Day: January 2, 2026

As locked-down as the Amazon Echo Show line of devices are, they’re still just ARM-based Android devices, which makes repurposing it somewhat straightforward as long as what you want is another Android device. Running Home Assistant on an Echo Show 8 with LineageOS. In this case, we’re talking about the first-generation Amazon Echo Show 8, […]
Elliot was of at Europe’s largest hacker convention: Chaos Communication Congress. He had an awesome time, saw more projects than you might think humanely possible, and got the flu. But he pulled through and put this audio tourbook for you. So if you’ve never been to CCC, give it a listen! In the far future, […]
Thanks to the Raspberry Pi, we have easy access to extremely inexpensive machines running Linux that have all kinds of GPIO as well as various networking protocols. And as the platform has improved over the years, we’ve seen more demanding applications on them as well as applications that use an incredibly small amount of power. […]
There’s folk wisdom in just about every culture that teaches about renewable energy — things like “make hay while the sun shines”. But as an industrial culture, we want to make hay 24/7 and not be at the whims of some capricious weather god! Alas, renewable energy puts a crimp in that. Once again, energy […]
Hardware hackers tend to have loads of hookup wire, and that led [firstgizmo] to design a 3D printable wire and cable spool storage system. As a bonus, it’s Gridfinity-compatible! The slot to capture loose ends is a nice touch, and the units can be assembled without external hardware. There are a lot of little design […]
Just because LEGO Technic is technically a toy doesn’t mean that you cannot do solid engineering with it, like building air-powered engines. After first building a simple air-powered piston engine, this time around [Jamie’s Brick Jams] sought to not only optimize the engine, but also build a clutch and something to power with said engine. […]
Programmers hold to a wide spectrum of positions on software complexity, from the rare command-line purists to the much more common web app developers, and the two extremes rarely meet. One point of contact, though, might be [Jan Antos]’s Brow6el, which uses sixel graphics to display a fully graphical web browser within a terminal. Behind […]
These days ready-to-use DC-DC converters are everywhere, with some of the cheaper ones even being safe to use without an immediate risk to life and limb(s). This piques one’s curiosity when browsing various online shopping platforms that are quite literally flooded with e.g. QS-4884CCCV-1800W clones of a DC-DC boost converter. Do they really manage 1800 […]
The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR)’s T1 class is famous for many reasons: being enormous, being a duplex, possibly having beaten Mallard’s speed record while no one was looking… and being in production in the 21st century. That last fact is down to the redoubtable work by the PRR T1 Steam Locomotive Trust, who continued their efforts […]
Between the news, the world situation, and the inevitable family stresses that come this time of year, well — one could be excused for feeling a certain amount of envy for those adorable pocket monsters who spend their time hidden away in red-and-white orbs. [carlos3dprint] evidently did, but he didn’t just dream of cozy concave […]