classic hacks

2705 Articles

FlyingCam Is A Sweet DIY Webcam On A Stick

March 12, 2025 by 5 Comments

Imagine you want to monitor a pot on the stove to see if it’s boiling over for just a few minutes, but you don’t want to have a dedicated permanent IP webcam solution in your kitchen. [Sebastian Duell]’s FlyingCam hijacks an IKEA lamp gooseneck to become something you never knew you needed: a wireless camera for short-term random remote observation. It’s a beautiful combination of 3D printing and commercial device re-use, and when paired with his DIY wireless screen, it’s a complete solution.

The guts of this project aren’t critical, or expensive. It’s built around one of those ESP32 single-board webcams, with an added fan, battery pack, antenna, and a power switch. You turn it on, and the AP in the ESP32 fires up, or optionally connects to your network. Point the camera at your target and you’re set, at least if you want to sit by your computer. But [Sebastian] also designed a nice simple remote screen, so you can keep tabs on your spaghetti wherever you roam around the house.

We love the attention to keeping the design simple here, both in form and in function. It’s a one-task device, so it’s important that it be extremely easy to use, and it’s hard to beat just pointing the thing and turning on a switch. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s good looking to boot.

IKEA stuff is cheap and cheerful, but often it’s missing just that one functionality that we want. What good is an air-quality sensor without MQTT logging capability, for instance? Or a standing desk that can’t remember set heights? Get hacking!

A Magic Eye Tube Does All The Work In This Kit

March 11, 2025 by 16 Comments

We’re used to low cost parts and a diversity of electronic functions to choose from in our projects, to the extent that our antecedents would be green with envy. Back when tubes were king, electronics was a much more expensive pursuit with new parts, so designers had to be much more clever in their work. [Thomas Scherrer OZ2CPU] has just such a design on his bench, it’s a Heathkit Capaci-Tester designed in 1959, and we love it for the clever tricks it uses.

It’s typical of Heathkits of this era, with a sturdy chassis and components mounted on tag strips. As the name suggests, it’s a capacitor tester, and it uses a magic eye tube as its display. It’s looking for short circuits, open circuits, and low equivalent resistance, and it achieves this by looking at the loading the device under test places on a 19 MHz oscillator. But here comes that economy of parts; there’s no rectifier so the circuit runs on an AC HT voltage from a transformer, and that magic eye tube performs the task of oscillator as well as display.

He finds it to be in good condition in the video below the break, though he removes a capacitor placed from one of the mains input lines to chassis. It runs, and confirms his test capacitor is still good. It can’t measure the capacitance, but we’re guessing the resourceful engineer would also have constructed a bridge for that.

Continue reading “A Magic Eye Tube Does All The Work In This Kit” →

Red and gold bakelite Philco farm radio on a workbench

Hacking A Heavyweight Philco Radio

March 10, 2025 by 6 Comments

There’s something magical about the clunk of a heavy 1950s portable radio – the solid thunk of Bakelite, the warm hum of tubes glowing to life. This is exactly why [Ken’s Lab] took on the restoration of a Philco 52-664, a portable AC/DC radio originally sold for $45 in 1953 (a small fortune back then!). Despite its beat-up exterior and faulty guts, [Ken] methodically restored it to working condition. His video details every crackling capacitor and crusty resistor he replaced, and it’s pure catnip for any hacker with a soft spot for analog tech. Does the name Philco ring a bell? Lately, we did cover the restoration of a 1958 Philco Predicta television.

What sets this radio hack apart? To begin with, [Ken] kept the restoration authentic, repurposing original capacitor cans and using era-appropriate materials – right down to boiling out old electrolytics in his wife’s discarded cooking pot. But, he went further. Lacking the space for modern components, [Ken] fabbed up a custom mounting solution from stiff styrofoam, fibreboard, and all-purpose glue. He even re-routed the B-wiring with creative terminal hacks. It’s a masterclass in patience, precision, and resourcefulness.

If this tickles your inner tinkerer, don’t miss out on the full video. It’s like stepping into a time machine.

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Soviet ZX Spectrum clone on a table

ZX Spectrum, Soviet Style: A 44-IC Clone You Can Build

March 10, 2025 by 12 Comments

If you’ve ever fancied building a ZX Spectrum clone without hunting down ancient ULAs or soldering your way through 60+ chips, [Alex J. Lowry] has just dropped an exciting build. He has recreated the Leningrad-1, a Soviet-built Spectrum clone from 1988, with a refreshingly low component count: 44 off-the-shelf ICs, as he wrote us. That’s less than many modern clones like the Superfo Harlequin, yet without resorting to programmable logic. All schematics, Gerbers, and KiCad files are open-source, listed at the bottom of [Alex]’ build log.

