As computer networks get bigger, it becomes increasingly hard to keep track of the flow of data over this network. How do you route data, making sure that the data is spread to all parts of the net…

Reflectance spectrometers work on a simple principle: different things reflect different wavelengths in different amounts, and because similar materials do this similarly, the measurements can be u…

At this point you’ve probably already heard the news: cheap Chinese 3D printers sometimes catch fire. Now we can’t say we’re shocked to find out that absolute bottom of the barrel…

To those of us in the corporate world, the conference room is where hope goes to die. Crammed into a space too small for the number of invitees, the room soon glows with radiated body heat and the …

As a gamer, [Lexie Dostal] dreamed of a smartphone that was a viable gaming platform: something with enough power to run the games and emulators he was interested in, with the controls to make play…

Persistance of Vision, or POV, displays are ever popular around these parts. Spin a few LEDs and you can make images appear in almost-thin air – just don’t stick your finger in the way.…

Right now, if you happen to be in Noth America, chances are pretty good that there’s at least one little face staring at you. Look around and you’ll spy it, probably about 15 inches up …

Space balloons, where one sends instrument packages to the edge of space on a weather balloon, are a low-cost way to scratch the space itch. But once you’ve logged the pressure and temperatur…

The history of consumer electronics is littered with devices that are relatively uninteresting at first, but become spectacular platforms for hardware exploitation once a few select people figure o…

This past semester I added research to my already full schedule of math and engineering classes, as any masochistic student eagerly would. Packed schedule aside, how do you pass up the chance to wo…

We’ve become used to seeing some beautiful hand-made creations at the smaller end of the flying machine scale, tiny aircraft both fixed and rotary wing. An aircraft that weighs a few grams is…

If you like your synthesizers glitchy, squawky, or simply quick-and-dirty, you won’t want to miss this week’s Hack Chat with Hackaday’s own [Elliot Williams], because he’ll …

Today we take the concept of a centralized software repository for granted. Whether it’s apt or the App Store, pretty much every device we use today has a way to pull applications in without …

The principle is well understood: use a motor in reverse and you get a generator. Using this bit of knowledge back in 2001 is what kick-started [Ted Yapo]’s Hackaday Prize entry. At the time,…

While an old CRT TV may work well enough on a MAME cabinet project, the real arcade purists are quick to point out that a proper arcade monitor and a TV aren’t the same thing. A real arcade b…

In the beginning, around 2011 or thereabouts, there was an infinite variety of designs available for anyone to build their own 3D printer. There were Mendels, some weirdos were actually trying to b…

Machines – is there anything they can’t learn? 20 years ago, the answer to that question would be very different. However, with modern processing power and deep learning tools, it seems…

Even if keeping bees sounds about as wise to you as keeping velociraptors (we all know how that movie went), we have to acknowledge that they are a worthwhile thing to have around. We don’t p…

We’ve all been there: after assessing a problem and thinking about a solution, we immediately rush to pursue the first that comes to mind, only to later find that there was a vastly simpler a…

If you’ve ever worked in a stingy office, you’ve become familiar with the communal coffee maker that runs on some variant of the honor system. There’s bits of paper, a coin jar sh…

Has the food in your pantry turned? Sometimes it’s the sickening smell of rot that tells you there’s something amiss. But is there a way to catch this before it makes life unpleasant? I…