First podcast of the new year! Editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys look back on the most interesting hacks and can’t-miss articles from the past week (or so). Highlights include abusing I…

The year is 1894. You are designing a train system for a large city. Your boss informs you that the mayor’s office wants assurances that trains can’t have wrecks. The system will start …

If you watch old science fiction or military movies — or if you were alive back in the 1960s — you probably know the cliche for a radar antenna is a spinning dish. Although the very fir…

People often get the impression that home built hardware is destined to have a certain amateurish look or feel to it. It’s as though just because you didn’t buy it in a store, it will l…

Way back when, before diesel-electric locomotives were a thing, trains weren’t really able to go backwards too well. Also it’s sometimes necessary to turn carriages around in a small sp…

The simplest answer to a problem is not necessarily always the best answer. If you ask the question, “How do I get a voice assistance to work on a crowded subway car?”, the simplest ans…

As no doubt is the case with many readers, there is a Raspberry Pi running in the yard near where this is being written that tracks airplanes, listening into the ADS-B radio broadcasts that they se…

If you walk into a dog owner’s home that dog is probably going to make a beeline to see if you are a threat. If you walk into a cat owner’s home, you may see the cat wandering around, i…

Fans of science fiction and related genres have always been disappointed by real life. The future holds so much promise on paper, yet millions were disappointed upon reaching 2015 to find that hove…

Amongst the more difficult machining tasks in the world are those involved in the production of internal combustion engines. Thanks to the Internet, it’s now possible to watch detailed videos…

We love electromagnetic displays: take the modern look of a digital readout, combine with the low-tech coil mechanism that you theoretically could create yourself, add a dash of random clacking sou…

[Sean Hodgins] has a knack for coming up with simple solutions that can make a big difference, but this is one of those “Why didn’t I think of that?” things: addressable seven-seg…

Watchdog timers are an often overlooked feature of microcontrollers. They function as failsafes to reset the device in case of a software failure. If your code somehow ends up in an infinite loop, …

Coconut is a delicious and versatile food but if you’ve ever tried to open one you know they can be a hard nut to crack. Those of us who live in the tropics where they are common might reach …

Astrophotography is an expensive hobby. When assembling even a basic setup consisting of a telescope, camera, guiding equipment and mount, you can easily end up with several thousand dollars worth …

It’s safe to say that hot-melt glue is a staple of the projects we see here at Hackaday. There won’t be many readers who don’t have a glue gun, and a blob of the sticky stuff will…

If you’ve never seen an IBM AS/400 machine, don’t feel bad. Most people haven’t. Introduced in 1988 as a mid-range server line, it used a unique object-based operating system and …

Remember when a homemade cloud chamber was a science fair staple? We haven’t participated for decades, but it seemed like every year someone would put a hunk of dry ice in a fish tank, add a …

Those of us who recycle our empty drink cans know the annoying storage problem these containers present. For an object with very little metal, a can takes up a huge amount of space, and should you …

[Maarten Tromp] recently took the time to document some of the unusual and creative electronic projects he received as gifts over the years. These gadgets were created in the early 2000’s and…