NVMe Blurs The Lines Between Memory And Storage

The history of storage devices is quite literally a race between the medium and the computing power as the bottleneck of preserving billions of ones and zeros stands in the way of computing nirvana. The most recent player is the …read more

Death Of The Serial Squid: When Do You Give Up?

While searching for a connector recently, I revisited an old project of mine called the Serial Squid. This was to have been my first open-source hardware design. After completing the entire design, PCB, BOM, and preparing for a crowd-funded campaign, …read more

Ask Hackaday: What’s In Your Fastener Bin?

A Saturday afternoon. The work week was done, the household chores were wrapped up, and with almost a week left until Christmas, there was just enough wiggle room to deny that there was still a ton of work left to …read more

The V-Bomber Ejector Seat Controversy

Once upon a time, bailing out of a plane involved popping open the roof or door, and hopping out with your parachute, hoping that you’d maintained enough altitude to slow down before you hit the ground. As flying speeds increased …read more

The Shell And The Microcontroller

One of the nicest amenities of interpreted programming languages is that you can test out the code that you’re developing in a shell, one line at a time, and see the results instantly. No matter how quickly your write-compile-flash cycle …read more

See all blog entries

Civil Defense Disco Ball Rocks Ground Zero

No comments
By Tom Nardi | January 15, 2021

Old Civil Defense survey meters like the V-715 are interesting conversation starters, but of very little practical use today. These devices were intended to be a sort of litmus test that survivors of a nuclear blast could use to determine …read more
This Week In Security: Ubiquiti, Nissan, Zyxel, And Dovecot

4 Comments
By Jonathan Bennett | January 15, 2021

You may have been one of the many of us who received an email from Ubiquiti this week, recommending a password change. The email stated that there was an unauthorized access of Ubiquiti systems, and while there wasn’t evidence of …read more
Programmable Filament For Multicolor Printing

18 Comments
By Al Williams | January 15, 2021

A recent research paper shows a way to create multicolor 3D prints using a single extruder if you are too lazy to babysit the machine and switch filament. The concept: print your own “programmable” filament that has the right colors …read more
A 136 Euro Pulse Jet For Some No-Firework Lockdown Fun

11 Comments
By Jenny List | January 15, 2021

With the aim of reducing virus transmission due to gatherings during the pandemic, the Dutch government have banned fireworks. The people of the Netherlands like their noisy things so we’re told that the ban has been widely flouted, but [Build …read more
Dynamic Map Of Italy On A PCB

5 Comments
By Bryan Cockfield | January 14, 2021

While most PCBs stick to tried-and-true methods of passing electrons through their layers of carefully-etched copper, modern construction methods allow for a large degree of customization of most aspects of these boards. From solder mask to number of layers, and …read more
Beam Dump Makes Sure Your Laser Path Is Safely Terminated

23 Comments
By Dan Maloney | January 14, 2021

Between hot things, sharp things, and spinny things, there’s more than enough danger in the average hacker’s shop to maim and mutilate anyone who fails to respect their power. But somehow lasers don’t seem to earn the same healthy fear, …read more
ESP32 Soil Monitors Tap Into Ultra-Low Power Mode

23 Comments
By Tom Nardi | January 14, 2021

Soil moisture sensors are cheap and easy to interface with, to the point that combining one with an Arduino and blinking an LED when your potted plant is feeling a bit parched is a common beginners project. But what about …read more