Mysterious Files PH

Can you call it a bandsaw if it has neither band nor saw? [WeldingRod1] does, with his entry in the laser contest — a manually-controlled laser cutter that he’s dubbed a Laser Bandsaw. Some might quibble that it’s not actually sawing with the beam, and others will inevitably find the safety implications rather frightening. We think it’s a fun project and that [WeldingRod1] can call it what he wants, as long as he follows his own advice and keeps his laser goggles firmly on his precious vision orbs.

He has actually put some thought into what started as the physical manifestation of a joke in a podcast. The blue diode laser — a NUBM44 diode rated at 7 W — got a custom-made copper heatsink. It’s also got a hefty beam dump in the form of a stack of box knife blades. That’s very necessary to keep the beam from reflecting where it shouldn’t, especially when you consider this operates like a regular band saw: you turn it on, and it’s ready to cut. With only 7 W of laser power it can’t cut that much, mind you, but apparently it’s great on balsa wood and blasts black paint off like nobody’s business.

Now if this was our shop we’d probably want to put the laser diode onto some kind of CNC platform, be it Cartesian or SCARA. But we’ve seen that done many, many times and if you’ve got the motor skills this might be just the tool for you. There’s a pinout and STLs for the 3D printed frame on the project page if you’re interested. If not, why are you still here? The article is finished. Go make something lase and send it in. The deadline for the 2026 Frikkin Laser Contest is fast approaching!

At the current rate of robotics development, you might assume that we’re close to Skynet taking over. However, while we  likely wouldn’t do well in a physical fight against a robot, we can at least keep the bragging rights of having the cooler actuators. Or at least, that was the case before a new actuator came into town — introducing “Electrofluidic Fiber Muscles”.

Traditional robotic actuators use motors of some kind with a variety of gearboxes or linkages to turn rotational movement into usable movement. This isn’t always the most effective way to run some robotics movements, especially when modeling humans. This is why many have turned to pressurized modes of actuation. Though most don’t show quite the promise of the new player.

Electrofluidic Fiber Muscles use pressure to shorten muscle strands, similar to past actuators. However, these are a tad different, taking advantage of electrofluidic pressure. A small current under high voltage is able to drive a pressure gradient in a long tube. This tube can then be connected to both an extensor and flexor portion of an actuating circuit, similar to a biological mechanical system. Better yet, this driving pressure pump can be spun around the fibers themselves, making a tight package.

Unfortunately, it will probably be a bit till we see this inside a hobbyist robot. Until then, make sure to check out some other actuator feats!

To give people the most intimate RBMK experience, the [Chornobyl Family] has been working tirelessly at not only replicating the original RBMK reactor control room and its SKALA industrial control system’s controls, but also to create a version that you could tinker with at home if you ever fancied getting your own RBMK operator license. This starts with the operator console, with its use demonstrated in a recent video including a range of common commands.

In this video the entering of codes on the console to interact with the system is detailed, including the logic behind it. In the absence of large displays to display many parameters and such, this way the operator could ‘talk’ with the control system, including obtaining current sensors readings and the setting and changing of setpoints. From the same console you can also select and run programs, which is useful for automating tasks, like monitoring coolant flows.

In the second video not only the construction of the control panel is covered, but also a visual representation of the simulated reactor core which is displayed on a connected monitor. Although not a part of the original SKALA system as such, a much larger version existed as a wall-sized physical version inside the control room, so it’s definitely more home-simulator friendly.

We previously covered this SKALA system that controls RBMK reactors, as well as the 1990s modernization of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

There was a time in the early 1980s when it was common to see home made keyboards for 8-bit machines that came with membrane or rubber keyboards. Though we’ve seen any numbers of home made modern ‘boards, it’s been decades since we saw one for an 8-bit micro. Until today, that is, when we saw [Vlad]’s Sinclair Spectrum. It’s a Spectrum with all that Sinclair glue logic that was in the ULA replaced in software by an RP2050, and that keyboard with the Spectrum decals.

The machine is a charming mixture of new and old, with a traditional cassette port alongside VGA, gameport joystick, and Sinclair joystick. The aim is to also have HDMI, though it’s not yet implemented. Sadly there is no Spectrum edge connector for period peripherals though. He admits it’s not cycle accurate to the original, but given that it runs all the games he’s given it this seems not to matter. Meanwhile that keyboard which caught our eye is a true period piece, sitting as it does on a piece of phenolic stripboard, and those decals are the perfect finishing touch.

The Spectrum receives quite a bit of love today, and if this one takes too many modern liberties for your liking, you can still make one using proper logic.

We are absolutely stoked to announce that the Hackaday Superconference is taking place this year November 6th through 8th in glorious Pasadena California, and we want to see you there!

If you’ve been to any of the previous nine Supercons, you know that it’s a fantastic gathering of the most motivated and interesting hackers around — but it’s also been a relatively small gathering. And while we love the very high signal-to-noise ratio of folks who show up, we’re always a little bit sad when the tickets sell out because it represents hackers who couldn’t be there.

