The AirPort Express Still Works In 2025 Thanks To Apple’s Ongoing Support

November 24, 2025 by Lewin Day 6 Comments

Apple was all-in on WiFi from the beginning, launching the AirPort line of products to much fanfare in 1999. In 2004, along came the AirPort Express—a fully-functional router the size of a laptop charger, that offered audio streaming to boot. As [schvabek] found out that while a lot of older Apple gear has long ago been deprecated, the AirPort Express is still very much supported and functional to this day!

Generally, you wouldn’t expect to plug in a 20-year-old Apple accessory and have it work with the company’s modern hardware. However, upon slotting the AirPort Express into a wall socket and starting the initialization process, [schvabek] noted that it was detected perfectly well by his post-2020 Macs. Only, there was a small problem—the configuration process would always stall out before completion.

Thankfully, there was a simple remedy. [schvabek] found that he could connect to the AirPort Express with his classic white plastic MacBook and complete the process. From there, he was astonished that Apple’s servers let him pull down a firmware update for a device from 2004. After that upgrade, the AirPort Express was fully functional with all his modern Apple gear. He could readily stream audio from his iPhone and MacBooks with no compatibility issues whatsoever.

It’s nice to see Apple still supporting this ancient hardware to this day. It’s a nice contrast when companies like Sonos are more than happy to brick thousands of old devices just for the sake of progress. Continue reading “The AirPort Express Still Works In 2025 Thanks To Apple’s Ongoing Support” →

Robot Phone Home…Or Else

October 24, 2025 by Al Williams 64 Comments

We would have enjoyed [Harishankar’s] tear down of a robot vacuum cleaner, even if it didn’t have a savage twist at the end. Turns out, the company deliberately bricked his smart vacuum.

Like many of us, [Harishankar] is suspicious of devices beaming data back to their makers. He noted a new vacuum cleaner was pinging a few IP address, including one that was spitting out logging or telemetry data frequently. Of course, he had the ability to block the IP address which he did. End of story, right?

No. After a few days of working perfectly, the robot wouldn’t turn on. He returned it under warranty, but the company declared it worked fine. They returned it and, indeed, it was working. A few days later, it quit again. This started a cycle of returning the device where it would work, it would come home and work for a few days, then quit again.

You can probably guess where this is going, but to be fair, we gave you a big hint. The fact that it would work for days after blocking the IP address wouldn’t seem like a smoking gun in real time.

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Entering The Wild World Of Power Over Ethernet

October 11, 2025 by Maya Posch 50 Comments

As Ethernet became the world-wide standard for wired networking, there was one nagging problem. You already have to plug in the network cable. But then you have to also plug in a power cable. That power cable needs to be long enough. And have the right plug on it for your country. And provide the right current and voltage. That’s how Power over Ethernet (PoE) was born, first in a veritable Wild West of proprietary standards and passive injectors, then in a standardized process. Recently [T. K. Hareendran] wrote a primer on PoE, with more of a DIY intro focus, including some favorite PoE PD (powered device) chips to use in your own design.

You can still totally use passive PoE if that’s your jam, and you have full control over the network and any connected devices. This would allow you to, for example, power your SBCs for a couple of bucks, although for adding PoE to your Mac Mini you may want to look at some more refined options, if only as a safety precaution.

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QUIC! Jump To User Space!

October 10, 2025 by Al Williams 19 Comments

Everyone knows that Weird Al lampooned computers in a famous parody song (It’s All About the Pentiums). But if you want more hardcore (including more hardcore language, so if you are offended by rap music-style explicit lyrics, maybe don’t look this up), you probably want “Kill Dash 9” by Monzy. There’s a line in that song about “You thought the seven-layer model referred to a burrito.” In fact, it refers to how networking applications operate, and it is so ingrained that you don’t even hear about it much these days. But as [Codemia] points out, QUIC aims to disrupt the model, and for good reason.

Historically, your application (at layer 7) interacts with the network through other layers like the presentation layer and session layer. At layer 4, though, there is the transport layer where two names come into play: TCP and UDP. Generally, UDP is useful where you want to send data and you don’t expect the system to do much. Data might show up at its destination. Or not. Or it might show up multiple times. It might show up in the wrong order. TCP solves all that, but you have little control over how it does that.

