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Hardware & Electronics
The most popular blog posts about hardware & electronics on Hacker News. 313 posts.
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I hacked a train toilet
The other day I rode on a Class 800 train in the UK. This is the “Intercity Express” train designed to replace the venerable HST (Intercity 125 with Mark 3 coaches, a train of which I have many memories and which I will dearly miss).
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Antenna Diodes in the Pentium Processor
I was studying the silicon die of the Pentium processor and noticed some puzzling structures where signal lines were connected to the silico...
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I also hacked my car
Gonçalo MB. My personal website, projects, contacts and stuff.
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Why does FM sound better than AM?
Frequency modulation (FM) is more robust to noise than amplitude modulation (AM) because static itself is primarily a form of amplitude modulation.
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Humane AI – Pico Laser Projection – AI Twist on an Old Scam (2023)
Humane AI (Humane, hereafter) combines the mid-2010s failed concept of using a laser projector to project on the body with the early 2000s failed projector phone (something I wrote about in 2013), …
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How I replaced deadly garage door torsion springs (2002)
Replacing broken torsion springs on a garage door.
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Better PC cooling with Python and Grafana
Improving the performance of a PC cooling system by writing a custom control loop in Python, and monitoring the results with Grafana.
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So good, it works on barbed wire (2001)
Next time you look at a transmission line, I hope you'll focus on the big four properties: characteristic impedance, high-frequency loss, delay, and cros...
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Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo
In the past months, Tesla has been offering a free, one-month trial of their full self-driving (FSD) system to all current owners. It looks like they are rolling this out in stages, because I only got mine only a few days ago.
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A Short Introduction to Automotive Lidar Technology
A guide to the operating principles, techniques and technology in lidar systems for self driving cars.
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Satya Nadella uses an IBM AS/400 in 1993
Symbolic of the transfer of power from IBM to Microsoft?
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Nokia 5110 – Back from the Dead (2022)
I loved my Nokia 5110 and I wonder if it was possible to breathe new life into this long-shelved and still-memed mobile phone. As it turns out, not only is it possible, but it's going to be a lot easier than I anticipated.
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Transforming a QLC SSD into an SLC SSD
In today's article, we're embarking on something unprecedented! We'll guide you step by step through the process of transforming an SSD equipped with QLC NANDs into an SLC SSD, significantly enhancing its durability and overall performance!
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60 kHz (2022)
It’s WWVB, the station that the National Institute of Standards and Technology uses to broadcast the current time, tuned to the 60 kHz frequency. Day and night, this station diligently continues broadcasting.
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Beating the L1 cache with value speculation (2021)
If we have a heuristic to guess some value cheaply, we can remove a data dependency in a tight loop using the branch predictor. This allows the CPU to run more instructions in parallel, increasing performance. If this explanation does not make much sense to you, keep reading to learn about some of the magic making…
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An interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su about solving hard problems
An interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su about her path to AMD, turning around the chip maker, the AI opportunity, and competing with Nvidia.
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Apple Watch with Android
Making Apple Watch functional with Android.
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Headphone and Amp Impedance (2011)
INTRO: The output Impedance of headphone sources is one of the most common reasons the same headphones can sound different depending on wha...
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Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships
I want to say thank you to all the people who sent condolences following last week’s post, especially those who shared their own stories of loss.
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General purpose MCUs built in to LEDs emulate candle flicker
Years ago I spent some time analyzing Candle-Flicker LEDs that contain an integrated circuit to mimic the flickering nature of real candles. Artificial candles have evolved quite a bit since then, …
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Reverse-engineering an encrypted IoT protocol
Extract metrics from your GoodWe solar PV system, and improve its security too
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Affordable Wheel Based Refreshable Braille Display
On HN [1] I came into contact with Mahmoud Al-Qudsi ( mqudsi@neosmart.net ) , who mentioned that he'd been working off-and-on on a braille reader that is both affordable and easy to manufacture. He sent me a some files and pointed to a patent [2] that he took out on a device that uses octagonal wheels with codes on…
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Reverse engineering and dismantling Kekz headphones
Close to a year ago, I stumbled upon the Kekz Headphones, which seemed like an interesting approach on the whole digital audio device space. They claimed to work without any internet connection and all of the content already on the headphones itself. They are On-Ear Headphones, which work by placing a small chip (I…
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Beating Jeff's 3.14 Ghz Raspberry Pi 5
Jeff came up against a 1V limit in his video " Overclocking Raspberry Pi 5 to 3.14 GHz on Pi Day " after firmware was released to remove the 3Ghz limit.