The Lightest FPV Whoop Drone
Build an ultralight FPV Whoop video drone that weighs less than three nickels! The post The Lightest FPV Whoop Drone appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Id…
AI Book Scanning: Just What Is A Rare Book?
One of the stories of the last few weeks has been that AI companies have been scanning books in very large numbers in order to train their models with content &…
Artificial Intelligence as It Once Was
One day, people will look back at what we call Artificial Intelligence and laugh. We do the same thing today, as chat bots totally outstrip what the computer in…
Anatomy of an SLA Resin Printing Disaster
When I got back into SLA resin printing recently, I knew that I’d inevitably have to deal with the agony of failed prints and of course resin spills. This…
Quest VR Headset Becomes Unlocked Hardware
The Quest virtual reality headset gets a fully unlocked bootloader thanks to the QuestStack tool, which automates a complex process of privilege escalation to p…
The Days Of Broadcast Digital TV Could Be Numbered
When the analog TV signals were turned off in most places around fifteen years ago, their replacement took the form of a set of digital multiplexes. ATSC for No…
What You’re Really Paying For When You Buy Premium Paint
Does premium paint really perform better? Professional painters explain what changes between paint tiers and when the upgrade is worth the cost. The post What Y…
The DIY Upgrades That Actually Mattered When We Sold Our Fixer-Upper
Buyers aren’t always impressed by the expensive renovations, but rather the projects that make a home feel functional and easy to imagine living in. The post Th…
Those Mysterious Black Tubes on the Road Have an Important Job
Black tubes across the road collect traffic data. Learn what they measure, how they work, and why transportation agencies use them. The post Those Mysterious Bl…
Straight Talk on 3D Printing Footwear At Home
Printed footwear is an intriguing idea, but as far as projects go it is somewhat more complex than it first appears. This guide to 3D printing your own clogs no…
3D-Printed Skin Gives Robots the Sensation of Touch
Hypoesthesia, more commonly referred to as numbness, is one of the more distressing ailments that can affect us humans, primarily because it reminds us of just …
A 1990s Homebrew OS With GUI And Web Browser, In AM29000 Machine Code
The AM29000 series of processors were AMD’s entry into the world of super-fast next-generation silicon of the late 1980s. It was a time when ARM was still…
An Electronic Explanation Of 1960s Fuzz Boxes
It’s likely that even those of us who have never picked up a guitar in our lives will recognize the sound of an electric guitar with a fuzz box effects &#…
100-Degree Heat Doesn’t Stop Landscapers — Here Are the Tips That Keep Them Going
Discover tips for staying cool while working on even the hottest days from the pros themselves. The post 100-Degree Heat Doesn’t Stop Landscapers — Here A…
The Coolest Castle to Visit in Every State
Discover the coolest castle in every U.S. state, from grand estates to historic fortresses, including when each landmark was built. The post The Coolest Castle …
Acmer SM 60W MOPA Split Laser Review
Acmer's SM MOPA laser comes with great power, but leaves responsibility to the user. The post Acmer SM 60W MOPA Split Laser Review appeared first on Make: DIY P…
At Last, A Gameboy Advance With Decent Audio
Many pieces of consumer electronics are build down to a price, and the corners cut show up in their performance. The Gameboy Advance from Nintendo is no excepti…
Tech in Plain Sight: Vacuum Blood Collection
If you’re blessed enough that you haven’t had blood drawn in a while, you might not have thought much about the process. You might imagine that a ne…
Combining Photogrammetry Utilities into a Simple GUI Tool
One of the fun aspects of open source software is that you can often find so many libraries and tools that implement the functionality you need, but ease of use…
An Early History of Space Stations: Where’s My Wheel?
Last time we found out the idea of space stations is surprisingly old. By the 1950s, everyone knew we’d be working in beautiful space stations that rotate…
Making Better Rubies At Home
Sapphires and rubies aren’t just pretty, they also got a range of practical uses. This makes it even more useful to be able to make them at home for obvio…
The Casio F-91W As A Contactless Payment Device.
