Join us on Wednesday, January 24 at noon Pacific for the X-Ray Investigation Hack Chat with Ahron Wayne!

It’s hard to imagine a world where we didn’t figure out how to use X-rays to peer inside things. Before Röntgen’s discovery that X-rays could penetrate living tissue, doctors had only limited (and often unpleasant) ways to get a look at what was going on inside the human body, and few of us would want to return to those days.

As fantastically useful as X-rays and later computed tomography (CT) became in medicine, it didn’t take too long for other uses for the technology to come along. Non-clinical applications for X-ray and CT abound, including their use in non-invasively exploring relics of immense archaeological value. One recent effort in this space that gained a lot of coverage in the press was the combination of CT imaging and machine learning to read the ink inside carbonized papyrus scrolls from the ruins of Pompeii.

The result was the “Vesuvius Challenge,” where different teams looked for techniques to virtually unwrap the roasted relics. Ahron’s contribution to the project was a little unusual — he bought a used desktop CT scanner, fixed it up, and started experimenting with reading ink from the carbonized remains of simulated papyrus scrolls. In other words, he made some scrolls, cooked them to beyond well-done in the oven, and tried to understand what happens to ink on papyrus that gets blasted by a volcano. If that’s not enough to get you to stop by the Hack Chat when Ahron joins us, we’re not sure what else would be! Suffice it to say we’re pretty excited about what Ahron has to say about DIY CT,  X-rays, collaborative open-source citizen science, and unwrapping the mysteries of Pompeii.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, January 24 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

Featured image: Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Join us on Wednesday, January 17 at noon Pacific for the Neutrino Hunters Hack Chat with Patrick Allison!

It’s a paradox of science that the biggest of equipment is needed to study the smallest of phenomena. The bestiary of subatomic particles often requires the power and dimension of massive accelerators to produce, and caverns crammed with racks full of instruments to monitor their brief but energetic lives. Neutrinos, though, are different. These tiny, nearly massless, neutral particles are abundant in the extreme, zipping through space from sources both natural and artificial and passing through normal matter like it isn’t even there.

That poses a problem: how do you study something that doesn’t interact with the stuff you can make detectors out of? There are tricks that neutrino hunters use, and most of them use very, VERY big instruments to do it. Think enormous tanks of ultrapure water or a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, filled with photomultiplier tubes to watch for the slightest glimmer of Cherenkov radiation as a neutrino passes by.

Neutrino hunting is some of the biggest of Big Science, and getting all the parts to work together takes some special engineering. Patrick Allison has been in the neutrino business for decades, both as a physicist and as the designated guru who keeps all the electronics humming. He’ll join us on the Hack Chat to talk about the neutrino hunting trade, and what it takes to keep the data flowing.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, January 17 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

Featured image: Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Join us on Wednesday, December 20 at noon Pacific for the Superconference Badge Hack Chat with Elliot Williams and Voja Antonic!

There’s a lot to get excited about when October rolls around and you know Supercon is right around the corner. Catching up with old friends, making new ones, hanging out in the alley, catching the talks, and of course the food. But at the top of everyone’s list has to be The Badge. Finding out what cool bit of technology is going to be built into the badge and figuring out exactly how you’re going to hack it once you get your greedy mitts on it — now that’s excitement!

The 2023 Supercon badge was quite a hit, at least judging by all the cool hacks that people came up with. But what exactly went into getting this badge into everyone’s hands? A lot of work, that’s what, along with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. And while there was plenty of work to go around and a lot of shoulders to the wheel, a lot of the work fell to Elliot and Voja. They’re going to be hopping into the last Hack Chat of the year to talk all about this amazing badge, from concept to conference, and all the hellish steps in between.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, December 20 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

Join us on Wednesday, December 6 at noon Pacific for the The Hoarder’s Dilemma Hack Chat with Gabe Emerson!

There’s a lot to be said for the power of a well-stocked junk bin. It’s almost a magical thing, being able to dive into a random box and retrieve just the right part to perform a needful repair or to complete a project without the need to hit the web or hop in the car for a trip to the hardware store. For those who pride themselves on their resourcefulness, it can be a heady experience indeed.

But as with everything, such feats of fix-it come at a price. That little squirt of dopamine that comes from having just the right thing can make your monkey brain fixate on a simple equation: “More stuff is better stuff.” The higher and deeper your stash, the better your chances of having what you need, assuming you can find it, of course. This way lies madness, and perhaps an appearance on a reality TV show.

Is there a better way? It’s hard to say, but we figured it would be a good idea to loop in someone with a lot of experience collecting junk that somehow finds its way into some pretty cool projects. Gabe Emerson runs the popular and aptly named “saveitforparts” channel over on YouTube, and fancies himself an accomplished hoarder. We’d have to agree, given his recent 1,000-mile drive to pick up a used geodesic dome, or his ever-increasing collection of RV satellite dishes, which he somehow puts to good use. His junk collection is pretty epic; he even has a whole piece of property devoted to the larger pieces of his collection, like an entire monorail train. He seems uniquely qualified to discuss the “Hoarder’s Dilemma” and the painful process of deciding what stays and what goes.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, December 6 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

Rescheduled — note new date!

Join us on Wednesday, October 18 at noon Pacific for the Satellite Hunting Hack Chat with Scott Tilley!

From the very first beeps of Sputnik, space has primarily been the domain of nations. It makes sense — for the most part, it takes the resources of a nation to get anything of appreciable size up out of the gravity well we all live in, but more importantly, space is the highest of high ground, and the high ground has always been a place of advantage to occupy. And so a lot of the hardware we’ve sent upstairs in the last 70 years has been in the national interest of this or that country.

A lot of these satellites are — or were, at least — top secret stuff, with classified payloads, poorly characterized orbits, and unknown communications protocols. This can make tracking them from the ground a challenge, but one that’s worth undertaking. Scott Tilley has been hunting for satellites for years, writing about his exploits on the Riddles in the Sky blog and sometimes being featured on Hackaday. After recently putting his skills to work listening in on a solar observation satellite as its orbit takes it close to Earth again, we asked him to stop by the Hack Chat to share what he’s learned about hunting for satellites, both long-lost and intentionally hidden. Join us as we take a virtual trip into orbit to find out just what’s going on up there.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, October 18 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.