Why Electric Trains Sound The Way They Do

If you’re a seasoned international rail traveler you will no doubt have become used to the various sounds of electric locomotives and multiple units as they start up. If you know anything abo…

Tiny Tapeout 4: A PWM Clone Of Covox Speech Thing

Tiny Tapout is an interesting project, leveraging the power of cloud computing and collaborative purchasing to make the mysterious art of IC design more accessible for hardware hackers. [Yeo Kheng …

Homebrew Reader Brings Paper Tape Programs Back To Life

We may be a bit biased, but the storage media of yesteryear has so much more personality than that of today. Yes, it’s a blessing to have terabyte SD cards smaller than your pinky nail and be…

Keep Tabs On PC Use With Custom Analog Voltmeter

With the demands of modern computing, from video editing, streaming, and gaming, many of us will turn to a monitoring system of some point to keep tabs on CPU usage, temperatures, memory, and other…

Playing Audio On The Pi Pico With No DAC To Speak Of

Normally, if you want to play music or other audio on a microcontroller, you need to get yourself a DAC. Or at least, that’s the easiest way to go about it and the one most likely to get you …

Sketchy Logg Dogg Logging Robot Remote Control Hacking

When we last left [Wes] amidst the torn-open guts of his Logg Dogg logging robot, he had managed to revitalize the engine and dug into the hydraulics, but one big obstacle remained: the lack of the…

Pico-Sized Ham Radio

There are plenty of hobbies around with huge price tags, and ham radio can certainly be one of them. Experienced hams might have radios that cost thousands of dollars, with huge, steerable antennas…

Spying On The ESP32’s GPIO

The ESP32 has been a go-to microcontroller platform for a while now, thanks to its versatile capabilities, integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and low power consumption. It’s ideal f…

Bigfoot Turns Classic Sewing Machine Into A Leather-Eating Monster

If you try to sew leather on a standard consumer-grade machine, more often than not you’ll quickly learn its limits. Most machines are built for speed, and trying to get them to punch through…

Simple Circuit Keeps Process Control Loops In Tune

Spare a moment’s pity for the process engineer, whose job it is to keep industrial automation running no matter what. These poor souls seem to be forever on call, fielding panicked requests t…

Hackaday Prize 2023: 10 KW Electronic Load

[tinfever] needed a high-power benchtop electronic load for an upcoming project, and by their own admission decided foolishly to build their own. And we’re glad they did. The thing is, whilst…

Accurate Cycle Counting On RP2040 MicroPython

The RP2040 is a gorgeous little chip with a well-defined datasheet and a fantastic price tag. Two SDKs are even offered: one based on C and the other MicroPython. More experienced MCU wranglers wil…

Tesla Door Phone Decoded (Not That Tesla)

[Danman] has digital door phones manufactured by Tesla — or at least, a Tesla, as they’re not to be confused with the carmaker, though. The problem is if someone comes to the door when …

Converting A B&W Exposer Head For Colour Analog Photo Printing

[Koraks tinkers] was gifted a gargantuan photographic enlarger, a Durst Laborator 138 s, which is a unit designed specifically for black and white usage only. This was not good enough for [Koraks] …

Op Amp Challenge: An Op-Amp Buck Regulator

Switching regulators have delivered such convenience and efficiency compared to their linear siblings, that it’s now becoming rare to see an old-style three-terminal regulator. Modern designs…

Spin Up To Speed With This Stroboscope

A stroboscope is not the most common tool, and while they can be purchased fairly inexpensively from various online stores, they are straightforward enough tools that plenty of us could build our o…

DIY Fume Extractor With ATtiny13 Speed Control

Let’s be honest, commercially-available soldering fume extractors are cheap enough that you probably don’t need to build one yourself. But it still makes for a good starter project, esp…

Monochrome LCD Video Hacks Galore!

[Wenting Zhang] is clearly a fan of old school STN LCD displays, and was wondering how various older portable devices managed to drive monochrome LCDs panels with multiple grey levels. If the displ…

Pitch Sequencer Turns Tascam Tape Deck Into Instrument

The cool thing about magnetic tape is that by varying the speed at which you play it back, you can vary the pitch of the output. [Issac] decided to take advantage of this, executing a fancy digital…