Hackaday Podcast

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams weigh the hacking gold found across the internet this week. We can't get over the epic adventure that went into making a battery from 100 pounds of potatoes. It turns out you don't need Internet for video conferencing as long as you're within a coupe of kilometers of everyone else. And move over toner transer method, resin printers want a shot at at-home PCB etching. We'll take a look at what the Tesla selfie cam is doing under the hood, and lose our marbles over a ball-bearing segment clock that's defying gravity. Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=442391

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys riff on the hardware hacks that took the Internet by storm this week. Machining siege weapons out of aluminum? If they can throw a tennis ball at 180 mph, yes please! Welding aficionados will love to see the Hero Engine come together. We dive into the high-efficiency game of hypermiling, and spin up the polarizing topic of the Sun Cycle. The episode wouldn't be complete without hearing what the game of Go sounds like as a loop sequencer, and how a variable speed cassette player can be abused for the benefit of MIDI lovers the world over. Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=435715

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams dish up a hot slice of the week's hardware hacks. We feature a lot of clocks on Hackaday, but few can compare to the mechanical engineering elegance of the band-saw-blade-based ratcheting clock we swoon over on this week's show. We've found a superb use of a six-pin microcontroller, peek in on tire (or is that tyre) wear particles, and hear the sounds of 500 mph RC gliders. Turns out 3D printers are the primordial ooze for both pumping water and positioning cameras. This episode comes to a close by getting stressed out over concrete. Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=434942

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams take Mike Szczys peruse the world of hacks. There was so much news this week that we lead off the show with a rundown to catch you up. Yet there is still no shortage of hardware hacks, with prosthetic legs for your rubber ducky, a RC cart that channels the spirit of Formula 1, and a project that brings 80's video conferencing hardware to Zoom. There's phosphine gas on Venus and unlimited hacking projects inside your guitar. The week wouldn't be complete without the joy of riffing on the most useless machine concept. Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=433621

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams take a look at all the hacks from the week that was. We think we've found the perfect tentacle robot, and the controller for it is fittingly also a tentacle. An unrelated project uses the same bowden cable trick as the tentacle controller to measure deflection. If you're more of a material-science geek, refining black sand to make your own inductors is a fascinating hack. And we wrap up the episode talking SSH keys and buses that go off road, but not in the way you might think. Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=432406

With Editor in Chief Mike Szczys off this week, Managing Editor Elliot Williams is joined by Staff Writer Dan Maloney to look over the hacks from the last week. If you've ever wondered how the Beatles sound on a floppy disk, wonder no more. Do you fear the coming robopocalypse? This noisy wall-climbing robot will put those fears to rest. We'll take a look at an undersea lab worthy of the Cousteau name, and finally we'll look inside a digital pregnancy test and wonder at its unusual power switch. Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=431146

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams ogle the greatest hacks from the past 168 hours. Did you know that Mars Rover didn't get launched into space all alone? Nestled in it's underbelly is a two-prop helicopter that's a fascinating study in engineering for a different world. Fingerprinting audio files isn't a special trick reserved for Shazam, you can do it just as easily with an ESP32. A flaw in the way Bluetooth COVID tracing frameworks chirp out their anonymized hashes means they're not as perfectly anonymized as planned. And you're going to love these cool ways to misuse items from those massive parts catalogs. Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=430419

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys check in on the best hacks from the past week. All the buzz is the algorithm that can reverse engineer your house keys from the way they sound going into the lock. Cardboard construction goes extreme with an RC car build that's beyond wizard-level. Speaking of junk builds, there's a CNC mill tipped on its side grinding out results worlds better than you expect from salvaged CD-ROM drives. And a starburst character display is a clever combination of laser cutting and alternative using UV-cured resin as a diffuser. Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=429459

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Tom Nardi chew the beef tallow as they take a tour through some of the best and most interesting articles from the past week, from kicking off another round of the popular Circuit Sculpture contest to building artisan coffee makers. We'll look at the engineering behind the post-apocalyptic face mask launcher of our nightmares, and stand in awe at the intersection of orbiting spacecraft and lawn emojis. Several tiny remote controlled vehicles will be discussed, and we'll take an unexpected look at how extruding plastic and aluminum might not be so different after all. Make sure to stick around until the end to learn why a little-known locomotive technology of the 1840s really sucked. Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=428104

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys flip through the index of great hacks. This week we learn of a co-existence attack on WiFi and Bluetooth radios called Spectra. The craftsmanship in a pneumatic drone is so awesome we don't care that it doesn't fly. Building a powerful TEA laser is partly a lesson in capacitor design. And join us in geeking out at the prospect of big rigs getting their juice from miles of overhead wires. Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=426831

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams gaze upon the most eye-popping projects from the past week. Who would have known that springy doorstops could be so artistic? Speaking of, what happens if you give everyone on the network the chance to collectively paint using pixels? There as better way to catch a rat, and a dubious way to lure mosquitoes. We scratch our heads at sending code to the arctic, and Elliot takes a deep look at the contact tracing apps developed and in use throughout Europe. Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=425629

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys go down the rabbit hole of hacky hacks. A talented group of radio amateurs have been recording and decoding the messages from Tianwen-1, the Mars probe launched by the Chinese National Space Administration on July 23rd. We don't know exactly how magnets work, but know they do a great job of protecting your plasma cutter. You can't beat the retro-chic look of a Commodore 64's menu system, even if it's tasked with something mundane like running a meat smoker. And take a walk with us down MP3's memory lane. Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=424793

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams are deep in the hacks this week. What if making your own display matrix meant a microcontroller board for every pixel? That's the gist of this incredible neon display. There's a lot of dark art poured into the slivers of microSD cards and this week saw multiple hacks digging into the hidden test pads of these devices. You've heard of Folding@Home, but what about Minecraft@Home, the effort to find world seeds from screenshots. And when USB chargers have exposed and rewritable firmware, what could possibly go wrong? Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=423655

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys are enamored by this week's fabrication hacks. There's a PCB mill that isolates traces by scratching rather than cutting. You won't believe how awesome this angle-cutter jig is at creating tapered augers for injection molding/extruding plastic. And you may not need an interactive way to cut foam, but the art from the cut pieces is more than a mere shadow of excellence. Plus we gab about a clever rotary encoder circuit, which IDE is the least frustrating, and the go-to tools for hard drive recovery. Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=422534

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams scoop up a basket of great hacks from the past week. Be amazed by the use of traditional Japanese joinery in a 3D-printed design -- you're going to want to print one of these Shoji lamps. We behold the beautiful sound of a noise generator, and the freaky sound from the Golden Gate. There's a hack for Android app development using Javascript on an IDE hosted from the phone as a webpage on your LAN. And you'll like the KiCAD trick that makes enclosure design for existing boards a lot easier. Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=421428