When things are congested, there are different strategies TCP can use, but changing them can be difficult. That’s where QUIC comes in. It is like a user-space TCP layer built over a UDP transport. There are a lot of advantages to that, and if you want to know more, or even just want a good overview of network congestion control mitigations, check the post out.

If you want to know more about congestion control, catch a wave.

Meshtastic: A Tale Of Two Cities

October 9, 2025 by Tom Nardi 84 Comments

If I’m honest with myself, I don’t really need access to an off-grid, fault-tolerant, mesh network like Meshtastic. The weather here in New Jersey isn’t quite so dynamic that there’s any great chance the local infrastructure will be knocked offline, and while I do value my privacy as much as any other self-respecting hacker, there’s nothing in my chats that’s sensitive enough that it needs to be done off the Internet.

But damn it, do I want it. The idea that everyday citizens of all walks of life are organizing and building out their own communications network with DIY hardware and open source software is incredibly exciting to me. It’s like the best parts of a cyberpunk novel, without all the cybernetic implants, pollution, and over-reaching megacorps. Well, we’ve got those last two, but you know what I mean.

Meshtastic maps are never exhaustive, but this gives an idea of node density in Philly versus surrounding area.

Even though I found the Meshtastic concept appealing, my seemingly infinite backlog of projects kept me from getting involved until relatively recently. It wasn’t until I got my hands on the Hacker Pager that my passing interest turned into a full blown obsession. But it’s perhaps not for the reason you might think. Traveling around to different East Coast events with the device in my bag, it would happily chirp away when within range of Philadelphia or New York, but then fall silent again once I got home. While I’d get the occasional notification of a nearby node, my area had nothing like the robust and active mesh networks found in those cities.

Well, they say you should be the change you want to see in the world, so I decided to do something about it. Obviously I wouldn’t be able to build up an entire network by myself, but I figured that if I started standing up some nodes, others might notice and follow suit. It was around this time that Seeed Studio introduced the SenseCAP Solar node, which looked like a good way to get started. So I bought two of them with the idea of putting one on my house and the other on my parent’s place down the shore.

The results weren’t quite what I expected, but it’s certainly been an interesting experience so far, and today I’m even more eager to build up the mesh than I was in the beginning.

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A Lorenz Teletype Shows Us Its Secrets

October 7, 2025 by Jenny List 23 Comments

When we use the command line on Linux, we often refer to it as a terminal. It’s a word with a past invoking images of serial terminals, rows of green-screened machines hooked up to a central computer somewhere. Those in turn were electronic versions of mechanical teletypes, and it’s one of these machines we’re bringing you today. [DipDoT] has a Lorenz teletype from the 1950s, and he’s taking us through servicing and cleaning it, eventually showing us its inner workings.

The machine in question had been in storage for many years, but remained in good condition. To be this long out of use though meant it needed a thorough clean, so he sets about oiling the many hundreds of maintenance points listed in a Lorenz manual. It’s a pleasant surprise for us to see keyboard and printer unit come away from the chassis for servicing so easily, and by stepping it through its operation step by step we can see how it works in detail. It even incorporates an identifier key — think of it as a mechanical ROM that stores a sequence of letters — which leads him to believe it may have come from a New York news office. The video is below the break, and makes for an interesting watch.

He’s going to use it with a relay computer, but if you don’t have one of those there are more modern ways to do it.

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Using The 74HC595 Shift Register To Drive 7-Segment Displays

August 21, 2025 by John Elliot V 19 Comments

In a recent video our hacker [Electronic Wizard] introduces the 74HC595 shift register and explains how to use it to drive 7-segment displays.

[Electronic Wizard] explains that understanding how to apply the 74HC595 can increase the quality of your projects and also help keep the demands on the number of pins from your microcontroller to manageable levels. If you’re interested in the gory details you can find a PDF datasheet for the 74HC595 such as this one from Texas Instruments.

[Electronic Wizard] explains further that a shift register is like a small one byte memory where its data is directly available on its eight output pins, no input address required. When you pulse the clock pin (CLK) each bit in the eight bit memory shifts right one bit, making room for a new bit on the left. The bits that fall off the right hand side can daisy chain into another 74HC595 going out on pin 9 and coming in on pin 14.

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