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610 Articles

Neural Net Reads The Gas Meter

July 21, 2026 by 19 Comments

In an ideal world, the role of technology would be to make all of our lives easier. And although all the ads suddenly appearing in our smart TVs and gaming systems might make it seem otherwise, some technology can still improve our lives if we work hard at it. For [Cian], that meant training a neural network to read his gas meter so he wouldn’t have to do it himself.

The root issue here is twofold, first that [Cian]’s gas company hasn’t upgraded their own technology to modern, remote-readable meters, and second that the meter can’t be read by a gas employee because it’s hidden in the depths of [Cian]’s basement. This latter fact requires him to delve into Moria-like depths to get to the meter, so the solution here was to place a Raspberry Pi in this location instead. With a camera pointed at the meter, it’s not quite capable of discerning digits on its own so a neural network was trained in order to get accurate readings of the dial. And, finally, since the machine is networked already [Cian] set it up to automatically notify the gas company of its reading so he is now completely out of the loop.

For automating tedious tasks like these, the Raspberry Pi with something like OpenCV as a computer vision tool is a fairly mature platform for light machine learning duties like these. We’ve seen license plate readers as well as neighborhood traffic surveys built on these platforms to help automate human labor away, making our lives easier one single-board computer at a time.

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Hackaday Europe 2026: Project Gigapixel

July 20, 2026 by 10 Comments

There was once a race to put out cameras with ever higher numbers of megapixels to snare customers eager to take the highest quality digital photos. These days, we know that things like optics, processing, and finer qualities of an image sensor are all very important beyond pure resolution. But, for a time, companies behaved as if megapixels mattered over all else.

But what if you could go farther—shooting not millions, but billions of pixels in a single image? That’s precisely what [Yannick Richter] came to Hackaday Europe to talk about, covering his Project Gigapixel build.

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Binaural Microphone On A Budget

May 10, 2026 by 26 Comments

For as many speakers as someone can cram into a surround sound system, humans still (generally) only have two ears to listen to those sounds with. This means that, for recording purposes, it’s possible to create incredibly vivid three-dimensional sounds with just two microphones, provided that there’s an actual physical replica of a human ear attached to each microphone. This helps ensure that all the qualities of the sounds are preserved in a way a real human would experience them, and as [David Green] demonstrates, these systems don’t need to be very expensive.

This build doesn’t just use models of human ears for recording sounds through. The silicone ears are mounted on a styrofoam mannequin head as well, which provides some sound isolation between the two microphones, much like a real human head. The ears are mounted in appropriate locations with the microphones installed inside, and the entire microphone apparatus is positioned on a PVC rig with a camera so that binaural audio will be recorded for anything [David] points it at.

Although he had some issues interfacing two microphones using 19th-century technology instead of soldering everything together, the build still eventually came together, and only for around $70 USD. However, this build is a bit dated now, so prices may have changed by now. It’s still a great way to produce realistic stereo sound without breaking the bank, but it’s not the only way of getting this job done.

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A Raspberry Pi-powered glitch camera, with adjustable glitch.

Easy-ish Glitch Camera? There’s A Pi 4 That

May 8, 2026 by 1 Comment

Usually, when you want to make glitchy images with lots of colors and things, you have to poke around inside a camera and successfully circuit-bend the thing without bricking it. But [sharkbiscuit101] proves that this isn’t necessary, provided you have a Raspberry Pi 4 and a few other components.

Now we don’t have a lot of detail here, but [sharkbiscuit101] is being heavily encouraged to share the relevant files and a component list. What we do know is that the there’s a screen for previewing images, a portable battery, a shutter button, a rotary encoder to dial in the weirdness, and a game pad for controls. Using the script and a slider, you can tweak different aspects of the image to basically break it down in real time. If you find a nifty combination, you can use the rotary encoder to save and then recall presets.

If you’re wondering about the grip, that’s a Sharge battery from the Bezos Barn. Per [sharkbiscuit101], it is a good size, and since Pi 4 doesn’t have a power button, it can be turned on and off at the battery.

Of course, you can always mess with JPGs on a raw, textual level instead, or produce standard photographs with a pinhole camera.

