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Mystery signal from a helicopter
I heard a mysterious sound in a Youtube video and started to investigate.
Topics /
Hardware & Electronics
The most popular blog posts about hardware & electronics on Hacker News. 93 posts.
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Quake on an oscilloscope
A summary of some problems I faced when tinkering with Quake to get it play nicely on an oscilloscope.
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Why movies look weird at 48fps, and games are better at 60fps
Let’s end this debate once and for all. Humans can see frame rates greater than 24fps (although plenty of people will argue that they can’t on the internet). I’ll explain more in a future post if necessary, but let’s take that as read.
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My Quest to Build the Ultimate Music Player
Over the past few years, I have been slowly but surely building my own music player. It's been a wild ride. The codebase has radically changed several times, but is always converging on a better music listening experience.
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Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill
In June of 2010 I moved to a place in Montana with only electric heat. By myself. In the past few winters I had conducted experiments in cutting the amount of energy I needed to stay warm, with a focus on heating myself instead of heating the whole house.
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Can I drop a pacemaker 0day?
Can I drop a pacemaker 0day at DefCon that is capable of killing people? Computers now run our cars. It's now possible for a hacker to i...
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Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
We’re launching a crowdfunding campaign around our Novena open hardware computing platform. Originally, this started as a hobby project to build a computer just for me and xobs – something that we would use every day, easy to extend and to mod, our very own Swiss Army knife. I’ve posted here a couple of times about…
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I Broke My Phone’s Screen, and It Was Awesome
So this past week has been quite a whirlwind — we wrapped up the Novena campaign and smashed all our stretch goals, concluding with over $700k raised , and I got my hair cut in a bar at midnight by none other than the skilled hands of Lenore of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories ( I blame Jake ! :). It was an…
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Anatomy of a cheap USB-to-Ethernet adapter
Taking apart a very cheap USB to Ethernet adapter and pondering on the parts found inside.
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Hard disk hacking
Apart from this article, I also gave a talk at OHM2013 about this subject. The video of that talk (minus the first few minutes) is now online .
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6 GHz frequency modulated radar
Making a cheap and simple radar with a range of about 100 meters.
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68 Katy – 68000 Linux on a Solderless Breadboard
What does it take to build a little 68000-based protoboard computer, and get it running Linux? In my case, about three weeks of spare time, plenty of coffee, and a strong dose of stubborness. After banging my head against the wall with problems ranging from the inductance of pushbutton switches to memory leaks in the…
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Making an embedded Linux computer
Designing and soldering a small ARM Linux board with 217 ball BGA package and 0402 passive components
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Reverse engineering a counterfeit 7805 voltage regulator
Update: It turns out my 7805 isn't counterfeit. eclectro did an in-depth search ( details on reddit ) and found an old 7805 datasheet fro...
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Woz’s take on the Apple 1’s noisy -5 volt supply
There was a recent thread about the Apple 1’s noisy -5 volt supply on Applefritter , so I asked Woz the following:
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First Atomic Clock Wristwatch
Do not be misled. The many "atomic time" wristwatches you see on the market today are merely cheap quartz wristwatches with a built-in radio receiver. The watch sets itself from 60 kHz VLF radio time signals transmitted by NIST from station WWVB near the US atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado. At least once a day…
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High speed M&M sorting machine
M&M sorting machine using electro magnets to send the M&Ms down the correct chutes. Uses an Arduino with a Bluetooth module to control the magnets.
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Dual-touch smartphone design concept
Smartphones have a thumb problem. The touchscreen is a magical invention, but it definitely has its shortcomings.
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How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven
One late night I opened up my trusty MacBook Pro only to find it turned off. “That’s odd, I never turn it off. Must have ran out of battery or something”. Without a further thought, I pressed the power button and the computer promptly started booting up. Since I had an SSD, this process would only take a few moments……
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24-Bit vs. 16-Bit Audio Test – Part II: Results and Conclusions
A blog for audiophiles about more objective topics. Measurements of audio gear. Reasonable, realistic, no snakeoil assessment of sound, and equipment.
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Shenzhen trip report – visiting the world's manufacturing ecosystem
Last year, a group of Media Lab students visited Shenzhen with, bunnie, an old friend and my hardware guru....
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Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface
Right now, people are burying Windows 8. Even people you'd normally expect to be on Microsoft's side are unhappy with it. Me, though? I kind of like it.
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Spoofing the Samsung Smart TV Internet Check
So it looks like Samsung is offline this morning . This shouldn't bother me - I don't work for them and their network isn't my problem. However it turns out that my Samsung Smart TV thinks there's no internet if there's no www.samsung.com :( - using tcpdump I started looking at what the TV was trying to contact when I…
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Magic mirror: One way mirror with a monitor behind it
I build stuff. Virtual and physical. For both business and pleasure. Join me in my development, design and electronics journey.