The Casio F-91W digital watch is perhaps one of the most successful pieces of consumer electronics ever made, having quietly supplied the essential function of …
Neo-Cyclostyle: Automatic Document Copying Devices in 1890
Document duplication has been a highly desirable feature, long before medieval monks slaved over yet another illuminated manuscript by flickering candle light. …
3D Printing a Railway Pump Car
A staple of old movies featuring railways, many handcars – also called pump trolleys or pump cars – feature the characteristic seesawing beam. Requi…
Hackaday Links: August 23, 2026
We’ll start this week off with some disappointing, though not entirely unexpected, news — the ambitious commercial mission to save NASA’s Neil…
Using the Basic SNES Hardware to Play Minecraft
After previously putting a very basic version of Minecraft on the Game Boy Color, [Tobi] decided to have some fun and port that version also to the Super Ninten…
Race Car Tire Pyrometer
Log your tire temperatures with a race car tire pyrometer and tune your ride for faster times. The post Race Car Tire Pyrometer appeared first on Make: DIY Proj…
Making LEDs in the Home Fab
Impressive as it most certainly is when an amateur fabricates a semiconductor, most of the projects we’ve seen are more demonstrations than workable chips. [Dr.…
Amiga-Inspired AROS Goes Bare Metal on Raspberry Pi
There’s no actual data, but if we had to guess the least-favourite Disney movie of former Amiga owners would have to be Frozen, because none of them will …
Bluetooth Shock Collar Keeps Wearer On Task
Like a lot of us [Liam Kloppers] had a problem with doomscrolling. Unwilling to go cold-turkey because he does find some utility in social media. He tried a num…
So, You Found a Foden Steam Lorry in a Field. What Next?
It’s quite likely that many readers will have harbored dreams of owning, or at least driving, a steam engine of some kind. [James Hervey-Bathurst] was luc…
Turning Corroded, Bug-Loving WiiMotes into a Working One
A time-honored tradition in the electronics repair business is to make many into one, specifically a stack of broken devices into one that works. So too with a …
An Atari Desktop On A Sega
Over recent years there have been a range of classic 16-bit consoles coaxed into running familiar operating systems, with -nommu Linux being a favourite. But th…
Open-Source ExpressLRS Receiver Reaches for Range
Drone control links are, from a radio signals perspective, nothing short of amazing: using a transmitter capable of transmitting, at most, one watt, a protocol …
The Shutter Makes This 3D Printed Camera Special
Making a film camera is a project within the reach of almost anyone, from the experimenter with cardboard and sticky tape, to the machinist with an aluminium bi…
555 Makes a Useful Beat Frequency Oscillator
If you’ve got a cheap ham rig, it might not be very practical for you to receive certain transmissions out of the box. However, if you were to hack in …
You Gotta Want It
On Hackaday last week, and on the podcast, we were talking about one of the educational toys of yesteryear that launched a thousand careers, at least if the com…
Building an Analog Geiger Counter
These days, it’s plenty easy to build a Geiger counter with a microcontroller that has a nice fancy display and a simple digital readout for how many radi…
Sleeper E-bike has Solenoid Display
[GRMNT] decided to bring his grandpa’s beautiful road bike into the future by making a sleeper e-bike conversion. Going into the project, [GRMNT] didnR…
Hacking A Cat Litter Box
[Joseph DiGiovanni] is the owner of a Litter Robot 4. It’s a convenient mechanized litter box for cats that can clean itself to reduce unwelcome odors ins…
How the Grid’s Harmonic Filters Keep the Power Clean
A fun way to think about a national electrical grid is as a massively upscaled electrical circuit, one in which you have multiple power supplies injecting AC po…
Building a Hammond Organ to Understand How They Work
The Hammond organ is an early form of electronic– or perhaps electromechanical– musical instrument. It solved the very real problem of organs normal…
Thermoacoustic Sterling Engine is Now Fully 3D Printable
Would you like to make your own energy? Why, who doesn’t in this era of rising costs! A sterling engine always looks like a good fit for that: highly effi…
PVC Pipe Turned DIY Digital Telescope
[Makestreme] had always wanted to own a nice telescope, but found that budget would not stretch to anything above a cheap model with a limited 50 mm aperture. W…
Hackaday Podcast Episode 383: QR Codes, Caving Gear, and the Old School Way to Learn Electronics
In this week’s episode, Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start things off by getting excited about the recently announced 2026 Retrocomputin…
Building a Discrete Component 75 Baud Modem
These days, modems are pretty fancy bits of kit, what with to keep up with the speeds of cable, VDSL, and fiber connections. At lower speeds, though, it’s…
Ever Wonder What Those Long Spikes on Semi-Truck Wheels Are For? Here’s the Answer
