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 […]
After you have written the code for some awesome application, you of course want other people to be able to use it. Although simply directing them to the source code on GitHub or similar is an option, not every project lends itself to the traditional configure && make && make install, with often dependencies being […]
A year ago, I’ve design reviewed an MCU module for CAN hacking, called TinySparrow. Modules are plenty cool, and even more so when they’re intended for remaking car ECUs. For a while now, every car has heavily depended on a computer to control the operation of everything inside it – the engine and its infrastructure, […]
This summer, we saw the WHY (What Hackers Yearn) event happen in Netherlands, of course, with a badge to match. Many badges these days embrace the QWERTY computer aesthetic, which I’m personally genuinely happy about. This one used 18650 batteries for power, in a dual parallel cell configuration… Oh snap, that’s my favourite LiIon cell […]
As a Hackaday writer, I see a lot of web pages, social media posts, videos, and other tips as part of my feed. The best ones I try to bring you here, assuming of course that one of my ever-vigilant colleagues hasn’t beaten me to it. Along the way I see the tropes of changing […]
Keeping track of time is essential, even for microcontrollers, which is why a real-time clock (RTC) peripheral is a common feature in MCUs. In the case of the STM32 family there are three varieties of RTC peripherals, with the newest two creatively called ‘RTC2′ and RTC3’, to contrast them from the very basic and barebones […]
Over a year ago, we took a look at importing a .step file of a KiCad PCB into FreeCAD, then placing a sketch and extruding it. It was a small step, but I know it’s enough for most of you all, and that brings me joy. Today, we continue building a case for that PCB […]
Ever want to find your device on the map? Think we all do sometimes. The technology you’ll generally use for that is called Global Positioning System (GPS) – listening to a flock of satellites flying in the orbit, and comparing their chirps to triangulate your position. The GPS system, built by the United States, was […]
Developing Android applications seems like it should be fairly straightforward if you believe the glossy marketing by Google and others. It’s certainly possible to just follow the well-trodden path, use existing templates and example code – or even use one of those WYSIWYG app generators – to create something passable that should work okay for […]