Hackaday Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Ep 120: Chip Shortage, VGA Glitching, Truly Owning Roku, and Omniballs May 28, 2021

Show notes

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys recount a week of awesome hacks. One you might have missed involves a Roku-based smart TV that was rooted and all secrets laid bare for the sole purpose of making an Ambilight setup work with it. We take a look at a creative blade-tracking system for a scrollsaw CNC project, and a robot arm that brings non-flat layers to 3D printing and envisions composite material printing. There's a great template for video glitching using inexpensive VGA to CGA converter boards, cleanly squeezed into a nice enclosure. We are a bit giddy for the omniwheel robot designs [James Bruton] has been showing off. And we finish out the show with a great conversation happening this week on Hackaday: people from throughout the community share how the chip shortage is affecting their projects.

You know you want to read the show notes!

Ep 119: Random Robot Writing, Slithering Snake Shenanigans, and Phased Array Phenomena May 21, 2021

Show notes

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams pick up on the neatest hacks you may have missed. We start off with another "What's that Sound?" so put your geeky-ears to the test and win a Hackaday Podcast T-shirt. Here are a couple of classic hacks to bring you joy: music based on Markov chains, and a squiggly take on the classic Nokia game of snake. For the more hardcore science geeks we dive into the B Meson news coming out of CERN's physics experiments. And after taking a detour in bristle-bot-based pen plotting, we unpack the hidden system of pipes that carry oil, gas, diesel, and more from the refinery to your region.

Sidle on up to the show notes.

Ep 118: Apple AirTag Hacked, Infill Without Perimeters, Hair-Pulling Robots, and Unpacking the 555 May 14, 2021

Show notes

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys gather to ooh and aah over a week of interesting hacks. This week we're delighted to welcome special guest Kristina Panos to talk about the Inputs of Interest series she has been working on over the last couple of years. In the news is the effort to pwn the new Apple AirTags, with much success over the past week. We look at turning a screenless Wacom tablet into something more using a donor iPad, stare right into the heart of a dozen 555 die shots, and watch what happens when you only 3D print the infill and leave the perimeters out.

Don't miss the show notes!

Ep 117: Chiptunes in an RCA Plug, an Arduino Floppy Drive, $50 CNC, and Wireless Switches May 07, 2021

Show notes

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams discuss the latest hacks from around the Internet. 3D-Printed linear rails don't sound like a recipe for a functional CNC machine but there was one this week that really surprised us. We were delighted by the procedurally generated music from a $0.03 microcontroller inside of an RCA plug (the clever flexible PCB may be the coolest part of that one). There's an interesting trick to reverse engineering Bluetooth comms of Android apps by running in a VM and echoing to WireShark. And we look at what the buzz is all about with genetically engineered mosquito experiments taking place down in the Florida Keys.

New this week is a game of "What's that sound?". Use the form link on the show notes below to send in your answer, one winner will receive a podcast T-shirt.

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Ep116: Three DIY Lab Instruments, Two Tickers, and a MicroCar Apr 30, 2021

Show notes

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys select our favorite hardware hacks of the past week. This episode is packed with DIY lab instruments, including a laser microscope, a Raspberry Pi spectrometer, and a stepper motor tester that can tell you what's going on all the way down to the microsteps. We wax poetic about what modular hardware really means, fall in love with a couple of stock-ticker robots, and chat with special guest Tom Nardi about his experience at the VCF Swap Meet.

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Ep115: AI is Bad at Linux Terminal, Puppeting Pico in Python, 3D Scanning Comes Up Short Apr 23, 2021

Show notes

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams pull back the curtain on a week of excellent hacks. We saw an awesome use of RGB LEDs as a data channel on a drone, and the secrets of an IP camera's OS laid bare with some neat reverse engineering tools. There's an AI project for the Linux terminal that guesses at the commands you actually want to run. And after considering how far autopilot has come in the aerospace industry, we jump into a look at the gotchas you'll find when working with models of 3D scanned objects.

Ep114: Eye is Watching You, Alien Art, CNC Chainsaw, and the Galvie Flu Apr 16, 2021

Show notes

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys marvel at the hacks that surfaced over the past week. An eye-popping webcam hack comes in the form of an animatronic that gives that camera above your screen an eyeball to look around, an eyelid to blink with, and the skin, eyelashes, and eyebrow to complete the illusion (and make us shudder at the same time).

Dan did a deep dive on Zinc Flu -- something to avoid when welding parts that contain zinc, like galvanized metals. A robot arm was given a chainsaw, leading to many hijinks; among them the headache of path planning such a machine. And we got to hear a really awesome story about resurrecting a computer game lost to obscurity, by using one of the main tools of the copyright office.

For links and more, go read the show notes!

Ep113: Python Switching to Match, a Magnetic Dyno, a Flying Dino, and a Spinning Sequencer Apr 09, 2021

Show notes

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams recap a week of great hacks. You won't want to miss the dynamometer Leo Fernekes built to measure the power output of his sterling motor (also DIY). In this age of lithium-powered multirotors, it's nice to step back and appreciate a hand-built rubberband-powered ornithopter.

We have a surprising amount to say about Python's addition of the match statement (not be be confused with switch statements). And when it comes to electromechanical synth gear, it's hard to beat a spinning tape-head sequencer.

Check out the show notes for links and more!

Ep 112: We Have an NFT, Racing a Mobius Strip, and Syncing Video with OpenCV and Blender Apr 02, 2021

Show notes

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys celebrate the cleverest projects from the week that was. We tried to catch a few fools on Thursday with our Lightmode™ and NFT articles -- make sure you go back and read those for a good chuckle if you haven't already.

While those fall under not a hack, many other features this week are world-class hacks, such as the 555 timer built from 1.5-dozen vacuum tubes, and the mechanical word-clock that's 64 magnetic actuators built around PCB coils by Hackaday's own [Mortiz v. Sivers]. A treat for the ears, [Linus Akesson] aka [lft] shows off a Commodore64 that seriously sounds a good as a cathedral organ. And a masterpiece of OpenCV and Blender, you can't miss the project by [Matthew Earl] that overlays video of the Mars landing on still satellite photos... perfection!

Check out the show notes!

Ep111: 3D Graphics are Ultrasonic, Lobotomizing Alexa, 3D-Printing Leaky Rockets, and Gaming the Font System Mar 26, 2021

Show notes

Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams curate a week of great hacks. Physical displays created in 3D space are a holy grail, and you can make one with 200 ultrasonic transducers, four FPGAs, and a lot math. Smart speakers have one heck of a microphone array in them, it's yours for the hacking if you just roll your own firmware. Hobby servos can be awful, but this week we saw they can be made really great by cracking open the DC motor to add a simple DIY position sensor. And lasers are making their way into car headlights; we illuminate the situation in this episode.

Check out the show notes!

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