Author Archives: Elliot Williams

DIY Tiny Single-PCB Synthesizer

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[Jan Ostman] has been pushing the limits of sound synthesis on the lowly AVR ATMega microcontrollers, and his latest two project is so cute that we just had to write it up. The miniTS shares the same basic sound-generation firmware with his previous TinyTS, which we’ve covered here before, but adds a lot more keys, an OLED, and MIDI, while taking away some of the knobs.

Both feature keyboards that are just copper pads placed over a ground plane, and the code does simple capacitive-sensing to figure out if they’re being touched or not. The point here is that you …read more

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Make Munich was Awesome

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It was a good weekend to be geeky in Bavaria. In addition to our own Hackaday Prize Bring-a-Hack party, there was the reason that we scheduled it in the first place, Munich’s independent DIY expo, Make Munich.

If you’re a loyal Hackaday reader, many of the projects would seem uncannily familiar. I walked in and was greeted by some beautiful word clocks in both German and English, for instance. Still, seeing the Open Theremin being sold with an “as seen on Hackaday” sticker made us smile. And then we had a great conversation about [Urs Gaudenz]’s other project: DIY biological …read more

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Hackaday Prize Bring-a-Hack Munich was Great

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Thanks to everyone who came to the Hackaday Prize Make Munich Meetup and Bring-a-Hack last night! We had a great time, and there were a bunch of cool projects on display, some of which we even got pictures of. Frankly, we were enjoying chatting too much to be peering through a camera lens.

Around 30 people made it over to the Munich CCC, including some familiar faces from the last time we had a party in Munich. Although it was a mostly local crowd, we also had visitors from Switzerland, Austria, and even the US of A: TV-B-Gone inventor, HaD …read more

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Don’t Forget: Bring a Hack Munich is Tonight

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If you’re in Munich, Germany this weekend and you’ve got a sweet hack to show off and a thirst for beer and/or good geeky company, then you’re in luck! Come join Hackaday at the muCCC for a Hackaday Prize Bring a Hack.

The location is Schleißheimer Str. 41, a short walk west along Heßstraße from the Theresienstraße U-Bahn. No reservation is needed, but it’d be swell if you’d let us know in the comments that you’re coming (or better yet, click the “join this event” button in the upper right of the event page) so that we have enough pizza …read more

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Hands-On the Hot New WeMos ESP-32 Breakout

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Just two weeks ago our favorite supplier of cheap ESP8266 boards, WeMos, released the long-awaited LOLIN32 ESP-32 board, and it’s almost a killer. Hackaday regular [deshipu] tipped us off, and we placed an order within minutes; if WeMos is making a dirt-cheap ESP32 development board, we’re on board! It came in the mail yesterday. (They’re out of stock now, more expected soon.)

If you’ve been following the chip’s development, you’ll know that the first spin of ESP-32s had some silicon bugs (PDF) that might matter to you if you’re working with deep sleep modes, switching between particular clock frequencies, or …read more

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Linger Keeps You Around After You’ve Gone

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We’re not sure if this is art, anti-snooping guerilla warfare, or just a cheeky hack, but we do know that we like it! [Jasper van Leonen]’s Linger keeps the SSIDs that your cell phone (for example) spits out whenever it’s not connected to a WiFi network, and replays them after you’re gone.

Some retail stores and other shady characters use MAC addresses and/or the unique collection of SSIDs that your phone submits in probe requests to fingerprint you and track your movement, either through their particular store or across stores that share a tracking provider. Did you know that you …read more

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Hackaday Prize Bring-a-Hack at Make Munich Next Week!

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Attention Europe! Next weekend, May 6th and 7th, is Make Munich. Hackaday wants to help you warm up with a Bring-a-Hack party on Friday, May 5th from 20:30 and on at the Munich local branch of the Chaos Computer Club.

Immediately following build-up for exhibitors at Make Munich, head on over to Schleißheimer Str. 41 (corner Heßstrasse, U-Bahn Theresienstraße) where Hackaday will be providing beer, Mate, and pizza for anyone who brings along a small project that they’re working on. We’ll have Hackaday.com and Hackaday Prize stickers galore, and a few copies of the Hackaday Omnibus on hand for those …read more

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Hackaday Prize Bring-a-Hack at Make Munich Next Week!

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Attention Europe! Next weekend, May 6th and 7th, is Make Munich. Hackaday wants to help you warm up with a Bring-a-Hack party on Friday, May 5th from 20:30 and on at the Munich local branch of the Chaos Computer Club.

Immediately following build-up for exhibitors at Make Munich, head on over to Schleißheimer Str. 41 (corner Heßstrasse, U-Bahn Theresienstraße) where Hackaday will be providing beer, Mate, and pizza for anyone who brings along a small project that they’re working on. We’ll have Hackaday.com and Hackaday Prize stickers galore, and a few copies of the Hackaday Omnibus on hand for those …read more

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Sexiest Tiny Metal Core-XY 3D Printer

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That’s a lot of qualifications, but we’re pretty sure that you can’t accuse us of hyperbole in the title: this is one of the tightest little 3D printer builds we’ve ever seen. Add in the slightly esoteric CoreXY kinematics and the thick aluminum frame, and it’s a speed demon in addition to being a looker.

[René] had built a few 3D printers before, so he had a good feel for the parameters and design tradeoffs before he embarked on the DICE project. Making a small print volume, for instance, means that the frame can be smaller and thus exponentially more …read more

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Making a Solar-Cell Tester With Mecrisp-Stellaris Forth

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In the last two articles on Forth, I’ve ranted about how it’s beautiful but strange, and then gotten you set up on a basic system and blinked some LEDs. And while I’ve pointed you at the multitasker, we haven’t made much real use of it yet. Getting started on a Forth system like this is about half the battle. Working inside the microcontroller is different from compiling for the microcontroller, and figuring out the workflow, how to approach problems, and where the useful resources are isn’t necessarily obvious. Plus, there’s some wonderful features of Mecrisp-Stellaris Forth that you might not …read more

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