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The Hackaday 2025 Component Abuse Challenge is all about abusing electronic components in the service of making them do things they were never intended to. It’s not the 2025 Food …read more

Full disclosure. If you want a lathe capable of turning metal stock, you probably should just buy one. But what fun is that? You can do like [kachurovskiy] and build …read more

There are few things that can keep a certain kind of mechanically-inclined mind entranced as well as a marble run, and few structures that look as interestingly organic as procedurally-generated …read more

In this era of cheap lithium pouch cells, it might seem mildly anachronistic to build AA batteries into a project. There are enough valid reasons to do so, however, and …read more

History is full of engineers making (or attempting to make) things out of the wrong stuff, from massive wooden aircraft to boats made of ice and sawdust. [PeterSripol] is attempting …read more

[Miroslav Hancar] wasn’t satisfied with abusing just a single component for our Component Abuse Challenge. He decided to abuse a whole assembly, in particular, some LED candles. In this project, …read more

Anything with a laser has undeniable hacker appeal, even if the laser’s task is as pedestrian as sending data over a fiber optic cable. [Shahriar] from [The Signal Path] must …read more

In theory, Wankel-style rotary internal combustion engines have many advantages: they ditch the cumbersome crankcase and piston design, replacing it with a simple, single-chamber design and a thick, plectrum-shaped chunk …read more

There is a point where taking technology for granted hides some of the incredible capabilities of seemingly simple devices. Optical mice are a great example of this principle, using what …read more

Most of us know that a neon bulb requires a significant voltage to strike, in the region of 100 volts. There are plenty of circuits to make that voltage from …read more

Last weekend was Supercon, and it was, in a word super. So many people sharing so much enthusiasm and hackery, and so many good times. It’s a yearly dose of …read more

While it sounds like the start of a joke, Australian shipmaker Incat Tasmania isn’t kidding around about electric ships. Hull 096 has started charging, although it has only 85% of …read more

Old parts such as EPROMs will often find themselves for sale on sites such as eBay, where they are sometimes snapped up by retrocomputing enthusiasts in search of interesting code. …read more

Over on Hackaday.IO our hacker [bornach] has his entry into the Component Abuse Challenge: Inductors are Wireless Power Sources. Some time back [bornach] was gifted a Qi wireless charging base …read more

Finding older versions of particular software can be a real chore, all too often only made possible by the sheer grace and benevolence of their creators. At the same time …read more

The lightsaber was one of the coolest and most iconic visual effects from the original Star Wars, and people have been trying to get that particular piece of movie magic …read more

It’s a bit of a truism that bigger sensors lead to better pictures when it comes to photography. Of course everyone who isn’t a photographer knows that moar megapixles is …read more

The humble 555 timer has its origins back in the early 1970s as the NE555, a bipolar integrated circuit. Over the years it has spawned a range of derivatives, including …read more

Hackaday Editors Tom Nardi and Al Williams spent the weekend at Supercon and had to catch up on all the great hacks. Listen in as they talk about their favorites. …read more

If you had an array of high power addressable LEDs, how would you project them onto a wall? Perhaps you’d use a Fresnel lens, or maybe an individual lens on …read more