Semi-truck wheel spikes aren’t as dangerous as they look. Learn what they cover, why truckers use them, and what they actually do. The post Ever Wonder What Tho…
Can a Cordless Stick Vacuum Really Replace Your Shop-Vac? We Tested Ryobi’s to Find Out
On this edition of Tool Trials we put a cordless vacuum to the ultimate workshop test. The post Can a Cordless Stick Vacuum Really Replace Your Shop-Vac? We Tes…
Lowe’s Is Taking the Giant Skeleton Trend To New Heights
Looking to up your Halloween game? Lowes has a new giant skeleton for sale this year and it's bigger than the Home Depot one. The post Lowe’s Is Taking the Gia…
Don’t Be THAT Neighbor — The Unwritten Rules of Being a Good Neighbor
Unless you live alone on a desert island, you've got neighbors. If you want to maintain good relations with them, avoid these 10 mistakes. The post Don’t …
You’ve Been Using Your Bathroom Fan Wrong This Whole Time
Find out how long to leave a bathroom fan on after a shower or bath to remove lingering moisture and help keep the space dry. The post You’ve Been Using Y…
If Your House Keeps Making Cracking Sounds, Here’s When to Worry and When to Relax
Summertime house cracking sounds are usually harmless, but not always. Here's what could be causing them. The post If Your House Keeps Making Cracking Sounds, H…
Anouk Wipprecht Brings Delft Blue to Life and Light for the Final Dutch Grand Prix
For the fourth and final time, Royal Delft’s hand-painted trophies will stand on the podium of the Formula 1 Heineken Dutch Grand Prix, and this year̵…
Romu, the RP2350 Board Small Enough To Lose
The RP2354A-powered Romu is smaller than a bread bag clip. The post Romu, the RP2350 Board Small Enough To Lose appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas f…
Foldable OLED Displays and the Bane of Dust
Much like Apple’s once vaunted super-slim butterfly keyboard, today’s range of portable devices featuring flexible OLED displays – which can f…
3D Printering: Why is my PLA so Brittle?
Over the years poly(lactic acid) (PLA) – also known as polylactide – has become a popular thermoplastic for a variety of reasons. One of these reaso…
Miniaturizing the Atari 2600 Console
For as popular as Atari was in their heyday, it wasn’t until well after they were on their famous decline that they released their first handheld, the Ata…
An Early History of Space Stations: The Brick Moon Made Real
People have lived in space stations for decades now, but something is wrong with them. Where are the big rotating wheels? You know the ones. They show up in old…
Teardown Shows Low-Fi Microphone is Surprisingly Sophisticated
The Ting FX EP-2350 by Teenage Engineering is a standalone microphone with a few extras, including samples and built-in effect presets that can be modified by t…
Reading isn’t Rocket Science… But In This Case…
While Hackaday’s bread and butter is, of course, hacks, we sometimes cover things that most of us are interested in that are probably out of reach for the…
Quick Share Implemented On A Kindle
Quick Share is a useful tool for flipping files between Android smart phones in a fuss-free wireless manner. [unrealJune] has now implemented the feature on Kin…
NASA Tests Featherweight Radar Antenna for SkyFall Mars Helicopters
After the little Mars helicopter Ingenuity blew everyone away with its performance, it was clear that a future Mars mission should involve more helicopters like…
HYDR8 Will Lead You to Water, But Will You Drink?
[Ayushmaan] states up front that most of his free time is spent “building things that probably didn’t need to exist”. Well, this one might be …
Mini Blinking Barrels Keep Desktop Traffic in Check
Your desk or bench is a work area, so why not make it look the part? That’s the idea behind the miniature blinking traffic barrels that [Glen Akins] recen…
Historical Hack: Henri Griffard’s Steam Injectors
Here’s a historical hack for you: you have a big, rolling pressurized kettle, also known as a steam locomotive. It needs water to make up for the steam co…
Smarting Up a Doorbell with Zigbee
Once upon a time a doorbell was little more than a button, a transformer, and a bell tucked somewhere around the house. These days, they get a little bit fancie…
Hackaday Europe 2026: The 1-Bit CPU That Ran Factories
Powered machinery started the industrial revolution, and it was automation that kicked it up another notch in the 20th century. The ability for machines to make…
New E-Bike Laws Could Be Coming to Your State — Here’s Why and What’s Changing
E-bike laws are rapidly evolving, and whether you ride one or not, the changes could affect you. Here’s how. The post New E-Bike Laws Could Be Coming to Your S…
AI Is Now Screening Some 911 Calls in New Orleans — and It’s Raising Questions
Initial reports claiming New Orleans was using AI to screen 911 calls were overstated. Here's how AI is really being used and what it means for callers in emerg…
Will 911 Calls Always Go Through? When Calls Can Fail
No, 911 calls don't require Wi-Fi or active cell service, but they can still fail. Learn when a call may not connect and what to do next. The post Will 911 Call…
The Growing Backlash Against Flock Surveillance Cameras, Explained
