Supercon 2026: Streaming Live

November 7, 2026 by No comments

While we’d love to have you all join us in Pasadena for Supercon 2026, the next best thing is to connect up to the festivities remotely through the magic of the Internet. The main stage talks (Lamarr) will be streamed live to our YouTube channel, while the talks taking place on the second stage (Hopper) will be recorded and posted afterwards.

Though it’s not quite as immersive as being there,  you can also join the #supercon-chat channel in the official Hackaday Discord server if you want to virtually rub shoulders with some of our favorite people in the world.

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Saving A Vintage High-Voltage Power Supply From The Scrap Heap

November 8, 2026 by No comments

[Mr Carlson’s Lab] saves a Fluke Model 407 high-voltage power supply from the scrap heap, and demonstrates carefully troubleshooting the vintage device to track the cause of the bad output down to a single capacitor. In the process, we get a close look at what is inside as well as insights on how to meaningfully service a device like this.

Firing up old electronics should always be done with care. Some electronic components don’t age well, and some faults aren’t always visible. Applying full power to an vintage device could cause considerable (and avoidable) damage. [Mr Carlson] powers up the device using an isolated transformer and a current-limited variac, but another classic approach would be to use a dim-bulb tester, which most folks could cobble together from spare parts.

Glorious vacuum tubes where one would otherwise expect transistors.

While destined for the junk heap, this Fluke Model 407 actually looks to be in pretty good condition. There’s no obvious damage or failure in its vacuum-tube-and-circuit-board internals, and it powers up but the main output doesn’t act right.

[Mr Carlson] walks through the entire process of tracking down the fault, demonstrating everything from safe power-up and basic inspections to signal and component checking. This process is aided by having access to the original schematics, and the problem is ultimately narrowed down to a faulty capacitor in a feedback signal responsible for keeping the output voltage constant.

It’s not a full restoration, but rather a clear demonstration of diagnosing a hardware error thanks to a careful and informed approach that keeps the specific challenges of vintage electronics in mind. Watch the whole thing in the video, embedded below.

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Space Invaders On A VFD

November 8, 2026 by 1 Comment

When most people think of vacuum fluorescent displays (VFDs), they probably imagine the clock on a microwave or the equalizer on a piece of stereo equipment. But there was a brief period where the glowing phosphor displays were actually used for portable game systems before things like LCD took over.

While the salvaged display that [José Luis Monteiro] and his father have been hacking on certainly isn’t portable, it does play a mean Space Invaders. It’s vertical resolution is a bit tight for the gameplay, but the various sprites look fantastic and the art style works particularly well with the retro VFD vibe.

Just as with their recent efforts to bring Snake to a seven-segment display, a great deal of attention is given to explaining the nuts and bolts of how these vintage displays work. The documentation and source code they’be provided are certainly valuable to anyone else who might be hacking on this type of hardware, but the video they’ve produced is entertaining and informative enough that it’s worth checking out even if you aren’t actively trying to port DOOM over to your old microwave.

If you’re interested in learning even more about these fascinating old school displays, we’ve previously covered some excellent deep dives into the tech.

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Lillith Tells Your Future

November 8, 2026 by 1 Comment

Maybe you are old enough to remember Zoltar in an arcade, or perhaps you’re just a fan of the movie Big. Either way, maybe you’d like to build an animated fortune teller. [Oh Well Why Not] did just that and gives you a roadmap for you to make your own. It took four months to build, but with the road already mapped, you can probably do it in less. Then again, who can predict the future?

The fortune teller, Lillith, uses servos and some voice generation to provide the same experience. If you dare to hit the button, you’ll get a glimpse into your future that’s at least as good as a fortune cookie from your local takeaway place.

Lillith doesn’t hide behind windows since it isn’t in a public venue, but if you were going to put it out in the wild, you’d probably want to encase it a little better. While waiting, the servos provide some small animations to attract the next user.

If you remember Bullwinkle more fondly than Zoltan, you might prefer this project.

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Custom Game Boy Cart Speeds Up Development

November 8, 2026 by 2 Comments

These days, it is easy enough to get a flash cart for your Game Boy that makes it easy to run code — yours or otherwise — on it, but they aren’t necessarily ideal for actual development. The process of shuttling new code over to the cart via an SD card isn’t bad if you’re doing it once, but it gets very annoying if you’re trying to make rapid incremental changes.

Which is specifically what [MrFrenchLame] was looking to improve on with his development cart. Rather than using a SD card to move over ROMs, the cart features a small bootloader that establishes communication with the computer over the Game Boy’s link port. The new code goes right into the cart’s RAM, where it can be immediately executed without having to write it out to flash. When you want to load new code, just press a button on the cart, and the whole thing starts over fresh. The upload routine can even be worked into your IDE to streamline the process.

