Hacked Calipers Make Automated Measurements a Breeze

Now, digital calipers with wired interfaces to capture the current reading are nothing new. But the good ones are expensive, and really, where’s the fun in plugging a $75 cable into a computer? So when [Max Holliday] was asked to trick out some calipers for automating data capture, he had …read more

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Simple Timer Evolves into Custom Kid’s Watch

Sporting a new wristwatch to school for the first time is a great moment in a kid’s life. When it’s a custom digital-analog watch made by your dad, it’s another thing altogether.

As [Chris O’Riley] relates, the watch he built for his son [Vlad] started out as a simple timer …read more

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Open Source Synthesizers Hack Chat

Matt Bradshaw is a musician, maker, and programmer with a degree in physics and a love for making new musical instruments. You may remember his PolyMod modular digital synthesizer from the 2018 Hackaday Prize, where it made the semifinals of the Musical Instrument Challenge. PolyMod is a customizable, modular synthesizer that uses digital rather than analog circuitry. That seemingly simple change results in a powerful ability to create polyphonic patches, something that traditional analog modular synths have a hard time with.

Please join us for this Hack Chat, in which we’ll cover:

  • The hardware behind the PolyMod, and the design

…read more

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We Asked 105 Experts What Scares and Inspires Them Most About the Future

Climate change, extremism, and artificial intelligence were among the top fears, and young people, technology, and equality were among the top hopes. Continue reading We Asked 105 Experts What Scares and Inspires Them Most About the Future

Southeast Asia’s Digital Economy To Triple To $240 Billion By 2025, Says Google Report

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: It may sit in the shade of China and India, but tech has real growth potential in Southeast Asia. Home to a cumulative 650 million people, the region’s digital economy is forecast to triple in size a… Continue reading Southeast Asia’s Digital Economy To Triple To $240 Billion By 2025, Says Google Report

[SANS ISC] The Challenge of Managing Your Digital Library

I published the following diary on isc.sans.edu: “The Challenge of Managing Your Digital Library”: How do you manage your digital library on a daily basis? If like me, you are receiving a lot of emails, notifications, tweets, [name your best technology here], they are chances that you’re flooded by tons

[The post [SANS ISC] The Challenge of Managing Your Digital Library has been first published on /dev/random]

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Analog Clock Goes Digital, or Vice Versa

Designing a good clock takes a lot of considerations. It’s not just hands, faces, and numbers anymore; there are also word clocks, electronic clocks, marble clocks, or water clocks, and just about anything else imaginable can be used to tell time. Of course, electronic clocks are great for their versatility, and this one shows off an analog-looking clock that is (of course) digital, leveraging all of the perks of analog with all of the upsides of digital electronics.

One of the key design considerations that [Sasa] had while building this piece was that it needed to be silent. LEDs certainly …read more

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7 Segment Clockwork Display Made From Cardboard

We’ve seen a variety of oddball 7-segment displays in the past, but this one uses a new material: both for the display and the mechanical mechanism that drives it; cardboard. Yup, the whole thing is made from cardboard, wood and a few rubber bands. [The Q] shows how he put together in this nice video, starting from first principles that show how the segments are made: simple pieces of cardboard painted on one side with fluorescent paint. A piece of wood pushes the element out to blank it, and each element is connected to a cam wheel that pushes the …read more

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