TechyMagThings

Macropads can be as simple as a few buttons hooked up to a microcontroller to do the USB HID dance and talk to a PC. However, you can go a lot further, too. [CNCDan] demonstrates this well with his sleek macropad build, which throws haptic feedback into the mix.

The build features six programmable macro buttons, which are situated either on side of a 128×64 OLED display. This setup allows the OLED screen to show icons that explain the functionality of each button. There’s also a nice large rotary knob, surrounded by 20 addressable WS2811 LEDs for visual feedback. Underneath the knob lives an an encoder, as well as a brushless motor typically used in gimbal builds, which is driven by a TMC6300 motor driver board. Everything is laced up to a Waveshare RP2040 Plus devboard which runs the show. It’s responsible for controlling the motors, reading the knob and switches, and speaking USB to the PC that it’s plugged into.

It’s a compact device that nonetheless should prove to be a good productivity booster on the bench. We’ve featured [CNCDan’s] work before, too, such as this nifty DIY VR headset.

While Apple weren’t the first to invent high-DPI displays or to put them into consumer electronics, they did popularize them fairly effectively with the Retina displays in the early 2010s and made a huge number of them in the following years. The computers they’re attached to are getting up there in age, though, and although these displays are still functional it isn’t quite as straightforward to use them outside of their Apple-approved use. [David] demonstrates one way of getting this done by turning a 5k iMac into an external monitor.

The first attempt at getting a usable monitor from the old iMac was something called a Luna Display, but this didn’t have a satisfying latency. Instead, [David] turned to replacing the LCD driver board with a model called the R1811. This one had a number of problems including uneven backlighting, so he tried a second, less expensive board called the T18. This one only has 8-bit color instead of the 10-bit supported by the R1811 but [David] couldn’t personally tell the difference, and since it solved the other issues with the R1811 he went with this one. After mounting the new driver board and routing all of the wires, he also replaced the webcam with an external Logitech model and upgraded the speakers as well.

Even when counting the costs for both driver boards, the bill for this conversion comes in well under the cost of a new monitor of comparable quality from Apple, a company less concerned about innovation these days than overcharging their (admittedly willing) customers. For just a bit of effort, though, these older iMacs and other similar Apple machines with 5k displays can be repurposed to something relatively modern and still usable. Others have done similar projects and funded the upgrades by selling off the old parts.

Kei trucks are very versatile vehicles, but their stock powerplant can leave a bit to be desired. If you need more power, why not try an electric conversion?

[Ron “Mr. G” Grosinger] is a high school auto shop and welding teacher who worked with his students to replace the 40 hp gas motor in this Daihatsu Hijet with the 127 hp of a Hyper 9 electric motor. The motor sits in the original engine bay under the cab and is mated to the stock transmission with a custom adapter plate made from plate steel for less than $150. We really appreciate how they left all the electronics exposed to see what makes the conversion tick.

The faux battery was made by a foam sculptor friend out of urethane foam shaped with a carving knife and then painted. It slides on a set of unistrut trolleys and reveals the 5 salvaged Tesla battery modules that power the vehicle. The fold down sides of the truck bed allow easy access to anything not already exposed if any tweaking is necessary.

We’ve seen a kei truck become a camper as well or an ebike powered with actual power tool batteries. If you’re thinking of your own electric conversion, which battery is best?

This week Jonathan chats with Olaf Andreas Schulte and Lars Kiesow about Opencast, the video management system for education. What does Opencast let a school or university accomplish, how has that changed over the last decade, and what exciting new things are coming? Watch to find out!

• https://explore.opencast.org/
• https://opencast.org/
• https://opencast.org/2025/12/19/opencast-apereo-update/

Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show right on our YouTube Channel? Have someone you’d like us to interview? Let us know, or have the guest contact us! Take a look at the schedule here.

Direct Download in DRM-free MP3.

If you’d rather read along, here’s the transcript for this week’s episode.

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Theme music: “Newer Wave” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

I just love it when y’all send in your projects, so thanks, [Kai]! But were do I even begin with this one? Okay, so, first of all, you need to know that [Kai Ruhl] built an amazing split keyboard with plenty of keys for even someone like me. Be sure to check it out, because the build log is great reading.

But that wasn’t enough — a mousing solution was in order that didn’t require taking [Kai]’s hands off of the keyboard. And so, over the course of several months, the RollerMouse Keyboard came into being. That’s the creation you see here.

Essentially, this is an ortholinear split with a built-in roller bar mouse, which basically acts like a cylindrical trackball. There’s an outer pipe that slides left/right and rolls up and down, and this sits on a stationary inner rod. The actual mouse bit is from a Logitech M-BJ69 optical number.

[Kai] found it unpleasant to work the roller bar using thumbs, so mousing is done via the palm rests. You may find it somewhat unpolished with all that exposed wiring in the middle. But I don’t. I just worry about dust is all. And like, wires getting ripped out accidentally.

All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy

As I write this, a terrible snowpocalypse is snuggling up to the southern and mid-western states. What a time to watch The Shining and check out the dullboy prototype by [Blind_Heim].

