[kcraske] had a simple plan for their clock build. They wanted a digital clock that was inspired by the appearance of an analog one, and they only wanted to use basic logic, with no microprocessors involved. Ultimately, they achieved just that.
Where today you might build a clock based around a microcontroller and a real-time clock module, or by querying a network time server, [kcraske] is doing all the timekeeping in simpler hardware. The clock is based around a bunch of 74-series logic chips, a CD4060 binary counter IC, and a 32.768 KHz crystal, which is easy to divide down to that critical 1 Hz. Time is displayed on the rings of LEDs around the perimeter of the clock—12 LEDs for hours, and 60 each for minutes and seconds. Inside the rings, the ICs that make up the clock are arranged in a pleasant radial configuration.
One of the hardest parts of a project — assuming it makes it that far — is finishing it up in an aesthetically pleasing manner. As they say, the devil is in the details, wearing Prada. Apparently the devil also has an excellent manicure, because [Tamas Feher] has come up with a way to introduce incredibly detailed decals (down to 0.1 mm) in cheap, repeatable fashion, using a technique borrowed from the local nail salon.
The end result can look quite a bit better than the test piece above.
For those who aren’t in to nail art (which, statistically speaking, is likely to be most of you) there is a common “stamping” technique for putting details onto human fingernails. Nail polish is first applied to voids on a stencil-like plate, then picked up by a smooth silicone stamper, which is then pressed against the nail, reproducing the image that was on the stencil. If that’s clear as mud, there’s a quick demo video embedded bellow.
There’s a common industrial technique that works the same way, which is actually where [Tamas] got the idea. For nail salons and at-home use, there are a huge variety of these stencils commercially available for nail art, but that doesn’t mean you’re likely to find what you want for your project’s front panel.
[Tamas] points out that by using a resin printer to produce the stencil plate, any arbitrary text or symbol can be used. Your logo, labels, whatever. By printing flat to the build plate, you can take advantage of the full resolution of the resin printer — even an older 2 K model would more than suffice here, while higher res like the new 16 K models become the definition of overkill. The prints go quick, as they don’t need any structural thickness: just enough to hold together coming off of the plate, plus enough extra to hold your designs at a 0.15 mm inset. That doesn’t seem very thick, but remember that this only has to hold enough nail polish to be picked up by the stamper.
[Tamas] cautions you have to work fast, as the thin layer of nail polish picked up by the stamper can dry in seconds. You’ll want plenty of nail polish remover (or plain acetone) on hand to clean the stamper once you’ve finished, as well as your stencil. [Tamas] cautions you’ll want to clean it immediately if you ever want to use it again. Good to know.
While this is going outside of the nail art kit’s comfort zone, it might not quite be abuse. It is however a very useful technique to add to our ever-growing quiver of how to make front panels. Besides, we don’t specify you have to literally make components suffer; we just want to see what wild and wonderful substitutions and improvisations you all come up with.
It’s the moment you hard-core hardware nerds have been waiting for: the reveal of the 2025 Hackaday Supercon Communicator Badge. And this year, we’ve outdone ourselves, but that’s thanks to help from stellar collaboration with folks from the community, and help from sponsors. This badge is bigger than the sum of its parts, and we’ve planned for it to be useful for you to hack on in the afterlife. Indeed, as always, you are going to be the final collaborator, so we can’t wait to see what you’ll do with it.
We’re going out – wide out – on a limb and trying to create a dense mesh network of badges talking to each other at Supercon. It’s going to be like a badge-hosted collection of chat rooms, as connected as we can make them without talking over each other.
You look up a topic, say Retro Computing or SAO trading, punch in the channel number on the numpad, and your badge starts listening to everything going on around that topic. But they also listen to everything else, and repeat anything they hear on to their neighbors. Like IRC, but LoRa.
Compared to the old 8-bit Arduinos, it’s incredible how cheap modern microcontrollers like the ESP32 have become. But there are even cheaper options out there if you don’t need that kind of horsepower, and are willing to do a little work yourself, as [atomic14] demonstrates.
