[Michigan Rocks] says he avoided making rock spheres for a long time on account of the time and cost he imagined was involved. Well, all that is in the past in light of the fabulous results from his self-built Rock Sphere Machine! Turns out that it’s neither costly to make such a machine, nor particularly time-consuming to create the spheres once things are dialed in. The video is a journey of the very first run of the machine, and it’s a great tour.
The resulting sphere? Super satisfying to hold and handle. The surface is beyond smooth, with an oil-like glossy shine that is utterly dry to the touch.
The basic concept — that of three cordless drills in tension — is adapted from existing designs, but the implementation is all his own. First a rough-cut rock is held between three diamond bits. The drills turn at 100 RPM while a simple water reservoir drips from above. After two hours, there’s a fair bit of slurry and the rock has definitely changed.

[Michigan Rocks] moves on to polishing, which uses the same setup but with progressively-finer grinding pads in place of the cutting bits. This part is also really clever, because the DIY polishing pads are great hacks in and of themselves. They’re made from little more than PVC pipe end caps with hex bolts as shafts. The end caps are filled with epoxy and topped with a slightly concave surface of hook-and-loop fastener. By doing this, he can cut up larger fuzzy-backed polishing pads and stick the pieces to his drill-mounted holders as needed, all the way down to 6000 grit. He shows everything about the pads at the 11:55 mark, and it’s an approach worth keeping in mind.

What is the end result like? See for yourself, but we think [Michigan Rocks] sums it up when he says “I wish you could feel this thing, it feels so smooth. It’s so satisfying to roll around in your hands. I’m so happy I made this machine. This is awesome.”

We’ve seen machines for making wooden spheres but this one makes fantastic use of repurposed stuff like inexpensive cordless drills, and the sort of wood structures anyone with access to hand tools can make.

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Thanks to [AloofPenny] for the tip.

hackaday.com/2026/02/13/rock-s…

Many things about diamonds seem eternal, including the many engineering problems related to making them work as a silicon replacement in semiconductor technology. Yet much like a diamond exposed to a stream of oxygen-rich air and a roughly 750°C heat source, time will eventually erase all of them. As detailed in a recent [Asianometry] video, over the decades the challenges with creating diamond wafers and finding the right way to dope pure diamond have been slowly solved, even if some challenges still remain today.

Diamond is basically the exact opposite as silicon when it comes to suitability as a semiconductor material, with a large bandgap (5.5 eV vs the 1.2 of silicon), and excellent thermal conductivity characteristics. This means that diamond transistors are very reliable, albeit harder to switch, and heat produced during switching is rapidly carried away instead of risking a meltdown as with silicon semiconductors.

Unlike silicon, however, diamond is much harder to turn into wafers as you cannot simply melt graphite and draw perfectly crystallized diamond out of said molten puddle. The journey of getting to the state-of-the art soon-to-be-4″ wafers grown on iridium alongside the current mosaic method is a good indication of the complete pain in the neck that just this challenge already is.

Mosaic method of growing a diamond wafer, as filmed by Asianometry.
Doping with silicon semiconductors is done using ion implantation, but diamond has to be special and cannot just have phosphorus and boron implanted like its sibling. The main challenge here is that of availability of charge carriers from this doping, with diamond greedily hanging on to these charge carriers unless you run the transistor at very high temperatures.

Since you can only add so much dopant to a material before it stops being that material, a more subtle solution was sought. At this point we know that ion implantation causes damage to the diamond lattice, so delta-doping – which sandwiches heavily doped diamond between non-doped diamond – was developed instead. This got P-type transistors using boron, but only after we pacified dangling carbon electron bonds with hydrogen atoms and later more stable oxygen.

State-of-the art switching with diamond transistors is currently done with MESFETs, which are metal-semiconductor field-effect transistors, and research is ongoing to improve the design. Much like with silicon carbide it can take a while before all the engineering and production scaling issues have been worked out. It’s quite possible that we’ll see diamond integrated into silicon semiconductors as heatsinks long before that.

