wired Radio, How It Worked | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"broadcasting",
"USSR",
"wired radio"
] | At the height of the Cold War, those of us on the western side of the wall had plenty of choice over our radio listening, even if we stuck with our country’s monolithic broadcaster. On the other side in the Soviet Union, radio for many came without a choice of source, in the form of wired radio systems built into all apartments. [Railways | Retro Tech | DIY] grew up familiar with these wired radios, and
treats us to a fascinating examination of their technology, programming, and ultimate decline
.
In a Soviet apartment, usually in the kitchen, there would be a “Radio” socket on the wall. Confusingly the same physical dimension as a mains socket, it carried an audio signal. The box which plugged into it was referred to as a radio, but instead contained only a transformer, loudspeaker, and volume control. These carried the centralised radio station, piped from Moscow to the regions by a higher voltage line, then successively stepped down at regional, local, and apartment block level. A later refinement brought a couple more stations on separate sub-carriers, but it was the single channel speakers which provided the soundtrack for daily life.
The decline of the system came over the decades following the end of communism, and he describes its effect on the mostly older listenership. Now the speaker boxes survive as affectionate curios for those like him who grew up with them.
You probably won’t be surprised to find
twisted-wire broadcasting in use in the West, too
.
Thanks [Stephen Walters] for the tip. | 43 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "8088278",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-01-25T21:29:48",
"content": "I wish I’d known about this before reading George Orwell’sNineteen Eighty-Four(1949). This adds a new dimension to the 2-way TV in every home.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}... | 1,760,371,656.50362 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/25/preventing-ai-plagiarism-with-ass/ | Preventing AI Plagiarism With .ASS Subtitling | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Artificial Intelligence"
] | [
"ai",
"artificial intelligence",
"ass",
"generative AI",
"plagiarism",
"poison",
"srt",
"subtitles",
"youtube"
] | Around two years ago, the world was inundated with news about how generative AI or large language models would revolutionize the world. At the time it was easy to get caught up in the hype, but in the intervening months these tools have done little in the way of productive work outside of a few edge cases, and mostly serve to burn tons of cash while turning the Internet into even more of a desolate wasteland than it was before. They do this largely by regurgitating human creations like text, audio, and video into inferior simulacrums and, if you still want to exist on the Internet, there’s basically nothing you can do to prevent this sort of plagiarism.
Except feed the AI models garbage data like this YouTuber has started doing
.
At least as far as YouTube is concerned, the worst offenders of AI plagiarism work by downloading the video’s subtitles, passing them through some sort of AI model, and then generating another YouTube video based off of the original creator’s work. Most subtitle files are the fairly straightfoward
.srt
filetype which only allows for timing and text information. But a more obscure subtitle filetype known as Advanced SubStation Alpha, or
.ass
, allows for all kinds of subtitle customization like orientation, formatting, font types, colors, shadowing, and many others. YouTuber [f4mi] realized that using this subtitle system, extra garbage text could be placed in the subtitle filetype but set out of view of the video itself, either by placing the text outside the viewable area or increasing its transparency. So now when an AI crawler downloads the subtitle file it can’t distinguish real subtitles from the garbage placed into it.
[f4mi] created a few scripts to do this automatically so that it doesn’t have to be done by hand for each one. It also doesn’t impact the actual subtitles on the screen for people who need them for accessibility reasons. It’s a great way to “poison” AI models and make it at least harder for them to rip off the creations of original artists, and [f4mi]’s tests show that it does work.
We’ve actually seen a similar method for poisoning data sets used for emails long ago
, back when we were all collectively much more concerned about groups like the NSA using automated snooping tools in our emails than we were that machines were going to steal our creative endeavors.
Thanks to [www2] for the tip! | 57 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "8088210",
"author": "osmarks",
"timestamp": "2025-01-25T18:24:37",
"content": "This won’t stop autotranscription from audio. And a right-thinking person wants to be in more training data for obvious reasons (wider exposure, shifting the text prior).",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,371,656.319587 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/25/networking-history-lessons/ | Networking History Lessons | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Network Hacks",
"Rants"
] | [
"history",
"networking",
"newsletter"
] | Do they teach networking history classes yet? Or is it still too soon?
I was reading [Al]’s first installment of the
Forgotten Internet series, on UUCP
. The short summary is that it was a system for sending files across computers that were connected, intermittently, by point-to-point phone lines. Each computer knew the phone numbers of a few others, but none of them had anything like a global routing map, and IP addresses were still in the future. Still, it enabled file transfer and even limited remote access across the globe. And while some files contained computer programs, others files contained more human messages, which makes UUCP also a precursor to e-mail.
What struck me is how intuitively many of this system’s natural conditions and limitations lead to the way we network today. From phone numbers came the need for IP addresses. And from the annoyance of having know how the computers were connected, and to use the bang notation to route a message from one computer to another through intermediaries, would come our modern routing protocols, simply because computer nerds like to automate hassles wherever possible.
But back to networking history. I guess
I learned my networking on the mean streets
, by running my own Linux system, and web servers, and mail servers. I knew enough networking to get by, but that mostly focused on the current-day application, and my beard is not quite grey enough to have been around for the UUCP era. So I’m only realizing now that knowing how the system evolved over time helps a lot in understanding why it is the way it is, and thus how it functions. I had a bit of a “eureka” moment reading about UUCP.
In physics or any other science, you learn not just the status quo in the field, but also how it developed over the centuries. It’s important to know something about the theory of the aether to know what special relativity was up against, for instance, or the various historical models of the atom, to see how they inform modern chemistry and physics. But these are old sciences with a lot of obsolete theories. Is computer science old enough that they teach networking history? They should!
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
! | 34 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8088134",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-01-25T15:43:04",
"content": "Just to clarify, email between users of different computershistory) pre-dates UUCP (1976). SMTP came along later.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "80... | 1,760,371,656.134715 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/25/ai-mistakes-are-different-and-thats-a-problem/ | AI Mistakes AreDifferent, And That’s A Problem | Donald Papp | [
"Artificial Intelligence"
] | [
"ai",
"mistakes"
] | People have been making mistakes — roughly the same ones — since forever, and we’ve spent about the same amount of time learning to detect and mitigate them. Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems make mistakes too, but [Bruce Schneier] and [Nathan E. Sanders] make the observation that, compared to humans,
AI models make entirely different
kinds
of mistakes
. We are perhaps less equipped to handle this unusual problem than we realize.
The basic idea is this: as humans we have tremendous experience making mistakes, and this has also given us a pretty good idea of what to expect our mistakes to look like, and how to deal with them. Humans tend to make mistakes at the edges of our knowledge, our mistakes tend to clump around the same things, we make more of them when bored or tired, and so on. We have as a result developed controls and systems of checks and balances to help reduce the frequency and limit the harm of our mistakes. But these controls don’t carry over to AI systems, because AI mistakes are pretty strange.
The mistakes of AI models (particularly Large Language Models) happen seemingly randomly and aren’t limited to particular topics or areas of knowledge. Models may unpredictably appear to lack common sense. As [Bruce] puts it, “A model might be equally likely to make a mistake on a calculus question as it is to propose that cabbages eat goats.” A slight re-wording of a question might be all it takes for a model to suddenly be confidently and utterly wrong about something it just a moment ago seemed to grasp completely. And speaking of confidence, AI mistakes aren’t accompanied by uncertainty. Of course humans are no strangers to being confidently wrong, but as a whole the sort of mistakes AI systems make aren’t the same kinds of mistakes we’re used to.
There are different ideas on how to deal with this, some of which researchers are (ahem)
confidently
undertaking. But for best results, we’ll need to invent new ways as well. The essay
also appeared in IEEE Spectrum
and isn’t terribly long, so take a few minutes to check it out and get some food for thought.
And remember, if preventing mistakes at all costs is the goal, that problem is already solved:
GOODY-2 is undeniably the world’s safest AI
. | 59 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "8088078",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-01-25T12:59:44",
"content": "In my humble experience, LLMs are great for coding as long as what you require is strictly a very standard and vanilla implementation of something.The moment you want anything even slightly complex, or ... | 1,760,371,656.420009 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/27/diy-probe-clamps-to-ease-your-pcb-work/ | DIY Probe Clamps To Ease Your PCB Work | Donald Papp | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"pcb",
"pcb probe",
"probe clamp",
"probe tip"
] | Those of us familiar with PCB work would agree that anything that helps hold probes secure and hands-free to components, traces, or test points is worth looking at. That’s where [2048bits]’
snap probe
design comes in. With a little additional and inexpensive hardware, one can have all the hands-free probe clamps one’s workbench can fit!
That first link is where you’ll find a list of required hardware and the CAD files (in
.step
format) for the probe itself. The obvious approach to making the pieces would be to 3D print them, but we notice the design — while attractive — looks like a challenging print due to the features. We’re not the only ones to see that, and happily there’s
already a remix
by [user_2299476772] aimed at keeping the essential features while making them easier to print.
If you’re taking a DIY approach to PCB probes, we’d like to remind you that one of our readers discovered
dental burrs make absolutely fantastic, non-slip probe tips
. This seems like a good opportunity to combine two ideas, and having the CAD files for the probe clamp means modification is straightforward. Let us know on
the tips line
if you get something working!
[via
Hackster
] | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8089882",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-01-28T04:10:42",
"content": "Great pointers. Time to upgrade from hacked clothespins.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8089943",
"author": "Skwid",
"timestamp": "2025-01-28T... | 1,760,371,656.762529 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/27/a-low-voltage-solder-gun-from-scratch/ | A Low Voltage Solder Gun From Scratch | Jenny List | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"solder gun",
"soldering",
"step-down"
] | We’re used to those high voltage projects which use a self-oscillating transformer circuit with a TV flyback winding, and we have even at times railed against them for their inefficiency compared to a real flyback circuit using the same parts. But what happens if the same idea is used to create a low voltage instead of a high one? [D. Creative] has
a soldering gun project doing just this
, making a low voltage at a very high current.
The video of the project is below the break, and while electrically it’s nothing unexpected, we’re taken by the quality of the build. All the parts come from scrap electronics, the main transformer is three ferrite cores with a piece of copper busbar as the secondary. The circuitry is built dead bug style, and it’s housed in a gun-style case made by hand from sheet Perspex. It takes 12 volt power from a laptop power supply, and feeds it to the oscillator which is perched up at the back of the device. The transformer fits in the “barrel”, and a pair of large capacitors fit in the handle. We expect it to get hot, but the duty cycle on these devices in use is probably low enough to keep it from melting.
We like anything that uses scrap parts to make something useful, and we’re particularly taken with the casing of this one. It looks as though the parts come from old switch mode power supplies,
something we’ve been known to rob ourselves
. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8089852",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-01-28T00:58:59",
"content": "The induction part is a neat trick, even if it’s pretty low power. But the neatest part about this build is the ability to power it from 12 volts, untethered by a wall cord.Thatis useful.So it’s almost a sh... | 1,760,371,656.55989 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/27/new-open-source-deepseek-v3-language-model-making-waves/ | New Open Source DeepSeek V3 Language Model Making Waves | Maya Posch | [
"Artificial Intelligence"
] | [
"ai",
"large language model"
] | In the world of large language models (LLMs) there tend to be relatively few upsets ever since OpenAI barged onto the scene with its transformer-based GPT models a few years ago, yet now it seems that Chinese company DeepSeek has upended the status quo. Its new
DeepSeek-V3 model
is not only open source, it also claims to have been trained for only a fraction of the effort required by competing models, while
performing significantly better
.
The full training of DeepSeek-V3’s 671B parameters is claimed to have only taken 2.788 M hours on NVidia H800 (
Hopper-based
) GPUs, which is almost a factor of ten less than others. Naturally this has the LLM industry somewhat up in a mild panic, but for those who are not investors in LLM companies or NVidia can partake in this new OSS model that has been released under the MIT license, along with the
DeepSeek-R1 reasoning model
.
Both of these models can be run locally, using both AMD and NVidia GPUs, as well as using the online APIs. If these models do indeed perform as efficiently as claimed, they stand to massively reduce the hardware and power required to not only train but also query LLMs. | 82 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "8089776",
"author": "ted yapo",
"timestamp": "2025-01-27T21:31:42",
"content": "AI that doesn’t burn the planet down is a worthy goal, excluding for the moment the other negative impacts the technology can have on our lives. i kind of get the panic on the hardware stocks, bc maybe y... | 1,760,371,657.020744 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/27/the-ftc-take-action-is-time-finally-up-for-john-deere-on-right-to-repair/ | The FTC Take Action, Is Time Finally Up For John Deere On Right To Repair? | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"FTC",
"john deere",
"right to repair"
] | Over the last decade we have brought you frequent reports not from the coolest of hackerspaces or the most bleeding edge of engineering in California or China, but from the rolling prairies of the American Midwest. Those endless fields of cropland waving in the breeze have been the theatre for an unlikely battle over right to repair, the result of which should affect us all. The case of
FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION, STATE OF ILLINOIS, and STATE OF MINNESOTA, v. DEERE & COMPANY
relates to the machinery manufacturer’s use of DRM to restrict the repair of its products, and holds the promise to end the practice once and for all.
This is being written in Europe, where were an average person asked to name a brand that says “America”, they might reach for the familiar; perhaps Disney, McDonalds, or Coca-Cola. These are the flag-bearers of American culture for outsiders, but it’s fair to say that none of them can claim to have built the country. The green and yellow Deere tractors on the other hand represent the current face of a company with nearly two hundred years of farming history, which by virtue of producing some of the first mass-produced plows, had perhaps the greatest individual role in shaping modern American agriculture and thus indirectly the country itself. To say that Deere is woven into the culture of rural America is something of an understatement, agricultural brands like Deere have an enviable customer base, the most loyal of any industry.
Thus while those green and yellow tractors are far from the only case of DRM protected repairability, they have become the symbolic poster child for the issue as a whole. It’s important to understand then how far-reaching it is beyond the concerns of us technology and open-source enthusiasts, and into something much more fundamental.
The text of the lawsuit itself
can be readily downloaded as a PDF
, and from our non-lawyerly pass it seems that at its heart lies the manufacturer’s monopolistic practices by restricting access to software diagnostic and repair tools, rather than the use of DRM itself. Thus should the suit not go Deere’s way, as we read it it wouldn’t undermine the DMCA or the use of DRM, but it would lessen the attractiveness of DRM to a manufacturer by removing their ability to restrict repairers whether they use DRM or not. This would propagate out beyond the farm, and have a consequent effect on the repairability of much more than tractors.
This lawsuit is the latest of many targeting the same issue, and despite having the FTC behind it we’re not certain of its chances of success in the current climate. We hope that decades of these practices causing a modern Deere to be
worth considerably less than an old one
will inflict enough damage on the brand for its competitors to take note. There was a time when buying a Deere such as the one your scribe piloted over the fields of Oxfordshire years ago was the “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” of agricultural machinery, while now there’s a seed of doubt as to whether a minor breakdown could cause a lost harvest. That’s not an enviable position for any brand to find itself in, especially by its own hand. | 44 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8089696",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-01-27T18:40:41",
"content": "People who cram computers into things for absolutely no good practical purpose except to rent-seek and make things more proprietary and tough to work on should be punished suitably. I vote for public pillory, ... | 1,760,371,656.644228 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/27/contrails-are-a-hot-topic-but-what-is-to-be-done/ | Contrails Are A Hot Topic, But What Is To Be Done? | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"airplane",
"clouds",
"contrail"
] | Most of us first spot them as children—the white lines in the blue sky that are the telltale sign of a flight overhead. Contrails are an instant visual reminder of air travel, and a source of much controversy in recent decades. Put aside the overblown conspiracies, though, and there are some genuine scientific concerns to explore.
See, those white streaks planes leave in the sky aren’t just eye-catching. It seems they may also be having a notable impact on our climate. Recent research shows their warming effect is comparable to the impact of aviation’s CO
2
emissions. The question is then simple—
how do we stop these icy lines from heating our precious Earth?
But How?
A Qantas airliner releases contrails at 36,000 feet. Note the contrails form some way behind the outlet of the engines—the water vapor in the hot exhaust takes time to cool and form ice crystals around tiny particles that act as nucleation points.
Sergey Kustov
, CC BY-SA 3.0
The name contrails is a portmanteau of “condensation trails,” which tells you everything you need to know. Those white streaks form when aircraft fly through cold, humid areas of the atmosphere. They come about when water vapor mixes with tiny particles of soot and sulfur in the aircraft’s exhaust, which act as nucleation points for forming water droplets. These then tend to freeze in low temperature conditions, creating icy particles behind the aircraft. The result? The telltale trail in the sky.
Due to the chemical vagaries of combustion, aircraft exhaust pretty much contains all the ingredients for contrail production—primarily water vapor and tiny particulates. However, those alone aren’t enough to produce a bright and lingering contrail. Some contrails may only last a few seconds, or maybe a few minutes, in moderately cool zones of the atmosphere. However, in places where it gets particularly cold and humid, it’s possible for an aircraft to leave contrails that last for hours, slowly spreading out until they become many kilometers wide. Under these conditions, they functionally increase the level of cloud cover in the atmosphere.
The Problem
Unfortunately, contrails aren’t just pretty lines in the sky. Scientists have found they also have an impact on the climate—and not in the direction we’d like. Unfortunately, contrails tend to have a warming effect. While they increase the amount of sunlight reflected away from Earth, they ultimate trap more heat in the atmosphere than they bounce away.
The sky above Würzburg, Germany—left, with no flights, and right, with regular air traffic. What looks like natural cloud cover is in fact the result of long-lived contrails spreading out over time. Credit:
Wegmann
, CC BY-SA 3.0
It might sound like a minor thing, but the science suggests their warming impact is likely larger than that of fossil fuel emissions from global aviation operations. One study performed in 2018 suggested that contrails are doing more to heat up the Earth than all the CO
2
emitted by aviation
since 1940
. The science is clear – these artificial clouds are a serious climate concern.
There is hope for tackling this icy problem, however. As most of us have noticed, not every plane leaves a bright, long lasting contrail. That’s because atmospheric conditions have to be within a certain range to produce them. Fly in warmer, less humid air, and your contrails won’t last as long—nor do as much harm to the climate.
As it turns out, less than 3% of global flights
generate 80% of contrail warming
. The effect is particularly pronounced in regions like North America, Europe, and the North Atlantic, where high-altitude flights are common. Night flights also cause the most warming, because the clouds are just trapping heat. Daytime flights create less damaging contrails because they reflect some sunlight to offset the heat they’re trapping on Earth.
The good news is that relatively simple solutions exist. By making minor adjustments to flight paths – climbing or descending slightly to avoid the cold, humid atmospheric layers where contrails form – airlines can significantly reduce their climate impact.
In a 2023 trial
, tests by American Airlines and Google showed that it was possible to cut contrail formation by 54% with only a 2% increase in fuel use. With only some flights having to adjust their routes to reduce contrails, the effect could be as little as an 0.3% increase in fuel burn across an airline’s fleet. In fact, one study suggests that the benefits of producing less contrails would be 100 times greater than the penalty of added greenhouse gas emissions
from the greater fuel burn
. Cost-wise, estimates suggest avoiding contrails would add just €3.90 to a Paris-New York ticket or €1.20 to a Barcelona-Berlin flight.
Recent studies suggest just 3% of flights cause 80% of contrail warming. A handful of flights actually create contrails with a cooling effect, but they’re the minority. Credit:
study paper
, data from Teoh, et al (2024)
The aviation industry now faces a clear opportunity: by targeting the small number of flights causing most contrail warming, they could make a major dent in their climate impact at minimal cost. With appropriate weather forecasting and flight planning, contrail avoidance could be one of aviation’s most cost-effective climate solutions.
It’s not an instant solution—there is still a great deal of work to be done before this is a routine practice in the industry. Ultimately, more fuel burn will still cost airlines money, as will the administrative overhead of predicting pro-contrail conditions and tasking aircraft to avoid them. Regardless, addressing contrails offers a smart, immediate way to reduce aviation’s contribution to global warming. The science is solid, the solutions are available, and the costs are theoretically manageable. The next step is putting this knowledge into action—the question remains as to which airlines lead the charge. | 76 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "8089598",
"author": "Mayhem",
"timestamp": "2025-01-27T15:25:37",
"content": "After the 9/11 attacks on the USA there was s study done that concluded that the temperature went up due to several weeks of no contrails. Follow the science.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/08/0... | 1,760,371,656.900333 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/27/building-the-feynman-motor-that-fits-through-a-sewing-needles-eye/ | Building The Feynman Motor That Fits Through A Sewing Needle’s Eye | Maya Posch | [
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"Electric motor",
"miniaturization"
] | The first attempt at replicating William McLellan’s miniature motor. (Credit: Chronova Engineering, YouTube)
How small can an electric motor be without resorting to manufacturing methods like lithography? In a
recent video, [Chronova Engineering]
on YouTube tries to replicate the 1960 McLellan motor that fulfilled [Richard Feynman]’s challenge requirements. This challenge was part of [Feynman]’s
1959 lecture
titled
There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom
, on the possibilities of miniaturization. A $1,000 reward was offered for anyone who could build an electric motor that was no larger than 1/64th inch cubed (~0.0625 mm
3
), with the expectation that new manufacturing methods would be required to manufacture a motor this small.
As reported in the
December 1960 issue
of
The Month at Caltech
, [William McLellan] walked into [Feynman]’s lab with this tiny marvel that took him 2.5 months of lunch hour breaks to build. Weighing in at 250 micrograms and consisting out of 13 parts, it was constructed using a microscope, a watchmaker’s lathe and a toothpick. Surely replicating this feat would be easy today, right?
The main challenge is that everything is incredibly small. The rotor shaft is 90 micrometers in diameter, and the four coils require winding incredibly thin wire at scales where typical manufacturing methods do not apply. Suffice it to say that it takes massive amounts of patience, creativity and the best (stereo) microscope you can get, yet even with modern optics and materials this first attempt mostly failed.
At the end we’re left with SEM shots of this replication attempt and an immense amount of respect for the skills of [William McLellan] who made a working version in 1960 using much more basic tools during his lunch breaks.
Thanks to [J. Peterson] for the tip. | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8089572",
"author": "Paolo Kallio",
"timestamp": "2025-01-27T13:19:23",
"content": "“Infamous”?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8089575",
"author": "Sam",
"timestamp": "2025-01-27T13:42:01",
"content": "The details o... | 1,760,371,656.711984 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/27/3d-print-stamps-and-ink-stuff-to-your-hearts-content-with-these-tips/ | 3D Print Stamps, And Ink Stuff To Your Heart’s Content With These Tips | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Art"
] | [
"3d printed",
"flexible",
"ink",
"stamp"
] | Ink stamps can be fun to make and use, and 3D printers are uniquely positioned to create quality stamps of all kinds with just a little care. As with most things, the devil is in the details and the best results will require some extra work. Luckily, [Prusa] has a blog post that goes through
how to 3D print the best stamps
and includes concrete recommendations and tips to get the most out of the process.
Resin printers can create stamps too, just ensure a flexible material is used.
What makes a good 3D-printed stamp? It should be easy to use, transfer an image cleanly, and retain ink reasonably well. To hit these bases, printing the stamp face out of a flexible material is probably the most important, but a flat and smooth stamp surface is equally crucial. Satin-finish build plates will give a weathered look to the stamp, but textured build plates in general are no good.
As for the design, turning an image into a 3D object can be a bit challenging for novices, but there are tools that make that much easier now than it used to be. Some slicers allow importing
.svg
files (scalable vector graphics) with which to emboss or deboss objects, and online tools as well as free software like
Inkscape
will let folks covert images into
.svg
format.