This lack of permanence makes the cart a poor choice for actually playing games since everything goes poof when the power goes out. Plus, it only has 32K of RAM to work with, and can’t really do anything without being tethered to a computer. But it’s a fantastic solution if you’re looking to test things out quickly.

That said, there is one pretty major problem with this project: it requires your development computer to have a physical parallel port, which is a tall order in 2026. [MrFrenchLame] mentions this could likely be addressed by pulling in knowledge from some of the modern DIY flash carts we’ve seen recently, but hasn’t had time to tackle it yet. Maybe you could lend a hand?

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An FPGA Version Of The AT&T UNIX PC For MiSTer

November 8, 2026 by 5 Comments

We all have our childhood heroes, which in the case of [Hrvoje Cavrak] was the 1985 AT&T UNIX PC. This 18 kg behemoth of a workstation computer boasted a 10 MHz Motorola 68010 CPU, up to 4 MB of RAM and dozens of megabytes of storage in addition to endless expansion options, making it a powerhouse of a personal computer for the discerning professional. Now, many decades later [Hrvoje] has an FPGA-based version to tinker with.

This project targets the MiSTer project, meaning that this softcore with SystemVerilog, Verilog and VHDL components should synthesize and run on any MiSTer-compatible FPGA system, such as the DE10 Nano. For that board the SDRAM add-on board is required due to the DE10 Nano Cyclone V SoC’s FPGA side only having access to a fraction of the 4 MB required by the softcore.

Obviously the boot ROM and disk images for AT&T UNIX are still under copyright, so although you can download both you should be wary of provoking the current copyright holder. With that in place, however, you now have got access to a very complete UNIX PC experience, as can be seen in the demonstration video.

Some aspects of the code were written and validated by LLM coding chatbots, so this is still a ‘works on my MiSTer board’ project. In lieu of getting access to the real hardware – meanwhile priced at unobtanium levels – this seems like a fair enough trade-off if old workstations like these are your thing.

The UNIX PC obviously didn’t make it into mainstream computer as we covered previously, with the IBM PC with MS-DOS, CP/M and Apple’s systems quickly cornering the home market along with Commodore, Atari, etc. This possibly makes these AT&T UNIX PCs even more rare than 1990s SGI and Sun systems.

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Making A Dog Car Wash Without (very) Fancy Tools

November 7, 2026 by 17 Comments

[Stuff Made Here] got fed up with the hassle of washing their dog, and in traditional engineer fashion, decided that automating the process would solve the problem. However, as science fiction writers love to warn us, automation and living things don’t always mix.

The concept, much like a car wash, is to have an arch-like structure spray the dog with oscillating nozzles. A secondary nozzle provides a simple air drying function on each of the pods. An “undercarriage” nozzle of similar design runs in a channel below the dog to ensure all mud has been removed. The nozzles move along linear rails, driven by a DC motor. All the electronics are water proofed with the AC power source a distance away to provide additional electrical protection.

Unlike other projects of the past, [Stuff Made Here] set out to make this project without fancy metal working tools. Fortunately, it’s a project well suited to SLA 3D printing. While probably printable on an FDM printer, the parts need to withstand water back pressure. While there are better ways of doing this, the nozzles are mounted on an arch made of two bent conduits with legs welded on. The nozzles are mechanically connected with linkages to control the spraying direction.

However, [Stuff Made Here] couldn’t resist the urge to use a new CNC lathe when it arrived, so the quest to avoid fancy tools was lost to the desire to play with new fancy tools. Also, a grate under the under-carriage nozzle would have taken too long to source, so instead a plasma cutter made short work of some sheet metal. Granted, the parts could easily be 3D printed and/or sourced online.

Besides the fact that the dog is terrified of the machine and won’t use it, it works brilliantly! Sound off in the comments if you think [Stuff Made Here]’s attempt at making a project without fancy tools was successful.

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Artemis II Rocket Was Powerful Enough To Disrupt GPS

November 7, 2026 by 27 Comments

Rockets certainly have a substantial impact if you ever see a launch in person. The noise, shock waves, and even heat can be awe-inspiring. What is less obvious are the impacts a launch has on our upper atmosphere, or “anthropogenic space weather” as the fancy scientists call it. A pre-print from a recent study on Artemis II’s impact on our atmosphere shows a shockingly wide range of effects.

As a whole, the impact on Artemis comes in waves. Each stage of the Space Launch System performs burns in different parts of the atmosphere, creating increasing ripples as the rocket moves through various layers. The first stage is the largest in terms of thrust, but has limited impact on the ionosphere because of how low it occurred. The 2nd and 3rd stages’ impact, however, was so large that it could’ve sustainably disrupted GPS signals at the time. Waves even traveled through the atmosphere across the entirety of North America in the form of gravity waves. These ionosphere “holes” might not be a major problem now, but it’s something to think about as we ramp up rocket production.

While this research relied on thousands of sensors across the globe, that doesn’t mean you need the same budget to analyze the state of the ionosphere at home.