So this year, we’re celebrating Supercon Ten by expanding out of our traditional location at the Design Lab so that we can accommodate 20% more hackers, while still keeping the cosy nature of the event intact. So if you’ve been wanting to come to Supercon, but procrastinated the ticket sales every year, this year is looking 20% better.

Call for Proposals

If you want to give a talk to an interested audience of hackers just like you, now is your chance. Fill out the Call for Participation form before Wednesday, Aug 12th to put your hat in the ring. Presenters not only get to share their work with a like-minded audience, but they get in the door free! Presenting really is the best way to attend a conference like this – it’s the ultimate ice-breaker. (Plus, did we mention free?)

We will have two tracks of talks on two stages, and both are a mix of shorter 20-minute talks and longer 40-minute sessions, so whatever the size of your ideas, we have the slot for you. As always, we like to hear about your projects: hardware, software, creation, destruction, or anything in-between. In short, if you have a talk that would interest the readers of Hackaday, it fits. Check out last year’s slate if you’re curious, but bear in mind that we like to see new stuff, so don’t feel constrained by precedent. If you’re into it, there’s a good chance that many of us are too!

All you need is an abstract, a title, and a solid general idea of how the talk is going to go. First time speaker, or grizzled veteran: get your proposal in now.

Plus ça Change…

Supercon Ten starts out as usual with a casual badge-hacking day at Supplyframe HQ on the morning of Friday Nov 6th. We love this day because there’s “nothing” to do! It’s the perfect way to ease into the conference: the doors open, and the food and coffee starts flowing. As the solder melts, brought-along hacks get demoed, friendships form, and plans get hatched. We go on well into the night, with music and festivities to keep you motivated or distracted – the choice is yours.

Saturday and Sunday are chock-full of talks, workshops, challenges, and other events. This year, we’ll be a few blocks south at the ArtCenter South Campus, which means that we’ll be relocating our traditional back-alley ambiance to significantly fancier digs. But of course, we’ll have space for hacking, mingling, and watching the talks.

Sunday evening comes too soon, and at the end of this second day of talks, we’ll let you showcase all of the badge hacks that you’ve been working on before spilling out into the town and falling far too late into bed.

Just because enough is never enough, we’ll probably also meet up informally sometime Thursday night if you’re already in town. And if you’re able to finagle a half-day Monday into your schedule, you’ll find that a bunch of folks have off-schedule side trips that are always popular.

Get Excited!

We know that we’re announcing late this year. The new venue, combined with a late Hackaday Europe, made for a lot more planning to be done. But now that all of our ducks are in a row, we’re very much looking forward to November. And of course, we can’t wait to see what you all are going to bring with you to Supercon. After all, it’s the Hackaday community that makes it great.

Get your talk proposals in now, and in the next few weeks, we’ll open up ticket pre-sales. Tell your friends, neglect to mention it to your enemies, and start making your Supercon plans today.

[lcamtuf] is not just a calculator superfan, but also a skilled builder. That much is evident in the fabulous  design of Calcumator 2000, an electromechanical calculator that uses voltmeter readouts as digits (plus one at the bottom to represent decimal place). There are plenty of high-quality build images, so give it a look!

Calcumator 2000 is a bit of a love letter to a time when display technology hadn’t quite yet produced anything suitable for calculator use. This resulted in calculator designs that are generally unrecognizable compared to the 7-segment display based devices we see today. The Calcumator 2000, in all its electromechanical glory, would have fit right in that era.

The Calcumator 2000 has all the usual buttons one would expect from a simple calculator and drives a total of seven readouts, one of which acts as the decimal point. The idea of using voltmeters as digit displays came from [lcamtuf]’s voltmeter clock, an earlier work with a similar attention to detail in its design and assembly.

We want to take a moment to admire how clean the blue panel is. [lcamtuf] made it by painting one side of an acrylic panel, cutting the letters and design out on a CNC mill, then filling with white paint. The depth of the cuts gives the white elements a nifty multi-layer effect that really complements the design.

Want to see it work? Oh yes, you do. Check out the video, embedded just below.

[Irving John Good] was at Trinity College, Oxford back in 1964. His paper, “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine” could have been a topic for today, as we deal with machines that aren’t really ultraintelligent, but appear smart and think they are even smarter. He starts off with a bold thesis: “The survival of man depends on the early construction of an ultraintelligent machine.”

He also admits that we’ll need to understand more about the human brain and human thought to make a breakthrough. This is still true today. However, we still don’t fully understand how our brains work, but it seems unlikely that we are just super-large LLMs. Not that [Good] anticipated the modern chatbot. Perhaps his comments will apply more to a future AI software that actually thinks like a human, if there will ever be such a thing.

Then again, there are many parallels. One theme in the paper is that a smart machine will design a smarter machine. Unless, of course, it is afraid of being replaced. If a machine were actually sentient, what are the ethics of turning it off and tearing it apart?

It is hard to be a visionary. [Good] remarks that by 1980, progress in human/computer symbiosis will encourage more investment in the field and that by that time, there would be “great advances in microminiaturization” and “frequencies of one billion pulses per second,” might be common in “large computers.”

We love reading what smart people thought the future might be like. What will the world be like in another 60 or 100 years?