Assuming we can make diamond work for semiconductor transistors, it should allow us to pack more and smaller transistors together than even before, opening up many options that are not possible with silicon, especially in more hostile environments like space.

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hackaday.com/2026/02/13/why-di…

While it is fun to get toys that look like your favorite science fiction props, it is less fun when the electronics in them don’t measure up to the physical design. [Steve Gibbs] took a Hasbro R2D2 toy robot and decided to give it a brain upgrade along with enhanced sensors. You can see a video of the robot doing its thing and some build details below.

In this case, the toy from Hasbro was not working at all, so [Steve] saved it from the dumpster. Instead of a repair, he decided to just gut it and rebuild it with modern electronics. The ultrasonic sensor on the forward toe is a dead giveaway.

The robot responds to voice commands better than the original and can play sound effects and clips from Star Wars. You can also control the robot with a phone app. The new or upgraded sensors include microphones, a PIR sensor, a photoresistor to sense light, a smoke and CO₂ sensor, a computer vision camera, and, of course, the ultrasonic range finder.

Some motors and the original speaker are in use, but R2 now sports additional LEDs and servos. All the extras required some surgery on the plastic body. Instead of regular batteries, the ‘bot now uses a LiPo battery, so the old battery compartment was cut out to make more room.

Even if you aren’t a die-hard Star Wars fan, this is a fantastic project, and May the 4th is right around the corner. These toys aren’t cheap, but if you can score one with bad electronics, you might be able to find something cheap or — like Steve — even free.

These toys are popular hacking targets. Now [Steve] needs a pit droid.

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hackaday.com/2026/02/13/r2d2-g…

It’s a bit ironic that an Atari 2600 game based on Raiders of the Lost Ark — a movie about archaeology — is now the subject of its own archaeological expedition as [Dennis Debro] and [Halkun] spent time reverse-engineering the game. Luckily, they shared their findings, so you can enjoy it the same way you can visit a king’s tomb without having to discover it and dig for it. If you don’t remember the game, you might enjoy the demo from [Speedy Walkthroughs] in the video below.

If you are only used to modern software, you might think this is little more than someone dumping the program code and commenting it. However, on these old, limited systems, you have to really understand the actual architecture because there are so many things you have to manage that are specific to the hardware.

For example, the game has two 4K ROM banks that use a strange switching mechanism. The entire game is built around the NTSC television signal. Everything is oriented toward generating the 60 Hz frame rate. Game logic runs during the vertical blanking and over-scan sections to prevent strange visible artifacts due to software running.

This is a fascinating look inside game coding as it existed around 1982. Of course, you can also run everything using emulation. Usually, our reverse engineering is more hardware-related. But we do love these old games, too.

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hackaday.com/2026/02/13/inside…

Cyberdecks are great projects, and [Salim Benbouziyane]’s scratch-built CM Deck is a fantastic specimen. It’s a clamshell-style cyberdeck with custom split keyboard, trackpad, optional external WiFi antenna, and some slick underlighting thanks to a translucent bottom shell. There’s even a hidden feature that seems super handy for a cyberdeck: a special USB-C port that, when plugged in to another host (like another computer), lets the cyberdeck act as an external keyboard and trackpad for that downstream machine.
The CM Deck is built around the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, which necessitates a custom PCB but offers more design freedom.
Notably, the CM Deck is custom-built around the Raspberry Pi Compute Model 5. When we first peeped the CM5 the small size was striking, but of course that comes at the cost of having no connectors, supporting hardware, or heat management. That’s something [Salim] embraced because it meant being able to put connectors exactly where he wanted them, and not have to work around existing hardware. A custom PCB let him to lay out his cyberdeck with greater freedom, less wasted space, and ultimately integrate a custom-built keyboard (with RP2040 and QMK firmware).

Even the final enclosure is custom-made, with 3D printing being used to validate the design and PCBway providing finished plastic shells in addition to manufacturing the PCBs. [Salim] admits that doing so was an indulgence, but his delight at the quality of the translucent purple undercarriage is palpable.

