Oh, there was a time when you could prototype just about everything on a breadboard. The CPU in your computer came in a DIP package, and there were no BGA packages. to be found anywhere. In the for…

Hackaday likes clocks, a lot. Speaking personally, from my desk I can count at least eight clocks, of which seven are working. There’s normal quartz movement analog clocks, fun automatic wris…

Where the Hackaday Cat goes when she steps over the threshold into the wider world is a mystery, she reveals her whereabouts strictly on her terms and would we suspect be very cagey were we able to…

[Bram] wasn’t satisfied with the portable music playback devices that were currently available. He craved an offline music player that had a large storage capacity but found that this was onl…

Everyone knows that space is an incredibly inhospitable place, but the surface of Mars isn’t a whole lot better. It’s a dim, cold, and dry world, with a wisp of an atmosphere that provi…

Off-the-shelf components are great; the world and our work simply wouldn’t be the same without. But one of the constraints is that one has to design around them, and that’s what led [An…

Of all the lessons that life hands us, one of the toughest is that you can be right about something but still come up holding the smelly end of the stick. Typically this is learned early in life, b…

For many projects that require control of air pressure, the usual option is to hook up a pump, maybe with a motor controller to turn it on and off, and work with that. If one’s requirements c…

In the past we’ve talked about one of the major downsides of working with vintage computer hardware, which of course is the fact you’re working with vintage computer hardware. The reali…

We aren’t suggesting you go digging through the trash looking for empty cans, there’s a word for people who do that, and it isn’t “hacker”. But if you’ve already…

Sometimes it is hard to remember just how far computers have come in the last three or four decades. An old NASA video (see below) has been restored with better sound and video recently that shows …

Drawn along in the wake of the 3d printing/home shop revolution has been the accessibility of traditional subtractive CNC equipment, especially routers and mills. Speaking of, want a desktop mill? …

Many low-cost wireless temperature and humidity sensors use a 433 MHz transmitter to send data back to their base stations. This is a great choice for the manufacturer of said devices because it&#8…

Deep in the mojave, the largest aircraft ever made will soon be making test flights. This is the Stratolaunch, and it’s measured the largest to ever fly based on wingspan. The Stratolaunch wa…

Never underestimate the importance of fixturing when you’re machining parts. No matter what the material, firmly locking it down is the key to good results, and may be the difference between …

Software defined radio picked up a lot of popularity when it was discovered that cheap USB TV tuners were functional bits of hardware that could become SDRs. It’s the software that makes this…

I tried my best to see every badge and speak with every badge maker at DEF CON 26. One thing’s for sure, seeing them all was absolutely impossible this year, but I came close. Check out the g…

Before the introduction of the Raspberry Pi, building robots was hard. The best solution to turning motors on a chassis was repurposing an old roomba. For the brain, maybe you could throw Linux on …

Too often we hear that 3D printing is at best only a way for making prototypes before you invest in “real” manufacturing. At worst, it’s a way to make little toys for your desk or…

When a fine piece of lab instrumentation crosses your bench, you’ve got to do your best to put it to work. But even in the highest quality devices no component lasts forever, especially vacuu…