This week, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up across the (stupid, lousy) time zones to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week.

Again, no news is good news. On What’s That Sound, Kristina didn’t get close at all, but at least had a guess this time. If you think you can identify the sound amid all the talking, you could win a Hackaday Podcast t-shirt!

After that, it’s on to the hacks and such, beginning with a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation when it comes to a pair of formerly-cloud music players. We take a look at a crazy keyboard hack, some even crazier conductive string, and a perfectly cromulent list of 70 DIY synths on one wild webpage. Finally, we rethink body art with LEDs, and take a look at a couple of printing techniques that are a hundred years or so apart in their invention.

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!

Download in DRM-free MP3 and savor at your leisure.

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode 315: Conductive String Theory, Decloudified Music Players, And Wild Printing Tech” →

It might not be Pi Day anymore, but Elliot and Dan got together for the approximately 100*Pi-th episode of the Podcast to run through the week’s coolest hacks. Ultrasound seemed to be one of the themes, with a deep dive into finding bugs with sonar as well as using sound to cut the cheese — and cakes and pies, too.

The aesthetics of PCBs were much on our minds, too, from full-color graphics on demand to glow-in-the-dark silkscreens. Is automation really needed to embed fiber optics in concrete? Absolutely! How do you put plasma in a bottle? Apparently, with kombucha, Nichrome, and silicone. If you need to manage your M:TG cards, scribble on the walls, or build a mechanical chase light, we’ve got the details. And what exactly is a supercomputer? We can’t define it, but we know one when we see it.

Download the zero-calorie MP3.

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode 314: It’s Pi, But Also PCBs In Living Color And Ultrasonic Everything” →

Elliot does the podcast on the road to Supercon Europe, and Al is in the mood for math and nostalgia this week. Listen in and find out what they were reading on Hackaday this week.

The guys talked about the ESP-32 non-backdoor and battery fires. Then it was on to the hacks.

Self-balancing robots and satellite imaging were the appetizers, but soon they moved on to Kinect cameras in the modern day. Think you can’t travel at the speed of light? Turns out that maybe you already are.

Did you know there was a chatbot in 1957? Well, sort of. For the can’t miss stories: watches monitor your heart and what does the number e really mean?

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!

Download in DRM-free MP3 and stream it on the big speakers.

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode 312: Heart Attacks, The Speed Of Light, And Self-balancing” →