Samwise Makers' News
Friday, July 17, 2026
Wireless LCD Streaming for the ANENG AN870 Multimeter
The ANENG AN870 is a capable budget multimeter but its readings stay stuck on its screen. Maker [Bits und Bolts] solved this by building a wireless LCD streaming system that pipes live DMM readings directly into OBS. The hardware splits across two custom PCBs: an RP2040 Zero paired with an HC-12 433 MHz transceiver fits inside the multimeter, while a matching HC-12 and ESP32-C3 handle reception and WiFi output. A boost converter supplies 3.3V from the meter's existing AA cells. LCD segment states are mapped and transmitted wirelessly, giving streamers and workbench tinkerers a clean, real-time data overlay without any cables. All schematics and firmware live on GitHub.
A USB Port By Any Other Color…
That shiny blue USB 3.0 hub you just bought might be hiding a dirty secret. A Hackaday teardown of a generic four-port hub reveals two HS8836A chips operating purely at USB 2.0 speeds, blue color scheme notwithstanding. Worse, all four ports share a single USB 1.1 bus, capping the entire hub at 12 Mbps. Internal construction raises further red flags: missing solder joints, absent bypass capacitors on the 3.3V rail, and a barrel jack wired to back-feed voltage onto the host PC USB port. A quick lsusb -t command reveals the truth on any Linux machine. Shop by spec, not by color.
GOES-19 Goes Down, NOAA Investigating
NOAA GOES-19 weather satellite — primary eye over the continental United States, Central and South America, and the Atlantic Ocean — entered safe mode the night of July 15, going offline during peak hurricane season. Ground controllers confirmed a safe hold but instrument restart was still ongoing when Hackaday reported. The backup is GOES-16, a same-design sibling launched in 2016 and still operational. Recovery from safe hold typically runs around eight hours. The timing is particularly sensitive: Canadian wildfire smoke tracking and active Atlantic storm forecasting both lean heavily on continuous GOES-19 imagery and data for real-time analysis.
White Rails Are The Infrastructure Hack We Didn't Know We Needed
Union Pacific Railroad is painting its continuously welded steel rails white and it actually works. The technique, borrowed from Italian rail operators, cuts rail surface temperatures by 11°C (20°F) by reflecting solar radiation that would otherwise be absorbed by dark steel. Standard rail can reach temperatures 30–50° above ambient on sunny summer days, causing the metal to buckle in a dangerous failure mode called sun kink. White-painted rail holds its geometry far better under extreme heat. The low-cost approach is now spreading to other North American and European operators searching for practical mitigations against increasingly frequent heat waves.
A Sloshing-Mercury-Powered Neon Light
In 1675, astronomer Jean Picard noticed his barometer glowing in the dark as mercury sloshed inside the glass tube, a triboelectric effect ionizing residual gas. YouTuber [Styropyro] recreated the phenomenon and discovered that backfilling a vacuum flask with neon at around 40 millitorr transforms that faint glow into a vivid orange-red light whenever the flask is shaken. A krypton-filled tube glows blue but less brightly. The effect also works with copper beads or Teflon pieces, though Galinstan — the popular mercury substitute — coats glass and prevents the charge buildup needed. Points of obstruction in the tube intensify the glow further. The video demonstration is genuinely stunning.
Hackaday Europe 2026: Build A Cable Modem for Your Arduino
Most of us plug in a cable and never think twice about the physics inside it. At Hackaday Europe 2026, Michael Wiebusch delivered an accessible deep-dive into transmission line theory — explaining why signals can travel simultaneously in both directions on a single wire, much like ripples passing through each other on a pond. He then demonstrated the theory live: building a directional coupler from resistors and an op-amp, then using it to send TTL signals bidirectionally down 50-ohm and 75-ohm coaxial cables connected to Arduinos. Simple, elegant, and illuminating for anyone who has ever wondered what is really happening inside their wiring.
Bad Apple On A Karaoke Machine
The Bad Apple demoscene tradition has claimed yet another unlikely platform. Developer [Adam Gashlin] squeezed the classic black-and-white animation — complete with scrolling lyrics — into the CD+G format, the long-forgotten system that packed low-resolution graphics into the subcode channel of ordinary music CDs. The constraint: CD+G allows only 300 screen commands per second. Gashlin beat the limit with two clever tricks: palette-swapping to pack four frames into one palette cycle, and selective block updates to push frame rate from 2.5 seconds per frame all the way up to 16.3 FPS. The triple-buffered result, with synchronised audio and karaoke lyrics, is genuinely remarkable.
Top Crowdfunding
Kickstarter / Indiegogo
1. RootBoard — Open-hardware cyberdeck terminal shell, ~$115, Kickstarter (live)
2. None this week
3. None this week
GitHub Trending
Makers & Hardware
1. BitsUndBolts/airmeter — wireless DMM LCD streamer ★
2. fgimian/deej — Arduino+Go hardware audio mixer ★
3. ESP32 GPS Browser Tracker (Heltec LoRa 32 + REYAX GNSS) ★
Upcoming Events
Maker Faire Edmonton — July 17–19, Edmonton, Canada (this weekend!)
Maker Faire Meridian — Aug 15, 2026, Meridian, USA
Maker Faire Bay Area — Sept 25–27, 2026, Bay Area, USA
Curated by JD · samwise.agency