Buy Break Build: A Hackaday Contest Series

We like alliteration

We are proud to introduce a new contest here at Hackaday. Buy Break Build will be regular event where we challenge you to make something from something else. We want to work out your hacker brains to come up with inventive ways to use limited parts. We may have a specific product or genre in mind, and a specific out come we would like to get, then we let you guys loose to make it happen. The … [Read more...]

Servicing an Epson projector

servicing-epson-projector

[Socket7] got his hands on a projector that had some color calibration problems. Of course the servicing manual says that there are no technician serviceable parts inside, but he cracked it open and fixed it anyway. This is an Epson PowerLite 5500c which was showing blue and yellow bands around the outside of the projected image. He could hear something rattling around inside which happened to … [Read more...]

We knew we were doomed when the T-shirt cannon bots showed up

10-barrel-tshirt-shooting-robot

The newest addition to the Skynet armada is this 10-barrel t-shirt cannon. It's capable of storming the battlements at over twelve feet per second with a firing rate of three T-shirts per second (ooh, is that cotton?). The members of Team 254, which is hosted by Bellarmine College Preparatory School, built the robot over the summer. This involved a full production cycle; planning, 3D … [Read more...]

Software security courtesy of child labor

young-hacker-discovers-vulnerability

We couldn't help but poke a little fun in the headline. This is [Alex Miller], a twelve year old who claimed a $3000 bounty from Mozilla. See, [Alex] is a self-taught security guru. When Mozilla upped the reward for discovering and reporting critical security flaws in their software he went to work searching for one. He estimates that he spent an hour and a half a day for ten days to find the … [Read more...]

Hacking: a disobedient act that drives change

why-we-hack-title

[Adam Dachis] published an essay a couple of days ago called Why We Hack. In it he discusses the outlook that hacking, on all of its various levels, is a simple form of disobedience. We have to agree with him. Manufacturers would like you to think that voiding the warranty is as good as smashing the product to bits. But we all know that if you can't crack it open you don't really own it. [Adam] … [Read more...]

Artisans Asylum Takes on the Machine

When breakfast requires you defending yourself with a plate and wearing a face sheild, you know you've gone too far.

You'll probably lose your appetite after watching part one and part two of Artisans Asylum as they Take on the Machine. Based around the Wallace and Gromit "automated" set of contraptions, the team from Boston set out to make their own breakfast machine. Of course, with only three weeks to work it didn't exactly turn out as planned. They certainly had some good ideas though, and we were amazingly … [Read more...]