Do you remember the early days of consumer wireless networking, a time of open access points with default SSIDs, manufacturer default passwords, Pringle can antennas, and wardriving? Fortunately ou…

We all know feature creep can be a problem in almost any project. A simple idea can often become unusable if a project’s scope isn’t clearly defined in the beginning. However, the oppos…

[typo]'s mother gets around with a walker. It's a great assistive device until she has to lift the heavy thing up into her car. Noting that this was a little cruel he did as any hacker would and foun...

Hackaday was in Portland last weekend for the Open Hardware Summit. I did a brief recap earlier this week but this post has been on my mind the entire time. The night before the summit, OSH Park (the...

Subatomic physics is pretty neat stuff, but not generally considered within the reach of the home-gamer. With cavernous labs filled with racks of expensive gears and miles-wide accelerators, playin…

The next giant leap for mankind is to the stars. While we are mostly earthbound -- for now -- that shouldn't stop us from gazing upwards to marvel at the night sky. In saying that, if you're an amateu...

[Petru] seems to have designed his weather ticker project with beginners in mind. Leveraging the inexorable forces of both the Raspberry Pi and cheap online auction house modules, it's nearly the Hack...

For the last few years of the Hackaday Prize, there have been more than a few prosthetic devices presented. Almost without exception, the target for these projects are prosthetic hands. That’…

If you’re a heavy user of a 3D printer, or a welder, you’ll know the problem of empty spools. You’ve used up all the filament or the welding wire, and you’re left with a sub…

In our eyes, there isn’t a much higher calling for Arduinos than using them to make musical instruments. [victorh88] has elevated them to rock star status with his homemade electronic drum ki…

We take our mother tongue for granted, a language we learn as young children without realizing the effort involved. It is only when as adults we try to pick up another language that we fully understan...

[Paul Rako]'s teardown of his treasured P6042 current probe shows why Tektronix commands so much respect among the old hats of the electronics world.

Built in 1969, the P6042 is pretty sparse trans...

There are several reasons you should have an isolation transformer. They can prevent ground loops and also prevent a device under test from having a DC path to ground (or isolate an oscilloscope from ...

Every mad scientist’s lair needs a Geiger counter. After all, if that UFO crashes on the back patio, you might need to know if it is hot. [Tanner_Tech] shows you how to build a cheap one that…

You need only look at the weekly user account leak from a popular web service or platform to know there’s a problem with security. Reusing passwords is the dumbest thing you can do right now, and th...

Building a simple robot arm is a lot more straightforward than it used to be.  If you have a laser cutter, or a bit of cash and don't mind waiting for postage, there are inexpensive kits like the MeA...

[Alex]'s entry for the Hackaday Prize is extremely simple: it's a device to monitor the inside of casts. For every itch, for every broken bone, for every skin irritation, and for every episode of Hou...

[Eric Wasatonic] had a box of SWB2433 transistors that he had very little information about. In order to discover their properties, he fired up his curve tracer to compare these transistors with mo…

Piano rolls are the world’s longest-lasting recording medium, and its first digital one. They were mass-produced from 1896 to 2008, and you can still get some made today, although they’…

We’ve all taken apart a small toy and pulled out one of those little can motors. “With this! I can do anything!” we proclaim as we hold it aloft. Ten minutes later, after we&#8217…