Author: Elliot Williams

1460 Articles

An Electric Jellyfish For Androids

March 21, 2026 by 9 Comments

We have to admit, we didn’t know that we wanted a desktop electric jellyfish until seeing [likeablob]’s Denki-Kurage, but it’s one of those projects that just fills a need so perfectly. The need being, of course, to have a Bladerunner-inspired electric animal on your desk, as well as having a great simple application for that Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) that you impulse purchased two years ago.

Maybe we’re projecting a little bit, but you should absolutely check this project out if you’re interested in doing anything with one of the CYDs. They are a perfect little experimentation platform, with a touchscreen, an ESP32, USB, and an SD card socket: everything you need to build a fun desktop control panel project that speaks either Bluetooth or WiFi.

We love [likeablob]’s aesthetic here. The wireframe graphics, the retro-cyber fonts in the configuration mode, and even the ability to change the strength of the current that the electric jellyfish is swimming against make this look so cool. And the build couldn’t be much simpler either. Flash the code using an online web flasher, 3D print out the understated frame, screw the CYD in, et voila! Here’s a direct GitHub link if you’re interested in the wireframe graphics routines.

We’ve seen a bunch of other projects with the CYD, mostly of the obvious control-panel variety. But while we’re all for functionality, it’s nice to see some frivolity as well. Have you made a CYD project lately? Let us know!

The Unreasonable Power Density Of Lithium-Ion

March 21, 2026 by 64 Comments

We’re all used to it by now, but I’d just like to reflect on how insanely power-packed lithium ion batteries are, and everything that’s afforded us. I’m trying to think of a gadget, a hobby, or nearly anything in my house that’s not touched by the battery chemistry.

I’m looking at my portable wireless keyboard in front of me, with a LiPo pack inside. Oddly enough, I’m charging it with a LiPo-based power bank, simply because the cable to the nearest USB-C adapter is too short. A gaming console, cell phone, and a DSLR camera are all within arms reach and powered with lithium.

It’s not just consumer stuff either. I fly FPV quads and airplanes for fun when I can, and of course those are made entirely possible by the combination of smaller brushless DC motors and their drivers, and the high-power-density LiPo packs that power them. For field recharging, I have a huge self-made LiIon pack that can keep them all in the air all day. These days, LiPo and LiIon tech is the heart of hacker projects big and small. Heck, we even powered this year’s Hackaday Supercon badge with a LiPo that allowed it to run all weekend on a charge for many folks, where in the past swapping out AAs during the event was commonplace.

The application that still blows my mind is that we recently got a solar installation on our roof, which means a huge LiFePO battery in the basement. And while it’s one thing to power noisy little quads on the battery tech, it somehow seems another to power our entire house, for multiple hours per day, from a battery. Granted it’s not a couple of AAA cells in a little black plastic box, but it’s simply amazing to run a washing machine, the fridge, the stove, and even the heating off of what amounts to a battery pack.

Of course, I’m aware of the costs of producing the cells, both in terms of money and the environmental damage. It’s not a free lunch, and I’m looking forward to both cleaner and cheaper energy storage chemistries in the future. But for now, I’m still in awe of the many options that lithium-based battery chemistry has brought us. May your pillows remain non-spicy!

This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on the web version of the newsletter. Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning? You should sign up!

Hackaday Europe Tickets On Sale Now, CFP Extended

March 18, 2026 by 8 Comments

Hackaday Europe is approaching, and we’re putting tickets on sale now. “But wait, you haven’t selected the talks yet!” we hear you saying. Indeed! And that’s why we discount the first round of entries for our True Believers™ – the hard core who know that it’s going to be a fantastic event and turn up regardless. So if you want to come to Hackaday Europe on the cheap, go snap up your ticket before they’re gone.

Call for Participation Extended

Of course, giving a talk is always the best way to attend a hacker gathering like this. And we know that we said that today was the deadline for talk submissions. But we also know that many of you have advanced degrees in procrastineering, so we’re giving you a week’s extension.

Selected speakers get in free, and we’ll reserve you an early-bird ticket for putting together a legit talk proposal either way. So if you’re a first-time presenter or a wizened pro, and you have something that you’d like to say to an audience of like-minded hackers, we’d all like to hear from you. We won’t extend the deadline twice, though, so get your proposal in before March 25.