Flexible filaments tend to be stringy so they should be dried before use, especially if the stamp design has a lot of separate elements that invite stringing. Any flex filament should do the job, but of course some specific filament brands perform better than others. Check out the full blog post for specific recommendations.
Pausing a print and inserting a pre-printed support piece (removed after the print completes) helps form big overhangs.
The remaining tricky element is that flexible filaments also tend to be poor at bridging, and if one is printing a stamp face-down on the build plate (to get that important, ultra-flat face) then the upper inside of the stamp may need some support for it to come out right. As [Prusa] suggests, this is a good place to use a
manual, drop-in pre-printed support piece
. Or if one has the ability to print in multiple materials, perhaps print the support structure in PLA since it is just about
the only material that won’t completely weld itself to flex filaments
. Of course, if one is designing the stamp entirely in CAD, then the best option would be to chamfer the stamp elements so supports aren’t necessary in the first place. Finally, don’t overlook the value of a physical design that makes handling easy and attractive.
Since 3D printing makes iteration so fast and easy, maybe it would be worth using this to revisit
using rubber stamps to help create PCBs
? | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8089415",
"author": "Actually....",
"timestamp": "2025-01-27T09:18:14",
"content": "Better to print a negative of your stamp and use that to mold the rubber pad.Using photopolymer stamp resin, which has a gum like consistency, on an mSLA printer is doable but doesnt give as good a r... | 1,760,371,657.084272 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/25/making-the-longest-distance-radio-contact-possible/ | Making The Longest-Distance Radio Contact Possible | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"antenna",
"deep space",
"dish",
"satellite",
"space"
] | One of the more popular activities in the ham radio world is DXing, which is attempting to communicate with radio stations as far away as possible. There are some feats that will earn some major credibility in this arena, like two-way communication with Antarctica with only a few watts of power, long-path communication around the globe, or even bouncing a signal off the moon and back to a faraway point on Earth. But these modes all have one thing in common: they’re communicating with someone who’s also presumably on the same planet. Barring extraterrestrial contact, if you want to step up your DX game
you’ll want to try to contact some of our deep-space probes
(PDF).
[David Prutchi] aka [N2QG] has been doing this for a number of years now and has a wealth of knowledge and experience to share. He’s using both a 3.2 meter dish and a 1.2 meter dish for probing deep space, as well as some custom feed horns and other antennas to mount to them. Generally these signals are incredibly small since they travel a long way through deep space, so some amplification of the received signals is also needed. Not only that, but since planets and satellites are all moving with respect to each other, some sort of tracking system is needed to actively point the dish in the correct direction.
With all of that taken care of, it’s time to see what sort of signals are coming in. Compared to NASA’s 70-meter antennas used to communicate with deep space, some signals received on smaller dishes like these will only see the carrier wave.
This was the case when an amateur radio group used an old radio telescope to detect one of the Voyager signals recently
. But there are a few cases where [David] was able to actually receive data and demodulate it, so it’s not always carrier-only. If you’re sitting on an old satellite TV dish like these, we’d certainly recommend pointing it to the sky to see what’s out there.
If not, you can always 3D print one
. | 29 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8088054",
"author": "Scoldog",
"timestamp": "2025-01-25T10:55:04",
"content": "PDF link is dead",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8088084",
"author": "David Prutchi",
"timestamp": "2025-01-25T13:41:10",
"... | 1,760,371,657.153453 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/24/a-modem-as-a-cassette-interface/ | A Modem As A Cassette Interface | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"cassette",
"data storage",
"modem"
] | At least some in the audience will at some time in the distant past have loaded or saved a program on cassette, with an 8-bit home computer. The machine would encode binary as a series of tones which could be recorded to the tape and then later retrieved. If you consider the last sentence you’ll quickly realize that it’s not too far away from what a modem does, so can a modem record to cassette and decode it back afterwards? [Jesse T] set out to give it a try, and
as it turns out, yes you can
.
The modem talks and listens to the cassette recorder via circuitry that provides some signal conditioning and amplification, as well as making a dial tone such that the modem thinks it’s talking to a real phone line. An Arduino steps in as dial tone creator.
Of course, this is hardly a viable solution to 21st century data storage need, but that’s hardly the point as it’s a cool hack. We like it, and oddly
we’ve seen a similar technique used with a retrocomputer in the past
.
Thanks [CodeAsm] for the tip! | 20 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8088020",
"author": "Hussien",
"timestamp": "2025-01-25T06:15:37",
"content": ">using greentext in terminalmuch haxx0r, such 1337",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8088031",
"author": "Gitesh",
"timestamp": "2025-01-25T07... | 1,760,371,657.376843 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/24/bouncing-signals-off-of-satellites-other-than-the-moon/ | Bouncing Signals Off Of Satellites Other Than The Moon | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"Earth-Moon-Earth",
"geostationary orbit",
"ham radio",
"moon bounce",
"radio",
"Radio Telescope",
"satellite",
"WSJT-X"
] | The moon is a popular target for ham radio operators to bounce signals since it’s fairly large and follows a predictable path. There are some downsides, though; it’s not always visible from the same point on Earth and is a relatively long way away. Thinking they could trade some distance for size,
an amateur radio group from the Netherlands was recently able to use a radio telescope pointed at a geostationary satellite to reflect a signal back down to Earth
, using this man-made satellite to complete the path instead of the more common natural one.
While there are plenty of satellites in orbit meant for amateur radio communication (including the International Space Station, although it occasionally does other things too), these all have built-in radio transmitters or repeaters specifically meant for re-transmitting received signals. They’re also generally not in geostationary orbit. So, with a retired radio telescope with a 20-meter dish aimed directly at one of the ones already there, they sent out a signal which bounced off of the physical body of the satellite and then back down where it was received by a station in Switzerland. Of course, the path loss here is fairly extreme as well since the satellite is small compared to the moon and geostationary orbit is a significant distance away, so they used
the Q65 mode in WSJT-X
which is specifically designed for recovering weak signals.
Don’t break out the tape measure Yagi antenna to try this yourself just yet, though. This path is not quite as reliable as Earth-Moon-Earth for a few reasons the group is not quite sure about yet. Not every satellite they aimed their dish at worked, although they theorize that this might be because of different shapes and sizes of the satellites or that the solar panels were not pointing the correct direction. But they were able to make a few contacts using this method nonetheless, a remarkable achievement they can add to their list
which includes receiving a signal from one of the Voyager spacecraft
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087993",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2025-01-25T03:27:04",
"content": "Sounds like a 21st-century version ofProject Echo, a set of 1960s-era space-balloons that operated as passive reflectors.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,371,657.208559 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/24/bosch-starter-motor-freed-from-mercedes-prison/ | Bosch Starter Motor Freed From Mercedes Prison | Bryan Cockfield | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"alternator",
"Bosch",
"can-bus",
"eq boost",
"generator",
"hybrid",
"mercedes",
"starter motor"
] | Vehicle alternators are interesting beasts. Produced on a massive scale, these electric machines are available for a minimum of cost and contain all kinds of great parts: some power electronics and a belt-driven generator are generally standard fare. This generator can also be used as a motor with only minor changes to the machine as a whole, so thanks to economies of scale it’s possible to get readily-available, powerful, compact, and cheap motors for all kinds of projects using alternators as a starting point.
[LeoDJ] noticed that this starter motor in a modern Mercedes had some interesting benefits beyond all of these perks
, but it took a bit more work to get up and running than a typical alternator would have.
The motor, built by Bosch, can be found in the Mercedes E200 EQ Boost. This is a hybrid car, but different than something like a Prius in that it doesn’t have an electric motor capable of powering the car on its own. Instead it uses a combination starter motor/alternator/generator to provide extra power to the engine during acceleration, increasing efficiency and performance. It can also charge the small battery bank when the car slows down. Vehicles that use this system need much beefier alternators than a standard car, but liberating it from the car means that it has much more power available than a typical alternator would.
There were a number of issues to solve, though. Being that the motor/alternator has to do all of this extra work (and that it came out of a car whose brand is known for being tedious to work on in the first place) it is much more complicated than an off-the-shelf alternator. [LeoDJ] has been able to get his to spin by communicating with it over the CAN bus, but there’s still some work to be done
before it goes into something like an impressively fast electric bicycle
.
Thanks to [RoganDawes] for the tip! | 79 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087976",
"author": "Greg Mathews",
"timestamp": "2025-01-25T01:36:08",
"content": "I don’t get why people would buy German cars, they’re horrendously overengineered and difficult to fix. I drive a 2005 Chevrolet Lanos and it’s very easy to fix, you don’t need special tools for most... | 1,760,371,657.536387 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/24/small-print-bed-no-problem/ | Small Print Bed? No Problem! | Bryan Cockfield | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"dovetail",
"jigsaw",
"joinery",
"joint",
"large print",
"print bed"
] | One of the major limitations of 3D printers is the size of the printable area. The robotic arm holding the printer head can only print where it can reach, after all. Some methods of reducing this constraint have been tried before, largely focusing on either larger printers or printer heads that are mobile in some way. Another approach to increasing the size of prints beyond the confined space typical of most consumer-grade 3D printers is to create some sort of joinery into the prints themselves so that larger things can be created.
[Cal Bryant] is developing this jigsaw-based method which has allowed him to produce some truly massive prints
.
Rather than making the joints by hand, [Cal]’s software will cut up a model into a certain number of parts when given the volume constraints of a specific 3D printer so it can not only easily print the parts, but also automatically add the jigsaw-like dovetail joints to each of the sections of the print. There were a few things that needed prototyping to get exactly right like the tolerance between each of the “teeth” of the joint, which [Cal] settled on 0.2 mm which allows for a strong glued joint, and there are were some software artifacts to take care of as well like overhanging sections of teeth around the edges of prints. But with those edge cases taken care of he has some working automation software that can print arbitrarily large objects.
[Cal] has used this to build a few speaker enclosures, replacing older MDF designs with 3D printed ones. He’s also built a full-size arcade cabinet which he points out was an excellent way to use up leftover filament. Another clever way we’ve seen of producing prints larger than the 3D printer is to remove the print bed entirely.
This robotic 3D printer can move itself to a location and then print directly on its environment
. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087968",
"author": "Bobtato",
"timestamp": "2025-01-25T00:24:35",
"content": "This is very similar to something I’ve done quite a bit in my day job, which I can’t talk about in detail. But I will note that “jigsaw” is short for “jigsaw puzzle” – you can easily outsmart your future ... | 1,760,371,657.420129 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/24/sony-ends-blu-ray-md-and-minidv-media-production/ | Sony Ends Blu-Ray, MD And MiniDV Media Production | Maya Posch | [
"News"
] | [] | With the slow demise of physical media the past years, companies are gradually closing shop on producing everything from the physical media itself to their players and recorders. For Sony this seems to have now escalated to where it’ll be
shuttering its recordable optical media storage operations
, after more than 18 years of producing recordable Blu-ray discs. As noted by [Toms Hardware] this also includes minidisc (MD) media and MiniDV cassettes.
We previously reported on Sony
ending the production of recordable Blu-ray
media for consumers, which now seems to have expanded to Sony’s remaining storage media. It also raises the likelihood that Sony’s next game console (likely PlayStation 6) will not feature any optical drive at all as Blu-ray loses importance. While MiniDV likely was only interesting to those of us still lugging one of those MiniDV camcorders around, the loss of MD production may be felt quite strongly in the indie music scene, where MD is experiencing somewhat of a revival alongside cassette tapes and vinyl records.
Although it would appear that physical media is now effectively dead in favor of streaming services, it might be
too soon to mark its demise
. | 30 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087885",
"author": "psuedonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-01-24T18:03:42",
"content": "Important to note that this is the end of blank writeable media production. Stamping of discs (such as those for all prerecorded media) can continue.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"rep... | 1,760,371,657.646557 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/24/hackaday-podcast-episode-305-caustic-clocks-practice-bones-and-brick-layers/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 305: Caustic Clocks, Practice Bones, And Brick Layers | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos joined forces and Wonder-Twin rings to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week.
First up in the news: Big boo to Bambu Labs, who have tried to clarify their new authentication scheme and probably only dug themselves in deeper with their customers.
On What’s That Sound, Kristina didn’t get close at all, but at least had a guess this time. Do know what it is? Let us know, and if you’re right and your number comes up, you can keep warm in a limited edition Hackaday Podcast t-shirt.
Then it’s on to the hacks and such beginning with a rather nice reverse-engineering of the Yamaha PRS-E433 keyboard, which led to a slice of Bad Apple playing on the tiny screen.
After that, we take a look at an NES musical instrument, how to make wires explode with energy, and a really cool space mouse that uses flexures. Finally, we talk about a piece of forgotten Internet history, and a whole bunch of keyboards.
Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Download in
DRM-free MP3
and savor at your leisure.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 305 Show Notes:
News:
Bambu Lab Tries To Clarify Its New “Beta” Authentication Scheme
What’s that Sound?
Know what this week’s sound is?
Let us know for your chance at a Hackaday Podcast t-shirt
!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Shellcode Over MIDI? Bad Apple On A PSR-E433, Kinda
Bone Filament, For Printing Practice Bones
Going Minimal: 64×4, The Fun In Functional Computing
Family Bass Is Musical NES Magic
Making Wire Explode With 4,000 Joules Of Energy
High Voltage Hacks: Shrinking Coins
Innovative Clock Uses Printed Caustic Lens
Hidden Shaft And Gears Make This Hollow Clock Go
Moritz v. Sivers
Improved Thermochromic Clock Uses PCB Heaters For Better Contrast
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Brick Layer Post-Processor, Promising Stronger 3D Prints, Now Available
Interactive LED Matrix Is A Great Way To Learn About Motion Controls
Electric Vehicle Charging Heats Up
Kristina’s Picks:
Trinteract Mini Space Mouse Does It In 3D
‘Robotic’ Dress Uses Simple Techniques To Combine 3D Printed Parts With Fabric
Probably Ruining A Keyboard For Science
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Forgotten Internet: UUCP
Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Hardware-Layered Keyboard | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087998",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2025-01-25T03:45:36",
"content": "“Rooting” protocol? I was going to try to correct you, but after looking it up, apparently, some people pronounce it that way, though this is the first time I’ve heard it done so.",
"parent_id": null,... | 1,760,371,657.584832 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/24/this-week-in-security-clamav-the-amd-leak-and-the-unencrypted-power-grid/ | This Week In Security: ClamAV, The AMD Leak, And The Unencrypted Power Grid | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"ClamAV",
"microcode",
"pentesting",
"This Week in Security"
] | Cisco’s
ClamAV has a heap-based buffer overflow
in its OLE2 file scanning. That’s a big deal, because ClamAV is used to scan file attachments on incoming emails. All it takes to trigger the vulnerability is to send a malicious file through an email system that uses ClamAV.
The exact vulnerability is
a string termination check that can fail to trigger
, leading to a buffer over-read. That’s a lot better than a buffer overflow while writing to memory. That detail is why this vulnerability is strictly a Denial of Service problem. The memory read results in process termination, presumably a segfault for reading protected memory. There are Proof of Concepts (PoCs) available, but so far no reports of the vulnerability being used in the wild.
AMD Vulnerability Leaks
AMD has
identified a security problem
in how some of its processors verify the signature of microcode updates. That’s basically all we know about the issue, because the security embargo still isn’t up. Instead of an official announcement, we know about this issue via an Asus beta BIOS release that
included a bit too much information
.
I Read the Docs
There’s nothing quite as fun as
winning a Capture The Flag (CTF) challenge the wrong way
. The setup for this challenge was a simple banking application, with the challenge being to steal some money from the bank’s website. The intended solution was to exploit the way large floating point numbers round small values. Deposit 1e10 dollars into the bank, and a withdraw of $1000 is literally just a rounding error.
The unintended solution was to deposit
NaN
dollars. In JavaScript-speak that’s the special Not a Number value that’s used for oddball situations like dividing by a float that’s rounded down to zero.
NaN
has some other strange behaviors, like always resulting in false comparisons.
NaN > 0
? False.
NaN < 0
? False.
NaN == NaN
? Yep, also false. And when the fake bank web app checks if a requested withdraw amount is greater than the amount in the account? Since the account is set to
NaN
, it’s also false. Totally defeats the internal bank logic. How did the student find this unintended solution? “I read the docs.” Legendary.
Another Prompt Injection Tool
[Utku Sen] has
a story and a revamped tool
, and it leads to an interesting question about LLMs. The story starts with a novel LLM prompt, that gives more natural sounding responses from AI tools. LLMs have a unique problem, that there is no inherent difference between pre-loaded system prompts, and user-generated prompts. This leads to an attack, where a creative user prompt can reveal the system prompt. And in a case like [Utku]’s, the system prompt is the special sauce that makes the service work. He knew this, and attempted to protect against such attacks. Within an hour of releasing the tool to the public, [Utku] got a direct message on X with the system prompts.
There’s a really interesting detail, that the prompt injection attack only worked 1 out of 11 times. This sent me down an LLM rabbit hole, asking whether LLMs are deterministic, and if not, why not. The simple answer is the “temperature” control knob on LLMs add some random noise to the output text. There seems to be randomness even when the LLM temperature is turned to zero, caused either by floating point errors, or even
a byproduct of doing batched inference
. Regardless, prompt injection attacks may only work after several tries.
And that brings us to
promptmap
tool. It is intended to evaluate a system prompt, and launch multiple attempts to poison or otherwise inject malicious user prompts into the system. And of course, it is now capable of using the approach that successfully revealed [Utku]’s system prompt.
Cloudflare’s Unintentional GPS
There’s a really interesting unintended side effect of using Cloudflare’s CDN network:
Users load data from the nearest datacenter
. Unique data can be served to a target user, and then the cache can be checked to leak coarse location information. This is novel research, but ultimately not actually all that important from a security perspective. The primary reason is that the same sort of attack has always existed and can be used to extract a much more valuable piece of user identifying data: The user’s IP address.
The Unauthenticated, Unencrypted radios that control The German Power Grid
[Fabian Bräunlein] and [Luca Melette] were just looking for radio-controlled light switches
, to pull off a modern take on
Project Blinkenlights
. What they found was the Radio Ripple Control protocol, an unauthenticated, unencrypted radio control protocol. That just happens to control about 40 Gigawatts of power generation across Germany, not to mention street lamps and other bits of hardware.
The worst-case scenario for an attacker is to turn
on
all of the devices that use grid power, while turning
off
all of the connected devices that generate power. Too much of an imbalance might even be capable of resulting in the dreaded grid-down scenario, where all the connected power generation facilities lose sync with each other, and everything has to be disconnected. Recovery from such a state would be slow and tedious. And thankfully not actually very likely. But even if this worst-case scenario isn’t very realistic, it’s still a severe vulnerability in how the German grid is managed. And fixes don’t seem to be coming any time soon.
Bits and Bytes
The Brave browser had a bit of a
dishonest downloads issue
, where the warning text about a download would show the URL from the referrer header. The danger is that a download may be considered trustworthy, even when it’s actually being served from an arbitrary URL.
If JavaScript in general or next.js in particular is in your security strike zone, you’ll want to
check out the write-up from [Rachid.A] about cache poisoning
in this particular framework, and the nice cache of security bounties it netted.
Zoom has
a weird security disclosure
for one of their Linux applications, and it contains a description I’ve never seen before: The bug “may allow an authorized user to conduct an escalation of privilege via network access.” Given the CVSS score of 8.8 with an attack vector of network, this should probably be called a Remote Code Execution vulnerability.
Subaru had a problem with STARLINK
. No, not the satellite Internet provider, the other STARLINK. That’s Subaru’s vehicle technology platform that includes remote start and vehicle tracking features. That platform had a pair of flaws, the first allowing an attacker to reset any admin’s password. The second is that the Two Factor Authentication protection can be bypassed simply by hiding the pop-up element in the HTML DOM. Whoops! Subaru had the issues fixed in under 24 hours, which is impressive.
And finally,
Silent Signal has the intriguing story of IBM’s i platform
, and and a compatibility issue with Windows 11. That compatibility issue was Microsoft cracking down on apps sniffing Windows passwords. And yes, IBM i was grabbing Windows passwords and storing them in the Windows registry. What a trip. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087862",
"author": "ziggurat29",
"timestamp": "2025-01-24T16:53:10",
"content": "Thank you for the good read. I particularly enjoyed the system prompt reveal hack, and found the NaN to be delicious.I know my comment does not add much to the discussion, but we don’t have a ‘like’ bu... | 1,760,371,657.760793 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/24/setting-the-stage-for-open-source-sonar-development/ | Setting The Stage For Open Source Sonar Development | Tom Nardi | [
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"bathymetry",
"sonar",
"transducer",
"ultrasonic"
] | At Hackaday, we see community-driven open source development as the great equalizer. Whether it’s hardware or software — if there’s some megacorp out there trying to sell you something, you should have the option to go with a comparable open source version. Even if the commercial offering is objectively superior, it’s important that open source alternatives always exist, or else its the users themselves that end up becoming the product before too long.
So we were particularly excited when
[Neumi] wrote in to share his Open Echo project
, as it contains some very impressive work towards democratizing the use of sonar. Over the years we’ve seen a handful of underwater projects utilize sonar in some form or another, but they have always simply read the data from a commercial, and generally expensive, unit. But Open Echo promises to delete the middle-man, allowing for cheaper and more flexible access to bathymetric data.
The TUSS4470 Shield lets you experiment with driving transducers.
The project started with the reverse engineering of a cheap commercial fish finder, which gave [Neumi] first-hand experience with driving ultrasonic transducers and interpreting the signal they return. Further research lead him to the Texas Instruments TUSS4470, a ultrasonic sensor IC that can do much of the heavy lifting. He spun up an Arduino shield using this chip, and wrote the necessary code to interface directly with a commercial transducer.
This is already a huge milestone for DIY sonar, but [Neumi] isn’t stopping there. The newest iteration of the hardware is designed not just to work with commercial transducers, but can be used with home-built ones as well. While the project isn’t complete, he’s made some very rapid progress as demonstrated in the video below.
We’ve covered a number of projects
over the years that involved reading the depth of body of water, and this project would have been able to make each one of them cheaper and easier accomplish. While admittedly not every hacker is keen to map the bottom of their local waterway, we know there is a niche group out there that have been waiting a long time for a project like this to come around. | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087807",
"author": "Reg",
"timestamp": "2025-01-24T12:50:58",
"content": "Wait until he gets to the software. Seismic Unix will do it, but learning imaging DSP is not for the mathematically timid. And there is a LOT of math.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,371,657.709179 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/24/laser-cut-metal-endoskeleton-beefs-up-3d-prints/ | Laser-Cut Metal Endoskeleton Beefs Up 3D Prints | Dan Maloney | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"embedded",
"endoskeleton",
"epoxy",
"reinforce",
"steel",
"testing",
"truss"
] | There are limits to what you can do with an FDM printer to make your parts stronger. It really comes down to adding more plastic, like increasing wall thickness or boosting up the infill percentage. Other than that, redesigning the part to put more material where the part is most likely to fail is about the only other thing you can do. Unless, of course, you have access to a fiber laser cutter that can make
internal metal supports for your prints
.
