Hackaday.com

Until the 2000s vacuum tubes practically ruled the roost. Even if they had surrendered practically fully to semiconductor technology like integrated circuits, there was no escaping them in everything from …read more

A few weeks back, we reported on a research group that figured out how to measure heartrate using perturbations in WiFi signals. [Nick Bild] was interested in this so-called “Pulse-Fi” …read more

Occasionally a design requires capacitors that are much closer to being identical in value to one another than the usual tolerance ranges afford. Precision matching of components from parts on …read more

What do you do when you find a ISA Sound Blaster 2.0 card in a pile of scrap? Try to repair the damage on it to give it a second …read more

Usually when an alchemist shows up promising to turn rocks into gold, you should run the other way. Sure, rocket fuel isn’t gold, but on the moon it’s worth more …read more

It’s 2025 and we still don’t have flying cars– but we’ve got this full-scale flying DeLorean prop from [Brian Brocken], and that’s almost as good. It’s airborne and on camera …read more

Generally, a digital TV tuner is something you buy rather than something you make yourself. However, [Johann] has always been quite passionate about the various DVB transmission standards, and decided …read more

Imagine trying to balance a heavy metal ball bearing on a cafeteria tray. It’s not the easiest thing in the world! In fact, it’s perhaps a task better automated, as …read more

Over this series test-driving operating systems, we’ve tried to bring you the unusual, the esoteric, or the less mainstream among the world of the desktop OS. It would become very …read more

You can read e-books on just about anything—your tablet, your smartphone, or even your PC. However, the interface can be lacking somewhat compared to a traditional book—on a computer, you …read more

It’s becoming somewhat of a running gag that any device or object will be made ‘smart’ these days, whether it’s a phone, TV, refrigerator, home thermostat, headphones or glasses. This …read more

Miniaturization is a trend that comes and goes in the cellular phone space. For a while, our phones were all getting smaller, then they started getting bigger again as screens …read more

Repairing vintage computers is bread-and-butter for many of us around here. The machines themselves tend to be fairly fixable, assuming spare parts are available and there hasn’t been too much …read more

Often, we face tedious tasks with no way around them. Sometimes, you just have to grit your teeth and push through. But small tweaks can make the onerous task a …read more

Ok, we’ll admit it. If you asked us what the first transistorized computer was, we would have guessed it was the TC from the University of Manchester. After all, Dr. …read more

Remember AOL? For a lot of folks, America Online was their first ISP, the place where they got their first exposure to the Internet, or at least a highly curated …read more

[Too Many Wires] has a custom computer he’s building. He wanted a mouse, but USB is a bit of a stretch for the fledgling computer. We might have opted for …read more

By virtue of its triple bond, acetylene burns hotter than any other common hydrocarbon when mixed with oxygen, but it isn’t the only flame hot enough for welding. With the …read more

We’ve all seen spectacular pictures of space, and it’s easy to assume that’s how it looks to the naked eye through a nice telescope. But in most cases, that’s simply …read more

Have you ever wished your hand had an extra feature? Like, maybe, a second thumb? A scope probe pinky maybe? Well, if you are building a robot effector, you get …read more