Hackaday editors Tom Nardi and Elliot Williams bring you up to speed on the most interesting stories of the week. Hackaday’s Remoticon and Germany’s Chaos Communication Congress are virtual again this year, but the Vintage Computer Festival will be live. We’ll also talk about ocean-going drones, the recreation of an old-school light bulb with a potato peeler, cheap smart watches with hidden potential, and sanding down shady modules to figure out just how you’ve been scammed. Stick around for some thoughts on turning real-estate signs into a handy prototyping material, and to find out why some very impressive Soviet tech is getting the boot from America’s space program.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

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Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast 139: Furter Burner, Glowing Potato Peeler, Hacked Smartwatch, And The Last Atlas” →

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys peruse the great hardware hacks of the past week. There’s a robot walker platform that wirelessly offloads motor control planning to a computer. We take a look at automating your fishing boat with a trolling motor upgrade, building the Hoover dam in your back yard, and playing Holst’s Planets on an army of Arduini. Make sure you stick around until the end as we stroll through distant memories of Gopher, and peek inside the parking garages of the sea.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

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Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast 138: Breakin’ Bluetooth, Doritos Rockets, Wireless Robots, And Autonomous Trolling” →

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams marvel at a week packed full of great hardware hacks. Do you think the engineers who built the earliest home computers knew that their work would be dissected decades later for conference talks full of people hungry to learn the secret sauce? The only thing better than the actual engineering of the Commodore floppy drive is the care with which the ultimate hardware talk unpacks it all! We look upon a couple of EV hacks — one that replaces the inverter in a Leaf and the other details the design improvements to Telsa’s self-hiding door handles. Before we get to medieval surgery and USB-C power delivery, we stop for a look at a way to take snapshots of Game Boy gameplay and an electric plane engine that looks radial but is all gears.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

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Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast 137: Maximum Power Point, Electric Car Hacking, Commodore Drive Confidential, And Tesla Handles” →

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys look back on a great week of hardware hacking. What a time to be alive when you can use open source tools to decode signals from a probe that has long since left our solar system! We admire two dirt-cheap builds, one to measure current draw in mains power, another to mill small parts with great precision for only a few bucks. A display built from a few hundred 7-segment modules begs the question: who says pixels need to be the same size? We jaw on the concept of autonomous electric cargo ships, and marvel at the challenges of hitting an asteroid with a space probe. All that and we didn’t even mention using GLaDOS as a personal assistant robot, but that’s on the docket too!

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (60 MB or so.)

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast 136: Smacking Asteroids, Decoding Voyager, Milling Cheap, And PS5 Triggered” →

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Tom Nardi go over the best stories and hacks from the previous week, covering everything from sidestepping rockets to homebrew OLED displays. We’ll cover an incredible attempt to really emulate the Nintendo Game Boy, low-cost injection molding of rubbery parts, a tube full of hypersonic shockwaves, and how a hacked depth finder and a rowboat can help chart those local rivers and lakes that usually don’t get any bathymetric love. Plus, even though he’s on vacation this week, Elliot has left us with a ruddy mysterious song to try and identify.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (52 MB)

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast 135: Three Rocket Hacks, All The Game Boy Gates, And Depth Sounding From A Rowboat” →

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys are joined by contributing editor Jenny List to talk about her adventure at Born Hack last week. We also discuss the many capacitor values that go into regen receivers, the quest for a Raspberry Pi handheld that includes a slide-out keyboard, and how capacitive touch might make mice (mouses?) and touchpads better. There’s a deep dive into 3D printer bed leveling, a junk-box metal detector build, and an ambisonic microphone which can listen any-which-way.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (60 MB or so.)

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast 134: Hackers Camping, Metal Detecting, 360° Hearing, And Pocket Computing” →