Collaborate Disseminate
We really like PCB-level hacks, especially ones that show ingenuity in solving a real problem while being super cheap to implement. Hackaday.IO user [Steph] wanted a cheap way to switch …read more Continue reading Your Battery Holder Is Also Your Power Switch With ToggleSlot
[Raymond Ma] has a penchant for browsing Aliexpress and purchasing curious pieces of hardware that are as high on promises as they are low on cost. This is a process …read more Continue reading What’s Inside a Super-Cheap Projector? Not a Lot!
It started with [CHORL] making a promise to himself regarding constructing a new combat robot: no spending of money on the new robot. That rule was violated (but only a …read more Continue reading When Combat Robot Wheels Need To Be Nice And Cheap (But Mostly Cheap)
A hacker is somebody who’s always thinking creatively to solve problems, usually using what they have on hand. Sometimes that means using a 555 to build a CPU, and other …read more Continue reading Camping For $25: Thrift Store Hacks To Keep Cozy
I’d love to tell you that I’m never wrong, but I’ve been wrong a lot. Remember the Arduino? When it was brand new, I thought it was some silly collection …read more Continue reading Dream Bigger, Predict the Future
If you are building a home shop, it is common to try to get the cheapest gear you can possibly get. However, professionals often look at TCO or total cost of ownership. Buying a cheap car, for example, can cost more in the long run compared to buying an expensive …read more
There are usually two ways to go about any task: the easy way and the hard way. Sometimes we might not know there are two options, but once we see someone else’s solution we might feel differently. When running a greenhouse or small farm, for example, we might decide to …read more
Building an electric motor isn’t hard or technically challenging, but these motors have very little in the way of control. A stepper motor is usually employed in applications that need precision, but adding this feature to a motor adds complexity and therefore cost. There is a small $3 stepper motor available, but the downside to this motor is that it’s not exactly the Cadillac of motors, nor was it intended to be. With some coaxing, though, [T-Kuhn] was able to get a lot out of this small, cheap motor.
To test out the motors, [T-Kuhn] built a small robotic arm. …read more
We’ve noticed waving cats in restaurants and stores for years, but even the happy bobbing of their arm didn’t really catch our attention. Maybe [Josh] had seen a couple more than we have when it occurred to him to take one apart to see how they work. They are designed to run indoors from unreliable light sources and seem to bob along forever. How do the ubiquitous maneki-neko get endless mechanical motion from one tiny solar cell?
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the prevalence and cost of these devices, the answer is quite simple. The key interaction is between a permanent magnet …read more
Continue reading An Electromagnet Brings Harmony to this Waving Cat
CubeSats are tiny satellites which tag along as secondary payloads during launches. They have to weigh in at under 1.33 kg, and are often built at low cost. There’s even open source designs for these little spacecrafts. Over 800 CubeSats have been launched over the last few years, with many more launches scheduled in the near future.
[Thomas Cholakov] coupled a homemade cloverleaf antenna to a software-defined radio to track some of these satellites. The antenna is built out of copper-clad wire cut to the correct length to receive 437 MHz signals. Four loops are connected together and terminated to …read more