This week on the podcast we have something a little different for you. Elliot is on vacation, so Tom was in charge of running the show and he had Kristina in the hot seat.

First news: The Tiny Games Challenge 2024 is still ongoing and has attracted an impressive 44 entrants at the time of this writing. You have until September 10th at 9:00 am PDT to show us your best minigame, whether it’s tiny hardware, tiny code, or a tiny parts list.

Then we move on to What’s That Sound, which Tom and Kristina developed together, so there won’t be any great excitement in guessing. But can You Get it? Can you figure it out? Can you guess what makes that sound? If you do and your number is drawn, you’ll get a special Hackaday Podcast t-shirt.

Now it’s time for the hacks, starting with an open source liquid rocket and a really cool retro trackball laptop. Then we’ll talk about screwdriver mania, the wow! signal, and whether you’re using your calipers wrong. Finally, we’ll look at a laptop that isn’t really a laptop and a simple trick to keep your laser engraver aligned.

If you want to follow along, check out the links below and as always, let us know what you think of this episode in the comments!

Download it in DRM-free MP3 format and enjoy it at your leisure.

Episode 285: Show Notes:

News:

What is that noise?

• Fill out this form with your best guess (coming soon…) and you could win!

Interesting hacks of the week:

Quick hacks:

• Tom’s selection:
• Kristina’s selection:

Articles you can’t miss: