Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The MingKwai Typewriter

May 12, 2025 by Kristina Panos 4 Comments

Sometimes, a little goes a long way. I believe that’s the case with this tiny media control bar from [likeablob] that uses an ESP32-C3 Super Mini.

An in-line media control bar with four purple-capped key switch buttons and a knob. — Image by [likeablob] via Hackaday.IO

From left to right you’ve got a meta key that allows double functions for all the other keys. The base functions are play/pause, previous track, and next track while the knob handles volume.

And because it uses this Wi-Fi-enabled microcontroller, it can seamlessly integrate with Home Assistant via ESPHome.

What else is under the hood? Four low-profile Cherry MX Browns and a rotary encoder underneath that nicely-printed knob.

If you want to build one of these for yourself, all the files are available on GitHub including the customizable enclosure which [likeablob] designed with OpenSCAD. Continue reading “Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The MingKwai Typewriter” →

Nebula Mouse with sliced CAD view in the back

Nebula Mouse: The 6-DOF You Build Yourself

May 5, 2025 by Heidi Ulrich 30 Comments

Let’s say your CAD workflow is starving for spatial awareness. Your fingers yearn to push, twist, and orbit – not just click. Enter the Nebula Mouse. A 6-DOF DIY marvel, blending 3D printing, magnets, and microcontroller wizardry into a handheld input device that emulates the revered 3DConnexion SpaceMouse – at a hacker price. It’s wireless, RGB-lit, powered by a chunky 1500 mAh cell, and fully configurable through standard apps. The catch? You print and build it yourself, with a little help of [DoTheDIY]’s design files.

This isn’t some half-baked enclosure on Thingiverse. The Nebula’s internals are crafted with the kind of precision that makes you file plastic for hours just to fit weights correctly. Hall effect sensors track real-world movement in all axes; a Seeed Xiao nRF52840 handles Bluetooth duty. It’s hefty (280 g), intentional, and smartly designed: auto-wake, USB-C, even a diffused LED bezel for night-time geek cred. Just beware that screw lengths matter. Misplace a 20 mm and you’ll hear the soft crack of PCB grief. No open firmware either – you’ll get compiled code only, unlocked per build via Discord.

In short: it’s not open source, but it is deeply open-ended. If your fingers itch after having seen the SpaceMouse teardown of last month, this might be what you’re looking for.

A small mood/busy indicator attached to a laptop.

Personal Traffic Light Stops Them In Their Tracks

December 14, 2024 by Kristina Panos 30 Comments

Working from home can be pretty cool, but if you’re not the only one in the house trying to do it, the whole situation can feel like you’re right back in the office with all those walking, talking distractions. Except they’re in pajamas instead of business casual.

So, what’s the answer? Many times it’s not practical to stop what you’re doing, especially just to communicate that you’re busy. We suppose you could glare at them, put up your hand, or even give a dismissive wave, but a better solution might be this mood signal built by [gokux].

Through a simple web app, you can be red to indicate that you’re super busy, yellow to mean busy-ish, and green for let’s gossip about the cats.

This mood indicator is built on the Seeed Xiao ESP32-C3 and shows the given mood indicator on a small matrix of sixteen WS2812B LEDs. It’s powered by a 600 mAh, 3.7 V battery and a small push button switch. As usual, [gokux] has grade-A instructions for building your own version of this slick solution.

Would you like something more tactile and low-tech? Check out our own [Bob Baddeley]’s free/busy indicator from the lockdown days.

Tiny Motion Detection Alarm Does The Trick

February 24, 2024 by Kristina Panos 6 Comments

If you have mischievous children or forgetful elderly in your life, you might want to build a couple of these tiny motion detection alarms to help keep them out of harm’s way. Maybe you want to keep yourself out of the cookie jar. We say good for you.

But you could always put one of these alarms on a window, a drawer, or anything else you don’t want opened or moved. The MPU6050 3-axis IMU makes sure that any way the chosen item gets jostled, that alarm is going off.

As you may have guessed, there isn’t much more to this build — the brain is a Seeed Xiao ESP32-C3, and there’s a buzzer, a battery, a switch, and a push button to program it.

The cool thing about using an ESP32-C3 is that [gokux] can use these for other things, like performing a task when motion is detected. If you do want to build yourself a couple of these, here are step-by-step instructions.

If you’d rather detect motion in the vicinity, here’s a PIR-based solution.

Swatch Internet-Time Clock Doesn’t Miss A Beat

November 27, 2023 by Kristina Panos 21 Comments

The thing about human invention is that occasionally, two or more people think of an idea around the same time, and it’s difficult to determine who was first. Such is the case with Swatch’s Internet time, which is told in something called “.beats”. Rather than using hours and minutes, the solar day in the .beat system is divided into 1,000 parts equal to one minute in the French Revolutionary decimal time system, or 1 minute and 26.4 seconds of standard time.

Swatch came up with .beats to sell their special line of .beats watches. But they weren’t the only ones to divide the solar day this way. A few months before Swatch’s announcement of .beats time, a Argentinian drummer named [Charly Alberti] came up with the same idea and created a website for it to display the current Internet time of day.

The point of all this is that [Roni Bandini] has created an homage to both .beats and [Charly] in the form of a small clock. The main brain is a Seeed Studio Xiao nRF52840, with a Xiao TFT round display to show the time as well as a tribute to [Charly]. The 3D-printed stand incorporates a cylindrical power source. We think the black and white images, which [Roni] created with Dall-e, look fantastic.

Interestingly enough, the Xiao has no Internet connectivity; the time is set manually via hard-coded variable, and then the display’s RTC keeps track of the seconds and convert them to Internet time. Check out the brief build video after the break.

Interested in regular old metric time? Here’s a modern metric clock.

Continue reading “Swatch Internet-Time Clock Doesn’t Miss A Beat” →