RSS Parrot

A Computer Terminal the Old Way

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/21/a-computer-terminal-the-old-way/

Published: September 22, 2026 05:00

Here in 2026 if we need a terminal the chances are we fire one up on our computer and continue on our way without a thought. What we are doing …read more

New Research Suggests that a Neutrino Laser is Impossible

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/21/new-research-suggests-that-a-neutrino-laser-is-impossible/

Published: September 22, 2026 02:00

As cool as it would have been to wield lasers that produce a beam of neutrinos, recently two papers were published by MIT researchers that seem to dampen the likelihood …read more

The Mazda Suitcase Car Rides Again

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/21/the-mazda-suitcase-car-rides-again/

Published: September 21, 2026 23:00

Once you arrive at your destination via plane, it can be a drag waiting for a rental car. Why not bring your own with a replica of the Mazda suitcase …read more

Trying a New Radial Impeller Design for Quadcopters

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/21/trying-a-new-radial-impeller-design-for-quadcopters/

Published: September 21, 2026 20:00

Even if the world has already settled on plain old propellers as the way to make quadcopter drones fly, this doesn’t mean that you cannot give other designs a shake …read more

Pedal Harder for Affordability

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/21/pedal-harder-for-affordability/

Published: September 21, 2026 18:30

In the US, among other places, housing costs are skyrocketing. It can sometimes be difficult to get a feel for the scale of the issue and how it hits neighborhoods …read more

The First Floating Nuclear Power Station

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/21/the-first-floating-nuclear-power-station/

Published: September 21, 2026 17:00

Nuclear power really hit its stride in the 1950s. In the post-war period, there was a rush to develop peaceful uses for splitting the atom, beyond its application as a …read more

The RP2350 Does 1080p

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/21/the-rp2350-does-1080p/

Published: September 21, 2026 15:30

Coaxing a DVI signal out of a microcontroller to drive a DVI or HDMI screen has been possible for a while now, but limitations in what the devices can do …read more

DIY Router on x86 E-Waste: OpenWrt and OPNsense

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/21/diy-router-on-x86-e-waste-openwrt-and-opnsense/

Published: September 21, 2026 14:00

In previous installments of this series we looked at how creating a DIY router using an e-waste-level PC has changed over the years, before attempting to boot OpenWrt for x86 …read more

Searching for Dark Matter with a Levitating Magnet

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/21/searching-for-dark-matter-with-a-levitating-magnet/

Published: September 21, 2026 11:00

Much of science is performed through inference, with the readings on instruments, a flash of light in heavy water, or the results of parsing through terabytes of sensor data after …read more

The Sinclair Spectrum Gets A Desktop GUI

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/21/the-sinclair-spectrum-gets-a-desktop-gui/

Published: September 21, 2026 08:00

Of the popular 1980s 8-bit computers, it’s fair to say that Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum punched above its weight. Sir Clive’s love of squeezing more functionality out of less hardware meant …read more

Making a Copper-Oxide Photodetector from Scratch

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/20/making-a-copper-oxide-photodetector-from-scratch/

Published: September 21, 2026 05:00

Photodetectors come in a wide variety of constructions and materials, with the Cu2O-based photodetector that [Mad Scientist Creations] demonstrates in a recent video being a good example of a photodetector …read more

Hackaday Links: September 20, 2026

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/20/hackaday-links-september-20-2026/

Published: September 21, 2026 02:00

Some sad news to start this week off — after 52 years in business, Sherline has announced they are winding down their manufacturing operations. By the end of October they …read more

Reviving TEMPEST Attacks with an Injected Signal

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/20/reviving-tempest-attacks-with-an-injected-signal/

Published: September 20, 2026 23:00

TEMPEST attacks are often the most effective way to break air-gapped security: rather than directly accessing a computer, the attacker records the system’s unintended radio emissions and uses them to …read more

Ski Lift Removes Mice from Chicken Coop

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/20/ski-lift-removes-mice-from-chicken-coop/

Published: September 20, 2026 20:00

Getting rid of rodents like squirrels, mice, or groundhogs is a lot like digging a hole on the beach. No matter how much you remove, it’ll always fill back in. …read more

World War I Coded Message Appears Cracked, Finally

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/20/world-war-i-coded-message-appears-cracked-finally/

Published: September 20, 2026 17:00

When you think of wartime cryptography, you probably think of World War II and Enigma, although there were other famous codes used during that war. But in fact, there have …read more

