FDA Says PPE Can Be Reused After Trip Through Shipping Container Decontamination System

We are hearing so much in the news about shortages of personal protective equipment, or PPE, for healthcare workers. Factories are being asked to perform the impossible when it comes to production be the need is so real, so immediate, and so widespread.

The problem with rapid consumption of PPE …read more

Star Trackers: Telling Up From Down In Any Space

Keeping track of position is crucial in a lot of situations. On Earth, it’s usually relatively straight-forward, with systems having been developed over the centuries that would allow one to get at least a rough fix on one’s position on this planet. But for a satellite out in space, however, …read more

Stay Smarter Than Your Smart Speaker

Smart speakers have always posed a risk to privacy and security — that’s just the price we pay for getting instant answers to life’s urgent and not-so-urgent questions the moment they arise. But it seems that many owners of the 76 million or so smart speakers on the active install …read more

Perhaps August Dvorak Is More Your Type

One of the strangest things about human nature is our tendency toward inertia. We take so much uncontrollable change in stride, but when our man-made constructs stop making sense, we’re suddenly stuck in our ways — for instance, the way we measure things in the US, or define daytime throughout …read more

Behind The Scenes Of Folding@Home: How Do You Fight A Virus With Distributed Computing?

A great big Thank You to everyone who answered the call to participate in Folding@Home, helping to understand proteins interactions of SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. Some members of the FAH research team hosted an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on Reddit to provide us with behind-the-scenes details. Unsurprisingly, the …read more

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A Touchless Handwashing Timer Comes In Handy

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By Lewin Day | April 3, 2020

In 2020, it’s no longer enough to simply wash your hands. You’ve got to do it right. Proper process involves rubbing soap and water over every surface of your hands, and taking a full 20 seconds to do the job. While many recommend singing various popular songs to keep time, …read more
LED Heart Beats With The Beholder

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By Lewin Day | April 3, 2020

Many a maker likes to use their craft to create gifts for loved ones. [Jiří Praus] was celebrating having been married for 5 years, and crafted this beautiful LED heart sculpture to commemorate the occasion.

The outer shell was created by first starting with a 3D printed heart shape. This …read more
Charging Pad Flips For Solar Power

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By Lewin Day | April 3, 2020

Charging pads are now a common, popular way to charge small devices. They have the benefit of reducing wear on connectors and being easier to use. [bcschmi6] decided to build a solar powered charging pad, which should come in handy when out and about.

The build uses a 3 W …read more
Cellular Tracking Used During COVID-19 Pandemic

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By Lewin Day | April 3, 2020

As most in the technology community know, nation states have a suite of powerful tools that can be used to trace and monitor mobile phones. By and large, this comes up in discussions of privacy and legislation now and then, before fading out of the public eye once more. In …read more
Hackaday Podcast 061: Runaway Soldering Irons, Open Source Ventilators, 3D Printed Solder Stencils, And Radar Motion

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By Mike Szczys | April 3, 2020

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams sort through the hardware hacking gems of the week. There was a kerfuffle about whether a ventilator data dump from Medtronics was open source or not, and cool hacks from machine-learning soldering iron controllers to 3D-printing your own solder paste stencils. A motion …read more
Minimalist Magnetic Minute Minder Mesmerizes

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By Kristina Panos | April 3, 2020

Timepieces are cool no matter how simplistic or granular they are. Sometimes its nice not to know exactly what time it is down to the second, and most of the really beautiful clocks are simple as can be. If you didn’t know this was a clock, it would still be …read more
This Week In Security: OpenWrt, ZOOM, And Systemd

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By Jonathan Bennett | April 3, 2020

OpenWrt announced a problem in opkg, their super-lightweight package manager. OpenWrt’s target hardware, routers, make for an interesting security challenge. A Linux install that fits in just 4 MB of flash memory is a minor miracle in itself, and many compromises had to be made. In this case, we’re interested …read more