The lightsaber was one of the coolest and most iconic visual effects from the original Star Wars, and people have been trying to get that particular piece of movie magic off the silver screen for about 40 years now. [HeroTech] seems to have cracked the code with their “Impossible Lightsaber”— it’s fully retractable, fully lit, […]
Have you ever seen photos of retro movie sets where the cameras seem to be bedazzled with lenses? Of course you can only film via one lens at a time, but mounting multiple lenses on a turret as was done in those days has certain advantages –particularly when working with tiny M12 lenses, like our […]
There’s something delightfully sci-fi about any kind of volumetric display. Sure, you know it’s not really a hologram, and Princess Leia isn’t about to pop out and tell you you’re her only hope, but nothing says “this is the future” like an image floating before you in 3D. [Matthew Lim] has put together an interesting […]
We often take for granted how easy it is to get information in today’s modern, Internet-connected world. Especially around electronics projects, datasheets are generally a few clicks away, as are instructions for building almost anything. Not so in the late 80s where ordering physical catalogs of chips and their datasheets was generally required. Mastering this […]
Such are the breadth of functions delivered by integrated circuits, it’s now rare to see a simple small-signal transistor project on these pages. But if you delve back into the roots of solid state electronics you’ll find a host of clever ways to get the most from the most basic of active parts. Everyone was […]
The basic principles of a motion picture film camera should be well understood by most readers — after all, it’s been well over a hundred years since the Lumière brothers wowed 19th century Paris with their first films. But making one yourself is another matter entirely, as they are surprisingly complex and high-precision devices. This […]
One of the lost pleasures of our modern world is the experience of going shopping at a grocery store, a mall, or a drugstore, and finding this month’s electronics magazine festooned with projects that you might like to build. Sure, you can find anything on the Internet, but there’s something to be said about the […]
We always enjoy videos from [w2aew]. His recent entry looks at vertical or VFETs, which are, as he puts it, a JFET that thinks it is a triode. He clearly explains how the transistor works as a conductor unless you bias the gate to form a depletion zone. The transistors have a short channel, which […]
Blaise Pascal is known for a number of things, but we remember him best for the Pascaline, an early mechanical calculator. [Chris Staecker] got a chance to take a close look at one, which is quite a feat since there were only about 20 made, and today we only know where nine of them wound […]
Dial-up modems had a distinctive sound when connecting, with the glittering, screeching song becoming a familiar melody to those jumping online in the early days of the Internet. Modern digital connections don’t really have an analog to this, by virtue of being entirely digital. And yet, [Nick Bild] decided to make WiFi audible in a […]