Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Al Williams met to review the week in Hackaday. Turns out, it was a week for tiny things, cybersecurity, nostalgia, and projects that would have been nearly impossible for the average hacker not that long ago. But first, you can hear a little about the upcoming Supercon badge and the trials of importing and exporting parts for the badges.

How many props does your drone have? [Joshua] has one. Want to fabricate semiconductors at home? Do you have a microwave? What about using NFC in your next project? There’s all that and more in this episode.

The quick hacks include a request from NASA for ideas (and, yes, there is prize money) and slide rule tricks, among other things. For the can’t miss articles, the cybersecurity weekly got some appreciation and Al took a trip down memory lane at the Altair 8800 he always wanted.

Check out the links if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments, or drop us a line on the mailbag.

Download in DRM-free macroscopic MP3.

Episode 392 Show Notes:

News:

• Supercon Ten Tickets On Sale Now
  • The Trials And Tribulations Of Your First Badge
  • PHP2Shell — AI uncovers critical vulnerabilities in the backbone of the web

Mailbag:

• Thanks to [Silver Dog Australia] for some new sting sounds for the podcast. Send us your sound, questions, or thoughts on the podcast for next week’s mailbag: mailbag@hackaday.com

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• Building A Flying Drone With A Single Propeller
  • Building And Flying A Helicopter With A Virtual Swashplate
  • Flies Like A Quadcopter, But This Drone Design Has Only One Propeller
  • One-Motor Drone Mimics Maple Seeds For Stability
• Making Photovoltaic Solar Cells With A Microwave
• A Stereo Vision Board For Hardware Hackers
  • I’m not putting a WiFi router into a phone charger (Part 3) – Rootkit Labs Blog
  • Stereo Vision And Depth Mapping With Two Raspi Camera Modules
  • High Performance Stereo Computer Vision For The Raspberry Pi
  • Tracking Bees With A Stereo Camera
  • Building The First Digital Camera
• An Open Micro-Manipulator Improved
• Building A Microscope With A 3D View
• Birduino Plays Bird Calls On Demand With NFC-enabled Cards

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  • NASA’s Lunar Ground Challenge is a Real Buzz
  • 5 GHz Drone Video, With An ESP32
  • Going Whole-Hog On A First Satellite Ground Station
• Al’s Picks:
  • Simplifying Slide Rule Calculations With Trig
  • An LCR Meter With Compromises
  • Visualize Regular Expressions With Marbles

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• This Week In Security: Critical DNS Keys Rotated, Hacking Freezers Isn’t Cool, OpenAI Spies On Itself, And Advanced Hardware Wallet Hacks
• The Age Of Altair

Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start this episode off with a discussion about Philadelphia’s budding hacker conference and the imminent retirement of the EZ80. After considering the parallels between the wide world of aviation headsets and our personal projects, talk moves on to the exciting developments in the world of software-defined radio on the ESP32, a Meshtastic pager from a bygone era, and how all the wild flying machines entered into DARPA’s Lift Challenge ended up losing to a simple helicopter.

You’ll also hear about turning plastic bottles into printer filament, pushing e-ink screens to their limits, and browsing the web on the PSP in 2026. To wrap things up they’ll marvel at all the modern abstraction sitting between software and the memory it’s running on, and revisit some RF concepts that might be particularly useful now that everyone is playing with a new SDR device.

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

Download in DRM-free MP3.

Episode 391 Show Notes:

News:

• JawnCon 0x3 Kicks Off In Philadelphia This Friday
• Littelfuse Announces Retirement Of The EZ80

Mailbag:

• You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but sometimes it can be fun. Thanks [Tom Brusehaver] for the headphone suggestions.

