‘Tis the season for holiday hacks, and [Ben Emmett] is here to remind us that we don’t necessarily need a fancy microcontroller in order to make flashy fun things happen.
Smoothing down the copper traces with a guitar pick.
Take this Christmas tree for example, which uses a 555 timer and a CB4017 decade counter in order to drive some blinking LEDs. The ICs are through-hole, making the circuit fairly accessible to new players, but there are a few SMD components that need soldering as well. (More on that later.)

Here, the 555 acts like a clock and drives a square wave. Using the clock as input, the decade counter toggles the output pins one after the other, driving the LEDs to blink in turn. Since there are only eight lights, there is a pause in the light-up pattern, but that could be fixed by wiring decade counter output #9 to the reset pin.

Although function was the main focus circuit-wise, [Ben] managed to lay the traces in the shape of a Christmas tree, which looks great. Having done a similar project in the past, he discovered that the craft cutting machine prefers thick traces and wider spaces between them. This is largely why [Ben] chose to use through-hole ICs.

After laying everything out in KiCad, [Ben] exported the copper layer image for use on the cutting machine. Once it was all cut out, he put it on transfer tape to weed out the extra copper, and get the traces onto cardstock, the final substrate.

This is such a fun project, and we love that the CR2032 that powers it also acts as the stand in its vertical holder. Hit up GitHub if you want to make one for yourself. Want something even more 3D? Check out this hollow tree we saw a few years ago.

hackaday.com/2024/12/13/flashy…

We all carry touch screen computers around in our pockets these days, but before the smartphone revolution, there was the personal digital assistant (PDA). While it wasn’t a commercial success, one of the first devices in this category was the Apple Newton. Today they’re sought after by collectors, although most of the ones surviving to this day need a bit of rework to the battery pack. Luckily, as [Robert’s Retro] shows, it’s possible to rebuild the pack with modern cells.

By modern standards, the most surprising thing about these battery packs is both that they’re removable and that they’re a standard size, matching that of AA batteries. The Newton battery pack uses four cells, so replacing them with modern rechargeable AA batteries should be pretty straightforward, provided they can be accessed. This isn’t as easy, though. In true Apple fashion the case is glued shut, and prying it apart can damage it badly enough so it won’t fit back in the tablet after repair is complete. The current solution is to cut a hatch into the top instead and then slowly work on replacing the cells while being careful to preserve the electronics inside.

[Robert’s Retro] also demonstrates how to spot weld these new AA batteries together to prepare them for their new home in the Newton case. With the two rows fastened together with nickel strips they can be quickly attached to the existing electrical leads in the battery pack, and from there it’s just a matter of snapping the batteries into the case and sliding it back into the tablet. If you’re looking for something a bit more modern, though, we’d recommend this Apple tablet-laptop combo, but it’s not particularly easy on the wallet.

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hackaday.com/2024/12/13/apple-…

This week on the big 300th episode, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos teamed up to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week. So basically, business as usual.

First up in the news: it’s time for the Hackaday Europe 2025 call for proposals! Do you have a tale of hardware, firmware, or software that must be shared with the Hackaday crowd? Then this is your chance to regale us with a 20- or 40-minute talk. You know we love to hear new voices, so be sure to consider proposing a talk.

On What’s That Sound, it’s a results show week. Congratulations to [Kelvin] who was one of many that correctly identified it as the Wii startup sound. Kristina will just be over here with her Pikachu64 with the light-up cheeks.

Then it’s on to the hacks and such beginning with a rather nice reverse-engineering of the PS1, which surprisingly did it with a two-sided board. Then it’s on to a smartphone home server, magic eye images in a spreadsheet, and the math behind the music of 80s. Finally, we talk about disc cameras, the hovercraft revolution, and a whole mess of keyboards.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/…

Download in DRM-free MP3 and savor at your leisure.

Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast

Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:

• iTunes
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• RSS
• YouTube
• Check out our Libsyn landing page

Episode 300 Show Notes:

News:

• 2025 Hackaday Europe CFP: We Want You!

What’s that Sound?

• Congratulations to [Kelvin]! It was the Wii menu background music.

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• PlayStation Motherboard Sanded And Scanned, But There’s More To Do
  
  • Deconstructing PCBs
  • Remoticon Video: How To Reverse Engineer A PCB

  
  

• The Audiophile Carrot
  
  • Reddit – Dive into anything

  
  

• Smartphone Runs Home Server
  
  • I “Solved” Samsungs Swelling Battery Problem! (Batteryless Phone) – YouTube
  • Want Octoprint But Lack A Raspberry Pi? Use An Old Android Phone

  
  

• Magic Eye Images In Your Spreadsheet
• Amateur Radio Operators Detect Signals From Voyager 1
  
  • Moon Bouncing And Radar Imaging With LoRa
  • Decoding JS1YMG: First Ham Radio Station On The Moon After SLIM Mission
  • Voyager-1 single dish detection at Allen Telescope Array – Daniel Estévez
  • Detecting Voyager 1 with the ATA

  
  

• Do 3D Printers Dream Of LEGO Sheep?
  
