Synesthetic Clock Doesn’t Require Synesthesia

We often think of synesthetes as those people who associate say, colors with numbers. But the phenomenon can occur with any of the senses. Simply put, when one sense is activated, synesthesia cause…

ESP-Drone: Building An ESP32-Based Quadcopter For Not Much Cash

What’s the cheapest quadcopter you can build? As [Circuit Digest] demonstrates with their variant of the ESP-Drone project by Espressif, you only need a minimum of parts, with at the core an …

LoRA, With No Radio

A LoRa project has traditionally required a dedicated radio module, because it’s a commercially licenced protocol. But as the way it works has been progressively reverse engineered, it’…

2024 Home Sweet Home Automation: [HEX]POD – Climate Tracker And Digital Nose

[eBender] was travelling India with friends, when one got sick. Unable to find a thermometer anywhere during COVID, they finally ended up in a hospital. After being evacuated back home, [eBender] h…

Trick Your (1970) Pickup Truck

[Dave] wanted an old pickup, and he found a GMC Sierra Grande truck vintage 1970. While it had an unusual amount of options, there weren’t that many high-tech options over 50 years ago. The f…

Dodge, The Weird Tripod Robot

[hannu_hell] created Dodge as a “novel design of tripod.” It’s a small robotic device quite unlike anything else we’ve seen of late. It’s intended to be a self-mobile …

PCB Design Review: ESP32-S3 Round LCD Board

For our next installment, I have a lovely and daring PCB submitted by one of our readers, [Vas]. This is an ESP32-S3 board that also has an onboard round TFT display, very similar to the one we use…

Dev Board Watch Takes Path Of Least Resistance

Building your own watch or clock is kind of a maker’s rite of passage. Once upon a time, if you went with a wrist watch, you’d typically work on producing your own compact PCB with ever…

Custom Library Rescues Good LoRa Hardware From Bad Firmware

The range of hardware that comes on some dev boards these days is truly staggering. Those little LoRa boards are a prime example — ESP32 with WiFi and Bluetooth, a transceiver that covers a b…

RP2040, ESP32, And An Atmega Have An ADC-Off

[Simon Monk] got frustrated with bad ADC performance when tinkering with an ESP32 board, and decided to put three of the nowadays-iconic boards to the test – a classic ESP32 devboard, a Pi Pi…

Avoid I2C Address Conflicts On ESP32 By Pin Muxing

Using hardware I2C on an ESP32? Do you need to connect multiple I2C devices with the same address? Normally, you wouldn’t be able to do that without extra parts, but on the ESP32, [BastelBaus…

ESP32 Weather Station Looks Great With Color E-Paper Display

[educ8s.tv] has built weather stations before, but his latest is his best yet. It’s all thanks to its low-power design, enabled by its e-paper display. The build is based around an ESP32 micr…

Internet Radio Built In Charming Cassette-Like Form Factor

You can listen to plenty of broadcast radio these days. There’s a lot of choice too, with stations on AM, FM, and digital broadcasts to boot. However, if you want the broadest possible choice…

A Smarter Solar Water Heater

Installing solar power at a home is a great way to reduce electricity bills, especially as the cost of solar panels and their associated electronics continue to plummet. Not every utility allows se…

ESP32 Oscilloscope Skips Screen For The Browser

An oscilloscope can be an expensive piece of equipment, but not every measurement needs four channels and gigahertz sampling rates. For plenty of home labs, old oscilloscopes with CRTs can be found…

Solar E-Ink Weather Station Works On Dark Days, Too

One way to get through the winter doldrums is to take notice of the minuscule positive changes in weather as spring approaches. Although much of the US is experiencing a particularly warm month, th…

Melodio Self Mate

While the proliferation of the smartphone has caused the personal music player (PMP) market to mostly evaporate, there are still those who prefer a standalone device for their music. The Melodio Se…

IoT Air Purifier Makes A Great Case Study In Reverse Engineering

Here at Hackaday, about the only thing we like more than writing up tales of reverse engineering heroics is writing up tales of reverse engineering heroics that succeed in jailbreaking expensive wi…

A General-Purpose PID Controller

For those new to fields like robotics or aerospace, it can seem at first glance that a problem like moving a robot arm or flying an RC airplane might be simple problems to solve. It turns out, howe…

Alarm Panel Hack Defeats Encryption By Ignoring It

As frustrating as it may be for a company to lock you into its ecosystem by encrypting their protocols, you have to admit that it presents an enticing challenge. Cracking encryption can be more tro…