It's podcast time again, and this week Dan sat down with Elliot for a look back at all the cool hacks we've written about. We started off talking about Hackaday Europe, which is coming up in March -- seems unlikely that it's just around the corner, but there it is. There's also good news: the Hack Chat is back, and we started things off with a bang as Eben Upton stopped by to talk all things Pi. Separately, we talked about fault injection attacks, including how to find the hidden cup of  0xC0FFEE in an RP2350. We saw a very cool piece of LED jewelry that does a fluid simulation, a direct conversion radio that's all laid out in front of you, and the scrunchiest mechanical digital clock you'll ever see. We saw blinkenlights for blinkenlights' sake, all the ways to put threads in your prints, and how to ditch to coax and wire up your antennas with Cat 6 cable. Plus, it's an Al Williams twofer in the Can't-Miss Articles, with a look back at life before GPS and how you can tune into digital ham radio, no radio required.

As the holiday party season fades away into memory and we get into the swing of the new year, Elliot Williams is joined on the Hackaday Podcast by Jenny List for a roundup of what's cool in the world of Hackaday. In the news this week, who read the small print and noticed that Benchy has a non-commercial licence? As the takedown notices for Benchy derivatives fly around, we muse about the different interpretations of open source, and remind listeners to pay attention when they choose how to release their work. The week gave us enough hacks to get our teeth into, with Elliot descending into the rabbit hole of switch debouncing, and Jenny waxing lyrical over a crystal oscillator. Adding self-driving capability to a 30-year-old Volvo caught our attention too, as did the intriguing Cheap Yellow Display, an ESP32 module that has (almost) everything. Meanwhile in the quick hacks, a chess engine written for a processor architecture implemented entirely in regular expressions impressed us a lot, as did the feat of sending TOSLINK across London over commercial fibre networks. Enjoy the episode, and see you again next week! And check out the links over at Hackaday.

After a bit too much eggnog, Elliot Williams and Al Williams got together to see what Hackaday had been up to over the holiday. Turns out, quite a bit. There was a lot to cover, but the big surprise was the "What's that Sound" competition. Do you know who had the correct answer from the last show? No one! So they guys did the right thing and drew from all the entrants for a coveted Hackaday Podcast T-shirt. Back to the hacks, you'll hear about USB-C and the EU, what to do when the Kickstarter product you had your heart set on doesn't deliver, and a very strange way to hack some power grids wirelessly. If you are interested in physics cameras, modifying off-the-shelf gear, or a fresh approach to color 3D printing, they'll talk about that, too. Finally,  you can find out what Tom Nardi thought of Hackaday in the year past, and if your next ocean voyage will have to stop for a charge.  

Hackaday is having a happy holiday, and we hope you are too!  We'll be back next Friday, so stay tuned.

Twas the week before Christmas when Elliot and Dan sat down to unwrap a pre-holiday bundle of hacks. We kicked things off in a seasonally appropriate way with a PCB Christmas card that harvests power from your microwave or WiFi router, plus has the potential to be a spy tool. We learned how to grow big, beautiful crystals quickly, just in case you need some baubles for the tree or a nice pair of earrings. Speaking of last-minute gifts, perhaps you could build a packable dipole antenna, a very durable PCB motor, or a ridiculously bright Fibonacci simple add-on for your latest conference badge. We also looked into taking a shortcut to homebrew semiconductors via scanning electron microscopes, solved the mystery of early CD caddies, and discussed the sad state of table saw safety and the lamentable loss of fingers, or fractions thereof.

This week on the big 300th episode, Hackaday's Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos teamed up to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week. So basically, business as usual. First up in the news: it's time for the Hackaday Europe 2025 call for proposals! Do you have a tale of hardware, firmware, or software that must be shared with the Hackaday crowd? Then this is your chance to regale us with a 20- or 40-minute talk. You know we love to hear new voices, so be sure to consider proposing a talk. On What's That Sound, it's a results show week. Congratulations to [Kelvin] who was one of many that correctly identified it as the Wii startup sound. Kristina will just be over here with her Pikachu64 with the light-up cheeks. Then it's on to the hacks and such beginning with a rather nice reverse-engineering of the PS1, which surprisingly did it with a two-sided board. Then it's on to a smartphone home server, magic eye images in a spreadsheet, and the math behind the music of 80s. Finally, we talk about disc cameras, the hovercraft revolution, and a whole mess of keyboards. Check out the links if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