  • Watch The OpenScan DIY 3D Scanner In Action
  • Get Great 3D Scans With Open Photogrammetry
  • What To Expect From 3D Scanning, And How To Work With It

  
  

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  
  • The Math Behind The Music Of The 80s
  • Chaotic System Cooks Meat Evenly
  • Raspberry Pi 500 And The Case Of The Missing M.2 Slot

  
  

• Kristina’s Picks:
  
  • Updated Mouse Ring Does It With A Joystick
  • An Engineer’s Perspective On Baking Gingerbread Houses
  • Unexpectedly Interesting Payphone Gives Up Its Secrets

  
  

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• Disc Film,When Kodak Pushed Convenience Too Far
• The Hovercraft Revolution And Finding The Right Niche For A Technology
  
  • Lenses: From Fire Starters To Smart Phones And VR

  
  

• Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Funny Keyboard

hackaday.com/2024/12/13/hackad…

Two guys — Stern and Gerlach — did an experiment in 1922. They wanted to measure magnetism caused by electron orbits. At the time, they didn’t know about particles having angular momentum due to spin. So — as explained by [The Science Asylum] in the video below — they clearly showed quantum spin, they just didn’t know it and Physics didn’t catch on for many years.

The experiment was fairly simple. They heated a piece of silver foil to cause atoms to stream out through a tiny pinhole. The choice of silver was because it was a simple material that had a single electron in its outer shell. An external magnet then pulls silver atoms into a different position before it hits some film and that position depends on its magnetic field.

If electrons randomly flew around the nucleus like a cloud, you’d expect a cloudy line on the film. If the electrons had a fixed number of possible electron orbits, the film would show a series of points. In the end, the result was a big surprise — it was neither of the expected patterns. Instead, they got something shaped like the outline of some lips.

They realized that the horizontal deflection occurred even without the magnet, so what looked like two lines were really two points, and that implies that the electrons must be in one of two positions. However, the truth is more complicated.

In fact, Schrödinger’s equations appeared later and shed more light on how the electrons could orbit. It also seemed to imply that the earlier experiment should have been a single spot on the film. The answer turned out to be quantum spin.

According to the video, this was a lucky mistake. The experiment was perfect for measuring quantum spin, but it was unlikely that anyone would have thought to perform it for that purpose. By trying to prove one thing, they had actually proved another thing that no one understood yet. Science is strange and wonderful.

Spin is a big deal in many quantum computers. If you need a refresher on electron orbitals, it is a topic we cover periodically.

youtube.com/embed/vRI1fCOQ0GA?…

hackaday.com/2024/12/13/the-st…

Humans are well overdue for a technological revolution – not a profit-driven one like we’re having now, a human-centric one. Sci-fi is wonderful for having your brain run wild. Over the last century, we’ve had writers try and imagine what world would’ve had looked like if a new technology were to address different aspects of human condition, or, work to undercut us all in yet unseen ways, for a change.

Quite a few leading HaD projects have clear sci-fi inspiration, too, and same goes for a large number of Hackaday Prize entries. Over here, we live for fantasy made reality through skill, wit, and insights.

Ever got a sci-fi-esque dream that you’ve tried to implement with modern-day tech, only to fail because something fundamental was missing about how your phone/laptop/smartwatch functions? You’re not alone here, for sure – this describes a large chunk of my tech journey. In real life, you work with audience-tailored devices, the few fun usecases pre-cooked into the hardware-firmware blob.

Still, how much can you build on top of a consumer device? Alternative OSes that liberate you from the trend of enshittification, for instance, that one’s brilliant and a lifeline for preserving one’s sanity. Alternative platforms that bring a reprieve from a modern combative and ad-filled social media environment, sure. Still, feels limited

How about diary keeping? Personal diaries are really rad, aren’t they? Surely, that one’s a low-hanging fruit?

Betteridge’s Law Breaking

The first “hack on self”-like app I’ve ever built, was a parser/UI for our local public transport company schedules – letting me know when to run for a bus stop. I wanted to reduce resistance, and eventually, even integrate it into a portable device of some sort. I did bring that to a phone of mine, with help of Python SDK for Symbian S60, a wonderful if a little limited framework.

