storage

72 Articles

Shrinking Blinky As Far As Possible

April 1, 2025 by 39 Comments

Many of us know the basic Blink Arduino sketch, or have coded similar routines on other microcontrollers. Flashing an LED on and off—it doesn’t get much simpler than that. But how big should a blink sketch be? Or more importantly, how small could you get it? [Artful Bytes] decided to find out.

The specific challenge? “Write a program that runs on a microcontroller and blinks an LED. The ON and OFF times should be as close to 1000 ms as possible.” The challenge was undertaken using a NUCLEO-L432KC Cortex-M4 with 256 K of flash and 64 K of RAM.

We won’t spoil the full challenge, but it starts out with an incredibly inefficient AI & cloud solution. [Artful Bytes] then simplifies by switching to an RTOS approach, before slimming down further with C, assembly, and then machine code. The challenge was to shrink the microcontroller code as much as possible. However, you might notice the title of the video is “I Shrunk Blinky to 0 Bytes.” As it turns out, if you eliminate the digital code-running hardware entirely… you can still blink an LED with analog hardware. So, yes. 0 bytes is possible.

We’ve featured the world’s smallest blinky before, too, but in a physical sense rather than with regards to code size.

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ice forming on surface with plus and minus pole

The Coolest Batteries You’ve Never Heard Of

March 9, 2025 by 55 Comments

Imagine cooling your building with the same principle that kept Victorian-era icehouses stocked with lake-frozen blocks, but in modern form. That’s the idea behind ice batteries, a clever energy storage hack that’s been quietly slashing cooling costs across commercial buildings. The invention works by freezing water when energy is cheap, and using that stored cold later, they turn major power hogs (air conditioning, we’re looking at you) into more efficient, cost-effective systems.

Pioneers like Nostromo Energy and Ice Energy are refining the tech. Nostromo’s IceBrick modules pack 25 kWh of cooling capacity each, install on rooftops, and cost around $250 per kWh—about half the price of lithium-ion storage. Ice Energy’s Ice Bear 40 integrates with HVAC systems, shifting up to 95% of peak cooling demand to off-peak hours. And for homes, the Ice Bear 20 replaces traditional AC units while doubling as a thermal battery.

Unlike lithium-ion, ice batteries don’t degrade chemically – their water is endlessly reusable. Combining the technology with this hack, it’s even possible in environments where water is scarce. But the trade-off? They only store cooling energy. No frozen kilowatts for your lightbulbs, just an efficient way to handle the biggest energy drain in most buildings.

Could ice batteries help decentralize energy storage? They’re already proving their worth in high-demand areas like California and Texas. Read the full report here and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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NEMA Releases Standard For Vehicle-to-Grid Applications

February 22, 2025 by 70 Comments

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) has been hailed as one of the greatest advantages of electrifying transportation, but has so far remained mostly in the lab. Hoping to move things forward, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) has released the Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) Power Export Permitting Standard.

The new standards will allow vehicle manufacturers and charger (EVSE) suppliers to have a unified blueprint for sending power back and forth to the grid or the home, which has been a bit of a stumbling block so far toward adoption of a seemingly simple, but not easy, technology. As renewables make up a larger percentage of the grid, using the increasing number of EVs on the road as battery backup is a convenient solution.

While the standard will simplify the technology side of bidirectional charging, getting vehicle owners to opt into backing up the grid will depend on utilities and regulators developing attractive remuneration plans. Unfortunately, the standard itself is paywalled, but NEMA says the standard “could put money back in electric vehicle owners’ pockets by making it easier for cars to store energy at night or when turned off and then sell power back to grids at a profit during peak hours.”

We’ve covered some of the challenges and opportunities of V2G systems in the past and if you want something a little smaller scale, how about using a battery that was once in a vehicle to backup your own home?

Organizing Components, The Easy Way

January 3, 2025 by 50 Comments

There’s an old joke: What do you get someone who has everything? A place to put it. For hackers like [Christian], everything is a hoard of priceless electronic components. His solution is using small zipper bags, either regular plastic or anti-static. These attach using hook and loop fastener to plastic binder sheets which then live in a binder. Combined with some custom printed labels and a few other tricks, it makes for a nice system, as you can see in the video below.

Honestly, we’ve done something similar before, using a binder with little pockets, but the bag and custom labels beat our system. He even has QR codes on some of them to locate data sheets easily. Seems like a barcode for inventory management might have been good, too.

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Hackaday Links: November 17, 2024

November 17, 2024 by 18 Comments

A couple of weeks back, we covered an interesting method for prototyping PCBs using a modified CNC mill to 3D print solder onto a blank FR4 substrate. The video showing this process generated a lot of interest and no fewer than 20 tips to the Hackaday tips line, which continued to come in dribs and drabs this week. In a world where low-cost, fast-turn PCB fabs exist, the amount of effort that went into this method makes little sense, and readers certainly made that known in the comments section. Given that the blokes who pulled this off are gearheads with no hobby electronics background, it kind of made their approach a little more understandable, but it still left a ton of practical questions about how they pulled it off. And now a new video from the aptly named Bad Obsession Motorsports attempts to explain what went on behind the scenes.

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Bright green shelving units suspended with silver hardware from a black frame. They are against a dark wooden wall.

Sliding Shelves Supersize Storage

August 2, 2024 by 23 Comments

Organizing things in your home or workshop is a constant battle for some of us. Until we have access to a Tardis or bag of holding, maybe the next best thing is a sliding shelf system.

[HAXMAN] found a great set of sliding shelves online, but after recovering from sticker shock decided he could build something similar for much less. The frame for the shelving was built from 4×4 posts, some 2x4s, and strut channel track welded to steel 2x6s. Aluminum plates bolted to strut trolleys support the weight of the shelving units he built from plywood.

Everything was painted with a multi-material paint formulated for covering both wood and metal so everything has a uniform appearance. We love the bright shelving offset by the more classic black appearance of the rack. Just because its storage, doesn’t mean it has to look boring!

Looking for more clever storage solutions? You might like your to make your own shadow boards, favor Gridfinity, or just wonder what other readers do to organize their electronic odds and ends.
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Thrift Store CD Rack Turns Into Small Parts Storage Playground

March 17, 2024 by 15 Comments

What in the world could an accessory for an obsolete audio medium possibly have to do with keeping all your unruly bits and pieces in order? First of all, we’re not sure the CD is quite dead yet; we’ve got about a thousand of them packed away somewhere, and we’re pretty sure they’ll be back in style again one of these days. Until then, though, the lowly CD rack might be just what you need to get your shop under control.

As [Chris Borge] relates the story, he stumbled over this CD rack at a thrift sale and quickly realized its potential. All it took was some quick design work and a bit of 3D printing. Okay, a lot of 3D printing, including some large, flat expanses for the drawer bottoms, which can be a problem to print reliably. His solution was simple but clever: pause the print and insert a piece of stiff card stock to act as the drawer bottom before continuing to print the sides. This worked well but presented an adhesion problem later when he tried to print some drawer dividers, so those were printed as a separate job and inserted later.

Sadly, [Chris] notes that the CD format is not quite Gridfinity compatible, but that’s not a deal breaker. He also doesn’t provide any build files, but none are really necessary. Once you’ve got the basic footprint, what you do with your drawers is largely dependent on what you’ve got to store. The video below has a lot of ideas for what’s possible, but honestly, we’re looking at all those little parts assortment kits from Bojack and Hilitchi piled up in a drawer and just dreaming about the possibilities here. Add a voice-activated, LED inventory locator, and you’d really have something. Off to the thrift store!

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