[Salim]’s video (embedded below) is a deep dive into the whole design and build process, and it’s a great watch for anyone interested in the kind of work and decisions that go into making something like this. Experienced folks can expect to nod in sympathy when [Salim] highlights gotchas like doing CAD work based on the screen’s drawings, only to discover later that the physical unit doesn’t quite match.

The GitHub repository contains the design files for everything, so give it a browse if you’re interested. [Salim] is no stranger to clean builds, so take a moment to admire his CRT-style Raspberry Pi terminal as well.

youtube.com/embed/U5GZeMm5nhI?…

Thanks [Keith Olson] for sharing the tip!

hackaday.com/2026/02/13/custom…

In the latest episode of the Hackaday Podcast, editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start things off by discussing the game of lunar hide-and-seek that has researchers searching for the lost Luna 9 probe, and drop a few hints about the upcoming Hackaday Europe conference. From there they’ll marvel over a miniature operating system for the ESP32, examine the re-use of iPad displays, and find out about homebrew software development for an obscure Nintendo handheld. You’ll also hear about a gorgeous RGB 14-segment display, a robot that plays chess, and a custom 3D printed turntable for all your rotational needs. The episode wraps up with a sobering look at the dangers of industrial robotics, and some fascinating experiments to determine if a decade-old roll of PLA filament is worth keeping or not.

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 this episode in DRM-free MP3 on your ESP32 with BreezyBox for maximum enjoyment.

Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast

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News:

• Forget Waldo. Where’s Luna 9?
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What’s that Sound?

• Think you know that sound? Fill out the form for a chance to win!

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• BreezyBox: A BusyBox-Like Shell And Virtual Terminal For ESP32
  
  • GitHub – valdanylchuk/breezyapps: ESP32 ELF apps for BreezyBox

  
  

• Lessons Learned After A Head-First Dive Into Hardware Manufacturing
• Upcycling An IPad Into A Touchscreen Display For Your PC
• Exploring Homebrew for the Pokémon Mini
  
  • Pokemon-Mini.net

  
  

• Designing A Compact RGB 14-Segment Display
• A Working Intercom From Antique Telephones

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  
  • ReMemory Is The Amnesia-hedging Buddy Backup You Didn’t Know You Needed
  • Building A Self-Playing Chess Board Robot
  • Why Haven’t Quantum Computers Factored 21 Yet?
    
    • [1301.7007] Pretending to factor large numbers on a quantum computer

    
    

  
  

• Tom’s Picks:
  
  • Gaming On An Arduino Uno Q In Linux
  • Scanning Table For The Professional Maker
  • Making A Hidden Door Status Sensor

  
  

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• How Industrial Robot Safety Was Written In Blood
  
  • U.S. Chemical Safety Board

  
  

• Is That Ancient Reel Of PLA Any Good?

hackaday.com/2026/02/13/hackad…

One of the best parts of 3D printing is that you can freely download the plans for countless model from sites like Thingiverse, Printables, and others. Yet with the veritable flood of models on these sites you also want to have some level of quality. Here recent news pertaining to Thingiverse is probably rather joyful, as with the acquisition of Thingiverse by MyMiniFactory, it should remain one of the most friendly sites for sharing 3D printing models.

Although Thingiverse as a concept probably doesn’t need much introduction, it’s important here to acknowledge the tumultuous times that it has gone through since its launch in 2008 as part of MakerBot. Both were acquired by Stratasys in 2013, and this has lead to ups and downs in the relationship with Thingiverse’s user base.

MyMiniFactory was launched in 2013 as a similar kind of 3D printing object-sharing platform as Thingiverse, while also offering crowdsourcing and paid model options. In the MyMiniFactory blog post it’s stated that these features will not be added to Thingiverse, and that nothing should change for Thingiverse users in this regard.

