Collaborate Disseminate
Every hacker is familiar with those teeny little tactile buttons that are so enjoyable to click over and over again. [ROBO HUB] has built a giant version as a tribute, …read more Continue reading Big Tactile Button Is Silly But Cool
The war on Internet ads rages on, as the arms race between ad blockers and ad creators continues to escalate. To make a modern Internet experience even remotely palatable, plenty …read more Continue reading Pie Stop For Emergency DNS Needs
Competition sure brings out the brute in people, doesn’t it? So what do you do when you need a bunch of switches you can let people fist-pound or stomp on …read more Continue reading Surprisingly Stomp-able Soft Switches
Most projects that interface with the real world need some sort of input device. Obviously this article is being written from a standardized “human interface device” but when the computers …read more Continue reading Capacitive Touch Controller for FPGAs
Press button, wait, press button again, repeat. There must be a better way! If that kind of interaction drives you nuts, you’ll probably appreciate [Tommy]’s buttonpusher, which has only one job: automate away some of the more boring parts of …read more
Continue reading buttonpusher Automates Animal Crossing Tasks
The first LED digital wristwatches hit the market in the 1970s. They required a button push to turn the display on, prompting one comedian to quip that giving one to a one-armed man would be in poor taste. While the UIs of watches and other wearables have improved since then, …read more
George Mallory, a famous English mountaineer, once suggested that it was of no use to climb mountains. Instead, he posited, the only reason to climb a mountain is because it is there. Likewise, when you become an expert in nurse call systems like those found in hospitals, you may find …read more
Continue reading A Nurse Call System Becomes Turing Complete
Regular readers of Hackaday have certainly seen the work of [Jeremy Cook] at this point. Whether you remember him from his time as a writer for this fine online publication, or recognize the name from one of his impressive builds over the last few years, he’s a bona fide celebrity around these parts. In fact, he’s so mobbed with fans at events that he’s been forced to employ a robotic companion to handle distributing his personalized buttons for his own safety.
Alright, that might be something of a stretch. But [Jeremy] figured it couldn’t hurt to have an interesting piece …read more
So you’re building a new mechanical keyboard. Or attaching a few buttons to a Raspberry Pi. Or making the biggest MIDI grid controller the world has ever know. Great! The first and most important engineering question is; how do you read all those buttons? A few buttons on a ‘Pi can probably be directly connected, one for one, to GPIO pins. A mechanical keyboard is going to require a few more pins and probably some sort of matrix scanner. But the grid controller is less clear. Maybe external I/O expanders or a even bigger matrix? Does it still need diodes …read more
Continue reading What’s the Cheapest Way to Scan Lots of Buttons?
An outstanding number of things most people take for granted present enormous hurdles for people with physical disabilities, including interaction with computers and other digital resources. Assistive technologies such as adaptive switches allow users who cannot use conventional buttons or other input devices to interact with digital devices, and while there are commercial offerings there is still plenty of room for projects like [Cassio Batista]’s DIY Low-cost Assistive Technology Switches.
[Cassio]’s project focuses on non-contact switches, such as proximity and puff-based activations. These are economical, DIY options aimed at improving accessibility for people who are unable to physically push even …read more
Continue reading DIY Switches For People Who Can’t Push Switches