DIY Force Sensing Joysticks Are A Cheap Way To Go

October 14, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest No comments

Traditional joysticks typically use potentiometers or hall effect sensors to determine the displacement of the stick itself when moved by the operator. Force-sensing joysticks are considered more desirable for certain purposes like side-stick flight simulators, because they measure the force applied instead, as per the name. They can be expensive to buy off-the-shelf, but you can build a cheap set on your own if you know what you’re doing, as [tekasza] demonstrates.

The build that [tekasza] put together is based around the Teensy 4.0 microcontroller. It’s set up to read a series of load cells that determine the force applied to the stick in the X and Y axes. The cells are wired up to HX711 load cell amplifiers so they can be easily read by the microcontroller. The Teensy does the work to take the load cell readings and convert them into axis outputs for a USB HID game controller, allowing the stick to be used with just about any game or simulator on the market. [tekasza] has the stick integrated with pedals as well as a whole bunch of buttons and switches to control other simulator features, built up into a full seated sim setup.

If you’ve ever wanted to use a force-sensitive stick like modern fighter pilots do, this build could be very relevant to your interests. We’ve also seen plenty of other great sim hardware builds in recent years, too.

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What’s A Nonius?

October 14, 2026 by Al Williams 1 Comment

If you already know what a nonius is, you can probably skip this post. But, if like us, you would have to look it up, we’ll tell you what we found out. It turns out, a translation mistake taught us a new word and some history we weren’t aware of.

In the manual, this is captioned: Figure 4-7 Nonius Display (Standard Mode)

Have a look at the adjacent graphic from a waveform display. What would you call the vertical red lines at positions 139 and 200?

We’d probably call them markers. Or maybe cursors. The manual, however, calls each one a “nonius”. It refers to them that way multiple times.

Oddly, the manual also has sentences like “Select one nonius and right-click, and then select ‘Remove Marker’ in the next window to delete the nonius.”

So, clearly, a nonius is the vertical line marker or cursor. But that, of course, begs a question…

What is a Nonius?

Have you ever heard of the vernier scale? If you’ve done navigation, used a traditional caliper, or tuned an old shortwave receiver, you probably have. [Pierre Vernier] developed it in 1631 as a way to better interpolate values on a scale.

However, there was an earlier version used to improve measurements on astrolabes. A Portuguese navigator named [Pedro Nunes] created this type of astrolabe in 1542. The Latinized version of his name is [Petrus Nonius]. What are the odds of him inventing… oh wait, they named it after him. That does make more sense.

The nonius is a series of concentric circles traced on the instrument. Working towards the center, each circle has fewer divisions than the previous one. In fact, if the outer ring had 90 marks for 90 degrees, the next ring would have 89, and the following one would have 88.

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Testing Oneself For AI Slop

October 14, 2026 by Jenny List 25 Comments

The feed of a Hackaday writer brings many surprises, some rubbish, and the occasional diamond which of course we bring to you. Sometimes a page catches the eye that’s not a Hackaday piece per se, but makes for interesting reading. Today there was an example which provides a catalyst for a story if not being one itself.

It’s an AI skill intended to make a slop-writing operation look less sloppy, and since it contains a list of slop behaviours, of course it’s irresistible to turn it on yourself. To delve into the archives, if you will. So here goes, how slop-like is your scribe?

It kicks off with the old favourite, “Delve“. Oh dear, that one’s in the List Hackaday corpus quite a bit. Earliest appearance: 2016. Then landscape terms, in which it’s easy to recognise “Sphere” again. Oops. 2016 again. How about “Testament“? Well, that one’s a 2017 word. “Pivotal“? Four years of the Raspberry Pi, back in 2016. How about “Showcase“? Yup, it’s there, in 2019. Meanwhile “Foster“, goes back to 2017.

Next up are “Leverage” and “Utilise“. Safe ground here. Editors have what are referred to a “Pet Peeves”, language tics that annoy them on sight, and those two regrettable pieces of business-speak never evade this red pencil. The word you are looking for is “Use”.

The page goes on to name a load more words as tells, and we could continue to dissect them for your amusement, but we think you get the message from long-pre-LLM Hackaday. It gets more interesting when it talks about paragraph structure, and there are the things we’d recognise as tells. Staccato paragraphs, one-line stacks for impact, and repeated sentence start words. Whether AI slop is sounding like a business influencer’s Linkedin posts, or the other way round, is anybody’s guess. And yes, Hackaday does use em-dashes — get over it.

It’s amusing to poke mild fun at your past writing style, but if there’s a serious point in there it’s that spotting slop is never as easy as having a check-box list of tells when in fact you’re just looking at professional-grade command of the language. After all, given that Hackaday is in its corpus, the LLM can even make a passable effort at writing like one of us. Perhaps the key lies in that article, when the fake Hackaday piece became obvious because it lacked the inference of the real one.

