DIY Game Console Does It With Optical Disks

September 30, 2026 by Tyler August No comments

Optical media may be dead for video games on the big corporate consoles, but not in [Emmet]’s heart– or on his DIY game console, that he built specifically to use optical media. Not fancy blu-ray or newfangled DVDs, either, but good old fashioned CDs from the Orange Book.

Yeah, he’s not fitting modern AAA flagship games on those disks, but the Intel N150 on the single board computer he’s using isn’t going to power through them, either. That’s fine, though, because there are literally decades of content this machine can handle. That’s why the board is running Batocera, which is a Linux distro tailor-made for retrogaming on x86– and also ARM, but that’s not important here.

He’s using ESP32-S3s to run custom wireless gamepads with BLE, which means he’s got more power in each of them than some of the retro consoles this machine is emulating, but it gets the job done. Unlike some cartridge projects we’ve seen that merely queue up the games, the CDs on this one actually do seem to store the ROM file, along with a shell script to put it in the correct emulator’s library. We might have gone with autorun, but it’s [Emmet]’s console and he’s got it working how he likes.

What really makes this project stand out, in our opinion, is the effort [Emmet] put into custom CD labels and art for the jewel cases. It really makes this feel like an actual game console and not just a PC hooked to a the TV. The 3D printed case doesn’t hurt in that respect, either.

Be it from a nostalgia, as in this project, a need for cheap storage, or the perverse desire to hook it to an NES, optical media seems to be having a bit of a moment. Speaking of moment, we’re going to have to take a moment to come to grips with the fact that CDs have become nostalgic. Didn’t they just replace vinyl?

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Will Superconducting Transistors Help Quantum Computers?

September 30, 2026 by Maya Posch 6 Comments

Despite all the glamorous promises made about quantum computing, it’s hard to make the argument that today’s quantum computers hold a candle to the sheer practicality of classical computers, especially when qubits need to be cuddled at cryogenic temperatures inside a cryostat. This is worsened by the problem that regular semiconductor transistors do not really appreciate these same cryogenic temperatures, creating an awkward interfacing problem for the controlling electronics.

Now a new pitch here is to create superconducting transistors that will happily work at temperatures near absolute zero. In an article in IEEE Spectrum this start-up – called S-Transistors – and their concept are covered.

By being able to have the control circuits inside the same cryostat, one can forego the absolute mess of wiring that has to penetrate it, and with it one major failure point. Their proposed solution uses the same Josephson junctions (JJs) that are also used for qubits, using a high enough current to briefly make it non-superconducting, inducing a voltage pulse that can be detected.

In addition, JJ-based field effect transistors (JJFETs) are used, with this 2025 paper by [Yusheng Xiong] et al. detailing these structures. Here S–Transistors claims that they are now able to manufacture JJFETs at scale, which would be another major breakthrough that could bring quantum computing just a little bit closer.

They’d be competing with cryogenic CMOS (Cry-CMOS), which can use standard semiconductor production lines to create circuits that can withstand cryogenic temperatures, albeit not quite a the near-zero K level that these superconducting transistors and JJFETs would be capable of.

Pogo-Bot Goes All Terrain With Compliant Foot

September 30, 2026 by Tyler August 2 Comments

What do you get when you combine a pogo stick, a quadcopter, and engineering students from the University of Toronto? This thing, apparently– a “monopedal hopping robot” that uses a spikey, pivoting foot pad tensioned by what look like elastic bands to keep it upright on all terrain from soft sand to hard ice.

It’s an interesting concept. The thrust from the four propellers is what gives the energy to get the robot moving, but its pogo-like hopping is entirely down to the spring-loaded single legged “landing gear”. Early iterations just used a spike on the end of that leg, but that failed in ways that some might find humorous, which you will see if you watch the video embedded below. Giving the monopod an actual foot with some traction and the ability to pivot and match the terrain works much better– now not only can this robot leap tall fences in a single bound, an errant ice patch won’t send it skittering away.

This isn’t the first one-legged robot we’ve seen; some only use their leg while others have wings, but this odd quadcopter is the first we’ve seen to brave Canadian winter. Continue reading “Pogo-Bot Goes All Terrain With Compliant Foot” →

Open Source Tricorder Is In It For The Science

September 30, 2026 by Tyler August 3 Comments

If you’re reading Hackaday there’s pretty good odds you’re at least somewhat fond of Star Trek. We’d bet good money most of you would quit your jobs today if a Starfleet recruiter showed up. That’s something you’d have in common with [PeterAJansen], who has been working for over a decade now to create something worthy of being called a tricorder. If his latest iteration, the Open Source Science Tricorder Cyberdeck, isn’t there yet, it’s pretty darn close.

Frankly, it looks more usable than Roddenberry’s version.