Reverse Engineering A Sony Car Stereo LCD

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/20/reverse-engineering-a-sony-car-stereo-lcd/

Published: September 20, 2026 14:00

For his own reasons, [Jose Luis Monteiro] (aka [emsyscode]) decided he needed to drive the LCD on a Sony CDX-A250 car stereo’s front panel using an Arduino. There’s probably a …read more

A Bandpass Filter Pulls In The Signals

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/20/a-bandpass-filter-pulls-in-the-signals/

Published: September 20, 2026 11:00

It’s an unfortunate side effect of proximity to a large transmitter that the received signal can overload a receiver’s front end even when tuned to other frequencies. [Rfrht]’s had this …read more

No GPU, No Problem: Flagship LLMs on a GPU-less Teenaged Server

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/20/no-gpu-no-problem-flagship-llms-on-a-gpu-less-teenaged-server/

Published: September 20, 2026 08:00

There are lots of reasons to run LLMs locally, from privacy concerns to just wanting to futz about with the technology, but if you want to run the big models, …read more

Teardown and Repair of a Insoma Water Timer

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/19/teardown-and-repair-of-a-insoma-water-timer/

Published: September 20, 2026 05:00

Water timers are nifty devices that can water the lawn at set times or keep that vegetable garden from turning into a dustbowl. When [electronupdate] timer refused to output water …read more

Laser Your Way into Debug Mode on the RP2350

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/19/laser-your-way-into-debug-mode-on-the-rp2350/

Published: September 20, 2026 02:00

The RP2350 is actually a pretty secure chip, all things considered. It has secure boot, ARMv8’s TrustZone to split secure and non-secure execution, and you can permanently disable debug — …read more

A Hotspot Becomes A Handheld

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/19/a-hotspot-becomes-a-handheld/

Published: September 19, 2026 23:00

A Linux handheld computer is, in theory, easy and inexpensive given the availability of single-board computers, but in practice the budget invariably edges well into three figures. There’s an interesting …read more

Coreboot Hikes the Bay Trail to DRAM Initialization

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/19/coreboot-hikes-the-bay-trail-to-dram-initialization/

Published: September 19, 2026 20:00

This article is written on an open-source operating system, but not an open-source machine — the BIOS isn’t open-source, and even if it were supported by the coreboot project (formerly …read more

Teaching a Robot Hand to Walk

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/19/teaching-a-robot-hand-to-walk/

Published: September 19, 2026 17:00

Although it wasn’t apparently designed with this in mind, it seems particularly fortuitous that this walking robotic hand was released in time for Halloween. Designed by researchers from ETH Zurich, …read more

What are Your Indispensable Software Skills?

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/19/what-are-your-indispensable-software-skills/

Published: September 19, 2026 14:00

Using tools properly takes skill, and this goes for software tools as well as hardware. You don’t just buy a paintbrush and on day one paint the Mona Lisa. Similarly, …read more

Using Azo Photoisomerization to Alter Semiconductor Film Properties

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/19/using-azo-photoisomerization-to-alter-semiconductor-film-properties/

Published: September 19, 2026 11:00

Generally semiconductor devices like transistors have fixed properties, but using an azobenzene (Azo) compound it’s possible to optically alter these properties by exposing them to UV light. This is demonstrated …read more

Emulating Memory Access: How Hard Can It Be?

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/19/emulating-memory-access-how-hard-can-it-be/

Published: September 19, 2026 08:00

There are so many things we approximate to make life simple. Wires, for example, have no resistance or other strange effects. Crystal oscillators output their exact frequency. But surely our …read more

The Concertina Goes Electronic

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/18/the-concertina-goes-electronic/

Published: September 19, 2026 05:00

The concertina is an instrument that features heavily in European folk music, of which there are a variety of types. [Xcott Craver] has built one, an anglo concertina of the …read more

On Chip Debug for (Some) MicroPython

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/18/on-chip-debug-for-some-micropython/

Published: September 19, 2026 02:00

If you’ve used MicroPython much, you know that debugging usually amounts to printing a few things out, trying your code out, and then repeating. But [ghi-electronics] wants you to have …read more

Sony’s First Computer

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/18/sonys-first-computer/

Published: September 18, 2026 23:00

In 1982, desktop computers were coming into their own, and no clear leaders had emerged. But everyone knew they wanted a piece of the action. This led to, among other …read more