This is [Blind_Heim]’s first project, and I think it looks mighty fine, especially with those slanty thumb keys. They are [Blind_Heim]’s own creation and were inspired by the design of the 1959 Adler Universal featured in The Shining. (Hence the name of the keyboard.) In case it isn’t obvious, they are meant for Kailh choc v1 switches.

Rev 1 shown here has a nice!nano and supports v1 chocs only. Rev 2 will support v1 and v2, and will have a 40 mm Cirque trackpad in that middle space there. Rev 2 will also be open-source and entirely free of copyright, so watch out for that.

Regarding those thumb keys, [Blind_Heim] says that they wanted something ergonomic and monoblock at first, and so the angles were just for looks. But after using it, he realized they were actually quite useful when it comes to determining which key is which without having to look.

The Centerfold: Downtown Busy Town Is the Place to Be

This desk mat ought to bring back some memories. Hopefully good ones, of daycare and snacks and nap time. Here it is for sale if you feel the need to drive little cars around on it.

As for the keyboard, that’s a Norbauer Heavy Grail Ghost of Christmas Future edition, which was of course a limited release that’s long sold out. I’m sure there are other transparent bodies out there, but good luck finding a bug-eyed, duck-faced keycap.

Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad? Send me a picture along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!

Historical Clackers: the Saturn

The Virtual Typewriter Museum calls the 1899 Saturn “one of the most impractical machines ever, built with proverbial precision in Switzerland”.

The operation of this blind writer is pretty interesting, and that’s putting it politely. There are nine U-shaped type bars: four on each side beneath the carriage, and one in the middle that swings up from behind.

Each of these type bars holds eight characters, and these are selected by moving a wire up and down the index card using that giant round selector button the left side. The you would strike one of the nine keys corresponding to the column your character appears in.

Evidently the lower case characters were laid out differently than the upper case, which made it even more difficult to use. But hey, Swiss precision.

There is not a lot of information out there about the Saturn, but the Virtual Typewriter Museum does have more shots of various angles.

Finally, a Keyboard Made of Marble and Ceramic

Apparently there was a Kickstarter near the end of 2025 for this thing. Well, this is the first I’ve heard of it. This here is the Keychron Q16 HE 8K ceramic and marble keyboard, which debuted at CES.

This is a luxury keyboard for sure, right down to the pre-lubed Keychron ultra-fast Lime magnetic switches which features Tunnel Magnetoresistance (TMR) and per-key adjustable actuation.

They say it’s built for gaming, but I don’t know. I think it’s built for whatever you want to use it for. It will be available in April. I sincerely hope that it’s like typing on little coffee cups, and it probably sounds amazingly thocky.

Now Tweak Town doesn’t have a whole lot to say about this keyboard, so I found a review to go with it. [YouallareToxic] has quite a bit to say about the keyboard. I think the biggest takeaway from this review is that this keyboard sounds like no other. [YouallareToxic] likens it to a frog guiro. A what? Check out the video below.

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Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards? Help me out by sending in a link or two. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to email me directly.

Very-long baseline interferometry (VLBI) is a technique in radio astronomy whereby multiple radio telescopes cooperate to bundle their received data and in effect create a much larger singular radio telescope. For this to work it is however essential to have exact timing and other relevant information to accurately match the signals from each individual radio telescope. As VLBI is used for increasingly higher ranges and bandwidths this makes synchronizing the signals much harder, but an optical frequency comb technique may offer a solution here.

In the paper by [Minji Hyun] et al. it’s detailed how they built the system and used it with the Korean VLBI Network (VLB) Yonsei radio telescope in Seoul as a proof of concept. This still uses the same hydrogen maser atomic clock as timing source, but with the optical transmission of the pulses a higher accuracy can be achieved, limited only by the photodiode on the receiving end.

In the demonstration up to 50 GHz was possible, but commercial 100 GHz photodiodes are available. It’s also possible to send additional signals via the fiber on different wavelengths for further functionality, all with the ultimately goal of better timing and adjustment for e.g. atmospheric fluctuations that can affect radio observations.

Some time ago, Lego released a beautiful (and somewhat pricey) typewriter set that was modeled after one used by company founder Ole Kirk Kristiansen. To the disappointment of some, it doesn’t actually work—you can’t really write a letter with it. [Koenkun Bricks] decided to rectify this with their own functional design.

Right away, we’ll state that this is not a traditional typewriter. There are no off-the-shelf Lego components with embossed letters on them, so it wasn’t possible to make Lego type bars that could leave an impression on paper with the use of an inked ribbon. Instead, [Koenkun Bricks] decided to build a design that was Lego all the way down, right to the letters themselves. The complicated keyboard-actuated mechanism picks out flat letter tiles and punches them on to a flat Lego plate, creating a plastic document instead of a paper one.

It’s not perfect in operation. It has some issues unique to its mode of operation. Namely, the round letter tiles sometimes rotate the wrong way as they’re feeding through the typewriter’s mechanisms, so you get sideways letters on your finished document. It looks kind of cool, though. Outside of that, sometimes the letter pusher doesn’t quite seat the letter tiles fully on the document plate.

Overall, though, it’s a highly functional and impressive build. We’ve seen some other great DIY typewriters before, too, like this 3D printed build. Video after the break.

[Thanks to hn3000] for the tip!]