Join Hackaday Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Staff Writer Dan Maloney for their take on the hottest hacks in a hot, hot week. We found a bunch of unusual mechanisms this week, like an omnidirectional robot that’s not quite wheeled but not quite a walker either. Or, if you’d rather fly, there’s a UAV that’s basically a flying propeller. There’s danger afoot too, with news of a chess-playing robot with a nasty streak, a laser engraver that’ll probably blind you, and a high-voltage corona motor that actually does useful work. We’ll use our X-ray vision to take a deep dive into a 60-GHz phased array antenna, let a baby teach a machine what it means to be hungry, and build a couple of toy cameras just for funsies. Ballons as a UI? Maybe someday, thanks to ultrasonic levitation. And we’ll wrap things up by snooping in on the Webb telescope’s communications, as we find out how many people it takes to make wire harnesses. Spoiler alert: it’s a lot.
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!
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Turn Drone Into A Large Propeller To Increase Hover Efficiency
Reverse Engineering A Phased Array System Reveals Surprising Details
Starlink Satellite Dish X-Rayed To Unlock RF Magic Inside
Atmospheric High-Voltage Motor Makes Useful Power
Drone And High Voltage Spin Up This DIY Corona Motor
electrostaticmotor – YouTube
Digital “Toy” Camera, Made For Tilt-Shift And Other Analog-Like Experimenting
Pen Plotter Draws Maps Directly On The Wall
Pi Cam Replaces Pinhole And Film For Digital Solargraphy
Omnidirectional Walker With Wheeled Feet
DIY Walkers – YouTube
Move Over Strandbeest, Here’s Strider!
Digital Measuring Wheel Is Exactly What It Sounds Like
Surveyor’s wheel – Wikipedia
Opisometer – Wikipedia
Elliot’s Picks:
Balloons Are The User Interface Of The Future
A Tiny Forest Of Resistors Makes For Quick And Dirty Adaptive Optics
Interesting Optics Make This Laser Engraver Fit In A Pocket
Taming The Beast: Pro-Tips For Designing A Safe Homebrew Laser Cutter
Dan’s Picks:
Design Cities In A Snap With Buildify
Machine Learning Baby Monitor Prevents The Hunger Games
Nokia 5110 Gets Android Stowaway And A Keyboard
The Surprisingly Manual Process Of Building Automotive Wire Harnesses
How Does The James Webb Telescope Phone Home?
How Is Voyager Still Talking After All These Years?
Joe Kim: Where Technology And Art Collide
