Hackaday Podcast 215: Autonomous Race Car, Espresso Robot, and Vintage Computers [Hackaday]

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It’s podcast time again, and this time around Elliot and Dan took a grand tour through the week’s best and brightest hacks. We checked out an old-school analog cell phone that went digital with style, dug into a washing machine’s API, and figured out how to melt metal in the microwave — the right way. Does coffee taste better when it’s made by a robot? Of course it does! Can you get a chatbot to spill its guts? You can, if you know how to sweet talk it. Let’s play Asteroids on an analog oscilloscope, spoof facial recognition with knitting, and feel the need for speed with an AI-controlled model race car. And was VCF East worth the wait? According to Tom Nardi, that’s a resounding “Yes!”

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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Episode 215 Show Notes:

News:

• NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Completes 50th Flight
  • An Up-Close Look at the First Martian Helicopter
• Hackaday Prize: Re-engineering Education Challenge Wraps Up Soon

What’s that Sound?

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• Internet Of Washing Machines Solves An Annoyance
• Custom Bluetooth Adapter Brings 1990s Car Phone Back Online
• Robot Races A Little Smarter To Go Faster
  • F1TENTH
• Radio Waves Bring The Heat With This Microwave-Powered Forge
  • Lost PLA Casting With A Little Help From Your Microwave
• RoboGaggia Makes Espresso Coffee On Its Own
• Hacking Bing Chat With Hash Tag Commands

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  • Raspberry Pi Camera Conversion Leads To Philosophical Question
  • A Clock Timebase, No Microcontroller
  • A Low-Noise Amplifier To Quantify Resistor Noise
• Dan’s Picks:
  • Need To Pick Objects Out Of Images? Segment Anything Does Exactly That
  • Circumvent Facial Recognition With Yarn
  • Bust Out That Old Analog Scope For Some Velociraster Fun!

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• Vintage Computer Festival East Was A Retro Madhouse
  • Vintage Computer Festival Southeast 10.0 — 2023 – Vintage Computer Federation
• New Renewable Energy Projects Are Overwhelming US Grids