An INA219 board with a QWIIC connector and "female barrel jack to male barrel jack" cable soldered on. the qwiic end is plugged into the side of the Blepis PDA, with the screen showing a device found on the 0x40 address

Just Use QWIIC Already

November 12, 2026 by 21 Comments

Years ago, I wrote an article describing different I2C-on-a-connector ecosystems, explaining their strengths, weaknesses, and implementation details, as well as piling on a heap of fun stories. Looking back at it, it’s a great reference article, if I do say so myself. In particular, I highlighted QWIIC, which is a Sparkfun-borne standard for putting 3.3 V I2C on a JST-SH (or compatible) 4-pin connector.

I’ve since implemented a fair bit of QWIIC, and grew to like it so much more. I’m here to explain to you why you ought to be putting those JST-SH connectors in everything you design that touches I2C, all the cool things they let you do, where to buy a lot of cheap cables at once, and all the references you could need. I will also tell you about my USB pinout for QWIIC, something you should definitely know about.

In2ispensable Interconnect

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USB-C Hub Or Nintendo Switch 2 Dock? Relax, It’s Both!

November 12, 2026 by 2 Comments

[Nozomi] travels with a Nintendo Switch 2, but the official dock is bulky and doesn’t seem to be made for travel. USB-C hubs with displays are common, but they won’t work with the Switch. Not without a little hacking, anyway.

It was obvious that the hub wasn’t too far off. It will charge the Switch, so Power Delivery was working. A sniffer showed that even the DisplayPort initialization happened. A little flashing on the hub allowed it to complete the proprietary protocol, and that made TV mode work, but HDR was washed out. [Nozomi] theorized it was a mismatched color space, so that required a patch for a different chip. Another flash forces the right color tag for HDR TV, but there would have to be another patch for HDR DP.

That patch doesn’t exist. Variable refresh rate also does not work. We didn’t find the actual code for the patches, but we still thought the detective work was worth the read. Some people don’t want a more portable dock, but a less portable one.

The Sextant: Navigating The Old Way

November 12, 2026 by 37 Comments

Navigation is easy these days, as we’ve entire complex computerized mapping systems and radio-based positioning systems to find ourselves anywhere on Earth. It might seem simple to use GPS these days, even trivial, but billions of dollars are what it took to make that happen.

Back in the day, navigation was simpler, and cheaper, using a handheld device and natural objects in space instead of artificial satellites with atomic clocks. Let’s learn about the sextant, and how it did its job.

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Tiny Transmitters Track Monarch Butterflies

November 12, 2026 by 8 Comments

Miniaturization is one thing, but how would you like to design a transmitter that attaches to a butterfly? That’s what the BlūMorpho transmitter is made to do, according to [Tom Jokinen] writing for Be Giant. Apparently, most of these butterflies have a two- to six-week life, but periodically a “super generation” spawns and lives up to nine months. This is enough time to migrate from Canada and the United States to Mexico. In Mexico, they spend the winter, and then return when the weather is more hospitable. Scientists wanted to study this migration pattern, and the tiny transmitter is exactly what they needed.

You can even download an app to track the butterflies yourself. The transmitter looks like a tadpole and weighs 60 milligrams. There’s no battery, but there is a tiny solar cell. The transmitter emits a Bluetooth signal that your phone’s location services can relay.

To affix the transmitter, researchers put a glassine envelope over the butterfly, weigh its wings down with something slightly heavy, and then apply eyelash glue to the transmitter. You can see the process in the video below.

What else could you do with a virtually weightless Bluetooth tracker? It is possible that dedicated tracking stations could have a longer range.

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Espresso, Meet Custom-Machined Stainless Steel Boiler

November 12, 2026 by 13 Comments

While pondering some repairs for his Gaggia Classic Pro espresso machine, [Hans Gaensbauer] ended up machining an entirely new boiler from stainless steel.

It was a nontrivial undertaking, since the boiler is an assembly that integrates not only heaters and pump connections, but one end is also the group head into which the portafilter interfaces. [Hans] had to deal with machining out the contours and pockets necessary for a portafilter to lock in securely, complete with the little screen and perforated plate responsible for even water distribution. And of course, the whole thing still has to fit into the original machine. All in all, [Hans] had some constraints to work around, making it a considerably more complex job than just milling a chamber out of a block of stainless steel.

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A LEGO 3D Printer

November 11, 2026 by 11 Comments

LEGO building blocks are a great toy, but every so often a hacker decides to take the little bricks outside of the toy room and make them an integral part of a build. [Adam Turaj] took that idea further than most with his Studprint, a 3D printer that’s 92% LEGO.

We aren’t just talking LEGO bricks making up part of the frame here, or even the bed — though that’s obviously the case — but [Adam] goes so far that even the motion system is using LEGO leadscrews to drive the axes of this printer. Is it particularly capable? Well, no. He’s not boasting of a remarkable bed size or high speeds here because that’s really not the point. The point is that he made a printer in LEGO and if you don’t see the fun in that, we don’t know what to tell you.

The whole project is open source, and includes the CAD files for the handful of non-LEGO bits you’ll need to mount the electronics, steppers and such. With an unheated bed of ABS bricks, you’re going to be limited in filament choices, but [Adam] has at least made a Benchy, which is all anyone really needs, right?

In light of recent work, we might suggest that the printer is also a pick-and-place machine. If you want to turn the phrase “LEGO 3D Printer” around, we have seen 3D Printed LEGO before as well. We’d be remiss not to note that this isn’t the first printer to use the ubiquitous building blocks we’ve seen, though this one keeps with the regular filament and extruder rather than hot glue like the 2013 version.

It’s Elite, For The Commodore Pet

November 11, 2026 by 7 Comments

A few times in the life of someone interested in technology, there comes along something which after seeing it, you know the field is never going to be the same again. For a teenage future Hackaday writer this came in seeing Elite, on a BBC Micro. Nowadays an open world game is normal, but in the mid-1980s it was mind-blowing. Of course, such a powerful piece of software couldn’t be ported to any old computer, so owners of less capable machines were left envious of their more well-heeled friends.

It will be a surprise to Commodore Pet owners then, that over four decades later, [David Given] has ported the game to their platform. It’s not such a leap, as the Pet has the same (albeit slower) 6502 as the BBC Micro, and the game requires the Commodore machine to have 32k of memory.

So what you get is Elite, but with the Pet’s block graphics rather than the higher-resolution you’d have seen on the newer machines. He admits it doesn’t play well and that the code is something of a mess, but we suspect 32k Pet owners in 2026 won’t be too bothered by this. All the code and disk images are there in the repository, and you can see it at work in the video below the break. Meanwhile if you’re curious about the Elite codebase, you can take a look at it yourself.

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