The WEEDINATOR agricultural robot is one of the longer-running projects we’ve featured here on Hackaday. We first featured it way back in 2017 for that year’s Hackaday prize, and after a …read more

[Brogan M Pratt] and his students do a lot of 3D printing, and as such found themselves producing a lot of plastic waste. Seeing an opportunity, they built a bike-powered …read more

Although desalination is very commonly used these days to convert seawater into fresh water, one of the major disadvantages of current approaches is that commercial desalination plants produce a lot …read more

Pallets are a wonderful way to package goods and move them around, but especially the wooden ones have a very finite lifespan. This means that many of them are discarded …read more

It’s possible to get a pretty good deal on used Toyota Prius cars, but as with all hybrid cars that also means a used battery pack and resulting issues. In …read more

Gravity batteries aren’t exactly a new idea. You can store energy by lifting something heavy, converting kinetic energy into potential energy. To get it back, you let the mass fall …read more

Engineering design makes all kinds of tradeoffs. Power trades off with torque, strength trades off with weight, and cost can trade off with quality. For designing a hydroelectric turbine, one …read more

A healthy aquarium ecosystem requires very specific conditions, with factors like the salinity and temperature having to be just right to keep said ecosystem happy. As some species are adapted …read more

Research reactors come in many forms and sizes, with the TRIGA class being commonly found at universities. The TRIGA reactor at the University of Utah was installed in 1975, and …read more

It seems fair to say that hamsters are a somewhat divisive pet, between their fluffiness, high-strung nature, short lifespan and incessant squeaking that sounds like some electronic device is trying …read more

Producing hot water off-grid is a surprisingly energy-intensive activity, and although it looks simple on its surface it can get quite complicated especially when used in large scale for something …read more

With all the battery technologies and modern low-current sleep modes in most microcontrollers, running a sensor and microcontroller combo off-grid and far away from any infrastructure is usually not too …read more

When building a project to operate on battery power for long periods of time, having a microcontroller with a reliable and extremely low-power sleep mode is critical. When processing power …read more

Many of us will have seen the portable solar panels offered on our favourite online purveyors of electronics, but some who have bought them remain unimpressed with their performance. [t.oster92] …read more

Have you ever looked out across the rooftops of a city and idly gazed at the infrastructure that remains unseen from the street? It seems [varunsontakke80] has, because here’s their …read more

As we learn more about all the nasty stuff floating in the air, it becomes more compelling to monitor the air for pollution levels. [Aleksei Tertychnyi] does just that with …read more

One of the problems facing any solar power installation comes in storing enough power for high-intensity operations such as cooking. The high-tech and expensive way involves battery banks and inverters, …read more

Distraction free writing tools are a reaction to the bells and whistles of the modern desktop computer, allowing the user to simply pick up the device and write. The etyper …read more

One of the more interesting categories of our ongoing Green Power Challenge is “anything but PV” — and since the radiated power of Near Field Communication is decidedly not photovoltaic, …read more

Noise cancelling headphones are a great way to insulate yourself from the bustle of the city, but due to their power requirements, continuous use means frequent recharging. [Alessandro Sgarzi] has …read more

We’ve all had those times when your electrical device of choice is running low on battery. Sometimes you even plan ahead and are also carrying a battery pack, but what …read more

If you started with computers early enough, you’ll remember the importance of the RAMdisk concept: without a hard drive and with floppies slow and swapping constantly, everything had to live …read more

Before there was pressure-treated wood, before modern paints, there was pine tar. Everything from tool handles to wagons to ships were made of wood preserved with pine tar, once upon …read more

One of the pitfalls of modern engineering is that it’s entirely possible to end up in a situation where a product or solution has been designed by someone who has …read more

The topic of boiling water is apparently a rather divisive topic, with plenty of strong opinions to go around on what is safe and the most efficient way to go …read more

Most carpenters and woodworkers find themselves with the problem of disposing of all the sawdust they create when performing their craft. There are lots of creative solutions to this problem, …read more

Cooking with charcoal is a fairly common human activity, as much as others have come to prefer fuels like propane and propane accessories for their outdoor, summertime grilling. Although it’s …read more

As temperatures warm up in the Northern Hemisphere, one’s mind naturally turns to the outdoors and the garden — even if some of our gardens are still snow-covered. One secret …read more

2000 m above ground level (AGL), winds are stronger and much, much more consistent than they are at surface. Even if the Earth were a perfect sphere, there’d be a …read more

Everyone here can think of a cloud-connected product that was killed because the company that made it stopped supporting it. While these corporations have forgotten their products, the US PIRG …read more