Elliot and Dan teamed up this week for the podcast, and after double-checking, nay, triple-checking that we were recording, got to the business of reviewing the week’s hacks. We kicked things off with a look at the news, including a potentially exciting Right to Repair law in Washington state and the sad demise of NASA’s ISS sighting website.
Our choice of hacks included a fond look at embedded systems and the classic fashion sense of Cornell’s Bruce Land, risky open CRT surgery, a very strange but very cool way to make music, and the ultimate backyard astronomer’s observatory. We talked about Stamp collecting for SMD prototyping, crushing aluminum with a boatload of current, a PC that heats your seat, and bringing HDMI to the Commodore 64.
We also took a look at flight tracking IRL, a Flipper-based POV, the ultimate internet toaster, and printing SVGs for fun and profit. Finally, we wrapped things up with a look at the tech behind real-time river flow tracking and a peek inside the surprisingly energetic world of fuel cells.
Download this entirely innocent-looking MP3.
Episode 323 Show Notes:
News:
- Washington Consumers Gain Right To Repair For Cellphones And More
- NASA Is Shutting Down The International Space Station Sighting Website
- 2025 Pet Hacks Contest
What’s that Sound?
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
- A Love Letter To Embedded Systems By V. Hunter Adams
- ECE 4760 repo
- Designing with Microcontrollers – Old projects from Bruce Land’s days at the helm of ECE 4760
- A RISC-V Operating System Instruction Manual
- Reconditioning A Vintage CRT Tube
- A 100-Year-Old Electronic Musical Instrument Brought Back To Life
- Making A Backyard Observatory Complete With Retractable Roof
- Stamp: Modular Breakout Boards For SMD Prototyping
- EMF Forming Was A Neat Aerospace Breakthrough
Quick Hacks:
- Elliot’s Picks
- Dan’s Picks:
Can’t-Miss Articles:
The ‘What’s that sound’ segment is devilish this time.
The echo makes it even harder to guess.