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Hackaday Podcast

275 episodes - English - Latest episode: 7 days ago - ★★★★★ - 53 ratings

Hackaday Editors take a look at all of the interesting uses of technology that pop up on the internet each week. Topics cover a wide range like bending consumer electronics to your will, designing circuit boards, building robots, writing software, 3D printing interesting objects, and using machine tools. Get your fix of geeky goodness from new episodes every Friday morning.

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Episodes

Ep 263: Better DCMA, AI Spreadsheet Play, and Home Assistants Your Way

March 22, 2024 16:47 - 1 hour - 74.7 MB

No need to wonder what stories Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Al Williams were reading this week. They'll tell you about them in this week's podcast. The guys revisit the McDonald's ice cream machine issue to start.   This week, DIY voice assistants and home automation took center stage. But you'll also hear about AI chat models implemented as a spreadsheet, an old-school RC controller, and more. How many parts does it take to make a radio? Not a crystal radio, a software-defined one...

Ep 262: Wheelchair Hacking, Big Little Science at Home, Arya Talks PCBs

March 15, 2024 15:30 - 1 hour - 72.3 MB

Join Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi as they go over their favorite hacks and stories from the past week.  This episode starts off with an update on Hackaday Europe 2024, which is now less than a month away, and from there dives into wheelchairs with subscription plans, using classic woodworking techniques to improve your 3D printer’s slicer, and a compendium of building systems. You’ll hear about tools for finding patterns in hex dumps, a lusciously documented gadget for snif...

Ep 261: Rickroll Toothbrush, Keyboard Cat, Zombie Dialup

March 08, 2024 16:30 - 36 minutes - 42.8 MB

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up in a new disposable location to give the lowdown on this week's best hacks. First up in the news -- the Home Sweet Home Automation contest is still going strong. You've still got plenty of time, so get on over to Hackaday.IO and start your entry today. In the news, the UK is asking how powerful an electric bike should be (more than 250 Watts, certainly), and legal pressure from Nintendo has shut down two emulators. Then i...

Ep 260: KiCad 8, Two Weather Stations, and Multiple I2Cs

March 01, 2024 16:55 - 1 hour - 71.2 MB

It's a leap year, so Elliot and Dan put the extra day to good use tracking down all the hottest hacks from the past week and dorking out about them. There's big news in the KiCad community, and we talked about all the new features along with some old woes. Great minds think alike, apparently, since two different e-ink weather stations made the cut this week, as did a floating oscilloscope, an automated film-developing tank, and some DIY solar panels. We talked about a hacker who figured out ...

Ep 259: Twin-T, Three D, and Driving to a T

February 23, 2024 16:30 - 59 minutes - 65.2 MB

Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Al Williams sat down to compare notes on their favorite Hackaday posts of the week. You can listen in on this week's podcast. The guys talked about the latest Hackaday contest and plans for Hackaday Europe. Plus, there's a what's that sound to try. Your guess can't be worse than Al's, so take a shot. You could win a limited-edition T-shirt. In technical articles, Elliot spent the week reading about brushless motor design, twin-t oscillators, and a truly...

Ep 258: So Much Unix, Flipper Flip-out, and the Bus Pirate 5

February 16, 2024 16:49 - 1 hour - 77.5 MB

Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi discuss all the week's best and most interesting hacks and stories, starting with Canada's misguided ban on the Flipper Zero for being too spooky. From there they'll look at the state-of-the-art in the sub-$100 3D printer category, Apple's latest "Right to Repair" loophole, running UNIX on the NES (and how it's different from Japan's Famicom), and the latency of various wireless protocols. After singing the praises of the new Bus Pirate 5, dis...

Ep 257: The Hacks and Just the Hacks

February 14, 2024 18:11 - 21 minutes - 23.4 MB

Last week, we held an Episode 256 celebration round-table, but Kristina and I also met afterwards to talk about all the week's hacks.  That part didn't fit, but we didn't want to deprive you of your weekly hack fix either, so here they are!