Making a Digital Music Player for Cassette Decks

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/18/making-a-digital-music-player-for-cassette-decks/

Published: September 18, 2026 20:00

In the cross-over between the era of tapes into that of MP3s, you’d see quite a few of those special cassette tapes that were actually digital music players inside. Some …read more

Reconstructing a Pin on a Pin Grid Array Package

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/18/reconstructing-a-pin-on-a-pin-grid-array-package/

Published: September 18, 2026 18:30

Before moving to land grid array (LGA) packaging whereby each pin on the substrate is just a copper pad, processors commonly used pin grid array (PGA) packaging, including the still …read more

Hackaday Podcast Episode 387: Superhuman Clocks, CAN in USB-C, and the Joys of Bare Metal

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/18/hackaday-podcast-episode-387-superhuman-clocks-can-in-usb-c-and-the-joys-of-bare-metal/

Published: September 18, 2026 16:45

This week, Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start the episode off by discussing the latest CircuitPython developments before covering some impressive reverse engineering efforts, the benefits of modeling …read more

Brain Control Your Appliance, Sort Of

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/18/brain-control-your-appliance-sort-of/

Published: September 18, 2026 15:30

We aren’t sure we subscribe to [Upside Down Labs] description that their Neuro PlayGround Lite (NPG Lite) actually constitutes brain control in the science fiction sense. However, the package can …read more

This Week in Security: Flock Cameras Are Old, Microsoft Patches Patches, and Researchers attack SSH

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/18/this-week-in-security-flock-cameras-are-old-microsoft-patches-patches-and-researchers-attack-ssh/

Published: September 18, 2026 14:00

Leak site Distributed Denial of Secrets has released a dump of the filesystems of a Flock camera, and Micah Lee has published a dive into the contents.  Apparently the Flock …read more

Meta Portal Given New Life As Extended Display

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/18/meta-portal-given-new-life-as-extended-display/

Published: September 18, 2026 11:00

The Meta Portal and associated devices are effectively defunct, having been abandoned by the company in 2022. If you’ve still got one at home, you might be wondering what to …read more

TV Audio Tube Makes a Transceiver

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/18/tv-audio-tube-makes-a-transceiver/

Published: September 18, 2026 08:00

It’s not often we see a tube project here, so [Helge Fykse]’s PCL86 transceiver is a welcome find. If you know anything about the European Pro-Electron device naming system you’ll …read more

Building a DIY Centrifuge For Blood Processing

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/17/building-a-diy-centrifuge-for-blood-processing/

Published: September 18, 2026 05:00

If you want to do certain types of lab work with blood, you’ll need a centrifuge. It’s often possible to find serviceable units on the used market, but they may …read more

Surveillance Camera Security? It’s Completely Flocked!

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/17/surveillance-camera-security-its-completely-flocked/

Published: September 18, 2026 02:00

Surveillance cameras from Flock Safety have become a controversial privacy battleground, as the communities in which they are installed wake up to their sinister potential, and stories roll in of …read more

Your CYD Is Now A Telly

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/17/your-cyd-is-now-a-telly/

Published: September 17, 2026 23:00

The Cheap Yellow Display is an all-in-one ESP32 board with a touchscreen, that’s as the name suggests, cheap. It’s appeared in a great many projects since it emerged from the …read more

Keep Your Back Cool While Others Melt

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/17/keep-your-back-cool-while-others-melt/

Published: September 17, 2026 20:00

With an El Niño event in full swing those of us in the northern hemisphere have just had a roasting hot summer, and those in the southern are about to …read more

Why Wave Energy is the Final Frontier of Renewable Energy

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/17/why-wave-energy-is-the-final-frontier-of-renewable-energy/

Published: September 17, 2026 18:30

With the Earth’s atmosphere being effectively just a less dense fluid than the oceans around us, it’s reasonable to ask why we got wind turbines and wind mills quite literally …read more

Eye-D Badge Catches Your Attention

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/17/eye-d-badge-catches-your-attention/

Published: September 17, 2026 15:30

Head out to your next corporate conference, and you’ll probably be handed a little paper badge in a plastic holder so people can learn what to call you (or whether …read more

FCC ISM Rules May Shatter Lora Mesh Communities

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/17/fcc-ism-rules-may-shatter-lora-mesh-communities/

Published: September 17, 2026 14:00

Although everyone has their own reasons for exploring a new hobby, one of the driving factors behind the popularity of Meshtastic and MeshCore has been the incredible accessibility offered by …read more