Flock cameras are on people's minds lately, and not in a good way. The post The Growing Backlash Against Flock Surveillance Cameras, Explained appeared first on…
Was Your Address Moved To a New Voting District? What To Know About Redistricting
Redistricting may change a home's voting district. Learn how to check official records, sample ballots, and election information. The post Was Your Address Move…
Make: Live – Inside Volume 98, The Action Issue
Wednesday, August 19, 2026 @ 4 PM Pacific Time Join us live for a chat with the authors of Make: Volume 98 about getting out of the workshop and putting rubber …
Cave Radio – Talking Through Solid Rock
Learn the secrets of underground cave radio, and you can talk through solid rock. The post Cave Radio – Talking Through Solid Rock appeared first on Make: DIY P…
PolyShot Camera Focuses On Nostalgia
Although we personally have yet to see anyone brandishing an old digital point-and-shoot camera, we hear they’re back in vogue. Why, though? People are no…
Announcing the 2026 Hackaday Retrocomputing Challenge
What is it about retrocomputing? For some people, it’s nostalgia. For others, it’s the appeal of simplicity. For still others, it’s the chance to save old machi…
So, You Want to Fix an Old Camera
Old cameras are a fantastic way to experiment with photography, and outside a few brands, they can be an inexpensive way too. It’s easy to find older came…
Smartphones and the Next Generation of Hearing Aids
If you don’t actually need one, you’d be forgiven for thinking a hearing aid just makes everything louder for the wearer. Especially since there are…
Watch Soldering Up Close and From Any Angle, in VR
A manual skill like soldering is so much easier to learn and grasp when one can watch it in action, and there’s a brand new way to do that using …re…
Store Tunes on Paper and Stream Them Over LoRA
Some projects seem too good to be true until you dig into it and find the secret magic that makes it all work. Take Paper Tunes by [Makestreame], a project R…
Using Acoustic Resonators as Thrusters for Small Robots
There are quite a few rather unconventional methods of propulsion, but perhaps one of the more curious approaches involved Helmholtz resonance, as demonstrated …
You May Have Been Using Your Ruler Wrong This Whole Time
There's a reason for that small gap before the zero on a ruler. But have you been accounting for it in your measurements? The post You May Have Been Using Your …
What Those Lines on Traffic Lights Really Mean— and Why They Matter
Learn what the black lines on some traffic lights mean, how Dallas Display louvers control visibility, and why engineers use them. The post What Those Lines on …
More On Wave Overhangs for 3D Printing
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…
Using the Famicom Network System in 2026
Usually, the name ‘Famicom’ and the associated Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) don’t exactly bring to mind downloadable content and online…
Hackaday Links: August 16, 2026
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’…
Another Radio on a Chip Design
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 …
Laser Layers for (Almost) Isotropicly Strong Prints
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, ther…
Building an Actuator for a Walking Robot
Unlike biological systems, which can use muscles, robots that try to imitate them don’t have particularly fast, powerful, compact linear actuators available. Th…
r-Selecting Tiny Probes to Shotgun Into Saturn’s Rings
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 trea…
Researchers Hack an Airline Analog
Modern airliners are rather complicated feats of engineering. Innumerable safety-critical components are connected with tens of miles of wiring, complex digital…
Machine Learning COFFIES “Hears” Sunspots Before We Can See Them
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 pat…
Turning Energy Drinks Into Rocket Fuel
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…
Peeling Fruit with the Power of Steam
Steam power is a staple of the steampunk aesthetic, thermodynamics, and a checkpoint for the budding mechanical engineer studying heat cycles. But because food …
Scanning for Lifesigns with ESP32 and Raspberry Pi
It’s a sci-fi trope that you can ‘scan for life signs’ and detect if there are humans — or suspiciously human-shaped aliens — pres…
Radio Shack Toy Returns to Life
[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 mad…
Fully Characterized Systems
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 proje…
ESP32 Music Sequencer is Clearly Nailing the Y2K Aesthetic
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 …
Bots, Blasters, Bugs, and a Bunch of Open Sauce Hardware
Open Sauce 2026 was filled with familiar faces, new projects, robots, and all kinds of wings. The post Bots, Blasters, Bugs, and a Bunch of Open Sauce Hardware …
Twin Guitar-Playing Robots Will Work for Tab
Remember Animusic? They were these incredible animated music videos with original tunes being played by computer-generated robots. Well, the MegCell Pulse might…