One of the nice things about magnetic storage is that as long as the magnetic layer remains intact, the data it contains should stay readable pretty much indefinitely. That raises the prospect of recovering data from really old computer systems featuring magnetic memory, such as the 63-year old LGP-21 that [David Lovett] of Usagi Electric […]
While it might seem quaint these days, we’ve met many makers and hackers who reach for a pen and a pad when learning something new or working their way through some technical problem. But even if you’re the type of person who thinks best when writing something out on paper, there’s still a good chance […]
Like many of you, I have a hard time getting rid of stuff. I’ve got boxes and boxes of weirdo bits and bobs, and piles of devices that I’ll eventually get around to stripping down into even more bits and bobs. Despite regular purges — I try to bring a car-load of crap treasure to […]
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) forms the bridge between the analog world of paper and the world of machines. The modern-day expectation is that when we point a smartphone camera at some characters it will flawlessly recognize and read them, but OCR technology predates such consumer technology by a considerable amount, with IBM producing OCR systems […]
Glasses for the blind might sound like an odd idea, given the traditional purpose of glasses and the issue of vision impairment. However, eighth-grade student [Akhil Nagori] built these glasses with an alternate purpose in mind. They’re not really for seeing. Instead, they’re outfitted with hardware to capture text and read it aloud. Yes, we’re […]
Hackaday Editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams get caught up on the most interesting hacks of the past week. On this episode we take a deep dive into radiation-monitor projects, both Geiger tube and scintillator based, as well as LED cube projects that pack pixels onto six PCBs with parts counts reaching into the tens […]
In our info-obsessed culture, hackers are increasingly interested in ways to quantify the world around them. One popular project is to collect data about their home energy or water consumption to try and identify any trends or potential inefficiencies. For safety and potentially legal reasons, this usually has to be done in a minimally invasive […]