As [Paul] explains it, this project stemmed from an unfortunate episode where a printed monitor stand failed, sending the LCD panel to its doom. He had taken care to reinforce that part by filling it with fiberglass resin, but to no avail. Unwilling to risk a repeat with a new tablet holder, he decided to test several alternative methods for reinforcing parts. Using a 100 W fiber laser cutter, he cut different internal supports from 0.2 mm steel shim stock. In one case he simply sandwiched the support between two half-thickness brackets, while in another he embedded the steel right into the print. He also made two parts that were filled with epoxy resin, one with a steel support embedded and one without.
The test setup was very simple, just a crane scale to measure the force exerted by pulling down on the part with his foot; crude, but effective. Every reinforced part performed better than a plain printed part with no reinforcement, but the clear winner was the epoxy-filled part with a solid-metal insert. Honestly, we were surprised at how much benefit such a thin piece of metal offered, even when it was directly embedded into the print during a pause.
Not everyone has access to a fiber laser cutter, of course, so this method might not be for everyone. In that case, you might want to check out
other ways to beef up your prints
, including
just splitting them in two
. | 24 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087765",
"author": "Duderino",
"timestamp": "2025-01-24T09:42:30",
"content": "Cool. I’m gonna runout and buy a carbon fibre curing oven to see if I can use it to make my plasticine parts stronger.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,371,657.937055 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/23/a-second-rare-atari-cabinet-3d-printed/ | A Second Rare Atari Cabinet 3D Printed | Jenny List | [
"Games"
] | [
"arcade cabinet",
"atari",
"SpaceRace"
] | Last year we covered the creation of a 3D-printed full-size replica of an original
Computer Space
arcade machine, the legendary first glimmer from what would become Atari, one of the most famous names in gaming. The flowing exuberance of glitter-finished fibreglass made these machines instantly recognisable. Not so well known though is that there was a second cabinet in a similar vein from Atari.
Space Race
is most often seen in a conventional wooden cabinet, but there were a limited number of early examples made in an asymetric angular take on the same fibreglass recipe as
Computer Space
. They’re super rare, but that hasn’t stopped a replica being made by the same team and
documented in a pair of videos
by [RMC – The Cave].
Just like the earlier project, a start was made with a 3D model. In this case an owner of a real cabinet was found, who ran off a not-very-good scan with a mobile phone. This was then used as the basis for a much better model, and the various pieces were printed. Using all manner of reel ends gave the assembled cabinet a coat of many colours look, but after a coat of filler, paint, and then glitter lacquer, you would never know. Electronics come courtesy of modern emulation hardware and a Sony CCTV monitor, and the joysticks were made from a mixture of common hardware and 3D prints. Both the videos are below the break, and you’ll now no doubt also want to see
the original project
.. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087799",
"author": "Robert Nixon",
"timestamp": "2025-01-24T12:28:30",
"content": "Looks suspiciously like a Voron Stealthburner toolhead",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8087827",
"author": "Steven-X",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,371,657.876749 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/23/trap-naughty-web-crawlers-in-digestive-juices-with-nepenthes/ | Trap Naughty Web Crawlers In Digestive Juices With Nepenthes | Maya Posch | [
"internet hacks"
] | [
"large language model",
"web crawler"
] | In the olden days of the WWW you could just put a
robots.txt
file in the root of your website and crawling bots from search engines and kin would (generally) respect the rules in it. These days, however, we have especially web crawlers from large language model (LLM) companies happily ignoring such signs on the lawn before proceeding to hover up every scrap of content on websites. Naturally this makes a lot of people very angry, but what can you do about it? The answer
by [Aaron B] is Nepenthes
, described on the
project page
as a ‘tar pit for catching web crawlers’.
More commonly known as ‘pitcher plants’,
nepenthes
is a genus of carnivorous plants that use a fluid-filled cup to trap insects and small critters unfortunate enough to slip & slide down into it. In the case of this Lua-based project the idea is roughly the same. Configured as a trap behind a web server (e.g.
/nepenthes
), any web crawler that accesses it will be presented with an endless number of (randomly generated) pages with many URLs to follow. Page generating is deliberately quite slow to not soak up significant CPU time, while still giving the LLM scrapers plenty of random nonsense to chew on.
Considering that these web crawlers deemed adhering to the friendly sign on the lawn beneath them, the least we can do in response, is to hasten model collapse by feeding these LLM scrapers whatever rolls out of a simple (optionally Markov-based) text generator. | 45 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087673",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2025-01-24T03:16:05",
"content": "Thumbs up!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8087679",
"author": "bruce.desertrat",
"timestamp": "2025-01-24T03:59:48",
"content": "This…is... | 1,760,371,657.840086 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/23/an-electric-converted-tractor-can-farm/ | An Electric Converted Tractor CAN Farm! | Jenny List | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"electric conversion",
"electric tractor",
"tractor conversion"
] | Last October we showed you a video from [LiamTronix], in which he applied an electric conversion to a 1960s Massey-Ferguson 65 which had seen better days. It certainly seemed ready for light work around the farm, but it’s only now that we get
his video showing the machine at work
. This thing really can farm!
An MF 65 wasn’t the smallest of 1960s tractors, but by today’s standards it’s not a machine you would expect to see working a thousand acres of wheat. Instead it’s a typical size for a smaller operation, perhaps a mixed farm, a small livestock farm, or in this case a horticulture operation growing pumpkins. In these farms the tractor doesn’t often trail up and down a field for hours, instead it’s used for individual smaller tasks where its carrying or lifting capacity is needed, or for smaller implements. It’s in these applications that we see the electric 65 being tested, as well as some harder work such as hauling a trailer load of bales, or even harrowing a field.
In one sense the video isn’t a hack in itself,
for that you need to look at the original build
. But it’s important to see how a hack turned out in practice, and this relatively straightforward conversion with a DC motor has we think proven itself to be more than capable of small farm tasks. Its only flaw in the video is a 30 minute running time, something he says he’ll be working on by giving it a larger battery pack. We’d use it on the Hackaday ancestral acres, any time! | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087659",
"author": "Cody",
"timestamp": "2025-01-24T02:08:21",
"content": "It looks like it could use some more weight. Might as well add some more batteries then.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8087690",
"author": "CMH62"... | 1,760,371,658.08811 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/23/this-qr-code-leads-to-two-websites-but-how/ | This QR Code Leads To Two Websites, But How? | Elliot Williams | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"qr code"
] | QR codes are designed with alignment and scaling features, not to mention checksums and significant redundancy. They have to be, because you’re taking photos of them with your potato-camera while moving, in the dark, and it’s on a curved sticker on a phone pole. So it came as a complete surprise to us that [Christian Walther]
succeeded in making an ambiguous QR code
.
Nerd-sniped by [Guy Dupont], who made them using those lenticular lens overlays, [Christian] made a QR code that resolves to two websites depending on the angle at which it’s viewed. The trick is to identify the cells that are different between the two URLs, for instance, and split them in half vertically and horizontally: making them into a tiny checkerboard. It appears that some QR decoders sample in the center of each target square, and the center will be in one side or the other depending on the tilt of the QR code.
Figuring out the minimal-difference QR code encoding between two arbitrary URLs
would make a neat programming exercise
. How long before we see these in popular use,
like back in the old days when embedding images was fresh
? QR codes are fun!
Whether it works is probably phone- and/or algorithm-dependent, so try this out, and let us know in the comments if they work for you.
Thanks [Lacey] for the tip! | 47 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087509",
"author": "Jack",
"timestamp": "2025-01-23T21:11:49",
"content": "iPhone SE2 – yup, 2. Very, very clever.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8087519",
"author": "Jack Dansen",
"timestamp": "2025-01-23T21:23:34",... | 1,760,371,658.037927 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/21/probably-ruining-a-keyboard-for-science/ | Probably Ruining A Keyboard For Science | Kristina Panos | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"lubed keyboard",
"lubricant",
"switch lube",
"WD-40"
] | Lubing your keyboard’s switches is definitely a personal preference, though we’re sure that many would call it absolutely necessary. However, people from both camps would probably
not
suggest is using WD-40 to do so, instead pointing toward Krytox or at least Super Lube. But there are enough people out there who have tried the great water displacer and claim to have experienced no problems that
[Sea_Scheme6784] decided to give it a go
(so you don’t have to).
Having now collected enough boards to sacrifice one to the lubrication gods, [Sea_Scheme6784] chose a completely stock Logitech G413 SE with brown switches and heavily sprayed every one. Oh yeah, there was no taking them apart first as most lube enthusiasts would advise. No carefully painting it on in the right places with a small brush. Just mad spraying, y’all.
The effects were noticeable immediately — it changed the feel for the better and made the switches way less scratchy. Also the sound is more poppy, despite drowning in not-lubricant. Interesting! [Sea_Scheme6784] says the stabilizers are still rattling away, so that’s no good. Keep an eye on r/mechanicalkeyboards for updates on these shenanigans. We know we will.
Want to know what else you can do to to switches besides lube?
Lots of stuff
.
Main and thumbnail images via
Kinetic Labs | 32 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086731",
"author": "El Gru",
"timestamp": "2025-01-22T01:11:55",
"content": "Just pick the right type of WD-40 and all is good. Yes, there is more than one.But why put sticky icky into your keyboard at all, that’s gross.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,371,658.309778 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/21/interactive-led-matrix-is-a-great-way-to-learn-about-motion-controls/ | Interactive LED Matrix Is A Great Way To Learn About Motion Controls | Lewin Day | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"led",
"mpu6050",
"ws2812b"
] | It’s simple enough to wire up an LED matrix and have it display some pre-programmed routines. What can be more fun is when the LEDs are actually interactive in some regard. [Giulio Pons] achieved this with his interactive LED box,
which lets you play with the pixels via motion controls.
The build runs of a Wemos D1 mini, which is a devboard based around the ESP8266 microcontroller. [Giulio] hooked this up to a matrix of WS2812B addressable LEDs in two 32×8 panels, creating a total display of 512 RGB LEDs. The LEDs are driven with the aid of an Adafruit graphics library that lets the whole display be addressed via XY coordinates. For interactivity, [Giulio] added a MPU6050 3-axis gyroscope and accelerometer to the build. Meanwhile, power is via 18650 lithium-ion cells, with the classic old 7805 regulator stepping down their output to a safe voltage. Thanks to the motion sensing abilities of the MPU6050, [Giulio] was able to code animations where the LEDs emulate glowing balls rolling around on a plane.
It’s a simple build, but one that taught [Giulio] all kinds of useful skills—from working with microcontrollers to doing the maths for motion controls. There’s a lot you can do with LED matrixes
if you put your mind to it
, and if you just start experimenting, you’re almost certain to learn
something
. Video after the break. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086707",
"author": "jbx",
"timestamp": "2025-01-21T22:08:56",
"content": "Cool, but can it play Doom ?Or at least Tetris ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8086741",
"author": "0xdeadbeef",
"timestamp": "2025-01-22T02:07... | 1,760,371,658.231587 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/21/hydroelectric-generator-gets-power-from-siphoning/ | Hydroelectric Generator Gets Power From Siphoning | Bryan Cockfield | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"ebike",
"generator",
"hub motor",
"hydro",
"hydroelectric",
"impeller",
"off grid",
"siphon"
] | Siphons are one of those physics phenomena that, like gyroscopes, non-Newtonian fluids, and electricity, seem almost magical. Thanks to atmospheric pressure, simply filling a tube with liquid and placing the end of the tube below the liquid level of a container allows it to flow against gravity, over a barrier, and down into another container without any extra energy inputs once the siphon is started. They’re not just tricks, though; siphons have practical applications as well,
such as in siphon-powered hydroelectric turbine
.
This is an iteration of [Beyond the Print]’s efforts to draw useful energy from a local dam with an uneconomic amount of water pressure and/or volume for a typical hydroelectric power station.
One of his earlier attempts involved a water wheel
but this siphon-based device uses a more efficient impeller design instead, and it also keeps the generator dry as well. Using 3″ PVC piping to channel the siphon, as well as a short length of thinner pipe to attach a shop vac for priming the siphon, water is drawn from the reservoir, up the pipe, and then down through the impeller which spins a small DC generator.
This design is generating about 9 V open-circuit, and we’d assume there’s enough power available to charge a phone or power a small microcontroller device. However, there’s a ton of room for improvement here. The major problem [Beyond the Print] is currently experiencing is getting air into the system and having the siphon broken, which he’s solved temporarily by adding a bucket at the outflow. This slows down the water though, so perhaps with any air leaks mitigated the power generation capabilities will be greatly increased. | 43 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086685",
"author": "robomonkey",
"timestamp": "2025-01-21T19:42:49",
"content": "for maximum throughput he needs that generator and turbine near the exit to the siphon. Let Gravity do the work.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,371,658.499038 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/21/family-bass-is-musical-nes-magic/ | Family Bass Is Musical NES Magic | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"bass",
"famicom",
"family computer",
"nes"
] | The Family BASIC keyboard was a peripheral that was built for programming on the Nintendo Family Computer, or Famicom. As [Linus Åkesson] demonstrates, though, it can do so much more.
Meet the Family Bass
.
The core of the project is a special adapter which [Linus] created to work with the Family BASIC keyboard. Traditionally, the keyboard plugs into the Famicom’s expansion port, but [Linus] wanted to hook it up to the controller port on a Nintendo Entertainment System instead. Getting them to talk was achieved with an ATtiny85 which could cycle through the 72-key matrix in the keyboard and spit out a serial stream of data the controller port could understand.
On the NES end, the console is set up to run custom code from [Linus] that lets him play the internal sound chip’s triangle wave with the keyboard. He demonstrates this ably in a video where he performs a song called
Platform Hopping
along with some of his other retro computer instruments.
We’ve seen [Linus]
build some other great instruments in the past too,
which are both creative and nostalgic. Video after the break. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086644",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2025-01-21T17:24:48",
"content": "No demo of the rods. What’s up with pitch bending?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8086787",
"author": "Ewald",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,371,658.546641 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/21/mining-and-refining-the-halogens/ | Mining And Refining: The Halogens | Dan Maloney | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"brine",
"bromine",
"caliche",
"chlor-alkali",
"chlorine",
"electrolysis",
"fluorine",
"halogen",
"iodine",
"Mining and Refining",
"prills"
] | I was looking at the periodic table of the elements the other day, as one does, when my eye fell upon the right-hand side of the chart. Right next to the noble gases at the extreme edge of the table is a column of elements with similar and interesting properties: the halogens. Almost all of these reactive elements are pretty familiar, especially chlorine, which most of us eat by the gram every day in the form of table salt. As the neighborhoods of the periodic table go, Group 17 is pretty familiar territory.
But for some reason, one member of this group caught my attention: iodine. I realized I had no idea where we get iodine, which led to the realization that apart from chlorine, I really didn’t know where any of the halogens came from. And as usual, that meant I needed to dig in and learn a little bit about the mining and refining of the halogens. At least most of them; as interesting as they may be, we’ll be skipping the naturally occurring but rare and highly radioactive halogen astatine, as well as the synthetic halogen tennessine, which lives just below it in the group.
Fluorine
We’ll start our look at the halogens with fluorine, partly because we’ve already covered
the production of hydrofluoric acid
, the primary industrial source of elemental fluorine, but also because it’s a bit of an outlier compared to the other halogens, all of which are most commonly sourced from brines. Rather, hydrofluoric acid comes from rocks, specifically fluorspar, which produces HF and calcium sulfate when treated with sulfuric acid.
Hydrofluoric acid is converted into fluorine gas by electrolysis. Unfortunately, HF is a poor electrical conductor, so some potassium bifluoride is added to make the solution conductive enough for electrolysis. No water is used to make the electrolyte; rather, the HF and potassium bifluoride mixture is kept molten at up to 250°C in the electrolysis cell. HF is continuously added as electrolysis proceeds, to keep the electrolyte at the correct ratio. The steel walls of the cell act as the cathode, while a block of graphite is used as the anode. Fluorine gas is captured from the anode, dried and filtered, and compressed for storage.
Most industrial processes requiring fluorine get it from hydrofluoric acid, so only about 2% of all fluorine mined as fluorspar makes it into fluorine gas. The primary use for fluorine gas is
the production of uranium hexafluoride
, the feedstock for uranium purification for nuclear fuels. Most of the rest of fluorine gas production goes to the manufacture of sulfur hexafluoride for the electrical industry, where it serves as a gaseous dielectric for high-voltage switchgear.
Chlorine
Next up on our tour of the halogens is chlorine, a reactive element with so many industrial uses it’s hard to name them all. Apart from its familiar uses in disinfection and public sanitation, chlorine is used to create polymers like polyvinyl chloride along with a host of organic and inorganic chlorides. Chlorine is also needed to produce the next halogen on our list, bromine, which we’ll cover below.
Like fluorine gas, gaseous chlorine is produced by electrolysis using the chlor-alkali process. The electrolyte for chlorine production, though, is an aqueous brine solution, normally sourced from naturally occurring deposits that form by groundwater seeping into underground salt formations. The concentrated NaCl solution — or sometimes potassium chloride; the method works for both — is pumped to the surface from great depths and filtered to high purity before being piped into the cell house, where long rows of special electrolysis cells are ready to receive it.
Schematic of chlor-alkali cell for the electrolytic production of chlorine. Hydrogen and sodium hydroxide are also produced, Credit: Heitner-Wirguin, C., public domain.
Each electrolysis cell is divided into two compartments, one for the anode and one for the cathode. Between them is a thin membrane made from a resin material that is selectively permeable to cations. Fresh brine is pumped into the anode side of the cell, while plain water is pumped into the cathode side. On the anode side, the chlorine gas is liberated from the chloride ions and collected. The positively charged sodium or potassium ions move across the membrane into the cathode side of the cell. There, water is electrolyzed to hydrogen gas, a valuable byproduct that is also collected and, and hydroxide ions, which greedily bind with the sodium or potassium from the other side of the cell. This creates the third useful product of the chlor-alkali process, either sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide, which is generically referred to as caustic. The caustic is pumped off, filtered, and further purified before being shipped.
The raw chlorine gas coming off the anode side of the cell has a lot of water vapor mixed in with it. The gas is dried by passing it through a heat exchanger that cools it enough to condense the water vapor. The dried gas is then further cooled and compressed before being liquified for shipping. Alternatively, the dried gas can be piped to other parts of the plant for immediate use in other processes, including the production of bromine.
Bromine
In elemental terms, bromine is a strange beast. It’s the only non-metallic element that exists as a liquid under standard temperature and pressure conditions. That presents both challenges and opportunities for its extraction and purification.
As with most halogens, brine is the source material for bromine production. Sodium chloride is the main salt in most brines, but in places such as the Dead Sea area on the border between Israel and Jordan, the brine has enough bromides to be commercially viable. The Smackover Formation, which stretches in an arc from Texas to Florida in the United States also has bromide-rich brines, particularly in southern Arkansas.
Extraction starts with pumping brine up from deep wells. The brine is naturally hot, which reduces the amount of energy needed to extract the bromine. Filtered brine is pumped to the top of a tall reaction tower through a long vertical section of pipe. At the bottom of the pipe, chlorine gas is injected into the brine. Chlorine, a powerful oxidant, preferentially strips electrons away from bromides in the brine, which converts bromides to bromine (Br
2
). The brine enters the top of the reactor tower, which has an outlet at the top that’s connected to a venturi. High-pressure steam passes over the venturi, creating a partial vacuum in the tower. The combination of heat and vacuum causes the bromine in the brine to flash-evaporate. The gaseous bromine is sucked out of the venturi into the steam, while the remaining brine falls back down to the bottom of the tower through a matrix of plastic discs. The discs break the droplets up and slow them down, giving any remaining bromine in the brine a chance to evaporate and make its way back up and out of the tower.
The bromine gas is sent to a condenser to remove water vapor and another, colder condenser to turn it into a liquid. The liquid bromine then goes into a dryer that removes all remaining traces of water, chlorine, and other contaminants. The liquid bromine is then shipped in specialized rail or truck tankers while waste brine is pumped back into the geologic formation it came from. Bromine has many industrial uses, but its most familiar use is probably in flame-retardent compounds. Most of us have probably seen the sickly orange color of old plastics, which is caused by the bromine-based flame retardants breaking down over time. Bromine compounds also figure prominently in the FR4 substrate used to make flame-retardant printed circuit boards.
Iodine
Last up is iodine, the halogen that kicked this whole thing off. Iodine is unique in that it used to be extracted mainly from plants, specifically kelp. The discovery of a type of soil called caliche in the Atacama Desert of Chile changed things in the 19th century. While mainly prized as a rich source of potassium nitrate, some caliche deposits also have iodate minerals, up to 1% by weight. It’s not much, but it’s enough to make extraction commercially viable.
Iodine prills. Source:
Nefronus
, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
The current process for extracting iodine starts with making an artificial brine. Caliche is blasted free from the ground and piled into huge plastic-lined pits. Water is pumped over the caliche, which leaches the iodates as it works its way down through the pile. The resulting brine is pumped into evaporation ponds, where solids settle out of solution as the brine concentrates in the fierce desert sun.
The concentrated brine is pumped out of the ponds and filtered before being sent to large absorption towers. There, sulfur dioxide gas is injected into the brine, which causes it to release iodine. The elemental iodine immediately combines with the SO
2
to form iodide ions. The iodide-rich solution then gets a shot of iodic acid (HIO
3
), which converts all the iodide ions into solid iodine.
Kerosene is then added to the solution to extract the iodine. This dark purple witch’s brew is then pumped into a reactor where high temperature and pressure are used to melt the solid iodine, dropping it back out of the suspension. The molten iodine is then pumped to a prilling tower, where it drips through a sieve of fine holes. The droplets cool as they drop through the tower, forming small balls of solid iodine, or prills, which are ready for shipping. | 25 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086650",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2025-01-21T17:46:51",
"content": "Fascinating article! I had no idea that halogens were typically sourced from brine.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8086652",
"author": "Paul... | 1,760,371,658.622563 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/21/cyber-walkman-does-it-in-style/ | Cyber Walkman Does It In Style | Kristina Panos | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"cyberpunk",
"oled",
"ssd1306",
"UNIHIKER",
"Walkman"
] | One of the best things about adulthood is that finally we get to, in most cases, afford ourselves the things that our parents couldn’t (or just didn’t for whatever reason). When [Yakroo108] was a child, Walkmans were expensive gadgets that were out of reach of the family purse. But today,
we can approximate these magical music machines ourselves with off-the-shelf hardware
.
Besides the cyberpunk aesthetic, the main attraction here is the UNIHIKER Linux board running the show. After that, it’s probably a tie between that giant mystery knob and the super-cool GUI made with
Tkinter
.
We also like the fact that there are two displays: the smaller one on the SSD1306 OLED handles the less exciting stuff like the volume level and the current time, so that the main UNIHIKER screen can have all the equalizer/cyberpunk fun.
Speaking of, this user-friendly GUI shows play/stop buttons and next buttons, but it looks like there’s no easy way to get to the previous track. To each their own, we suppose. Everything is enclosed in a brick-like 3D-printed enclosure that mimics early Walkmans with orange foam headphones.
If you want an updated Walkman with keyboard switches (who wouldn’t?),
check this out
. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086555",
"author": "Michael Perreault",
"timestamp": "2025-01-21T12:17:36",
"content": "Entire ARM SoC running Linux just to play songs? In late 2000s I could buy $15 mp3 player based on 8051 and it worked for hours on a single AAA battery or NiMH cell.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,658.726743 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/21/from-retro-to-radiant-3d-tetris-on-a-led-matrix/ | From Retro To Radiant: 3D Tetris On A LED Matrix | Heidi Ulrich | [
"Games",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"ESP",
"ESP32",
"led",
"led matrix",
"microcontroller",
"tetris"
] | We love seeing retro games evolve into new, unexpected dimensions. Enter [Markus]’ adaptation of
3D
Tetris
on a custom-built 3x3x12 RGB LED matrix
. Developed as a university project, this open-source setup combines coding, soldering, and 3D printing. It’s powered by an ESP32 microcontroller with gameplay controlled by a neat web interface.
