In his continuing quest to reduce the parts count of a robot as far as possible, [Carl Bugeja] has hit upon an unusual design: robots built of almost nothing but PCBs. Admittedly, calling these floppy four-legged critters robots is still a bit of a stretch at this point. The video below shows that while they […]
There are a lot of ARM microcontrollers out there, and the parts from ST are featured prominently is the high-power builds we’re seeing. The STM32F4 and ~F7 are powerhouses with great support, and the STM32F0 and the other younger children of the family make for very good, low-power microcontrollers. Now, the STM32 family is getting […]
Dial-up modems were well known for their screeching soundtrack during the connection process. Modern networking eschews audio based communication methods, so we no longer have to deal with such things. However, all is not lost. [::vtol::]’s Mayak installation brings us a new sound, all its own. The installation consists of four WiFi routers, connected to […]
Oh, what’s KiCon you say? KiCon is the first dedicated conference on our favorite libre EDA tool: KiCad, organized by friend of Hackaday Chris Gammell and scheduled for April 26 and 27th in Chicago. Having stuffed ourselves full of treats through the holidays, followed by sleeping through the calm winter months, we find ourselves once […]
Listen, it hurts to hear, but somebody needs to say it. It’s over, OK? You’ve got to admit it and move on. Sure, you could get away with it for a week or two in January, but now it’s just getting weird. No matter how hard you fight it, the facts are the facts: the […]
We like blinky things. We’re moths drawn to the flame of serially-addressable RGB LEDs. If the LEDs are smaller, we want to know. If you can drive more of them, we want to know. That said, the most interesting news out of CES last January was both right up our alley, and immensely disappointing. Corsair, […]
There was a time, not so very long ago, when simply getting a 3D printer to squirt out an object that was roughly the intended shape and size of what the user saw on their computer screen was an accomplishment. But like every other technology, the state of the art has moved forward. Today the […]
Your thermostat is some of the oldest and simplest automation in your home. For years these were one-temperature setting and nothing more. Programmable thermostats brought more control; they’re alarm clocks attached to your furnace. Then Nest came along and added beautiful design and “learning features” that felt like magic compared to the old systems. But […]
Sporting a new wristwatch to school for the first time is a great moment in a kid’s life. When it’s a custom digital-analog watch made by your dad, it’s another thing altogether. As [Chris O’Riley] relates, the watch he built for his son [Vlad] started out as a simple timer for daily toothbrushing, a chore […]
Inexpensive OLED displays with I2C interfaces abound, but there is a catch: they tend to be stuck on I2C address 0x3C. Some have a jumper or solder pads to select an alternate (usually 0x3D), but they lack any other method. Since an I2C bus expects every device to have a unique address, this limits the […]