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Adding Smarts To Dumb Brushed Motors
A big part of the Hackaday Prize this year is robotics modules, and already we’ve seen a lot of projects adding intelligence to motors. Whether that’s current sensing, RPM feedback, PID control, or...
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Apple Coin Bank Plants the Seed of Saving
Consider the piggy bank. Behind that innocent, docile expression is a capitalistic metaphor waiting to ruin your fond memories of saving for that BMX bike or whatever else it was that drove home the...
View ArticleMakerbot Printer Reborn As PCB Engraver
Makerbot 3D printers were among the first to hit the market, so it makes sense that old and broken ones now litter the shelves of hackerspaces and home workshops alike. Rather than throw his one out,...
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PIC Powered PicoBat Picks Up Pulsed Power
In 2012, [Bruno] wanted to detect some bats. Detect bats? Some varieties of bat (primarily the descriptively named “microbats”) locate themselves and their prey in space using echolocation, the same...
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LEGO: The Kristiansen Legocy
Whether you are young, old, or a time traveling Vulcan, something unites all of us globally: the innocent LEGO blocks that encourage creativity over spoon-fed entertainment. Have you noticed the excess...
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Controlling Robotics Visually
The world — and the Hackaday Prize — is filled with educational robots. These are small, wheeled robots loaded up with sensors, actuators, a few motor drivers, and some sort of system that is easy to...
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Building A Mini Electric Bike In Between Projects
What do you do when you suddenly find you have some free time because you’re waiting on parts or have run up against other delays for your current project? If you’re [James Bruton], you design and...
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Hackers Want Cambridge Dictionary to Change Their Definition
Maybe it’s the silly season of high summer, or maybe a PR bunny at a cybersecurity company has simply hit the jackpot with a story syndicated by the Press Association, but the non-tech media has been...
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ESP8266 Home Computer Hides Unexpected Gems
With a BASIC interpreter and free run throughout their hardware, home computers like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 used to be a pervasive way to light that hacker fire. With the advent of cheap...
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After The Sun Set On San Mateo, LED Takes Over Hackaday’s BAMF Meetup
After this Spring’s Bay Area Maker Faire closed down for Saturday night and kicked everybody out, the fun moved on to O’Neill’s Irish Pub where Hackaday and Tindie held our fifth annual meetup for...
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Improving Indoor Navigation of Robots With IR
If the booths at CES are to be believed, the future is full of home robots: everything from humanoid robots on wheels to Alexas duct taped to a Roomba. Back in reality, home robots really aren’t a...
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Pool Ball Return System Chalked Up To Ingenuity
Do you play pool? If so, you probably take the automatic ball return systems in bar and billiard hall tables for granted. [Roger Makes] was tired of walking around his home table to collect the balls...
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A Different Use For Microwave Oven: Melting Aluminum
Microwave ovens are a treasure trove of useful parts: transformers, an HV capacitor, a piezo speaker, and a high torque motor, to name just a few. In a new twist, [Rulof Maker] strips all that out and...
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Next Weekend: Beginner Solar Workshop
Next week, Hackaday is hosting a workshop for all you hackers ready to harness the power of the sun. We’re doing a Beginner Solar Workshop at Noisebridge in San Francisco. You’re invited to join us on...
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Rachel Wong Keynote: Growing Eyeballs in the Lab and Building Wearables that...
The keynote speaker at the Hackaday Belgrade conference was Rachel “Konichiwakitty” Wong presenting Jack of All Trades, Master of One. Her story is one that will be very familiar to anyone in the...
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Simple Quadcopter Testbed Clears The Air For Easy Algorithm Development
We don’t have to tell you that drones are all the rage. But while new commercial models are being released all the time, and new parts get released for the makers, the basic technology used in the...
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A Lightgun For LCDs – Thanks To Maths!
Light guns were a fun way to learn to shoot things on consoles, enjoying their heyday in the 80s and 90s. The original designs largely relied on the unique characteristics of CRT televisions and the...
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This Year, Badges Get Blockchains
This year’s hottest new advance in electronics comes through wearable badges. You can’t have failed to notice another technology that’s getting really hot. It’s the blockchain. What is a blockchain?...
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When The Going Gets Tough, These Wheels Transform To Tracks
When we want to build something to go where wheels could not, the typical solution is to use tracks. But the greater mobility comes with trade-offs: one example being tracked vehicles can’t go as fast...
View ArticleHow Etak Paved the Way to Personal Navigation
Our recent “Retrotechtacular” feature on an early 1970s dead-reckoning car navigation system stirred a memory of another pre-GPS solution for the question that had vexed the motoring public on road...
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