This 3D build makes the classic game so much harder to play, that one could argue whether it’s still a game, or has turned into a form of art. Although it is challenging to rotate and drop blocks on such a small scale, for die-hard
Tetris
fans (and we know you’re out there), there is always someone up to become best at it. Just look at the FastLED-powered light show, the responsive web-based GUI, and fully modular 3D printed housing, this project is a joy to look at even when nobody is playing it. Heck, a game that
turned 40 only a year ago
should be so mature to entertain itself, shouldn’t it?
From homemade
Pong
tables to LED cube displays, hobbyists keep finding ways to give classic games a futuristic twist. Projects like this are about pushing boundaries. Hackaday’s archives are full of
similar innovations
, but why not craft some new ones? | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086524",
"author": "Carl Foxmarten",
"timestamp": "2025-01-21T10:04:07",
"content": "I’ve coded an OpenGL 3D Tetris clone for a university course, and it was WAY more than just 3×3! Definitely incredibly challenging to play!(we used spheres for the individual “bits”, so you could –... | 1,760,371,658.666012 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/23/this-home-made-laptop-raises-the-bar/ | This Home Made Laptop Raises The Bar | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"anyone_e",
"home made laptop",
"laptop"
] | With ready availability of single board computers, displays, keyboards, power packs, and other hardware, a home-made laptop is now a project within most people’s reach. Some laptop projects definitely veer towards being cyberdecks while others take a more conventional path, but we’ve rarely seen one as professional looking as
[Byran Huang]’s anyon_e open source laptop
. It really takes the art to the next level.
The quality is immediately apparent in the custom CNC-machined anodised aluminium case, and upon opening it up the curious user could be forgiven for thinking they had a stylish commercial machine in their hands. There’s a slimline mechanical keyboard and a glass trackpad, and that display is an OLED. In fact the whole thing had been built from scratch, and inside is an RK3588 SoC on a module sitting on a custom-designed motherboard. It required some effort for it to drive the display, a process we’ve seen cause pain to other designers, but otherwise it runs Debian. The batteries are slimline pouch cells, with a custom controller board driven by an ESP32.
This must have cost quite a bit to build, but it’s something anyone can have a go at for themselves as
everything is in a GitHub repository
. Purists might ask for open source silicon at its heart to make it truly open source, but considering what he’s done we’ll take this. It’s not the first high quality laptop project we’ve seen
by any means
, but it may be the first that wouldn’t raise any eyebrows in the boardroom. Take a look at the video below the break.
https://www.byran.ee/posts/creation/ | 54 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087434",
"author": "Byran Huang",
"timestamp": "2025-01-23T18:15:24",
"content": "Thank you Jenny! You also wrote one of my closest friends and classmates’ article “HOW TO LAND A MODEL ROCKET VERTICALLY” before too!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,658.819742 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/23/shellcode-over-midi-bad-apple-on-a-psr-e433-kinda/ | Shellcode Over MIDI? Bad Apple On A PSR-E433, Kinda | Elliot Williams | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"bad apple",
"midi",
"reverse engineering",
"shellcode",
"video",
"yamaha"
] | If hacking on consumer hardware is about figuring out what it can do, and pushing it in directions that the manufacturer never dared to dream, then this is a very fine hack indeed. [Portasynthica3] takes on the Yamaha PSR-E433, a cheap beginner keyboard, discovers a shell baked into it, and takes it from there.
[Portasynthinca3]
reverse engineered the firmware, wrote shellcode for the device, embedded the escape in a MIDI note stream, and even ended up writing some simple LCD driver software totally decent refresh rate on the dot-matrix display
, all to support the lofty goal of displaying arbitrary graphics on the keyboard’s dot-matrix character display.
Now, we want you to be prepared for a low-res video extravaganza here. You might have to squint a bit to make out what’s going on in the video, but keep in mind that it’s being sent over a music data protocol from the 1980s, running at 31.25 kbps, displayed in the custom character RAM of an LCD.
As always, the hack starts with research. Identifying the microcontroller CPU lead to JTAG and OpenOCD. (We love the technique of looking at the draw on a bench power meter to determine if the chip is responding to pause commands.) Dumping the code and tossing it into Ghidra lead to the unexpected discovery that Yamaha had put a live shell in the device that communicates over MIDI, presumably for testing and development purposes. This shell had PEEK and POKE, which meant that OpenOCD could go sit back on the shelf. Poking “Hello World” into some free RAM space over
MIDI sysex
was the first proof-of-concept.
The final hack to get video up and running was to dig deep into the custom character-generation RAM, write some code to disable the normal character display, and then fool the CPU into calling this code instead of the shell, in order to increase the update rate. All of this for a thin slice of Bad Apple over MIDI, but more importantly, for the glory. And this hack is glorious! Go check it out in full.
MIDI is entirely hacker friendly, and it’s likely you can hack together a musical controller that would wow your audience just with stuff in your junk box. If you’re at all into music, and you’ve never built your own MIDI devices,
you have your weekend project
.
Thanks [James] for the gonzo tip! | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087408",
"author": "Jon Mayo",
"timestamp": "2025-01-23T16:58:55",
"content": "sysex messages are a bit of a nightmare to implement. because vendors have to design them from scratch.7-bit JSON over MIDI 2.0 at least gives a vendor the option to grab a rock solid parser written by s... | 1,760,371,658.864295 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/23/brick-layer-post-processor-promising-stronger-3d-prints-now-available/ | Brick Layer Post-Processor, Promising Stronger 3D Prints, Now Available | Tom Nardi | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"g-code",
"gcode post-processing",
"slicer"
] | Back in November we first brought you word of a slicing technique by which the final strength of 3D printed parts could be considerably improved by adjusting the first layer height of each wall so that subsequent layers would interlock like bricks. It was relatively easy to implement, didn’t require anything special on the printer to accomplish, and testing showed it was effective enough to pursue further. Unfortunately, there was some patent concerns, and it seemed like nobody wanted to be the first to step up and actually implement the feature.
Well, as of today,
[Roman Tenger] has decided to answer the call
. As explained in the announcement video below, the company that currently holds the US patent for this tech hasn’t filed a European counterpart, so he feels he’s in a fairly safe spot compared to other creators in the community. We salute his bravery, and wish him nothing but the best of luck should any lawyer come knocking.
So how does it work? Right now the script supports PrusaSlicer and OrcaSlicer, and the installation is the same in both cases — just download the Python file, and go into your slicer’s settings under “Post-Processing Scripts” and enter in its path. As of right now you’ll have to provide the target layer height as an option to the script, but we’re willing to bet that’s going to be one of the first things that gets improved as the community starts sending in pull requests for the GPL v3 licensed script.
There was a lot of interest in this technique when we covered it last
, and we’re very excited to see an open source implementation break cover. Now that it’s out in the wild, we’d love to hear about it in the comments if you try it out.
Thanks to [greg_bear] in the
Hackaday Discord
for the tip. | 45 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087307",
"author": "sweethack",
"timestamp": "2025-01-23T12:59:00",
"content": "There’s also Z pinning that’s worth reading about. The idea is to make a hole that’s 3 or 4 layer deep and when the hotend is on top of the hole, it’s simply letting the plastic flow into it, plugin the... | 1,760,371,658.948593 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/23/its-never-too-late-for-a-fixed-simcity-2000/ | It’s Never Too Late For A FixedSimCity 2000 | Donald Papp | [
"Games",
"Software Hacks"
] | [] | Some retro games need a little help running on modern systems, and it’s not always straightforward.
SimCity 2000 Special Edition
is one such game and [araxestroy]’s
sc2kfix bugfix DLL
shows that the process can require a nontrivial amount of skill and finesse. The result? A
SimCity 2000 Special Edition
that can run without crash or compromise on modern Windows machines, surpassing previous fixes.
SimCity 2000 Special Edition
was a release for Windows 95 that allowed the game to work in windowed glory. The executable is capable of running under modern Windows systems (and at high resolutions!) but it’s got a few problems lurking under the hood.
There are crash issues during save/load dialog boxes, and a big visual problem. Animations rely on palette swapping for the game’s animations, and the technique originally used simply does not work right on modern displays. A fellow named [Guspaz] created
SC2KRepainter
to partially deal with this by forcing window redraws, but it’s an imperfect fix with a few side effects of it’s own.
[araxestroy]’s new solution eliminates dialog crashes and restores the animations, letting them look exactly as they should even on modern systems. It does this elegantly not by patching the executable or running a separate process, but by making the changes in memory at runtime with the help of a specially-crafted
.dll
file. Just grab
winmm.dll
from
the latest release
and put it into the same folder as
simcity.exe
, then launch the game to enjoy it as the designers intended!
Patching old games is a scene that helps ensure not only that classics never die, but also helps them be appreciated in new ways. Heck, even
E.T. for the Atari 2600 has gotten tweaked
, highlighting the misunderstood nature of the game in the process. | 32 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087247",
"author": "Tom",
"timestamp": "2025-01-23T09:55:38",
"content": "I have very fond memories of SimCity 2000. Is it available for (lawful) download somewhere or do you have to own a legit copy to do this?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,659.016876 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/22/a-ribbon-microphone-is-harder-than-you-think/ | A Ribbon Microphone Is Harder Than You Think | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"microphone",
"ribbon microphone"
] | There’s a mystique around ribbon microphones due to their being expensive studio-grade items, which has led more than one experimenter down the rabbit hole of making one. [Catherine van West]
has posted her experiments in the field
, and it makes for an interesting read.
The recipe for a ribbon microphone is very simple indeed — suspend a corrugated ribbon of foil in a magnetic field, and take the voltage across the ribbon. But that simplicity hides some significant issues, as the foil is much thinner than the stuff you might roast your turkey under. Such lightweight foil is extremely fragile, and the signwriters leaf used here proved to be difficult to get right.
Then when the microphone is built there’s still the exceptionally low impedance and small voltage across the ribbon to contend with. The choice here is a transformer rather than a FET preamp, which surprised us.
The result is by all accounts a decent sounding microphone, though with some hum pickup due to difficulty with shielding. Should you give one a try? Maybe not, but
that hasn’t stopped others from giving it a go
. | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087235",
"author": "milldude",
"timestamp": "2025-01-23T09:12:32",
"content": "One wonders if a second loop of wire in series, wound “the other way” aside/above the ribbon could act as a “humbucker”, cancelling the magnetically picked up hum.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,371,659.069456 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/22/electric-vehicle-charging-heats-up/ | Electric Vehicle Charging Heats Up | Bryan Cockfield | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"charger",
"electric vehicle",
"ev",
"extension cord",
"general purpose",
"heater",
"power cable",
"space heater"
] | As the electric vehicle takeover slowly lumbers along, marginally increasing efficiencies for certain applications while entrenching car-centric urban design even further, there are some knock-on effects that are benefiting people and infrastructure beyond simple transportation. Vehicle-to-grid technology has applications for providing energy from the car back to the grid for things like power outages or grid leveling. But [Technology Connections] is taking this logic one step further. Since a large number of EV owners have charging stations built into their garages,
he wondered if these charging stations could be used for other tasks and built an electric heater which can use one for power
.
This project uses a level 2 charger, capable of delivering many kilowatts of power to an EV over fairly standard 240V home wiring with a smart controller in between that and the car. Compared to a level 1 charger which can only trickle charge a car on a standard 120V outlet (in the US) or a DC fast charger which can provide a truly tremendous amount of energy in a very short time, these are a happy middle ground. So, while it’s true a homeowner could simply wire up another 240V outlet for this type of space heater or other similar application, this project uses the existing infrastructure of the home to avoid redundancies like that.
Of course this isn’t exactly plug-and-play. Car chargers communicate with vehicles to negotiate power capabilities with each other, so any appliance wanting to use one as a bulk electric supply needs to be able to perform this negotiation. To get the full power available in this case all that’s needed is a resistor connected to one of the signal wires, but this won’t work for all cases and could overload smaller charging stations. For that a more complex signalling method is needed, but since this was more of a proof-of-concept we’ll still call it a success. For those wanting to DIY the charger itself,
building one from the ground up is fairly straightforward as well
.
Thanks to [Billy] for the tip! | 64 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087156",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2025-01-23T03:37:09",
"content": "This is cool, and I know the answer to the following is “Because they wanted to” but, why? I must be missing something, it doesn’t appear to use the car’s battery to run the heater.…this has inspired me howe... | 1,760,371,659.306778 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/22/what-day-is-it-again-check-the-clock/ | What Day Is It Again? Check The Clock | Kristina Panos | [
"clock hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"Beetle ESP32-C3",
"clock",
"day of the week",
"esp32-C3",
"PCB clock"
] | If you’re lucky enough to work from home, you’ll soon find that it presents its own set of challenges, mostly related to work/life balance. It can get so bad that you don’t know what day of the week it is. Really. Ask us how we know.
Rather than miss a meeting (or a day off), prolific hacker [Arnov Sharma] created this
day of the week clock
. It uses a customized LED driver board with seven sets of three LEDs, each driven by a MOSFET. Each MOSFET is controlled by a DFRobot Mini Beetle ESP32-C3. It runs on a 2200 mAh, 3.7 V lithium-ion battery.
While this is mostly PCBs, there are three printed parts that turn it into a displayable object. We really like the look of this clock — it has just the right amount of pizazz to it and reminds us of a and old movie marquee. Be sure to check out the great build instructions.
We love a good clock around here. In case you missed it,
here is the latest from [Moritz v. Sivers] that uses a caustic lens to display the time
. | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087135",
"author": "Sammie Gee",
"timestamp": "2025-01-23T01:22:24",
"content": "Umm this is seven-state finite machine. Somehow I think the ESP32-D3 is an overkill, but if it is cheap and runs mostly in deep sleep, to be awaken and send once-a-day-command, then it is kewl.Point be... | 1,760,371,659.21255 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/22/make-your-vr-controllers-handle-like-two-handed-weapons/ | Make Your VR Controllers Handle Like Two-Handed Weapons | Donald Papp | [
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"3d printed",
"attachment",
"controllers",
"sword",
"two handed",
"vr"
] | Wielding things like two-handed swords in VR can be awkward. There’s no sense of grasping a solid object. The controllers (and therefore one’s hands) feel floaty and disconnected from one another, because they are. [Astro VR Gaming] aims to fix this with a DIY attachment they are calling the
ARC VR Sword Attachment
.
The ARC is a 3D-printed attachment that allows a player to connect two controllers together. They can just as easily be popped apart, which is good because two separate controllers is what one wants most of the time. But for those moments when hefting a spear or swinging a two-handed sword is called for? Stick them together and go wild.
The original design (the first link up above) uses magnets, but
an alternate version
uses tapered inserts instead, and provides a storage stand. Want to know if the ARC is something you’d like to make for yourself? Watch it in action in the video embedded just under the page break.
VR is an emerging technology with loads of space for experimentation and DIY problem solving. We wish more companies would follow Valve’s example of
hacker-friendly hardware design
, but even just providing CAD models of your hardware to make attachments easier to design would be a big step forward, and something every hacker would welcome. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8087076",
"author": "Duck Hunter",
"timestamp": "2025-01-22T21:10:41",
"content": "VR is a fading technology. Unfortunately for cokeheads in tech industry the recent global health emergency didn’t last as long as they expected and this fad never caught on.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,661.285488 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/22/floss-weekly-episode-817-incompatible-with-reality/ | FLOSS Weekly Episode 817: Incompatible With Reality | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"FLOSS Weekly",
"FRRouting"
] | This week,
Jonathan Bennett
and
Dan Lynch
chat with
Stefano Zacchiroli
about Debian and Software Heritage!
https://www.softwareheritage.org/
https://upsilon.cc/~zack/
Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show right on
our YouTube Channel
? Have someone you’d like us to interview? Let us know, or contact the guest and have them contact us!
Take a look at the schedule here
.
Direct Download
in DRM-free MP3.
If you’d rather read along,
here’s the transcript for this week’s episode
.
Places to follow the FLOSS Weekly Podcast:
Spotify
RSS
Theme music: “Newer Wave” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under
Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8088708",
"author": "Richard",
"timestamp": "2025-01-26T18:48:31",
"content": "One thing that would have been interesting to touch on in this episode is the challenge of building code.Even pulling modern Python codebase from Github can be hard to get running. Code archived, on its ... | 1,760,371,661.944892 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/22/robotic-dress-uses-simple-techniques-to-combine-3d-printed-parts-with-fabric/ | ‘Robotic’ Dress Uses Simple Techniques To Combine 3D Printed Parts With Fabric | Lewin Day | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"dress",
"fabric",
"fashion",
"neoprene"
] | By and large, our clothes don’t actively
move.
They’re simple pieces of fabric assembled to sit nicely on our bodies, and little more. [anoukwipprecht] created something a little more technological and confronting, though,
with the Robotic Open-Source Scale Dress.
Right from the drop, you can see what the dress is all about. It’s an open-shoulder design that has eight large moving scales mounted on the front. These scales are printed, and each features its own servo for independent movement. The scale baseplates are designed to hide the servos themselves, creating a sleeker look that hides the mechanism underneath. Each baseplate is also perforated with holes, allowing it to be sewn on to the base garment in a stout fashion. The dress itself is created with thick neoprene fabric, enabling it to take the weight of the scale assemblies without sagging or pulling away from the body. You can even customize the scales in various ways—such as adding feathers instead.
The dress is a neat piece, and would catch eyes for its pointy scales alone. The fact that they can start moving at any time only increases the garment’s impact. We’ve seen some other great fashionable uses of 3D printing before, too, like these
awesome printed shoes.
Meanwhile, if you’re printing your own garments in your home lab, don’t hesitate to
let us know
! Or, even better… wear them
to the next Hackaday event
! | 19 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086940",
"author": "deshipu",
"timestamp": "2025-01-22T15:19:25",
"content": "I find it extremely disingenuous to use quotes for “robotic” when describing an autonomously moving project like this, yet at the same time no quotes or the slightest sign of hesitation when describing re... | 1,760,371,661.667569 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/22/diy-drones-deliver-the-goods-with-printed-release/ | DIY Drones Deliver The Goods With Printed Release | Bryan Cockfield | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"communications",
"controller",
"delivery",
"drone",
"ESP32",
"package",
"protocol"
] | It seems like the widespread use of delivery drones by companies like Amazon and Wal-Mart has been perpetually just out of reach. Of course robotics is a tricky field, and producing a fleet of these machines reliable enough to be cost effective has proven to be quite a challenge. But on an individual level, turning any drone into one that can deliver a package is not only doable but
is something [Iloke-Alusala] demonstrates with their latest project
.
The project aims to be able to turn any drone into a delivery drone, in this case using a FPV drone as the platform. Two hitch-like parts are 3D printed, one which adds an attachment point to the drone and another which attaches to the package, allowing the drone to easily pick up the package and then drop it off quickly. The real key to this build is the control mechanism. [Iloke-Alusala] used
an ESP32 to tap into the communications between the receiver and the flight controller
. When the ESP32 detects a specific signal has been sent to the flight controller, it can activate the mechanism on the 3D printed hitch to either grab on to a package or release it at a certain point.
While this is a long way from a fully autonomous fleet of delivery drones, it goes a long way into showing that individuals can use existing drones to transport useful amounts of material and also sets up a way for an ESP32 to decode and use a common protocol used in drones, making it easy to expand their capabilities in other ways as well. After all, if we have
search and rescue drones
we could also have drones that deliver help to those stranded. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086857",
"author": "strawberrymortallyb0bcea48e7",
"timestamp": "2025-01-22T12:13:14",
"content": "Finally, no more asking for permission from DJI to fly it anywhere!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8086924",
"author": "Sok... | 1,760,371,661.360582 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/22/going-minimal-64x4-the-fun-in-functional-computing/ | Going Minimal: 64×4, The Fun In Functional Computing | Heidi Ulrich | [
"computer hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"64kb",
"cpu",
"MinOS 2",
"von neumann"
] | If you’ve ever wondered what makes a computer tick,
the Minimal 64×4 by [Slu4]
is bound to grab your attention. It’s not a modern powerhouse, but a thoughtfully crafted throwback to the essence of computing. With just 61 logic ICs, VGA output, PS/2 input, and SSD storage, this DIY wonder packs four times the processing power of a Commodore 64.
What sets [Slu4]’s efforts apart is his refusal to follow the beaten track of CPU development. He imposes strict complexity limits on his designs, sticking to an ultra-minimalist Von Neumann architecture. His journey began with the ‘Minimal Ur-CPU’, a logic-chip-based computer that could crunch numbers but little else. Next came the ‘Minimal 64’, featuring VGA graphics and Space Invaders-level performance. The latest ‘Minimal 64×4’ takes it further, adding incredible speed while keeping the design so simple it’s almost ridiculous. It’s computing stripped to its rawest form—no fancy sound, no dazzling graphics, just raw resourcefulness.
For enthusiasts of
retro-tech and DIY builds
, this project is a treasure trove. From text editors to starfield simulations to
Sokoban
, [Slu4] proves you don’t need complexity to make magic. | 38 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086819",
"author": "12L14",
"timestamp": "2025-01-22T10:10:39",
"content": "Will it run Doom? ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8087008",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2025-01-22T18:02:23",
"co... | 1,760,371,661.555517 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/21/making-wire-explode-with-4000-joules-of-energy/ | Making Wire Explode With 4,000 Joules Of Energy | Maya Posch | [
"Science"
] | [
"detonator",
"exploding wire method"
] | The piece of copper wire moments before getting vaporized by 4,000 joules. (Credit: Hyperspace Pirate, Youtube)
In lieu of high-explosives, an exploding wire circuit can make for an interesting substitute. As [Hyperspace Pirate]
demonstrates in a recent video
, the act of pumping a lot of current very fast through a thin piece of metal can make for a rather violent detonation. The basic idea is that by having the metal wire (or equivalent) being subjected to a sufficiently large amount of power, it will not just burn through, but effectively vaporize, creating a very localized stream of plasma for the current to keep travelling through and create a major shockwave in the process.
This makes the
exploding wire method
(EWM) an ideal circuit for any application where you need to have a very fast, very precise generating of plasma and an easy to synchronize detonation. EWM was first demonstrated in the 18th century in the Netherlands by [Martin van Marum]. These days it finds use for creating metal nanoparticles, brief momentary light sources and detonators in explosives, including for nuclear (implosion type) weapons.
While it sounds easy enough to just strap a honkin’ big battery of capacitors to a switch and a piece of wire, [Hyperspace Pirate]’s video demonstrates that it’s a bit more involved than that. Switching so much current at high voltages ended up destroying a solid-state (SCR) switch, and factors like resistance and capacitance can turn an exploding wire into merely a heated one that breaks before any plasma or arcing can take place, or waste a lot of potential energy.
As for whether it’s ‘try at home’ safe, note that he had to move to an abandoned industrial site due to the noise levels, and the resulting machine he cobbled together involves a lot of high-voltage wiring. Hearing protection and extreme caution are more than warranted. | 80 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086773",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2025-01-22T06:33:52",
"content": "Joules of energy? Is that like Volts of electricity, Amps of current, Ohms of resistance, Watts of power, or Farads of capacitance?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,662.072595 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/21/the-nokia-design-archive-is-open-for-viewing/ | The Nokia Design Archive Is Open For Viewing | Navarre Bartz | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"History"
] | [
"cellphone",
"mobile phone",
"nokia",
"phone",
"retrotechtacular"
] | During the Cambrian Explosion of cellphone form factors at the turn of the millenium, Nokia reigned supreme. If you’d like to see what they were doing behind the scenes to design these wild phones, you’ll love the
Nokia Design Archive from Aalto University
.