The CH32V003 is a dirt cheap microcontroller—which can reportedly be had for as little as 10 cents if you know where to look. It’s not the most powerful chip by any means, boasting just 16 K flash, and 2 K of SRAM. However, it is a 32-bit RISC V machine, and it does run at 48 MHz—giving it a leg up on many 8-bit parts that are still out there.
Surprisingly there aren’t a whole lot of CH32V003 products for the maker market, so if you want to play with it, you’ll probably need to spin up your own boards. [atomic14] does just that, showing us how the chip can be put to good use by turning it into a little musical trinket. It’s a fun demo, and a great way to get to grips with programming on a new microcontroller platform.
It’s hard to get more chiptune than a 10 cent chip beeping its little head off. How could possibly justify spending tens of dollars modding a Game Boy when this exists, even if it sounds like a caffeinated greeting card?
Having a gadget’s battery nestled snugly within the bowels of a device has certain advantages. It finally solves the ‘no batteries included’ problem, and there is no more juggling of AA or AAA cells, nor their respective chargers. Instead each device is paired to that one battery that is happily charged using a standardized USB connector, and suddenly everything is well in the world.
Everything, except for the devices that cannot be used while charging, wireless devices that are suddenly dragging along a wire while charging and which may have charging ports in irrational locations, as well as devices that would work quite well if it wasn’t for that snugly embedded battery that’s now dead, dying, or on fire.
Marrying devices with batteries in this manner effectively means tallying up all the disadvantages of the battery chemistries and their chargers, adding them to the device’s feature list, and limiting their effective lifespan in the process. It also prevents the rapid swapping with fresh batteries, which is why everyone is now lugging chunky powerbanks around instead of spare batteries, and hogging outlets with USB chargers. And the task of finding a replacement for non-standardized pouch cell batteries can prove to be hard or impossible.
Looking at the ‘convenience’ argument from this way makes one wonder whether it is all just marketing that we’re being sold. Especially in light of the looming 2027 EU regulation on internal batteries that is likely to wipe out the existence of built-in batteries with an orbital legal strike. Are we about to say ‘good riddance’ to a terrible idea?
Unless you are over a certain age, you probably take it for granted that electronic gadgets you buy have some FCC marking on them. But it wasn’t always true. [Ernie] submits that the FCC’s regulation of the computer industry was indirectly the result of the success of CB radio in that same time period.
Today, there is a high chance you don’t watch TV directly over the airwaves or even consume audio from a traditional radio station. Even if you do, the signal is increasingly likely to be digital. But only analog radio and TV were highly susceptible to interference. When a professional radio station or the power company interfered with you watching I Love Lucy, you could count on them to resolve it. Even ham radio operators, a small segment of the population, would, in general, graciously help you if their transmissions interfered with your equipment.
Never mind that, in many cases, it was the cheap TV or some other problem on the receiving end. Then there was another source of potential interference: CB radio. At first, you were about as likely to encounter a CB operator as a ham radio operator. But then in the 1970s, CB exploded, becoming a cultural phenomenon, and you can hear what a state it was in by watching the contemporary TV report in the video below.
While the Unihiker K10 is based on the common ESP32 microcontroller, out of the box, it isn’t compatible with standard Arduino libraries. However, [mircemk] had previously figured out how to get the K10 to play nice with the Arduino environment, building a simple light meter as a proof of concept. It just took a little tinkering to get everything playing nicely together, but soon enough, the TFT LCD and a light sensor were playing nicely with the K10 platform.
Moving forward, [mircemk] wanted to unlock more capability, so set about figuring out how to get WiFi and the onboard buttons working within the Arduino environment. A great way to test this was building a clock—the screen would show an analog clock face, the buttons would be used for control, and the WiFi would be used to query an NTP time server to keep it synced up and accurate.
It took a little work, particularly as the buttons are accessed through an external I/O expansion chip, but [mircemk] got there in the end. The clock may not be a particularly advanced project, but the write-up demonstrates how the K10 can readily be used with Arduino libraries for when you’re not interested in leveraging its fancier AI/ML capabilities.
