It’s a hot one at both microphones, as Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos wilt in the heat with ice lollies and freezer packs. But still, we persevered long enough to make a podcast.

In Hackaday news, Supercon is on! It’s going down in Pasadena, California, but the talks will be somewhere slightly larger, with a courtyard instead of an alley. Get your talk proposals in now! In other Hackaday news, we still have our Frikkin’ Lasers Contest going on until Thursday, July 23rd.

Interestingly enough, we got a comment on an older article from none other than [Michael J. Van de Graaff], whose grandfather invented the Van de Graff generator and was “quite upset” when plans for a DIY version appeared in Scientific American. And finally, Google Earth’s desktop client is being discontinued, but you can still travel the globe on your phone, or in your PC’s browser.

Not only do we have another triple mailbag this week, we have another failed attempt at guessing the Sound by Kristina. However, [Alexander] knew that it was CD-ROM drive a-spinnin’. Speaking of What’s That Sound, be sure to let us know your ideas for the new prize.

That sounds like a lot of preamble, but we quickly get to a full slate of hacks, a couple of which are pretty retro in retrospect. Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

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Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode 378: C Coders, Ceramic Printers, And Shadow Archives” →

This week’s podcast sees Elliot joined by Jenny List, as both suffer silently in the European summer heat because the sound of a desk fan would come over on the recording.

A stand-out hack of the week comes from [Bitluni], whose GPU made from thousands of cheap microcontrollers is on a scale we’ve never seen before. It’s an amazing project in itself, but the manufacturing and power consumption issues of so many processors running at the same time make for a discussion of their own.

Otherwise, we have diecasting on the bench, an impressive achievement by any measure, a Raman spectrometer, and an open source take on something like a Kei truck. In quick hacks there’s a dicussion of soldering versus crimping for high current connectors, and neon tubes used as digital logic in an organ. The recording finishes with a discussion of 7-segment display history, and whether an engineering education teaches design for manufacture.

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Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode Ep 377: Parallel Pixels, Wiggly Consoles, And Seven Segments” →

Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Al Williams were in a retro mood this week. There was a new ‘486 computer, a new mechanical TV, and a USB stick with a magnetic personality. Can you watch YouTube on a Game Boy? Maybe.

For the can’t miss articles, this week, Elliot and Al reflected on the awkward phase of 3D printers when they transformed from being expensive commercial machines, to where they are now. Meanwhile, Al was interested in how airplanes know how fast they are going. Along the way, there were musical hacks, precision machine tools, and a quantum 8 ball.

Check out the links if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments! Or write or record something for our mailbag segment.

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Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode 376: Modern Retro Projects, Retro Modern Projects, And The Teen Years For 3D Printing” →

In this episode, Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start off by taking a trip down the Raspberry Pi memory lane and then tackle a fresh pile of listener mail. The discussion moves on to hacking bike counter, homebrew upgrades to the Nintendo Entertainment System, and building RAM from whats in the parts bin. You’ll hear about the latest drop-in upgrade for a classic Casio watch, hosting light bulbs that host subversive literature, and loading Wii U games from a weird disk drive from the 1980s. They’ll wrap things up with a dive into the evolving portrayals of brilliant rebels in media, and all the things you can do with a cheap router.

Check out the links if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

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Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode 375: Rebuilding Tech On Our Terms And The Hero Nerd” →