Featuring images, presentations, videos and a number of other goodies (remember transparencies?), this collection gives us some in-depth insight into how consumer products were dreamed up, designed, and brought to market. Some projects require more reading between the lines than others as the Archive is somewhat fragmented, but we think it could still be an invaluable peek into product design, especially if you’re working on projects that you want to be usable outside of a hacker audience.
The Archive also includes
approximately 2000 objects
including many
unreleased “unknown” models
and
prototypes of phones
that actually did make it into the wild. While we’d love to get our hands on some of these devices IRL, having images with reference colors is probably the next best thing. Having replaced a number of smartphone screens, we hope more hackers take up the buttons and indestructible casing of these elegant devices for a more civilized age.
Thanks to [Michael Fitzmayer] for the tip! Be sure to checkout his work on Nokia
N-Gage
phones, including an SDK if you too love to taco talk. | 19 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086750",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025-01-22T03:09:41",
"content": "Frutiger Aero Finnish excellence on full glorious display. Kippis!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8086769",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2025-... | 1,760,371,661.610893 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/20/a-quarter-and-a-dime-will-get-you-a-commodore-64-softmodem/ | A Quarter And A Dime Will Get You A Commodore 64 Softmodem | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"c64",
"commodore 64",
"modem"
] | Back in the 1980s, a viable modem cost hundreds of dollars. Even in the 1990s, you were looking at spending a a Benjamin or two to get computer squawking down the phone lines. According to [Cameron Kaiser], though, it’s possible to whip up a softmodem using a Commodore 64 for much cheaper than that. How much?
Just 35 cents, we’re told!
The inspiration was simple—Rockwell apparently used to build modems using the 6502. The Commodore 64 has a 6502 inside, pretty much, so surely it could be a softmodem, right? Indeed, one [John Iannetta] had done this in a one-way form in the 1980s, using the Commodore 64’s SID audio chip to output data in sound form. In 1998, he espoused the 35-cent modem—basically, the price of buying an RCA jack to hook up a phone line to your Commodore 64.
As [Cameron] found out, the concept still works today, as does [John’s] code, but it’s more like 68 cents in 2025 dollars. With the right bits and pieces, and a little code, you can have your C64 modulating data into sound at rates of 300 baud.
It’s hacky, slow, and there’s no real way to receive—the C64 just doesn’t have the chops to demodulate these kinds of signals on its own. You also shouldn’t use it on a real phone line if you don’t want to damage your C64. Still, it’s a wonderful bit of hackery, and it’s fun to see how well it works. We’ve seen some other great Commodore 64 modem projects before,
like the ever-useful RetroModem.
Meanwhile, if you’ve got your own communication hacks for the computers of yesteryear, don’t hesitate to
let us know! | 43 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086465",
"author": "Duck Hunter",
"timestamp": "2025-01-21T06:28:48",
"content": "Q: What does the “-dem” part in “modem” stand for?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8086468",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,371,661.804305 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/20/bambu-lab-tries-to-clarify-its-new-beta-authentication-scheme/ | Bambu Lab Tries To Clarify Its New “Beta” Authentication Scheme | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"News"
] | [
"3d printing",
"Bambu lab",
"drm"
] | Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of any developing tech scandal is the way that the target company handles criticism and feedback from the community. After announcing a new authentication scheme for cloud & LAN-based operations a few days ago,
Bambu Lab today posted an update
that’s supposed to address said criticism and feedback. This follows the
original announcement
which had the 3D printer community up in arms, and quickly saw the new tool that’s supposed to provide safe and secure communications with Bambu Lab printers ripped apart to
extract the security certificate and private key
.
In the new blog post, the Bambu Lab spokesperson takes a few paragraphs to get to the points which the community are most concerned about, which is interoperability between tools like OrcaSlicer and Bambu Lab printers. The above graphic is what they envision it will look like, with purportedly OrcaSlicer getting a network plugin that should provide direct access, but so far the Bambu Connect app remains required. It’s also noted that this new firmware is ‘just Beta firmware’.
As the flaming wreck that’s Bambu Lab’s PR efforts keeps hurtling down the highway of public opinion, we’d be remiss to not point out that with the security certificate and private key being easily obtainable from the Bambu Connect Electron app, there is absolutely no point to any of what Bambu Lab is doing. | 62 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086427",
"author": "Nathan",
"timestamp": "2025-01-21T03:07:27",
"content": "“with the security certificate and private key being easily obtainable from the Bambu Connect Electron app, there is absolutely no point to any of what Bambu Lab is doing”Unless what they’re doing is only ... | 1,760,371,661.910736 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/20/3d-printed-rc-car-focuses-on-performance-fundamentals/ | 3D-Printed RC Car Focuses On Performance Fundamentals | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"ackermann steering",
"R/C car",
"radio control",
"steering",
"suspension",
"suspension design"
] | There are a huge number of manufacturers building awesome radio-controlled cars these days. However, sometimes you just have to go your own way. That’s what [snamle] did with this awesome 3D-printed RC car—
and the results are impressive.
This build didn’t just aim to build something that looked vaguely car-like and whizzed around on the ground. Instead, it was intended to give [snamle] the opporunity to explore the world of vehicle dynamics—learning about weight distribution, suspension geometry, and so many other factors—and how these all feed into the handling of a vehicle. The RC side of things is all pretty straightforward—transmitter, receiver, servos, motors, and a differential were all off-the-shelf. But the chassis design, the steering, and suspension are all bespoke—designed by [snamle] to create a car with good on-road handling and grip.
It’s a small scale testbed, to be sure. Regardless, there’s no better way to learn about how a vehicle works on a real, physical level—you can’t beat building one with your own two hands and figuring out how it works.
It’s true, we see a lot of 3D printed RC cars around these parts. Many are built with an eye to robotics experimentation or simply as a learning exercise. This one stands out for its focus on
handling
and
performance
, and of course that
nicely-designed suspension system
. Video after the break. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086431",
"author": "craig",
"timestamp": "2025-01-21T03:15:56",
"content": "The ability to design and print off for testing a series of non-adjustable, say, a-arms that mess with geometry by like 0.5-1 degree increments is rad! Find the best, stick with it and it will never go out ... | 1,760,371,661.707027 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/20/smallest-usb-device-so-far/ | Smallest USB Device… So Far | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"keyboard",
"microcontroller",
"mouse",
"pcb",
"port",
"small",
"stm32",
"tiny",
"usb"
] | For better or worse it seems to be human nature to compete with one another, as individuals or teams, rather than experience contentedness while moving to the woods and admiring nature Thoreau-style. On the plus side, competition often results in benefits for all of us, driving down costs for everything from agriculture to medical care to technology. Although perhaps a niche area of competition, the realm of “smallest USB device” seems to have a new champion:
this PCB built by [Emma] that’s barely larger than the USB connector pads themselves
.
With one side hosting the pads to make contact with a standard USB type-A connector, the other side’s real estate is taken up by a tiny STM32 microcontroller, four phototransistors that can arm or disarm the microcontroller, and a tiny voltage regulator that drops the 5V provided by the USB port to the 3.3V the STM32 needs to operate. This is an impressive amount of computing power for less than three millimeters of vertical space, and can operate as a HID device with a wide variety of possible use cases.
Perhaps the most obvious thing to do with a device like this would be to build
a more stealthy version of this handy tool to manage micromanagers
, but there are certainly other tasks that a tiny HID can be put to use towards. And, as far as the smallest USB device competition goes, we’d also note that USB-A is not the smallest connector available and, therefore, the competition still has some potential if someone can figure out how to do something similar with an even smaller USB connector.
Thanks to [JohnU] for the tip! | 37 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086378",
"author": "Joseph Sammarco",
"timestamp": "2025-01-20T21:38:57",
"content": "Cool. One time insert. If you want it back you got to dig it out with tweezers.LOL, no thanks",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8086497",
... | 1,760,371,662.147535 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/20/modulathe-is-cnc-ready-and-will-machine-what-you-want/ | Modulathe Is CNC Ready And Will Machine What You Want | Lewin Day | [
"cnc hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"cnc lathe",
"lathe"
] | Once upon a time, lathes were big heavy machines driven by massive AC motors, hewn out of cast iron and sheer will. Today, we have machine tools of all shapes and sizes, many of which are compact and tidy DIY creations.
[Maxim Kachurovskiy]’s Modulathe fits the latter description nicely
.
The concept behind the project was simple—this was to be a modular, digital lathe that was open-source and readily buildable on a DIY level, without sacrificing usability. To that end, Modulathe is kitted out to process metal, wooden, and plastic parts, so you can fabricate in whatever material is most appropriate for your needs.
It features a 125 mm chuck and an MT5 spindle, and relies on 15 mm linear rails, 12 mm ball screws, and NEMA23 stepper motors. Because its modular, much of the rest of the design is up to you. You can set it up with pretty much any practical bed length—just choose the right ball screw and rail to achieve it. It’s also set up to work however you like—you can manually operate it, or use it for CNC machining tasks instead.
If you want a small lathe that’s customizable and CNC-ready, this might be the project you’re looking for. We’ve featured some other
similar projects in this space, too
. Do your research, and explore! If you come up with new grand machine tools of your own design, don’t hesitate to
let us know!
Thanks to [mip] for the tip! | 14 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086384",
"author": "Mr Name Required",
"timestamp": "2025-01-20T22:00:04",
"content": "Wow MT5 is a monster headstock taper for that lathe size, but the bigger the better.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8086414",
"author":... | 1,760,371,662.205132 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/20/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-hardware-layered-keyboard/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Hardware-Layered Keyboard | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"1989",
"Chicago no. 3",
"keyboard framework",
"modular keyboard",
"molekula",
"nintendo",
"replacement keyboard",
"trs-80",
"typewriter"
] | You know (or maybe you didn’t), I get super excited when y’all use the links at the bottom of this round-up we call Keebin’ to communicate with your old pal Kristina about your various labors of love. So just remember that.
Case in point: I was typing up this very issue when I heard from [Jay Crutti] and [Marcel Erz]. Both are out there making replacement keyboards for TRS-80s — [Jay] for
Models 3 and 4
, and [Marcel] for the
Model 1
. Oooh, I said to myself. This is going at the top.
A TRS-80 Model 4. Image by [Jay Crutti] via
JayCrutti.com
Relevant tangent time: I remember in the 90s having a pile of computers in my parents’ basement of various vintages, a TRS-80 Model 2 among them. (Did I ever tell you about the time I got pulled over for speeding with a bunch of different computers in the backseat? I was like no, officer, first of all, those are old machines that no one would really want, and I swear I didn’t steal them.)
I think the TRS-80 is probably the one I miss the most. If I still had it, you can bet I would be using [Jay] and [Marcel]’s work to build my own replacement keyboard, which the 40-year-old machine would likely need at this point if the Model 4 is any indication with its failing keyboard contacts.
To create the replacements, [Jay] used Keyboard Layout Editor (KLE), Plate & Case Builder, and EasyEDA. Using the schematic from the maintenance manual, he matched the row/column wiring of the original matrix with Cherry MX footprints. Be sure to check out [Jay]’s site for a link to the project files, or to purchase parts or an assembled keyboard. On the hunt for TRS-80 parts in general?
Look no further than [Marcel]’s site
.
Keyboards On the Molekula Level
While some focus aesthetically on keyboards, or on comfort, [zzeneg] is simultaneously rocking both
and
coming up with new keyboard frameworks.
Take the open-source Molekula for example
.
Image by [zzeneg] via
reddit
[zzeneg] really digs modular keyboards and especially
the VIK standard
for interfacing data between PCBs, which calls for an FPC 12-pin, 0.5 mm pitch connector.
The big idea with molekula and future keyboards is to have dumb sides and a smart central module that does the braining and the hosting. Additionally, [zzeneg]’s plan is to keep the central PCBs’ footprint under 100 mm² in order to make it more affordable for experimentation. You can see this in the third photo of
the gallery
.
There are a couple of cool things going on in addition to the modularity — the switch footprints cover pretty much anything you’d want to use, and [zzeneg] left the hot swap sockets exposed around back. This thing is just cool through and through.
Via
reddit
The Centerfold: Alice, 1989 Style
Image by [Brooklick] via
reddit
I wouldn’t mind being chained to [Brooklick]’s desk for a while. Would you? What I can tell you is that this is an Alice keyboard, and that those are 1989
keycaps
and
switches
. Don’t get too excited unless you also have an Alice; according to [Brooklick], the Space bars are crap, although they do look good.
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 Chicago No. 3
At first glance,
the Chicago No. 3
looks a bit like a car that’s missing a bumper. But then you look again and see it sitting on round feet firmly planted behind the frame-less keyboard and think, it might be kind of nice to type on this one. And without that extra iron, it’s probably pretty light and portable, too.
Image via
The Antikey Chop
Given all of that, the No. 3 does have an interesting WERTY layout, with the ‘Q’ appearing on the bottom row. So did the model that sold concurrently, the No. 1 (which did have a frame around the keyboard). The base of the No. 3 was slotted, which made it even lighter to carry around.
Additionally, the two models had different ribbon mechanisms. The No. 3 used a 3/8″ ribbon that fed through those vertically-oriented spools, which is something I haven’t seen before. The No. 3 had two additional keys — a Backspace and a Margin Release. Whereas the No. 1 cost $35, the No. 3 went for $50 in early 1900s money (
about $1,600 today
).
Functionally speaking, the two were quite similar. In addition to both having a WERTY keyboard, they each used a typesleeve — a cylindrical component that can be swapped out, much like the IBM Selectric’s golf ball type element — and a hammer to print. Interestingly enough, in order to use either model, the typist had to turn the safety off by pulling a “hammer extension arm” on the left side before typing. Hopefully, nothing terrible happened if you forgot to do this.
And What Do We Think of Hardware Layers?
Madden was here. Image via
AutoKeybo
Wow. This might actually be a good use of image recognition; I am undecided. It certainly looks cool at first blush, anyway. And I hope it makes a little
zhoop!
sound in the process of working.
Okay, so, imagine you’re sitting there at your split keyboard and need to mouse or enter some digits real fast. With this number, all you have to do is stretch out your fingers for a second and
whoosh —
the QWERTY retracts, and in its place comes a 10-key on the left and a mouse on the right.
That’s the power of
AutoKeybo
. Here, watch the demo video. It’s only nine seconds long.
So, let’s start with the obvious. This is supposed to be an ergonomic keyboard, given that you don’t have to move your hand over to mouse. But you do have to rest your arms on a big plastic box that’s two keyboards tall, and that probably isn’t good for you. But it
is
split, and the sides
are
angled toward one another, so there’s that.
The cool part is that the trays move independently, so you just stretch out whichever hand is hiding what you need to use real quick. It would be nice to access the mouse without losing the left half of the keyboard. Don’t ask me why, it just would. Just so you wouldn’t have to move both hands.
Okay, so how does it work already? Basically, there’s a built-in camera that detects the splaying of your fingers to trigger the switch.
It has a Raspberry Pi 5 doing all of the crunching
, which of course you could use as a standalone computer.
Here’s a report from someone else who tried it out
at CES.
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": "8086343",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2025-01-20T18:16:49",
"content": "well. I think its time for you to take a look at the Varityper 1010: three level shift keys, proportional typefaces, exchangable typefaces, different type sizes, adjustable character space, variable lin... | 1,760,371,662.494275 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/20/diy-strontium-aluminate-glows-in-the-dark/ | DIY Strontium Aluminate Glows In The Dark | Al Williams | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"glow in the dark",
"strontium"
] | [Maurycyz] points out right up front: several of the reagents used are very corrosive and can produce toxic gasses. We weren’t sure if they were trying to dissuade us not to replicate it or encourage us to do so. The project in question is making
strontium aluminate
which, by the way, glows in the dark.
The material grows strongly for hours and, despite the dangers of making it, it doesn’t require anything very exotic. As [Maurycyz] points out, oxygen and aluminum are everywhere. Strontium sounds uncommon, but apparently, it is used in ceramics.
For the chemists among us, there’s an explanation of how to make it by decomposing soluble nitrate salts. For the rest of us, the steps are to make aluminum hydroxide using potassium alum, a food preservative, and sodium hydroxide. Then, it is mixed with nitric acid, strontium carbonate, europium, and dysprosium. Those last elements determine the color of the glow.
A drying step removes the acid, followed by dissolving with urea and water. The heat of the reaction wasn’t enough to form the final product, but it took time with an oxy-propane torch to form blobs of strontium aluminate. The product may not have been pure, because it didn’t glow for hours like commercial preparations. But it did manage to glow for a few minutes after light exposure.
We try to limit our chemistry to less toxic substances, although ferric chloride can make a mess. You could probably track down the impurities with
a gas chromatograph
. What we really want is
a glow-in-the-dark car antenna
. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086320",
"author": "CJay",
"timestamp": "2025-01-20T16:59:54",
"content": "Strontium is also used in fireworks, I think it makes a strong red colour?There’s not much apart from the acid that’s hard to come by (and who knows, it might be a lot easier to get Nitric in your country th... | 1,760,371,662.315368 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/20/time-of-flight-sensors-how-do-they-work/ | Time-of-Flight Sensors: How Do They Work? | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"hardware",
"Interest",
"Microcontrollers",
"Slider"
] | [
"lidar",
"time of flight"
] | With the right conditions, this tiny sensor can measure 12 meters
If you need to measure a distance, it is tempting to reach for the ubiquitous ultrasonic module like an HC-SR04. These work well, and they are reasonably easy to use. However, they aren’t without their problems. So maybe try an IR time of flight sensor. These also work well, are reasonably easy to use, and have a different set of problems. I recently had a project where I needed such a sensor, and I picked up a TF-MiniS, which is a popular IR distance sensor. They aren’t very expensive, and they work serial or I2C. So how did it do?
The unit itself is tiny and has good specifications. You can fit the 42 x 15 x 16 mm module anywhere. It only weighs about five grams — as the manufacturer points out, less than two ping-pong balls. It needs 5 V but communicates using 3.3 V, so integration isn’t much of a problem.
At first glance, the range is impressive. You can read things as close as 10 cm and as far away as 12 m. I found this was a bit optimistic, though. Although the product sometimes gets the name of LiDAR, it doesn’t use a laser. It just uses an IR LED and some fancy optics.
How it Works
The simple explanation for how these sensors work is that they bounce light off a target and measure how long it takes to see the reflection. This is oversimplified, but one thing to keep in mind is that light is fast. To measure a millimeter, you need to measure a difference of less than 7 picoseconds. Light travels 1 mm in 3.3 picoseconds, and then the return flight doubles that.
How time of flight works (from the TFmini-S Product Guide)
Because of practical considerations, there are typically a few specialized techniques used. A pulsed sensor turns the illumination on and off and samples pixels to determine the ratio of the overlap in the outbound beam and the reflected light.
It is also possible to sample four measurements on each cycle (that is, four measurements 90 degrees apart) and compute the distance with some fancy trigonometry. TI has a paper that
goes into some detail
. Or, if you prefer video, they have a video on the topic, too, which you can see below.
Practical Concerns
Of course, you can’t measure infinitesimally small times, so the sensors are typically blind when you get too close. This sensor claims to be able to read as little as 10 cm. However, if you read closely, you’ll see that if the total distance is under 6 meters, the sensor is only accurate to within plus or minus 6 cm. So at 10 cm, you might read 4 cm to 16 cm, which is a pretty big difference.
Ambient light can affect measurements, too. One thing you might not think about is that it also matters how reflective the target item is. All of these things can reduce the 12-meter range.
You really want a flat target (image from the TFmini-S product manual)
You also have to think about the field of view. The further away something is, the larger it needs to be. At 12 meters, for example, the target has to be at least 42 cm on a side to present a big enough target. At 1 meter, a 3.5 cm side will suffice.
The target must also be fairly flat in the field of view. If the sensor sees a partial reflection at one distance and more reflection at a further distance, you’ll get an inaccurate reading. None of these things are insurmountable, of course.
Connecting isn’t hard. You use the red/black wires for 5 V power. A 3.3 V serial port is on the white and green wires: white is the line the unit receives data on. We’ve read that if you hook these up backwards or overvolt them, they’ll die. We didn’t test that.
Code
It is pretty easy to write some MicroPython code to get some readings. You can download
the code to try it out
. The heart of it is very simple:
while True:
total_distance = 0
valid_samples = 0
for _ in range(NUM_SAMPLES):
distance, strength, _ = get_lidar_data()
if distance >= 0 and strength >= 100: # throw out "weak" values or errors
total_distance += distance
valid_samples += 1 # only count good values
if valid_samples > 0:
print(total_distance / valid_samples)
By default, the device sends data out frequently. If you want to change things, you can and you can even save your setup so that it will continue to operate to your last settings.
The output is two 0x59 bytes followed by the distance (two bytes), the strength (two bytes, LSB), a device temperature (two bytes), and a checksum. All the two-byte values are least-significant byte first.
Commands all start with 0x5A and the length of the packet. Then there’s a command code, any data the command needs, and a checksum. Many of the commands are fixed, so the checksum is already computed in the documentation for you.
Speaking of documentation, if you want to write your own code, you don’t really need the datasheet. You do want the “Product Manual” from the
Benewake website
. The commands are all in that document. You can switch to a readout in millimeters or centimeters. You can set how often the system sends data. You can also put it in a polling mode. The slowest you can get data is once per second.
In Use
A simple but effective test setup.
So how did it work? Some informal testing on the bench wasn’t too bad. The error at near distances was within range but pretty bad at about 3 cm. However, it looked relatively constant, so you can account for it in your code. We don’t know if different materials or different sensors would require different offsets, but we’d guess they do.
There was some very small noise in the sensor output, but, honestly, not much. There were no wild results to filter out. Averaging didn’t buy much because the output was pretty stable already.
Conclusion
Like most things, this is a good solution if you need it, but there are other options, and you have to weigh the pros and cons of each method. Of course,
you can build your own
, which might help you optimize. Sometimes, the
ultrasonic sensors
are just fine. | 16 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086283",
"author": "clancydaenlightened",
"timestamp": "2025-01-20T15:29:13",
"content": "“The target must also be fairly flat in the field of view”Well using Femto photography principles and quantum mechanics you can technically get time of flight, around a corner and from a curve... | 1,760,371,662.276236 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/20/you-can-now-play-doom-in-microsoft-word-but-you-probably-shouldnt/ | You Can Now PlayDOOMIn Microsoft Word, But You Probably Shouldn’t | Lewin Day | [
"Games"
] | [
"doom",
"doom port",
"game",
"gaming",
"pdf",
"port"
] | DOOM
used to primarily run on x86 PCs. It later got ported to a bunch of consoles with middling success, and then everything under the sun, from random embedded systems to PDFs. Now, thanks to [Wojciech Graj], you can even
play it in Microsoft Word
.
To run
DOOM
inside Microsoft Word, you must enable VBA macros, and ignore security warnings, to boot. You’ll need a modern version of Word, and it will only work on Windows on an x64 CPU. As you might imagine, too, the *.DOCM file is not exactly lightweight. It comes in at 6.6 MB, no surprise given it contains an entire FPS. It carries inside it a library called doomgeneric_docm.dll and the whole doom1.wad data file. Once the file is opened, a macro then extracts all the game data and executes it.