What does change is its joining of the ‘SoulCrafted‘ initiative, which is an initiative against machine-generated content, including so-called ‘AI slop’. There will be a live Q & A on February 17th during which the community can pitch their questions and ideas, along with a dedicated Thingiverse group.

hackaday.com/2026/02/13/mymini…

We live in an age where engineering marvels are commonplace: airplanes crisscross the sky, skyscrapers grow like weeds, and spacecraft reach for the stars. But every so often, we see something unusual that makes us take a second look. The Falkirk Wheel is a great example, and, even better, it is functional art, as well.

The Wheel links two canals in Scotland. Before you click away, here’s the kicker: One canal is 35 meters higher than the other. Before 1933, the canals were connected with 11 locks. It took nearly a day to operate the locks to get a boat from one canal to the other. In the 1930s, there wasn’t enough traffic to maintain the locks, and they tore them out.

Fast Forward

In the 1990s, a team of architects led by [Tony Kettle] proposed building a wheel to transfer boats between the two canals. The original model was made from [Tony’s] daughter’s Lego bricks.

The idea is simple. Build a 35-meter wheel with two cassions, 180 degrees apart. Each cassion can hold 250,000 liters of water. To move a boat, you fill the caissons with 500 tonnes of water. Then you let a boat into one of them with its weight displacing an equal amount of water, so the caissons stay at the same weight.

Once you have a balanced system, you just spin the wheel to make a half turn. There are 10 motors that require 22.5 kilowatts, and each half turn consumes about 1.5 kilowatt-hours.

Not Lockless

The wheel actually raises boats up 24 m, so the remaining 11 m still requires two locks. But this is a far cry from the eleven locks the system replaces. The structure has a foundation with 30 concrete piles down on the bedrock. The wheel itself uses 14,000 bolts to avoid welds that might fatigue under stress.

As you’d expect, the caissons have to turn with the wheel in order to stay level, somewhat like a Ferris Wheel. This works using three 8-meter gears. It takes about four minutes for the wheel to make a half turn. You can watch it work in the video below.

Why?

We were a bit disappointed that there doesn’t seem to be any reason to connect the two canals except as a tourist attraction. On the other hand, about half a million visitors go every year, so it does have an economic impact. As far as we know, this is the world’s only rotating boat lift. It certainly is artistic compared to, say, the historic Anderton Lift.

We love big engineering. Even the ones that seem commonplace.

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Featured image: “FalkirkWheelSide” by Sean Mack.

hackaday.com/2026/02/13/the-en…

«Qualcosa è andato storto. Come i social network e l’intelligenza artificiale ci hanno rubato il futuro», è un potente atto d’accusa nei confronti della tecnologia che ci rende dipendenti da smartphone, tablet e computer. Pubblicato da Solferino pochi mesi fa, è già un caso editoriale. Alla settima ristampa ha venduto circa 20.000 copie. Un successo, per un paese dove un italiano su due legge meno di un libro all’anno.

E il motivo di questo successo è che il libro spiega, in parole chiare e comprensibili, senza peli sulla lingua, che cosa le aziende come Meta/Facebook e TikTok, sono state e sono pronte a fare pur di catturarci davanti allo schermo, per vendere il nostro tempo di attenzione agli inserzionisti e così facendo terremotando psiche, sentimenti e percezioni degli utenti, soprattutto di quelli più giovani.

Già, perché, Riccardo Luna, è lui l’autore del libro, ripercorrendo le origini della Rete, che lui stesso da direttore di Wired candidò a premio nobel per la pace, racconta come questa si sia ormai popolata di app che recintano i nostri interessi e argomenta come la Rete, da utopia democratica dei primi anni 2000 sia stata colonizzata dall’affarismo di Big Tech che non ritiene di dover rispondere a nessuno del proprio operato. Aziende guidate da imprenditori tech che anziché dedicare le loro enormi ricchezze a sfamare il mondo, a contrastare gli effetti perversi del cambiamento climatico e a favorire pace e democrazia, lucrano su sistemi che creano rabbia e violenza, i social network a cui hanno messo il turbo degli algoritmi capaci di innescare i circuiti del piacere che scattano quando vediamo il like sotto il nostro post e ci rendono frustrati quando non li vediamo. Meccanismi che sfruttano anche la solitudine, l’incertezza sessuale e le delusioni dei più giovani per renderli sempre meno sicuri di se stessi e sempre più dipendenti dal feed del social preferito.

