Physics gives us the basic tools needed to understand the universe, but turning theory into something useful is how engineers make their living. Pushing on that boundary is the subject of this week…

It’s incredibly likely that, unless you own one of the original movie props, your Stargate Horus helmet is not as cool as [jeromekelty]’s. We say this with some confidence because [jero…

[Bruce Land] switched his microprocessor programming class over from Atmel parts to Microchip's PIC32 series, and that means that he's got a slightly different set of peripherals to play with. One thi...

It's hard to beat a vintage clock for something that you can hack, and that your significant other might actually let you display in your home. It's practical and it's art all at the same time! But, f...

The first remote control for a TV was the Zenith Space Command back in the 1950's. Space Command used sounds at ultrasonic frequencies to control the set. It wasn't until the 1980's and the Viewstar c...

Satellites make many of our everyday activities possible, and the technology continues to improve by leaps and bounds. A prototype, recently completed by [Arda Tüysüz]'s team at ETH Zürich's Power ...

If you ever wanted to make an occasion festive with bubbles, [Sandeep_UNO] may have the project for you. As you can see in the video below (and, yes, it should have the phone rotated and it doesn't), ...

NFL preseason starts in just a few weeks. This year, it will come with a bit of a technological upgrade. The league plans to experiment with custom microchip-equipped footballs. Unfortunately, this…

The concept of free will is the perfect example of human arrogance ever conceived. If a gas molecule collides with another gas molecule, simple physics can determine the momentum of the first gas mole...

If the [realjohnnybravo] is the one from the show, it appears he finally managed to get a girlfriend, marry her, and produce at least one son. As the old schoolyard rhyme goes, first comes love, then...

Anyone who has worked in an office with a vending machine knows this problem well: someone wants a snack or a drink from the vending machine, but doesn't have any small change. So, they proceed to wal...

A quality bench power supply is essential for electronics work. Nobody wants to go through the trouble of digging through their electronics bin just to find a wall wart with the right output. And, eve...

Radio telescopes are one of the more high-profile pieces of scientific apparatus. There is an excitement to stories of radio astronomers of old probing the mysteries of the Universe on winter night…

Proxxon is a mostly German maker of above average micro tools. They do sell a tiny milling machine in various flavors, from manual to full CNC. [Goran Mahovlić] did not buy that. He did, however, co...

[Jason Holt] wrote in to tell about of the release of his PRUDAQ project. It's a dual-channel 10-bit ADC cape that ties into the BeagleBone's Programmable Realtime Units (PRUs) to shuttle through up t...

Going to DEF CON this week? Getting into Vegas early? We're having a meetup on Wednesday, in the middle of the day, in the desert. It's all going down at the grave of James T. Kirk. Rumor has it, the ...

Nixie tubes, electromagnets, levitation, and microcontrollers — this project has “Hackaday” written all over it! Time Flies: Levitating Nixie Clock comes from [Tony Adams], and us…

Linear CCDs are an exceptionally cool component. They can be used for DIY spectrometers, and if you’re feeling very adventurous, a homemade version of those crappy handheld scanners of the ea…

Lastpass is a great piece of software when it comes to convenience, but a recent simple hack shows just how insecure software like it can be. [Mathias Karlsson] nabbed a nice $1000 bounty for its d…

How do artificial intelligences get so intelligent? The same way we do, they get a library card and head on over to read up on their favorite topics. Or at least that’s the joke that [Jakob W…