2026-02-28 17:00:22
Sodium Chloride has a melting point of 801 C (1,474 F), putting it comfortably between commonly-cast materials like aluminum and bronze. Which led to [Robinson Foundry] asking the question: can you cast salt like a metal? The answer, surprisingly, was yes!
[Robinson] tries casting the salt with two different methods: like it was glass, and like it was metal. In the glass-like casting, he packs a ceramic mold with salt and tosses it into an electric kiln, there to melt and very slowly cool. In metal-like casting, he just tosses salt into a crucible and melts it in the same beer-can kiln we saw when we featured his lost-pla casting a while back. The molten salt is poured very carefully into sand casting molds. If you’re familiar with the technique, you can skip to about 5:20 when he does the reveal.
As it turns out, the sand casting works out much better. While the glass-style casting in the electric kiln grew much larger crystals and so is more translucent, it’s also stuck completely inside the porous ceramic. Perhaps the ceramic would need glazed to pull off that technique?
On the other hand, the sand reacts with the salt in some way– molten salt isn’t exactly a noble gas, after all–to create a lovely gunmetal finish to the parts. They almost look like metal, though the brittleness gives away the game when he opens the mold to show a dagger in several pieces. For the decorative busts and megalodon teeth in the test, though, it is a great success.
Now, we’re not going to say this video came about because of high metal prices, or comment on what sort of trade policies might be driving up the price of metals like aluminum in the USA, but we do think this a great hack. While salt-based castings are obviously going to have very different physical properties than metal, for decorative work, it creates a lovely finish out of a material that’s cheap as dirt. Hopefully he comes back to the glass-style casting; we would not want to trust that black coating around food, and a salt crystal salt shaker sounds too good to pass up.
The only times we’ve seen molten salt around here is in nuclear reactors, and in homemade batteries, though that first one obviously wasn’t table salt.
2026-02-28 14:00:28
[Joshua Clay] recently unveiled his newest RC Nerf Dart Robot and talks through his design choices, pointing out that in his aim to have it launch darts fast and hard he may have somewhat overshot the mark. He found out first hand during testing that it shoots hard enough to leave welts through a sweatshirt and probably should be downgraded a bit. Thankfully, one of the features of his new unit is a highly modular design that makes iterating easier than ever.
This model is an evolution of his first Nerfbot, and the new one is a smaller, tighter design that trades a wheeled base for a tracked one, among other changes.
The tank platform is one example of [Joshua] using affordable, off-the-shelf solutions where it makes sense to do so. For example, the inexpensive tank-track platform means he can focus on the rest of the bot without having to design or make his own tank treads. Similarly, to control the bot he opts for a PlayStation 4 controller, paired to the bot over Bluetooth. It’s high quality, inexpensive, commonly available, and easily interfaced with the RP2040 that runs the show.
[Joshua] aims for a modular, LEGO-inspired mechanical assembly that makes maintenance, wiring, and iteration as easy as possible. We especially like how the battery, wiring, and things like gears for the pan-and-tilt mechanism of the Nerf launcher are easily accessible.
The dart launcher uses two flywheels to grip and propel each dart fed from a high-capacity magazine, and you can watch it move and shoot around the 9:44 mark in the video, embedded below. It’s plenty loud, but the camera is barely able to register darts leaving the barrel.
If you like the looks of [Joshua]’s newest Nerfbot, keep an eye out because he’s got more to share about it and is considering other features like a camera. In the meantime, there are a few more photos on his website.
2026-02-28 11:00:03
Philco was a common household brand for many years. The company started in 1892, making street lights. Then they pivoted to batteries. This was big business when early radios were all battery-operated. But in the 1920s, line-powered radios threatened to shrink their customer base, so they pivoted again. This time, they started making radios. So what happened? [The Last Shift] has the story, and you can see the video below.
Philco used advanced manufacturing techniques to make radios more affordable. By 1930, they were the number one radio maker in the world. After World War II, they moved into everything electric: mostly appliances, but also the new king of the electronics market, the television.
Philco faced much competition and wanted to stand out. The answer was the Predicta, a TV like no other at the time. It used an advanced semi-flat picture tube with a plastic coating. The 17-inch or 21-inch picture tube was detached from the TV itself. In one model, the tube sat on top of the TV with a swivel mount. In a pricier variant, the tube connected to the TV with a 25-foot cable. Who needs a remote control? Put the TV by your recliner and change channels while watching the screen across the room.
