Author: Bryan Cockfield

1906 Articles

The Drawer Every Standing Desk Needs

November 11, 2026 by 2 Comments

Adjustable standing desks have had some ergonomic and health benefits for many people who would otherwise be sitting down all day, but those benefits come at a cost of a bit of usability. They can be more expensive, they make cable management and lighting a bit more difficult, and of course they take up more space than a normal desk. Related to that, they may have limited or no drawer space. [Super Valid Designs] decided to tackle all of these problems, while at the same time addressing the larger problem of a very disorganized workspace.

The idea seems simple on its face. The desk surface would be removed from the legs and a full-sized drawer built that matches the footprint of the desk and attaches to the same points, then the surface can be put back on top of that. But this is where feature creep started to set in, although in this case it was all a net positive for the build. [Super Valid Designs] wanted a front for the drawer but, since this is where his keyboard and mouse would go, wanted it to automatically move aside so it’s not in the way. He built a clever mechanism that pivots the front down when the drawer slides out. Not only that, but the drawer locks into place when it’s halfway out in “keyboard mode” and by lifting the front and pulling the drawer further out he can access a deeper storage space further to the back of the drawer.

Although adding these features in took him longer than he originally thought, the new desk is much more usable than the old while helping him eliminate some of the clutter around his workspace. Like any prototype, though, there were a few issues such as cable management (which is a problem with most standing desks) and the fact that he forgot that some of his peripherals were attached to the desk with clamps, which can’t be used with the drawer cabinet in the way. Overall though it’s a major improvement which we think could only be further improved by making it not just a standing desk, but a walking desk.

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Watching The Watchers

November 10, 2026 by 3 Comments

Although it used to be a much more rare event, now almost any time at dawn or dusk, provided clear weather, a human observer can walk outside, look up, and spot an artificial satellite passing overhead. This has caused some consternation among astronomers who have another source of pollution to deal with in their data, but has benefited society in other ways such as more reliable internet and better weather predictions. To keep an eye on what exactly is passing overhead, take a look at this tool built by [Armaan].

The browser-based satellite tracker uses simplified perturbations models (SGP4) to model the passes of every satellite that has passed a given location on Earth in the past seven days. The modeling is all done locally within the user’s browser, and can even be self-hosted through a fairly simple method that involves forking the project with a tool called Vercel. Not only does this tool find the satellite passes for that given location, though, but it also automatically downloads any imagery that those satellites sent back down to Earth.

The project itself is open source, so users can engage with the code without using Vercel if they choose. Beyond just checking out what happened to fly overhead in the last few days and checking out weather data without needing your own satellite dish to download the data yourself, this could also be useful for radio operators looking to make contacts with satellite repeaters or those wanting to keep tabs on crewed satellites like the International Space Station while it still remains in orbit.

Gesture Controls With Only A Camera

November 10, 2026 by 1 Comment

Back in 2002, [Takahiro Yonemura] and others built a system that used a single webcam-like device to track a user’s hand and generate inputs for a computer. Given that this was more than 20 years ago, the technological limitations were much greater than they are today. It wasn’t until nearly a decade later that we got something like the Microsoft Kinect, and even now many VR and gesture controls require something more than a simple camera. Although [Takahiro Yonemura]’s original paper (Japanese, Google Translate link) is now many decades old, he’s recently picked the project back up and used it to develop this game.

The original system worked by attempting to automatically identify the user’s fingers and head. The team had focused on user inputs for standard PCs, drawing characters in the air and allowing the software to interpret them and pass them to a computer. In the modern iteration the scope is slimmed down a bit. The system instead detects an open or closed hand, and can recognize when it leaves the camera’s view. For the game built around this concept, the player controls a dragon who whips his tail around a map. Closing and opening a hand generates a click in the game, and moving a hand off-screen pauses the game.

Although the game has relatively simple controls, these types of games can be quite fun and popular. From the video clip on the Steam page it looks like [Takahiro] is having plenty of fun playing it. Although we’d prefer it be open source so others can experiment with his gesture controls, we can also experiment with other camera-only gesture controls like this project which allows the user to move and interact with 3D objects in a virtual space.

Cat Feeder Ensures Fed Cats

November 3, 2026 by 18 Comments

Automatic cat feeders are a dime a dozen, largely because this is an easy problem to solve. Dry cat food is easy for machines to manipulate, and the electronics needed to accomplish the task to a bare minimum are plentiful and inexpensive. But just doling out food is only easy part of the problem. [Jason] wanted to make sure that his cats actually ate once the food was dispensed so he added a few extra features to this cat feeder.