Camera Slider: Build Instead Of Buy Goes Awry

May 4, 2026 by 1 Comment

[TheHyperFix] had a problem. He’d spied a brilliant camera slider, but didn’t want to lay out big money to acquire it. The natural solution? Build one! Only, life is seldom so straightforward.

The plan was straightforward – take an old broken 3D printer, and repurpose its parts to make a camera slider instead. The build started with a aluminium extrusion, some V-slot wheels, and a 3D printed platform to hold the camera. Moving the platform was done via a belt drive, using the stepper motors and some software to tell the original printer controller what to do.

Unfortunately, the early experiments failed when the controller blew up under load. An Arduino was subbed in with a CNC shield, which got things back on track, and [TheHyperFix] had a somewhat functional slider with relatively jerky movement. A tough iterative design process ensued to work out problems with bearings and the Arduino’s pulse limit, among others.

As it stands, the slider is semi-functional, but it’s not quite well behaved enough to use for professional shooting. Still, for a first attempt at electronics prototyping, we think [TheHyperFix] did a pretty solid job. It might not be all there yet, but it’s well on the way, and a great deal was learned in the process.

If you’re trying to build a camera slider in a hurry, you might like to try recreating one of the builds we’ve featured before. Video after the break.

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Three-Axis Camera Slider From 3D Printer Parts

May 3, 2026 by 4 Comments

There’s a great reason 3D printers are made with things like extruded aluminum rails and other commodity, off-the-shelf parts. These things are designed not only for ease of construction and prototyping, but they’re also fairly strong especially given how modular they are. And they are excellent platforms for other projects as well. [CNCDan] has been using plenty of on-hand 3D printer parts to build a three-axis camera slider to film parts of his other projects, and this video documents his build and the latest upgrades to this platform.

After sorting out some issues with underpowered motors by improving their gear ratios, he found that many of the sizes and clearances on the existing platform changed enough that he needed to redo other parts of the carrier, including the mounting plate. He cut a new plate from steel and pressed bearings in, and then started putting together the other axes including a quick release mechanism for his camera. With a camera that weighs about 1.4 kg, getting the motors to move the camera smoothly was its own challenge. He re-worked all of his driver code over the course of a few weeks and eventually got his new system working much better than the original version.

With everything said and done, the camera slider can be controlled wirelessly with a GUI on another computer. Everything runs on an ESP32, and the slider can support other cameras besides his heavier one, including smartphones. He notes that this wasn’t the easiest way to build a project like this, but worked for him eventually because he had the parts and tools on hand to make it work. He’s also put the project files up on a GitHub page for anyone interested. Camera sliders like these have some niche uses as well; take a look at this high-speed camera slider for some examples.

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Photographing The ISS With A Thrift Store Lens Is Challenging

May 3, 2026 by 8 Comments

There are plenty of photos of the International Space Station out there on the Internet, but taking your own from ground level is a special challenge. [saveitforparts] recently decided to attempt this feat using a $15 thrift store lens.

What a setup! The lens is so big it has its own tripod mount.

The cool thing about the digital photography revolution is that there is a lot of old film gear that can be had for cheap. In this case, [saveitforparts] found a 400 mm Sigma XQ lens with a 2x teleconverter for just $14.99. Paired with an adapter, it sat nicely on a Sony NEX-3 digital camera, ready to try and capture the ISS as it passed overhead.

But as you might imagine, aiming at the space station is not a point-and-shoot job. N2YO.com was used to figure out the best time to try and capture it. [saveitforparts] was able to capture the ISS as a white dot as it passed over, but couldn’t quite get enough zoom to really see the Station in detail. He was able to repeat the feat with a Canon camcorder, but the image was still pretty blobby and didn’t show much. Later attempts involved capturing transits as the ISS passed by the Sun, though the orbiting complex mostly appeared as a small speck.

[saveitforparts] did technically capture the ISS, just not closely enough to see much beyond a dot. It’s not the first time we’ve seen this attempted, though! If you try and capture the ISS with something truly ridiculous, like a Game Boy Camera or Kodak Charmera, you are honor-bound to tell us on the tipsline. Continue reading “Photographing The ISS With A Thrift Store Lens Is Challenging” →