A Nebula Straight From The Stars To Your Table

March 31, 2026 by Ian Bos 3 Comments

Space may truly be the final frontier, but maybe that frontier can be closer than you thought. Pictures of nebulae and planets bring the colorful sights of deep space right to your screen. You may even have models of some of the rockets used for those missions on a shelf. However, did you know that you could even have a model of those nebulae or planetary surfaces from [NASA]?

While we have covered some distributed models from [NASA] here before, the catalog has expanded far past what 2016 had in store. Additionally, the catalog has been sorted into a more user-friendly, filterable interface than a simple GitHub repository. Most models even have a description attached, giving some basic background information on what the Crab Nebula is, for example.

There could always be more; there don’t appear to be many models of the space shuttle or some other expected files, but what is there is incredible. Some non-3D model files can also be found from star maps to full planetary maps.

While this file repository is cool and all, it’s not all [NASA] does. When not sending rockets deep into space for cool pictures, [NASA] has to make sure the Moon doesn’t explode. Was that a possibility at some point? Of course it has been!

Retro Open Source Camera Straight From The ’90s

March 30, 2026 by Ian Bos 6 Comments

In our modern society, we have started to take the humble camera for granted. Perhaps because of this, trendy standalone cameras have started to take off. Unfortunately, most of the time these cameras are expensive and not any better than those in our everyday smartphones. If only there were some open-source solution where you could build and customize your own standalone device? [Yutani] has done just that with the SATURNIX.

Simple microcontrollers and cameras meant for Raspberry Pis are a dime a dozen these days. Because of this, it’s no surprise to hear that the SATURNIX is based on recognizable hardware, a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W and an Arducam 16MP sensor. The Pi Zero powers both the sensors’ capture abilities and the interactive LCD display.

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Stadia Controller Reborn As Bluetooth Gamepad Adapter

March 25, 2026 by Ian Bos 5 Comments

Tech has a problem, an e-waste problem. Google is a common offender when it comes to this, creating a product just to end support a couple of years later. Thankfully, there are some lasting capabilities left in their defunct Stadia controllers. After hearing about these capabilities, [Bringus Studios] managed to turn this future e-waste into something new: a Bluetooth adapter for game controllers.

To give some credit to Google, once they announced the Stadia program was winding down, they released an updated firmware that let you use the controller as a generic Bluetooth gamepad. But there was also a rather unusual feature added — if another controller is connected to it via USB, its output will be passed along over Bluetooth as if it was coming from the Stadia controller itself.

This would allow you to wirelessly connect an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 controller to your computer, for example. But while a neat trick, having the two controllers plugged into each other is a bit awkward. So [Bringus Studios] decided to take the Stadia controller apart and turn it into a dedicated Bluetooth interface.

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Venus Flytrap Takes Ride Through A Particle Accelerator

March 23, 2026 by Ian Bos 20 Comments

In the blue corner, we have the VENUS FLYTRAP! In the red corner, we have the underdog of the century, AN ENTIRE PARTICLE ACCELERATOR. Yes, you read that right. When you have a particle accelerator, it’s only second nature to throw anything you can into it. That’s why [Electron Impressions] put a poor fly-eating trap into their accelerator.

Chloride and potassium ions leaving cause osmotic pressure in neighboring cells

The match-up isn’t quite as arbitrary as it might seem at first. The flytrap’s main mechanism of trapping and digesting insects relies heavily on intracellular ion movement. Many cells along the inside of the trap have hair-activated calcium channels that respond to a fly landing on its surface. This ion movement then creates an action potential, which propagates along the entire surface, triggering closing. As the potential moves across different cells, other ions leave and create osmotic pressure. This pressure is what creates the mechanical movement.

Of course, this makes it no surprise when the plant finds itself under the ionizing radiation that every single head closes at once. While this is a cool demonstration, there is a slight side effect of killing every single cell by ripping apart the trap’s DNA.

Well, who would have guessed that the underdog accelerator would have won… Anyways, the DNA being ripped apart is far from ideal for repeatability. If you want to learn more about genetic features that SHOULD be repeated, then make sure to check out the development of open-source insulin!

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A Simple Switch For Simply Too Much Current

March 23, 2026 by Ian Bos 40 Comments

A switch is simple: connect two pieces of metal together and bam! Except, it’s not that simple at high currents. How much current? Just about 400 car batteries worth would certainly cause some issues. This is the issue that [Technology Hobby] hoped to fix with his clever switch design.

While many content creators are great at finding or making high-current sources (looking at you, Styropyro), their switches can’t always hold up to the abuse. [Technology Hobby] found that many of the switches used by these creators had issues based on an inconsistent and limited contact area. Making a bigger contact patch is always fairly easy; keeping those contacts from skipping can be a bit more difficult.

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A Smart Printer Enclosure For The Open Source World

March 15, 2026 by Ian Bos 18 Comments

3D printing has had its time to spread its wings into the everyday home, yet many of those homes lack the proper ventilation to prevent the toxic VOCs from escaping. Because of this, [Clura] has put together an entire open-sourced smart enclosure for most open concept printers.

While certain 3D printers or filament choices lend themselves to being worse than others, any type of plastic particles floating around shouldn’t find their way into your lungs. The [Clura] enclosure design includes HEPA and carbon filters in an attempt to remove this material from the air. Of course, there’s always the choice to have a tent around your printer, but this won’t actually remove any VOCs and air located inside a simple enclosure will inevitably escape.

What makes this enclosure different from other, either commercial or open-source designs, is the documentation included with the project. There are kits available for purchase, which you may want for the custom PCB boards for smart features such as filament weighing or fume detection. Even still, if you don’t want to purchase these custom boards the Gerber files are available on their GitHub page.

As smart as this enclosure is, it still won’t fix the issues of what happens to the toxins in your print after it’s done printing. If you are interested in this big picture question, you are not alone. Make sure to stay educated and help others learn by checking out this article here about plastic in our oceans.

Sub-Second Volumetric 3D Printing

February 25, 2026 by Ian Bos 20 Comments

One of the more promising 3D printing technologies that hasn’t quite yet had its spotlight is volumetric 3D printing. Researchers from the Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, have developed a new method that uses a high-speed periscope instead of rotating the printing volume — resulting in print times of less than one second.

Normal volumetric printing uses a rotating volume of photosensitive resin to print nearly any geometry desired. However, this method presents issues when printing at high speeds. If you rapidly rotate a liquid, it won’t exactly stay still. So why not rotate the projector itself? This change also allows the use of less viscous resins, which is particularly useful if you want to pump fluid around.

Why would you want to pump around liquid? Scalability of course! Printing in seconds while pumping the results into a collection vessel would allow for mass production more flexible than traditional ejection methods. The researchers manage to keep quality high with some fancy algorithmic correction, which allows for accuracy on the scale of μm.

While this technology still doesn’t find a common space among average hobbyists, this may soon change…especially with these mass manufacturing capabilities. For similar volumetric printing capabilities, check out xolography.