July 23, 2021
3D design, cad, geometry, HackadayU, How-To, parametric design, rhino 3d modeling, Software Hacks, visual programming

New Video Series: Designing With Complex Geometry

Whether it’s a 3D printed robot chassis or a stained glass window, looking at a completed object and trying to understand how it was designed and put together can be intimidating. But upon closer examination, you can often identify the repeating shapes and substructures that were combined to create the final piece. Soon you might […]

July 2, 2021
custom firmware, ESP32, flasher, Microcontrollers, nRF52, Software Hacks, SWD, voltage glitch

ESP32 Turned Handy SWD Flasher For NRF52 Chips

Got an nRF52 or nRF51 device you need to flash? Got an ESP32 laying around collecting dust? If so, then firmware hacking extraordinaire [Aaron Christophel] has the open source code you need. His new project allows the affordable WiFi-enabled microcontroller to read and write to the internal flash of Nordic nRF52 series chips via their […]

June 8, 2021
database, Hackaday Columns, linux, Linux Hacks, Software Hacks, sql, sqlite

Linux Fu: Databases Are Next-Level File Systems

It is funny how exotic computer technology eventually either fails or becomes commonplace. At one time, having more than one user on a computer at once was high tech, for example. Then there are things that didn’t catch on widely like vector display or content-addressable memory. The use of mass storage — especially disk drives […]

June 5, 2021
diy, Email, Hackaday Columns, hosting, newsletter, Rants, Software Hacks

Wreck Your Mail Before You Check Your Mail

Every five years or so, I think it’s time to review my e-mail flow. (Oh no!) I run my own mail server, and you should too, but this means that I get to figure out managing and searching and archiving and indexing it all by myself. (Yippee!) And I’ll be honest — sometimes I’m a […]

June 3, 2021
basic, commodore 64, firmware, Lilygo, smart watch, Software Hacks, Wearable Hacks

Commodore Inspired Watch Puts BASIC On Your Wrist

Ask a smart watch owner what their favorite wrist-mounted feature is, and they might say it’s having all their daily information available at a glance, or the ease with which they’re able to communicate with friends and family. If they don’t mention knocking out a few lines in their wearable BASIC interpreter, then you know […]

April 18, 2021
3d printing, How-To, openscad, Software Hacks

Guide To Mastering OpenSCAD Costs Roughly The Same As OpenSCAD

OpenSCAD is a fantastic free tool for 3D modeling, but it’s far less intuitive to use for non-programmers than mouse-driven programs such as Tinkercad. Powerful as it may be, the learning curve is pretty steep. OpenSCAD’s own clickable cheat sheet and manual comes in handy all the time, but those are really more of a […]

March 16, 2021
buffer overflow, copy protection, drm, exploit, Playstation, Playstation Hacks, Software Hacks

PlayStation Unlocked With New Software Hack

The original PlayStation might be pushing 30 years old now, but that doesn’t mean hackers have given up on chipping away at it. A new exploit released by [Marcos Del Sol Vives] allows users to run copied games on all but the earliest hardware revisions of this classic console, and all you need to trigger […]

February 15, 2021
celsius, Fahrenheit, Ghidra, imperial units, metric system, Microcontrollers, Software Hacks

Ghidra Used To Patch Fahrenheit Into An Air Quality Meter

Even though most of the world population couldn’t tell you what room or body temperature is in Fahrenheit, there are some places on this globe where this unit is still in common use. For people in those areas, it’s therefore a real hassle when, say, a cheap Chinese air quality measurement systems only reports in […]

February 14, 2021
digital cameras hacks, digital photography, image formats, konica, KQP, photo scanning, proprietary, Retrocomputing, Software Hacks, virtualbox

Legacy Digital Photos, With A Side Of Murphy’s Law

[Dave Madison] came across some old digital photos, and in his quest to access them, he ran into quite a few challenges. The saga brings to mind both Murphy’s Law, and while [Dave] prevailed in the end, it required quite a few more steps than one might expect. The one smooth part of the process […]

November 26, 2020
audio fingerprinting, chapter skip, ffmpeg, fingerprinting, mkvmerge, Software Hacks, video, Video Hacks

Audio Fingerprinting Skips A Show’s Intro, Reliably

Lacking a DVD drive, [jg] was watching a TV series in the form of a bunch of .avi video files. Of course, when every episode contains a full intro, it is only a matter of time before that gets too annoying to sit through. Chapter breaks reliably inserted around the intro, even when it doesn’t […]

October 31, 2020
3d Printer hacks, MSLA, network control, Octoprint, Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi Zero, resin 3d printer, Software Hacks

Adding Remote Control To The Elegoo Mars Pro

Recent price drops put entry level masked stereolithography (MSLA) resin 3D printers at around $200 USD, making them a very compelling tool for makers and hackers. But as you might expect, getting the price this low often involves cutting several corners. One of the ways manufacturers have made their machines so cheap is by simplifying […]

October 25, 2020
Font, graphic lcd, Microcontrollers, oled, scaling, smoothing, Software Hacks

Smoothing Big Fonts On Graphic LCDs

Here’s a neat little trick: take the jaggies out of scaled fonts on the fly! This technique is for use on graphic displays where you might want to scale your fonts up. Normally you’d just write a 2×2 block of pixels for every area where there would have been one pixel and boom, larger font. […]

October 1, 2020
custom firmware, LA104, logic analyzer, multi-tool, Software Hacks, Tool Hacks

Teaching A Pocket Logic Analyzer (Many) New Tricks

A few years ago, low-cost pocket digital oscilloscopes aimed at the hacker and maker crowd started hitting the market and gained quite a following. While few would consider them to be a replacement for a proper bench scope, they’re cheap and convenient enough that it’s hard to complain. Manufacturers are apparently looking to expand on […]

Category: <span>Software Hacks</span>