A Trackball 3D Controller

April 27, 2026 by No comments

We use CAD packages in our 3D work, and it’s likely that many of us have become annoyed by the limitations of controlling the view of a 3D object using a 2D interface, our mouse. Joystick-like 3D controllers exist for this purpose, but [David Liu] found them inconvenient. He tried a trackball, but that didn’t improve matters. His response was to take the trackball and change the way it controlled the software, turning it from the equivalent of a ball rolling over a surface to a ball representing the object on the screen itself. He can turn and rotate the object intuitively just by moving the ball.

He started with a Kensington off-the-shelf trackball and adapted its electronics and handy twin optical sensors such that it worked in the required fashion. There was a lot of iterating and tuning to get the control feeling right, but he’s ended up with a peripheral that replaces both mouse and 3D joystick, and leaves the other hand free for those keyboard shortcuts.

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Mist, Mirrors, Laser : Multi-view 3D Projection

April 26, 2026 by 4 Comments

“Lights, camera, action!” might have been the call when recording back in the day, but for an awesome three-dimensional viewing experience, you might try yelling “Mist, Mirrors, Laser!” and following in the footsteps of [Ancient]’s latest adventure in voxel displays, which is also embedded below.

He starts with a naive demonstration: take a laser projector and toss an image into a flat cloud of mist. That demonstrates that yes, the mist does resolve an image, and that the viewing angle is very poor– that is, brightness drops off sharply when you’re out of line from the projector. In this case, that’s a good thing! It means more angles can be projected into that mist for a three-dimensional, hologram effect.

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Hackaday Links: April 26, 2026

April 26, 2026 by 1 Comment

It’s been three weeks since the Artemis II crew returned to Earth, and while the mission might be over for Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Hammock Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, the work is only just beginning for engineers back at NASA. In a blog post earlier this week, the space agency went over the preliminary post-mission assessments of the spacecraft and its ground support equipment, and detailed some of the work that’s currently taking place as preparations begin for Artemis III.

During Artemis I, higher than expected damage was noted on both the Orion’s heat shield and the Space Launch System (SLS) launch pad. But according to NASA, the changes implemented after that first mission seem to have prevented similar issues this time around. The post also explains that reusable components of the Orion spacecraft, such as the avionics and the crew seats, are already in the process of being removed from Integrity so they can be installed in the next capsule on the production line.

While watching the live stream of the Artemis mission is the closest most of us will ever get to experiencing spaceflight, that doesn’t mean you can’t explore the solar system from the comfort of your own home — or more specifically, your browser. [Sani Huttunen] has created an incredible web-based solar system simulator that lets you explore our celestial neighborhood throughout different periods of time. You can tour the moons of Jupiter, see how the planets aligned on the date of your birth, and even check in on the Voyager probes. There are some very valid reasons to be skeptical about software moving to the web, but we’ve got to admit, this is a very slick demonstration of just how far modern browsers have come.

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A Sail And Oar Skiff Built From Common Lumber

April 26, 2026 by 8 Comments

For those first venturing into sailing, it can be overwhelming since the experience is thick with jargon and skills that don’t often show up in life ashore. With endless choices, including monohulls versus catamarans, fiberglass versus wood, fractional versus masthead rigs, and sloops versus ketches, a new sailor risks doing something like single-handing a staysail schooner when they should have started on a Bermuda-rigged dinghy without a spinnaker. Luckily, there are some shortcuts to picking up the hobby, like the venerable Sunfish or Hobie ships. It’s also possible to build a simple sailing vessel completely out of materials from a local hardware store, as [Cumberland Rover] has been demonstrating.

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A drill bit, not apparently rotating, descends toward a block of aluminium and throws up aluminium shavings as it passes through the block.

Freeze Moving Tools With A Stroboscopic Camera

April 26, 2026 by 14 Comments

If you take a video of a spinning wheel, you’ll probably notice that the spokes appear to turn more slowly than the wheel is actually rotating, and sometimes in the wrong direction. This is caused by a near match in the frame rate of the camera and the rate of rotation of the wheel – each time the camera captures a frame, the wheel has rotated a spoke into nearly the same position as in the last frame. If you time the exposures carefully, as [Excessive Overkill] did in his latest video, this effect can seemingly freeze moving objects, such as a fan or saw blade.

Most cameras only allow relatively coarse, fixed adjustments to frame rate, making it difficult to synchronize the shutter to an object’s motion. To get around this, [Excessive Overkill] used an industrial camera (previously used in this aimbot), which has fine frame rate control and external triggering. He connected the external trigger to a laser sensor, which detects a piece of retroreflective tape every time it passes by (for example, on one blade of a fan). When the laser sensor sends a signal, it also triggers a powerful LED flash. The flash is so powerful that dark materials create a hum when exposed to it, as pulses quickly heat the material, but each pulse is also so brief that the flash board doesn’t require any cooling.

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2026 Green Powered Challenge: A Portable Solar Panel, Made Better

April 26, 2026 by 2 Comments

Many of us will have seen the portable solar panels offered on our favourite online purveyors of electronics, but some who have bought them remain unimpressed with their performance.  [t.oster92] had just such an issue, and concluded that since it had great dull-day performance, it wasn’t the panels themselves that were at fault. There followed a teardown and an investigation of the circuitry inside.

The panels fed a small PCB containing a buck converter, with an 8-pin SOIC carrying an untraceable part number. Some detective work revealed it was likely to be a rebadged version of a more common part, which exposed the problem as a converter without the rating to deliver the power it should. The solution, at least in part, was to replace it with a more powerful chip on a module and reap the benefits.

This would be the end of the story, but this is an ongoing project. Next up will be adding MPPT capability to extract the last bit of juice from those panels. That makes this one a story to keep an eye on, because we could all use a decent set of panels.

This hack is part of our 2026 Green Powered Challenge.

2026 Hackaday Greep Powered Challenge

Dyson Vacuums And The Curse Of Cooked Capacitors

April 26, 2026 by 25 Comments

It seems to be becoming a bit of a theme that consumer electronics are dying not due to some critical fault, but due to Cooked Capacitor Syndrome (CCS). Case in point, Dyson handheld vacuums and the capacitors on its driver board. After having his $800 Dyson V15 handheld vacuum die after two and a half years of regular use, [LeftyMaker] found himself elbows-deep in the dusty innards of the vacuum just to replace some capacitors.

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