Author: Lewin Day

3535 Articles

Converting The C64 Mini Into A C64C

April 14, 2025 by 14 Comments

The C64 Mini is a beautiful and functional replica of the most popular computer ever made, except at 50% size and without a working keyboard. For maximum nostalgia, it was modeled after the brown breadbox C64 case which so characterized the model. However, [10p6] wanted to build a tiny C64C instead, so set about making a conversion happen.

The build is primarily about the case design. [10p6] created a nice 50% scale duplicate of the C64C, with an eye to making it work with the internals of the popular C64 Mini. The case was paired with a custom PETSCII keyboard PCB and keycaps designed by [Bleugh]. This was a key element, since it wouldn’t really feel like a functional C64C without a functional keyboard. The build also scored a bonus USB hub for more flexibility. For the best possible finish, the case, power button, and keycaps were all printed using a resin printer, which provides a more “production-like” result than FDM printers are capable of.

It’s funny how retro computers remain popular to this day, particularly amongst the hacker set. In contrast, we don’t see a whole lot of people trying to replicate Pentium II machines from the mid-1990s. If you do happen to have a crack at it, though, the tipsline is always open. Video after the break.

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Supercon 2024: Quick High-Feature Boards With The Circuit Graver

April 4, 2025 by 11 Comments

These days, if you want to build something with modern chips and components, you probably want a custom PCB. It lets you build a neat and compact project that has a certain level of tidiness and robustness that you can’t get with a breadboard or protoboard. The only problem is that ordering PCBs takes time, and it’s easy to grow tired of shipping delays when you don’t live in the shadow of the Shenzhen board houses.

[Zach Fredin] doesn’t suffer this problem, himself. He’s whipping up high-feature PCBs at home with speed and efficiency that any maker would envy. At the 2024 Hackaday Supercon, he was kind enough to give a talk to explain the great engineering value provided by the Circuit Graver.

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Keep Bears At Bay With The Crackle Of 280,000 Volts

April 4, 2025 by 42 Comments

Bears! Are they scared of massive arcs that rip through the air, making a lot of noise in the process? [Jay] from the Plasma Channel sure hopes so, because that’s how his bear deterrent works!

[Jay] calls it the Bear Blaster 5000. Right from the drop, this thing looks like some crazy weapon out of Halo. That’s because it throws huge arcs at 280,000 volts. The basic concept behind it is simple enough—a battery drives a circuit which generates (kinda) low voltage AC. This is fed to the two voltage multipliers which are set up with opposite polarity to create the greatest possible potential difference between the two electrodes they feed. The meaty combination is able to arc across electrodes spaced over four inches apart. It’s all wrapped up in a super-cool 3D printed housing that really shows off the voltage multiplier banks.

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Supercon 2024: Rethinking Body Art With LEDs

April 2, 2025 by 3 Comments

Tattoos. Body paint. Henna. All these are popular kinds of body art with varying histories and cultural connotations, many going back centuries or even longer. They all have something in common, though—they all change how the body reflects light back to the viewer. What if, instead, body art could shine a light of its very own?

This is the precise topic which [Katherine Connell] came to discuss at the 2024 Hackaday Supercon. Her talk concerns rethinking body art with the use of light emitting diodes—and is both thoroughly modern and aesthetically compelling. Beyond that, it’s an engineering development story with liquid metal and cutting-edge batteries that you simply don’t want to miss!

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Australia’s Steady March Towards Space

April 2, 2025 by 30 Comments

The list of countries to achieve their own successful orbital space launch is a short one, almost as small as the exclusive club of states that possess nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union was first off the rank in 1957, with the United States close behind in 1958, and a gaggle of other aerospace-adept states followed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Italy, Iran, North Korea and South Korea have all joined the list since the dawn of the new millennium.

Absent from the list stands Australia. The proud island nation has never stood out as a player in the field of space exploration, despite offering ground station assistance to many missions from other nations over the years. However, the country has continued to inch its way to the top of the atmosphere, establishing its own space agency in 2018. Since then, development has continued apace, and the country’s first orbital launch appears to be just around the corner.

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Malfunctional Timekeeping With The Vetinari Clock

April 1, 2025 by 26 Comments

Lord Vetinari from the Discworld series is known for many things, but perhaps most of all a clock that doesn’t quite keep continuous time. Instead, it ticks away at random increments to infuriate those that perceive it, whilst keeping regular time over the long term. [iracigt] decided to whip up a real world version of this hilarious fictional timepiece.

The clock itself is an off-the-shelf timepiece purchased from Target for the princely sum of $5. However, it’s been deviously modified with an RP2040 microcontroller hidden away inside. The RP2040 is programmed to tick the clock at an average of once per second. But each tick itself is not so exact. Instead, there’s an erraticness to its beat – some ticks are longer, some shorter, in the classic Vetinari style. [iracigt] explains the nitty gritty of how it all works, from creating chaos with Markov chains to interfacing the RP2040 electronically with the cheap quartz clock movement.

If you’ve ever wanted to build one of these amusements yourself, [iracigt’s] writeup is a great place to start. Even better, it was inspired by an earlier post on these very pages! We love to see the community riff on a theme, and we’d love to see yours, too – so keep the tips coming, yeah? Video after the break.

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Shrinking Blinky As Far As Possible

April 1, 2025 by 39 Comments

Many of us know the basic Blink Arduino sketch, or have coded similar routines on other microcontrollers. Flashing an LED on and off—it doesn’t get much simpler than that. But how big should a blink sketch be? Or more importantly, how small could you get it? [Artful Bytes] decided to find out.

The specific challenge? “Write a program that runs on a microcontroller and blinks an LED. The ON and OFF times should be as close to 1000 ms as possible.” The challenge was undertaken using a NUCLEO-L432KC Cortex-M4 with 256 K of flash and 64 K of RAM.

We won’t spoil the full challenge, but it starts out with an incredibly inefficient AI & cloud solution. [Artful Bytes] then simplifies by switching to an RTOS approach, before slimming down further with C, assembly, and then machine code. The challenge was to shrink the microcontroller code as much as possible. However, you might notice the title of the video is “I Shrunk Blinky to 0 Bytes.” As it turns out, if you eliminate the digital code-running hardware entirely… you can still blink an LED with analog hardware. So, yes. 0 bytes is possible.

We’ve featured the world’s smallest blinky before, too, but in a physical sense rather than with regards to code size.

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