Collaborate Disseminate
Foil-lined foam insulation board, scraps of lumber, and a paint-thinner can hardly sound like the tools of a radio astronomer. But when coupled with an SDR, a couple of amplifiers, and a fair amount of trial-and-error tweaking, it’s possible to build your own hydrogen-line radio telescope and use it to …read more
Continue reading Probe the Galaxy on a Shoestring with this DIY Hydrogen-Line Telescope
We know the effect of passing white light through a prism and seeing the color spectrum that comes out of the other side. It will not be noticeable to the naked eye, but that rainbow does not fully span the range of [Roy G. Biv]. There are narrowly absent colors which blur together, and those missing portions are a fingerprint of the matter the white light is passing through or bouncing off. Those with a keen eye will recognize that we are talking about spectrophotometry which is identifying those fingerprints and determining what is being observed and how much is …read more
The fossil cloud is only the third of its kind ever seen by astronomers, but could pave the way for their systematic discovery in the future. Continue reading Astronomers Discover Incredibly Rare ‘Fossil Cloud’ Created Minutes After the Big Bang
Fruit can be a tricky thing: if you buy it ripe you’ll be racing against time to eat the pieces before they turn into a mushy mess, but if you buy the ones which are a bit before their prime it’s not always easy to tell when they’re ready to eat. Do you smell it? Squeeze it? Toss it on the counter to see if it bounces? In the end you forget about them and they go bad anyway. That’s why here at Hackaday we sustain ourselves with only collected rainwater and thermo-stabilized military rations.
But thankfully Cornell students [Christina …read more
Many different projects started with the same thought: “That’s really expensive… I wonder if I could build my own for less.” Success is rewarded with satisfaction on top of the money saved, but true hacker heroes share their work so that others can build their own as well. We are happy to recognize such generosity with the Hackaday Prize [Robinhood] achievement.
Achievements are a new addition to our Hackaday Prize, running in parallel with our existing judging and rewards process. Achievements are a way for us to shower recognition and fame upon creators who demonstrate what we appreciate from our …read more
Continue reading Putting More Tech Into More Hands: The Robin Hoods of Hackaday Prize
Many different projects started with the same thought: “That’s really expensive… I wonder if I could build my own for less.” Success is rewarded with satisfaction on top of the money saved, but true hacker heroes share their work so that others can build their own as well. We are happy to recognize such generosity with the Hackaday Prize [Robinhood] achievement.
Achievements are a new addition to our Hackaday Prize, running in parallel with our existing judging and rewards process. Achievements are a way for us to shower recognition and fame upon creators who demonstrate what we appreciate from our …read more
Continue reading Putting More Tech Into More Hands: The Robin Hoods of Hackaday Prize
Many different projects started with the same thought: “That’s really expensive… I wonder if I could build my own for less.” Success is rewarded with satisfaction on top of the money saved, but true hacker heroes share their work so that others can build their own as well. We are happy to recognize such generosity with the Hackaday Prize [Robinhood] achievement.
Achievements are a new addition to our Hackaday Prize, running in parallel with our existing judging and rewards process. Achievements are a way for us to shower recognition and fame upon creators who demonstrate what we appreciate from our …read more
Continue reading Putting More Tech Into More Hands: The Robin Hoods of Hackaday Prize
Reflectance spectrometers work on a simple principle: different things reflect different wavelengths in different amounts, and because similar materials do this similarly, the measurements can be used as a kind of fingerprint or signature. By measuring how much of which wavelengths get absorbed or reflected by a thing and comparing to other signatures, it’s possible to identify what that thing is made of. This process depends heavily on how accurately measurements can be made, so the sensors are an important part.
[Kris Winer] aims to make this happen with the Compact, $25 Spectrometer entry for The 2018 Hackaday Prize. The …read more
Continue reading Tiny $25 Spectrometer Aims to Identify Materials with Ease
Some of you may remember the SCiO, originally a Kickstarter darling back in 2014 that promised people a pocket-sized micro spectrometer. It was claimed to be able to scan and determine the composition of everything from fruits and produce to your own body. The road from successful crowdsourcing to production was uncertain and never free from skepticism regarding the promised capabilities, but the folks at [Sparkfun] obtained a unit and promptly decided to tear it down to see what was inside, and share what they found.
The main feature inside the SCiO is the optical sensor, which consists of …read more
Can you make a spectrometer for your home lab all from materials you have sitting around? We might not believe it from a less credible source, but this MIT course does indeed build a spectrometer from foam board using two razor blades as the silt cover and a writable CD as the diffraction grating. The coolest part is removing the metal backing of the CD.
Hackaday reader [gratian] tipped us off about the course available from MIT courseware called Nanomaker. It boils down some fairly complicated experiments to the kind one can do in the home lab without involving thousands …read more
Continue reading Bring Doping, Mirofluidics, Photovoltaics, and More Into the Home
