Collaborate Disseminate
Should you spend some time around the less scientifically informed parts of the internet, it’s easy to find “Free power” stories. Usually they’re some form of perpetual motion machine flying …read more Continue reading 2025 Component Abuse Challenge: Light an LED With Nothing
If you’re familiar with electrical slip rings as found in motors and the like you’ll know them as robust assemblies using carefully chosen alloys and sintered brushes, able to take …read more Continue reading 2025 Component Abuse Challenge: The Slip Ring In Your Parts Bin
The arrival of cheap thermal printer mechanisms over the last few years has led to a burst of printer hacking in our community, and we’re sure many of you will …read more Continue reading Another Thermal Printer, Conquered
One of the fun things about writing for Hackaday is that it takes you to the places where our community hang out. I was in a hackerspace in a university …read more Continue reading “AI, Make Me A Degree Certificate”
If you’ve ever combed boxes of old tech detritus in search of a nugget of pure gold, we know you’ll appreciate the excitement of discovering, in a dusty University of …read more Continue reading Have They Found a Complete UNIX V4?
The Hackaday 2025 Component Abuse Challenge is all about abusing electronic components in the service of making them do things they were never intended to. It’s not the 2025 Food …read more Continue reading 2025 Component Abuse Challenge: Dawg Gone LED Tester
Most of us know that a neon bulb requires a significant voltage to strike, in the region of 100 volts. There are plenty of circuits to make that voltage from …read more Continue reading 2025 Component Abuse Challenge: Glowing Neon From a 9 V Relay
Old parts such as EPROMs will often find themselves for sale on sites such as eBay, where they are sometimes snapped up by retrocomputing enthusiasts in search of interesting code. …read more Continue reading BIOS Detectives Find Ghost Of Previously Unknown PC
The humble 555 timer has its origins back in the early 1970s as the NE555, a bipolar integrated circuit. Over the years it has spawned a range of derivatives, including …read more Continue reading 2025 Component Abuse Challenge: Pushing a 555 to the Limit
If you had an array of high power addressable LEDs, how would you project them onto a wall? Perhaps you’d use a Fresnel lens, or maybe an individual lens on …read more Continue reading An LED Projector as a Lighting Effect