This week on the big 300th episode, Hackaday's Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos teamed up to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week. So basically, business as usual. First up in the news: it's time for the Hackaday Europe 2025 call for proposals! Do you have a tale of hardware, firmware, or software that must be shared with the Hackaday crowd? Then this is your chance to regale us with a 20- or 40-minute talk. You know we love to hear new voices, so be sure to consider proposing a talk. On What's That Sound, it's a results show week. Congratulations to [Kelvin] who was one of many that correctly identified it as the Wii startup sound. Kristina will just be over here with her Pikachu64 with the light-up cheeks. Then it's on to the hacks and such beginning with a rather nice reverse-engineering of the PS1, which surprisingly did it with a two-sided board. Then it's on to a smartphone home server, magic eye images in a spreadsheet, and the math behind the music of 80s. Finally, we talk about disc cameras, the hovercraft revolution, and a whole mess of keyboards. Check out the links if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

On this episode of the Hackaday Podcast, Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi talk about the optical witchcraft behind holograms, the finer points of designing 3D printable threads, and the challenges of switching your local network over to IPv6. They'll also cover how a clever software patch improves the graphics in a flight simulator from the 1990s, and why spacecraft flying into orbit powered by the SABRE engine is going to remain a dream for now. From there you'll hear about a reproduction VW gas gauge that works better than the real thing, custom ball screws, and the latest and greatest in homebrew battery charging. Finally, they'll cap the episode off by exploring the conundrum that's heating up London's Underground, and diving into the (mostly) fictional history of teleportation. Check out the links on Hackaday if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

This week's Hackaday podcast has a European feel, as Elliot Williams is joined by Jenny List for a look at the week's happenings in the world of cool hardware hacks. Starting with the week's news, those Redbox vending machines continue to capture the attention of hackers everywhere, and in the race to snag one before they're carted off for recycling someone has provided the missing hardware manual in the form of a wiki. Europeans can only look on wistfully. Then there's the curious case of life on the asteroid sample, despite the best efforts of modern science those pesky earth bacteria managed to breach all their anti-contamination measures. Anyone who's had a batch of homebrew go bad feels their pain. The week provided plenty of hacks, with the team being wowed by [Bitluni]'s CRT-like laser projector, then the many ingenious ways to 3D-print a hinge, and perhaps one of the most unforgiving environments in the home for a piece of robotics. Meanwhile our appetite for cool stuff was sated by an entire family of Japanese games consoles we'd never heard of, and the little voltage reference whose data sheet also had an audio amplifier circuit. Finishing up, our colleague Arya has many unorthodox uses for a USB-C cable, and we have a frank exchange of views about Linux audio. Check out all the links, and by all means, give us a roasting in the comments!

This week on the Podcast, Hackaday's Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos joined forces to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week. First up in the news: Elliot was at Electronica and spotted a wild Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5. And just as excitingly, FreeCAD has finally reached version 1.0, which means it's stable and ready for real work. Kristina is getting tired of losing at What's That Sound, so she'll have to come up with some to stump you all. Can you get this week's sound? If you can, and your number comes up, you get a special Hackaday Podcast t-shirt. Then it's on to the hacks and such, but first, there's even more news and opinion to be had in Tom's review of Prusa's new printer, which happens to be closed-source. Then we'll discuss another printer that prints upside-down, an elegant cyberdeck, and a cyberpunk pocket watch. Finally, we talk about the Great Redbox Cleanup, and take a look at man-made stalactites.

In this episode you'll get to hear not one, not two, but three Hackaday Editors! Now that the dust has mostly settled from the 2024 Hackaday Supercon, Al Williams joins Elliot and Tom to compare notes and pick out a few highlights from the event. But before that, the week's discussion will cover the questionable patents holding back a promising feature for desktop 3D printers, a new digital book from NODE, and the surprisingly limited history of welding in space. You'll also hear about the challenge of commercializing free and open source software, the finicky optics of the James Web Space Telescope, and the once exciting prospect of distributing software via pages of printed barcodes.

With Superconference 2024 in the books, Dan joined Elliot, fresh off his flight back from Pasadena, to look through the week (or two) in hacks. It was a pretty good crop, too, despite all the distractions and diversions. We checked out the cutest little quadruped, a wireless antenna for wireless communications, a price-tag stand-in for paper calendars, and a neat way to test hardware and software together. We take the closest look yet at why Arecibo collapsed, talk about Voyager's recent channel-switching glitch, and find out how to put old Android phones back in action. There's smear-free solder paste application, a Mims-worthy lap counter, and a PCB engraver that you've just got to see. We wrap things up with a look at Gentoo and pay homage to the TV tubes of years gone by -- the ones in the camera, for the TV sets.