Ep 256: 0, 256, 400, 100, and 10000000

February 09, 2024 16:37 - 41 minutes - 44.1 MB

For this week's episode, we did something super special -- we all convened to answer your burning questions about your hosts, both as hackers and as humans. We kick things off with a segment featuring a hearty round-table discussion between Elliot, Al, Dan, Kristina, and Tom. What's on our benches? What do we type on? Go find out! None of us figured out What's That Sound though a few of us had some creative guesses. Can you guess the sound? There could be a t-shirt in it for ya. Kristina...

Ep 255: Balloon on the Moon, Nanotech Goblets, and USB All the Way

February 02, 2024 16:40 - 1 hour - 71.2 MB

This week, Dan joined Elliot for a review of the best and brightest hacks of the week in Episode 0xFF, which both of us found unreasonably exciting; it's a little like the base-2 equivalent of watching the odometer flip over to 99,999. If you know, you know. We had quite a bumper crop of coolness this week, which strangely included two artifacts from ancient Rome: a nanotech goblet of colloidal gold and silver, and a perplexing dodecahedron that ends up having a very prosaic explanation -- p...

Ep 254: AI, Hijack Guy, and Water Rockets Fly

January 26, 2024 16:30 - 1 hour - 69.2 MB

This week Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Al Williams chew the fat about the Haier IOT problem, and all other top Hackaday stories of the week. Want to prove your prowess at C programming? Take a quiz! Or marvel at some hairy display reverse engineering or 3D-printed compressor screws. On the lighter side, there's an immense water rocket. After Al waxes nostalgic about the world of DOS Extenders and extended memory, the guys talk about detective work: First detecting AI-written materi...

Ep 253: More Wood Robot, Glitching and Fuming Nitric Acid, We Heart USB-C

January 19, 2024 17:31 - 1 hour - 91.7 MB

This week Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start things off with a traffic report from the Moon, which has suddenly become a popular destination for wayward robots. [caption id="attachment_657278" align="alignright" width="300"] Anonymizing an ATtiny85 via laser[/caption] From there, they'll go over a fire-tending contraption that's equal parts madness and brilliance, two decades of routers being liberated by OpenWRT, impressive feats of chip decapping, and USB-C's glorious...

Ep 252: X1Plus Hacks Bambu, Scotto Builds a Katana Keyboard, and Bass Puts out Fire

January 12, 2024 17:05 - 45 minutes - 50 MB

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up to discuss the best hacks of the previous week. It's CES time once again in Las Vegas, and you know what that means -- some wacky technologies like this AI pet door that rejects dead mice. Then it's on to What's That Sound, which Kristina managed to nail for once. Can you get it? Can you figure it out? Can you guess what's making that sound this week? If you can, and your number comes up, you get a special Hackaday Podcas...

Ep 251: Pluto, Pinball, Speedy Surgery, and DIY GPS

January 05, 2024 17:34 - 1 hour - 70.5 MB

Welcome to 2024! This time around, Elliot and Dan ring in a new year of awesome hacks with quite an eclectic mix. We kick things off with a Pluto pity party and find out why the tiny ex-planet deserved what it got. What do you do if you need to rename a bunch of image files? You rope a local large-language model in for the job, of course. We'll take a look at how pinball machines did their thing before computers came along, take a fractal dive into video feedback, and localize fireworks with...

Ep 250: Trains, RC Planes, and EEPROMS in Flames

December 29, 2023 16:30 - 46 minutes - 55.1 MB

This week in the Podcast, Elliot Williams is off at Chaos Communication Congress, hearing tales of incredible reverse engineering that got locomotives back up and running, while Al Williams is thinking over what happened in 2023. There’s a lot of “how things work” in this show, from data buoys to sewing machines to the simulated aging of ICs. Whether you’re into stacking bricks, stacking Pi Picos, or stacking your 3D prints to make better use of precious bed space, this episode is for you....

