Ep 314: It's Pi, but Also PCBs in Living Color and Ultrasonic Everything

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys chew the fat over the coolest of hacks. It's hard to beat two fascinating old-tech demonstraters; one is a mechanical computer for accurate cheese apportionment, the other an ADC built from logic chips. We gawk two very different uses of propeller-based vehicles; one a flying-walker, the other a ground-effect coaster. Big news shared at the top of the show is that Keith Thorne of LIGO is going to present a keynote at Hackaday Remoticon. And we wrap the episode talking about brighter skies from a glut of satellites and what the world would look like if one charging cable truly ruled all smartphones. Come check out the show notes!

15 Okt 202152min

Hackaday editors Tom Nardi and Elliot Williams bring you up to speed on the most interesting stories of the week. Hackaday's Remoticon and Germany's Chaos Communication Congress are virtual again this year, but the Vintage Computer Festival will be live. We'll also talk about ocean-going drones, the recreation of an old-school light bulb with a potato peeler, cheap smart watches with hidden potential, and sanding down shady modules to figure out just how you've been scammed. Stick around for some thoughts on turning real-estate signs into a handy prototyping material, and to find out why some very impressive Soviet tech is getting the boot from America's space program. Please peruse the show notes!

8 Okt 202150min

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys peruse the great hardware hacks of the past week. There's a robot walker platform that wirelessly offloads motor control planning to a computer. We take a look at automating your fishing boat with a trolling motor upgrade, building the hoover dam in your back yard, and playing Holst's Planets on an army of Arduini. Make sure you stick around until the end as we stroll through distant memories of Gopher, and peek inside the parking garages of the sea. And check out the show notes, won't you?

1 Okt 202150min

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams marvel at a week packed full of great hardware hacks. Do you think the engineers who built the earliest home computers knew that their work would be dissected decades later for conference talks full of people hungry to learn the secret sauce? The only thing better than the actual engineering of the Commodore hard drive is the care with which the ultimate hardware talk unpacks it all! We look upon a couple of EV hacks -- one that replaces the inverter in a Leaf and the other details the design improvements to Telsa's self-hiding door handles. Before we get to midieval surgery and USB-C power delivery, we stop for a look at a way to take snapshots of Game Boy gameplay and an electric plane engine that looks radial but is all gears. Don't forget to check out the show notes!

24 Sep 202151min

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys look back on a great week of hardware hacking. What a time to be alive when you can use open source tools to decode signals from a probe that has long since left our solar system! We admire two dirt-cheap builds, one to measure current draw in mains power, another to mill small parts with great precision for only a few bucks. A display built from a few hundred 7-segment modules begs the question: who says pixels need to be the same size? We jaw on the concept of autonomous electric cargo ships, and marvel at the challenges of hitting an asteroid with a space probe. All that and we didn't even mention using GLaDOS as a personal assistant robot, but that's on the docket too! Don't forget to check out the show notes!

17 Sep 202150min

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Tom Nardi go over the best stories and hacks from the previous week, covering everything from sidestepping rockets to homebrew OLED displays. We'll cover an incredible attempt to really emulate the Nintendo Game Boy, low-cost injection molding of rubbery parts, a tube full of hypersonic shockwaves, and how a hacked depth finder and a rowboat can help chart those local rivers and lakes that usually don't get any bathymetric love. Plus, even though he's on vacation this week, Elliot has left us with a ruddy mysterious song to try and identify. You know you want to read the show notes!

10 Sep 202154min

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys are joined by contributing editor Jenny List to talk about her adventure at Born Hack last week. We also discuss the many capacitor values that go into regen receivers, the quest for a Raspberry Pi handheld that includes a slide-out keyboard, and how capacitive touch might make mice (mouses?) and touchpads better. There's a deep dive into 3D-printer bed-leveling, a junk-box metal detector build, and an ambisonic microphone which can listen any-which-way. Dig on the show notes!

3 Sep 202150min

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams wade into a week of wonderful hacks. There's an acrylic lens that hides images in the network of caustics: the light rays that shine through it. Boston Dynamics is finally showing the good stuff; people wrenching on 'bots, and all kinds of high-end equipment failure, along with some epic successes. Can you grow better plants by inferring what they need by accurately weighing them? In more turbulent news, a police drone slammed into a Cessna mid-flight, the ISS went for an unexpected spin, and McDonald's not-ice-cream machines have a whole new layer of drama around them. You know you want to read the show notes!

27 Aug 202146min