What do you do if you want a robot with great mobility? Walking is hard, and wheels are good enough, especially if you use the ‘wheels within wheels’ Mecanum setup. But you need torque, too. That’s what makes this entry into the Hackaday Prize so fantastic. It’s a Mecanum wheel of sorts, with an integrated […]
The concept of negative resistance has always fascinated me. Of course, a true negative resistance is not possible, and what is meant is a negative differential resistance (NDR). But of course knowing the correct term doesn’t do anything to demystify the topic. Negative resistance sounds like an unusual effect, but it turns out to be […]
Selecting electronic components can be a frustrating process, one of trawling through the websites of distributors such as DigiKey, Mouser, or RS, and then poring over manufacturer data sheets. These documents produced as detailed guides to the technical specifications of a device contain enough to give an engineer everything they need to incorporate it into […]
Recently there’s been some buzz in the news that Pepsi, or more accurately the company’s Russian division, had partnered with a startup by the name of StartRocket to experiment with the idea of putting “billboards” in space. After overwhelmingly negative response to the idea on social media, Pepsi’s official line is that the StartRocket experiment […]
The world is full of single board computers that want a slice of the Raspberry Pi action. Most of them are terrible. But fools and their money, yadda yadda, and there’s a new sucker born every minute. The latest contender to the Raspberry Pi is the Atomic Pi. It’s an x86-based single board computer that […]
The first Arduino was serial, and over the decade and a half, this has been the default way to upload code to an Arduino board. In 2008, support for in-circuit programmers was added, and later port detection was added. The latest version of the Arduino IDE adds something new: pluggable discovery. Now any protocol is […]
Acrylic is a great material. It’s not cheap, but it comes in a wide variety of colours and styles and can be used to make some very attractive projects. [Geek Mom Projects] is a big fan, and whipped up some fun pendants for a high school Maker Faire. [Geek Mom] has long been a fan […]
Security is something that’s far too often overlooked in embedded devices. One of the main risks is that if the device doesn’t verify the authenticity of incoming firmware updates. [Walter Schreppers] was working on a USB password storage device, so security was paramount. Thus, it was necessary to develop a secure bootloader. [Walter]’s device was […]
The future of the music instrument industry lies in synthesizers, and nowhere is this more apparent than the suite of tiny, pocket-sized synths more than capable of making bleeps and bloops. You’ve got tiny Korgs and Pocket Operators, and the time is ripe for people to wake up to tiny, pocket-sized synths. The latest in […]