HackSpace magazine — Issue 81

Small circuits can do much more than blink. In HackSpace magazine — Issue 81, electronics becomes a starting point for inventive builds, useful workshop techniques, and projects that mix code with hands-on craft. This August 2024 issue gathers 50 electronics projects, with room for both familiar maker territory and some less expected connections.

Fifty ways to make electronics tangible

The issue moves across microcontrollers, LEDs, circuit design, and practical builds. KiCad tutorials look at PCB design, while other projects explore RGB LEDs, no-code LED control, and a Raspberry Pi Pico. The emphasis is on seeing how electronic components can become part of something made, rather than treating circuits as an end in themselves.

From a self-playing piano to a solar water bottle

Featured projects bring electronics into surprising forms: an automatic piano puts a modern spin on a musical mechanism, and a solar water bottle applies UV LEDs to the idea of water treatment. There’s also an e-paper music player project, an arc-reactor-inspired alarm clock, and a look at ways to add movement and interaction to maker builds.

Workshop skills, with room for yarn

Beyond circuits, tutorials cover laser-cutting jigs, tin-can enclosures, doming blocks, and robot arms. Mathematical crochet offers a different route into precision making—proof that a maker’s toolkit needn’t stop at electronics or 3D printing.

A magazine for curious makers

Interviews, project showcases, letters, crowdfunding coverage, and a Prusa MMU3 review round out the issue. It’s a broad, browsable mix for electronics hobbyists and makers who like learning a technique, seeing how someone else solved a problem, and then applying the idea to a build of their own.