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What Will You Do If WWVB Goes Silent?
Buried on page 25 of the 2019 budget proposal for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), under the heading “Fundamental Measurement, Quantum Science, and Measurement Dissemination”,...
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Cheap FPGA Board Roundup
There’s never been a better time to get into using FPGAs. Nearly all vendors have some level of free software and while boards haven’t gotten as cheap as ones with microcontrollers, the prices are way...
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Turning Everything Into A Tap Controller
Our entire life is staring at glowing rectangles, and all our surroundings are hard, flat surfaces. [Ben] had the idea to turn those flat surfaces into a generic tap interface controller, and his...
View ArticleAutomated Turntable For 3D Scanning
Those just starting out in 3D printing often believe that their next major purchase after the printer will be a 3D scanner. If you’re going to get something that can print a three dimensional model,...
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Plasma Etching In A Microwave
Deep inside your smartphone are a handful of interesting miniature electromechanical devices. The accelerometer is a MEMS device, and was produced with some of the most impressive industrial processes...
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If You Are Planning On Building Your Own Space Shuttle…
One of the most complicated machines ever built was the US space shuttle (technically, the STS or Space Transportation System). Despite the title, we doubt anyone is going to duplicate it. However,...
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Hardware Store White Balance Reference
We live in a time in which taking pictures is preposterously easy: take out your phone (assuming it wasn’t already in your hands), point it at something, and tap the screen. The camera hardware and...
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Better Ways To Drive Nixie Tubes
Ah, Nixie tubes. You’re not cool unless you have a few Nixie tubes sitting around, and you’re not awesome unless you’ve built your own Nixie tube clock. That’s what [Thomas] is doing for his entry...
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Build Your Own Two-Stage Water Rockets
Water rockets are one of the most fun and exciting science-adjacent activities one can take part in during the summer, and are popular with children and adults alike. Designs range from a bike pump...
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An Incredible ATX Amiga 4000 Motherboard
No matter how far modern computer hardware advances, there’s still a fairly large group of people who yearn for the early days of desktop computing. There’s something undeniably appealing about these...
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Cross-Correlation Makes Quick Work Of Ads
Once relegated to the proverbial Linux loving Firefox user, ad blocking has moved into public view among increased awareness of privacy and the mechanisms of advertising on the internet. At the annual...
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Toil in Style With Salvaged Porsche Office Chairs
It seems as if everyone has finally decided to stop pretending that standing in front of a desk for 8+ hours was something anyone actually wanted to do, and once again embrace the classic adjustable...
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Listening To Mains Power
There’s a lot you can tell by looking at the waveform of your mains power. There are harmonics, transient changes, and periodic fluctuations that are correlated to the demand on the grid itself....
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Using Modern Nintendo Controllers On The C64
There are plenty of people out there who still enjoy playing games on vintage computers like the Commodore 64. But while they likely return to these classic games themselves out of a sense of...
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Low-Quality Capacitors Turned Into High-Quality Temperature Sensors
When life hands you a bunch of crummy capacitors, what do you do? Make a whole bunch of temperature sensors, apparently. The less-than-stellar caps in question came to [pyromaniac303] by way of one of...
View ArticleRetro-uC, Your Favorite Instruction Sets On Custom Silicon
A few months ago, we caught wind of an interesting project in Big-O Open silicon. It’s a chip, loaded up with the great CPU cores of yore. Now, it’s finally a project on Crowdsupply. The Retro-uC...
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MIDI Association Releases Spec For TRS Jacks
The MIDI spec was released in 1983, and for more than thirty years every synthesizer, drum machine, and piece of computer hardware with MIDI has sported an enormous DIN-5 jack on the back. Why did...
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You’ve Never See A Solid-State Oscilloscope Like This One
Remember a the time before oscilloscopes had a brain? It’s easy to forget as we’ve become accustomed to a class of simple solid state oscilloscope using a microcontroller as signal processor and a...
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Better Motion Through Electrostatic Actuators
If you want something to move with electricity, odds are you’ll be using magnets. Deep inside every servo, every motor, and every linear actuator is a magnet and some coils of wire. There is another...
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UnMaker 2.0 Is Wile E Coyote’s Dead Blow Hammer
Hammers! They’re good for knocking in nails, breaking things apart, and generally smashing up the joint, if you’re in such a mood. Typically, they’re made of iron or steel and come in a variety of...
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