Glowing Dot-Matrix Spins Out Letters, Physical Weather Icons are Pure Art, and DMX Lighting Goes DIY with ESP8266

Plus It's Not a Pebble Watch It's a Rubble Watch, Neural Networks Listen to Your Forearm, and Vintage Mechanical Keypad Goes Optical [3602421454791242043.png] Wednesday, March 18, 2020 [Store 3.5 kWh of Solar Energy in Seventy-Five 18650 Lithium-Ion Cells »]( Curb Your Cabin Fever With day-to-day life disrupted by Coronavirus in many corners of the world, it's likely that you're hunkering down to spend a lot of time at home over the coming weeks. The evidence all points to this isolation being the best way to reduce the rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations, so let's do our part to make social distancing more bearable: [Pop into the Hack Chat]( // You're always invited to socialize with your fellow hackers in this chat room. It's a great place to get ideas for interesting projects to fill up the spare time and to share about your own adventures. [Learn FPGA in Your Browser]( // 2019 was the year of the FPGA; did you miss it? Dip your toe in the software-defined-hardware revolution with Al Williams' four-part bootcamp which begins by using a simulator to learn the concepts. [Try Machine Learning]( // Machine Learning (ML) is the part of AI that excites the hardware geek in all of us - let the hardware do the heavy lifting by teaching itself new skills like color, object, or speech recognition. Our [Train All the Things contest]( challenges you to try out ML anywhere you can: a single-board computer, the cloud, or even microcontroller dev boards. Many are using their extra cycles to [brainstorm how to confront the outbreak]( and to find ways we can support friends, neighbors, and community members. We can't wait to see what you do with your evenings and weekends. Stay safe out there, and live to hack another day. Highlights from the IO POPULAR BITS [c4b97552-19ac-4aff-9fb6-0a7a2cf1e687.gif]( [Weather Icons IRL]( Weather displays seemed like the killer app for magic mirrors, but they have nothing on this standalone weather display. The stackup of concentric holes in the frame layers hide a weather icon for every condition. Current forecasts are divined from changes in barometric pressure over time. [4d083da2-988b-4625-ab5b-189ad2db5b3f.gif]( [Rolling with Ultraviolet]( Glow-in-the-Dark is the layman's term for phosphorescence and the quickest way to charge up that glow is using a UV light source. Here's a delightful way to do it, with a single cylinder to display a letter or a number. A row of seven vertical UV LEDs charges up columns on the phosphorescent cylinder which is rotated by a stepper motor. [dce21adc-5205-46e9-a0e5-add7fcc2aba7.jpg]( [Have You Tried Not Touching Your Face?]( We can all use a little bit of comic relief from the weight of our current situation. Mike Rigsby has a talent for this and gives us a respite with a scrap-bin project that sounds an alarm if you try to touch your face. It uses a tilt sensor placed on an elastic wrist band. If you reach up near shoulder level, you'll get the buzzer. Hack Chat LIVE CHAT WITH LEADING EXPERTS EVERY WEDNESDAY [Today: Amateur Radio Homebrewing Hack Chat]( Charlie Morris (ZL2CTM) will host [today's Hack Chat](. Like many hams, Charlie loves to make his own gear, and has homebrewed everything up to and including transceivers that rival commercial ones. He'll join us to discuss the homebrewer's art, and share some of his RF design secrets. [Next Week: Side-Channel Attacks Hack Chat]( Samy Kamkar will host [next week's Hack Chat](. Samy is well-known in the hardware hacking community for showing us where the weak points in system security lie. He'll drop by the Hack Chat to discuss side-channel attacks, those unexpected vectors which include everything from keyboard sounds to vibrating potato chip bags. Featured Projects POPULAR BITS [1f5f8b92-3915-488f-b58b-66a1dee6e7be.jpg]( [Bling Your Workshop with ESP8266 Lighting Controlled via Art-Net]( [fd4687af-0cfa-4f37-85ed-2125dacf6bcd.jpg]( [Rubble Watch Pursues Pebble's Smartwatch Legacy]( [20123ad1-b17a-42b1-8452-db1cf4ac9998.jpg]( [Brain Control from Forearm Sensor Band and Neural Network]( [6f956a6a-7e07-4676-b800-c9ec77d60d5b.jpg]( [Vintage Mechanical Keypad Given Optical Sensor Upgrade]( Live Events MEETUPS, CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS [Chillin' at Home: Right Now](#) Worldwide | Protecting public health is paramount. With that in mind, all events we would normally list here have been cancelled or postponed. We hope to see you at [Hackaday Belgrade]( sometime this summer but we have yet to work out a new date for the conference. For now, let's all do what we can to slow the spread of the outbreak. [6106791452383979970.png]( [8302381452383965490.png]( [1582301482276864754.png]( [Terms of Use]( [Privacy Policy]( [Hackaday.io]( [Hackaday.com]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?]( [unsubscribe from this list]( [update subscription preferences]( Hackaday · 61 South Fair Oaks Avenue · Suite 200 · Pasadena, CA 91105 · USA