(A few people have reached out to us, wanting to avoid the Google login that the above form requires. If you’re in the same camp, write to us directly and let us know!)

Hackaday Europe

In case you don’t know, Hackaday Europe started out as a bi-annual event that we first held a decade ago in Belgrade. It has been such a success that we’re now doing it every year, and leap-frogging around Europe to spread the love. The last two three events have been in Berlin, and this is our first time in Lecco, Italy. This year, it runs the weekend of May 16th and 17th, with a pre-event on the evening of the 15th, to be announced.

What stays the same? We have a fantastic crowd who bring their passion projects with them, a fun badge to hack on, and of course food, drink, music, and merriment all along. Oh, and the talks. (You are submitting your talk, right?)

We’ll have more details coming your way in the next few weeks, so stay tuned. After March 25th, we’ll get to selecting talks, and let you all know. Get your tickets now – we can’t wait to see you all in eight-and-a-half weeks!

What Is A Computer?

March 14, 2026 by 36 Comments

On the podcast, [Tom] and I were talking about the new generation of smartphones which are, at least in terms of RAM and CPU speed, on par with a decent laptop computer. If so, why not just add on a screen, keyboard, and mouse and use it as your daily driver? That was the question posed by [ETA Prime] in a video essay and attempt to do so.

Our consensus was that it’s the Android operating system holding it back. Some of the applications you might want to run just aren’t there, and on the open side of the world, even more are missing. Is the platform usable if you can’t get the software you need to get your work done?

But that’s just the computer-as-a-tool side of the equation. The other thing a computer is, at least to many of our kind of folk, is a playground. It’s a machine for experimenting with, and for having fun just messing around. Android has become way too polished to have fun, and recent changes on the Google side of things actively prevent you from installing arbitrary software. The hardware is similarly too slimmed-down to allow for experimentation.

Looking back, these have been the same stumbling blocks for the last decade. In 2018, I was wondering aloud why we as a community don’t hack on cell phones, and the answer then was the same as it is now – the software is not friendly to our kind. You can write phone apps, and I have tried to do so, but it’s just not fun.

The polar opposites of the smartphone-as-computer are no strangers in our community. I’m thinking of the Linux single-board computers, or even something like a Steam Deck, all of which are significantly less powerful spec-wise than a flagship cell phone, but which are in many ways much more suitable for hacking. Why? Because they make it easy to do the things that we like to do. They’re designed to be fun computers, and so we use them.

So for me, a smartphone isn’t a computer, but oddly enough it’s not because of the hardware. It’s because what I want out of a computer is more than Turing completeness. What I want is the fun and the freedom of computering.

This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on the web version of the newsletter. Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning? You should sign up!

German Fireball’s 15 Minutes Of Fame

March 11, 2026 by 20 Comments

Sunday night, around 7:00 PM local time, a bright fireball streaked across the western German sky, exploded, and rained chunks of space rock down on the region around Koblenz. One of the largest known chunks put a soccer-ball-sized hole in someone’s roof, landing in their bedroom. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. But given the apparent size of the explosion, there must be many more pieces out there for the finding, and a wave of hopeful meteorite hunters has descended upon the region.

But if you wanted a piece of the action, where exactly would you start looking? How do scientists find meteorites anyway? And what should you do if you happen to see a similar fireball in the night sky?

Citizen Science

Meteorite video-bombs a boring parking lot in Heerlen, NL.

In the age of always-on dashboard cameras, ubiquitous smartphones, and other video recording devices, it’s hard for a shy meteorite to find a quiet spot out of the public eye. That makes them a lot easier to find than they were in the past. Indeed, the International Meteor Organization, which aggregates amateur meteor observations, received more than 3,200 reports of this one, including several with video documentation. Some are stunning, and others may not even be of the event at all.

By collecting reports from many locations, they can hope to piece together the meteorite’s trajectory. However, if you look at the individual reports, it’s clear that this is a difficult task. Nobody is expecting a bright fireball to streak across the night sky, so many of the reports are reasonably vague on the details and heavy on the awe.

