Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Would Nuclear Winter Cancel Out Global Warming?

 

at 1/25/22 8:00am

Nuclear war was very much a front-of-mind issue during the fraught political climate of the Cold War era. Since then, atomic sabre rattling has been less frequent, though has never read more

[Category: Featured, Interest, Original Art, agriculture, catastrophe, nuclear winter]

— 555 Teardown Isn’t Just A Good Time, It’s To Die For

 

at 1/25/22 5:00am

It seems only appropriate that hot on the heels of the conclusion of Hackadays 555 Timer Contest that [Ken Shirriff] posts a silicon die teardown of an early version of read more

[Category: classic hacks, Parts, 555 teardown, 555 timer, die, microscope, npn, pnp, teardown]

— An Entire Computer In ICMP Packets

 

at 1/25/22 2:00am

The earliest stored program computer in the modern sense was not one of the names such as ENIAC or Colossus that you might expect, but the Manchester Baby, an experimental read more

[Category: Retrocomputing, icmp, manchester baby, tube computer]

— Tiny Homemade Injection Molder

 

at 1/24/22 11:00pm

With 3d printing continually gaining ground, some hackers might not see the need for traditional injection molding. After all, you can tweak the code or the model and print dozens read more

[Category: 3d Printer hacks, Tool Hacks, actionbox, injection molding, plastic injection]

— Saving Martian Colonists Using Table Salt And Rocket Science

 

at 1/24/22 8:00pm

Imagine for a moment that you are a member of an early Mars colony. Youre stranded, and the only way to get a message home is to launch a radio read more

[Category: Major Tom, Science, Space, diy rocket, model rocketry, potassium chlorate, Rocket Motor, RUD, sodium chlorate, sodium choride, solid rocket]

— Rainwater Storing Gojo Is A Stroke Of Genius

 

at 1/24/22 5:00pm

The traditional Ethiopian Gojo is a circular domed dwelling constructed from a central vertical beam, and a surrounding structure of curved beams made from wood or bamboo. A covering of read more

[Category: green hacks, home hacks, building, ethiopia, Gojo, Rain harvesting, Rural, Water storage]

— Portable Pizza Oven Has Temperature Level Over 900

 

at 1/24/22 2:00pm

While its possible to make pizza from scratch at home right down to the dough itself, itll be a struggle to replicate the taste and exquisite mouthfeel without a pizza read more

[Category: home hacks, baking, burner, cooking, custom, gas, metal, oven, Pizza, plumbing, temperature, welding]

— Heart-Shaped Heartwarming Valentine’s Day Pendant

 

at 1/24/22 12:30pm

This is no ordinary heart-shaped PCB pendant project! To us, its also symbol representing the striking amount of love that [SaltyPaws] has put into its design and documentation. He tells read more

[Category: Wearable Hacks, charlieplexing, pcb art, pendant, STEAM education]

— Can Robots Give Good Hugs?

 

at 1/24/22 11:00am

We could all use a hug once in a while. Most people would probably say the shared warmth is nice, and the squishiness of another living, breathing meatbag is pretty read more

[Category: Hackaday Columns, Lifehacks, Robots Hacks, elder care, hugs, robot, soft robotics]

— Compliant Mechanisms Hack Chat

 

at 1/24/22 10:00am

Join us on Wednesday, January 26 at noon Pacific for the Compliant Mechanisms Hack Chat with Amy Qian! When it comes to putting together complex mechanisms, we tend to think read more

[Category: Hackaday Columns, compliant mechanisms, constraint, elastic, flexible, flexure, Hack Chat, modulus, monolithic]

— One-piece Geared Hinge Can Take the Weight

 

at 1/24/22 9:00am

3D printers have come a long way from cranking out things like bottle openers and coat pegs, and [E. Soderberg]s Print in Place Geared Hinge is a pretty nifty demonstration read more

[Category: 3d Printer hacks, 3d printed, geared, herringbone, hinge, print in place]