The original Leningrad-1 was designed by Sergey Zonov during the late Soviet era, when cloning Western tech was less about piracy and more about survival. Zonov’s design nailed a sweet spot between affordability and usability, with enough compatibility to run 90-95% of Spectrum software. [Alex]’ replica preserves that spirit, with a few 21st-century tweaks for builders: silkscreened component values, clever PCB stacking with nylon standoffs, and a DIY-friendly mechanical keyboard hack using transparent keycaps.

While Revision 0 still has some quirks – no SCART color output yet, occasional flickering borders with AY sound – [Alex] is planning for further improvements. Inspired to build your own? Read [Alex]’ full project log here.

Dismanteled Hallicrafters radio on workbench

Shortwave Resurrection: A Sticky Switch Fix On A Hallicrafters

March 4, 2025 by 10 Comments

Shortwave radio has a charm all its own: part history, part mystery, and a whole lot of tech nostalgia. The Hallicrafters S-53A is a prime example of mid-century engineering, but when you get your hands on one, chances are it won’t be in mint condition. Which was exactly the case for this restoration project by [Ken’s Lab], where the biggest challenge wasn’t fried capacitors or burned-out tubes, but a stubborn band selector switch that refused to budge.

What made it come to this point? The answer is: time, oxidation, and old-school metal tolerances. Instead of forcing it (and risking a very bad day), [Ken]’s repair involved careful disassembly, a strategic application of lubricant, and a bit of patience. As the switch started to free up, another pleasant surprise emerged: all the tubes were original Hallicrafters stock. A rare find, and a solid reason to get this radio working without unnecessary modifications. Because some day, owning a shortwave radio could be a good decision.

Once powered up, the receiver sprang to life, picking up shortwave stations loud and clear. Hallicrafters’ legendary durability proved itself once before, in this fix that we covered last year. It’s a reminder that sometimes, the best repairs aren’t about drastic changes, but small, well-placed fixes.

What golden oldie did you manage to fix up?

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It’s 2025, And Here’s A New Film Format

March 4, 2025 by 8 Comments

We love camera hacking here at Hackaday, and it’s always fascinating to see new things being done in photography. Something rather special has come our way from [Camerdactyl], who hasn’t merely made a camera, instead he’s created an entirely new analogue film format. Move over 35mm and 120, here’s the RA-4 cartridge!

RA-4 is the colour print chemistry many of you will be familiar with from your holiday snaps back in the day. Normally a negative image is projected onto it from the negative your camera took, and the positive image is developed on the paper as the reverse of that.  It can also be developed as a reversal process similar to slide film, in which the negative image is developed and bleached away leaving an unexposed positive image, which can then be exposed to light and developed to reveal a picture. This means that with carefully chosen colour correction filters it can be shot in a camera to make normal colour prints with this reversal process.

The new film format is a 3D printed cartridge system holding a long roll of RA-4 paper, which slots into a back for standard 5 by 4 inch cameras. He’s also made a modular developing machine for the process, and can get over 100 shots on a roll. A portion of the video below deals with how he wants to release it; since it has taken a huge amount of development resources he intends to release the files to the public in stages as he reaches sales milestones with his work. It’s an unusual strategy that we hope works for him, though we suspect that many camera hackers would be prepared to pay him directly for the files.

Either way, it’s a reminder that there’s still plenty of fun to be had with analogue film, and also that reversal development of RA-4 is possible. Some of us here at Hackaday have been known to hack a few cameras, we guess it’s another one to add to the “one day” list.

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On Sensory Weaver Building

March 2, 2025 by 24 Comments

What is a sensory weaver? [Curiosiate] tells us: “A device which takes sensory data feeds in and converts it in various ways on the body as information streams as though a native sensory input.” As an example, they’ve built one.

This one, called “MK2 Lockpick” is a wrist-mounted array of linear actuators, with a lengthy design/build log to peek into. We don’t get PCB files (blame EasyEDA’s sharing), but we do at least get a schematic and more than enough pictures for anyone interested to reproduce the concept – the levels of bespoke-ness here warrant a new PCB for any newcomers to sensory weaver building, anyway. We also get a story of a proof-of-concept thermal input sensory weaver.  The team even includes a lessons learned da, and plenty of inspiration throughout the posts on the blog.

This kind of tech is getting more and more popular, and we are sure there will be more to come — especially as we keep getting cool new gadgets like linear actuators in form of replacement parts. For instance, the actuators in this sensory weaver are harvested from Samsung S23 smartphones, and you could probably find suitable ones as iPhone replacement parts, too. Looking to start out in this area but want a quick build? Look no further than the venerable compass belt.