power

147 Articles

A Complex Way To Push A Button

July 31, 2026 by 17 Comments

We’ve likely all looked at a simple problem in our lives and thought that it would be an easy fix, only to realize that the project is enormously more complicated than we first realized. Whether that’s starting a home improvement project, doing a quick repair to a bicycle or car, or trying to install an obscure piece of software on a Linux machine, the amount of time we budget for these tasks often ends up woefully underestimated. [Oscar]’s night light needs to have its brightness set every night, and it seems easy enough to get a microcontroller to automate that, right?

Well, upon opening the small device, the first issue is that there is no labeling on any of the parts, so simply adding a jumper on to existing microcontroller pins without damaging anything wouldn’t easily be possible. Adding a secondary microcontroller is the next logical step, but the power supply in the night light is extremely underpowered so using even the smallest Raspberry Pi or off-the-shelf Arduino was out of the question too. [Oscar] instead chose an ATtiny85, which solves the power requirement issue, but these are a bit more of a challenge to program without a USB device. From there, it needs a transistor wired in to the circuit to actually push the button for him, plus a few support resistors, so [Oscar] actually had a PCB custom-built to hold all of these components.

Even after all of that, the space within the night light enclosure made installing the PCB a challenge, but in the end he has a device which, when his home automation system powers on the plug for the nightlight, automatically boots up and pushes the switch the required number of times and then puts itself to sleep. We’d call that a success even after the colossal effort getting this inexpensive, small light working the way he wanted. There are some other low-powered solutions for problems like these too, as long as being battery-powered isn’t a dealbreaker.

2026 Green Powered Challenge: Adding Low-Power Sleep To Microcontrollers

April 27, 2026 by 19 Comments

When building a project to operate on battery power for long periods of time, having a microcontroller with a reliable and extremely low-power sleep mode is critical. When processing power isn’t needed, it should be able to wait around using almost no energy until an interrupt triggers it. Once triggered, the CPU performs its tasks and then puts itself right back to sleep, making sure the battery lasts as long as possible. Unfortunately, not every microcontroller has sleep capabilities or has an acceptably low level of power use for maximizing battery life. For these systems, a tool like this power manager might come in handy.

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Comparing The Power Usage Of 12 VDC And 240 VAC Kettles

March 26, 2026 by 40 Comments

If you have a 12 VDC power system, like the battery of a PV solar system or car, would it be more efficient to boil water for that cup of tea with that 12V straight from the battery, or use a 240 VAC mains kettle via a ~90% efficient inverter instead? That’s the question that [Cahn] decided to answer experimentally, using a bulky 3 kW inverter and a collection of electric kettles.

Although the used amount of 500 mL of water is boiled much faster in the 2,200 Watt mains kettle than in the 150 and 350 Watt low-voltage kettles, this obvious difference is somewhat irrelevant if you’re only concerned with efficiency. To measure the power used a Victron smart shunt was used with each run, keeping in mind that a perfect efficiency for heating 500 mL from room temperature to boiling is around 43-44 Wh.

With two runs per kettle, the 240 VAC kettle used 65-70 Wh. The first ‘150 Watt’ kettle pulled nearly 200 Watt to boil the water after about 20 minutes, using 62-64 Wh. The second ‘150 Watt’ kettle pulled around 180 Watt, took 23-25 minutes and used 68-74 Wh. Finally, the ‘350 Watt’ kettle drew over 420 Watt and used 50-56  Wh in just over 8 minutes.

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Power Control For A Busy Workbench

March 10, 2026 by 34 Comments

Who among us does not have a plethora of mains-powered devices on their workbench, and a consequent mess of power strips to run them all? [Jeroen Brinkman] made his more controllable with a multi-way switch box.

At first sight it’s a bank of toggle switches, one for each socket. But this is far more than a wiring job, because of course there are a couple of microcontrollers involved, and each of those switches ultimately controls a relay. There are also status LEDs for each socket, and a master switch to bring them all down. Arduino code is provided, so you can build one too if you want to.

We like the idea of a handy power strip controller, and especially the master switch with the inherent state memory provided by the switches. This could find a home on a Hackaday bench, and we suspect on many others too. It’s by no means the first power strip with brains we’ve seen, but most others have been aimed at the home instead.

The Death Of Baseload And Similar Grid Tropes

February 12, 2026 by 87 Comments

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in or near people who are really interested in energy policies will have heard proclamations such as that ‘baseload is dead’ and the sorting of energy sources by parameters like their levelized cost of energy (LCoE) and merit order. Another thing that one may have noticed here is that this is also an area where debates and arguments can get pretty heated.

The confusing thing is that depending on where you look, you will find wildly different claims. This raises many questions, not only about where the actual truth lies, but also about the fundamentals. Within a statement such as that ‘baseload is dead’ there lie a lot of unanswered questions, such as what baseload actually is, and why it has to die.

Upon exploring these topics we quickly drown in terms like ‘load-following’ and ‘dispatchable power’, all of which are part of a healthy grid, but which to the average person sound as logical and easy to follow as a discussion on stock trading, with a similar level of mysticism. Let’s fix that.

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Hackaday Links: December 7, 2025

December 7, 2025 by 17 Comments

We stumbled upon a story this week that really raised our eyebrows and made us wonder if we were missing something. The gist of the story is that U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who has degrees in both electrical and mechanical engineering, has floated the idea of using the nation’s fleet of emergency backup generators to reduce the need to build the dozens of new power plants needed to fuel the AI data center building binge. The full story looks to be a Bloomberg exclusive and thus behind a paywall — hey, you don’t get to be a centibillionaire by giving stuff away, you know — so we might be missing some vital details, but this sounds pretty stupid to us.

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Don’t Turn That Old System On, First Take It Apart

July 21, 2025 by 35 Comments

When you first get your hands on an old piece of equipment, regardless of whether it’s an old PC or some lab equipment, there is often the temptation to stick a power lead into it and see what the happy electrons make it do. Although often this will work out fine, there are many reasons why this is a terrible idea. As many people have found out by now, you can be met by the wonderful smell of a Rifa capacitor blowing smoke in the power supply, or by fascinatingly dangly damaged power wires, as the [Retro Hack Shack] on YouTube found recently in an old Gateway PC.

Fortunately, this video is a public service announcement and a demonstration of why you should always follow the sage advice of “Don’t turn it on, take it apart”. Inside this Gateway 2000 PC from 1999 lurked a cut audio cable, which wasn’t terribly concerning. The problem was also a Molex connector that had at some point been violently ripped off, leaving exposed wiring inside the case. The connector and the rest of the wiring were still found in the HDD.

Other wires were also damaged, making it clear that the previous owner had tried and failed to remove some connectors, including the front panel I/O wiring. Thankfully, this PC was first torn apart so that the damage could be repaired, but it shows just how easily a ‘quick power-on check’ can turn into something very unpleasant and smelly.

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