Ep 249: Data by Laser and Parachute, Bluetooth Hacks, Google's Gotta Google

December 22, 2023 16:36 - 1 hour - 73.1 MB

'Twas the podcast before Christmas, and all through the house, the best hacks of the week are dancing around Elliot and Tom's heads like sugar-plums. Whatever that means. Before settling their brains in for a long winter's nap, they'll talk about the open source software podcast that now calls Hackaday home, the latest firmware developments for Google's Stadia controller, high-definition cat videos from space, and upgrades for the surprisingly old-school battery tech that powers the Toyota...

Ep 248: Cthulhu Clock Radio Transharmonium, Thunderscan, and How to Fill Up in Space

December 15, 2023 16:30 - 1 hour - 65.7 MB

This week, Elliot sat down with Dan for the penultimate podcast of 2023, and what a week it was. We started with news about Voyager; at T+46 years from launch, any news tends to be bad, and the latest glitch has everyone worried. We also took a look at how close the OSIRIS-REx mission came to ending in disaster, all for want of consistent labels. Elliot was charmed by a Cthulhu-like musical instrument, while Dan took a shine to a spark gap transmitter that's probably on the FCC's naughty lis...

Ep 247: Cameras From Gingerbread or Hardboard, and the Insecurity of Bluetooth

December 09, 2023 00:17 - 44 minutes - 47.9 MB

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up to discuss the best hacks of the previous week. We have no nerdy news this week, but is that necessarily a bad thing? Speaking of nothingness, we have no winner for What's That Sound? because all six people who responded were wrong. Was the sound of Clippy too obscure? But then it's on to the hacks, beginning with an awesome autonomous excavator that, among other things, lays boulders algorithmically to build load-beari...

Ep 246: Bypassing Fingerprint Readers is Easy, Killing Memory Chips is Hard, Cell Phones vs Sperm

December 01, 2023 16:30 - 1 hour - 81.2 MB

It's the week after Thanksgiving (for some of us) and if you're sick of leftovers, you're in luck as Elliot and Dan get together to discuss the freshest and best inter-holiday hacks. We'll cue up the "Mission: Impossible" theme for a self-destructing flash drive with a surprising sense of self-preservation, listen in on ET only to find out it's just a meteor, and look for interesting things to do with an old 3D printer. We'll do a poking around a little in the basement at Tektronix, see how ...

Ep 245: The Silver Swan, ET's Umbrella Antenna, Model Tanks vs Space Shuttle Tires

November 24, 2023 16:30 - 59 minutes - 66.9 MB

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Managing Editor Tom Nardi link up through the magic of the Internet to go over some of their favorite stories from the last week. After revealing the bone-chilling winners of this year's Halloween contest, the discussion switches over to old-timey automatons, receiving deep space transmissions with a homebrew antenna that would make E.T. proud, and the treasures that can be found while poking around in a modern car's CAN bus. They'll also go o...

Ep 244: Fake Chips, Drinking Radium, and Spotting Slippery Neutrinos

November 17, 2023 16:30 - 45 minutes - 52.9 MB

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up to discuss the best hacks of the previous week, at least in our opinions. After chasing the angry bird away from Kristina's office, we go to the news and learn that we're in the middle of a solar conjunction Essentially, the Sun has come between Earth and Mars, making communication impossible for about another week. Did you know that this happens every two years? Then it's time for a new What's That Sound, and although ...

Ep 243: Supercon, Super Printing, and Super Gyros

November 10, 2023 16:30 - 44 minutes - 49.7 MB

With solder fumes from Supercon badge hacking still in the air, Hackaday's Elliot Williams and Al Williams met to compare notes about the conference talks, badge hacking, and more. Tom Nardi dropped by, too. Did you miss Supercon? It isn't quite the whole experience, but most of the talks are on our YouTube channel, with more coming in the weeks ahead. Check out the live tab for most of the ones up now. You can even watch the badge hacking celebration. Al nailed What's That Sound, as did...

