The Raspberry Pi has been a revolutionary computer in the maker space, providing a full Linux environment, GUI, and tons of GPIO and other interfacing protocols at a considerably low price. This wasn’t its original intended goal, though. Back in the early 2010s it was supposed to be an educational tool for students first, not […]
The Roland SP-404 Mk2 is a popular groovebox that can deliver a great beat if you know how to use it. If you’re seeking greater control than is available out of the box, though, you might like to try a custom pedal built by [Romain Dereu]. The concept is simple enough—[Romain] whipped up a bespoke […]
The PiStorm is nothing new; if you’re familiar with the retrocomputer scene, you’ve probably heard of it. By replacing the 68k processor in an old Amiga (or some models of Atari) the PiStorm accelerator gives a multiple order of magnitude speedup. It’s even a reversable mod, plugging in where the original CPU was. What’s not […]
Most solar lights are cheap garbage that exist just to put more microplastics into the environment as they degrade in short order. [Jeremy Cook] built his own solar light, however, and this one might just last a little longer. Most solar lights rely on the cheapest nickel-cadmium or nickel-metal hydride cells that are available on […]
For a full-fledged, bells-and-whistles driving simulator a number of unique human interface devices are needed, from pedals and shifters to the steering wheel. These steering wheels often have force feedback, with a small motor inside that can provide resistance to a user’s input that feels the same way that a steering wheel on a real […]
In the 1970s CPUs still had wildly different approaches to basic features, with the Intel 8086 being one of them. Whereas the 6502 used separate circuits for operations, and the Intel 8085 a clump of reconfigurable gates, the 8086 uses microcode that configures the ALU along with two lookup tables. This complexity is one of […]
Over the past years there have appeared in the media increasingly more alarming reports about micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs) and the harm that they are causing not only in the environment, but also inside our bodies. If some of the published studies were to be believed, then MNPs are everywhere inside our bodies, from our […]
Why press many button when few button do trick? That was the thinking of [Bike Cook Robots] when it came time to revamp his desk. To that end, he whipped up a tidy macropad to make daily computing tasks easier. The build is based around an Adafruit RP2040 Feather ThinkInk devboard, chosen because it plugs […]
Like many of you, I have a hard time getting rid of stuff. I’ve got boxes and boxes of weirdo bits and bobs, and piles of devices that I’ll eventually get around to stripping down into even more bits and bobs. Despite regular purges — I try to bring a car-load of crap treasure to […]