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• ESP-SDR Can Now Transmit
  • The ESP32, An SDR In Itself
  • GitHub – h0m3us3r/eSpDR · GitHub
  • GitHub – jochenhammes/esp32-sdr-trx: A software-defined transceiver from one ESP32-S3 board: rtl_tcp receiver for SDR++ and FM/SSB voice transmitter for 13 cm (experimental) · GitHub
  • GitHub – z1000biker/esp32c3rxtx · GitHub
  • Using An ESP32-C3’s RF Hardware For DVB-S2 Video Transmission
  • GitHub – barisdinc/ESP32-DATV-SA: Stand-alone fork of SP8ESA/ESP32-DATV: ESP32-C3 DVB-S2 beacon/transmitter without a PC · GitHub
• Pager Converted To Meshtastic Node
• Mars Pathfinder: What Really Happened?
  • The First Bug On Mars
• DARPA Lift Challenge Won By Helicopter
• 2026 Retrocomputing Challenge: USBSID-Pico Has Two SIDs, Many Inputs
• Counting The PET Bottles Needed To Make 1 Kg Of Printer Filament

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  • AI Controls IPhone Via ESP32
  • Slim Type For Small Screens, With PixelFonts
  • Rendering 3D Prints From G-Code
• Tom’s Picks:
  • A Modern Browser For The PlayStation Portable
  • Tiny E-Paper Display Delivers 30 FPS Of Game Boy Fun
  • Single Button, Handheld Gaming Console

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• Your Computer Memory Is A Lie
• So You Want To Make Your SDR Work On Other Frequencies

This week, Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met a few minutes later than usual, and somehow defeated a buzz together with the power of will before settling into the news, rifling through the Mailbag, and otherwise creating the attached podcast.

So, the news. Amazon, in their infinite wisdom, have chosen to not only remove Alexa’s aux port on future models, but also disable the input on extant ones. Is this really bad news? Maybe just because it seems like taking a choice away for the sake of exerting power over the people.

Anyway. In Hackaday news, the Retrocomputing Contest is currently on fire, and runs through 10AM PDT on Tuesday, October 27th. That means you have about 2.5 weeks left.

Supercon Ten ticket sales are similarly aflame, and per Elliot, it’s about time to release the next round of speakers. So, watch for that.

After digging deep in the Mailbag and eventually just dumping the thing out on the table, we found our brand new Hackaday Podcast Mailbag Audio Bumper! This jingle comes courtesy of [Dakota Winslow], who also advises that there are Easter eggs to be found.

Then, it was on to the hacks, including Elliot’s record-tying number of Quick Hacks, and plenty of in-linkage.

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!

Download in lovely MP3.

Episode 390 Show Notes:

News:

• With Latest Update, Alexa Refuses To Pass The Aux
• Retrocomputing Contest
• 2026 Hackaday Superconference Tickets, Friday, November 6-Sunday, November 8  •  10 AM-7:30 PM

Mailbag:

• Check out our new Hackaday Podcast Mailbag Audio Bumper!  Thanks [Dakota]!

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• The World’s Smallest TV Console Plays DOOM
• Conveyor Belt GBoard Brings The Keys To You
  • ErgoDex DX1 Input System – Detailed Specification Sheet
• How To Grow A Giant Crystal From Copper Sulfate
  • Automated Rig Grows Big, Beautiful Crystals Fast
• Porting Video Games To VHS
  • Wikipedia: Dragon’s Lair
• Keep That Old Radio Alive With An ESP32
• Gardening With…OpenSCAD?

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  • 2026 Retrocomputing Challenge: Retro Terminal Bartop Arcade Topper
  • Solve Your TTL Video Woes With An RP2350
  • The Commodore 64 Keyboard Font, For Everyone
  • You Know This Font, But You Don’t Really Know It
  • Building A Cheap, Dexterous Robot Hand
• Kristina’s Picks:
  • Don’t Try This At Home, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Edition
  • Electronic Busy Board Is Fun For Kids And Hackers
  • A Mechanical Radio, Sort Of

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• Lead A Discord Exodus With A Matrix Server
• A Headset Fit For A Hackaday Writer