Ep 242: Mechanical Math, KaboomBox, and Racing the Beam

October 27, 2023 15:30 - 43 minutes - 46.6 MB

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up from their separate but equally pin drop-quiet offices to discuss the best hacks of the previous week. Well, we liked these one, anyway. First up in the news, it's finally time for Supercon! So we'll see you there? If not, be sure to check out the talks as we live-stream them on our YouTube channel! Don't forget -- this is your last weekend to enter the 2023 Halloween Hackfest contest, which runs until 9 AM PDT on Octob...

Ep 241: Circuit Bending, Resistor Filing, the Butterfly Keyboard, and the Badge Reveal

October 20, 2023 16:15 - 1 hour - 70.1 MB

Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi meet up virtually to talk about the week's top stories and hacks, such as the fine art of resistor trimming and lessons learned from doing overseas injection molding. They'll go over circuit bending, self-driving cars, and a solar camera that started as a pandemic project and turned into an obsession. You'll also hear about Linux on the Arduino, classic ICs etched into slate, and an incredible restoration of one of the most interesting Thinkpads...

Ep 240: An Amazing 3D Printer, A Look Inside Raspberry Pi 5, and Cameras, Both Film and Digital

October 13, 2023 15:30 - 1 hour - 69.6 MB

Date notwithstanding, it's your lucky day as Elliot and Dan get together to review the best hacks of the week. For some reason, film photography was much on our writers' minds this week, as we talked about ways to digitalize an old SLR, and how potatoes can be used to develop film (is there a Monty Python joke in there?) We looked at a 3D printer design that really pulls our strings, the custom insides of the Raspberry Pi 5, and the ins and outs of both ferroresonant transformers and ham r...

Ep 239: Overclocking, Oscilloscopes, and Oh No! SMD Out of Stock!

October 06, 2023 15:30 - 1 hour - 72.1 MB

Elliot Williams and Al Williams got together again to discuss the best of Hackaday for a week, and you're invited. This week, the guys were into the Raspberry Pi 5, CNC soldering, signal processing, and plasma cutting. There are dangerous power supplies and a custom 11-bit CPU. Of course, there are a few Halloween projects that would fit in perfectly with the upcoming Halloween contest (the deadline is the end of this month; you still have time). OpenSCAD is about to get a lot faster, an...

Ep 238: Vibrating Bowl Feeders, Open Sourcery, Learning to Love Layer Lines

September 29, 2023 15:00 - 1 hour - 66.2 MB

Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start this week's episode off with some deep space news, as NASA's OSIRIS-REx returns home with a sample it snapped up from asteroid Bennu back in 2020. From there, discussion moves on to magical part sorting, open source (eventually...) plastic recycling, and the preposterously complex method newer Apple laptops use to determine if their lid is closed. They'll also talk about the changing perceptions of 3D printed parts, a new battery tech that probably won't c...

Ep 237: Dancing Raisins, Coding on Apples, and a Salad Spinner Mouse

September 23, 2023 03:30 - 43 minutes - 46.9 MB

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos gathered over the Internet and a couple cups of coffee to bring you the best hacks of the previous week. Well, the ones we liked best, anyhow. First up in the news, we've got a brand-spankin' new Halloween Hackfest contest running now until 9AM PDT on October 31st! Arduino are joining the fun this year and are offering some spooky treats in addition to the $150 DigiKey gift cards for the top three entrants. It's a What's That ...

Ep 236: The Car Episode, Building Leonardo's Water Mill, Reviving Radio Shack

September 15, 2023 16:01 - 1 hour - 65.1 MB

Elliot and Dan got together this time around to recap the week in hacks, and it looks like the Hackaday writing crew very much had cars on their minds. We both took the bait, with tales of privacy-violating cars and taillights that can both cripple a pickup and financially cripple its owner. We went medieval -- OK, more like renaissance -- on a sawmill, pulled a popular YouTuber out of the toilet, and pondered what an animal-free circus would be like. Is RadioShack coming back? Can an ESP32 ...

