We take photographs as a way to freeze moments in time and to capture the details that get blurred by our unreliable memories. There is little room for interpretation, and this is kind of the whole…

The parenthood of any invention of consequence is almost never cut and dried. The natural tendency to want a simple story that’s easy to tell — Edison invented the light bulb, Bell inve…

The joy of building robots comes from being able to imbue them with as much or as little personality and functionality as you wish during the design and build process. While creative flair and orig…

Disney is working on modular, intelligent robot limbs that snap into place with magnets. The intelligence comes from a reasonable sized neural network that also incorporates some modularity. The ro…

It’s that time of year again in the United States, and the skies will soon be alight with pyrotechnic displays, both professional and amateur. Amazing fireworks are freely available, sometime…

In somewhat of a departure from their normal fare of heavy metal mods, [Make It Extreme] is working on a battery pack for an e-bike that has some interesting design features. The guts of the pack a…

Manufacturers dye all sorts of 3D printer filaments on their factory lines; why can’t we? [Richard] takes this idea one step further by creating his own custom multicolored reels of nylon. Pr…

Most Hackaday readers will have heard of [Clive Sinclair], the British inventor and serial entrepreneur whose name appeared on some of the most fondly-recalled 8-bit home computers. If you aren&#82…

It’s a Holy Grail among hackerspaces, the possession of a pick-and-place machine. These robotic helpers for placing surface-mount components on PCBs are something of a gateway to electronic p…

Oxford is a city world-famous for its university, and is a must-see stop on the itinerary of many a tourist to the United Kingdom. It features mediaeval architecture, unspoilt meadows, two idylic r…

One of the promises of 3D printing is that you can mass produce objects at home, printing out multiple copies of whatever you want. Unfortunately, the reality is a bit different: once you have prin…

Summer is here, and it’s time for the question on everyone’s mind: how are they going to get the fuselage of a 747 from the California desert to Burning Man? You can’t put it on a…

Earlier this year, [Dan Maloney] went inside mechanical calculators. Being the practical sort, [Dan] jumped right into the Pascaline invented by Blaise Pascal. It couldn’t multiply or divide.…

An ergometer is a fancy fitness word for a rowing machine, a device which can be used to work out the muscles used in rowing. It’s an excellent cardio workout that can also build upper body s…

While many of the Arduino platforms are great tools for gaining easy access to microcontrollers, there are a few downsides. Price and availability may be the highest on the list, and for those reas…

While many of the Arduino platforms are great tools for gaining easy access to microcontrollers, there are a few downsides. Price and availability may be the highest on the list, and for those reas…

If you’re looking to get started in designing a few PCBs, you could use one of the many software packages that allow you to create a PCB quickly, easily, and with a minimum amount of fuss. Yo…

Like many people, [Mike] has a list of things he wants to do in life. One of them is “fire a gun with a switch,” and with a little help from some hacker friends, he knocked this item of…

Just when it seems like we’ve juiced all the creative potential out of our 3D printers, a bold new feature lands on the table. Enter Velocity Painting, a concept brought to life by [Mark Whea…

If you follow the desktop 3D printer market, it probably won’t surprise you to hear that nearly every 3D printer on display at the inaugural East Coast RepRap Festival (ERRF) was made in Chin…