We’re partial to musical instrument hacks around here, mainly because we find instruments to be fascinating machines. Few are more complex than the piano, and, as it turns out, few are quite so hackable. Still, we have to admit that this ragtime piano hack took us by surprise. We always thought that the rich variety […]
Many people enjoy playing flight simulators or making the occasional orbit in Kerbal Space Program, but most are stuck controlling the onscreen action with nothing more exotic than a keyboard and mouse. A nice compromise for those that don’t have the space (or NASA-sized budget) to build a full simulator cockpit is a USB “button box” […]
Watch Justin McAllister’s presentation on simple antennas suitable for a zombie apocalypse and two things will happen: you’ll be reminded that everything antennas do is amazing, and their reputation for being a black magic art will fade dramatically. Justin really knows his stuff; there is no dangle-a-wire-and-hope-for-the-best in his examples. He demonstrates that it’s possible […]
You’ve got to admit, things have been going exceptionally well for SpaceX. In the sixteen years they’ve been in operation, they’ve managed to tick off enough space “firsts” to make even established aerospace players blush. They’re the first privately owned company to not only design and launch their own orbital-class rocket, but to send a […]
Join us Wednesday at noon Pacific time for the From Software to Tindie Hack Chat! Brian Lough has followed a roundabout but probably not unusual route to the hardware hacking scene. Educated in Electronic and Computer Engineering, Brian is a software developer by trade who became enamored of Arduino development when the ESP8266 hit the market. […]
Nintendo’s Game Boy was the handheld of the 1990s. Like many of their products, it was famous for its ability to stand up to punishment from angry children and military strikes alike. Its biggest weakness is perhaps its unbacklit LCD screen. Retrogamers and chiptuners alike find themselves modifying and replacing these regularly. A common problem during […]
In 2016, a Tesla Model S T-boned a tractor trailer at full speed, killing its lone passenger instantly. It was running in Autosteer mode at the time, and neither the driver nor the car’s automatic braking system reacted before the crash. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigated the incident, requested data from […]
Sharing your life with a cat is a wonderful and fulfilling experience. Sharing your life with an awake, alert, and bored cat in the early hours when you are trying to sleep, is not. [Simon Aubury] has just this problem, as his cat [Snowy] is woken each morning by a jet passing over. In an […]
The Instax SQ6 and Fujifilm’s entire range of instant cameras are fun little boxes that produce instant photos. It’s a polaroid that’s not Polaroid, and like most instant cameras, the lenses are just one or two pieces of plastic. A lens transplant is in order, and that’s exactly what [Kevin] did to his Instax camera. […]