Ep 235: Licorice for Lasers, Manual Motors, and Reading Resistors

September 08, 2023 15:30 - 1 hour - 73.3 MB

Name one other podcast where you can hear about heavy 3D-printed drones, DIY semiconductors, and using licorice to block laser beams. Throw in homebrew relays, a better mouse trap, and logic analyzers, and you'll certainly be talking about Elliot Williams and Al Williams on Hackaday Podcast 235. There's also contest news, thermoforming, and something that looks a little like 3D-printed Velcro. Elliot and Al also have their semi-annual argument about Vi vs. Emacs. Spoiler alert: they decide...

Ep 234: Machines on Fire, Old Kinect New Kinect, and Birth of the Breadboard

September 01, 2023 15:30 - 1 hour - 76.8 MB

It might sound like a joke, but this week, Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start things off by asking how you keep a Polish train from running. Like always, the answer appears to be a properly modulated radio signal. After a fiery tale about Elliot's burned beans, the discussion moves over to the adventure that is home CNC ownership, the final chapter in the saga of the Arecibo Telescope, and the unexpected longevity of Microsoft's Kinect. Then it's on to the proper way to cook a PCB, FFmpeg i...

Ep 233: Chandrayaan on the Moon, Cyberdecks, Hackerspaces Born at a German Computer Camp

August 25, 2023 17:36 - 45 minutes - 52.4 MB

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos experimented with the old adage that brevity is the soul of wit. That's right; this week, they're all Quick Hacks, and that's to make room for a special series of interviews that Elliot recorded at CCCamp with the pillars of US hackerspace creation. This one's really special, do have a listen. We still made room for the news this week: India launched Chandrayaan-3, which combines an orbiter, lander, and rover all in one. Then it...

Ep 232: Hackaday Podcast Chaos Camp Placeholder Edition

August 18, 2023 15:30 - 53 seconds - 1.6 MB

Elliot is off at Chaos Communications Camp, and Tom is on vacation, leaving us with no podcast this week. But don't fret, Elliot is picking up a ton of interview material for next week's show. It's gonna be a good one!     

Ep 231: Harnessing Sparks, Hacking Food, and Leaving Breadcrumbs

August 11, 2023 15:30 - 52 minutes - 55.3 MB

Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Al Williams don't always agree on the best text editor to use, but they do -- usually -- agree on what makes a great hack. This week, they found plenty of Hackaday posts to discuss, ranging from exotic eavesdropping on keyboards, oscilloscopes, and several posts of interest to anyone who wants to build good-looking prototypes. If you are like mechanics, you'll hear about an escapement-like mechanism and a Hobson's coupler. If you crave more traditional hac...

Ep 230: Space Science, Superconductors, Supercaps, and Central Air

August 04, 2023 15:30 - 1 hour - 65.2 MB

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Managing Editor Tom Nardi start things off by tackling a pair of science stories, one that may or may not change the world, and the other that hopes to help us understand the very fabric of the universe. Afterwards they get to the important stuff: the evolution of Game Boy Camera hacking, the finer points of 3D print orientation, and mixing up electrically conductive concrete at home. From there the conversation shifts to a couple of 486 Turbo b...

Ep 229: DIY VR, Gutting Voice Assistants, and ChatGPT Failing Its Summer Internship

July 28, 2023 15:30 - 42 minutes - 49.9 MB

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos braved the slight cold and the high heat respectively to bring you the best hacks of the previous seven days. In the news this week: you've got a second and final chance to get your Supercon talk proposals in!  So get on that, because we need YOU to help make Supercon awesome. We can chalk up a win for Kristina on What's That Sound this week (finally!). Will you get it right? Will you get it exactly right? Time and Elliot's fanc...

Ep 228: Bats, Eggs, Lasers, Duck Tape, and Assembly Language

July 21, 2023 17:22 - 1 hour - 68.7 MB

Summer's in full swing, and this week both Elliot and Dan had to sweat things out to get the podcast recorded. But the hacks were cool -- see what I did there? -- and provided much-needed relief. Join us as we listen in on the world of bats, look at a laser fit for a hackerspace, and learn how to make an array of magnets greater than -- or less than -- the sum of its parts. There'll be flying eggs, keyboards connected to cell phones, and everything good about 80s and 90s cable TV, as well as...