The main addition to this feeder compared to off-the-shelf models is a weight sensor under the bowl. The feeder metes out a certain amount of food, and then a Raspberry Pi Pico W keeps an eye on the weight of the dish. If it goes down, presumably the cat has eaten all of the food. But just to be sure, an ultrasonic sensor was added beside the bowl to ensure something cat-shaped was there at the same time. There was some issue with this sensor blasting out noise in a cat’s audible range at first, but it seems like that problem has since been solved as well.

The build has a few other perks as well. The hardware has wireless communication ability, so it’s easy to keep an eye on when out and about. It can log data and is much more programmable than others. Like most cat feeders, though, it’ll only work for dry food. For automatically feeding wet food something like this robotic feeder that opens cans and dispenses them at set intervals would be needed.

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ToothPaste Goes Where Your Password Manager Doesn’t

November 3, 2026 by 21 Comments

One of the easiest ways of improving security and privacy when using the Internet, and computers in general, is to use strong passwords unique to each site or service. A password manager makes this easy on your phone or computer, but what if you’re in a situation where you can’t install any software on the device you’re logging into? In that case, maybe it’s time to get out the Toothpaste.

The way this creation from [brisk4t] works is that an ESP32-S3 is programmed to act as a keyboard and mouse for any computer it’s plugged into. From there, it connects over an encrypted WEB-BLE connection to another device like a laptop or smartphone. This second device can send text to the ESP32 acting using an extension for Chromium-based browsers, and the ESP32 sends it over the USB connection as if it were nothing more than a standard keyboard. This is all done without having to install any apps or drivers on the target machine, since any machine in the last two or three decades can recognize a USB keyboard and mouse with no problem.

Not only does this allow for easy password input for awkward situations, this can also be used for BIOS where an app couldn’t be installed anyway, for air-gapped systems with no networking, or insecure systems the user doesn’t trust. If you don’t need quite as many bells and whistles, we’ve seen a similar technique pulled off with an ATtiny85.

2026 Retrocomputing Challenge: Custom RISC-V Processor For Retro System

October 28, 2026 by 4 Comments

Although once little more than an academic endeavor, the RISC-V architecture is slowly supplanting applications that would have normally gone to ARM. Even a few microcontrollers have chips running this open-source instruction set now, and we expect it to grow in the future since it doesn’t require the licensing of an ARM or x86 chip. [M_Jagadeesh97] is getting ahead of the curve with this retro gaming system built on a custom-designed RISC-V system.

Most of us, presumably including [M_Jagadeesh97], don’t have access to chip fabrication tools, but what we can get is any of various FPGAs. This RISC-V CPU is built on a Terasic DE0-Nano board with 32 MB of RAM available to it, and boots to a launcher with 32 games available. There are a few limitations with this low-power system which was largely solved by limiting the display to 64×32, which lets it maintain the same aspect ratio as the original DOOM as well as the same aspect ratio for many of the older games, while still maintaining 45 FPS.

The project writeup goes deep into the design of a system like this, from the bare metal, the CPU design, the timing of the video signals, and how to implement a Wolfenstein-like raycaster. After adding a small display it looks to be fairly portable as well and is an excellent demonstration of how powerful inexpensive boards like this  FPGA can be with the proper amount of effort.

2026 Hackaday Retrocomputing Contest

Hacking The Modern Tamagotchi With UART

October 28, 2026 by 7 Comments

Although not technically the first virtual pet, the Tamagotchi handhelds certainly popularized the idea and made it a worldwide phenomenon. In the late 90s it was hard to go out in public and not see them dangling from backpacks and belt loops. They turned out to be more than a passing fad, too. There have been Tamagotchis in various forms since then, and one of the latest, the Tamagotchi Paradise, is uniquely hackable thanks to this custom UART interface.

The build starts with a simple and inexpensive CH340G UART adapter with a built-in USB interface. A custom 3D printed enclosure is used to house the adapter and also help to expose the interface to the Tamagotchi. This is done by wiring three pins to nickel strips, which are threaded through slits in the case and looped back around to create a pogo-style adapter for the Tamagotchi’s custom dock. Normally this would be used to link to other Tamagotchis, but in this case the USB-to-UART adapter mimics it, allowing for all kinds of in-game shenanigans. The project’s creator [Squalius] shows it off by connecting it directly to a browser tool in Google Chrome.

Not only that, but this can also be used to modify the software running on the handheld entirely, with the video showing demos playing not only Super Mario but also DOOM (of course). This isn’t too surprising given that these games are built with modern 32-bit ARM microcontrollers. For the 90s purists, though, it probably won’t surprise anyone to know that these devices have been the subject of various hacks almost since they came out.

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