If you think that Microsoft Word doesn’t really have a way of displaying live game graphics, you’d be correct. Instead, that DLL is creating a bitmap image of the game state for every frame, which is then displayed inside Word itself. It uses the GetAsyncKeyState function to grab inputs from the arrow keys, number keys, and CTRL and space so the player can move around. It certainly sounds convoluted, but it actually runs pretty smoothly given all the fuss.
While this obviously
works,
you shouldn’t get in the habit of
executing random code in your word processor
. It’s just not
proper,
you see, like elbows on the dinner table! And, you know. It’s insecure. So don’t do that.
[Thanks to Josiah Gould for the tip!] | 23 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086236",
"author": "strawberrymortallyb0bcea48e7",
"timestamp": "2025-01-20T12:02:18",
"content": "The original DOOM (1993) source code was released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 in 1999. However, assets like graphics, music, and sound remain proprietary, req... | 1,760,371,662.371055 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/20/innovative-clock-uses-printed-caustic-lens/ | Innovative Clock Uses Printed Caustic Lens | Lewin Day | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"caustic",
"caustics",
"clock",
"light",
"optics"
] | Hackers and makers have built just about every kind of clock under the sun. Digital, analog, seven-segment, mechanical seven-segment, binary, ternary, hexadecimal… you name it. It’s been done. You really have to try to find something that shocks us… something we haven’t seen before.
[Moritz v. Sivers] has done just that.
Wild. Just wild.
Meet the Caustic Clock. It’s based on the innovative
Hollow Clock
from [shiura]. It displays time with an hour hand and a minute hand, and that’s all so conventional. But what really caught our eye was the manner in which its dial works. It uses caustics to display the clock dial on a wall as light shines through it.
If you’ve ever seen sunlight reflect through a glass, or the dancing patterns in an outdoor swimming pool, you’ve seen caustics at play. Caustics are the bright patterns we see projected through a transparent object, and if you shape that object properly, you can control them. In this case, [Moritz] used some
GitHub code from [Matt Ferraro]
to create a caustic projection clockface, and 3D printed it using an SLA printer.
The rest of the clock is straightforward enough—there’s some WS2812 LEDs involved, an Arduino Nano, and even an RP2040. But the real magic is in the light show and how it’s all achieved.
We love learning about optics
, and this is a beautiful effect well worth studying yourself. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086244",
"author": "UnderSampled",
"timestamp": "2025-01-20T12:34:20",
"content": "This technique would make for an amazing escape room prop!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8086308",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,371,662.745567 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/19/bone-filament-for-printing-practice-bones/ | Bone Filament, For Printing Practice Bones | Elliot Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"bone filament",
"medicine",
"science"
] | Of course there is bone-simulation filament on the market
. What’s fun about this Reddit thread is all of the semi-macabre concerns of surgeons who are worried about its properties matching the real thing to make practice rigs for difficult surgeries. We were initially creeped out by the idea, but now that we think about it, it’s entirely reassuring that surgeons have the best tools available for them to prepare, so why not 3D prints of the actual patient’s bones?
[PectusSurgeon] says that the important characteristics were that it doesn’t melt under the bone saw and is mechanically similar, but also that it looks right under x-ray, for fluorscopic surgery training. But at $100 per spool, you would be forgiven for looking around for substitutes. [ghostofwinter88] chimes in saying that their lab used a high-wood-content PLA, but couldn’t say much more, and then got into a discussion of how different bones feel under the saw, before concluding that they eventually chose resin.
Of course, Reddit being Reddit, the best part of the thread is the bad jokes. “Plastic surgery” and “my insurance wouldn’t cover gyroid infill” and so on. We won’t spoil it all for you, so enjoy.
When we first read “printing bones”, we didn’t know if they were discussing
making replacement bones
, or
printing using actual bones in the mix
. (Of course we’ve covered both before. This is Hackaday.)
Thanks [JohnU] for the tip! | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086180",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-01-20T08:54:06",
"content": "I can picture people into Cryptozoology burying some interesting 3D prints to be discover by future archaeologists! The Pterosaurs (extinct flying reptiles) Hyrax (related to elephants and sirenians) would ... | 1,760,371,662.694367 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/19/robotics-class-is-open/ | Robotics Class Is Open | Al Williams | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"Robot Operating System",
"ros"
] | If you are like us, you probably just spin up your own code for a lot of simple projects. But that’s wasteful if you are trying to do anything serious. Take a robot, for example. Are you using ROS (Robot Operating System)? If not — or even if you are — check out [Janne Karttunene] and the University of Eastern Finland’s open-source course
Robotics and ROS 2 Essentials
.
The material is on
GitHub
. Rather than paraphrase, here’s the description from the course itself:
This course is designed to give you hands-on experience with the basics of robotics using ROS 2 and Gazebo simulation. The exercises focus on the Andino robot from Ekumen and are structured to gradually introduce you to ROS 2 and Docker.
No prior experience with ROS 2 or Docker is needed, and since everything runs through Docker, you won’t need to install ROS 2 on your system beforehand. Along the way, you’ll learn essential concepts like autonomous navigation and mapping for mobile robots. All the practical coding exercises are done in Python.
Topics include SLAM, autonomous navigation, odometry, and path planning. It looks like it will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in robotics or anything else you might do with ROS.
If you want a
quick introduction to ROS
, we can help. We’ve seen a number of cool
ROS projects
over the years. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8086040",
"author": "Gordon",
"timestamp": "2025-01-20T05:26:10",
"content": "I think the future of education overall will be largely open source. I have learned more in some 20 min youtube videos then an entire college course! I have a keen interest in robotics so will be looking i... | 1,760,371,662.650817 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/19/hackaday-links-january-19-2025/ | Hackaday Links: January 19, 2025 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"bitcoin",
"Blue Origin",
"cfp",
"hackaday links",
"hope",
"landfill",
"leap year",
"meteorite",
"New Glenn",
"ring",
"satellite",
"SpaceX",
"starship"
] | This week, we witnessed a couple of space oopsies as
both Starship and New Glenn suffered in-flight mishaps
on the same day. SpaceX’s Starship was the more spectacular, with the upper stage of the seventh test flight of the full stack experiencing a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” thanks to a fire developing in the aft section of the stage somewhere over the Turks and Caicos islands, about eight and a half minutes after takeoff from Boca Chica. The good news is that the RUD happened after first-stage separation, and that the Super Heavy booster was not only able to safely return to the pad but also made
another successful “chopsticks” landing on the tower
. Sorry, that’s just never going to get old.
On the Bezos side of the billionaire rocket club, the maiden flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn
ended with the opposite problem
. The upper stage reached orbit, but the reusable booster didn’t make it back to the landing barge parked off the Bahamas. What exactly happened isn’t clear yet, but judging by the telemetry the booster was coming in mighty fast, which may indicate that the engines didn’t restart fully and the thing just broke up when it got into the denser part of the atmosphere.
While we’re not huge fans of doorbell cameras, mainly on privacy grounds but also because paying a monthly fee for service just seems silly, we might reconsider our position after one
captured video of a meteorite strike
. The impact, which occurred at the Prince Edward Island home of Joe Velaidum, happened back in July but the video was only just released; presumably the delay was for confirmation that the object was indeed a meteorite. Joe’s Ring camera captured
video
of something yeeting out of the sky and crashing into the sidewalk next to the driveway, in the exact spot he’d been standing only moments before. It’s hard to say if he would have been killed by the impact, but it sure wouldn’t have been fun.
While we’re on space-adjacent topics, we saw an interesting story about
a satellite that was knocked out of service for a couple of days
thanks to 2024 being a leap year. The Eutelsat OneWeb communications satellite went offline on the last day of the year, apparently because some software wasn’t prepared for the fact that 2024 had 366 days. It’s not clear if this caused any problems with the satellite itself, although the company said the problem was with the “ground segment” so it likely wasn’t. Engineers were able to work through the problem and get it back online within 48 hours, but we’re left wondering how something like this could happen with so many standard libraries out there that specifically deal with leap day calculations.
It’s that time of year again — HOPE_16 is gearing up, and tickets for the August 15-17 conference at St. John’s University in Queens are
already on sale
. It looks like the
Call for Proposals
is active now too, so if you’ve got a talk you’d like to give, get going.
And finally, sad news for a hapless early adopter of Bitcoin, whose eleven-year effort to locate a hard drive with 8,000 Bitcoin on it
has reached a legal end
. Back in 2013, a hard drive owned by James Howells containing the Bitcoin wallet was accidentally disposed of, ending up in a landfill in Newport, Wales. Howells immediately asked for permission to search for the missing fortune, which at the time was worth about $7.5 million. This seems to us like his first mistake; in light of the potential payout, we’d probably have risked a trespassing charge. Howells spent the next couple of years trying to get access while assembling a recovery team, with the effort driven by the ever-increasing price of Bitcoin. Howells also brought suit against the council to get access, an effort that a High Court judge brought to an end last week. So Howells is out of luck, and the hard drive, now worth $765 million, still lies in the landfill. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085911",
"author": "Eric",
"timestamp": "2025-01-20T00:25:54",
"content": "If that landfill remained in active use for the past 12 years, there’s thousand cubic meters to sort through, probably a few hundred discarded hard drives in the mix, and a whole lot of health and safety iss... | 1,760,371,662.78583 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/19/dillo-turns-25-and-releases-a-new-version/ | Dillo Turns 25, And Releases A New Version | Jenny List | [
"internet hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"dillo",
"web",
"web browser"
] | The chances are overwhelming, that you are reading this article on a web browser powered by some form of the Blink or WebKit browser engines as used by Google, Apple, and many open source projects, or perhaps the Gecko engine as used by Firefox. At the top end of the web browser world there are now depressingly few maintained browser engines — we think to the detriment of web standards evolution.
Moving away from the big players though, there are several small browser projects which eschew bells and whistles for speed and compactness, and we’re pleased to see that one of the perennial players
has released a new version
as it
passes its quarter century
.
Dillo describes itself as ” a fast and small graphical web browser”, and it provides a basic window on the web with a tiny download and the ability to run on very low-end hardware. Without JavaScript and other luxuries it sometimes doesn’t render a site as you’d see it in Chrome or Firefox, but we’re guessing many users would relish some escape from the web’s cycle-sucking garbage. The new version 3.2.0 brings bug fixes, as well as math formula rendering, and navigation improvements.
The special thing about Dillo is that this is a project which came back from the dead. We reported last year
how a developer resurrected it after a previous release back in 2015
, and it seems that for now at least it has a healthy future. So put it on your retro PC, your original Raspberry Pi, or your Atari if you have one, and try it on your modern desktop if you need reminding just how fast web browsing can be.
This isn’t the only interesting browser project on the block,
we’re also keeping an eye on Ladybird
, which is aiming for those big players rather than simplicity like Dillo.
Thanks [Feinfinger] for the tip. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085882",
"author": "Chris Pepin",
"timestamp": "2025-01-19T21:41:59",
"content": "In Firefox, I have a number of extensions that allow me to block most of the crap that comes along with most modern web browsing (pop-ups, tracking pixels, etc.). It appears to not support javascript... | 1,760,371,662.835066 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/19/bambu-connects-authentication-x-509-certificate-and-private-key-extracted/ | Bambu Connect’s Authentication X.509 Certificate And Private Key Extracted | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"Bambu lab"
] | Hot on the heels of Bambu Lab’s announcement that it would be locking down all network access to its X1-series 3D printers with new firmware, the X.509 certificate and private key from the Bambu Connect application
have now been extracted
by
[hWuxH]
. This application was intended to be the sole way for third-party software to send print jobs to Bambu Lab hardware as
we previously reported
.
The Bambu Connect app is a fairly low-effort Electron-based affair, with some attempt at obfuscation and encryption, but not enough to keep prying eyes out. The de-obfuscated
main.js
file
can be found here
(
archived
), with the certificate and private key clearly visible. These are used to encrypt HTTP traffic with the printer, and is the sole thing standing in the way of tools like OrcaSlicer talking with authentication-enabled Bambu Lab printers.
As for what will be the next steps by Bambu Lab, it’s now clear that security through obfuscation is not going to be very effective here. While playing whack-a-mole with (paying) users who are only interested in using their hardware in the way that they want is certainly an option, this might be a wake-up call for the company that being more forthcoming with their userbase would be in anyone’s best interest.
We await Bambu Lab’s response with bated breath. | 125 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085819",
"author": "fuzzyfuzzyfungus",
"timestamp": "2025-01-19T18:09:22",
"content": "So they tied access to a single, publicly distributed, private key and called it a ‘security’ feature?That’s honestly repulsive. Just blatantly not bothering with authentication is a step above b... | 1,760,371,663.049499 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/19/an-instant-gratification-game-boy-printer/ | An Instant Gratification Game Boy Printer | Tom Nardi | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"game boy camera",
"Game Boy Link Cable",
"game boy printer",
"rp2040"
] | When the Game Boy Printer was released back in 1998, being able to produce a hard-copy of your
Pokémon
diploma or your latest Game Boy Camera snapshot at the touch of a button was was pretty slick indeed. But in our modern paperless society, the GB Printer somehow sticks out as even more archaic than the other add-on’s for Nintendo’s iconic handheld. Even among the folks who are still proudly playing the games that support the Printer, nobody actually wants to print anything out — although that doesn’t mean they don’t want to see the images.
The
TinyGB Printer
, developed by [Raphaël BOICHOT] and [Brian KHUU], could be considered something of a Game Boy Non-Printer. Powered by the RP2040 Zero development board, this open source hardware device plugs into your Game Boy and is picked up by all the games as a legitimate Printer. But instead of cranking out a little slip of thermal paper once you hit the button, the image is displayed in all its 240×240 glory on a 1.3 inch TFT display mounted to the top of the board.
Now, there’s a couple neat things going on here. First of all, because the whole process is digital, [Raphaël] and [Brian] have managed to pull out all the stops and believe they are reproducing these images in the highest fidelity possible. The images are also being simultaneously stored (as PNGs) to a micro SD card on the board, which given the file size of these images, essentially gives you unlimited storage capacity. The documentation says the code might start glitching once you’ve put tens of thousands of images on the card, but surely your sanity would give out before then.
Clever use of off-the-shelf modules keeps the board cheap, easy to build, and relatively compact.
The documentation looks fantastic on this project, and we love the different variations that are possible depending on how you want to build it. For example you can choose to power it with AA or AAA batteries (to match whatever your Game Boy uses), and there’s support for removing the display if you’re more interested in banking the images than viewing them on the go.
If this project seems a bit similar, it’s probably because the duo
were involved in the NeoGB Printer we covered back in 2021
. Between the two this new version is considerably more polished, and it’s interesting to see how the team has improved on the basic concept over the last few years. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085764",
"author": "Hatch",
"timestamp": "2025-01-19T15:24:24",
"content": "They ‘believe’? They are recording the highest fidelity? They are. There aren’t that many pixels and it’s easy to check. This is 1:1 not sure why the doubt cast lol it’s an awesome project.",
"parent_id... | 1,760,371,662.883939 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/19/diy-handheld-is-an-emulation-powerhouse/ | DIY Handheld Is An Emulation Powerhouse | Inderpreet Singh | [
"Games",
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"emulation",
"handheld gaming",
"oled",
"radxa"
] | If you’re into handheld gaming, you’ve got a wide array of hardware options to choose from these days that are capable of running everything from console classics to full-fledged PC titles. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t enterprising gamers out there who are still building their own custom handhelds —
like the Retro Lite CM5
.
For this project, [StonedEdge], [GinKage], and [notime2d8] set out to create a powerful enough handheld that could emulate games spanning the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and 3DS eras. Using a Radxa Rk3588s compute module as a base, the build navigates the design and construction of things like the carrier board, custom controllers, and the enclosure.
The project’s build log takes the form of a
set of forum entries
that starts with emulating games on an OrangePi 5 and mapping out things like USB 3.0 support, Power Delivery and management, I2S audio, along with display options amongst other chores. But the project’s GitHub repo is packed with technical details for anyone looking for a more condensed version.
There are experiments with the MIPI OLED displays and the final revision uses an RP2040 as an HID to read button presses and data from the IMU. WiFi 6 and BLE 5.2 are handled by an M2 slot-mounted module that is interfaced using a PCI Express bus which is always tricky when designing your PCBs. The final product looks great and there are a couple of videos that show the device in action. Additionally, the design files and code are available for anyone who fancies building one themselves.
If you like handheld gaming consoles, then have a look at the
Intel NUC based Handheld with Steam Deck vibes
. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085719",
"author": "mini",
"timestamp": "2025-01-19T12:31:24",
"content": "Reminds me of a 3D printed kit from a chinese dude that turned an Xperia compact mobo & screen into a handheld.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8085720"... | 1,760,371,663.147035 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/19/motorized-coil-tunes-your-ham-antenna-on-a-budget/ | Motorized Coil Tunes Your Ham Antenna On A Budget | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur",
"antenna",
"ATAS",
"ham",
"inductor",
"motorized",
"tuner",
"tuning coil",
"wiper",
"yaesu"
] | When it comes to amateur radio, one size definitely does not fit all. That’s especially true with antennas, which need to be
just
the right size for the band you’re working, lest Very Bad Things happen to your expensive radio. That presents a problem for the ham who wants the option to work whichever band is active, and doubly so if portable operation is desired.
Of course, there are commercial solutions to this problem, but they tend to be expensive. Luckily [
Øystein (LB8IJ)] seems to have found a way around that with
this low-cost homebrew motorized antenna coil
, which is compatible with the Yaesu Automatic Tuning Antenna System. ATAS is supported by several Yaesu transceivers, including the FT-891 which [Øystein] favors for field operations. ATAS sends signals up the feedline to a compatible antenna, which then moves a wiper along a coil to change the electrical length of the antenna, allowing it to resonate on the radio’s current frequency.
The video below details [
Øystein
]’s implementation of an ATAS-compatible tuning coil, mainly focusing on the mechanical and electrical aspects of the coil itself, which takes up most of the room inside a 50-mm diameter PVC tube. The bore of the air-core coil has a channel that guides a wiper, which moves along the length of the coil thanks to a motor-driven lead screw. [
Øystein
] put a lot of work into the wiper, to make it both mechanically and electrically robust. He also provides limit switches to make sure the mechanism isn’t over-driven.
There’s not much detail yet on how the control signals are detected, but a future video on that subject is promised. We’re looking forward to that, but in the meantime, the second video below shows [
Øystein
] using the tuner in the field, with great results. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085684",
"author": "OH3CUF",
"timestamp": "2025-01-19T09:08:42",
"content": "What is the loss percentage in transmitting power comparing this to those small autotuners with relay/coil/capacitor -combos?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,371,663.099909 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/18/a-look-inside-a-modern-mixed-signal-oscilloscope/ | A Look Inside A Modern Mixed Signal Oscilloscope | Inderpreet Singh | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"Digital oscilliscope",
"test equipment"
] | High-speed bench equipment has become so much more affordable in the last decade that naturally one wonders what has made that possible. A great source of answers is a teardown by users like [kerry wong] who are kind enough to
take apart their MSO2304X 300MHz osilloscope for our viewing pleasure
.
The posted teardown video shows the guts of the scope without enclosure, heatsinks and shields that reveal a handful of boards that execute the functions nicely. The motherboard uses the Xilinx KINTEX-7 FPGA that is expected to run core processes such as signal processing as well as managing the sample storage on the paired DDR3 memory.
The analog front-end here is a bit of a surprise as it sports TI’s ADC08D1000 ADCs that are capable of 1.3 GSPS but the scope is advertised to be capable of more. The inferred design is that all four ADCs are being operated in an interleaved symphony to achieve 5 GSPS. Testing confirms that each input uses two ADCs at a time and when two or more channels are employed, the reconstruction quality drops.
The input lanes are pretty standard and are equipped with amps and power regulators that are more than up to the task. More TI chips are discovered such as the DAC128S085 that are the key to the analog waveform generator which is a feature commonly found in modern high-end oscilloscopes. On the application processor side, the scope has a Rockchip RK3568 that is responsible for the GUI and other user-level functions.
An interesting point in the video was how lean the construction is as well as the cost. The FPGA, ADCs, and other analog components are estimated to total the sale price of the scope, which means that manufacturer pricing would have to be heavily discounted to grant gross margin on sales. We loved the
review of the scope
and is the other part of the story. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085884",
"author": "Oliver",
"timestamp": "2025-01-19T21:47:29",
"content": "Cool, but not really new or supprising, dave ‘eevblog’ jones took apart a plenty of scopes.We did tons of reverse engineering, including xrays, on the rigol mso5k :)Still cool too see that competitors do ... | 1,760,371,663.182916 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/18/stealth-airtag-broadcasts-when-moved-an-experiment/ | Stealth AirTag Broadcasts When Moved: An Experiment | Heidi Ulrich | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"air tag",
"AirTag",
"battery",
"ESP32",
"IMU",
"microcontroller",
"MPU-6050",
"smart tag"
] | A simple yet intriguing idea is worth sharing, even if it wasn’t a flawless success: it can inspire others.
[Richard]’s experiment with a motion-powered AirTag fits this bill.
Starting with our call for simple projects, [Richard] came up with a circuit that selectively powers an AirTag based on movement. His concept was to use an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a microcontroller to switch the AirTag on only when it’s on the move, creating a stealthy and battery-efficient tracker.
The setup is minimal: an ESP32 microcontroller, an MPU-6050 IMU, a transistor, and some breadboard magic. [Richard] demonstrates the concept using a clone AirTag due to concerns about soldering leads onto a genuine one. The breadboard-powered clone chirps to life when movement is detected, but that’s where challenges arise. For one, Apple AirTags are notoriously picky about batteries—a lesson learned when Duracell’s bitter coating blocks functionality. And while the prototype works initially, an unfortunate soldering mishap sadly sends the experiment off the rails.
Despite the setbacks, this project may spark a discussion on the possibilities of DIY digital camouflage for Bluetooth trackers. By powering up only when needed, such a device avoids constant broadcasting, making it harder to detect or block. Whether for tracking stolen vehicles or low-profile uses, it’s a concept rich with potential. We
talked about this back in 2022
, and there’s
an interesting 38C3 talk
that sheds quite some light on the broadcasting protocols and standards.
Header AirTag: Apple, Public domain, via
Wikimedia Commons | 43 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085648",
"author": "ken welles",
"timestamp": "2025-01-19T03:48:04",
"content": "Yep, GE patented this concept (with GPS, not air tags) in 1996, US Pat # 5491486: Mobile tracking units employing motion sensors for reducing power consumption therein. Inventors: Welles, II; Kenneth ... | 1,760,371,663.258619 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/18/i3c-bit-banging-fun-for-the-rp2040/ | I3C Bit-banging Fun For The RP2040 | Inderpreet Singh | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"I3C",
"rp2040",
"saleae logic"
] | The RP2040 has quickly become a hot favorite with tinkerers and makers since its release in early 2021. This is largely attributed to the low cost, fast GPIOs, and plethora of bus peripherals. [xyphro] has written the
I3C Blaster firmware that helps turn the Raspberry Pi Pico into a USB to I3C converter
.
The firmware is essentially a bit-bang wrapper and exposes an interactive shell with a generous command set. But it is a lot more than that. [xyphro] has taken the time to dive into the I3C implementation standard and the code is a fairly complex state-machine that is a story on its own.
[xyphro] provides a Python script in case you feel like automating things or drawing up your GUI. And finally, if you are feeling adventurous, the I3C implementation is available for your project tinkering needs.