— Floating Solar Farms Are Taking The World’s Reservoirs By Storm

 

at 1/24/22 8:00am

Photovoltaic solar panels are wonderful things, capable of capturing mere light and turning it into useful electricity. Theyre often installed on residential and commercial rooftops for offsetting energy use at read more

[Category: Current Events, Engineering, Original Art, Science, floating solar, floatovoltaics, green energy, solar, solar power, sustainability]

— How To Optimize Your Workspace: Analyze How You Work

 

at 1/24/22 5:00am

[Jay Carlson] has shared some fantastic guidance on how to optimize ones home workspace, and you just might want to emulate some of his layout, especially if you routinely juggle read more

[Category: home hacks, how-to, bun rack, cafeteria tray, optimization, space saving, workbench, workspace]

— Domesticating Old Server Hardware In The Age Of Shortages

 

at 1/24/22 2:00am

Our own [Dave Rowntree] started running into bottlenecks when doing paid work involving simulations of undisclosed kind, and resolved to get a separate computer for that. Looking for budget-friendly high-performance read more

[Category: computer hacks, fan controller, home server, HP, proliant, rack mount, rack mount server]

— Silicone Devices: DIY Stretchable Circuits

 

at 1/23/22 11:00pm

Flexible circuits built on polyimide film are now commonplace, you can prototype with them at multiple factories, at a cost that is almost acceptable to your average hacker. Polyimide film read more

[Category: Wearable Hacks, elastic, flexible, Galinstan, gallium, silicone, stretch, stretchable, Wearables]

— DIY “Solid State Drive” Puts Four Bytes in Your Pocket

 

at 1/23/22 8:00pm

In a relatively short amount of time, the average capacity of USB flash drives has skyrocketed. It wasnt so long ago that two and four gigabyte drives were considered to read more

[Category: classic hacks, Microcontrollers, binary, dip switch, EFM8UB2]

— Hackaday Links: January 23, 2022

 

at 1/23/22 5:00pm

When Tongas Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Haapai volcano erupted on January 15, one hacker in the UK knew just what to do. Sandy Macdonald from York quickly cobbled together a Raspberry Pi and read more

[Category: Hackaday Columns, Hackaday links, Slider, anemia, astronomy, contest, ethernet, hackaday links, hat, red blood cells, rp2040, shockwave, Starlink, Tonga, volcano]

— Is That The Moon Worming Its Way Into Your BIOS?

 

at 1/23/22 2:00pm

When facing a malware situation, the usual guaranteed solution is to reinstall your OS. The new developments in malware world will also require you to have a CH341 programmer handy. read more

[Category: Security Hacks, CH341, CH341A, malware, moonbounce, UEFI]

— Display Your Speech In Realtime To Help Lipreaders In The Mask Era

 

at 1/23/22 11:00am

Masks are all well and good when it comes to reducing the spread of deadly pathogens, but they can make it harder to understand people when they speak. They also read more

[Category: Misc Hacks, ai, deepgram ai, mask, speech recognition]

— Printed Circuit Bird Family Calls For Us To Consider Analog

 

at 1/23/22 8:00am

On our favourite low-attention-span content site, [Kelly Heaton] has recently started sharing a series of Printed Circuit Birds. These are PCBs shaped like birds, looking like birds and chirping like read more

[Category: Art, Musical Hacks, analog, analog audio, art, beam, beam robotics, bird calls, birds are not real, birdsong, electronic art]

— Cables Too Long? Try Cable Management Via DIY Coiling

 

at 1/23/22 5:00am

Annoyed by excessively-long cables? Tired of the dull drudgery and ugly results of bunching up the slack and wrapping it with a twist-tie? Suffer no longer, because the solution is read more

[Category: how-to, cable coiling, cable management, diy, mandrel, thermoforming]

As of 1/25/22 9:36am. Last new 1/25/22 9:03am.