The “tri” in tricorder means three, but this device has more than three instruments– so did the ones on the show, come to think of it. You won’t be scanning for veteron radiation with this, but you do get a scintillation crystal to get a spectroscopic analysis of beta- or gamma-ray sources; there’s also a visible light spectrometer, thermal camera, and magnetic field camera along with a standard magnetometer and the usual environmental sensors to give you temperature, pressure, and humidity, plus particulate, VOC and CO2 concentration. Enough to explore an alien planet? That’s hard to say, but it seems like enough to explore this one.

The device is based around a Clockwork Pi uConsole, which takes care of the form-factor: a slabtop with a QWERTY keyboard and an IPS display in a nice screen, and a Compute Module 5 to crunch all that data. It might not be quite as stylish as the folding units seen on-screen in Star Trek, but it seems like an eminently practical form factor. There are videos of it in operation as well as being assembled on the GitHub repository, where you can get all the details needed to make your own. It is the Open Source Science Tricorder, after all.

This isn’t the first project we’ve seen chasing tricorder glory, but many of the others were more interested in screen accuracy than science. [Peter]’s earlier “arducorder” was a very notable exception to that trend.

Thanks to [MarcCote] for the tip! If your scanners pick up something interesting in cyberspace, remember our hailing frequencies are always open.

Apple Finally Made AirPods Repairable… Sort Of

September 30, 2026 by Maya Posch 9 Comments

It’s been true for a while now that Apple’s AirPods have been effectively disposable, with [iFixit] slapping each successive generation with an abysmal 0/10 repairability score. The moment that any of the built-in batteries faltered you could effectively toss the whole package out as e-waste.

Interestingly, with the fifth generation it would seem that a battery swap in the earbuds is now actually possible without whole-scale destruction, according to the [iFixit] teardown video.

Although it’s still a far cry from the demonstrated FairBuds battery replacement, this time around a bit of gentle heat allows for the glued-together earbud to cleanly separate, with inside a socketed coin cell. The catch here is that the polarity on these sockets differs between the left and right earbud, which was discovered after a quick swap.

Unfortunately this same easy-to-open change doesn’t carry over to the case for the earbuds, which still requires physical destruction of the plastic to get to its battery. Accordingly [iFixit] gives this generation of AirPods a generous 2/10. Although a step in the right direction, it seems clear that if repairability or even simply being able to replace the batteries is a concern, the AirPod’s probably aren’t for you.

Last year’s third generation AirPods made [iFixit] really angry, so this is borderline glowing praise. Of course, the issue with non-removable batteries remains a problem, especially when new EU regulations that should have fixed this get watered down.

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Assembling And Testing A DIY Jet Turbine

September 30, 2026 by Maya Posch 10 Comments

After many months of painstaking work, [AlfMart CNC Garage] over at YouTube has finally reached the stage where he can fully assemble his DIY jet turbine and commence testing. Even if deceptively simple devices, just the starting mechanism turned out to be a challenge. Due to the extreme conditions that these jet turbines operate under, tolerances are narrow, and many of the materials require careful selecting and testing.

Fortunately this is not true for the outer casing, which is cobbled together from a commercial gas cylinder and a children’s steel drinking bottle that so happened to have the right dimensions. From there the parts get increasingly more specialized, down to the carefully balanced rotor. Assuming everything was done right up till this point, the first start-up will mean a happily roaring turbine and not a deafening explosion followed by a cloud of shrapnel.

In the video the full assembly can be observed, along with detailed instructions should anyone want to follow along with their own DIY jet turbine. Naturally a lot of attention has to be paid to tolerances during the assembly process. Following the basic turbine assembly, the RPM sensor circuit and the electrical starter are added, with the latter allowing for the turbine to spin up prior to ignition.

The first basic starter tests revealed an issue with the starter motor and clutch mechanism, requiring some upgrades. Before the first ignition the whole turbine has to be dynamically balanced, for which first a new balancing rig will be designed and assembled. While this means that first ignition will still be a while off, it’s best to take projects like this slow and steady. We’re also looking forward to seeing this new dynamic balancing rig that’s claimed to be much more advanced than that used for balancing the rotor.

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Roman Telescope Saves Fuel, Doubles Mission

September 30, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 7 Comments

Contemplate the events that might end a space mission, and you might picture something dramatic: detonation on the pad, a dead guidance system, or micrometeoroids shattering delicate solar panels. More often, though, the ending is far more mundane. Plenty of perfectly healthy spacecraft have been retired simply because the fuel tanks ran dry. That’s why mission planners guard every kilogram of go juice so jealously, and why careful preparation in a mission is critical to long-term success.

Which brings us to NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Barely two weeks after its August 30 launch on a Falcon Heavy, the mission team announced that Roman now has enough fuel for at least 22 years of science operations. That’s well over double its original 10-year fuel budget. It’s a huge gain, so let’s explore how NASA pulled it off.

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