It’s often said that what’s inside matters more than one’s looks, but it’s hard to argue that a product’s looks and its physical user experience are what makes it instantly …read more
The Juno spacecraft was launched towards Jupiter in August of 2011 as part of the New Frontiers series of spacecraft, on what would originally have been a 7-year mission, including …read more
The flow battery is one of the more interesting ideas for grid energy storage – after all, how many batteries combine electron current with fluid current? If you’re interested in …read more
Another entry in the world of interesting FDM filaments comes courtesy of CC3D with their 72D TPU filament, with [Dr. Igor Gaspar] putting it to the test in his recent …read more
Although Charles Hall conducted his first successful run of the Hall-Héroult aluminium smelting process in the woodshed behind his house, it has ever since remained mostly out of reach of …read more
While it might not be accurate to say VHS is dead, it’s certainly not a lively format. It continues on in undeath thanks to dedicated collectors and hobbyists, some of …read more
We did explicitly ask for projects that use a 555 timer for the One Hertz Challenge, but we weren’t expecting the 555 to be the project. Yet, here we are, …read more
We’ve all felt the frustration of cheap consumer electronics — especially when they aren’t actually cheap. How many of us have said “Who designed this crap? I could do better …read more
Picture this: it’s January 19th, 2038, at exactly 03:14:07 UTC. Somewhere in a data center, a Unix system quietly ticks over its internal clock counter one more time. But instead …read more
Wall warts. Plug mounted power supplies that turn mains voltage into low voltage DC on a barrel jack to power a piece of equipment. We’ve all got a load of …read more
It hasn’t been that long since humans figured out how to create power grids that integrated multiple generators and consumers. Ever since AC won the battle of the currents, grid …read more
In contrast to the success of their molten-plastic cousins, paste extrusion 3D printers have never really attained much popularity. This is shame because, as the [Hand and Machine] research group …read more
Out on Maui, [rabbitcreek] desired to keep track of local ocean conditions. The easiest way to do that was by having something out there in the water to measure them. …read more
For a brief, buzzing moment in 1983, the Coleco Adam looked like it might out-64 the Commodore 64. Announced with lots of ambition, this 8-bit marvel promised a complete computing …read more
JavaScript is everywhere these days, even outside the browser. Everyone knows that this is because JavaScript is the best programming language, which was carefully assembled by computer experts and absolutely …read more
Having a robot that can quickly and unsupervised pick any lock with the skills of a professional human lockpicker has been a dream for many years. A major issue with …read more
[danjovic] came up with a nifty entry for our 2025 One-Hertz Challenge that lands somewhere between the categories of Ridiculous and Clockwork. It’s a clock that few hackers, if any, …read more
[Scott Baker] wrote in to let us know about his freezer monitor. After a regrettable incident where the ice cream melted because the freezer failed [Scott] decided that what was …read more
By and large, the human body is designed to breathe from birth, and keep breathing continuously until death. Indeed, if breathing stops, lifespan trends relatively rapidly towards zero. There’s a …read more
When you first get your hands on an old piece of equipment, regardless of whether it’s an old PC or some lab equipment, there is often the temptation to stick …read more