Hackaday.com

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

There’s another ransomware story this week, but this one comes with a special twist. If you’ve followed this column for long, you’re aware that ransomware has evolved beyond just encrypting …read more

Have you ever seen photos of retro movie sets where the cameras seem to be bedazzled with lenses? Of course you can only film via one lens at a time, …read more

Plastic recycling is something that many of us strive to accomplish, but we often get caught up in the many hurdles along the way. [Brothers Make] are experienced in the …read more

The Playstation 3 had a dizzying number of variants from its first launch in 2006 to when they stopped selling the slim models over a decade later in 2017. Of …read more

We get it, CAD software can be daunting to learn. Somehow [Boaztheostrich] found it so daunting he procrastinated his way into a AR voxel-based CAD app he calls “ABCCAD”, written …read more

For the Component Abuse Challenge our hacker [Tim Williams] observes that N-P-N reads the same way forwards and backwards, so… what happens if we reverse bias one? (Note: this remark …read more

Over the decades we have seen a lot of methods for powering LEGO-based contraptions, ranging from LEGO Technic pneumatics to electric motors, but what about steam power? We have all …read more