There can be few readers who were young in the 1970s who did not want to share in the adventures of the fearless animated ghost-hunting young crime-fighters of Scooby-Doo. What do you remember from the series though? The Mystery Machine van? Scooby snacks? Or perhaps the improbably haunted theme parks whose owners would have got […]
A common complaint about open hardware and software is that the aesthetic aspects of the projects often leave something to be desired. This isn’t wholly surprising, as the type of hackers who are building these things tend to be more concerned with how well they work than what they look like. But there’s certainly nothing […]
If you’re looking for “smart” home appliances, there’s no shortage of options on the market. Even relatively low-end gadgets are jumping on the Internet of Things bandwagon these days (for better or for worse). But what if you’re not looking to purchase a brand new major appliance right now? In that case, you might be […]
Coffee machines are delicate instruments, likely to be damaged by limescale. Thus they will often have a filter present, but filters have a limited capacity of water upon which they can be effective. At Make Bournemouth, they have approached the problem of when to change filters on their coffee machine by applying a bit of […]
Underfloor heating is a wonderfully luxurious touch for a bedroom and en-suite bathroom, and [Andy] had it fitted so that he could experience the joy of walking on a toasty-warm floor in the morning. Unfortunately after about a year it stopped working and the culprit proved to be its thermostat. A replacement was eye-wateringly expensive, […]
The idea of the so-called “smart bulb” sounds good; who wouldn’t want to be able to verify the porch light is on if you’re out of town for the night, or check to see if you left the bathroom lights on in your rush out the door in the morning? But in practice, it can be […]
There is something strangely amusing about the idea of a sprinkler system relying on a cloud. But it was this limitation in some commercial offerings that led [Zack Lalanne] to create his own controller when it was time to upgrade his aging irrigator. It’s a straightforward enough device, he’s taken an ESP8266 on the ubiquitous […]
Upholstery is a craft that dates back far longer than many we feature on Hackaday. It requires patience, attention to detail, and a series of specialised skills. If you fancy yourself to be like a young Jack White, you might have considered trying your hand at a piece or two. [darkpine] did just that, and […]
Some of us here at Hackaday are cat lovers, but we also understand that a plethora of unwanted cats using a suburban back garden can be bothersome, and a few years ago we featured a project from Aussie YouTuber [Craig Turner], in which he created a motion-detecting water spray for use as a relatively harmless […]
It’s not that storage boxes and organizers are hard to find. No, the problem this project set out to solve was more nuanced than that. The real trouble [theguymasamato] had was that his storage options — wide shelves and deep drawers — weren’t well suited to storing a lot of small and light objects. The […]