An Enhanced Game Boy Advance

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/17/an-enhanced-game-boy-advance/

Published: September 17, 2026 11:00

[Bucket Mouse] has long been a fan of the various iterations of the Nintendo Game Boy. Now, he’s turned his eye to the Game Boy Advance, building an enhanced version …read more

Printing a Clock Fit for a Pope

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/17/printing-a-clock-fit-for-a-pope/

Published: September 17, 2026 08:00

When it comes to clockwork, there is a spectrum — some people love the ticking, and some people hate it, while most fall into the broad middle of indifference. Once …read more

Recreating Unobtainable Diagnostic Tools For The Jaguar XJ220

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/16/recreating-unobtainable-diagnostic-tools-for-the-jaguar-xj220/

Published: September 17, 2026 05:00

If you own a Jaguar XJ220 or the rarer XJR-15, you’re probably not short on money or real estate. You may, however, be finding it hard to lay your hands …read more

Introducing the Periodic Table of US Electrical Receptacles

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/16/introducing-the-periodic-table-of-us-electrical-receptacles/

Published: September 17, 2026 02:00

Although things may seem simple on the North American grid as an end-user if you limit yourself to just 120 VAC and NEMA 1-15 and 5-15 connectors, there is a …read more

Ride the Rails on a OneWheel

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/16/ride-the-rails-on-a-onewheel/

Published: September 16, 2026 23:00

The US has tons of abandoned rail, especially in urban environments, so it seems a shame to let it go to waste. [OneWheel] decided to modify one of their boards …read more

A 3D Rasterizer For Embedded Devices

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/16/a-3d-rasterizer-for-embedded-devices/

Published: September 16, 2026 20:00

Once upon a time, doing graphics on a microcontroller was challenging, to say nothing of the concept of going into three dimensions. But modern microcontrollers are far more powerful, and …read more

FLOSS Weekly Episode 882 with OSADL: Better Together

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/16/floss-weekly-episode-882-with-osadl-better-together/

Published: September 16, 2026 18:30

This week Jonathan chats with Jan Altenberg of the Open Source Automation Development Lab, a cooperative of nerds that care about Linux and Open Source! Jan and OSADL helped push …read more

A Cheap and Easy Control Screen For Home Assistant

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/16/a-cheap-and-easy-control-screen-for-home-assistant/

Published: September 16, 2026 15:30

Home Assistant is a great way to rig up and manage your smart home and its many and varied devices. You can of course control the system from your smartphone …read more

Heat Domes: Meet the Quiet and Oppressive Take on the Thunderdome

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/16/heat-domes-meet-the-quiet-and-oppressive-take-on-the-thunderdome/

Published: September 16, 2026 14:00

One of the nice things about the weather is that even if it’s bad right now, it’ll definitely be changing soon and maybe even for the better. There is one …read more

Full-Color Looks Great on 3D Printed Sliding Puzzles

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/16/full-color-looks-great-on-3d-printed-sliding-puzzles/

Published: September 16, 2026 11:00

[Angus] of [Maker’s Muse] shows off both a parametric, print-in-place sliding puzzle design he created, and the results of UV printing full-color designs on the same. The results look beautiful, …read more

Round AMOLED Badge Does All Kinds Of Cool Stuff

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/16/round-amoled-badge-does-all-kinds-of-cool-stuff/

Published: September 16, 2026 08:00

[curisama] has put together a project simply entitled The Badge. It’s simple enough, being a little round screen that you wear. Only, it does a wide variety of rather interesting …read more

A Super-Accurate Clock Using a Tiny Microcontroller

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/15/a-super-accurate-clock-using-a-tiny-microcontroller/

Published: September 16, 2026 05:00

DCF77 is a German VLF transmitting station that broadcasts a time signal across Europe on 77.5 kHz. Thus a common sight in a European home is a clock emblazoned with …read more

Tips To Model Your Next CNC Cabinet in CAD Before Buying Anything

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/15/tips-to-model-your-next-cnc-cabinet-in-cad-before-buying-anything/

Published: September 16, 2026 02:00

[Clough42] has started a new CNC control cabinet build, and uses it as an opportunity to demonstrate why he models the whole thing out in CAD before ordering parts or …read more

Coffee Maker Steam Wand Gets a Safe Outlet

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/15/coffee-maker-steam-wand-gets-a-safe-outlet/