We loved the fact there is a branch project that lets you extend a Saleae Logic Analyzer to decode I3C and associated protocols by adding a Pico on the cheap. The last update to the project log shows the addition of a MIPI I3C High Data Rate Mode which operates at 25 Mbps which is right up the RP2040s.
[xyphro] gave us the
Home Brew Version Of Smart Tweezers
a decade ago and we expect there is more to come. If you are interested in reading more about the I3C bus, have a look at
I3C — No Typo — Wants To Be Your Serial Bus
. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085690",
"author": "Mr David Mark Pye",
"timestamp": "2025-01-19T09:49:55",
"content": "Wonder whether the PIO hardware could be given the i3c job, to save bitbanging",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8085701",
"author": "Pet... | 1,760,371,663.310158 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/18/investigating-usb-to-ethernet-dongles-with-malware-claims/ | Investigating USB-to-Ethernet Dongles With “Malware” Claims | Maya Posch | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"malware",
"USB dongle"
] | Recently a video surfaced from someone claiming that certain USB-to-Ethernet dongles contained ‘malware’ among other big claims. Basically these dongles were said to be designed by China (and Russia) to spy on users and so on, but how much of this is actually grounded in reality? When
[lcamtuf] dove into the topic
, what he found was not so much a smoking gun, but rather a curious relic from the era when drivers-on-CD were being phased out.
The item that the video went bananas about was namely an additional SPI Flash chip on the PCB alongside the USB 2.0 – Ethernet IC, with many conspiracy theories being floated as to what it would be used for. After some digging, [lcamtuf] found that the IC used in these dongles (SR9900) is by a company called CoreChips Shenzhen, with a strong suggestions that it is a clone of the (2013-era) Realtek RTL8152B.
Both chips have an external SPI Flash option, which is used with the USB side to present a ‘virtual CD drive’ to the user when the dongle is plugged in. This was borne out with the
SR9900 Windows system mass production tool
that [lcamtuf] obtained a copy of. Included with the flashing tool is a 168 kB ISO image (containing the SR9900 driver package) which happily fits on the 512 kB Flash chip.
Although it’s always possible for chips and firmware to contain backdoors and malware, in this particular case it would appear to be that it’s merely a cruel reminder that 2013 is now already vanishing into the realm of ‘retro computing’ as us old fogies cling to our driver installation floppies and CDs. | 56 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085537",
"author": "Jon",
"timestamp": "2025-01-18T21:04:08",
"content": "On the other hand, capable people could put things other than drivers on there, although that’s not a lot of room for a rubber ducky, it isn’t nothing",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [... | 1,760,371,663.472175 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/18/putting-cheap-motorcycle-tachometers-to-work/ | Putting Cheap Motorcycle Tachometers To Work | Tom Nardi | [
"classic hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"analog gauge",
"gauge cluster",
"tachometer"
] | With so much data being thrown at our eyeballs these days, it’s worryingly easy for the actually important stuff to slip by occasionally. So when [Liam Jackson] wanted a way to visualize the number of test failures popping up in the continuous integration system at work, he went with a novel but effective solution —
universal motorcycle tachometers
.
It turns out these little gauges can be had for under $10 a piece from the usual overseas retailers, and are very easy to drive with a microcontroller. As [Liam] explains, all you need to do other than providing them with 12 volts, is feed them a PWM signal. Even though the gauges are designed for a 12 V system, they apparently don’t have any problem responding to the 5 V logic level from the Arduino’s pins.
As for the frequency he says that 1,000 RPM corresponds to 16.66 Hz, so you can just multiply up from there to show whatever number you wish. That said, [Liam] warns that the gauges draw several hundred milliamps once the needle gets into the two digit range, so keep that in mind. Conveniently, those number happen to be in red anyway…
For his particular application, [Liam] put three of the gauges together to create a very handsome dashboard. If you want to recreate his setup exactly he’s
made the STLs available
for the gauge cluster housing. Note the small OLED at the center, this offers a way to show a bit more context than the three analog gauges alone can express, especially if you’ve got an application where you might be switching between multiple data sources.
Over the years we’ve seen several projects that repurposed analog gauges of various types,
often for showing computer performance
, but they generally involved having to drive the galvanometers directly. That these tachometers can simply be fed a simple digital signal should make implementing them into your project much easier. | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085462",
"author": "Janowan",
"timestamp": "2025-01-18T18:16:38",
"content": "Quote: “[…] when displaying high numbers (e.g., 9 or 10), the dials can each draw several hundred milliamps from the 5V source […]”Is this because the gauges have a return spring mechanism and going to hi... | 1,760,371,663.378293 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/18/learn-new-tools-or-hone-your-skill-with-the-old/ | Learn New Tools, Or Hone Your Skill With The Old? | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"newsletter",
"practice makes perfect",
"software",
"tools"
] | Buried in a talk on AI from an artist who is doing cutting-edge video work was the following nugget that entirely sums up the zeitgeist: “The tools are changing so fast that artists can’t keep up with them, let alone master them, before everyone is on to the next.” And while you might think that this concern is only relevant to those who have to stay on the crest of the hype wave, the deeper question resounds with every hacker.
When was the last time you changed PCB layout software or refreshed your operating system? What other tools do you use in your work or your extra-curricular projects, and how long have you been using them? Are you still designing your analog front-ends with LM358s, or have you looked around to see that technology has moved on since the 1970s? “OMG, you’re still using ST32F103s?”
It’s not a simple question, and there are no good answers. Proficiency with a tool, like for instance the audio editor with which I crank out the podcast every week, only comes through practice. And practice simply takes time and effort. When you put your time in on a tool, it really is an investment in that it helps you get better. But what about that newer, better tool out there?
Some of the reluctance to update is certainly
sunk-cost fallacy
, after all you put so much sweat and tears into the current tool, but there is also a real cost to overcome to learn the new hotness, and that’s no fallacy. If you’re always trying to learn a new
way of doing something
, you’re never going to get
good at doing something
, and that’s the lament of our artist friend. Honing your craft requires focus. You won’t know the odd feature set of that next microcontroller as well as you do the old faithful – without sitting down and reading the datasheet and doing a couple finger-stretching projects first.
Striking the optimal balance here is hard. On a per-project basis, staying with your good old tool or swapping to the new hotness is a binary choice, but across your projects, you can do some of each. Maybe it makes sense to budget some of your hacking time into learning new tools? How about ten percent? What do you think?
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
! | 42 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085403",
"author": "Gus Mueller",
"timestamp": "2025-01-18T15:12:51",
"content": "I still use a dubiously-obtained Adobe Photoshop from 2003 for all my graphic work. I know it very well and it’s totally free to use forever. It can’t save to whatever the latest format hotness is, ... | 1,760,371,663.636301 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/18/jtag-swd-debugging-on-the-pi-pico/ | JTAG & SWD Debugging On The Pi Pico | Tom Nardi | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"debugger",
"jtag",
"openocd",
"pi pico",
"SWD"
] | [Surya Chilukuri] writes in to share JTAGprobe
— a fork of the official Raspberry Pi debugprobe firmware that lets you use the low-cost microcontroller development board for JTAG and SWD debugging just by flashing the provided firmware image.
We’ve seen similar projects in the past
, but they’ve required some additional code running on the computer to bridge the gap between the Pico and your debugging software of choice. But [Surya] says this project works out of the box with common tools such as OpenOCD and pyOCD.
As we’ve cautioned previously, remember that the Pi Pico is only a 3.3 V device. JTAG and SWD don’t have set voltages, so in the wild you could run into logic levels from 1.2 V all the way to 5.5 V. While being able to use a bare Pico as a debugger is a neat trick, adding in a level shifter would be a wise precaution.
Looking to get even more use out of those Pi Picos you’ve got in the parts bin?
How about using it to sniff USB
? | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085357",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-01-18T12:32:52",
"content": "Very cool project, I’ll give this a goI’ve been trying to interface a JLINK debugger with python for some automated flashing and testing (and probably remote access) but for whatever reason, I couldn’t ... | 1,760,371,663.68999 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/18/a-pda-from-an-esp32/ | A PDA From An ESP32 | Jenny List | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ESP32",
"pda"
] | The ESP32 series of microcontrollers have been with us for quite a few years now and appeared in both Tensilica and RISC-V variants, both of which deliver an inexpensive and powerful device. It’s thus shown up in quite a few handheld computers, whether they be conference badges or standalone devices, and this is definitely a field in which these chips have more to give. We’re pleased then to see
this e-ink PDA
from [ashtf8], which we think raises the bar on this type of device.
At its heart is an ESP32-S3, on the back side of a QWERTY keyboard PCB, and for a display it has an e-ink screen. To get over the annoying e-ink refresh when typing text it uses a hybrid of e-ink and OLED, with a small OLED holding the current line which can be periodically sent to the e-ink. Perhaps the nicest thing about the hardware though is the clear resin printed clamshell case, and a hand-cast silicone membrane for the keyboard. That has always been a part considered difficult to produce, and here he is making one from scratch. Take a look at the video below the break.
Software-wise it has a range of apps with more promised, but even as it stands it looks useful enough to work with. If that’s not enough, then
perhaps an ESP32 operating system would help
. | 17 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085311",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-01-18T09:47:03",
"content": "Wow, awesome build.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8085313",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2025-01-18T09:48:12",
"content": "Very cut... | 1,760,371,663.743968 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/17/a-field-expedient-welder-only-macgyver-could-love/ | A Field Expedient Welder Only MacGyver Could Love | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"arc",
"FCAW",
"flux-core",
"mig",
"welding"
] | If you needed to weld something in a pinch, what’s the minimum complement of equipment you could get away with? In [Professor Bardal]’s case, it’s
a couple of motorcycle batteries and a roll of flux-core wire
, and not much else.
We suspect this one is going to elicit quite a few comments, not least by the welding fans who no doubt will be triggered by just about everything in the video below, especially by characterizing this as MIG welding; it’s FCAW, or flux-core arc welding. But it bears some superficial similarities to MIG, at least insofar as there’s a consumable wire electrode through which a high-current DC supply flows, creating enough heat to melt it and the base metal. In this case, the current is provided by a pair of 12-volt motorcycle batteries hooked together in series. There’s also a torch of sorts — a short length of copper capillary tubing with a 1-mm inside diameter clamped in the jaws of a stick welder stinger, or a pair of locking pliers if you’re really in a pinch. The torch is connected to the negative terminal on the battery with a jumper cable, and the positive terminal is connected to the workpiece.
To create the weld, a piece of 0.8-mm flux-core welding wire is threaded through the capillary and into the joint, and fed by hand as it’s consumed. It’s awkward and awful, but it works. Of course, there’s no control over amperage as there would be with a legit welding machine, which would make it hard to adapt this method to different materials. Weld quality appears poor, too. But we suspect that if you were in a position to need a welder like this, you wouldn’t really care about any of that.
Fabricobbled welding rigs seem to be [Professor Bardal]’s thing — witness
this much more professional MIG welder
, complete with a baking soda and vinegar shielding gas generator.
Thanks to [Danjovic] for the tip. | 46 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085295",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2025-01-18T07:31:37",
"content": "Perhaps the most amazing part is how he got a 9 minute video out of it…Anyway, nobody stated it was a good weld, so… yeah it “works”. This aint welding, it’s more like dripping candle wax on it so you no long... | 1,760,371,663.927005 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/17/no-crystal-earpiece-no-problem/ | No Crystal Earpiece? No Problem! | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"crystal earpiece",
"crystal radio"
] | A staple of starting off in electronics ion years past was the crystal set radio, an extremely simple AM radio receiver with little more than a tuned circuit and a point contact diode as its components. Point contact diodes have become difficult to find but can be replaced with a cats whisker type detector, but what about listening to the resulting audio? These circuits require a very high impedance headphone, which was often supplied by a piezoelectric crystal earpiece. [Tsbrownie]
takes a moment to build a replacement for this increasingly hard to find part
.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but we were still slightly taken aback to discover that inside these earpieces lies the ubiquitous piezoelectric buzzer element. Thus given
a 3D-printed shell
to replace the one on the original, it’s a relatively simple task to twist up a set of wires and solder them on. The result is given a test, and found to perform just as well as the real thing, in fact a little louder.
In one sense this is such a simple job, but in another it opens up something non-obvious for anyone who needs a high impedance earpiece. The days of the crystal radios and rudimentary transistor hearing aids these parts were once the main target for may both have passed, but just in case there’s any need for one elsewhere, now we can fill it. Take a look at the video, below the break.
Fancy trying a crystal radio?
We’ve got you covered
. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085058",
"author": "Grahame",
"timestamp": "2025-01-18T03:25:35",
"content": "Very interesting project. Just a note on twisting wires together. I learnt long ago (about 70 years !) to pull on the wires slightly before releasing them from the drill. This seems to set the wires an... | 1,760,371,664.068756 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/17/packing-even-more-features-into-a-classic-radio/ | Packing EvenMoreFeatures Into A Classic Radio | Heidi Ulrich | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"I2S",
"ILI9431",
"IPS display",
"lcd",
"M5Stack",
"NFC",
"NFC reader",
"Teensy"
] | When it comes to hacking niches, breathing new life into vintage devices is always an exciting challenge. [t0mg]’s recent project exemplifies this with
his 1978 Sony FX-300 ‘Jackal’ radio
. He’d already upgraded the radio in 2021 and turned it into a feature-packed marvel, but there’s always room for improvement.
[t0mg]’s initial 2021 build had its quirks: noisy sound, a subpar display, and a non-functional radio module. Determined to enhance these aspects, he sourced an IPS version of the original 3.2″ ILI9431 LCD, significantly improving viewing angles. To tackle the audio issues, he integrated an M5Stack Atom microcontroller, utilizing its Bluetooth A2DP capabilities to deliver cleaner digital sound via I2S to the Teensy audio board. The Teensy itself got a complete wire overhaul just for the sake of good craftmanship.
The new setup also enabled the display of song metadata. Additionally, [t0mg] incorporated a dedicated Arduino Nano clone to manage inputs, streamlining the overall design. The revamped ‘Jackal’ now boasts a bunch of impressive features such as displaying RDS data for FM stations, voice recording, and an NFC reader for personalized playlists.
If you’re into radio makeovers,
look into this post for a real
golden oldie
, or start out with
the basics
. For [t0mg]’s earlier improved version of this Jackal,
read our article on it here
. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8083971",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2025-01-17T09:14:23",
"content": "Rest in pieces, little CRT.. 😞",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8084558",
"author": "I Alone Possess The Truth",
"timestamp": "2025-... | 1,760,371,663.793243 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/16/neat-ring-clock-relies-on-addressable-leds/ | Neat Ring Clock Relies On Addressable LEDs | Lewin Day | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"ESP32",
"ws2812b"
] | [WhiskeyTangoHotel] wanted to build an LED clock after seeing some great designs online. They elected to go after a ring clock design,
based around the ever-popular WS2812B addressable LEDs.
The core of the build is the HELTEC WiFi 32 development board. It’s not one we’re intimately familiar with, but it’s based around the popular Expressif ESP32. Since it’s got WiFi, it’s able to simply dial up a network time server to always keep accurate time. It then drives a set of WS2812B LEDs set up in six rings. They display the current time with a layout akin to that of a typical analog clock.
What makes this build just a little more fun is the inclusion of Disco Mode. At the press of a button, the full set of LEDs flashes out some fun dancing patterns. The clock is also programmed to trigger the same display for sixty seconds at the top of each hour.
It’s a straightforward build—what might have been highly complicated to build two decades ago has been simplified with the magic of addressable LEDs. What’s also cool is that this clock was apparently inspired by another project shared
on these very pages.
If you’ve been spurred to build something cool yourself, don’t hesitate to
notify the tipsline! | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "8084559",
"author": "Mel",
"timestamp": "2025-01-17T16:14:01",
"content": "AFAICS, there is no reference to the supplier of the “Ring’o’LEDs” – or have I missed that?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8084572",
"author":... | 1,760,371,663.971578 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/16/building-a-raycaster-within-bash/ | Building A Raycaster Within Bash | Lewin Day | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"bash",
"code",
"raycaster",
"raycasting"
] | Wolfenstein 3D
was a paradigm-shifting piece of software, using raycasting techniques to create a game with pseudo-3D graphics. Now, [izabera] has done something very similar,
creating a raycasting display engine that runs entirely within bash.
The work was developed with an eye cast over
an existing raycasting tutorial online.
As you might imagine, implementing these graphical techniques in a text console proved difficult. The biggest problem [izabera] encountered was that bash is slow. It’s not supposed to display full frames of moving content at 25+ fps. It’s supposed to display text. Making it display graphics by using tons of colorful characters is really pushing the limits. Bash also doesn’t have any ability to work with floating points, so all the calculations are done with massive integers. Other problems involved the limited ways to read the keyboard in bash, and keeping track of the display as a whole.
It’s neat reading about how this was pulled off—specifically
because it was hard.
It might not be the kind of project you’d ever implement for serious work, but there are learnings to be had here that you won’t get anywhere else.
Code is on Github
, while there’s a visual storytelling of how it came together
on imgur.
We’ve seen similar work before—
with magical 3D graphics generated in Microsoft Excel
. Will wonders never cease? We hope not, because we always like to see new ones
on the tipsline
. Keep us busy! | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "8083924",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2025-01-17T04:34:20",
"content": "Impressive.If you just want to check out the end very, this video is pretty much the finished result:https://i.imgur.com/X3OahKB.mp4Kind of reminds me of 3D Maze on the ZX81, especially the b&w version, just... | 1,760,371,664.020951 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/16/repairing-a-samsung-24-lcd-monitor-with-funky-color-issues/ | Repairing A Samsung 24″ LCD Monitor With Funky Color Issues | Maya Posch | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"dumpster diving",
"monitor"
] | The old cable in place on the Samsung monitor. (Credit: MisterHW)
Dumpster diving is one of those experiences that can net you some pretty cool gear for a reasonable price. Case in point the 24″ Samsung S24E650XW LCD monitor that [MisterHW] saved from being trashed. Apparently in very good condition with no visible external damage, the unit even powered up without issues. It seemed like a golden find until he got onto the Windows desktop and began to notice quaint red shimmering in darker areas and other issues that made it clear why the monitor had been tossed. Of course, the second best part about dumpster diving is seeing
whether you can repair such issues
.
Prior to disassembly it had been noted that percussive maintenance and bending of the frame changed the symptoms, suggesting that something was a bit loose inside. After taking the back cover and shielded enclosure off, a quick visual inspection of the boards and cables quickly revealed the likely suspect: broken traces on one of the cables.
Apparently somewhere during the assembly step in the factory the cable had been pushed against the PCB’s edge, causing the initial damage. Based on the listed assembly date the monitor had only been in use for a few years before it was tossed, so likely the symptoms would have begun and worsened as one after another of the traces gradually cracked and broke due to vibrations, thermal expansion, etc.
This issue made fixing the monitor very simple, however, assuming a suitable replacement cable could be found. The broken cable is a 30P 1.0 pitch PFC, with EBay throwing up a cable with similar specs for a Thomson brand TV. One purchase and anxious wait later, the replacement cable was installed as in the featured image alongside the old cable. Perhaps unsurprisingly it restored the monitor to full working order, demonstrating once again that dumpster diving is totally worth it. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "8083919",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2025-01-17T03:53:14",
"content": "I just wish it was easier to find places to dumpster dive.Hard to know what places might have good stuff, accessible dumpsters, and not notice/care about you digging around.I’d love any suggestions for ... | 1,760,371,664.13254 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/16/building-a-3d-printed-strandbeest/ | Building A 3D-Printed Strandbeest | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"Arduino Uno",
"robot",
"strandbeest"
] | The Strandbeest is a walking machine, a creation of the celebrated artist Theo Jansen. They can look intimidating in their complexity, but it’s quite possible to build your own. In fact, if you’ve got a 3D-printer, it can be remarkably straightforward,
as [Maker 101] demonstrates.
The build relies on an Arduino Uno as the brains. It’s equipped with an L293D motor driver shield to run two DC gear motors which drive the walking assemblies. Power is courtesy of a 3-cell lithium-polymer battery. The chassis, legs, and joints are all 3D-printed, and rather attractively in complimentary colors, we might add.
Controlling this little Strandbeest is simple. [Maker 101] gave the Arduino an infrared sensor which can pick up signals from a simple IR remote control. It can be driven backwards and forwards or turned left and right. What’s more, it looks particularly elegant as it walks—a hallmark of a good Strandbeest design.
Design files are
available online
for the curious. We love a good
Strandbeest build
, and
some can even be useful, too
! Video after the break. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8083843",
"author": "ExploWare",
"timestamp": "2025-01-16T22:04:11",
"content": "This man probably enjoyed the SD era, hence he assumes all outside of the PAL viewport is to be ignored… all the O2 wasted on storing and streaming these black pixels. . .",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,371,664.1868 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/16/taser-ring-is-scary-jewelry-you-shouldnt-build/ | Taser Ring Is Scary Jewelry You Shouldn’t Build | Lewin Day | [
"High Voltage",
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"jewelry",
"ring",
"taser"
] | Officially, the term “taser” refers to a particular brand of projectile-firing electric stun gun. However, the word is also colloquially used to refer to just about any device intended for delivering electric shocks to an adversary.
The taser ring from [Penguin DIY]
definitely fits that description, though we’d strictly advise you not to consider building this at home.
The build is a hacky one. An arc generator circuit was pulled out from a jet cigarette lighter, and reconfigured to fit in a small ring-based form factor. It was hooked up with a power switch and a small bank of 30 mAh lithium polymer cell for power, and a compact USB-C charger board was installed to keep the batteries juiced. The electronics were then delicately assembled into a ring-shaped mold, which was injected with resin to produce the final ring. Once cast, a pair of small metal electrodes were installed on the outside. Activating the taser function is as simple as squeezing the ring—easy to do just by making a fist.
We’ve seen projects like these before;
our advice is usually to avoid them unless you really know what you’re doing. Whether you end up shocking someone else or accidentally shocking yourself, the results tend to be bad. The latter seems particularly easy to do if you’re wearing this thing on your finger. Given it’s a ring, don’t expect to be able to pull it off in a hurry, either. It’s hard to see how that ends well. | 38 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "8083732",
"author": "Titus431",
"timestamp": "2025-01-16T18:34:47",
"content": "“TASER” name origin == Tom Alva Swift Electric Rifle",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8083755",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2025... | 1,760,371,664.300556 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/16/gimbal-clock-relies-on-servos-for-its-cool-movements/ | Gimbal Clock Relies On Servos For Its Cool Movements | Lewin Day | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"ESP8266",
"servo",
"time",
"wemos d1 mini"
] | In the annals of human history, clocks got boring there for a while. Most were just variations on hands spinning in a circle, with the occasional tweeting bird mechanism to liven things up. These days, we’re treated to all kinds of original and oddball designs, like this
neat gimbal clock from [Twisted&Tinned]
.
The concept of the build is straightforward enough. It has four main vertical arms, each with a servo at the base that rotates about a vertical axis. Upon each arm are between one and three servos which rotate 3D printed structures in the shape of numbers. A Wemos D1 Mini microcontroller commands the servos to the correct positions to display the current time. It also uses its WiFi connection to get accurate time updates directly from a network time server.
