A few years ago, I wrote a few columns titled Making A Thing. These columns were a tutorial of sorts for several different 3D modeling programs. This column wasn’t meant to be a complete guid…

Is your temper hard but brittle? Meet the Anger Release Machine: a ware-dropping spiral vending machine stocked with precious porcelain. There’s a bit more engineering and user experience des…

It was quite a surprise to learn that thermite isn't just rust and aluminum powder, but describes any combination of metal powder, metal oxide, and optionally fuel mixed together in a reactive ratio. ...

Hard drives work by spinning platters full of magnetized data while a read/write head very quickly harvests or changes bits as needed. Older (or perhaps cheaper) drives spin at 5400 RPM, better dri…

For most of us, our touch-screen smartphones have become an indispensable accessory. Without thinking we tap and swipe our way through our digital existence, the promise of ubiquitous truly portable c...

Who among you has difficulty rising in the mornings? Sunrise clocks that simulate a -- well, sunrise,  are a gentle means of returning to the waking world. [FlorianH], grappling with this very issue,...

What was your first Arduino program? Probably an LED blinker — that seems to be the “hello world” of microcontrolllers. You probably moved on to things a little more complicated p…

The best way to pull off this deception: tell your significant other that you’d want nothing more than a romantic week in Paris. Arrive in Paris, stash your bags, and then take either the num…

Next time you're renovating and need to run some cables around corners in you walls, save yourself some frustration by building [izzy swan]'s corner drilling rig. It's something akin to a custom tunne...

We're in the last few weeks for entries in the 2016 Hackaday Prize -- specifically the challenge is to show off your take on assisstive technology. This is a hugely broad category and I've been thinki...

For the first in a series of posts describing how to make a PCB, we’re going with Eagle. Eagle CAD has been around since the days of DOS, and has received numerous updates over the years. Unt…

If you're like us, you had no idea that there even was a World Robotic Sailing Championship. But we're glad that we do now! And congratulations to the team of A-Tirma G2, the winning boat. (Link in Sp...

Sure we can have our kids back up against a wall, force them to stand up straight, and use a ruler on their head to mark their height on the wall, but what kind of hacker would we be? There isn't a si...

Electric vehicles are everywhere now. Even though battery technology hasn't had the breakthrough that we need to get everyone out driving an electric car, the price for batteries has dropped enough th...

If you ever want to pique a kid’s interest in technology, it is best to bring out something simple, yet cool. There was a time that showing a kid how a crystal radio could pull in a radio sta…

If you are a gamer of A Certain Age, it's probable that you retain a soft spot for 8-bit computers and consoles of your youth. For a time when addictive gameplay came through the most minimal of g...

In a time when we're inundated with talk of an impending AI apocalypse it's nice to see an AI that's intentionally useless. That AI is HAL 9000. No, not the conflicted HAL from the movie 2001: A Space...

Pneumatic actuators offer interesting perspectives in applications like soft robotics and interaction design. [Aidan Leitch] makes his own pneumatic actuators from silicone rubber. His actuators co…

Google's most recent Chrome browser, version 53, includes trial support for Web Bluetooth, and it's like the Wild West! JavaScript code, served to your browser, can now connect directly to your Blueto...

When we buy new shiny toys, we usually open them up to at least have a look. [Scott Gibson] does the same, apparently. He found an ESP8266 module inside the EcoPlug brand WiFi-controlled wall switc…