If William Gibson and Bruce Sterling had written an arcade scene into “The Difference Engine”, it probably would have looked a lot like [Pete Wood]’s Meccano Martian Mission, as illustrated in the video below by the [London Meccano Club]. Meccano Martian Mission is an homage to Atari’s 1978 Lunar Lander video game, but entirely electromechanical and made of– you guessed it– Meccano.
Continue reading “Electromechanical Atari Is A Steampunk Meccano Masterpiece”
[Agatha] sent us this stunning multimeter she built as a gift for her mom. Dubbed the Mohmmeter — a playful nod to its ohmmeter function and her mom — this project combines technical ingenuity with heartfelt craftsmanship.
At its core, a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller reads the selector knob, controls relays, and lights up LEDs on the front panel to show the meter’s active range. The Mohmmeter offers two main measurement modes, each with two sub-ranges for greater precision across a wide spectrum.
She also included circuitry protections against reverse polarity and over-voltage, ensuring durability. There was also a great deal of effort put into ensuring it was accurate, as the device was put though its paces using a calibrated meter as reference to ensure the final product was as useful as it was beautiful.
The enclosure is a work of art, crafted from colorful wooden panels meticulously jointed together. Stamped brass plates label the meter’s ranges and functions, adding a steampunk flair. This thoughtful design reflects her dedication to creating something truly special.
Want to build a meter for mom, but she’s more of the goth type? The blacked-out Hydameter might be more here style.
These days, turn-by-turn GPS navigation isn’t considered special anymore. It’s in every smartphone and most cheap rental cars, and thus everybody expects you to figure out where you’re going. If you want a simpler and less robust navigation experience, you might like to try the rather fancy RadioScout.
The RadioScout is a build from [hardlyhumanfx]—a group of engineers and artists that collaborate on fun and whimsical projects. It looks like some kind of steampunk compass, and it kind of is—but at heart, it’s powered by GPS.
You program the RadioScout using the buttons on the front panel and a rotary phone dial to enter the latitude and longitude of your destination. It then uses an internal GPS receiver to compare that with your current location, and calculates a direct bearing to where you want to go. This bearing is displayed with a large compass-like needle run by a stepper motor, and you you can use it to guide yourself onwards.
It’s an attractive build that uses lots of neat parts. The team interfaced a microcontroller with a GPS receiver, a rotary dial, and 7-segment LEDs for the latitude and longitude display. The very real bell is neat, too. The whole thing is wrapped up in a brass and wooden case that would make you a star at just about any sci-fi convention. The build video is a little vague on the finer details, but experienced makers will be able to figure out how it all works.
You can actually buy a RadioScout if it’s something you must have, but one suspects the Hackaday set would probably prefer the homebrew route.
Continue reading “Antique-Style GPS Looks Like Steampunky Fun”
Inspired by the classic game Robo Rally, [Ytec3D]’s Clockwork Derby takes tabletop gaming to the next level by combining steampunk aesthetics with automation. We recently had the chance to see it live at Hackfest, together with [Ytec3D]’s animatronic tentacle, and we can say that his new take on playful robotics offers a unique experience for game enthusiasts. The 300×420 mm board uses magnets, motors, and card readers to handle up to eight players, creating a smooth, automated version of Robo Rally where players can focus on strategy while the board handles movement.
In Clockwork Derby, game pieces are moved by a magnetic system controlled by the board, which rotates and shifts pieces in real-time. Each player uses a card reader to program moves, with up to five cards per round. The board scans these cards via barcode scanners, so you don’t have to worry about tracking your moves or adjusting game pieces manually. [Ytec3D]’s game rules have been optimized for the automated setup, allowing for smoother gameplay and an emphasis on strategic choices.
The project is a standout for hackers and tinkerers who appreciate blending physical mechanics with digital precision. It’s a great example of how classic games can be modernized with a bit of ingenuity and tech. For those interested in DIY gaming projects or automation, Clockwork Derby is definitely worth exploring. To dive deeper into the build details and see more of the project, visit [Ytec3D]’s project page for an in-person look at this inventive tabletop game!