Temi già sollevati da altri prima di lui, certamente, come Nicholas Carr, Jaron Lanier, l’italiano Jacopo Franchi. Autori che hanno raccontato gli effetti dannosi dello scrolling infinito, quel modo di usare i social senza smettere mai e che, lungi dall’essere una cosa naturale innescata dalla curiosità, è un comportamento ingegnerizzato per le piattaforme da tecnologi e psicologi sociali in modo da trattenere chiunque, sia esso bambino o un adulto, appiccicati allo smartphone grazie all’algoritmo di selezione dei contenuti. A proposito, tu che leggi lo sapevi che basta un centinaio di video visti per riorganizzare l’algoritmo?

«Qualcosa è andato storto. Come i social network e l’intelligenza artificiale ci hanno rubato il futuro», Riccardo Luna, Solferino, 2025.

dicorinto.it/articoli/recensio…

Pneumatics are a common way to add some motion to soft robotic actuators, but adding it to a robot can be somewhat of a chore. A method demonstrated by [Jackson K. Wilt] et al. (press release, preprint) involves using a 3D printing to extrude two materials: one elastomeric material and a fugitive ink that is used to create pneumatic channels which are dissolved after printing, leaving the empty channels to be filled with air.

By printing these materials with a rational, multi-material (RM-3DP) custom nozzle it’s possible to create various channel patterns, controlling the effect of compressed air on the elastomeric material. This way structures like hinges and muscles can be created, which can then be combined into more complex designs. One demonstrated design involves a human-like hand with digits that can move and grasp, for example.

In the demonstration the elastomeric material is photopolymerizable polyurethane-acrylate resin, with the fugitive ink being 30 wt% Pluronic F-127 in water. The desired pattern is determined beforehand with a simulation, followed by the printing and UV curing of the elastomeric resin.

As is typical of soft robotics implementations, the resulting robots are more about a soft touch than a lot of force, but could make for interesting artificial muscle designs due to how customizable the printing process is.

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hackaday.com/2026/02/13/3d-pri…

The classic design of a mechanical clock generally consists of a display, a way to store energy, a way to release that energy at regular intervals, and a mechanism to transmit it where it needs to go. Most of us might be imagining a pendulum or a balance wheel, but there have been many other ways to maintain a reliable time standard with a physical object beyond these two common methods. This clock, for example, uses a rolling ball bearing as its time standard and [Tommy Jobson] discusses its operation in depth during a restoration.

The restoration of this clock, which [Tommy] theorizes was an amateur horological project even when it was new, starts by dismantling the clock nearly completely. The clock was quite dirty, so in addition to being thoroughly cleaned it also needed a bit of repair especially involving a few bent pins that stop the table’s rotation. These pins were replaced with stronger ones, and then everything in the clock’s movement was put back together. The tray carrying the ball bearing needed to be cleaned as well, and [Tommy] also added a lacquer to help preserve the original finish as long as possible. From there it was time to start calibrating the clock.

The ball bearing itself rolls back and forth along an inclined plane on a series of tracks. When it gets to the end it hits a lever which lets a bit of energy out of the movement, tilting the table back in the other direction to repeat the process. This is a much more involved process for getting an accurate time interval than a pendulum, so [Tommy] had a lot of work to do here. But in the end he was able to bring it back to life with an accuracy fairly close to a pendulum clock.

Ball bearings are a pretty popular medium for clock builds even in the modern era. This one uses them in a unique display, and a more recent version goes even further by using marbles to display digits directly.

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Thanks to [Keith] for the tip!

hackaday.com/2026/02/13/restor…