Rendering 3D Prints From G-Code

October 14, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 9 Comments

Your CAD software generally has some rudimentary tools for rending images of your parts, from simply-textured models to more photo-realistic options. However, those renders are of the geometry you created—not how that geometry would look after it was sent to a 3D printer. Extrudio is a tool that aims to create more realistic renders for 3D printed parts.

Rather than rendering from the geometry of your model, such as by using an STL file, Extrudio uses G-Code instead. It creates its render based on the instructions your 3D printer uses to produce your part, sweeping a virtual bead of plastic along the toolpaths in the code. In doing so, it can realistically display layer lines in a 3D print and other artifacts of the printing process, like stair-stepping on spheres and curves. It can display the render in various contexts, from blank studio backgrounds to a number of “sets” like a bench or kitchen.

The tool’s website notes that this could be useful for generating images for those selling 3D printed parts online, though obviously the realism of actually printing and photographing a part would still be superior. Still, it could prove a useful tool for quickly pitching realistic images of a 3D printed part, particularly if it’s desirable to model different colors or print techniques without putting in the hours to actually produce them.

We’ve featured some other great 3D printing hacks lately, like this nifty trick for doing overhangs without supports.

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Does It Run… Duke Nukem 3D?

October 13, 2026 by Jenny List 7 Comments

When id Software released DOOM back in 1993 it helped define the genre, but it was hardly the only hit first-person shooter of that decade. There was also 3D Realms’ 1996 Duke Nukem 3D, a game which added some humor to the genre. Here’s [PicoPlus-devel], with pico-duke3D. It’s Duke Nukem 3D, on an RP2350.

Before reaching the conclusion that this might be obvious and easy, the three years between the two releases saw quite significant movements in the world of gaming PCs. DOOM’s minimum spec in 1993 was a 386 and 4 MB of memory, and would have been playable on a basic VGA card in an ISA slot. By contrast three years later Duke Nukem 3D required at least a 486DX2 and 8 MB, which would inevitably have had VESA local bus or PCI graphics. It’s a Quake competitor rather than a DOOM competitor, thus the power required to run it has stepped up a notch or two.

The RP2350 then is up to the job, and runs the game on a DVI equipped Pico clone. It can be controlled via either SNES or USB controllers given the right hardware, making it the perfect one-game console. The shareware game works, as does the full version if you own a copy. Having been around in the ’90s then, we’re curious. Could it be made to run Shadow Warrior as well? You no mess with Lo Wang!

2026 Retrocomputing Challenge: USBSID-Pico Has Two SIDs, Many Inputs

October 13, 2026 by Tyler August 9 Comments

We’ll give you three guesses what the most important bits of silicon in [LouD]’s USBSID-Pico are, and two don’t count. Yes, there’s a Raspberry Pi Pico, and a pair of the unforgettable SID chips from MOS– the sound chip of the C64, the die that launched a thousand chiptunes. Well, unless you build it with a hardware SID replacement, but the goal of this device is to get SIDs hooked up to modern hardware.

To that end, USBSID-Pico can be controlled via USB– obviously– in the form of CDC/WebUSB/WebSerial but also MIDI, and even ASID, which is a specific protocol for streaming SID register data over MIDI. You might be wondering the point, since surely you can get cycle-accurate SID emulation on an RP2040, right? Well, not everyone agrees that cycle-accurate emulation is accurate enough; like the people who swear by the subtle distortions tube amplifiers introduce into the sound, some say the chip’s own inaccuracies give the sound out of the physical device a unique vibe emulators don’t match. That’s a fight for others to litigate; we just appreciate the work that went into getting these old sound chips talking to modern hardware, and getting the project certified as Open Source Hardware.

This combination of old sound and new microcontroller makes the USBSID-Pico a good entry for our ongoing retrocomputing contest, particularly the retro-modern category. Just be aware of PAL and NTSC differences with these old chips, or your beeps and boops might be out of tune. They haven’t made them in decades, but there are more than a few modern replacements for the MOS 6581.

JawnCon 0x3 Kicks Off In Philadelphia This Friday

October 13, 2026 by Tom Nardi 1 Comment

Philadelphia’s homegrown hacker con returns this weekend, and this time it’s starting a day early to pack in even more talks, demos, and activities. Tickets are still available for anyone who can get themselves to Arcadia University by the end of the week, and as always, students with a valid .edu email address get in for free. The talks will also be recorded for hackers that can’t make it out in person, but of course there’s no substitute for a weekend spent hanging out with like-minded folks.

Now in its fourth year, JawnCon continues to steadily grow and evolve. In 2026, it’s not only getting an extra day, but also a second stage for talks, delivering nearly 30 presentations on everything from board games to modern pager networks. For style points, the schedule is available via HyperCard running on an emulated Macintosh Plus, but you can also just read it off the web page if you insist.

In addition to the talks, there will be exhibits from local groups such as Philly Mesh, PhilTel, and the Open Organisation Of Lockpickers, as well as a dedicated classroom for those looking to study ahead of their amateur radio exams. Attendees can even use a pair of Zebra ID printers to produce custom badges, and we’re sure nothing untoward will happen with them.

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