Continue reading “Clockwork Derby: Digital Robo Rally, Steampunk Style”
It is one thing to make an artistic steampunk display. But [CapeGeek] added an Arduino to make the display come alive. The display has plenty of tubes and wires. The pressure gauge dominates the display, but there are lots of other interesting bits. Check it out in the video below.
From the creator:
The back-story is a fictional factory that cycles through a multistage process. It starts up with lights and sounds starting in a small tube in one corner, the needle on a big gauge starts rising, then a larger tube at the top lights up in different colors. Finally, the tall, glass reactor vessel lights up to start cooking some process. All this time, as the sequence progresses, it is accompanied by factory motor sounds and bubbling processes. Finally, a loud glass break noise hints that the process has come to a catastrophic end! Then the sequence starts reversing, with lights sequentially shutting down, the needle jumps around randomly, then decreases, finally, all lights are off, indicating the factory shutting down.
Continue reading “SteamPunk Factory Comes To Life With An Arduino”
Laptop screens have come a long way ever since the first LCD-equipped portables hit the market back in the 1980s. But even today’s high-resolution, full-color screens are not ideal for use in direct sunlight: limited contrast and annoying reflections can make reading awkward and working nearly impossible. Electronic-paper displays don’t suffer from those problems, but their low update speed and lack of color limit their use for general computing.
For some people however, the limitations of e-ink are not a deal-breaker. One of them is [Alleycat], who built a portable computer specifically for use in direct sunlight and equipped it with a 10.3″, 1872×1404 resolution e-ink display. It’s powered by a LattePanda Alpha 800s that runs Windows 10, and is mainly used for text-based tasks.
The LattePanda and the display are mounted inside a beautiful hand-made wooden case with a brass cover and leather straps, which makes it look like a kind of steampunk attaché case. A beefy power bank makes it a truly mobile machine, even though it doesn’t come with a built-in keyboard: [Alleycat] is too much of an ErgoDox fan to include anything inferior with the Steampunk Cyberdeck.
With an update rate of 15 Hz the display is nowhere near as fast as a modern TFT screen, but it looks entirely usable when [Alleycat] demonstrates scrolling in a web browser and even the classic DOS game Alley Cat. In fact, it reminds us of those first-generation LCD screens that were fitted on 286-class laptops back in the day, although with a vastly higher resolution.
We’ve seen a few e-ink based computer designs before, such as this Macintosh Classic II and this e-ink laptop project. The steampunk theme would go well with a hand-crafted metal mouse or this tiny display.
It’s an interesting question: What does one do for a follow-up to building the world’s worst HDMI display? Simple — stick it in a cool steampunk-inspired case and call it a day.
That seems to have been [mitxela]’s solution, and please don’t take our assessment as a knock on either the original build or this follow-up. [mitxela] himself expresses a bit of wonder at the attention garnered by his “rather stupid project,” which used the I2C interface in an HDMI interface to drive a tiny monochrome OLED screen. Low refresh rate, poor resolution — it has everything you don’t want in a display, but was still a cool hack that deserved the attention it got.
The present work, which creates an enclosure for the dodgy display, is far heavier on metalworking than anything else, as the video below reveals. The display itself goes in a small box that’s machined from brass, while the HDMI plug gets a sturdy-looking brass housing that makes the more common molded plastic plug look unforgivably flimsy — hot glue notwithstanding. Connecting the two is a flexible stalk, allowing it to plug into a computer’s HDMI port and giving the user the flexibility to position the nearly useless display where it can be seen best.
But again, we may be too harsh in our judgment; while DOOM is basically unplayable on the tiny display, “Bad Apple!!” is quite watchable, especially when accompanied by [mitxela]’s servo-controlled MIDI music box. And since when has usability been a criterion for judging a hack’s coolness, anyway?
Continue reading “Barely HDMI Display Gets A Steampunk-Inspired Enclosure”
