The Joy Of Properly Designed Embedded Systems

The ages-old dream of home automation has never been nearer to reality. Creating an Internet of Things device or even a building-wide collection of networked embedded devices is “easy” thanks to cheap building blocks like the ESP8266 WiFi-enabled microcontroller. Yet for any sizable project, it really helps to have a …read more

Ask Hackaday: How Do You Draw Schematics?

The lingua franca of electronic design is the schematic. I can pick up a datasheet written in Chinese (a language I do not read or speak) and usually get a half-decent idea of what the part is all about from the drawings. Unfortunately, even as my design experience has grown …read more

The CD Is 40, The CD Is Dead

The Compact Disc is 40 years old, and for those of us who remember its introduction it still has that sparkle of a high-tech item even as it slides into oblivion at the hands of streaming music services.

If we could define a moment at which consumers moved from analogue …read more

Hands-On: New Nvidia Jetson Nano is More Power In A Smaller Form Factor

Today, Nvidia released their next generation of small but powerful modules for embedded AI. It’s the Nvidia Jetson Nano, and it’s smaller, cheaper, and more maker-friendly than anything they’ve put out before.

The Jetson Nano follows the Jetson TX1, the TX2, and the Jetson AGX Xavier, all very capable platforms, …read more

Es’hail-2: Hams Get Their First Geosynchronous Repeater

In the radio business, getting the high ground is key to covering as much territory from as few installations as possible. Anything that has a high profile, from a big municipal water tank to a roadside billboard to a remote hilltop, will likely be bristling with antennas, and different services …read more

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Hackaday Links: March 24, 2019

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By Brian Benchoff | March 24, 2019

It has come to my attention that a few of you don’t know about Crystalfontz, an online store where you can find displays of all types, from USB LCD displays to I2C OLEDs, to ePaper displays. Thanks to [arthurptj] for that tip. Yes, Crystalfontz is cool, but have you ever …read more
Here’s The First Person To Put A Pi In The Raspberry Pi Keyboard

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By Brian Benchoff | March 24, 2019

Last week, the Raspberry Pi foundation released the first official Raspberry Pi-branded keyboard and mouse. As a keyboard, it’s probably pretty great; it’s clad in a raspberry and white color scheme, the meta key is the Pi logo, there are function keys. Sure, the Ctrl and Caps Lock keys are …read more
Custom LoRa Pager Designed With Care

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By Lewin Day | March 24, 2019

LoRa is a useful technology if you need to send data a long way at low power levels. Leveraging this, [5Volt-Junkie] decided to build a small pager named the LoRaNicator.

Those who love a detailed build log will enjoy this. The pager features everything up to and including the kitchen …read more
A Ruined Saw Blade Becomes A Bowl

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By Jenny List | March 24, 2019

Every workshop generates waste, whether it be wood shavings, scrap metal, or fabric scraps, and sometimes that waste seems too good to throw away. [Igor Nikolic]’s hackerspace had a ruined circular saw blade in the trash, and rather than let it go to waste he took it to the forge …read more
Grabbing the Thread: Spinlocks vs Mutexes

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By Bryan Cockfield | March 24, 2019

Getting into the weeds of operating systems is daunting work. Especially when the operating system involved is a fully featured modern PC operating system with millions of lines of code all working together to integrate hardware and software seamlessly. One such operating system “weed” is figuring out how to handle …read more
Air-Breathing Rocket Engine Promises Future Space Planes

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By Al Williams | March 24, 2019

If you are a certain age, you probably remember the promise of supersonic transports. The Concorde took less than 4 hours to go across the Atlantic, but it stopped flying in 2003 and ended commercial supersonic passenger flights But back in the 1970s, we thought the Concorde would give way …read more
Reverse Engineering a Telephonic Relay Device

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By Lewin Day | March 23, 2019

The Plain Old Telephone Service, or POTS, doesn’t get a lot of love from the average person anymore. Perhaps once in a while a payphone will be of use when a phone battery has died, but by and large many people simply don’t have hardwired phones anymore. However, that doesn’t …read more