For serious high-voltage plasma, you need a serious transformer. [Jay Bowles] from Plasma Channel is taking his projects to the next level, so he built a beefy 6000:1 flyback transformer. [Jay] first built a driving circuit for his dream transformer, starting with a simple 555 circuit and three MOSFETs in parallel to handle 90 A […]
[Peter Demchenko] wanted to use a low power TS555 in an ESR meter design. The problem is, he needed to handle significant current sink requirements for cases where the capacitor under test had a low ESR. The TS555 wasn’t up to the task. However, [Peter] made an interesting observation. the output pin of the device […]
To drive a MOSFET requires more than merely a logic level output, there’s a requirement to charge the device’s gate which necessitates a suitable buffer amplifier. A variety of different approaches can be taken, from a bunch of logic buffers in parallel to a specialised MOSFET driver, but [Mr. T’s Design Graveyard] is here with […]
Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys talk turkey on the latest hacks. Random numbers, art, and electronic geekery combine into an entropic masterpiece. We saw Bart Dring bring new life to a cool little multi-pen plotter from the Atari age. Researchers at UCSD built a very very very slow soft robot, and a broken […]
When an earthquake strikes, it’s usually hard to miss. At least that’s the case with the big ones; the dozens or hundreds of little quakes that go largely unnoticed every day are interesting too, and make sense to track. That’s usually left to the professionals, with racks of sensitive equipment and a far-flung network of […]
One thing that always means the end of the year is close is the reappearance of TV ads for “The Clapper.” After all, who needs home automation when you can clap on and clap off? While we’re partial to our usual home automation solutions, [Utsource123] shows us that building a clapper can be a fun […]
A frequent beginner project involves measuring soil moisture levels by measuring its resistance with a couple of electrodes. These electrodes are available ready-made as PCBs, but suffer badly from corrosion. Happily there is a solution in the form of capacitive sensor probes, and it is these that [Electrobob] is incorporating in to a home automation […]
Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys wade through the fun hacks of the week. Looks like Google got caught ripping off song lyrics (how they got caught is the hack) and electric cars are getting artificially noisier. We look at 3D Printing directly from used plastic, and building a loom with many hundreds of […]
Some of us are guilty of picking up questionable hardware from garage sales, fleamarkets, and well-meaning relatives. There is a balance between turning down a good investment and hoarding, and if we figure out how to tell the difference you will be the first to know. [Clem Mayer] may start on the side of unwise […]
Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys take a look at advances in photogrammetry (building 3D models out of many photographs from a regular camera), a delay pedal that’s both aesthetically and aurally pleasing, and the power of AI to identify garden slugs. Mike interviews Scotty Allen while walking the streets and stores of the Shenzhen Electronics […]