

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

Dec 17, 2021 • 54min
Ep 149: Ballerina Bot Balances, Flexures Track Cat Food, PCB Goes Under the Knife, and an ATtiny Does the 555
Newly ordained Hackaday editor-in-chief Elliot Williams and staff writer Dan Maloney jump behind the podcast mic to catch you up on all this week's essential hacks. We'll have a Bob Ross moment with an iPad, go to ridiculous lengths to avoid ordering a 555, and cook up a Wii in toaster. Need to make a VGA adapter from logic chips? Or perhaps you want to quantify the inner depths of human consciousness? Either way, we've got you covered.

Dec 10, 2021 • 55min
Ep 148: Pokemon Trades, Anniversary iPod Prototype, Stupid Satellite Tricks, and LED Strip Sensors
Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys get caught up on the week that was. People go to great lengths for video game saves, but this Pokemon hack that does hardware-based trade conversion between the Game Boy's Pokemon 2 and Pokemon 3 is something else. Why do we still use batteries when super capacitors exist? They're different components, silly, and work best at different things. Turns out you can study the atmosphere by sending radio waves through it, and that's exactly what the ESA is doing... around Mars! And will machined parts become as easy to custom order as PCBs have become? This week we take a closer look at prototyping as a service.

Dec 3, 2021 • 56min
Ep 147: Animating Traces, Sucking and Climbing, Spinning Sails, and Squashing Images
Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams get caught up on the week that was. You probably know a ton of people who have a solar array at their home, but how many do you know that have built their own hydroelectric generation on property? Retrocomputing software gurus take note, there's an impressive cross-compiler in town that can spit out working binaries for everything from C64 to Game Boy to ZX Spectrum. Tom took a hard look at the Prusa XL, and Matthew takes us back to school on what UEFI is all about. Won't somebody please think of the show notes?!?

Nov 26, 2021 • 58min
Ep 146: Dueling Trackballs, Next Level BEAM Robot, Take Control of Your Bench, and Green Programming
Postpone your holiday shopping and spend some quality time with editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams as they sift through the week in Hackaday. Which programming language is the greenest? How many trackballs can a mouse possibly have? And can a Bluetooth dongle run DOOM? Join us to find out! You don't need a pencil to jot down the links. Just check out the podcast page!

Nov 19, 2021 • 50min
Ep 145: Remoticon is On, Movie FX, Cold Plasma, and The Purest Silicon
With literally just hours to go before the 2021 Hackaday Remoticon kicks off, editors Tom Nardi and Elliot Williams still managed to find time to talk about some of the must-see stories from the last week. There's fairly heavyweight topics on the docket this time around, from alternate methods of multiplying large numbers to the incredible engineering that goes into producing high purity silicon. But we'll also talk about the movie making magic of Stan Winston and some Pokemon-themed environmental sensors, so it should all balance out nicely. So long as the Russian's haven't kicked off the Kessler effect by the time you tune in, we should be good. Check out the show notes for links and more!

Nov 12, 2021 • 51min
Ep 144: Jigs Jigs Jigs, Faberge Mic, Paranomal Electronics, and a 60-Tube Nixie Clock
Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys get caught up on the week that was. Two builds are turning some heads this week; one uses 60 Nixie tube bar graphs to make a clock that looks like the sun's rays, the other is a 4096 RGB LED Cube (that's 12,288 total diodes for those counting at home) that leverages a ton of engineering to achieve perfection. Speaking of perfection, there's a high-end microphone built on a budget but you'd never know from the look and the performance -- no wonder the world is now sold out of the microphone elements used in the design. After perusing a CNC build, printer filament dryer, and cardboard pulp molds, we wrap the episode talking about electronic miniaturization, radionic analyzers, and Weird Al's computer. Check out the show notes for links!

Nov 5, 2021 • 52min
Ep 143: More Magnesium Please, Robot Bicep Curls, Malamud's General Index, and Are You Down with EMC?
Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams catch up on a week's worth of hacks. Get a grip on robot hands: there's an eerily human one on offer this week. If you're doing buck/boost converter design, the real learning is in high-frequency design patterns that avoid turning your circuits into unintentional radiators. Those looking for new hobbies might want to take up autonomous boat racing. We saw a design that's easy enough to print on the average 3D printer -- and who doesn't want to build their own jet boat? We'll wrap up the episode by digging into magnesium sources, and by admiring the number of outfits who are rolling their own silicon these days. Check out the show notes for links galore!

Oct 29, 2021 • 55min
Ep 142: 65 Days of Airtime, Racecars Staring at the Ceiling, a Pushy White Cane, and Soapy Water Rockets
Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys flap their gums about all the great hacks of the week. Something as simple as a wheel can be totally revolutionary, as we saw with a white cane mod for the visually impaired which adds an omniwheel that knows where it's going. We enjoyed the collection of great hacks from all over the community that went into a multi-two-liter water rocket build. You'll hear Elliot and Mike's great debate about the origin of comments in computer code. And we spend plenty of time joking around about the worlds longest airplane flight (it was in a tiny Cessna and lasted over two months!) You really want to check out this week's show notes.

Oct 22, 2021 • 48min
Ep 141: LowFER Badges, Outrun Clocks, Dichroic Lamps, and Piano Action
Hackaday editors Mike and Elliot Williams catch up on a week's worth of hacks. It turns out there are several strange radio bands that don't require a license, and we discuss this weekend's broadcast where you can listen in. It's unlikely you've ever seen the website check-box abused quite like this: it's the display for playing Doom! Just when you thought you'd seen all the ESP32's tricks it gets turned into a clock styled after Out Run. Mike geeks out over how pianos work, we're both excited to have Jeremy Fielding giving a Keynote talk at Remoticon, and we wrap things up with a chat about traffic rules in space. Give the show notes a gander, won't you?

Oct 15, 2021 • 52min
Ep140: Aqua Battery, IBM Cheese Cutter, Waiting for USB-C, and Digging ADCs
Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys chew the fat over the coolest of hacks. It's hard to beat two fascinating old-tech demonstraters; one is a mechanical computer for accurate cheese apportionment, the other an ADC built from logic chips. We gawk two very different uses of propeller-based vehicles; one a flying-walker, the other a ground-effect coaster. Big news shared at the top of the show is that Keith Thorne of LIGO is going to present a keynote at Hackaday Remoticon. And we wrap the episode talking about brighter skies from a glut of satellites and what the world would look like if one charging cable truly ruled all smartphones. Come check out the show notes!