Sand Drawing Table Inspired By Sisyphus

June 30, 2025 by Zoe Skyforest 7 Comments

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a figure who was doomed to roll a boulder for eternity as a punishment from the gods. Inspired by this, [Aidan], [Jorge], and [Henry] decided to build a sand-drawing table that endlessly traces out beautiful patterns (or at least, for as long as power is applied). You can watch it go in the video below.

The project was undertaken as part of the trio’s work for the ECE4760 class at Cornell. A Raspberry Pi Pico runs the show, using TMC2209 drivers to command a pair of NEMA17 stepper motors to drag a magnet around beneath the sand. The build is based around a polar coordinate system, with one stepper motor rotating an arm under the table, and another panning the magnet back and forth along its length. This setup is well-suited to the round sand pit on top of the table, made with a laser-cut wooden ring affixed to a thick base plate.

The trio does a great job explaining the hardware and software decisions made, as well as showing off how everything works in great detail. If you desire to build a sand table of your own, you would do well to start here. Or, you could explore some of the many other sand table projects we’ve featured over the years.

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Can Digital Poison Corrupt The Algorithm?

June 27, 2025 by Zoe Skyforest 24 Comments

These days, so much of what we see online is delivered by social media algorithms. The operations of these algorithms are opaque to us; commentators forever speculate as to whether they just show us what they think we want to see, or whether they try to guide our thinking and habits in a given direction. The Digital Poison device from [Lucretia], [Auxence] and [Ramon] aims to twist and bend the algorithm to other ends.

The concept is simple enough. The device consists of a Raspberry Pi 5 operating on a Wi-Fi network. The Pi is set up with scripts to endlessly play one or more select YouTube videos on a loop. The videos aren’t to be watched by anyone; the device merely streams them to rack up play counts and send data to YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. The idea is that as the device plays certain videos, it will skew what YouTube recommends to users sharing the same WiFi network based on perceived viewer behavior.

To achieve subtle influence, the device is built inside an unobtrusive container. The idea being that it could be quietly connected to a given WiFi network to stream endlessly, in turn subtly influencing the view habits of other users on the same network.

It’s difficult to say how well this concept would work in practice. In many cases, sites like YouTube have robust user tracking that feeds into recommendation algorithms. Activity from a random user signed into the same network might not have much of an influence. However, conceptually, it’s quite interesting, and the developers have investigated ways to log the devices operation and compare it to recommendations fed to users on the network. Privacy provisions make this difficult, but it may be possible to pursue further research in this area. Files are on Github for the curious.

Ultimately, algorithms will always be a controversial thing as long as the public can’t see how they work or what they do. If you’re working on any projects of your own in this space, don’t hesitate to let us know!

[Thanks to Asher for the tip!]

Making GameCube Keyboard Controller Work With Animal Crossing

June 26, 2025 by John Elliot V 2 Comments

[Hunter Irving] is a talented hacker with a wicked sense of humor, and he has written in to let us know about his latest project which is to make a GameCube keyboard controller work with Animal Crossing.

This project began simply enough but got very complicated in short order. Initially the goal was to get the GameCube keyboard controller integrated with the game Animal Crossing. The GameCube keyboard controller is a genuine part manufactured and sold by Nintendo but the game Animal Crossing isn’t compatible with this controller. Rather, Animal Crossing has an on-screen keyboard which players can use with a standard controller. [Hunter] found this frustrating to use so he created an adapter which would intercept the keyboard controller protocol and replace it with equivalent “keypresses” from an emulated standard controller.

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Converting An E-Paper Photo Frame Into Weather Map

June 21, 2025 by John Elliot V 6 Comments

Here’s a great hack sent in to us from [Simon]. He uses an e-paper photo frame as a weather map!

By now you are probably aware of e-paper technology, which is very low power tech for displaying images. E-paper only uses energy when it changes its display, it doesn’t draw power to maintain a picture it has already rendered. The particular e-paper used in this example is fairly large (as e-paper goes) and supports color (not just black and white) which is why it’s expensive. For about US$100 you can get a 5.7″ 7-color EPD display with 600 x 448 pixels.

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Build A 400 MHz Logic Analyzer For $35

June 12, 2025 by John Elliot V 16 Comments

What do you do when you’re a starving student and you need a 400 MHz logic analyzer for your digital circuit investigations? As [nanofix] shows in a recent video, you find one that’s available as an open hardware project and build it yourself.

The project, aptly named LogicAnalyzer was developed by [Dr. Gusman] a few years back, and has actually graced these pages in the past. In the video below, [nanofix] concentrates on the mechanics of actually putting the board together with a focus on soldering. The back of the build is the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and the TXU0104 level shifters.

If you’d like to follow along at home, all the build instructions and design files are available on GitHub. For your convenience the Gerber files have been shared at PCBWay

Of course we have heaps of material here at Hackaday covering logic analyzers. If you’re interested in budget options check out $13 Scope And Logic Analyzer Hits 18 Msps or how to build one using a ZX Spectrum! If you’re just getting started with logic analyzers (or if you’re not sure why you should) check out Logic Analyzers: Tapping Into Raspberry Pi Secrets.

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Back To The Future Lunchbox Cyberdeck

June 10, 2025 by John Elliot V 4 Comments

Our hacker [Valve Child] wrote in to let us know about his Back to the Future lunchbox cyberdeck.

Great Scott! This is so awesome. We’re not sure what we should say, or where we should begin. A lot of you wouldn’t have been there, on July 3rd, 1985, nearly forty years ago. But we were there. Oh yes, we were there. On that day the movie Back to the Future was released, along with the hit song from its soundtrack: Huey Lewis & The News – The Power Of Love.

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2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Fort Bawks Is Guarded By Object Detection

June 9, 2025 by Tyler August 5 Comments

One of the difficult things about raising chickens is that you aren’t the only thing that finds them tasty. Foxes, raccoons, hawks — if it can eat meat, it probably wants a bite of your flock. [donutsorelse] wanted to protect his flock and to be able to know when predators were about without staying up all night next to the hen-house. What to do but outsource the role of Chicken Guardian to a Raspberry pi?

Object detection is done using a YOLOv8 model trained on images of the various predators local to [donutorelse]. The model is running on a Raspberry Pi and getting images from a standard webcam. Since the webcam has no low-light capability, the system also has a motion-activated light that’s arguably goes a long way towards spooking predators away itself. To help with the spooking, a speaker module plays specific sound files for each detected predator — presumably different sounds might work better at scaring off different predators.

If that doesn’t work, the system phones home to activate a siren inside [donutorelse]’s house, using a Blues Wireless Notecarrier F as a cellular USB modem. The siren is just a dumb unit; activation is handled via a TP-Link smart plug that’s hooked into [donutorelse]’s custom smart home setup. Presumably the siren cues [donutorelse] to take action against the predator assault on the chickens.

Weirdly enough, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen an AI-enabled chicken coop, but it is the first one to make into our ongoing challenge, which incidentally wraps up today.