Fish are popular animals to keep as pets, and for good reason. They’re relatively low maintenance, relaxing to watch, and have a high aesthetic appeal. But for all their upsides, they aren’t quite as companionable as a dog or a cat. Although some fish can do limited walking or flying, these aren’t generally kept as […]
For a late-1990s engineer with good soldering skills, many a free pint of beer could be earned by installing modchips on the game consoles of the day. Modchips were usually a small microcontroller connected with a few wires to selected pins on the chips or pads on the board that masked or overrode the copy […]
One of the problems with being a graffiti artist is that you have to carry around a different spray can for each color you intend to use. [Sandesh Manik] decided to solve this problem by building a rig that can produce a wider range of colors by mixing the paint from several cans at once. […]
Not so long ago, most computer users didn’t own their own machines. Instead, they shared time on mainframes or servers, interacting with this new technology through remote terminals. While the rise of cloud computing and AI might feel like a modern, more dystopian echo of that era, some look back on those early days with […]
The timer mechanism of the Vend-o-Vision. (Credit: SpaceTime Junction, YouTube) There was a time before portable TVs and personal media players when the idea of putting coin-operated TVs everywhere, from restaurants to airports and laundromats, would have seemed like a solid business model. Thus was born the Vend-o-Vision by Mini-TV USA, which presented itself as […]
At first glance, it may look like [Rybitski]’s 7-segment RGB LED clock is something that’s been done before, but look past the beautiful mounting. It’s not just stylishly framed; the back end is just as attentively executed. It’s got a built-in web UI, MQTT automation, so Home Assistant integration is a snap, and allows remote […]
Picture this: you have an irregular opening you need to fabricate a piece to fill. Maybe it’s the stonework of a fireplace; maybe it’s the curved bulkhead of a ship. How do you get that shape? The most “Hackaday” answer would be to 3D scan the area, create a CAD model based on the point […]
Everyone is probably familiar with the concept of battery-powered devices, but generally, this involves a laptop with a beefy battery pack and hardware optimized for low power draw. You could also do the complete opposite and try to run a desktop PC off alkaline AA cells, as [ScuffedBits] recently did out of morbid curiosity. Exactly […]
As temperatures warm up in the Northern Hemisphere, one’s mind naturally turns to the outdoors and the garden — even if some of our gardens are still snow-covered. One secret to good gardening is that many of the plants we love take too long to grow if started from seed outside, at least in relatively […]