Hackaday Europe 2026: The 1-Bit CPU That Ran Factories

Powered machinery started the industrial revolution, and it was automation that kicked it up another notch in the 20th century. The ability for machines to make things by themselves spurred increased output and in turn boosted economic growth. The concept became widely popular for manufacturers to implement, as any change with serious economic benefit tends to do. Fast forward to today, and advanced robots and fancy machine vision systems running on powerful computers are the norm in modern factories which create the many wonderful products that we all purchase, use, and enjoy.

Once upon a time, though, things weren’t so sophisticated. [Nicola Cimmino] came to Hackaday Europe 2026 to tell us all about a remarkably simple 1-bit CPU that used to run factories.

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Hackaday Europe 2026: Open Source Hardware Goes Underground, Literally

These days open source is everywhere, and frankly, we couldn’t be happier about it. But even with as prevalent as open software and hardware has become, we still occasionally hear about a project that takes the concept somewhere unexpected. Which is precisely why we were so eager to hear more about the fascinating work [Phil Underwood] has been doing.

In his talk Open Source Caving: 20 Years of Making Cave Mapping Tools at Hackaday Europe 2026, [Phil] takes us through a series of progressively more advanced open hardware devices that he’s designed to increase the speed and accuracy of underground mapping efforts. Along the way, he’s learned a number of valuable lessons about designing hardware that’s robust enough to handle the uniquely challenging environment underground while still being accessible enough for a hobbyist to build and use.

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Hackaday Europe 2026: Is Your Blood Pressure Monitor Lying To You?

Blood pressure is one of the so-called “vital signs” that medical practitioners use to determine the basic state of a patient in any given moment. It’s exactly what it sounds like—a measurement of the pressure of the blood flowing through the body, with some complications to account for the pulsatile nature of human blood flow.

You might think measuring blood pressure is a solved concern, and it mostly is. With that said, some blood pressure monitors out there aren’t quite doing their job properly, and [Milos Rasic] came to Hackaday Europe 2026 to spell out the problem.

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Hackaday Europe 2026: Building A Retro PC From Scratch

If you’re big into retrocomputing, you probably spend a lot of time chasing parts and machines on online classifieds or through local swap meets. But what if there was a different way to build a classic retro PC? What if you could put one together from bare chips, from the ground up?

[Jeroen Domburg] is no stranger to the pages of Hackaday. You might know him by his alias, [sprite_tm], under which he’s shared many projects, from miniaturizing old hardware to unearthing the secrets of undocumented commercial hardware. Now, he’s turning his considerable skills to figuring out how to build a retro PC in today’s world, and came to Hackaday Europe 2026 to show us all how it’s done.

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Amazing Stories

The 2026 installment of Hackaday Europe was last weekend, and I’m still basking in the warm glow of hanging out with such an inspiring group of hackers. It’s hard to emphasize how important it is, maybe especially for those of us on the inside of Hackaday, to get to nerd out together like that. While we do our best to present your stories on our pages, there is just no substitute for getting to talk about projects, hacks, and dreams in real life.

While we can’t bring you all of the side-conversations that took place, we did manage to get the talks recorded, and we’ll be writing them up shortly. We have some bad news on that front, though: due to a technical limitation with the setup that the university had in place, we only got the audio and slide feeds, and not the camera that should have been filming the presenters. Still, we have a record of most everything that went down on the main stage, so stay tuned.

We know that not everyone can make it out to either Supercon or Hackaday Europe, but we heartily recommend keeping your eyes out for local hacker events near you. This weekend, there’s Open Hardware Summit in Berlin, for instance. If you’re near NYC, there’s HOPE coming up in August. If your tastes run more toward retrocomupting, there might be a Vintage Computer Festival chapter near you. Heck, consider looking into some of the more mainstream events as well, if that’s what is in your neighborhood.

It’s definitely more of an effort to get out to an event in the physical world, but the connections you make with fellow hackers are absolutely worth it. Any events that we should know about?

2026 Hackaday Europe: Pre-party, More Workshops, And Everything Else

With Hackaday Europe no more than two days away, we want to help you wrap up all of the last loose ends. And that means last-minute changes in the workshop schedule, details on the Friday night pre-party, and more! Some tickets for the event itself, the workshops, and the pre-party (reservations required) are still available right here.

Pre-Party, Friday May 15th

Kick off the weekend with us at the official Hackaday Europe pre-party at Soqquadro Restaurant, Piazza Era 7, 23900 Lecco, Italy. Enjoy the Italian aperitivi on the gorgeous Lago di Lecco waterfront. Your ticket includes two drinks and an array of delicious snacks. It’s the Italian way to pregame the weekend ahead. Bring a hack, or just relax and hang out. Your choice. Either way, make sure you pre-register. (On the preregistration page, scroll all the way down past the workshops.)

Workshops

Unfortunately, the Let’s Mesh workshop has been canceled, but the good news, thanks to our incredible sponsors, we’ve added two great new workshops to the lineup. On Saturday, May 16th, we’ll have Tiny Tapeout, When Code Needs a Body, and Fault Injection 101. Sunday features EchoGlow: Arduino UNO Q Workshop with the brand-new Arduino Q devices, from 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM.

Tickets and full descriptions are available at registration.

Lightning Talks

On Sunday afternoon, we’ll dedicate some time to Lightning Talks. These are short, seven-minute talks, with or without slides, on whatever interests you at the moment. If you’ve got hacks or deep thoughts to share with us, you’ll never find a more receptive audience. Register now! Talk slots are FIFO.

Thanks, and See You Soon!

If you’ve never attended a Hackaday event before, we’re excited to see you. Half the fun is the crowd that convenes. If you want to bring along a hack to informally show-and-tell, it’s a great icebreaker. You won’t have to bring food or drinks – we’ve got that covered all weekend.

If you’re an old Hackaday hand, we’re stoked to see you again! A first at Hackaday Europe is going to be whatever large fraction of our SAO collection fits into carry-on luggage, and a sweet-looking SAO wall made by Hackaday Superfriend [Thomas Flummer]. If you have an SAO that you’d like to add to our pile, bring it along! It’s about time for us to do a photo gallery and write-up of everything we’ve got.

And we can’t leave without thanking our broad array of sponsors who make Hackaday Europe possible:

Hackaday Europe: Last Round Of Speakers, Workshops

If you don’t already have your tickets to Hackaday Europe, pick them up now. The clock is ticking! Today, we’d like to announce our keynote speaker, the remainder of our featured talks, and two more workshops. (And if you want workshop tickets, which always go fast, get those soon!)

Hackaday Europe is super excited to welcome back Hackaday Superfriend [Sprite_tm] to kick off the event with a keynote talk on how he made a retrogaming PC from bare silicon. Don’t miss it.

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