The next app of mine was a diary, encrypted with Blowfish, because that’s what I found a pure Python implementation of. I always tried keeping a diary, in a number of different paper forms, and I always failed in the end. The app though, it was fun, just secure enough to avoid relying on obscurity, and it worked great – for two weeks! It was pretty easy for me to forget about its existence, and every time I wanted to log something, I’d need to log in. Sounds easy? Yeah. In retrospect, I would’ve added a diary entry function before the decryption prompt, because even that small of a delay has backfired.

There’s a somberly fun saying, that with ADHD, a TODO list or a project can last at most two weeks. The diary is where I’ve really felt that one. Here I was, just having touched base with the dream of keeping a diary, and now it’s gone? How does that even work? How is it that I’m out of juice for it, somehow, why is it that opening the diary to make notes was fun two weeks ago, but is a chore today?

No worries, though, the sadness didn’t last long, I avoided learning too much in the moment, and immediately found something else to hack on. Every time I heard about journaling, keeping a diary, an archive, it felt fun, but also a fair bit more unreachable than before. I still wanted it, and, I’ve had my share of sadness to process through.

Or Did I?

Of course, if you’ve failed at building something, one way of processing the resulting sadness is to get distracted by other projects until you’re interested in the goal again, try and remember your mistakes, wait for the perfect conditions, and then build a new system that avoids those mistakes as you remember them.

Now, memories are fuzzy and malleable, so the “lessons from years ago” could be outright false, attention is hard to predict so it could take years to resume a project, and you’d want to reach for some actual insights, but whoops, you’d want some sort of diary to look back at, the whole thing is a chicken-and-egg problem yet again.

We don’t let that get in the way – we just build new stuff, and on average, it magically turns out to be better, because we’re building it differently this time. Really, just how many times can you try the same thing and fail? This time, it will be different! Seriously, it’s been days/months/years, how could it be the same? Keep pulling the lever of one-armed bandit that is project enthusiasm, see if you win the lottery and transform an aspect of your life for the better.

By that point, I had a few points of change filed away. I wanted some sort of daily notifications that’d motivate me to stick with it longer than two weeks, for sure. I also wanted to reduce resistance towards making entries – no more passphrase entry before logging, no more need for decryption. At the time, I spent 24/7 with my laptop on me, so that’s a low-resistance platform’s sorted out. I make it an Alt-Tab away, add regular notifications, should be easy this time.

Tale Of Two Scripts

I recalled one thing – the diary logs were accessible as long as I could remember the password, sure, and at the same time, I was rarely interested in re-reading them. Things changed, because I got a new question, trying to piece together a narrative about myself. How’d my days actually go? Could I draw trends of happiness, productivity, energy, excitement?

This time, I wrote a couple commandline apps with very simple text interfaces. The very first one, poc_1.py for proof-of-concept 1, used a non-dismissable notification service to poke me once every 24 hours, every morning, asking a very simple question – “how do you feel?”. Wake up, alt-tab into the commandline window, write in how I’m feeling as a baseline, then get up and go about my day.

Really, I wanted my computer to care about me, because it felt like the only entity that possibly would and really could, even, had the energy to. It can be hard to untangle a brain’s inner workings, even though stars know we all try, and my country isn’t known for having quality therapists that are easy to find. So, my computer it is – non-judgmental by nature, giving me space to talk, space of the kind I lacked everywhere else.

The next two poc_N.py scripts were about logging achievements and problems respectively, into the same logfile used by the poc_1.py. 10 minutes after I wrote both of them, I realized that they were a carbon copy of each other, and united them into poc_4.py – a script tailored for me to quickly log any sort of event into a commandline window at a whim.

The aim was very simple – let a stream of thoughts flow as quickly as possible. Type up your thoughts or an event, enter, type another, enter. One letter in the beginning to indicate event type, for rudimentary categorization – the script will remind you if you forget to input it, too. Primarily, I wanted to use it to log my day-to-day achievements and problems alike, but also general thoughts and feelings I wanted to let out.

"day_reflection": "it's been productive. Currently, I feel indifferent, to be honest. [...]"}

What Happened?

Two scripts, one asks me every morning how I’m feeling, and another is a place I can put any sorts of thoughts at any point. I wanted to – how my day went, and how I feel about the previous day. It was also pretty easy to read through the logs, or parse them – my “linebreak-separated json” strategy remains undefeated.

Every morning, I would wake up, look at my laptop, see a notification, and alt-tab the console window to talk about how I feel first thing in the morning. While writing my feedback, I could look to the side and see the achievements/problems/thoughts of the previous day. It was nice – and it’s still nice to use, even though I’ve definitely had gaps in its use. It wasn’t the nicest part about it!