The physical design was unique and in demand. The problem was that the semi-flat tube was unreliable. It was also black-and-white in a time when color TV burst on the scene. They made the set from 1959 to 1960 and discontinued it due to lower demand and high warranty service costs. By 1962, Philco was bankrupt.
Ford (the motor company) bought the company and used it as a vehicle for defense work (including NASA) and car radios. By 1974, the company was sold again to GTE. The giant factory in Philadelphia was razed.
We know of at least one famous collector of Predictas. If you wanted real remote control, you could get a more conventional Philco Directa at about the same time. It used a mechanical ultrasonic remote similar to the Zenith Space Command system.
2026-02-28 08:00:29
Having an AI assistant is all the rage these days, but AI assistants usually don’t know about your automation setups and may have difficulty dealing with tasks asynchronously. Enter zclaw. It gives you the option to have a personal assistant on an ESP32 backed by Anthropic, OpenAI, or OpenRouter. The whole thing fits in 888KB, and while it doesn’t host the LLM, it does add key capabilities to monitor and control devices connected to the ESP32.
You communicate with the assistant via telegram. You can say things like “Remember the garage sensor is on GPIO 4.” Then later you might say: “In 20 minutes, check the garage sensor and if it is high, set GPIO 5 low.” It has an RTOS for scheduling tasks and is aware of the timezone and common periods. Memory persists across reboots, and you can pick different personas.
Some of the use cases mentioned in the manual show how having something that can precisely schedule, control, or monitor devices might pay off. Ideas like bringing up a lab setup, scheduling plant watering, and more would be difficult to do with just a stock chatbot.
The AI can also introspect. For example, you could create a few tasks on a schedule and then ask the device to “show me my schedules.” You can also create up to 8 tools with a name, description, and action. This lets you describe something like “power_down_bench” and then tell zclaw to execute it on demand or even on a schedule. Overall, an interesting and well-documented setup.
We’ve seen many projects like this, and each has its own charm. And its own personality.
2026-02-28 05:00:15
Recently the Myrient game video archive announced that they’re shutting down on March 31st of this year, for a couple of reasons, but primarily the skyrocketing financial costs of hosting the archive. One advantage of Myrient over e.g. Archive.org is that – per the FAQ – every game on the site is curated and checked against a checksum of a known good copy. The site also focuses on fast downloads, making it a good resource if you’re trying to find ROMs of some more obscure old gaming system.
Amidst the mourning it seems also pertinent to address the reasons behind this shutdown. Although finances are the main reason for this hobby project to be shut down, it’s due to (paywalled) download managers that have recently appeared, and which completely bypass the donation requests and similar on the website. Despite use of Myrient for commercial, for-profit purposes having always been explicitly forbidden, this has been ignored to the point where the owner of Myrient had to shell out over $6,000 per month to cover the difference after donations.
Along with the rising costs of hosting due to rising storage and RAM prices courtesy of AI datacenter buildouts, this has meant that a hobby archive like this has become completely unsustainable. Barring good ways to block illegal traffic like these download tools and/or a surge in donations, it would seem that all archives like this are at risk of shutting down, along with other sites that contain commercially interesting content.
2026-02-28 03:30:27
Animatronic displays aren’t just for Halloween, and hackers today have incredible access to effective, affordable parts with which to make spectacles of light, sound, and movement. But the hardware is only half the battle. Getting everything synchronized properly can be a daunting task, so get a head start on your next holiday display with the Hauntimator by [1031-Systems].
After all, synchronizing movements, sound, and light by trial and error can get tiresome even in small setups. Anyone who makes such a display — and contemplates doing it twice — tends to quickly look into making things modular.
At its heart, Hauntimator works with a Raspberry Pi Pico-based controller board. The GUI makes it easy to create control channels for different hardware (for example, doing things like moving servos) and synchronize them to audio. Once an animation is validated, it gets uploaded to the control board where it runs itself. It’s open-source and designed to make plugins easy, so give it a look. There’s a video channel with some demonstrations of the tools that should fill in any blanks.
Intrigued by animatronics, but not sure where to begin? Get inspired by checking out this DIY set of servo-driven eyes, and see for yourself the benefits of smooth motor control for generating lifelike motion.
