3D Printing A Usable Airless Tire

For decades now, companies like Michelin have been teasing us with futuristic-looking automobile tires that don’t use air. Instead, they use a polymer mesh of sorts which maintains the same …read more

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Full Teardown of a 2026 Amazon Fire Stick HD

After the release of Google’s Chromecast so-called ‘streaming sticks’ have remained a popular form factor, even though such technology is these days part of ‘smart’ TVs. Being curious as to …read more

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Addressable LEDs Make Giant 16×2 Character Display

We’ve always taken a certain childlike joy in seeing tiny things made big, and big things tiny. Evidently [Uncle Stem] is the same way, if this 7x sized 16×2 “LCD” …read more

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FLOSS Weekly Episode 878: A Tool With Opinions

This week Jonathan chats with Jonathan Pallant about embedded Rust! Learn about the growing Rust driver library, the different ways to build a Rust stack on an embedded device, and …read more

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Know Your Food: Our Daily Bread

It’s time to return to our no-punches-pulled look at food manufacture, and this time we’re looking at the humble loaf of bread. As before, we’re approaching the subject with a …read more

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Cell Broadcast: The Modern Emergency Alert System

Once upon a time, telephones were primarily point-to-point communications systems. There were options for three-way and conference calls out there, but by and large the plain old telephone system was …read more

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Could Camera Hardware Be The Physical Equivalent to USB-C?

[Mansour] presents an interesting idea in his essay A Common Thread — just as USB-C has become the “One Connector To Rule Them All” in the world of electronics, so …read more

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Train Simulator Controller: July 2026 Progress Roundup

For the past three years [Christopher Mitchell] has been working on his replica of a British Rail Class 800 control cab for a physical train simulator, with the July blog …read more

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A Full Motion Video Codec For the Atari ST

Who says an old dog can’t do new tricks? The Atari ST has got to qualify as an “old dog” 41 years after launch, and if playing Full Motion Video …read more

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Polystyrene Foam can be Gasoline With Some Help

Styrofoam – or closed-cell extruded polystyrene (XPS) foam if you want to be precise – is one of those materials that is both super versatile for packaging and insulation, but …read more

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BornHack Radio 102.8 FM, Playing Radio At A Hacker Camp

Over the years I have been to many hacker camps and done a lot of very cool things, but BornHack 2026 brought me something entirely new: Radio. By which I …read more

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Un Ordinateur Pour Le Minitel-1 (A Computer For The Minitel-1)

In the 1980s, France was the stage for one of the boldest public computing projects of the era. Minitel was the French take on viewdata, and instead of making it …read more

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Road Trains Roam The Backroads of Australia

Trains and the railways they run on are a great way to move lots of stuff, or lots of people, a long way. Steel wheels on steel rail can shift …read more

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Testing Hundreds of Used LFP Cells Requires Some Automation

Although Li-ion cells have become a lot cheaper over the years, if you wish to buy hundreds of high-quality ones for that performance go-kart project, you may feel financially pressured …read more

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Yellow YAG Produces Powerful Pulses in Les’ Leftover Laser

[Les] likes lasing lasers, and who doesn’t? [Les] likes larger lasers than lots of folks, with his current project being an Nd:YAG (that’s Neodymium:Yttrium Aluminum Garnet) flash pumped laser intended …read more

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A Versatile PDP-11/70 Emulator

The PDP-11 was a 16-bit minicomputer that was very influential in its time. That’s what inspired [vanheusden] to start working on an emulator for the machine in 2018, which has …read more

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Sketching Temporary Circuits with a Light-Triggered Floquet Topological Insulator

In semiconductor technology, a base material like silicon is permanently modified to induce certain electrical behavior. In comparison a topological insulator material could be used to create temporary circuits using …read more

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Energizing a Vacuum Tube Flip-Flop Module of the IBM 604

Taking a break from ogling microscopic features in Intel’s semiconductor processors, [Ken Shirriff] is back to instead poking at decidedly macroscopic pluggable modules from the 1948 IBM 604 Electronic Calculator. …read more

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Child-Friendly Music Player Uses RFID

[David] has a young child who is clever enough to use a computer to play music, but he doesn’t quite want to hand over the mouse just yet. Thus, he …read more

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Congratulations to the Frikkin Laser Winners!

Apparently you all love lasers just as much as we do. We put out a challenge to use, build, or otherwise abuse our favorite coherent light sources, and you responded. …read more

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The 16K Display that Ate Las Vegas

You may have a 4K television. Perhaps you have even bought an 8K screen, despite the shortage of things worth watching in 8K. A 16K display is, today, a rarity. …read more

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Making a Retro(ish) Game Console From Scratch

As easy as it is to make a late 1980s-style game console using a modern microcontroller, there’s arguably more fun in doing things the traditional way. This is the challenge …read more

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Easy Theremin Uses ESP32

The Theremin is that classic electronic musical instrument that makes those weeee-ohhhhh noises which were so popular in mid-century science fiction movies. Mid-last-century, that is, because this century is just …read more

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Hackaday Links: August 2, 2026

About a month ago, we brought you word that the commercial rescue mission designed by Katalyst Space to save NASA’s Swift gamma-ray observatory had reached orbit and early indicators were …read more

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Turning Fruits Into Ethylene and Ethane Refrigerant

One of the best parts about DIY chemistry and physics projects is that you get to decide how early in the supply chain you want to begin, such as with …read more

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Architectural LED Install Shows How To Do It With Style

Anyone can string up some LED string lights in a space with mixed results. However, if you want to create a lighting environment that’s classy and stylish, it takes a …read more

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The Seven Sensors and Breakout Boards to Avoid in a Product

We’ve all seen these sensors and modules kicking around, as part of beginner kits, strapped into prototypes and potentially even in products deployed in the field. Yet as [John Teel] …read more

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Bike Trainers as Video Game Controllers

While we’ve largely settled on analog sticks and digital buttons for controlling video games, there’s all sorts of projects to create truly esoteric controllers that allow playing games in unique …read more

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Stewart Platform Walker Gains Feeling In Legs From Resistors

Stewy is a very interesting robot, with some slightly odd kinematics. Its head is a Stewart platform, which is a common-enough 6-DOF actuated plate normally used with a fixed base. …read more

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Commercialization and Innovation

The last year or two has seen relatively affordable multi-material printers hit the market, and the question that [Tom Nardi] and I were kicking around when he was writing up …read more

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