Author: Jenny List

3525 Articles

Holograms, From Your Plotter

August 13, 2026 by 16 Comments

When mass-printed holograms appeared on magazines in the 1980s they were a huge novelty, before degrading to the level of kids’ stickers in the years since. At the time they were seen as not for ordinary people to make, but the truth is they can be created without lasers or an optics lab. [Jordan Matelsky] is here to show us how they can be made using as humble a device as a pen plotter.

The effect of an interference pattern from a set of fine lines in a thin film can be demonstrated at its simplest with an oily finger and a mobile phone screen, and once he’s demonstrated that he takes us through some of the theory involved in shifting the light to make an image. There are some false starts with different materials, but eventually he shows us some finished holograms scribed on the polycarbonate of a CD case. It seems you really can make a hologram with a pen plotter. If these images interest you, we’ve looked deeper into the subject in the past. Meanwhile, one of the plotter-scribed holograms can be seen below. Continue reading “Holograms, From Your Plotter” →

Your Laptop Keyboard, On Another Device

August 12, 2026 by 28 Comments

It’s likely many of us have been in the position of first set-up on a machine such as a Raspberry Pi, and had keyboard problems. Either no spare keyboard is to be found, or a cluttered desk has to find extra space for a full-size keyboard. [Þórarinn] and [Arni] have a handy solution: use the existing keyboard on your laptop.

His approach is both ingenious and simple, as it’s only the K part of a KVM. On the laptop end, it’s a serial terminal, without the receiving side. The serial port in question is an RP2040 board which implements a USB-to-serial port. This serial connection goes to another RP2040, which does the ingenious bit. It’s a serial-to-USB HID keyboard. All of this means that keystrokes on the laptop are sent down the serial connection, and appear on the Pi or whatever computer as a USB keyboard as though typed locally. The mildly annoying first set-up can be done, and then it can be run via SSH or whatever other remote access protocol as normal. The code is provided, so anyone with a couple of RP2040 boards can do it.

We like this hack, because we’ve had the annoyance of needing a keyboard to set up what would otherwise be a completely headless machine too many times. It’s one to store away at the back of your mind, for those rare improvisational need-an-extra-keyboard moments.

Thanks [Henk] for the tip.

The PC OS That Would Have Blown Your Mind Back In 1984

August 11, 2026 by 59 Comments

As far as desktop microcomputers for mere mortals went in the first half of the 1980s, there was a sharp distinction between home computers such as the many 8-bit machines we regularly see here, and what you might call professional computers such as a CP/M word-processor or the earliest IBM PCs. These were conservative machines, boring even, with command line interfaces and mostly text-mode software.

When the middle of the decade saw the arrival of mass-market machines such as the Macintosh or the Amiga with their beautiful GUIs, a PC with DOS couldn’t yet compete. [Jggonz] then is over four decades late with the beautiful os8088, a fully-functional OS for 8088 IBM PCs and clones, with a very slick Mac-style GUI.

os8088 is a single-floppy OS that provides preemptive multitasking and fully loadable software alongside that GUI, unlike other similar projects we’ve seen it’s not an all-in-one compiled application that just looks like an OS. There’s a second floppy with a suite of software that would have been seriously impressive back in the day, with games, graphics, and demos. It’s a shame that this thing appeared in 2026 when there is little need of it.

You can try it for yourself either on real hardware, your own emulator, or even in an in-browser emulator. Sadly it’s not OS enough to fulfill the requirements for a Daily Drivers test drive, but it’s definitely fun to play with. Bonus, if you run it on a Book8088.

The Code The British Government Doesn’t Want You To See (Any More)

August 11, 2026 by 30 Comments

Governments like to do things which at least sound open and honest. It makes them look like Thoroughly Good Eggs, when maybe the truth might be a little murkier. They also like to quietly roll back those things when it suits them, and so it is that [Jonty], of Electromagnetic Field fame, has assembled a list of code repositories quietly disappeared by the UK Government. Naturally, being thorough about such things, he’s also kept copies.

