A gif of a BlueSky feed, visualized as Matrix-style digital rain.

It’s Raining From The BlueSky

January 28, 2025 by Kristina Panos 15 Comments

Which would you rather feel? The blast of a fire hose, or a cool, digital rain? That’s what we thought. Introducing Blue Rain — the fire hose that is the BlueSky feed, falling semi-cryptically down your screen in Matrix-style letter droplets. Ahh, isn’t that nice?

Now, the rain doesn’t have to be blue. You can change the color, the speed at which it falls, the font, the font size, and other stuff like toggling NSFW, uh, tweets. (Wait, what are we calling BlueSky messages, anyway? Skeets? Really?)

You can even choose between a few fonts for the rain. And if you want to like, actually read one of the skeets, just shoot one carefully with your mouse while it’s still falling.

[Simone] has the project files on GitHub, but you should really read the blog post. Inspired by the lovely firehose3d, [Simone] thought instead of displaying the BlueSky fire hose as digital rain.

First, she collects as many skeets as there are empty columns on a screen from a Jetstream sever. This is calculated based on font style and size. She wrote an algorithm loosely inspired by CodePen, which does digital rain. If the skeet doesn’t fully render by the time it reaches the bottom of the screen, the rest appears at the top of the same column and falls until it’s done displaying. Then the column clears out and waits for a new skeet.

Want to take Matrix-style digital rain on the go? You can cram it onto a Pico, you know.

Thanks for the tip, [FrancisF]!

Hackaday Podcast Episode 305: Caustic Clocks, Practice Bones, And Brick Layers

January 24, 2025 by Kristina Panos 2 Comments

This week, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos joined forces and Wonder-Twin rings to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week.

First up in the news: Big boo to Bambu Labs, who have tried to clarify their new authentication scheme and probably only dug themselves in deeper with their customers.

On What’s That Sound, Kristina didn’t get close at all, but at least had a guess this time. Do know what it is? Let us know, and if you’re right and your number comes up, you can keep warm in a limited edition Hackaday Podcast t-shirt.

Then it’s on to the hacks and such beginning with a rather nice reverse-engineering of the Yamaha PRS-E433 keyboard, which led to a slice of Bad Apple playing on the tiny screen.

After that, we take a look at an NES musical instrument, how to make wires explode with energy, and a really cool space mouse that uses flexures. Finally, we talk about a piece of forgotten Internet history, and a whole bunch of keyboards.

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.

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode 305: Caustic Clocks, Practice Bones, And Brick Layers” →

A light-up clock displays the day of the week.

What Day Is It Again? Check The Clock

January 22, 2025 by Kristina Panos 7 Comments

If you’re lucky enough to work from home, you’ll soon find that it presents its own set of challenges, mostly related to work/life balance. It can get so bad that you don’t know what day of the week it is. Really. Ask us how we know.

Rather than miss a meeting (or a day off), prolific hacker [Arnov Sharma] created this day of the week clock. It uses a customized LED driver board with seven sets of three LEDs, each driven by a MOSFET. Each MOSFET is controlled by a DFRobot Mini Beetle ESP32-C3. It runs on a 2200 mAh, 3.7 V lithium-ion battery.

While this is mostly PCBs, there are three printed parts that turn it into a displayable object. We really like the look of this clock — it has just the right amount of pizazz to it and reminds us of a and old movie marquee. Be sure to check out the great build instructions.

We love a good clock around here. In case you missed it, here is the latest from [Moritz v. Sivers] that uses a caustic lens to display the time.

Lubricating a keyboard switch the proper way, with a brush and the switch opened up.

Probably Ruining A Keyboard For Science

January 21, 2025 by Kristina Panos 32 Comments

Lubing your keyboard’s switches is definitely a personal preference, though we’re sure that many would call it absolutely necessary. However, people from both camps would probably not suggest is using WD-40 to do so, instead pointing toward Krytox or at least Super Lube. But there are enough people out there who have tried the great water displacer and claim to have experienced no problems that [Sea_Scheme6784] decided to give it a go (so you don’t have to).

Having now collected enough boards to sacrifice one to the lubrication gods, [Sea_Scheme6784] chose a completely stock Logitech G413 SE with brown switches and heavily sprayed every one. Oh yeah, there was no taking them apart first as most lube enthusiasts would advise. No carefully painting it on in the right places with a small brush. Just mad spraying, y’all.

