Hackaday Podcast 067: Winking Out of IoT, Seas of LEDs, Stuffing PCBs, and Vectrex is Awesome

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams explore the coolest hacks of the past 168 hours. The big news this week: will Wink customers pony up $5 a month to turn their lights on and off? There’s a new open source design for a pick and place machine. You may …read more

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Open Source Pick and Place Has a $450 BOM Cost

Give your grizzled and cramped hands a break from stuffing boards with surface mount components. This is the job of pick and place machine, and over the years these tools of the trade for Printed Circuit Board Assembly (PCBA) have gotten closer to reality for the home shop; with some …read more

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Help Us Throw More Cycles at the Coronavirus Problem

The Hackaday community has answered the call and put their computers put to work folding proteins found in the coronavirus. Team_Hack-a-Day ranks #44 in the world so far this month, and I’ve seen us rank as high as #19 on 24-hour leaderboards.

Want to join the fight? Donate some of …read more

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Hackaday Podcast 066: The Audio Overdub Episode; Tape Loop Scratcher, Typewriter Simulator, and Relay Adder

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys stomp through a forest full of highly evolved hardware hacks. This week seems particularly plump with audio-related projects, like the thwack-tackular soldenoid typewriter simulator. But it’s the tape-loop scratcher that steals our hearts; an instrument that’s kind of two-turntables-and-a-microphone meets melloman. We hear …read more

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FDA Approves Ventilator Designed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Yesterday NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that their ventilator design has received Emergency Use Authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration. This paves the way for the design to be manufactured for use in the treatment of COVID-19 patients.

JPL, which is tightly partnered with the California Institute of …read more

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Hackaday Podcast 065: Game Boy Hacks Galore, Cable Robo Elbow, Pi Cam Solargraphy, and the Deepest Sub is Crushing It

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams cover the hacks that made us happy over the past week. There’s an incredible cable-driven robotic elbow hack whose quality is only eclipsed by the fantastic explanation of how it works (like a block and tackle). Getting data like WiFi credentials into your …read more

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KiCad Panelization Made Easy

There’s a new Python-based script that will panelize your KiCad circuit boards from the command line. The project by [Jan Mrázek] is called KiKit and works on .kicad_pcb files to arrange them in a grid with your choice of mousebites or v-cuts for separating the boards after production.

When working …read more

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Hackaday Podcast 064: The COBOL Cabal, the Demoscene Bytes, and the BTLE Cure

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys pan for gold in a week packed with technological treasure. The big news is Apple/Google are working on contact tracing using BTLE. From adoption, to privacy, to efficacy, there’s a lot to unpack here and many of the details have yet to take …read more

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Automate Your Xbox

First the robots took our jobs, then they came for our video games. This dystopian future is brought to you by [Little French Kev] who designed this adorable 3D-printed robot arm to interface with an Xbox One controller joystick. He shows it off in the video after the break, controlling …read more

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