What do you do with a four-megapixel monochrome digital camera from the 90s that needed a dedicated PC with a frame grabber card to do anything useful? Easy — you turn it into a point-and-shoot by building your own frame grabber. At least that’s what [Frost Sheridan] did with a vintage Kodak MegaPlus 4.2i, a […]
In the decade or more since small inexpensive Linux-capable single board computers such as the Raspberry Pi came to the mainstream, many a hardware hacker has turned their attention to making a portable computer using one. With such a plethora of devices having been made one might think that the Pi handheld was a done […]
FR4 is FR4, right? For a lot of PCB designs, the answer is yes — the particular characteristics of the substrate material don’t impact your design in any major way. But things get a little weird up in the microwave range, and having one of these easy methods to measure the dielectric properties of your […]
Adding LEDs to a project used to be enough to make it cool. But these days, you need arrays of addressable multi-color LEDs, and that typically means WS2812B or something similar. The problem is that while it was pretty easy to test garden-variety LEDs, these devices can be a bit harder to troubleshoot. [Gokux] has […]
There are many ways to hack the world. Graduate students at Parsons The New School for Design developed a guide for hacking the biggest piece of technology humans have developed – the city. One of the things we love here at Hackaday is how hacking gives us a tool to make the world a better […]
Instant photography occupies a niche in film photography that has endured despite its relatively high cost and the ease of newer digital technologies. There are two main manufacturers, Polaroid and Fujifilm, as well as a few smaller boutique camera makers. Into this comes [Toast], with an entirely 3D printed instant camera, not a Polaroid as […]
One of the two stakes that make up the electrostatic precipitator system for atmospheric water harvesting. (Credit: Plasma Channel, YouTube) Atmospheric water harvesting is a way to obtain fresh water in arid regions, as there is always some moisture in the air, especially in the form of morning fog. The trick lies in capturing this […]
Turning surplus LCD panels into stand-alone monitors with the help of a driver board is an established hack, and a search of eBay or AliExpress will turn up boards for almost any widely available panel. [Drygol] has a couple of old iPad screens, and has done exactly this with them. What makes these two projects […]