Teardown: 168-in-1 Retro Handheld Game

The holidays are upon us, and that can mean many furrowed brows trying to figure out what token gift they can give out this year as stocking-stuffers. Something that’s a bit more interesting than a coupon book or a lotto scratcher, but also affordable enough that you can buy a …read more

Chandrayaan-2 Found By Citizen Scientist; Reminds Us Of Pluto Discovery

What does Pluto — not the dog, but the non-Planet — have in common with the Vikram lunar lander launched by India? Both were found by making very tiny comparisons to photographs. You’d think landing something on the moon would be old hat by now, but it turns out only …read more

Retrotechtacular: The Gyro-X

In the 1950s, American automobiles bloomed into curvaceous gas-guzzlers that congested the roads. The profiles coming out of Detroit began to deflate in the 1960s, but many bloat boats were still sailing the streets. For all their hulking mass, these cars really weren’t all that stable — they still had …read more

Updating To Windows 10 For Fun And Profit: Make Those OEM Keys Go Further

Microsoft seems to have an every-other-version curse. We’re not sure how much of this is confirmation bias, but consider the track record of releases. Windows 95 was game-changing, Windows 98 famously crashed during live demo. Windows 2000 was amazing, Windows ME has been nicknamed the “Mistake Edition”. XP was the …read more

The Story Of A Secret Underground Parisian Society

Deep in the heart of Paris, a series of underground tunnels snakes across the city. They cross into unkept public spaces from centuries ago that have since vanished from collective memory – abandoned basements, catacombs, and subways hundreds of miles apart.

Only a few groups still traverse these subterranean streets. …read more

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AI Knows If The Pitch Is On Target Before You Do

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By Lewin Day | December 10, 2019

Pitching a baseball is about accuracy and speed. A swift ball on target is the goal, allowing the pitcher to strike out the batter. [Nick Bild] created an AI system that can determine a ball’s trajectory in mid-flight, based on a camera feed.

The system uses an NVIDIA Jetson AGX …read more
Tracking Wasted Time With A Ferrofluid Clock

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By Dan Maloney | December 10, 2019

We know this project is supposed to be about developing a fine-looking ferrofluid clock, and not about the value of procrastination. But after watching the video below, see if you don’t think that procrastination has taken these two students further than expected.

We first ran into [Simen] and [Amund] several …read more
Chaining Together A 16×2 Bubble LED Display

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By Tom Nardi | December 10, 2019

We’ve recently noticed an uptick of interest in so-called “bubble displays”: vintage alphanumeric LEDs which are probably best remembered as being used in watches and calculators before the LCD took over. Today they’re available as surplus or even salvage for literally pennies, but unfortunately they only provide four or five …read more
With PowerCore And FluxLamp, Reflow Is Possible

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By Gerrit Coetzee | December 10, 2019

[nathan] sends in this combo of projects which combine to make a very interesting reflow oven.

First is PowerCore which has two microcontrollers, an ATmega and a ESP8366 working in tandem to turn the AC on and off at set intervals. A GLCD displays the current profiles and WiFi allows …read more
Weird Substances: Hagfish Slime

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By Kristina Panos | December 10, 2019

In the cold, dark recesses of ocean floors around the world, hagfish slither around like sea snakes, searching for food. When a hagfish finds a suitable carcass, it devours the dead fish in two different ways. As it burrows face-first through the tissue, eating with its jaw-less, tentacled mouth, the …read more
New Contest: Tell Time

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By Mike Szczys | December 10, 2019

Clocks. You love ’em, we certainly love ’em. So you hardly need a reason to take on a new clock build, but it makes it much sweeter when you know there’s a horde of people waiting to fawn over your creation. Hackaday’s Tell Time Contest is a celebration of interesting …read more
Don’t Hang Christmas Lights, Embed Them

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By Kristina Panos | December 10, 2019

Finding it hard to get into the holiday spirit this year? Maybe you just need a timely project to light up the evenings until Santa (or Krampus) pays your house a visit. Whoever visits this season, delight or distract them with a 3D printed tree featuring embedded RGB LEDs.

[MakeTVee] …read more