Published: September 15, 2026 23:00

Sometimes a hacker has a specific sort of problem, and uses the tools they have to solve it in a way that just might be helpful to someone else. That’s …read more

After 6 Years as Road Ornament a Widescreen Sony Trinitron Lives Again

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/15/after-6-years-as-road-ornament-a-widescreen-sony-trinitron-lives-again/

Published: September 15, 2026 20:00

After previously adopting a big Sony Trinitron CRT TV that had been trying to hitch a ride along the side of a road in Italy for at least six years, …read more

Sampling the Elephant’s Foot and Chornobyl’s Tedious Corium Clean-up

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/15/sampling-the-elephants-foot-and-chernobyls-tedious-corium-clean-up/

Published: September 15, 2026 18:30

The site of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP) remains a unique location, as what’s left of the No. 4 reactor is the only place in the world where you …read more

Hackaday Europe 2026: Bare Metal Made Easy

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/15/hackaday-europe-2026-bare-metal-made-easy/

Published: September 15, 2026 17:05

When we talk about programming in “bare metal,” it basically means writing software that runs right on the hardware with no operating system or abstraction layers in between. This gives …read more

Running Linux 6.11 on the ESP32-S3 with a Few Tweaks

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/15/running-linux-6-11-on-the-esp32-s3-with-a-few-tweaks/

Published: September 15, 2026 15:30

With the Xtensa Lx7 twin CPU cores in the ESP32-S3 running at a relatively zippy 240 MHz and accompanying PSRAM of up to 16 MB, you might find yourself wondering …read more

Linux Fu: Speak Up!

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/15/linux-fu-speak-up/

Published: September 15, 2026 14:00

Apparently, people hate typing. As every movie and TV show suggests, the future is talking to computers. There was a time when speech recognition was complex and not very good. …read more

Every ZX81 Expansion Card You Ever Wanted, All At Once

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/15/every-zx81-expansion-card-you-ever-wanted-all-at-once/

Published: September 15, 2026 11:00

The Sinclair ZX81 was a masterpiece of Sir Clive’s desire to get the most out of the least hardware, being about as minimalist as it was possible to get and …read more

Fixing a Ubiquiti 16-Port PoE Switch With an Extra Hole

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/15/fixing-a-ubiquiti-16-port-poe-switch-with-an-extra-hole/

Published: September 15, 2026 08:00

After saving a £300, 16-port Ubiquiti network switch from getting tossed into the trash, [Buy It Fix It] got the honor of trying to repair it. With four ports and …read more

An Open Heart Rate Monitor

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/14/an-open-heart-rate-monitor/

Published: September 15, 2026 05:00

If you spend any time near a gym, you may be familiar with Bluetooth heart rate monitors — a small pack of electronics mounted on a strap round the chest …read more

Writing an ESP32 Bluetooth Printer Driver In Two Acts

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/14/writing-an-esp32-bluetooth-printer-driver-in-two-acts/

Published: September 15, 2026 02:00

[Bas BotBerg] wanted to use a portable Bluetooth thermal printer to run off reports on sensor data collected by an ESP32-C3 microcontroller. But as is so often the case these …read more

How High-Voltage Current Transformers Monitor the Grid

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/14/how-high-voltage-current-transformers-monitor-the-grid/

Published: September 14, 2026 23:00

Being able to monitor voltages and currents is essential for many applications, with the national electrical grid being no exception. The obvious complication here is that the voltages and currents …read more

A UPS For Your Pi That’s a Little Different

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/14/a-ups-for-your-pi-thats-a-little-different/

Published: September 14, 2026 20:00

There are many uninterruptible power supply (UPS) solutions for the Raspberry Pi that take the form of HATs with a battery on board, but they’re not suitable for every situation. …read more

Pulse: a New VHDL Simulator

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/14/pulse-a-new-vhdl-simulator/

Published: September 14, 2026 18:00

With VHDL being arguably more deterministic and bullet-proof than Verilog, it’s good to see another open source VHDL simulator joining the fray that is not a variation of ghdl. Written …read more

Hackaday Europe 2026: Space Oddities

https://hackaday.com/2026/09/14/hackaday-europe-2026-space-oddities/

Published: September 14, 2026 17:05

If you’re in motorsport, or maritime, or mining fields, you can always call on a technician to come down and fix something when it’s broken. You can lay hands on …read more