December 24, 2020
3D printed enclosure, classic hacks, Magic 8-ball, Microcontrollers, oled, revision

Magic 8-Ball Gets A Modern Makeover

Back in 2012, [sjm4306] was surprised when his breadboard rendition of the classic “Magic 8-Ball” popped up on Hackaday. If he had known the project was going to be enshrined on these hallowed pages, he might have tidied things up a bit. Now with nearly a decade of additional electronics experience, he’s back and ready […]

November 2, 2020
433 mhz, alarm, alarm system, classic hacks, ESP32, home hacks, optocoupler

ESP32 Adds New Features To 1990s Home Alarm System

Given how fast technology is progressing, some consumer gadgets lend themselves to being replaced every few years. Mobile phones are a particularly good example of a device that you probably won’t want to hold onto for more than 4 years or so, with TVs not far behind them. On the other hand, something like a […]

October 23, 2020
classic hacks, Engineering, industrial design, model, oscilloscope, product development, prototype, Retrocomputing, tektronix

Cardboard Models Trace Design Process Of Vintage Tektronix Miniscopes

There aren’t many brands that inspire the kind of passion and fervency among its customers as Tektronix does. The venerable Oregon-based manufacturer of top-end test equipment has produced more collectible gear over the last 75 years than just about anyone else. Over that time they have had plenty of innovations, and in the 1970s they […]

October 8, 2020
breadboard, classic hacks, educational, electronics kit, microcontroller, Microcontrollers, trainer

Developing An Open Source Electronics Trainer

It’s a safe bet that most Hackaday reader’s interest in electronics started at a young age, and that their early forays into the world of hardware hacking likely involved some form of “playground” kit. As long as you didn’t lose any of the components, these kits promised the user that hundreds of possible projects were […]

September 30, 2020
anchorage, cement, classic hacks, compression, concrete, Engineering, Featured, Original Art, pre-stressed concrete, rebar, steel, tensile strength, tensioning

A Good, Hard Look At Pre-Stressed Concrete

From the looks of the average driveway or sidewalk, it may seem as though concrete is just destined to crack. But if concrete is so prone to cracking, how are we able to use it in so many high-stress applications like bridges and skyscrapers? This question came about while I was researching 3D-printed thermite for […]

September 5, 2020
antenna matching, car hacks, Casio F-91W, classic hacks, custom antenna, keyless entry, resonant frequency, Tesla the car, Wireless Hacks

See This Casio? Watch It Unlock My Tesla!

The whole point of gaining the remote unlock ability for our cars was to keep us from suffering the indignity of standing there in the rain, working a key into the lock while the groceries get soaked. [Mattia Dal Ben] reports that even Teslas get the blues and don’t unlock reliably all the time, in […]

July 5, 2020
classic game, classic hacks, easter egg, Games, nintendo, VIC-20, vintage

Finding A Secret Message From A Gaming Legend

Satoru Iwata is perhaps best remembered for leading Nintendo through the development of the DS and Wii, two wildly successful systems which undeniably helped bring gaming to a wider and more mainstream audience. But decades before becoming the company’s President in 2002, he got his start in the industry as a developer working on many […]

Category: classic hacks