Author: Zoe Skyforest

3683 Articles

CAN Bus Analyzer Runs In Your Browser

April 21, 2026 by 11 Comments

If you’ve got a modern car, truck, or tractor, it’s probably got a CAN bus or three that is bouncing data all around the vehicle. Listening in on these transmissions can enlighten you to what’s going on with sensors and modules which can aid in troubleshooting. You might find [Chanchal]’s latest work to be helpful in this regard — a CAN bus visualizer that runs right in your browser.

CANviz, as the project is known, is designed to work with any one of a number of cheap USB CAN reader modules. To use it, you simply run the Python “pip” tool to install it, and then you have a live CAN bus frame analyzer running on your local machine. Point your browser to localhost:8080 and you can see the data pouring in from whatever you happen to be hooked up to. The tool supports decoding CAN DBC files to make better sense of the raw data coming off the bus, and you can also record sessions for later analysis and even send CAN frames yourself if you need to. You can also run the tool on a remote single-board PC if so desired and access it over a network connection from another machine.

We’ve explored CAN hacking tools before and tools for visualization as well. Often, the latter is important when trying to debug and investigate dynamic issues. Meanwhile, if you’re working on your own automotive interface hacks, don’t hesitate to notify the tipsline!

SuperDisk: The Better Floppy That Never Caught On

April 21, 2026 by 49 Comments

Once the microcomputer era got going in earnest, the floppy disk quickly supplanted the tape as the portable storage method of choice. They were never particularly large, but they were fine for the average user to get by.

At the same time, it wasn’t long before heavier-duty removable storage solutions hit the market for power users who needed to move many megabytes at a time. In the 1980s, these were primarily the preserve of big print shops, corporate users, and governments. By the 1990s, even the mildly savvy computerist was starting to chafe against the tyrannical 1.44 MB limit of the regular 3.5″ diskette. Against this backdrop launched the SuperDisk—the product which hoped to take the floppy format to the next level, yet faltered all the same.

Continue reading “SuperDisk: The Better Floppy That Never Caught On” →

Cyberdeck Build Gets Closer To Regular Laptop Than Most

April 20, 2026 by 15 Comments

Cyberdecks are typically reminiscent of weird computers in futuristic sci-fi films, moreso than the computers of today. The cool thing about cyberdecks, though, is you get to build them however you like. [WillTechBuilds] has put together a deck of his own that diverges from cyberdeck norms and ends up closer to something you might have bought off the shelf at Best Buy.

For a start, the build eschews the typical Raspberry Pi or other single-board computer that normally lives at the heart of a cyberdeck. In its place is a motherboard harvested from a GMKTec NucBox G5. It runs the Intel N97 CPU. It’s an x86 processor that’s roughly equivalent in power to an i5 from 10 years ago, but it only sips 12 watts. The compact motherboard is installed in a compact 3D-printed case along with a porbable USB-C battery pack, a small widescreen LCD, and a Lenovo ThinkPad trackpoint keyboard. This latter design choice, along with the x86 chip, is what gives this build so much of a laptop feel. There’s no weird Linux desktop, green-glowing terminal, or chunky mechanical keyboard here, let alone any GPIO pins. Definitely an oddball entry to the cyberdeck world, but valid nonetheless.

We’ve featured cyberdecks built out of everything from CRT TVs to event badges. As always, we’d love to see your latest innovative creation on the tipsline. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Cyberdeck Build Gets Closer To Regular Laptop Than Most” →

DIY Weather Stations Report In From Chernobyl

April 20, 2026 by 8 Comments

You’re probably not going to hang out around Chernobyl any time soon. Still, knowing the conditions there can both satisfy your curiosity and provide scientific value. To that end, [Yury Ilyin] has spent the last couple decades installing homebrew weather stations across the Exclusion Zone for his own interest. 

The remote weather stations that [Yury] builds all follow a similar design. Each runs on three 18650 lithium cells, charged via a small solar panel. Most of these cells were salvaged from old laptop battery packs. These cells are used to power a GPRS or WiFi communications module, along with a temperature, humidity, and pressure sensor, and a Geiger counter, because, well… it’s Chernobyl.

He has been lucky enough to keep costs down by finding an old generation GPRS SIM card that could be cloned and used across multiple devices, and thus far has had no trouble receiving signals from his many distributed stations. He’s been able to use his sensor network to track the gradual decline of radioactive emissions in the area from Cs-137, as well as keep an eye on the local weather conditions in an area few ever tread.

[Yury] has built over two dozen of these devices, and several have passed the test of time—with the lithium cells and cellular hardware surviving both high and freezing temperatures as well as the ravages of rain and time. He’s continued to refine the design over the years, starting out with an ATmega644 running the show, and later upgrading to STM32 microcontrollers.

We’ve explored distributed radiation sensor networks before, too, as well as many a remote weather station. Continue reading “DIY Weather Stations Report In From Chernobyl” →

Flash Joule Heating Recovers The Good Stuff

April 20, 2026 by 15 Comments

Rare earth materials are a hot button topic these days. They’re important for everything from electric vehicles to defence hardware, they’re valuable, and everyone wishes they had some to dig up in their backyard. Lithium, too, is a commodity nobody can get enough of, with the demand for high-performance batteries grows each year.

When a material is desirable, and strategically important, we often start thinking of ways to conserve or recycle it because we just can’t get enough. In that vein, researchers have been developing a new technique to recover rare earth metals and lithium from waste streams so that it can be put back to good use.
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Modded Server PSU Provides Plenty Of Current

April 19, 2026 by 20 Comments

Most makers find themselves in need of a benchtop power supply at some point or another. Basic models can be had relatively cheaply, but as your current demands go higher, so does the price. [Danilo Larizza] has figured out an alternative solution—repurposing old server hardware to do the job instead.

The build is based around an HP Common Slot (CS) server power supply. They can be readily had for well under $50 if you know where to look. Even better, they can deliver over 50 amps at 12 volts, which happens to be a very useful voltage indeed. All you need to do is some minor mods.

A jumper on a couple of pins will get the power supply running, and with the addition of some terminals for your hook-up leads, you’re ready to go. As a hot-swappable single unit, the power supply is already outfitted with a ventilation fan to keep everything cool. If so desired, you can even make some further mods to bump output voltage a little ways past 13 or 14 volts if you’d like to use them for certain battery charging tasks.

Sure, you’re not getting a variable power supply, but if you need 12 volts and lots of it, this is a great way to go. We’ve featured similar builds before, too, turning ATX PC power supplies into useful benchtop tools.

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Rack Cage Generator Gets Your Gear Mounted

April 19, 2026 by 29 Comments

Sometimes, as hackers and makers, we can end up with messy lashed-together gear that is neither reliable nor tidy. Rackmounting your stuff can be a great way to improve the robustness and liveability of your setup. If you find this appealing, you might like CageMaker by [WebMaka].

This parametric OpenSCAD script can generate mounts for all kinds of stuff. Maybe you have a little network switch that’s just a tangle of wires on your desk, or a few pieces of audio gear that are loosely stacked on top of each other and looking rather unkempt. It would be trivial with this tool to create some 3D printed adapters to get all that stuff laced up nice and neat in a rack instead.

If you’re eager to get tinkering, you can try out the browser-based version quite easily. We’ve featured similar work before, too—many a maker has trod the path of rackmounting, as it turns out.