Automating 3D Printer Support Hardware

While 3D printers have evolved over the past two decades from novelties to powerful prototyping tools, the amount of support systems have advanced tremendously as well. From rudimentary software th…

Reinventing Rotary Switches With Stepper Motors

When you need to make very tiny measurements, even noise in closed relays can throw you off. [Marco] was able to observe this effect and wanted to build a switch that didn’t have this problem…

A Smart Power Distribution Unit For Home Automation

Power distribution units, as the name implies, are indispensable tools to have available in a server rack. They can handle a huge amount of power for demands of intensive computing and do it in a w…

Crank-Powered Train Uses No Batteries Or Plugs

The prolific [Peter Waldraff] is at back it with another gorgeous micro train layout. This time, there are no plugs and no batteries. And although it’s crank-powered, it can run on its own wi…

A Long-Range Meshtastic Relay

In the past few years we’ve seen the rise of low-power mesh networking devices for everything from IoT devices, weather stations, and even off-grid communications networks. These radio module…

Multiply Your Multimeter With Relays And USB

Multimeters are a bit like potato chips: you can’t have just one. But they’re a lot more expensive than potato chips, especially the good ones, and while it’s tempting to just go …

Pi Pico Enhances RadioShack Computer Kit

While most of us now remember Radio Shack as a store that tried to force us to buy batteries and cell phones whenever we went to buy a few transistors and other circuit components, for a time it wa…

Pinball With No Computers

Pinball machines were the video games of their day. Back when they were king, there were no microcontrollers — everything was electromechanical. We know from experience that fixing these was …

Flashlight Door Lock Is A Bright Idea

There are many ways to lock a door. You could use a keypad, an RFID card, a fingerprint or retina scan, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, the list goes on. You could even use a regular old metal key. But none of t…

Two-Channel Guitar Stomp Box Makes Momentary Switches Latching

When we first saw [Maarten Tromp]’s article about a “momentary latching switch” for guitar effects pedals, we have to admit to being a bit confused. When it comes to push-button s…

Partial Relay-Based Calculator Puts The Click Where It Counts

It looks like [Michal Zalewski] is raising the next generation the right way. First, his eldest son asks for help building a one-bit computer from discrete transistors. Not to be left behind, his l…

Automatic Transfer Switch Keeps Internet Online

Living in a place where the electric service isn’t particularly reliable can be frustrating, whether that’s because of a lack of infrastructure, frequent storms, or rolling blackouts. A…

Hackaday Prize 2023: Building A Relay ALU

There’s much truth in the advice that, to truly understand something, you need to build it yourself from the ground up. That’s the idea behind [Christian]’s entry for the Re-engin…

Spy Transceiver Makes Two Tubes Do The Work Of Five

Here at Hackaday, we love following along with projects as they progress. That’s especially true when a project makes a considerable leap in terms of functionality from one version to another…

Mechanical GIF Animates With The Power Of Magnets

It doesn’t matter how you pronounce it, because whichever way you choose to say “GIF” is guaranteed to cheese off about half the people listening. Such is the state of our polariz…

Replace Your Automatic Transmission With A Bunch Of Relays

A “Check Engine” light on your dashboard could mean anything from a loose gas cap to a wallet-destroying repair in the offing. For [Dean Segovis], his CEL was indicating a fairly seriou…

Programmable Resistance Box

For prototype electronics projects, most of us have a pile of resistors of various values stored somewhere on our tool bench. There are different methods of organizing them for easy access and iden…

Relay-Driven Nixie Clock Gets You To Stop Scrolling

We don’t often get a Tips line submission where the “Subject” line auto-translates as “Yoshi Yoshi Yoshi”, linking to a short video by [Yasunari Industries] (embedded …

Electric Wheelchair Dump Truck Hack Really Hauls

Have you ever looked at a derelict electric wheelchair and thought “I bet I could make something great with that!” Of course you have- this is Hackaday, after all! And so did [Made in P…