Author Archives: Brian Benchoff

Modular Keyboards For CAD, Gaming, And Video Editing

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Of all the input devices, the keyboard is the greatest. This comes at a cost, though: there were times back in the Before Days, when video and music editing applications came with custom keyboards. There were Pro Tools keyboards, Final Cut keyboards, and innumerable Adobe keyboards. What’s the solution to this problem? More keyboards, obviously, and this time we’ll make them modular.

For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Cole B] is building modular, programmable USB keyboards. It’s got everything: a standard 3×3 keypad, a keyboard that’s just four potentiometers, a keyboard that’s a rotary encoder, and a keyboard that’s a set …read more

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Moving 3D Printed Prosthetic Arms With A Pulse

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One of the best uses of 3D printers we’ve seen are custom prosthetics. Even today, custom-built prosthetics cost an arm and a leg, but there’s no reason why they should. Right now, we can scan someone’s arm or leg, import that scan into a 3D-modeling program, and design a custom-fit orthotic that can be spit out on a 3D printer. Now, we’re seeing some interesting methods of turning those 3D-printed parts into the beginnings of a cybernetic design. This is a custom printed robotic hand controlled by a pulse sensor. It’s in its early stages right now, but so far …read more

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Count To F Easily With This DIY Calculator

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Some of the greatest electronic calculators of all time, including the venerable HP-16C, included functionality to convert numbers between different bases. 3735928559 might not mean much in base 10, but convert that to hex, and you’ll offend vegetarians. If the great calculators of yore had a way to convert between number bases, that means someone must make a standalone device to do the same, right? That’s what [leumasyerrp] is doing for their entry into the Hackaday Prize, anyway.

The Base Convert project is a simple desktop calculator designed to convert between hexadecimal, decimal, and binary. To do this, there’s an …read more

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Twenty Projects That Just Won the Human Computer Interface Challenge

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The greatest hardware competition on the planet is going on right now. The Hackaday Prize is the Oscars of Open Hardware. It’s the Nobel Prize of building a thing. It’s the Fields Medal of firmware development, and simply making it to the finals grants you a knighthood in the upper echelon of hardware developers.

Last week, we wrapped up the fourth challenge in The Hackaday Prize, the Human Computer Interface challenge. Now we’re happy to announce twenty of those projects have been selected to move onto the final round and have been awarded a $1000 cash prize. Congratulations to the …read more

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Friday Hack Chat: Environmental Sensors

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When it comes to IoT and robotics, the name of the game is sensors. These aren’t just IMUs and the stuff that makes robots move — we’re talking about environmental sensors here. Everything from sensors that measure temperature, air quality, humidity, chemical sensors, and radiation sensors are on the table here. For this week’s Hack Chat, we’re talking all about environmental sensors with a hardware designer who has put them to the test.

Our guest for this week’s Hack Chat is Radu Motisan. He was a finalist in the 2014 Hackaday Prize with the uRad Monitor, a self-contained radiation monitoring …read more

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This Is Your Solution For Open Source Motion Tracking

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The HTC Vive Tracker adds real-world objects to your virtual world. While these real-world objects in virtual environments are now mostly limited to a Nintendo Zapper for a Duck Hunt clone and a tennis racket, the future is clear: we’re going to be playing Duck Hunt and Wii Sports while wearing headsets. The future is so bright, it burns.

Of course, with any piece of neat computing hardware, there’s an opportunity for building an Open Source clone. That’s what [Drix] is doing with his Hackaday Prize entry. He’s created an Open Source Vive Tracker. It’s called the HiveTracker, and it …read more

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There Is A Cost To Extended Lifetime Products. It’s 7.5%.

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Silicon and integrated circuits come and go, but when it comes to extended lifetime support from a company, it’s very, very hard to find fault with Microchip. They’re still selling the chip — new — that was the foundation of the Basic Stamp. That’s a part that’s being sold for twenty-five years. You can hardly find that sort of product support with a company that doesn’t deal in high-tech manufacturing.

While the good times of nearly unlimited support for products that are decades old isn’t coming to an end, it now has a cost. According to a press release from …read more

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The Quest For High Powered Blinky And Buzzing

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Sometimes, we need devices to notify us of something. The oven timer is going off. Your phone has a push notification. The smoke detector battery is getting low. All of these problems can be solved with a buzzer or an LED. It’s a simple and cheap problem to solve.

But what if you need to know if something’s wrong with a diesel engine that throwing out 90 dB of noise? What if you’re not guaranteed to be around that engine? What if you need to tell everyone within a half mile that something is wrong. Again, LEDs and beepers, but …read more

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Hackaday Links: September 2, 2018

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It’s (was, is?) the end of August, and that means the entire dreadlocked population of San Francisco is out in the middle of the Nevada Desert for a week. Yes, it’s Burning Man, and as always we have a host of builds that make you ask, ‘how did they do that, and how did they get that here’.

For the last few years, the greatest logistical feat of art cars is the 747. Yes, it’s the fuselage of a 747, turned into an art car. The top deck is a convertible. The biggest question surrounding this 747 is how do …read more

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You Have To Have A Very High IQ To Understand This Rick And Morty Portal Gun Replica

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It’s barely September, but that still means you’ve got to start working on your Halloween costume. If last year is any indication, the most popular costume this year will be, by far, Rick from Rick and Morty. There’s a lot to be said about this, but let me simplify it: if you dress up as Rick from Rick and Morty, you are not a Rick. You’re a Morty.

Nevertheless, Halloween is an awesome opportunity for some cosplay and prop-making action, and [Daren] has this year all wrapped up. He’s building the portal gun from Rick and Morty, …read more

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