The effects were noticeable immediately — it changed the feel for the better and made the switches way less scratchy. Also the sound is more poppy, despite drowning in not-lubricant. Interesting! [Sea_Scheme6784] says the stabilizers are still rattling away, so that’s no good. Keep an eye on r/mechanicalkeyboards for updates on these shenanigans. We know we will.

Want to know what else you can do to to switches besides lube? Lots of stuff.

Main and thumbnail images via Kinetic Labs

Cyber Walkman Does It In Style

January 21, 2025 by Kristina Panos 20 Comments

One of the best things about adulthood is that finally we get to, in most cases, afford ourselves the things that our parents couldn’t (or just didn’t for whatever reason). When [Yakroo108] was a child, Walkmans were expensive gadgets that were out of reach of the family purse. But today, we can approximate these magical music machines ourselves with off-the-shelf hardware.

Besides the cyberpunk aesthetic, the main attraction here is the UNIHIKER Linux board running the show. After that, it’s probably a tie between that giant mystery knob and the super-cool GUI made with Tkinter.

We also like the fact that there are two displays: the smaller one on the SSD1306 OLED handles the less exciting stuff like the volume level and the current time, so that the main UNIHIKER screen can have all the equalizer/cyberpunk fun.

Speaking of, this user-friendly GUI shows play/stop buttons and next buttons, but it looks like there’s no easy way to get to the previous track. To each their own, we suppose. Everything is enclosed in a brick-like 3D-printed enclosure that mimics early Walkmans with orange foam headphones.

If you want an updated Walkman with keyboard switches (who wouldn’t?), check this out.

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

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Hardware-Layered Keyboard

January 20, 2025 by Kristina Panos 6 Comments

You know (or maybe you didn’t), I get super excited when y’all use the links at the bottom of this round-up we call Keebin’ to communicate with your old pal Kristina about your various labors of love. So just remember that.

Case in point: I was typing up this very issue when I heard from [Jay Crutti] and [Marcel Erz]. Both are out there making replacement keyboards for TRS-80s — [Jay] for Models 3 and 4, and [Marcel] for the Model 1. Oooh, I said to myself. This is going at the top.

A TRS-80 Model 4 with a replacement keyboard. — A TRS-80 Model 4. Image by [Jay Crutti] via JayCrutti.com

Relevant tangent time: I remember in the 90s having a pile of computers in my parents’ basement of various vintages, a TRS-80 Model 2 among them. (Did I ever tell you about the time I got pulled over for speeding with a bunch of different computers in the backseat? I was like no, officer, first of all, those are old machines that no one would really want, and I swear I didn’t steal them.)

I think the TRS-80 is probably the one I miss the most. If I still had it, you can bet I would be using [Jay] and [Marcel]’s work to build my own replacement keyboard, which the 40-year-old machine would likely need at this point if the Model 4 is any indication with its failing keyboard contacts.

To create the replacements, [Jay] used Keyboard Layout Editor (KLE), Plate & Case Builder, and EasyEDA. Using the schematic from the maintenance manual, he matched the row/column wiring of the original matrix with Cherry MX footprints. Be sure to check out [Jay]’s site for a link to the project files, or to purchase parts or an assembled keyboard. On the hunt for TRS-80 parts in general? Look no further than [Marcel]’s site.
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Trinteract, a small space mouse, operating in Blender.

Trinteract Mini Space Mouse Does It In 3D

January 17, 2025 by Kristina Panos 17 Comments

We’re not sure how we managed to miss this one, but better late than never, right? This is Trinteract, a 3-DOF input device that’s both open-source and Arduino compatible. There’s even a neat 3D-printed clip to add it to the side of your laptop.

Imagine navigating 2D and 3D environments, or flying around in Minecraft with ease. [Görkem]’s custom PCB features a Hall effect sensor which picks up readings from the magnet embedded in the bottom of the joystick. You can use any magnetic object as input. In the video below the break, [Görkem] shows a 3D-printed sphere with a disc magnet trapped inside as an alternative. The super-neat part is that the thing moves around entirely on flexures. You know how much we love flexures around here.

[Görkem] has written up a fantastic guide for those who must have one of their own. As a bonus, the guide details the background and thought process behind the design, which we love to see.

Don’t like magnets? This space mouse uses an accelerometer and a spring.

Continue reading “Trinteract Mini Space Mouse Does It In 3D” →