Hackaday Podcast Episode 315: Conductive String Theory, Decloudified Music Players, And Wild Printing Tech

April 4, 2025 by Kristina Panos 1 Comment

This week, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up across the (stupid, lousy) time zones to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week.

Again, no news is good news. On What’s That Sound, Kristina didn’t get close at all, but at least had a guess this time. If you think you can identify the sound amid all the talking, you could win a Hackaday Podcast t-shirt!

After that, it’s on to the hacks and such, beginning with a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation when it comes to a pair of formerly-cloud music players. We take a look at a crazy keyboard hack, some even crazier conductive string, and a perfectly cromulent list of 70 DIY synths on one wild webpage. Finally, we rethink body art with LEDs, and take a look at a couple of printing techniques that are a hundred years or so apart in their invention.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Download in DRM-free MP3 and savor at your leisure.

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Ditto That

April 3, 2025 by Kristina Panos 42 Comments

In the 1982 movie Fast Times At Ridgemont High, a classroom of students receives a set of paperwork to pass backward. Nearly every student in the room takes a big whiff of their sheet before setting it down. If you know, you know, I guess, but if you don’t, keep reading.

Those often purple-inked papers were fresh from the ditto machine, or spirit duplicator. Legend has it that not only did they smell good when they were still wet, inhaling the volatile organic compounds within would make the sniffer just a little bit lightheaded. But the spirit duplicator didn’t use ghosts, it used either methanol (wood alcohol), isopropyl, or, if you were loaded, ethyl alcohol.

Invented in 1923 by Wilhelm Ritzerfeld, ditto machines were popular among schools, churches, and clubs for making copies of worksheets, fliers, and so on before the modern copy machine became widespread in the 1980s. Other early duplicating machines include the mimeograph, the hectograph, and the cyclostyle.

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Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Leather Keyboard

March 31, 2025 by Kristina Panos 13 Comments

Are you eager to get your feet wet in the keyboard surf, but not quite ready to stand up and ride the waves of designing a full-size board? You should paddle out with a macro pad instead, and take on the foam face-first and lying down.

A beautiful purple galaxy-themed macro pad with nine switches and three knobs. — Image by [Robert Feranec] via Hackaday.IO

Luckily, you have a great instructor in [Robert Feranec]. In a series of hour-long videos, [Robert] guides you step by step through each part of the process, from drawing the schematic, to designing a PCB and enclosure, to actually putting the thing together and entering a new world of macros and knobs and enhanced productivity.

Naturally, the fewer keys and things you want, the easier it will be to build. But [Robert] is using the versatile Raspberry Pi 2040, which has plenty of I/O pins if you want to expand on his basic plan. Not ready to watch the videos? You can see the schematic and the 3D files on GitHub.

As [Robert] says, this is a great opportunity to learn many skills at once, while ending up with something terrifically useful that could potentially live on your desk from then on. And who knows where that could lead?

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Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Grasshopper Typewriter

March 24, 2025 by Kristina Panos 10 Comments

Do you consider your keyboard to be a fragile thing? Meet the glass keyboard by [BranchNo9329], which even has a glass PCB. At least, I think the whole thing is glass.

The back side of an all-glass keyboard. Yeah. — Image via [BranchNo9329] via reddit

There are so frustratingly few details that this might as well have been a centerfold, but I thought you all should see it just the same. What we do have are several pictures and a couple of really short videos, so dive in.

I can tell you that [BranchNo2939] chose a glass substrate mainly due to curiosity about its durability compared with FR4. And that the copper circuitry was applied with physical vapor deposition (PVD) technology.

Apparently one of [BranchNo2939]’s friends is researching the bonding of copper on to glass panels, so they thought they’d give a keyboard a go. Right now the thing is incomplete — apparently there’s going to be RGB. Because of course there’s going to be RGB. Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Grasshopper Typewriter” →

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Cheesy Keyboard

March 18, 2025 by Kristina Panos 4 Comments

Let’s just kick things off in style with the fabulously brutalist Bayleaf wireless split from [StunningBreadfruit30], shall we? Be sure to check out the wonderful build log/information site as well for the full details.

Image by [StunningBreadfruit30] via reddit

Here’s the gist: this sexy split grid of beautiful multi-jet fusion (MJF) keycaps sits on top of Kailh PG1316S switches. The CNC-machined aluminium enclosure hides nice!nano boards with a sweet little dip in each one that really pull the keyboard together.

For the first serious custom build, [StunningBreadfruit30] wanted a polished look and finish, and to that I say wow, yes; good job, and nod enthusiastically as I’m sure you are. Believe it or not, [StunningBreadfruit30] came into this with no CAD skills at all. But it was an amazing learning experience overall, and an even better version is in the works.

I didn’t read the things. Is it open-source? It’s not, at least not at this time. But before you get too-too excited, remember that it cost $400 to build, and that doesn’t even count shipping or the tools that this project necessitated purchasing. However, [StunningBreadfruit30] says that it may be for sale in the future, although the design will have an improved sound profile and ergonomics. There’s actually a laundry list of ideas for the next iteration. Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Cheesy Keyboard” →

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Batwing Typewriter

March 11, 2025 by Kristina Panos 8 Comments

[Alex] of YouTube channel [EastMakes] wrote into tell me about his fantastic QWERTY ‘hexpansion’ board for the 2024 EMF Tildagon badge, and [Alex], I’m super glad you did. The system works!

Let’s back up a bit. Essentially, the idea is to have a badge that can be used beyond a single camp, with the creation of expansion boards being the other main attraction. Our own [Jenny List] covered the badge in detail back in June 2024 when she got her hands on one.

A pair of hands holds the 2024 EMF Tildagon badge with a QWERTY keyboard Hexpansion built by [EastMakes]. — Image by [EastMakes] via YouTube

[Alex] started by importing the Tildagon into Fusion360 and designing a way for the keyboard to attach to it physically. He then modeled the keyboard after the Blackberry types that can be found on Ali using the official EMF buttons established in earlier badges.

This QWERTY hexpansion is based on the RP2040, which is soldered around back and visible through the 3D-printed backplate. In order for the 90°-oriented board to align with the… not-90° connector, [Alex] built a little meander into the PCB.

The default OS on the Tildagon doesn’t know natively what to do with the serial messages from the keyboard, so [Alex] wrote an application that reads them in and decodes them. Be sure to check out the build and walk-through video after the break.

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A 3D-printed, hand-cranked, toy conveyor belt designed after the transporter belts in Factorio.

Designing A Toy Conveyor Belt For Fun And Profit

March 5, 2025 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

[Hope This Works] wants to someday build a tiny factory line in the garage, with the intent of producing some simple widget down the line. But what is a tiny factory without tiny conveyor belts? Not a very productive one, that’s for sure.

As you may have noticed, this is designed after the transporter belts from the game Factorio. [Hope This Works] ultimately wants something functional that’s small enough to fit in one hand and has that transporter belt aesthetic going. He also saw this as a way to level up his CAD skills from approximately 1, and as you’ll see in the comprehensive video after the break, that definitely happened.

And so [Hope This Works] started by designing the all-important sprockets. He found a little eight-toothed number on McMaster-Carr and used the drawing for reference. From there, he designed the rest of the parts around the sprockets, adding a base so that it can sit on the desk or be held in the hand.

For now, this proof-of-concept is hand-cranked. We especially love that [Hope This Works] included a square hole for the crank handle to stand in when not in use. Be sure to check out the design/build video after the break to see it in action.

How happy would you be to see Factorio come up in a job interview?

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