This week Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start things off with updates on the rapidly approaching Hackaday Europe and the saga of everyone’s favorite 3D printed boat.

From there they’ll cover an impressive method of seeing the world via WiFi, Amazon’s latest changes to the Kindle ecosystem, and an alternate reality in which USB didn’t take over the peripheral world. You’ll also hear about a multi-level hack that brings the joys of Linux into the world of Animal Crossing, 3D printed circuit components, and the imminent release of KiCAD 9.

Stick around until the end to learn about a unique hardened glass from East Germany and the disappointing reality of modern voice control systems.

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Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode 309: Seeing WiFi, A World Without USB, Linux In NES In Animal Crossing” →

The answer is: Elliot Williams, Al Williams, and a dozen or so great hacks. The question?  What do you get this week on the Hackaday podcast? This week’s hacks ran from smart ring hacking, to computerized tattoos. Keyboards, PCBs, and bicycles all make appearances, too.

Be sure to try to guess the “What’s that sound?” You could score a cool Hackaday Podcast T.

For the can’t miss this week, Hackaday talks about how to dispose of the body in outer space and when setting your ship’s clock involved watching a ball drop.

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Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode 307: CNC Tattoos, The Big Chill In Space, And PCB Things” →

It was Dan and Elliot behind the microphones today for a transatlantic look at the week in hacks. There was a bucket of news about AI, kicked off by Deepseek suddenly coming into the zeitgeist and scaring the pants off investors for… reasons? No matter, we’re more interested in the tech anyway, such as a deep dive into deep space communications from a backyard antenna farm that’s carefully calibrated to give the HOA fits. We got down and dirty with capacitors, twice even, and looked at a clever way to stuff two websites into one QR code. It’s all Taylor, all the time on every channel of the FM band, which we don’t recommend you do (for multiple reasons) but it’s nice to know you can. Plus, great kinetic art project, but that tooling deserves a chef’s kiss. Finally, we wrap up with our Can’t Miss articles where Jenny roots for the right to repair, and Al gives us the finger(1).

Download the zero-calorie MP3.

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode 306: Bambu Hacks, AI Strikes Back, John Deere Gets Sued, And All About Capacitors” →

This week, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos joined forces and Wonder-Twin rings to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week.

First up in the news: Big boo to Bambu Labs, who have tried to clarify their new authentication scheme and probably only dug themselves in deeper with their customers.

On What’s That Sound, Kristina didn’t get close at all, but at least had a guess this time. Do know what it is? Let us know, and if you’re right and your number comes up, you can keep warm in a limited edition Hackaday Podcast t-shirt.

Then it’s on to the hacks and such beginning with a rather nice reverse-engineering of the Yamaha PRS-E433 keyboard, which led to a slice of Bad Apple playing on the tiny screen.

After that, we take a look at an NES musical instrument, how to make wires explode with energy, and a really cool space mouse that uses flexures. Finally, we talk about a piece of forgotten Internet history, and a whole bunch of keyboards.

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 305: Caustic Clocks, Practice Bones, And Brick Layers” →

It’s podcast time again, and this week Dan sat down with Elliot for a look back at all the cool hacks we’ve written about. We started off talking about Hackaday Europe, which is coming up in March — seems unlikely that it’s just around the corner, but there it is. There’s also good news: the Hack Chat is back, and we started things off with a bang as Eben Upton stopped by to talk all things Pi. Separately, we talked about fault injection attacks, including how to find the hidden cup of  0xC0FFEE in an RP2350.

We saw a very cool piece of LED jewelry that does a fluid simulation, a direct conversion radio that’s all laid out in front of you, and the scrunchiest mechanical digital clock you’ll ever see. We saw blinkenlights for blinkenlights’ sake, all the ways to put threads in your prints, and how to ditch to coax and wire up your antennas with Cat 6 cable. Plus, it’s an Al Williams twofer in the Can’t-Miss Articles, with a look back at life before GPS and how you can tune into digital ham radio, no radio required.

Download the zero-calorie MP3.

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode 304: Glitching The RP2350, Sim Sim Sim, And A Scrunchie Clock” →

As the holiday party season fades away into memory and we get into the swing of the new year, Elliot Williams is joined on the Hackaday Podcast by Jenny List for a roundup of what’s cool in the world of Hackaday. In the news this week, who read the small print and noticed that Benchy has a non-commercial licence? As the takedown notices for Benchy derivatives fly around, we muse about the different interpretations of open source, and remind listeners to pay attention when they choose how to release their work.

The week gave us enough hacks to get our teeth into, with Elliot descending into the rabbit hole of switch debouncing, and Jenny waxing lyrical over a crystal oscillator. Adding self-driving capability to a 30-year-old Volvo caught our attention too, as did the intriguing Cheap Yellow Display, an ESP32 module that has (almost) everything. Meanwhile in the quick hacks, a chess engine written for a processor architecture implemented entirely in regular expressions impressed us a lot, as did the feat of sending TOSLINK across London over commercial fibre networks. Enjoy the episode, and see you again next week!

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode 303: The Cheap Yellow Display, Self-Driving Under $1000, And Don’t Remix That Benchy” →