Ep 227: Open Source Software, Decoupling Caps, DIY VR

July 14, 2023 15:30 - 1 hour - 70.2 MB

Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start this week's episode by addressing the ongoing Red Hat drama and the trend towards "renting" software. The discussion then shifts to homebrew VR gear, a particularly impressive solar-powered speaker, and some promising developments in the world of low-cost thermal cameras. Stay tuned to hear about color-changing breadboards, an unofficial logo for repairable hardware, and five lines of Bash that aim to unseat the entrenched power of Slack. Finally, we'll ta...

Ep 226: Ice, Snow, and Cooling Paint in July

July 07, 2023 15:30 - 1 hour - 74.2 MB

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Al Williams shoot the breeze about all things Hackaday. We start off with some fond remembrances of Don Lancaster, a legendary hardware hacker who passed away last month. There's also news about the Hackaday Prize (the tool competition) and a rant about fast computers and slow software, a topic that drew many comments this week. In the What's That Sound event, Al proves he's more of a Star Trek fan than a videogamer. But there were plenty of c...

Ep 225: Leafy Meats, Wind to Heat, and a Machine That's Neat

June 30, 2023 15:30 - 39 minutes - 46.6 MB

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos don't have a whole lot in the way of news, but we do know this: the Green Hacks Challenge of the 2023 Hackaday Prize ends precisely at 7AM PDT on July 4th. Show us what you can do in the realm of hacking for the planet, be it solar-based, wind-powered, recycled-trash-powered -- you get the idea. Kristina is now completely down for the count on What's That Sound, although this week, she was sort of in the neighborhood. But no mat...

Ep 224: Star Wars Holograms, Tricorders, and Other Sensors

June 23, 2023 15:30 - 50 minutes - 55.5 MB

Elliot and Al got together to discuss this week's projects, and you're invited! You'll hear news about replaceable batteries in the EU, along with some news about the Hacakday Op Amp Challenge winners and the start of a new contest. This week's choice hacks ranged from a Star Wars-style volumetric display, navigation using cosmic rays, measuring car speed with microphones, and a crazy 3D printing technique that will blow you away. There's plenty more where that came from. Ever tried to lan...

Ep 223: Smoking Smart Meter, 489 Megapixels, and Unshredding Documents

June 16, 2023 16:45 - 1 hour - 73.4 MB

Elliot's back from vacation, and Dan stepped into the virtual podcast studio with him to uncover all the hacks he missed while hiking in Italy. There was a lot to miss, what with a smart meter getting snuffed by a Flipper Zero -- or was it? How about a half-gigapixel camera built out of an old scanner, or a sonar-aimed turret gun? We also looked at a couple of projects that did things the hard way, like a TV test pattern generator that was clearly a labor of love, and an all-transistor HP fr...

Ep 222: VCF East Special Edition

June 09, 2023 15:30 - 35 minutes - 36.8 MB

Editor in Chief Elliot Williams is spending the week communing with nature, which under normal circumstances would mean no podcast -- after all, he's the one who puts each episode together. But since your weekend would obviously be ruined without a dose of lo-fi Hackaday beats to kick things off, Managing Editor Tom Nardi made a valiant attempt to go it alone and produce...something. This shortened episode will briefly go over the news, including updates about Hackaday's various ongoing co...

Ep 221: The Future of the Raspberry Pi, Sniffing a Toothbrush, Your Tactical Tool Threshold

June 02, 2023 15:30 - 1 hour - 71.8 MB

ditors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi are back in the (virtual) podcast studio to talk the latest phase of the 2023 Hackaday Prize, the past, present, and future of single-board computers, and a modern reincarnation of the Blackberry designed by hardware hackers. They'll also cover the current state of toothbrush NFC hacking, the possibilities of electric farm equipment, and a privately funded satellite designed to sniff out methane. Stick around till the end to find out if there really is su...

