The 6809 8-Bit Microcomputer: A Father-Son Odyssey

If you’re nostalgic for the golden age of microprocessors and dream of building your own computer, this story might spark your imagination. [Eric Lind], passionate retro enthusiast and his 14…

Apollo-era PCB Reverse Engineering To KiCad

Earlier this year [Skyhawkson] got ahold of a Apollo-era printed circuit board which he believes was used in a NASA test stand. He took high quality photos of both sides of the board and superimpos…

Hackaday Links: November 24, 2024

We received belated word this week of the passage of Ward Christensen, who died unexpectedly back in October at the age of 78. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, that’s understandable, be…

Supercon 2024 SAO Petal KiCad Redrawing Project

Last week I completed the SAO flower badge redrawing task, making a complete KiCad project. Most of the SAO petals are already released as KiCad projects, except for the Petal Matrix. The design fe…

Supercon 2024 Flower SAO Badge Redrawing In KiCad

Out of curiosity, I redrew the Supercon Vectorscope badge schematics in KiCad last year. As you might suspect, going from PCB to schematic is opposite to the normal design flow of KiCad and most ot…

Zero To Custom MacroPad In 37 Easy Steps

[Jeremy Weatherford] clearly has a knack for explaining projects well enough for easy reproduction but goes way further than most and has created a four-part YouTube series detailing every step fro…

Your Battery Holder Is Also Your Power Switch With ToggleSlot

We really like PCB-level hacks, especially ones that show ingenuity in solving a real problem while being super cheap to implement. Hackaday.IO user [Steph] wanted a cheap way to switch a wearable …

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The KiCad Plugin

The most striking feature of the Tenshi keyboard has to be those dual track pads. But then you notice that [fata1err0r81] managed to sneak in two extra thumb keys on the left, and that those are ti…

Hacker Tactic: Single-PCB Panels

Ordering a PCB? Two of them? Three? Five? For about eight years now, I’ve been regularly ordering large numbers of different PCBs, and, naturally, have developed a toolkit to make things smoo…

Turbocase Generates A PCB Shell For You

Our PCBs greatly benefit from cases – what’s with all the pins that can be accidentally shorted, connectors that stick out of the outline, and cables pulling the board into different di…

Giving Your KiCad PCB Repository Pretty Pictures

Publishing your boards on GitHub or GitLab is a must, and leads to wonderful outcomes in the hacker world. On their own, however, your board files might have the repo look a bit barren; having a pi…

Reverse Engineering The Quansheng Hardware

In the world of cheap amateur radio transceivers, the Quansheng UV-K5 can’t be beaten for hackability. But pretty much every hack we’ve seen so far focuses on the firmware. What about t…

CATS: A New Communication And Telemetry System

CATS is a new communication and telemetry standard intended to surpass the current Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) standard by leveraging modern, super-cheap Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) t…

Share Your Projects: KiCad Automations And Pretty Renders

I have a pretty large GitHub repository, with all of my boards open-sourced there. Now, I’m finally facing the major problem it has – it can be uncomfortable for others to work with. I …

KiCad 8 Makes Your Life Better Without Caveats

A few days ago, KiCad 8 was released, and it’s a straight upgrade to any PCB designer’s quality of life. There’s a blog post as usual, and, this year, there’s also a FOSDEM …

From KiCad To Blender For A Stunning Render

We love Blender. It brings you 3D modeling, but not in a CAD way — instead, people commonly use it to create animations, movies, games, and even things like VR models. In short, Blender is ab…

Revive A Sony Vaio P-Series With KiCad’s Background Bitmaps

You might remember that KiCad 7 came out this February, with a multitude of wonderful features. One of them was particularly exciting to see, and the KiCad newsletter even had an animated GIF to pr…

Vectorscope KiCad Redrawing Project

When I saw this year’s Supercon Vectorscope badge, I decided that I had to build one for myself. Since I couldn’t attend in-person, I immediately got the PCBs and parts on order. Noting that the Gi…

EcoEDA Integrates Your Junk Bin Into Your Designs

If you’re like us, there’s a creeping feeling that comes over you when you’re placing an order for parts for your latest project: Don’t I already have most of this stuff? Wi…