I realized that my feelings about the previous day had nothing to do with the previous day. Instead, it was defined by how I feel in the morning. My feelings were about how well I slept, what I ate, my dreams in the night, the first thought that came into my mind when I woke up, the last open window on my laptop. My feelings about yesterday were defined by anything except what I actually did yesterday.

It was sobering to be reminded how much my assessments and decisions are influenced by my feelings and state in the moment, rather than a recollection of facts and a weighted assessment of them. A year or two later, I saw this fact in a Twitter thread, described as a piece of common knowledge about life logging as a practice. I don’t think I’ve ever bookmarked it, and, I’m yet to track that thread down again.

Before, I used to put a lot of stock into the feeling of “how my last few days went”. Now, I keep it firmly in mind that I need strong references to make such conclusions. I still have big, months-long gaps in using the diary script, but I have not given up on it, or the idea – it’s not the only insight I’ve gotten from it.

Self: Hacked

So, that was a quick and fruitful finding – we take those. Collecting more data has proven to be helpful yet again, and so has building low-interaction-resistance context-aware systems. What else… a system that taps into feelings, might give you insights you couldn’t even hope for – it’s not like most of us get a solid toolkit to navigate or analyze our feelings day-by-day. Still a few problems left to solve and tricks to try out, and it’s all pretty exciting.

How can I make my diary keeping more consistent? Voice logging option for the days when text’s not as accessible? Building the diary system into multiple places at once, always having new aspects to switch to when one gets boring? Dynamic reminders that catch me exactly when I have some free time to write? More helpful event logging? Those are just a few of the directions I’m pursuing at once.

In the meantime, hacking continues. You’ll see more concepts, new findings, and even some lovely hardware – especially given that a couple other hackers have joined the fight.

hackaday.com/2024/12/13/hack-o…

agenparl.eu/2024/12/11/millepr…

(AGENPARL) – mer 11 dicembre 2024 MILLEPROROGHE, COLUCCI (M5S): SU AUTONOMIA E LEP GOVERNO PERSEVERA E VA CONTRO CONSULTA
ROMA, 11 dic. – “Nel testo bollinato del decreto Milleproroghe all’articolo 16 il governo trasferisce presso il dipartimento per gli Affari regionali e le Autonomie, quindi al ministro Calderoli, l’attività istruttoria per la determinazione dei livelli essenziali delle prestazioni (LEP) e dei relativi costi e fabbisogni standard, fino al 31 dicembre 2025. Quindi, il Governo persevera nell’errore di avocare a sè la determinazione dei Lep, calpestando il Parlamento e soprattutto la Corte Costituzionale che, nella recente sentenza sulla legge per l’Autonomia Differenziata, ha bocciato questa possibilità. Vorremmo anche capire cosa significa che l’attività istruttoria è trasferita “presso” e non “al” dipartimento, il Comitato per la determinazione dei LEP, presieduto dal prof. Cassese, è stato licenziato o semplicemente trasferito presso il Ministero? Sarebbe doveroso il suo scioglimento, a seguito della sentenza della Corte Costituzionale che ha bocciato la legge Calderoli e le collegate norme contenute nella legge di Bilancio 2023. In ogni caso questa contenuta nel dl Milleproroghe è un’operazione a dir poco spregiudicata, tenuto conto che la legge Calderoli è stata bocciata dalla Corte in tutti i suoi pilastri portanti, e lo è ancor di più se si considera che l’attività istruttoria si riferisce alla determinazione delle sole materie Lep e non anche, come pure ha stabilito la Corte, delle materie non Lep nelle parti in cui incidano su diritti sociali e civili. E’ proprio il caso di dire che non c’è peggior sordo di chi non vuol sentire. Al governo e alla maggioranza lo hanno ricordato tantissimi cittadini che hanno firmato per cancellare l’Autonomia, poi la Consulta con la sentenza che smantella la legge Calderoli. Se vogliono perseverare, prenderanno altre batoste e purtroppo a pagare saranno i cittadini che assistono a questo scempio istituzionale che può avere drammatiche ricadute sulla loro vita quotidiana”.
Lo afferma il capigruppo M5S nella commissioni Affari Costituzionali della Camera Alfonso Colucci.
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Ufficio Stampa Parlamento
Movimento 5 Stelle

MILLEPROROGHE, COLUCCI (M5S): SU AUTONOMIA E LEP GOVERNO PERSEVERA E VA CONTRO CONSULTA

(AGENPARL) - Roma, 11 Dicembre 2024(AGENPARL) – mer 11 dicembre 2024 MILLEPROROGHE, COLUCCI (M5S): SU AUTONOMIA E LEP GOVERNO PERSEVERA E VA CONTRO CONSULTA ROMA, 11 dic.

^Agenparl