Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Al Williams met up to trade their favorite posts of the week. Tune in and see if your favorites made the list. From crazy intricate automata to surprising problems in Peltier cooler designs, there’s a little bit of everything.

Should bikes have chains? What’s the hardest thing about Star Trek computers to duplicate? Can you make a TV station from a single microcontroller? The podcast this week answers these questions and more. Plus, weigh in on the What’s That Sound contest and you might just score a Hackaday Podcast T-shirt.

For the Can’t Miss segment, Elliot had airships on his mind, while Al’s sick of passwords. But is he sick enough to take electronic pills that transmit his password?

html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/…

Or download the bit stream and decrypt it by XORing each byte with zero.

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News:

• 2026 Hackaday Europe Call For Participation: We Want You!

What’s that Sound?

• Can you identify the sound? Al didn’t get it, but that is, admittedly, a very low bar. Enter your best guess here.

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• Love Complex Automata? Don’t Miss The Archer
  
  • Retrotechtacular: The Original Robot Arm
  • Televox: The Past’s Robot Of The Future
  • [Fran Blanche] Goes In-Depth With The Maillardet Automaton
  • 3D Printed Mechanical Contraption Shows Live Weather Forecast
  • The Incredible Mechanical Artistry Of François Junod
  • The Bad Old Days Of Telephone Answering Machines

  
  

• Peltier Fridges Have Early Death
• Why Chains Are Still Better For Bicycles Than Belts
  
  • Electric BMX With Friction Drive
  • Chainless “Digital Drive” Bikes Use Electric Power Transmission Instead

  
  

• Control Your Smart Home With Trek-Inspired Comm Badge
• A TV Transmitter From An STM32
  
  • Retrotechtacular: TV Troubleshooting

  
  

• Panoramic Film Camera Made From 3D Printed Parts
  
  • Panoramic photography – Wikipedia

  
  

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  
  • Easily Replaceable USB-C Port Spawned By EU Laws
  • The MOST Effective Thermal Mass Works Like A Sunburn
  • Random Number Generator Uses Camera Noise
  • Inside A Compact Intel 3000 W Water-Cooled Power Supply

  
  

• Al’s Picks:
  
  • X-Ray A PCB Virtually
  • Running In Printf
  • MicroGPT Lets You Peek With Your Browser

  
  

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• What One-Winged Squids Can Teach The Airship Renaissance
• Motorola’s Password Pill Was Just One Idea

hackaday.com/2026/02/27/hackad…