A Cheap Smart Plug To Block Distractions

June 27, 2025 by Jenny List 19 Comments

We have all suffered from this; the boss wants you to compile a report on the number of paper clips and you’re crawling up the wall with boredom, so naturally your mind strays to other things. You check social media, or maybe the news, and before you know it a while has been wasted. [Neil Chen] came up with a solution, to configure a cheap smart plug with a script to block his diversions of choice.

The idea is simple enough, the plug is in an outlet that requires getting up and walking a distance to access, so to flip that switch you’ve really got to want to do it. Behind it lives a Python script that can be found in a Git Hub repository, and that’s it! We like it for its simplicity and ingenuity, though we’d implore any of you to avoid using it to block Hackaday. Some sites are simply too important to avoid!

Of course, if distraction at work is your problem, perhaps you should simply run something without it.

Revealing The Last Mac Easter Egg

June 26, 2025 by Jenny List 34 Comments

A favourite thing for the developers behind a complex software project is to embed an Easter egg: something unexpected that can be revealed only by those in the know. Apple certainly had their share of them in their early days, a practice brought to a close by Steve Jobs on his return to the company. One of the last Macs to contain one was the late 1990s beige G3, and while its existence has been know for years, until now nobody has decoded the means to display it on the Mac. Now [Doug Brown] has taken on the challenge.

The Easter egg is a JPEG file embedded in the ROM with portraits of the team, and it can’t be summoned with the keypress combinations used on earlier Macs. We’re taken on a whirlwind tour of ROM disassembly as he finds an unexpected string in the SCSI driver code. Eventually it’s found that formatting the RAM disk with the string as a volume name causes the JPEG to be saved into the disk, and any Mac user can come face to face with the dev team. It’s a joy reserved now for only a few collectors of vintage hardware, but still over a quarter century later, it’s fascinating to learn about. Meanwhile, this isn’t the first Mac easter egg to find its way here.

There’s A New Reusable Rocket, And It’s A Honda

June 24, 2025 by Jenny List 18 Comments

As we watched the latest SpaceX Starship rocket test end in a spectacular explosion, we might have missed the news from Japan of a different rocket passing a successful test. We all know Honda as a car company but it seems they are in the rocket business too, and they successfully tested a reusable rocket. It’s an experimental 900 kg model that flew to a height of 300 m before returning itself to the pad, but it serves as a valuable test platform for Honda’s take on the technology.

It’s a research project as it stands, but it’s being developed with an eye towards future low-cost satellite launches rather than as a crew launch platform.As a news story though it’s of interest beyond its technology, because it’s too easy to miss news from the other side of the world when all eyes are looking at Texas. It’s the latest in a long line of interesting research projects from the company, and we hope that this time they resist the temptation to kill their creation rather than bring it to market.

3D Print Glass, Using Accessible Techniques

June 22, 2025 by Jenny List 21 Comments

When seeing a story from MIT’s Lincoln Labs that promises 3D printing glass, our first reaction was that it might use some rare or novel chemicals, and certainly a super-high-tech printer. Perhaps it was some form of high-temperature laser sintering, unlikely to be within the reach of mere mortals. How wrong we were, because these boffins have developed a way to 3D print a glass-like material using easy-to-source materials and commonly available equipment.

The print medium is sodium silicate solution, commonly known as waterglass, mixed with silica and other inorganic nanoparticles. It’s referred to as an ink, and it appears to be printed using a technique very similar to the FDM printers we all know. The real magic comes in the curing process, though, because instead of being fired in a special furnace, these models are heated to 200 Celsius in an oil bath. They can then be solvent cleaned and are ready for use. The result may not be the fine crystal glass you may be expecting, but we can certainly see plenty of uses for it should it be turned into a commercial product. Certainly more convenient than sintering with a laser cutter.

All You Need To Know About Photographic Lenses

June 20, 2025 by Jenny List 12 Comments

If you have ever played around with lenses, you’ll know that a convex lens can focus an image onto a target. It can be as simple as focusing the sun with a magnifying glass to burn a hole in a piece of paper, but to achieve the highest quality images in a camera there is a huge amount of optical engineering and physics at play to counteract the imperfections of those simple lenses.

Many of us in the hardware world aren’t optical specialists but our work frequently involves camera modules, so [Matt Williams]’ piece for PetaPixel laying out a primer on lens design should be essential reading well beyond its target audience of photographers.

In it we learn how a photographic lens is assembled from a series of individual lenses referred to as elements, combined together in groups to lend the required properties to the final assembly. We are introduced to the characteristics of different types of glass, and to the use of lens coatings to control reflections. Then we see examples of real lens systems, from some famous designs with their roots in the 19th century, to the lenses of today.

Sometimes a piece written for an entirely different audience can bring really useful insights into our field, and this is one of those times. We learned something, and we think you will too.

Header image: 4300streetcar, CC BY 4.0.

Bento Is An All-In-One Computer Designed To Be Useful

June 20, 2025 by Jenny List 23 Comments

All-in-one computers in which the mainboard lurked beneath a keyboard were once the default in home computing, but more recently they have been relegated to interesting niche devices such as the Raspberry Pi 400 and 500.

The Bento is another take on the idea, coming at it not with the aim of replacing a desktop machine, instead as a computer for use with wearable display glasses. The thinking goes that when your display is head mounted, why carry around a screen with your laptop.

On top it’s a keyboard, but underneath it’s a compartmentalized space similar to the Japanese lunchboxes which lend the project its name. The computing power comes courtesy of a Steam Deck so it has a USB-C-for-everything approach to plugging in a desktop, though there’s a stated goal to produce versions for other boards such as the Raspberry Pi. There’s even an empty compartment for storage of peripherals.

We like this computer, both for being a cyberdeck and for being without a screen so not quite like the other cyberdecks. It’s polished enough that we could almost imagine it as a commercial product. It’s certainly not the first Steam Deck based cyberdeck we’ve seen.

Game Boy? NES? Why Not Both!

June 19, 2025 by Jenny List 4 Comments

If you’re a retro Nintendo fan you can of course carry a NES and a Game Boy around with you, but the former isn’t very portable. Never fear though, because here’s [Chad Burrow], who’s created a neat handheld console that emulates both.

It’s called the Acolyte Handheld, and it sports the slightly unusual choice for these parts of a PIC32 as its main processor. Unexpectedly it can use Sega Genesis controllers, but it has the usual buttons on board for portable use. It can drive either its own LCD or an external VGA monitor, and in a particularly nice touch, it switches between the two seamlessly. The NES emulator is his own work, while Game Boy support comes courtesy of Peanut-GB.

We like the design of the case, and particularly that of the buttons. Could it have been made smaller by forgoing some of the through-hole parts in favour of SMD ones? Quite likely, but though it’s chunky it’s certainly not outsized.

Portable Nintendo-inspired hardware is popular around here, as you can see with this previous handheld NES