The familiar five volts standard from back in the TTL days always struck me as odd. Back when I was just a poor kid trying to cobble together my first circuits from the Forrest Mims Engineer’s Notebook, TTL was always a problem. That narrow 4.75 V to 5.25 V spec for Vcc was hard to […]
Taking on a refrigerator-sized minicomputer is not for the faint-hearted, but [Usagi Electric] has done it with a DEC PDP-11/44. He’s not doing it in half measures either, for his machine is tricked out with an impressive array of upgrades. Among them however is no storage, and with two co-processors there’s a meager 3U of […]
Glasses are perhaps the most non-invasive method of vision correction, followed by contact lenses. Each have their drawbacks though, and some seek more permanent solutions in the form of laser eye surgeries like LASIK, aiming to reshape their corneas for better visual clarity. However, these methods often involve cutting into the eye itself, and it […]
Over on brushless.zone, we’ve come across an interesting write-up that details the construction of a dam control system. This is actually the second part, in the first, we learn that some friends purchased an old dysfunctional 80 kW dam with the intention of restoring it. One friend was in charge of the business paperwork, one […]
The completed Lego DVD screensaver. (Credit: Grant Davis, YouTube) There’s something extremely calming and pleasing about watching a screensaver that merely bounces some kind of image around, with the DVD logo screensaver of a DVD player being a good example. The logical conclusion is thus that it would be great to replicate this screensaver in […]
Nature is known for its intense beauty from its patterns and bright colors; however, this requires going outside. Who has time for that insanity!?!? [Bleuje] provides the perfect solution with his mesmerizing display of particle behavior. Agents follow defined paths created by other agents. These patterns of color and structure, based on 36 points, are […]
If you’re going to be a hacker, learning C is a rite of passage. If you don’t have much experience with C, or if your experience is out of date, you very well may benefit from hearing [Nic Barker] explain tips for C programming. In his introduction he notes that C, invented in the 70s […]
It’s often said that one should not reinvent the wheel, but that doesn’t mean that you cannot change how the use of said wheel should be interpreted. After initially taking the rather zany concept of a monowheel for a literal ride, [Sam Barker] decided to shift gears, did a ‘what if’ and slapped a second […]
For those local to the Philadelphia area, a “jawn” can be nearly anything or anyone — and at least for this weekend, it can even be a hacker con building up steam as it enters its third year. Kicking off this Friday at Arcadia University, JawnCon0x2 promises to be another can’t-miss event for anyone with […]
Generally people equate the Arduino hardware platforms with MCU-centric options that are great for things like low-powered embedded computing, but less for running desktop operating systems. This looks about to change with the Arduino Uno Q, which keeps the familiar Uno formfactor, but features both a single-core Cortex-M33 STM32U575 MCU and a quad-core Cortex-A53 Qualcomm […]