Hackaday.com

In the 1960s, the home computer was barely a twinkle in anyone’s eye. This was the decade in which computers were used by a handful of companies and organizations and …read more

These days open source is everywhere, and frankly, we couldn’t be happier about it. But even with as prevalent as open software and hardware has become, we still occasionally hear …read more

The fun thing about thermopolymers like PLA is that you can blend in additives, some of which are necessary to make it at all usable, while so many other additives …read more

Most instruments, with maybe the exception of pianos, have consumable parts. Guitars need string changes, bows need rosin, saxophones need reeds. [Co:Creation Lab]’s balloon banjo requires both fishing line and …read more

We’ve heard of wave overhangs before. It is a new technique for printing horizontal overhangs with no supports. Building on some other techniques like arc overhangs. The idea is to …read more

Usually, the name ‘Famicom’ and the associated Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) don’t exactly bring to mind downloadable content and online services. However, at least in Japan, a modem add-on for …read more

We’re no strangers to unusual hardware failures around these parts, but even so, a swarm of jellyfish clogging up the works is a new one to us. That’s exactly what …read more

It used to be a rite of passage to build some sort of AM radio receiver. Many people started with a crystal radio, of course, but you’d graduate to maybe …read more

If there’s one defining factor about 3D printing you have to account for when you’re making a design, it’s probably layer adhesion. Sure, there are a lot of factors to …read more

Unlike biological systems, which can use muscles, robots that try to imitate them don’t have particularly fast, powerful, compact linear actuators available. This puts walking robots at a particular disadvantage, …read more

In ecology, there used to be a concept — now largely unfashionable — that species could be described as r- or K-selected, depending on how they treat their offspring. An …read more

Modern airliners are rather complicated feats of engineering. Innumerable safety-critical components are connected with tens of miles of wiring, complex digital buses, and dozens (perhaps hundreds) of computers. But, as …read more

In this age of neural net “AI”, even the most skeptical of Butlerians have to agree that these machine learning models can be very, very good at pattern recognition if …read more

Sometimes claimed to give you wings, energy drinks can, at the very least, be used to make rockets fly. This is what [Nate Scovill] did in a recent video, where …read more

Steam power is a staple of the steampunk aesthetic, thermodynamics, and a checkpoint for the budding mechanical engineer studying heat cycles. But because food is largely made of water, steam …read more

It’s a sci-fi trope that you can ‘scan for life signs’ and detect if there are humans — or suspiciously human-shaped aliens — present, but in real life it’s harder …read more

[The Modern Rogue] found an old childhood friend in a closet: a Radio Shack 200-in-1 electronic kit. Along with [Josh Nass], he put it through its paces and made a …read more

A friend from my old hackerspace was in grad school for electrical engineering. He had a professor who would ask, when something went wrong with a student project, “Have you …read more

Do you remember back when electronics came in clear cases? Back around the turn of the millennium, when translucency was chic. [3DSage] sure does, which is why he went to …read more

If there’s an engineer’s equivalent to those YouTube ASMR videos, then perhaps it comes in a good repair or servicing journey filmed without edits at the bench. Relaxing to watch, …read more