Category Archives: hackaday.io

The Future Travels Of The Travelling Hackerbox

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For the past year, I’ve been organizing a very special project over on hackaday.io. It’s the Travelling Hacker Box, a box full of random electronics junk, sibling to the The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk, and a project that has already traveled more than 25,000 miles. Earlier this month, I said the Hackerbox is going international, I asked for contributors to receive the project in faraway lands, and now it’s time for the final report. This is where the Travelling Hackerbox will be going over the next year.

More than 200 people responded to the call for hackerbox …read more

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The Travelling Hackerbox Is Going International

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Over the last year, Hackaday.io has seen an incredible project. It’s a migratory box of random electronic junk, better known as the Travelling Hackerbox. The idea behind this mobile electronic surplus store is simple: receive the box, take out some cool electronic gizmos, add some of your own, and send it on to the next person on the list. It is the purest expression of the hacker aesthetic, all contained in a cardboard box.

Last week, the Travelling Hackerbox appeared at the Hackaday Superconference where it was torn asunder. Its silicon and plastic innards were spilled for a badge hacking …read more

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Bending the Light

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Everyone knows you can’t visibly bend light over short distances in free air. Or can you? [Jack Pearse] has figured out a way to do it though, or at least make it appear that way. He does it by combining a trick of math and a trick of the eye. The secret is the hyperboloid, a geometric construct described by a quadratic equation. [Jack’s] creation is more specifically a hyperboloid in one sheet. This type of structure allows straight lines to create a an overall curved surface.  Hyperboloids have been used by architects and in construction for years, often in  …read more

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Retrofitting Smoke Alarms With Bluetooth

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Everybody should have a few smoke alarms in their house, and everyone should go check the battery in their smoke alarm right now. That said, there are a few downsides to the traditional smoke alarm. They only work where you can hear them, and this problem has been solved over and over again by security companies and Internet of Things things.

Instead of investing in smart smoke alarms, [Johan] decided to build his own IoT smoke alarm. It’s dead simple, costs less than whatever wonder gizmo you can buy at a home improvement store, and reuses your old smoke alarm. …read more

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Maslow Brings The Wall Plotter Into The Woodshop

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Hanging plotters, or two steppers controlling a dangling Sharpie marker on an XY plane, are nothing new to our community. But have you ever thought of trading out the Sharpie for a wood router bit and cutting through reasonably thick plywood sheets? That would give you a CNC machine capable of cutting out wood in essentially whatever dimensions you’d like, at reasonably low-cost. And that’s the idea behind [Bar]’s Maslow. It’s going to be a commercial product (we hope!), but it’s also entirely open source and indubitably DIYable.

[Bar] walks us through all of the design decisions in this video, …read more

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Hackaday in Portland this Week for Open Hardware Summit

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We’ve been trying fit in a tour of the Pacific Northwest for a couple of years now. This week is a perfect excuse. Hackaday is proud to sponsor the Open Hardware Summit which will be held in Portland this Friday!

Hackaday believes in the free and open sharing of information and ideas. Open Hardware has far-reaching benefits that help to educate and inspire current and future generations of hardware developers. Open Hardware also works toward making difficult and important advancements in the state of the art available to people who have the skills and interest to incorporate them in their …read more

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Join Hackaday For an NYC Meetup

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On the eve of the New York Maker Faire, Hackaday is throwing a meetup in the heart of Manhattan. Join us next Thursday for a low-key get-together, a few talks on assistive technologies, and a demo of the coolest new tool in recent memory.

Although these meetups are highly informal (and bringing some of the cool stuff you’ve built is encouraged), we do have a few speakers lined up. Holly Cohen and John Schimmel of DIYAbility are speaking about using homebrew devices for making everyone’s life easier. Johnny Falla of the Enable Community Foundation will give a talk about using …read more

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magicShifter 3000: An Over-Engineered POV Stick with a 15-Year Journey

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3 hackers, 16 LEDs, 15 years of development, one goal: A persistence of vision display stick that fits into your pocket. That’s the magicShifter 3000. When waved, the little, 10 cm (4 inches) long handheld device draws stable images in midair using the persistence of vision effect. Now, the project has reached another milestone: production.

The design has evolved since it started with a green LED bargraph around 2002. The current version features 16 APA102 (aka DotStar) RGB LEDs, an ESP-12E WiFi module, an NXP accelerometer/magnetometer, the mandatory Silabs USB interface, as well as a LiPo battery and charger with …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Russian Roulette With A Soldering Gun

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You’re driving along a lonely, dark highway with the knowledge that suicide rates are highly correlated with fatal single vehicle car accidents. A highway overpass bridge appears ahead. You might be able to make it around the guard rail. Might is the operative word. You’ve failed at everything else so far, and there’s no reason to believe this would be any exception.

The suffering will not end, but you can delay it a bit. That’s what the Internet is all about. Cat pictures. Memes. Rare Pepes. Distraction is your digital analgesic. Like this post if you agree. The problem with …read more

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Hackaday NYC Summer Party

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Hackaday is going to be back in NYC next week, and we’re having a meetup. This isn’t any meetup – it’s a meetup with skeeball. No, it does not get any better than this.

Next week, August 24, at 6:30pm, we’re pulling out all the stops at Ace Bar on the Lower East Side. This event is a bring-a-hack, and we want to see what you’re working on. Bring your current project, an oscilloscope demo, blinkey clothing, hacks, wearables, or just some cool, random junk. The last time we did this, someone brought a flight data recorder from a …read more

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