Crooked Bough News Round-up

— The Chinese Smart Glasses Proving that Smart Glasses can be Repairable

 

at 8/9/26 11:00am

Its often claimed that wearable devices cannot have user-replaceable batteries or even be serviceable at all due to how compact and waterproof they must be, yet there are plenty of read more

[Category: Teardown, batteries, right to repair]

— Transmitting Analog Video Via Frikkin’ Laser Beams

 

at 8/9/26 8:00am

Transmitting analog video via photons is old hat: thats how everything started, after all, back in the day with over-the-air TV. Up the frequency of those photons from radio to read more

[Category: Laser Hacks, analog video, composite video, laser]

— Continously Extruding 3D Printed Tubes with Compressed Air

 

at 8/9/26 5:00am

[Jan] of [Roetz 4.0] has a unique approach to multi-material 3D printing: he’s designed an extruder which takes two different materials and extrudes one as a shell around the other. read more

[Category: 3d Printer hacks, 3d printer extruder, compressed air, extruder, extrusion, multi-material, peristaltic pump, tubing]

— Whatever Happened to the Computer of Tomorrow, Anyway? The Xerox Alto Story

 

at 8/9/26 2:00am

Youve almost certainly heard of the Xerox Alto, the machine that pioneered the desktop-mouse-keyboard interface and inspired Steve Jobs to produce the Apple Lisa and Macintosh computers. It wasnt just read more

[Category: Retrocomputing, alto, computer history, xerox alto, xerox parc]

— Tracking Bees with a Stereo Camera

 

at 8/8/26 11:00pm

For whatever reason, [Jeremy] wants to photograph bees in flight. This is one of those things that doesnt seem that hard until you try to do it. Hes got the read more

[Category: digital cameras hacks, bees, computer vision, global shutter, stereo camera]

— High-Density Parchment Paper Papertronics with Laser-Carved Hydrophilic Channels

 

at 8/8/26 8:00pm

Paper as a substrate for electronic circuits is not very common, but promising for flexible circuits with low cost and easy recyclability. That said, paper is not an easy material read more

[Category: green hacks, Science, conductive polymer, papertronics]

— Track Bird Visitors With a Raspberry Pi and a USB Mic

 

at 8/8/26 5:00pm

Avian Visitors is a lovely project by [Teddy Warner] that uses a Raspberry Pi and microphone to keep track of which birds have been visiting your home, and creates a read more

[Category: Art, Artificial Intelligence, bird identification, birds, deep learning, e-ink, raspberry pi, USB microphone, weekend project]

— Grading Tomatoes with an ESP32 and ML

 

at 8/8/26 2:00pm

If youve ever worked with produce, you might know about grading. In addition to deciding if, say, a strawberry is good or not, they also have to sort them by read more

[Category: Artificial Intelligence, agriculture, ESP32, farming, grading, machine learning, Tomato]

— Robotic Screw and Bolt Sorter Seeks a New Challenge

 

at 8/8/26 11:00am

As someone who disassembles and repairs hardware, [Aad] eventually ended up with a huge collection of mixed bolts and screws. This led to creating the automatic bolt and screw sorting read more

[Category: Parts, Robots Hacks, computer vision, diy, machine vision, robotic gripper, robotics, sorting]

— Junkbin, a Way to Efficiently Reuse Your Old Electronics

 

at 8/8/26 8:00am

We all have that bin in the corner of our shops the one with all the circuit boards or broken electronics that we are totally gonna do something with. read more

[Category: Parts, consumer electronics, e-waste, e-waste recycling, right to repair, smd components]

— Tim Hunkin’s History Of Arcade Machines

 

at 8/8/26 5:00am

There was a particular treat at the recent Electromagnetic Field event in the UK, as [Tim Hunkin] delivered a talk on the history of arcade machines. Given that hes something read more

[Category: cons, Games, arcade, electromagnetic field, Tim Hunkin]

— Want Energy Efficiency? Dude, You’re Getting a Dell!

 

at 8/8/26 2:00am

With a title like Intel Just Matched Apple Silicon. Seriously., the latest video from [Jeff Geerling] makes some pretty bold claims. But as wed expect from [Jeff], hes got the read more

[Category: computer hacks, arm, dell, energy efficiency, gflops/w, MacBook Neo, x86]

— The BBC Tetris Companion

 

at 8/7/26 11:00pm

[Leaded Solder] took on an interesting challenge. The BBC, apparently, produced a game console known as the BBC Bridge Companion that connected to your TV and helped you learn to read more

[Category: Games, Retrocomputing, bbc, cartridge, retrocomputing, tetris]

— Block, shmock — Just Pump Water Over The Chip

 

at 8/7/26 8:00pm

If youre water cooling a PC, its generally accepted that you need some interface between the coolant and the chips a water block of copper or aluminum that carries read more

[Category: computer hacks, pc, water cooling]

— This Filesystem is Born to Fail

 

at 8/7/26 5:00pm

Sandboxing a Linux process usually means spending a lot of effort deciding what it isnt allowed to see. You might put it in a mount namespace, bind-mount a few directories read more

[Category: Linux Hacks, Software Hacks, failfs, linux, sandbox]

— Hacking a $6000 Cotton Candy Machine to Fully Control It

 

at 8/7/26 2:00pm

Having a fully automated cotton candy vending machine in your possession is a great thing, but not if you do not have full access to its software. With [Blocks Retro read more

[Category: Misc Hacks, cotton candy, vending machine]

— Chernobyl’s Robots, or the Hackathon From Hell

 

at 8/7/26 12:30pm

When the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plants #4 reactor experienced an extreme criticality event on that infamous day in 1986, the resulting steam explosion and lack of any kind of containment read more

[Category: History, Robots Hacks, Chernobyl, environmental cleanup, radiation]

— Hackaday Podcast Episode 381: Airless Tires, Full-color Prints, and 28 MW of LEDs

 

at 8/7/26 10:00am

This weeks Hackaday podcast is a European affair again, as Elliot Williams is joined by Jenny List on a summer evening to review the week. And we have a feast read more

[Category: Hackaday Columns, Podcasts, Hackaday Podcast]

— Music is Back on Optical Disk in This Plex Server

 

at 8/7/26 9:30am

Given that the no doubt totally sustainable build-out of data centers has sent both solid state and magnetic hard drive prices soaring, though, [WNY Over The Air] decided to take read more

[Category: Tech Hacks, BDXL, blu-ray, data storage, optical media, physical media]

— This Week in Security: Claude Gets Hacking, Hotel WiFi, and NPM Compromised Again

 

at 8/7/26 8:00am

kMaybe feeling left out from the questionable hype train of Our AI models cant be trusted, Anthropic has released reports that their Claude model has reached the Internet and accessed read more

[Category: Hackaday Columns, Security Hacks, claude, encryption, hawk, ken thompson, NPM, pqc, PyPI, quantum computing, security, shai halud, supply chain, Tailscale, This Week in Security, trusting trust, vpn, worm]

— FlipBuddy is Borg, You Will Be Assimilated

 

at 8/7/26 5:00am

When you think about it, time is all weve really got. Where to go from there is ultimately up to you. Maybe you use an app to track every task, read more

[Category: Lifehacks, Microcontrollers, accelerometer, ESP32, mpu6050, pomodoro, task timer, time management, timer]

As of 8/9/26 11:55am. Last new 8/9/26 5:05am.