It’s quite an artistic build—and it’s rather enjoyable to watch this one flex and twist its way into displaying the right time. It’s also easier to read at a glance than some of the more
unintelligible designs out there
. Indeed,
we see all kinds of neat and innovative clocks around these parts
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8083692",
"author": "alialiali",
"timestamp": "2025-01-16T16:56:11",
"content": "I wonder how hard it’s been to add some perspective art that only became apparent at the right position (in time and space).Like a visual alarm clock.It’s besides the point but I’m not sure clocks have ... | 1,760,371,664.223595 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/17/trinteract-mini-space-mouse-does-it-in-3d/ | Trinteract Mini Space Mouse Does It In 3D | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"f'n magnets",
"hall effect sensor",
"mouse",
"space mouse"
] | We’re not sure how we managed to miss this one, but better late than never, right? This is
Trinteract
, a 3-DOF input device that’s both open-source and Arduino compatible. There’s even a neat 3D-printed clip to add it to the side of your laptop.
Imagine navigating 2D and 3D environments, or flying around in Minecraft with ease. [Görkem]’s custom PCB features a Hall effect sensor which picks up readings from the magnet embedded in the bottom of the joystick. You can use any magnetic object as input. In the video below the break, [Görkem] shows a 3D-printed sphere with a disc magnet trapped inside as an alternative. The super-neat part is that the thing moves around entirely on
flexures
. You know how much we love flexures around here.
[Görkem] has written up a fantastic guide for those who must have one of their own. As a bonus, the guide details the background and thought process behind the design, which we love to see.
Don’t like magnets?
This space mouse uses an accelerometer and a spring
.
Thanks for the tip, [James]! | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8084717",
"author": "Duck Hunter",
"timestamp": "2025-01-18T01:19:24",
"content": "As a proof of concept? Fine, but shakes like hell. Maybe write your own driver and run input data through a Kalman?For actual 3D work in CATIA it’s easier to just buy SpaceMouse Pro. Even for hobby mo... | 1,760,371,664.3525 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/17/android-head-unit-gets-volume-knob-upgrade/ | Android Head Unit Gets Volume Knob Upgrade | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"knob",
"radio",
"Volume knob"
] | Touch screen head units are pretty much the norm these days. Many compromise with annoying on-screen volume controls or tiny buttons. If you find yourself with such a unit, you might like to hack in a real volume knob.
[Daniel Ross] shows us how to do just that.
The build uses an ATMega328 as the heart of the operation, though [Daniel] notes an Arduino Uno or Mini would have done just fine. It’s set up with a 74HC14 hex Schmitt trigger, and a CD4066 quad bilateral switch on a custom PCB. As for the volume knob itself, it’s not a real analog pot, instead it’s using a rotary encoder with a center push button. The way it works is that the Arduino reads the encoder, and figures out whether you’re trying to turn the volume up or down based on the direction you’re turning it. It then sends commands to the CD4066 to switch resistors in and out of circuit with lines going to the stereo to emulate the action of volume buttons on the steering wheel.
[Daniel’s] guide explains how everything works in greater detail, and how you can calibrate your head unit to accept these signals while preserving the function of your actual steering wheel volume buttons. Then you just have to find a neat way to integrate the knob into your existing dashboard.
We don’t see as many car stereo hacks in this era when infotainment systems rule all, but we’ve seen some great stuff from older vehicles
over the years.
Video after the break. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "8084661",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2025-01-17T21:25:14",
"content": "Oh man, the things we have to do today to get basic functionality in modern cars. This is a nice hack indeed.For a lot of people it seems that me still driving a 1992 Citroen BX estate is a hack…",
... | 1,760,371,664.40904 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/17/new-bambu-lab-firmware-update-adds-mandatory-authorization-control-system/ | New Bambu Lab Firmware Update Adds Mandatory Authorization Control System | Maya Posch | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"Bambu lab",
"cyber security"
] | As per a
recent Bambu Lab blog post
, its FDM printers in the X1 series will soon receive a firmware update that adds mandatory authentication for certain operations, starting with the firmware update on January 23rd for the aforementioned FDM printers. These operations include performing firmware upgrades, initiating a print job (LAN or cloud), remote video access and adjusting parameters on the printer. Using the printer directly and starting prints from an SD card are not affected.
As reasoning for this new feature Bambu Lab points to recent exploits that gave strangers access to people’s printers, though cheekily linking to an
article on an Anycubic
printer exploit. While admittedly a concern, this mostly affects internet-exposed printers, such as those that are tied into a ‘cloud’ account. Even so, LAN-based printing also falls under this new mandatory authentication system, with Bambu Lab offering a new tool called
Bambu Connect
for those who insist on using non-Bambu Lab branded software like OrcaSlicer. This allows for exported G-code files to be sent to a (property authenticated) Bambu Lab printer.
For those who do not wish to use this feature, not upgrading the firmware is currently the only recourse. Although this firmware update is only for X1-series printers, Bambu Lab promised that it’ll arrive for their other printers too in due time. While Bambu Lab printer owners consider installing the alternative
X1 Plus firmware
, the peanut gallery can discuss the potential security issues (or lack thereof) of an open Fluidd or similar UI on their LAN-connected, Klipper-based FDM printers.
Thanks to [mip] for the tip. | 105 | 33 | [
{
"comment_id": "8084604",
"author": "trianglPixl",
"timestamp": "2025-01-17T18:46:57",
"content": "After all of the goodwill around X1 Plus, it’s disappointing that they’ve decided to lock network control down. I hear that people have been using third-party software to run their print farms, and it... | 1,760,371,664.816514 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/17/hackaday-podcast-episode-304-glitching-the-rp2350-sim-sim-sim-and-a-scrunchie-clock/ | Hackaday Podcast Episode 304: Glitching The RP2350, Sim Sim Sim, And A Scrunchie Clock | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | It’s podcast time again, and this week Dan sat down with Elliot for a look back at all the cool hacks we’ve written about. We started off talking about Hackaday Europe, which is coming up in March — seems unlikely that it’s just around the corner, but there it is. There’s also good news: the Hack Chat is back, and we started things off with a bang as Eben Upton stopped by to talk all things Pi. Separately, we talked about fault injection attacks, including how to find the hidden cup of 0xC0FFEE in an RP2350.
We saw a very cool piece of LED jewelry that does a fluid simulation, a direct conversion radio that’s all laid out in front of you, and the scrunchiest mechanical digital clock you’ll ever see. We saw blinkenlights for blinkenlights’ sake, all the ways to put threads in your prints, and how to ditch to coax and wire up your antennas with Cat 6 cable. Plus, it’s an Al Williams twofer in the Can’t-Miss Articles, with a look back at life before GPS and how you can tune into digital ham radio, no radio required.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Download the zero-calorie MP3.
Episode 304 Show Notes:
News:
Hackaday Europe 2025 Tickets On Sale, and CFP Extended Until Friday
Eben Upton Hack Chat Transcript
What’s that Sound?
Congratulations to [Egon] for getting the Ross ice shelf, and not some sci-fi computer at all.
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
All The Attacks On The RP2350
A Direct Conversion Receiver Anyone Can Build
Amateur Radio Homebrewing Hack Chat
Make Your Own Variable Inductor
DIY Tuning Capacitors From Washers And 3D-Printed Parts
A Variable Capacitor For Not A Lot
Fluid Simulation Pendant Teaches Lessons In Miniaturization
Using The ESP8266 For Low-Cost Fault Injection
Comparing Ways To Add Threads To Your 3D Prints
Springs And Things Make For A Unique Timepiece
Unique Clock Finally Unites Hackers And Sequins
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks
Avian-Inspired Drones: How Studying Birds Of Prey Brings More Efficient Drones Closer
Audio On A Shoestring: DIY Your Own Studio-Grade Mic
Second CNC Machine Is Twice As Nice
Dan’s Picks:
Forget The Coax, Wire Up Your Antennas With Cat 6 Cable
Procedurally Generated Terrain In OpenSCAD
Blinkenlights-First Retrocomputer Design
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Before GPS There Was LORAN
No Ham License? Listen Anyway In Your Browser | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "8085239",
"author": "Ian Dunn",
"timestamp": "2025-01-18T04:03:40",
"content": "Yes please to the clock contest! This will be one I stand a chance at winning. I’ve got about 25 entries ready to go. I love your podcast!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
... | 1,760,371,664.593943 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/17/you-can-build-your-own-hubless-roller-blades-and-ride-off-road/ | You Can Build Your Own Hubless Roller Blades And Ride Off Road | Lewin Day | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"roller blades",
"roller skates",
"skate",
"skates"
] | Regular roller blades go way back, relying on a number of wheels mounted in a line and relying on regular bearings. [The Q] came up with an altogether more interesting design by
handcrafting some tall skates with two hubless wheels apiece.
The build eliminates the hard work of creating the shoe part of the skates. Instead, an existing pair of roller blades was used, and modified to run the alternative hubless setup. The hubless wheels themselves were built by essentially wrapping a few large ball bearings with foam tires from an existing scooter wheel. The ball bearings have a large internal diameter, which creates the hubless look. They’re then mounted to a replacement steel frame that was mounted to the original skates.
Are there any benefits to hubless wheels in this application? Probably not, other than aesthetics. These skates are far heavier than before, and with poorer rolling resistance. However, we will note that the softer foam tires and large rolling diameter would probably offer some benefits on rougher surfaces. They even appear to work on hard-packed dirt, which is pretty impressive.
In any case, it’s always neat to see oddball designs that challenge our perception of
what can and can’t be achieved on a mechanical level
. These things don’t always have to make sense from an efficiency standpoint to be fun. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "8084570",
"author": "fiddlingjunky",
"timestamp": "2025-01-17T16:59:52",
"content": "They look dope! I’d be worried about my ankles, though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "8084571",
"author": "Ben Norris",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,371,664.879461 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/17/this-week-in-security-rsync-sso-and-pentesting-mushrooms/ | This Week In Security: Rsync, SSO, And Pentesting Mushrooms | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"pentesting",
"rsync",
"SSO",
"This Week in Security"
] | Up first, go check your machines for the
rsync
version, and your servers for an exposed
rsync
instance. While there are some security fixes for clients in release 3.4.0,
the buffer overflow in the server-side rsync daemon
is the definite standout. The disclosure text includes this bit of nightmare fuel: “an attacker only requires anonymous read access to a
rsync
server, such as a public mirror, to execute arbitrary code on the machine the server is running on.”
A naive search on Shodan shows a whopping
664,955 results for rsync servers
on the Internet.
Red Hat’s analysis
gives us a bit more information. The checksum length is specified by the remote client, and an invalid length isn’t properly rejected by the server. The effect is that an attacker can write up to 48 bytes into the heap beyond the normal checksum buffer space. The particularly dangerous case is also the default: anonymous access for file retrieval. Red Hat has not identified a mitigation beyond blocking access.
If you run servers or forward ports, it’s time to look at ports 873 and 8873 for anything listening. And since that’s not the only problem fixed, it’s really just time to update to rsync 3.4.0 everywhere you can. While there aren’t any reports of this being exploited in the wild, it seems like attempts are inevitable. As
rsync
is sometimes used in embedded systems and shipped as part of appliances, this particular bug threatens to have quite the long tail.
My Gmail is My Passport, Verify Me
Here’s an interesting question.
What happens to those “Log In With Google” accounts
that we all have all over the Internet, when the domain changes hands? And no, we’re not talking about
gmail.com
. We’re talking about
myfailedbusiness.biz
, or any custom domain that has been integrated with a Google Workspace. The business fails, the domain reverts back to unclaimed, someone else purchases it, and re-adds the
admin@myfailedbusiness.biz
Google Workspace account. Surely that doesn’t register as the same account for the purpose of Google SSO, right?
The answer to this question is to look at what actually happens when a user uses Google Oauth to log in. The service sends a message to Google, asking Google to identify the user. Google asks the user for confirmation, and if granted will send an ID token to the service. That token contains three fields that are interesting for this purpose. The domain and email are straightforward, and importantly don’t make any distinction between the original and new users. So when the domain and email change hands, so does ownership of the token.
Oauth does provide a
sub
(subject) field, that is a unique token for a given user/service combination. Seems like that solves the issue, right? The problem is that while that identifier is guaranteed to be unique, it’s not guaranteed to be consistent, and thus isn’t widely used as a persistent user identifier. Google is aware of the issue, and while they initially closed it as a “Won’t fix” issue, the concept did eventually earn [Dylan Ayrey] a nifty $1337 bounty and a promise that Google is working on unspecified fixes. There is no immediate solution, and it’s not entirely clear that this is strictly a Google problem. Other SSO solutions may have the same quirk.
Fortigate Under Attack
Fortiguard has reported that
a vulnerability in FortiOS and FortiProxy is under active exploitation
. Fortiguard lists quite a few Indicators of Compromise (IoCs), but as far as the nature of the vulnerability, all we know is that it is an authentication bypass in an Node.js websocket module that allows a remote attacker to gain super-admin privileges. Yoiks.
Actic Wolf has more details on the exploit campaign
, which was first found back in early December, but appears to have begun with widespread scanning for the vulnerability as early as November 16. Attackers moved slowly, with the goal of establishing VPN access into the networks protected behind the vulnerable devices. Arctic Wolf has provided additional IoCs, so time to go hunting.
Ivanti Connect, Too
There’s another security device under attack this week, as watchTowr labs has yet another fun romp through vendor mis-security. This time it’s a
two-part
series
on Ivanti Connect Secure, and the two buffer overflows being used in the wild.
Ivanti has already released a patch, so the researchers ran a
diff
on the
strings
output for the patched and unpatched binary of interest. Three new error messages are in the new version, complaining about client data exceeding a size limit. The
diaphora
binary diffing tool found some interesting debbuging data, like
Too late for IFT_PREAUTH_INIT
. “IF-T” turns out to be an open VPN standard, and that term led to a statement about backwards compatibility in Ivanti code that had terrible “code smell”.
The IF-T protocol includes the optional clientCapabilities field, and Ivanti’s implementation used a fixed length buffer to store it when parsing incoming connections. The client code
almost
gets it right, using a
strlen()
check on the data, and
strncpy()
to ensure the right number of bytes are copied. Except both of those best-practices are completely useless when the result from
strlen()
is fed directly into
strncpy()
as the maximum byte count, without checking whether it overflows the buffer.
The second watchTowr article goes through the steps of turning the vulnerability into a real exploit, but doesn’t actually give away any exploit code. Which hasn’t really mattered, as
Proof of Concepts (PoCs) are now available
. The takeaway is that Ivanti still has security problems with their code, and this particular exploit is both fully known, and being used in the wild.
Pentesting Mushrooms
The folks at Silent Signal have an off-the-beaten-path write-up for us:
How to get hired as a pentester
. Or alternatively, the story of hacking Mushroom Inc. See, they built an intentionally vulnerable web application, and invited potential hires to find flaws. This application included cross-site scripting potential, SQL injection, and bad password handling, among other problems. The test was to take 72 hours, and find and document problems.
Part of the test was to present the findings, categorize each vulnerability’s severity, and even make recommendations for how the fictional business could roll out fixes. Along the way, we get insights on how to get your job application dismissed, and what they’re really looking for in a hire. Useful stuff.
Bits and Bytes
Secure Boot continues to be a bit of a problem.
Microsoft signed a UEFI application
that in turn doesn’t actually do any of the Secure Boot validation checks. This is only an issue after an attacker has admin access to a machine, but it does completely defeat the point of Secure Boot. Microsoft is finally rolling out fixes, revoking the signature on the application.
And if compromising Windows 11 is of interest to you, HN Security has just
wrapped a four-part series
that covers finding a vulnerability in an old Windows kernel driver, and turning it into a real read/write exploit that bypasses all of Microsoft’s modern security hardening.
Do you have a website, and are you interested in how your API is getting probed? Want to mess with attackers a bit?
You might be interested in the new
baitroute
tool
. Put simply, it’s a honeypot for web APIs.
And finally,
the minds behind Top10VPN have released another vulnerability
, this time in tunneling protocols like IPIP, GRE, and 6in4. The problem is a lack of validation on incoming tunnel packets. This allows for easy traffic injection, and using the tunnel servers as easy proxies. One of the worst cases is where this flaw allows accessing an internal network protected behind a consumer router. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "8084561",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2025-01-17T16:20:19",
"content": "When I first encountered the “login with Google”,My reaction was “What?”, quickly followed by “No Way!”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,371,664.944709 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/17/modding-a-toddlers-ride-on-for-more-grunt/ | Modding A Toddler’s Ride-On For More Grunt | Lewin Day | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"Power Wheels",
"pwm",
"ride on",
"soft start"
] | Kids love their Power Wheels and other ride-on electric cars. Indeed, [Ashwin]’s son was digging his little ATV, but soon found that some care was needed on the pedal. It had no proper throttle control, instead turning the motor hard on or off and scaring the poor kid in the process. The solution?
A bit of an upgrade from some off-the-shelf electronics.
Inspiration came from—where else—the /r/PowerWheelsMods subreddit. The main tweak was to install an off-the-shelf soft-start circuit to stop the motor banging hard on when the accelerator was pushed. Instead, when the accelerator is pushed, the module gradually ramps up its PWM output to the motor to smooth out the acceleration curve. This would make the ATV much easier to ride.
Implementing this off-the-shelf solution did take some doing, though. The first attempt ended with a short circuit and a blown fuse. However, [Ashwin] wasn’t deterred—a trip back online to do some research did the trick. With some careful wiring that took into account the crude forward and reverse circuit, [Ashwin] had a much smoother running ride-on for his son.
While most of the mods we see for these little ride-ons are
all about power and speed
, we do appreciate the occasional attempt to
make the things a bit safer for younger drivers
. If you’re brewing up your own fancy kidmobile at home—don’t hesitate to
let us know! | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "8084533",
"author": "Duck Hunter",
"timestamp": "2025-01-17T13:54:20",
"content": "Quadbike without ROPS, it’s tottaly safe trust me bro 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣😛😛😛 /s",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "8084578",
"author": "El Gru... | 1,760,371,664.993051 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/16/forgotten-internet-uucp/ | Forgotten Internet: UUCP | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Retrocomputing",
"Slider"
] | [
"forgotten internet",
"history",
"networking",
"UUCP"
] | What’s Forgotten Internet? It is the story of parts of the Internet — or Internet precursors — that you might have forgotten about or maybe you missed out on them. This time, we’re looking at Unix-to-Unix Copy, more commonly called UUCP. Developed in the late 1970s, UUCP was a solution for sending messages between systems that were not always connected together. It could also allow remote users to execute commands. By 1979, it was part of the 7th Edition of Unix.
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie may have used UUCP on a PDP-11 like this one. (Photo via Computer History Museum/Gwen Bell)
Operation was simple. Each computer in a UUCP network had a list of neighbor systems. Don’t forget, they weren’t connected, so instead of an IP address, each system had the other’s phone number to connect to a dial up modem. You also needed a login name and password. Almost certainly, by the way, those modems operated at 300 baud or less.
If a computer could dial out, when someone wanted to send something or do a remote execution, the UUCP system would call a neighboring computer. However, some systems couldn’t dial out, so it was also possible for a neighbor to call in and poll to see if there was anything you needed to do. Files would go from one system to another using a variety of protocols.
Under the Hood
UUCP was popular enough to have books written about it.
While UUCP was the name of the system (and UUCPNET the network of all computers reachable by UUCP), there were actually a few programs only one of which was named uucp. That program was the user’s interface to the system.
Other programs included uux for remote command execution, uucico which was the backend, and uustat which provided status information. Every hear of uuencode and uudecode? Those started here and were meant to convert binary to text and vice-versa, since you couldn’t be sure all the modems and computers could handle 8-bit data.
When uucico answers a call, it sends a Control+P along with a string indicating its host name. The caller responds with its own Control+P and host name, along with some options. If the caller isn’t recognized, the computer will hang up.
File Transfer
If the call continues, the caller can either send a file, request a file, send commands to execute, or ask for a hangup. Sending and receiving files or commands use g-protocol. Each packet was a Control+P, a number indicating packet size or type, a 16-bit checksum, the datatype, and a check digit for the header (the checksum didn’t cover the header).
The packet size was 1 to 8, corresponding to 32-4096 bytes. In practice, many small systems would only allow a value of 2, indicating 64 bytes. The size could also be 9 to indicate a control packet. There’s a
lot of detail
, but that’s the gist of it.
The g-protocol uses a sliding window system, which was innovative for its time and helpful, considering that systems often had long latencies between each other. In theory, a sender could have up to seven packets outstanding while sending data. In practice, many systems were fixed at a window size of three, which was not optimal for performance.
This led to the G-protocol (uppercase), which always used 4K packets with a window of three, and some implementations could do even better.
From the user’s perspective, you simply used the uucp command like the cp command but with a host name and exclamation point:
uucp enterprise!/usr/share/alist.txt alist.txt # copy alist.txt here from enterprise
uucp request.txt starbase12!/usr/incoming/requests # copy request.txt to remote system starbase12.
You might also use uux to run a remote command and send it back to you. You could run local commands on remote files or vice versa using a similar syntax where ! is the local machine and kelvin! is a computer named kelvin that UUCP knows about.
Reading the Mail
An important use of UUCP was early e-mail. Mail programs would cooperate with UUCP. UUCP E-mail addresses contain exclamation points (bangs) to identify the whole path to your machine. So, if you lived in New York and wanted to send an e-mail to Hackaday in California, it might require this address: NY4!east.node!center!west.node!CA8!Hackaday!alwilliams.
A USENET post from 2004 (GPL via
Wikipedia
)
It was common, then, to provide your e-mail address relative to some “well-known” node like “…!west.node!CA8!Hackaday!alwilliams.” It was up to the sender to fill in the first part. Your mail would travel through each computer. There could easily be more than one path to …!Hackaday!alwilliams even from the same starting point and there would almost certainly be different paths from different starting hosts.
Usenet was also distributed this same way. Usenet deserves its own Forgotten Internet installment, but it was an early form of what we think of today as discussion groups.
Keep in mind that in both cases, UUCP didn’t know anything about machines more than one hop away. It was up to the mail program to understand that it was running on west.node and that it should then dial up the CA8 computer and transmit the message to it.
Versions
[Mike Lesk] at Bell Labs originally developed the code, and by 1978, there was a UUCP network of 82 Unix machines internal to Bell Labs. Around 1983, there was an AT&T rewrite known as HoneyDanBer UUCP, referencing the authors’ names, that fixed some bugs.
Then [Ian Lance Taylor] wrote a GPL version in 1991, often known as Taylor UUCP. It was flexible and could communicate with other versions of UUCP. It could also go faster when talking to another Taylor UUCP instance.
There were UUCP programs for MSDOS, CP/M, Mac OS, and VMS. Probably even more than that. It was a very popular program.
All Good Things
Of course, full-time connections to the Internet would be the beginning of the end for UUCP. Sure, you could use UUCP over a network connection instead of a dial-up modem, but why? Of course, your phone bill would definitely go down, but why use UUCP at all if you can just connect to the remote host?
In 2012, a Dutch Internet provider stopped offering UUCP to the 13 users it had left on the service. They claimed that they were likely the last surviving part of the UUCP world at that time.
Of course, you can grab your modem and set up your own UUCP setup like [Chartreuse Kitsune] did recently in the video below.
Times were different
before the Internet
. It is amazing that over a single lifetime, we’ve gone from 300 baud modems to
over 1 petabit per second
. | 82 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "8083677",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2025-01-16T16:14:37",
"content": "300 Baud! The luxury! We used 45 baud on our Model 15s and liked it!And running through the TWX network it would often get down to 1 character per second, but itwasintercontinental text messaging in real t... | 1,760,371,665.127367 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.