The ESP32 series of microprocessors with their cheap high-power cores and built-in wireless networking have brought us a wide variety of impressive projects over the years. We’re not sure we’ve quite seen the like of [Jonathan R]’s video walkie talkie before though, a pair of units which as you might guess, deliver two-way video and […]
Gonzo journalism has been a hip thing since the 1970s or so, a way of covering a story in a compelling format with more subjectivity and less objectivity. The style has since been applied to all sorts of media, including film—and indeed, the makers of the Gonzo Pi. The Gonzo Pi is a camera with […]
When you see a ventriloquist like [Jeff Dunham], you probably expect to see him with a puppet. This time – spoilers ahead – you won’t. Besides his fame on stage, [Dunham] is also a collector of vintage tech and a die-hard television enthusiast. In the video below, [Dunham] has gotten his hands on a rarity: […]
Before flat screen technologies took over, we associate TV with the CRT. But there were other display technologies that worked, they just weren’t as practical. One scheme was the Nipkow disk, and [Bitluni] decided to build a working demonstration of how such a system works. Essentially, there’s a spinning disk with a spiral pattern of […]
Cameras are a funny rabbit hole to fall down as a hacker, because we have well over a century of items to pick and choose from, a lot of which can be had for relative pennies. In my case I have more of them than I’d care to mention, mostly film cameras and 8mm movie […]
The back of the 2View VHS box. The instructions are all in Dutch, as its (sole) launch market. (Credit: Techmoan, YouTube) Over the decades the video and music industries have tried a wide range of ways to get consumers to buy ‘cheaper’ versions of albums and music, but then limit the playback in some way. […]
Long before we had internet newsfeeds or Twitter, Ceefax delivered up-to-the-minute news right to your television screen. Launched by the BBC in 1974, Ceefax was the world’s first teletext service, offering millions of viewers a mix of news, sports, weather, and entertainment on demand. Fast forward 50 years, and the iconic service is being honored […]
Making microcontrollers produce video has long been a staple of hardware hacking, but as the resolution goes up, it becomes a struggle for less capable silicon. To get higher resolution VGA from an Arduino, [Marcin Chwedczuk] has produced perhaps the most bulletproof solution, to create dual-port RAM with the help of a static RAM chip […]
[Ryan Miceli] had spent a few years poring over and reverse-engineering Halo 2 when a friend asked for a favor. His friend created an improved Xbox with significant overclocks, RAM upgrades, BIOS hacks, and a processor swap. The goal was simple: patch the hardcoded maximum resolution from 480p to 720p and maybe even 1080p. With […]
We’ve seen 3D image projection tried in a variety of different ways, but this is a new one to us. This volumetric display by Interact Lab of the University of Sussex creates a 3D image by projecting light onto a tiny foam ball, which zips around in the air fast enough to create a persistence […]