Now we’re always happy to reach for a mildly sensational title, but paging through the archive it’s more a collection of flotsam and jetsam than a trove of state secrets, after all these were all public GitHub repositories. There’s a lot of web stuff, some data analytics in R for those interminable government reports, odd bits of server code, and a whole load more. The Met Office Informatics Lab in particular has a fair bit of climate related code and data.

Should Brits with an interest in government openness be concerned here? In terms of the data and code deleted, probably not, but in terms of that which they might delete without notice in the future, it’s a slippery slope. We’re glad people like [Jonty] are there to make these things a little less easy to disappear.

The PiShot Is Ready For Your Snaps

August 10, 2026 by 4 Comments

The formula for a Raspberry Pi camera is by now a straightforward one: take a Pi and camera module, add a display, buttons, and battery, and you’re done. This doesn’t mean that there’s no scope for more though, and [Irtaza2009] has one in the PiShot. It’s a few months old now but the repository is still being updated.

The 3D printed case follows a compact camera form factor with the screen on the rear, and a cold shoe on top. Inside is a Pi Zero 2 W and a Camera Module 3, with an 18650 cell and battery management/power supply board. The buttons are tactile switches hooked up to GPIOs, and the screen is an ST7789 SPI display.

For software there’s a Python script, which should do the job. We’ve not tested this one, but our experience is that slowness is the Achilles’ heel of Python based Pi cameras. We hope this one has managed to eke out some performance.

An interesting upgrade to this device would be to use an HQ camera module, for a mirror-less compact. It wouldn’t be the first such camera we’ve seen.

Tim Hunkin’s History Of Arcade Machines

August 8, 2026 by 12 Comments

There was a particular treat at the recent Electromagnetic Field event in the UK, as [Tim Hunkin] delivered a talk on the history of arcade machines. Given that he’s something of an engineering hero for his many years of delighting us with machines, it’s definitely worth a watch.

He has a special interest in arcade machines given that he runs a pair of arcades featuring his own creations. Part of the history tour explains the influence some machines have had on his creations, from the early automata he starts with, through to the Pachinko machine that graces Novelty Automation in London. We’re introduced to Victorian saucy film viewers, one-armed bandits, and pinball machines, and along the way the secret of that most British of machines, the penny falls, is revealed. We particularly like the rare electromechanical Pepper’s Ghost style video game cabinets he describes.

A few years ago now we took a trip to Novelty Automation, and wrote a profile for its creator. If you’re ever in London or Southwold, we suggest you do too. The video from EMF is below the break.

Continue reading “Tim Hunkin’s History Of Arcade Machines” →

Hackaday Podcast Episode 381: Airless Tires, Full-color Prints, And 28 MW Of LEDs

August 7, 2026 by 14 Comments

This week’s Hackaday podcast is a European affair again, as Elliot Williams is joined by Jenny List on a summer evening to review the week. And we have a feast of hacks for your delectation.

As the title above says, one of the stand-out hacks this week was a set of airless mountain bike tyres 3D printed in glorious fluorescent TPU. They look as though they shouldn’t work but in fact they showed real promise, and we discuss the process behind their design. Then we take a look at a hybrid of a UV printer and an SLA 3D printer, capable of making high-resolution and robust 3D prints. The prospect of new Amigas intrigues us for a while, then carbon-fibre fabric in 3D prints.

Finally we’re in awe of the tech behind the Las Vegas Sphere, and we’re there for some radio at the Danish BornHack hacker camp. Follow that one up and you’ll find a bonus, an unofficial extra Hackaday podcast.

All the usual links are below, but before you head on down to have a listen, don’t forget we’ve got a mailbag for the podcast and we’d love to hear from you!

Download your own non-volatile MP3 here.

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Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode 381: Airless Tires, Full-color Prints, And 28 MW Of LEDs” →