Hackaday Podcast
Hackaday
Hackaday Editors take a look at all of the interesting uses of technology that pop up on the internet each week. Topics cover a wide range like bending consumer electronics to your will, designing circuit boards, building robots, writing software, 3D printing interesting objects, and using machine tools. Get your fix of geeky goodness from new episodes every Friday morning.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Oct 27, 2023 • 43min
Ep 242: Mechanical Math, KaboomBox, and Racing the Beam
This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up from their separate but equally pin drop-quiet offices to discuss the best hacks of the previous week. Well, we liked these one, anyway. First up in the news, it's finally time for Supercon! So we'll see you there? If not, be sure to check out the talks as we live-stream them on our YouTube channel! Don't forget -- this is your last weekend to enter the 2023 Halloween Hackfest contest, which runs until 9 AM PDT on October 31st. Arduino are joining the fun this year and are offering some spooky treats in addition to the $150 DigiKey gift cards for the top three entrants. It's time for a new What's That Sound, and Kristina was able to stump Elliot with this one. She'll have to think of some more weirdo sounds, it seems. Then it's on to the hacks, beginning with an insanely complex mechanical central air data computer super-teardown from [Ken Shirriff]. We also learned that you can 3D-print springs and things by using a rod as your bed, and we learned whole lot about rolling your own electrolytic capacitors from someone who got to visit a factory. From there we take a look at a Commodore Datassette drive that sings barbershop, customizing printf, and a really cool dress made of Polymer-dispersed Liquid Crystal (PDLC) panels. Finally we talk about racing the beam when it comes to game graphics, and say goodbye to Kristina's series on USPS technology. Check out the links, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Oct 20, 2023 • 1h 4min
Ep 241: Circuit Bending, Resistor Filing, the Butterfly Keyboard, and the Badge Reveal
Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi meet up virtually to talk about the week's top stories and hacks, such as the fine art of resistor trimming and lessons learned from doing overseas injection molding. They'll go over circuit bending, self-driving cars, and a solar camera that started as a pandemic project and turned into an obsession. You'll also hear about Linux on the Arduino, classic ICs etched into slate, and an incredible restoration of one of the most interesting Thinkpads ever made. Stay tuned until the end to hear about a custom USB-C power supply and the long-awaited Hackaday Supercon 2023 Vectorscope badge. Check out the links and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments over at Hackaday!

Oct 13, 2023 • 1h 7min
Ep 240: An Amazing 3D Printer, A Look Inside Raspberry Pi 5, and Cameras, Both Film and Digital
Date notwithstanding, it's your lucky day as Elliot and Dan get together to review the best hacks of the week. For some reason, film photography was much on our writers' minds this week, as we talked about ways to digitalize an old SLR, and how potatoes can be used to develop film (is there a Monty Python joke in there?) We looked at a 3D printer design that really pulls our strings, the custom insides of the Raspberry Pi 5, and the ins and outs of both ferroresonant transformers and ham radio antennas. Learn about the SMD capacitor menagerie, build a hydrogen generator that probably won't blow up, and listen to the differences between a mess of microphones. And that's not all; the KIM-1 rides again, this time with disk drive support, Jenny tests out Serenity but with ulterior motives, and Kristina goes postal with a deep dive into ZIP codes. Check out the links if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Oct 6, 2023 • 1h 7min
Ep 239: Overclocking, Oscilloscopes, and Oh No! SMD Out of Stock!
The hosts discuss the Raspberry Pi 5, CNC soldering, signal processing, and plasma cutting. They also mention Halloween projects and OpenSCAD improvements. The podcast explores overclocking microprocessors, converting an HF torch, and using inexpensive oscilloscopes. They delve into topics like Google's augmented reality microscope, chip shortage engineering, and misusing DIP packages.

Sep 29, 2023 • 1h 1min
Ep 238: Vibrating Bowl Feeders, Open Sourcery, Learning to Love Layer Lines
NASA's OSIRIS-REx returns with an asteroid sample, magical part sorting, open source plastic recycling, complex lid detection in Apple laptops, changing perceptions of 3D printed parts, new battery tech, clock making nights seem longer, children's architecture books, and the origins of the microwave oven.

Sep 23, 2023 • 43min
Ep 237: Dancing Raisins, Coding on Apples, and a Salad Spinner Mouse
This week's podcast discusses a Halloween hackfest contest, coding on Macs, dancing raisins, a salad spinner-based game controller, nitinol properties, large Nixie tubes, a paper punching machine, rocker bogie suspensions, and the death of cursive.

Sep 15, 2023 • 1h 3min
Ep 236: The Car Episode, Building Leonardo's Water Mill, Reviving Radio Shack
Elliot and Dan got together this time around to recap the week in hacks, and it looks like the Hackaday writing crew very much had cars on their minds. We both took the bait, with tales of privacy-violating cars and taillights that can both cripple a pickup and financially cripple its owner. We went medieval -- OK, more like renaissance -- on a sawmill, pulled a popular YouTuber out of the toilet, and pondered what an animal-free circus would be like. Is RadioShack coming back? Can an ESP32 board get much smaller than this? And where are all the retro(computer)virus writers? We delve into these questions and more, while still saving a little time to wax on about personal projects. And although the show is peppered with GSM interference (Elliot says sorry!) it's not actually a clue for the What's That Sound. Check out the links if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Sep 8, 2023 • 1h 7min
Ep 235: Licorice for Lasers, Manual Motors, and Reading Resistors
Name one other podcast where you can hear about heavy 3D-printed drones, DIY semiconductors, and using licorice to block laser beams. Throw in homebrew relays, a better mouse trap, and logic analyzers, and you'll certainly be talking about Elliot Williams and Al Williams on Hackaday Podcast 235. There's also contest news, thermoforming, and something that looks a little like 3D-printed Velcro. Elliot and Al also have their semi-annual argument about Vi vs. Emacs. Spoiler alert: they decided they both suck. Missed any of their picks? Check out the links on Hackaday, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Sep 1, 2023 • 1h 7min
Ep 234: Machines on Fire, Old Kinect New Kinect, and Birth of the Breadboard
This episode covers a rogue signal disrupting Polish railways, home CNC ownership challenges, Arecibo Telescope collapse, Microsoft's Kinect longevity, PCB cooking techniques, wooden cyberdeck creation, diode laser engravers review, and the origins of the breadboard.

Aug 25, 2023 • 46min
Ep 233: Chandrayaan on the Moon, Cyberdecks, Hackerspaces Born at a German Computer Camp
This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos experimented with the old adage that brevity is the soul of wit. That's right; this week, they're all Quick Hacks, and that's to make room for a special series of interviews that Elliot recorded at CCCamp with the pillars of US hackerspace creation. This one's really special, do have a listen. We still made room for the news this week: India launched Chandrayaan-3, which combines an orbiter, lander, and rover all in one. Then it's on to the What's That Sound results show, and while Kristina did not get it right, she did correctly identify it as being used in Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody", as did one of the guessers who identified it as the cowbell sound from a Roland 808. Then it's on to the (quick) hacks, where we alternated for once just to keep things interesting. This week, Elliot is into 3D printing a clay extruder and then printing pottery with that, z-direction conductive tape, and the humble dipole antenna. Kristina is more into cyberdecks for the young and old, a reusable plant monitor, and 3D printing some cool coasters. Check out the links if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!


