Although kids these days tend to hang out on so-called “Social Media”, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was first, by decades. IRC is a real-time communication technology that allows people to…

There’s something uniquely satisfying about a pen plotter. Though less speedy or precise than a modern printer, watching a pen glide across the page, mimicking human drawing, is mesmerizing. This p…

Over on YouTube [Electronic Wizard] explains how to use the AT24C32 EEPROM for external memory for microcontrollers. He begins by explaining that you don’t want to try modifying your microcon…

[Rex Malik] didn’t need an alarm clock. That’s because he had one of two “home computer terminals” next to his bed and, as you can see in the video below, it made quite a ra…

Since e-ink first hit the market a couple decades back, there’s always murmurs of “that’d be great as a second monitor”— but very, very few monitors have ever been mad…

It’s fair to say that the average Hackaday reader enjoys putting together custom electronics. Some of those builds will be spaghetti on a breadboard, but at some point you’ll probably h…

One of the great things about sharing hacks is that sometimes one person’s work inspires someone else to take it even further. A case in point is [Ivor]’s colorimeter hacking (parts two and three),…

Over a year ago, we took a look at importing a .step file of a KiCad PCB into FreeCAD, then placing a sketch and extruding it. It was a small step, but I know it’s enough for most of you all,…

We’ve all done it at some time — made an electrical connection by twisting together the bare ends of some wires. It’s quick, and easy, but because of how little force required to …

Last time, I described how to write a simple Android app and get it talking to your code on Linux. So, of course, we need an example. Since I’ve been on something of a macropad kick lately, I…

Business cards, on the whole, haven’t changed significantly over the past 600-ish years, and arguably are not as important as they used to be, but they are still worth considering as a remind…

Dedicated word processors are not something we see much of anymore. They were in a weird space: computerized, but not really what you could call a computer, even in those days. More like a fancy ty…

Beyond the simple world of basic PLA filaments there is a whole wild world of additives that can change this humble material for better or worse. The most common additives here are primarily to add…

Most people’s memories of programming in the 8-bit era revolve around BASIC, and not without reason. Most of the time, it was all we had. On the other hand, there were other options if you so…

Recently, [Solder Hub] put together a brief video that demonstrates the basics of a Hall Effect sensor — in this case, one salvaged from an old CPU fan. Two LEDs, a 100 ohm resistor, and a 3.…

Recently, Linux has been rising in desktop popularity in no small part to the work on WINE and Proton. But for some, the year of the Linux desktop is not enough, and the goal is now for the year of…

For all its friendly countenance and award-winning industrial design, there’s one thing the venerable Macintosh Plus can’t do: fit into a 1U rack space. OK, if we’re being honest …

Keeping track of time is essential, even for microcontrollers, which is why a real-time clock (RTC) peripheral is a common feature in MCUs. In the case of the STM32 family there are three varieties…

Here at Hackaday Central, we fancy that we know a little something about Linux. But if you’d tasked us to run any GUI program inside a Linux terminal, we’d have said that wasn’t p…

This week Jonathan and Dan chat with Frank Vasquez and Chris Simmonds about Embedded Linux, and the 4th edition of the Mastering Embedded Linux Programming book. How has this space changed in the l…