This report from [Sophie Z], for instance, is typical. She records where she was and roughly the location in the night sky where the meteorite passed, along with the comment “I’ve never seen anything so amazing and large before in my life.” Other amateur observers are more precise. [David C] (“I have a Ph.D in physics”) managed to record the start and the end heading of the meteorite to a couple of decimal places. He must have had a camera.

Continue reading “German Fireball’s 15 Minutes Of Fame” →

Choice, Control, And Interruption

March 7, 2026 by 47 Comments

We were talking about [Maya Posch]’s rant on smartphones, “The Curse of the Everything Device”. Maya’s main point is that because the smartphone, or computer, can do everything, it’s hard for a person to focus down and do one thing without getting distracted, checking their whatever feed, or getting an important push notification about the Oscars. She was suggesting tying your hands to the mast by using a device that can only accommodate the one function, like a dedicated writing tool or word processor.

[Kristina Panos] compared the all-singing, all-dancing black rectangle to an everything-device of old: the all-in-one stereo receiver with built-in tape player, record player, and not just FM, but also AM radio receiver. The point being, the hi-fi device also does a whole lot of things but isn’t similarly cursed. The tape player never interrupts your listening to the AM radio station. When the record is over, it doesn’t swap over to FM. Your agency is required.

Similarly, it’s probably not intrinsically problematic that the smartphone has a camera, a web browser, text messages, and heck even a telephone built in. It’s how they interact with each other and the user, each vying for user attention, and interrupting with popups and alarms. It’s maybe a simple matter of software! (Says the hardware guy.)

Where would a distraction-free, but fully featured, phone begin? With the operating system? It would be perverse to limit you to one app at a time, or to make switching between them more cumbersome. How about turning off notifications, and relying on changing context only when you think about it? Maybe that’s a middle ground. How do you cope with the endless distractions offered to you by your smartphone? By your main computer?

This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on the web version of the newsletter. Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning? You should sign up!

Get Your Green Power On!

March 3, 2026 by 9 Comments

Nobody likes power cords, and batteries always need recharging or replacing. What if your device could run on only the power it could gather together by itself from the world around it? It would be almost like free energy, although without breaking the laws of physics.

Hackaday’s 2026 Green-Powered Challenge asks you to show us your devices, contraptions, and hacks that can run on the power they can harvest. Whether it’s heat, light, vibration, or any other source of energy that your device gathers to keep running, we’d like to see it.

The top three entries will receive $150 shopping sprees courtesy of the contest’s sponsor, DigiKey, so get your entry in before April 24, 2026, to be eligible to win.

Honorable Mentions

As always, we have several honorable mention categories to get your creative juices flowing:

  • Solar: In terms of self-powered anything, photovoltaic cells are probably the easiest way to go, but yet good light-harvesting designs aren’t exactly trivial either. Let’s see what you can run on just the sun. (Or even room lighting?)
  • Anything But PV: Harnessing the light is too easy for you, then? How about piezo-electric power or a heat generator? Show us your best self-powering projects that work even when it’s dark out.
  • Least Power: Maybe the smartest way to make your project run forever is to just cut down on the juice. If your project can run on its own primarily because of clever energy savings, it’s eligible for this mention.
  • Most Power: How much of a challenge is building a solar-powered desk calculator in 2026? How about pushing it to the other extreme? Let’s see how much power you can consume while still running without batteries or cords. Does your off-grid shack count here? Let’s see it!

Prior Art

We’ve seen a lot of green-powered projects on Hackaday over the years, ranging from a solar-powered web server to a microcontroller powered by a BPW34 photodiode. Will your entry run off the juice harvested by an LED? It’s not inconceivable!

Solar cells only work when the sun shines, though. As long as your body is putting out heat, this Seebeck-effect ring will keep on running. (Matrix vibes notwithstanding!) Or maybe you want to go straight from heat to motion with a Stirling engine. And our favorite environmental-energy-harvester of all has to be the Beverly Clock and its relatives, running on the daily heat cycles and atmospheric pressure changes.

Your Turn

So what’s your energy-harvesting project? Batteries are too easy. Take it to the next level! All you have to do to enter is put your project up on Hackaday.io, pull down the “Submit Project to…” widget on the right, and you’re in. It’s that easy, and we can’t wait to see what you are all up to.

And of course, stay tuned to Hackaday, as we pick from our favorites along the way.