Hackaday Podcast

Hackaday
undefined
Aug 2, 2019 • 56min

Ep029: Your Face in Silver Sand, Tires of the Future, ESP32 all the CNC Things, and Sub in a Jug

Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys geek out over the latest hacks. This week we saw a couple of clever CNC builds that leverage a great ESP32 port of GRBL. The lemonade-pitcher-based submarine project is everything you thought couldn't work in an underwater ROV. Amazon's newest Dot has its warranty voided to show off what 22 pounds gets you these days. And there's a great tutorial on debugging circuits that grew out of a Fail of the Week. Plus, we get the wind knocked out of us with an ambitious launch schedule for airless automotive tires, and commiserate over the confusing world of USB-C. Show Notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=370038
undefined
Jul 26, 2019 • 54min

Ep028: Brain Skepticism Turned Up to 11, Web Browsing in '69, Verilog For 7400 Logic

Hackaday Editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams cover the most interesting hacks over the past week. So much talk of putting computers in touch with our brains has us skeptical on both tech and timeline. We celebrated the 40th Anniversary of the Walkman, but the headphones are the real star. Plus, Verilog isn't just for FPGAs, you can synthesize 7400 circuits too! Elliot is enamored by a subtractive printing process that uses particle board, and we discuss a couple of takes on hybrid-powered drones. Show Notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=368984
undefined
Jul 19, 2019 • 49min

Ep027: Confusingly USB-C, Glowey Displays, Logically VGA, Hackers that Changed Gaming

Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys dive into the most interesting hacks of the week. Confused by USB-C? So are we, and so is the Raspberry Pi 4. Learning VGA is a lot easier when abstract concepts are unpacked onto a huge breadboard using logic chips and an EEPROM. Adding vision to a prosthetic hand makes a lot of sense when you start to dig into possibilities of this Hackaday Prize entry. And Elliot gets nostalgic about Counter-Strike, the game that is a hack of Half-Life, grew to eclipse a lot of other shooters, and is now 20 years old. Show Notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=366837
undefined
Jul 12, 2019 • 42min

Ep026: Tamper-Proof Electronics, Selfie Drones, Rocket Fuel, Wire Benders, Wizard-Level Soldering

Hackaday Editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams are back after last week's holiday break to track down all of the hacks you missed. There are some doozies; a selfie-drone controlled by your body position, a Theremin that sings better than you can, how about a BGA hand-soldering project whose creator can't even believe he pulled it off. Kristina wrote a spectacular article on the life and career of Mary Sherman Morgan, and Tom tears down a payment terminal he picked up in an abandoned Toys R Us, plus much more! Show Notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=366837
undefined
Jun 28, 2019 • 52min

Ep025: Of Cheese Graters, Fauxberries, Printed Gears, Power Latching, and Art-Loving AI

Hackaday Editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams dish their favorite hacks from the past week. Seems like everyone is trying to mill their own Mac Pro grille and we love seeing how they go about it. Elliot is gaga over a quintet of power latching circuits, Mike goes crazy for a dough sheeter project, and we dig through the news behind methane on Mars, the Raspberry Pi 4 release, and spoofing Presidential text alerts with SDR. If you like mini-keyboards you need to see the Fauxberry, Artificial Intelligence became an art critic this week, and poorly-lit rooms have been solved with a massive mirror system. Show Notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=364870
undefined
Jun 21, 2019 • 49min

Ep024: Mashing Smartphone Buttons, Sound Blastering, Trash Printing, and a Ludicrous Loom

Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys wade through the fun hacks of the week. Looks like Google got caught ripping off song lyrics (how they got caught is the hack) and electric cars are getting artificially noisier. We look at 3D Printing directly from used plastic, and building a loom with many hundreds of 3D printed parts. The Sound Blaster 1.0 lives again thanks to some (well-explained) reverse engineered circuitry. Your smartphone is about to get a lot more buttons that work without any extra electronics, and we'll finish things up with brass etching and downloadable nuclear reactor plans. Show Notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=363817
undefined
Jun 14, 2019 • 56min

Ep023: Everything Breaks... Raspberry Pi, ADS-B, Hackaday Website, and Automotive Airbags

Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams talk news and great hacks from the past seven days. Sad word this week as Maker Media, the company behind Make Magazine and Maker Faire, have closed their doors. There seems to be a lot of news about broken hardware to discuss with ADS-B problems grounding hundreds of flights in the US, Hackaday itself had a site outage, Raspberry Pi 3 B+ can be bricked with a really easy mistake, and Lewin wrote a great overview of the Takata airbag debacle. Don't worry there are still plenty of hacks as we look at old computers that sing, microcontrollers that chiptune, beat boxes that are actually boxes, and some very neat cartridge hacks for NES and Arduboy. Show Notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=362871
undefined
Jun 7, 2019 • 43min

Ep022: King of Power Banks, Great SDR Hacks, Sand Reflow, and Rat Rod Mower

Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys dig through the most interesting hacks from the past week. On this episode we take a look at a portable power bank build that defies belief. We discuss an all-in-one SDR portable, messing with restaurant pagers, and the software that's common to both of these pursuits. There's a hopping robot that is one heck of a PID challenge, and another robot that does nothing but stare you down. We bring it on home with great articles on pianos with floppy disks, and that satellite cluster you should be watching for in the night sky. Show Notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=361762
undefined
May 31, 2019 • 49min

Ep021: Chasing Rockets, Tripping on Synthesizers, an IoT Security Fail, and Alzheimer's Detection

Mike Szcycz is on a well-deserved vacation this week, so staff writer Dan Maloney joins managing editor Elliot Williams for a look at all the great hacks of the week. On this episode we're talking about licensing fees for MIDI 2.0, a two-way fail while snooping on employees, and the potential for diagnosing Alzheimer's with virtual reality. We also dive into the well-engineered innards of a robotic cheetah, a personal assistant safe enough for kids to use, and how listening to your monitor reveals more about you than you'd think. You don't want to miss a space nerd's quest for fire or a hacker's guide to solder and soldering. And you've got to catch the story of a hapless hacker's contact high from a vintage synthesizer. It's quite a trip. Show Notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=360003
undefined
May 24, 2019 • 1h 6min

Ep020: Slaying the Dragon of EL, Siege Weapon Physics, Dis-entangled Charlieplex, Laser Internet

Join editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys as they unpack all the great hacks we've seen this week. On this episode we're talking about laser Internet delivered from space, unwrapping the complexity of Charlieplexed circuits, and decapping ICs both to learn more about them and to do it safely at home. We have some fun with backyard siege weapons (for learning about physics, we swear!), gambling on FPGAs, and a line-scanning camera that's making selfies fun again. And nobody thought manufacturing electroluminescent displays was easy, but who knew it was this hard? Show notes: https://hackaday.com/?p=360002

The AI-powered Podcast Player

Save insights by tapping your headphones, chat with episodes, discover the best highlights - and more!
App store bannerPlay store banner
Get the app