A Treasure Trove Of Random Vintage Tech Resources

October 3, 2025 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

Finding, collecting, and restoring vintage tech is the rewarding pastime of many a Hackaday reader. Working with old-school gear can be tough, though, when documentation or supporting resources are hard to find. If you’re in need of an old manual or a little scrap of software, you might find the Vintage Technology Digital Archive (VTDA) a useful destination.

The VTDA is a simple website. There is no search function, or fancy graphical way to browse the resources on offer. Instead, it’s merely a collection of files in a well-ordered directory tree. Click through /pics/DiskSleeves/VTDA/ and you’ll find a collection of high-resolution scans of various old diskettes and their packaging. /docs/computing/Centronics/ will give you all kinds of useful documentation, from press releases to datasheets for printers long forgotten. You can even find Heathkit schematics and old Windows bootdisk images if you dive into the depths.

While it doesn’t have everything, by any means, the VTDA has lots of interesting little bits and pieces that you might not find anywhere else. It’s a great counterpart to other archival efforts out on the web, particularly if you’re a member of the retrocomputing massive.

Thanks to [Itay] for the tip!

Air Quality Monitor Plays Game Of Life

October 3, 2025 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

The problem with air quality is that you can’t really tell how good or bad it is just by looking…unless it’s really bad, that is. It’s usually more helpful to have some kind of sensor that can tell you what the deal is. To that end, [Arnov Sharma] built a neat air quality monitor with a fun twist.

A Raspberry Pi Pico W acts as the heart of the build, armed with an SGP40 gas sensor. This sensor is intended for monitoring total volatile organic compounds in the air, which can be a useful measure of air quality in at least one dimension. It reports a simple air quality score from 0 to 500, based on a 1-1000 ppm ethanol equivalent reading. Based on the sensor’s output, the Pi Pico drives an LED matrix display — setting it green for good quality air, yellow for moderate, and red for poor air quality (i.e. high VOC content). The fun part is that rather than just show a simple color, the display plays Conway’s Game of Life to create an animated visual. We’d love it even more if poor air quality lead to the premature death of individual cells, making it even more interactive.

We’ve featured other air quality monitors before; often, it’s desirable to monitor CO2 levels to determine whether more ventilation is needed.

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Building A Desk Display For Time And Weather Data

October 2, 2025 by Lewin Day 19 Comments

Just about every laptop, desktop, and smartphone in your life can tell you the date, time, and current weather predictions. However, sometimes it’s nice to have simple data displayed on a bespoke device. That’s what inspired [Mario] to create ESPTimeCast.

As you might have guessed by the name, the project is designed around the ESP32 and ESP8266 microcontrollers; either one is up to the task of running the show here. Both come with Wi-Fi connectivity out of the box, which makes it easy for them to hook up to the Internet to query NTP servers for the time and weather data from OpenWeatherMap. The data is then displayed on an LED matrix display, made up of four 8×8 LED modules and driven with the aid of the MAX7219 IC. Configuration is handled over a simple web interface hosted on the device itself. All the parts are wrapped up in a 3D-printed housing that would be very fitting in any home that appreciates the magic of late 60s/early 70s decor.

Hackers love building clocks, weather stations, and other useful information displays. We’ve seen a great many examples over the years. If you’re cooking up your own neat project in this area, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Building A Functional Aliens Motion Tracker

October 2, 2025 by Lewin Day 6 Comments

Aliens is the second film from the legendary science-fiction series about, well… aliens. Naturally, it featured some compelling future-tech — such as the M314 Motion Tracker. [RobSmithDev] wanted to recreate the device himself, using modern technology to replicate the functionality as closely as possible.

While a lot of cosmetic replicas exist in the world, [Rob] wanted to make the thing work for real. To that end, he grabbed the DreamHAT+ Radar HAT for the Raspberry Pi. It’s a short-range radar module, and thus is useless for equipping your own air force or building surface-to-air weaponry. However, it can detect motion in a range of a few meters or so, using its 60 GHz transmitter and three receivers all baked into the one chip.

[Rob] does a great job of explaining how the radar works, and how he integrated it into a viable handheld motion tracker that works very similarly to the one in the movie. It may not exactly keep you safe from alien predators, but it’s always fun to see a functional prop rather than one that just looks good.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen somebody try to replicate this particular prop, but the modern electronics used in this build definitely bring it to the next level.

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How Hydraulic Ram Pumps Push Water Uphill With No External Power Input

October 2, 2025 by Lewin Day 33 Comments

Imagine you have a natural stream running through a low-lying area on your farm. It’s a great source of fresh water, only you really need it to irrigate some crops sitting at a higher elevation. The area is quite remote from fixed utilities, complicating the problem.

Your first thought might be to grab a commercial off-the-shelf pump of some sort, along with a fancy solar power system to provide the necessary power to run it. But what if there were a type of pump that could do the job with no external power input at all? Enter the hydraulic ram pump.

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Sending TOSLINK Wirelessly With Lasers

October 2, 2025 by Lewin Day 30 Comments

TOSLINK was developed in the early 1980s as a simple interface for sending digital audio over fiber optic cables, and despite its age, is still featured on plenty of modern home entertainment devices. As demonstrated by [DIY Perks], this old tech can even be taught some new tricks — namely, transmitting surround sound wirelessly.

Often, a TOSLINK stream is transmitted with a simple LED. [DIY Perks] realized that the TOSLINK signal could instead be used to modulate a cheap red laser diode. This would allow the audio signal to be sent wirelessly through the open air for quite some distance, assuming you could accurately aim it at a TOSLINK receiver. The first test was successful, with the aid of a nifty trick, [DIY Perks] filled the open TOSLINK port with a translucent plastic diffuser to make a larger target to aim at.

The rest of the video demonstrates how this technique can be used for surround sound transmission without cables. [DIY Perks] whipped up a series of 3D printed ceiling mirror mounts that could tidily bounce laser light for each surround channel to each individual satellite speaker.

It’s a very innovative way to do surround sound. It’s not a complete solution to wiring issues—you still need a way to power each speaker. Ultimately, though, it’s a super cool way to run your home theater setup that will surely be a talking point when your guests notice the laser mirrors on the ceiling.

We’ve seen some other stealthy surround sound setups before, too.

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Electric Surfboard Gets Thrust Vectoring Upgrade

October 1, 2025 by Lewin Day 1 Comment

The internet has already taught us that an electric surfboard is a great way to get around on the water while looking like an absolute badass. [RCLifeOn] is continuing to push the boat forward in this regard, however, adding thrust vectoring technology to his already-impressive build.

If you’re unfamiliar with the world of electric surfboards, the concept is relatively simple. Stick one or more electric ducted fan thrusters on the back, add some speed controllers, and power everything from a chunky bank of lithium-ion batteries. Throw in a wireless hand controller, and you’ve got one heck of a personal watercraft.

Traditionally, these craft are steered simply by leaning and twisting as a surfer would with a traditional board. However, more dynamic control is possible if you add a way to aim the thrust coming from the propulsion system. [RCLifeOn] achieved this by adding steerable nozzles behind the ducted fan thrusters, controlled with big hobby servos to handle the forces involved. The result is a more controllable electric surfboard that can seriously carve through the turns. Plus, it’s now effectively an RC boat all on its own, as it no longer needs a rider on board to steer.

We’ve covered various developments in this surfboard’s history before, too. Video after the break. Continue reading “Electric Surfboard Gets Thrust Vectoring Upgrade” →