Ep 220: Transparent Ice, Fake Aliens, and Bendy Breadboards

May 26, 2023 15:30 - 48 minutes - 52 MB

You can join Elliot and Al as they get together to talk about their favorite hacks of the week. There's news about current contests, fake alien messages, flexible breadboards, hoverboards, low-tech home automation, and even radioactive batteries that could be a device's best friend. We have a winner in the What's that Sound competition last week, which was, apparently, a tough one. You'll also hear about IC fabrication, FPGAs, and core memory. Lots to talk about, including core memory, hov...

Ep 219: Lots of Lasers, Heaps of Ham Radio, and Breaching the Blood Brain Barrier

May 19, 2023 15:30 - 58 minutes - 62.8 MB

Elliot and Dan teamed up for the podcast this week, bringing you the week's sweetest hacks. And news too, as the ESA performed a little percussive maintenance on a Jupiter-bound space probe, and we learned about how to get an Orwellian free TV that exacts quite a price. We talked about Bitcoin mining two ways, including a way to put all that waste heat to good use -- just don't expect it to make good financial sense. Why would you stuff zip ties into a hot glue gun? It might just help with p...

Ep 218: Open Source AI, The Rescue of Salyut 7, The Homework Machine

May 12, 2023 15:30 - 48 minutes - 56.8 MB

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos have much in the way of Hackaday news -- the Op Amp Challenge is about halfway over, and there are roughly three weeks left in the Assistive Tech challenge of the 2023 Hackaday Prize. Show us what you've got on the analog front, and then see what you can do to help people with disabilities to live better lives! Kristina is still striking out on What's That Sound, which this week honestly sounded much more horrendous and mechanic...

Ep 217: The Unintentional Space and 3D Printing Episode

May 05, 2023 15:30 - 1 hour - 87.4 MB

Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi definitely didn't plan on devoting most of this episode to 3D printing and space stories, but let's be honest, it was bound to happen sooner or later. After an update on the Hackaday Prize, the discussion moves on to a pair of troubled spacecraft and the challenges of exploring the final frontier. From there you'll hear about a chocolate 3D printer we've had our eyes on for years, the tools you should have next to your own (non-chocolate) 3D p...

Ep 217: The Unintentional Space and 3D Printing Episode

May 05, 2023 15:30 - 1 hour - 87.4 MB

Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi definitely didn't plan on devoting most of this episode to 3D printing and space stories, but let's be honest, it was bound to happen sooner or later. After an update on the Hackaday Prize, the discussion moves on to a pair of troubled spacecraft and the challenges of exploring the final frontier. From there you'll hear about a chocolate 3D printer we've had our eyes on for years, the tools you should have next to your own (non-chocolate) 3D p...

Ep 216: FETs, Fax, and Electrochemical Fab

April 28, 2023 15:30 - 47 minutes - 53.1 MB

In this week's podcast, non-brothers Elliot Williams and Al Williams talk about our favorite hacks of the week. Elliot's got analog on the brain, courtesy of the ongoing Op Amp Contest, and Al is all about the retrocomputers, from a thrift-store treasure to an old, but still incredibly serviceable, voice synthesizer. Both agree that they love clever uses of mechanical parts and that nobody should fear the FET. Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us wh...

Ep 215: Autonomous Race Car, Espresso Robot, and Vintage Computers

April 21, 2023 15:30 - 58 minutes - 62 MB

It's podcast time again, and this time around Elliot and Dan took a grand tour through the week's best and brightest hacks. We checked out an old-school analog cell phone that went digital with style, dug into a washing machine's API, and figured out how to melt metal in the microwave -- the right way. Does coffee taste better when it's made by a robot? Of course it does! Can you get a chatbot to spill its guts? You can, if you know how to sweet talk it. Let's play Asteroids on an analog osc...