Many people who use water cooling in their computer systems like to go full-bore with ‘aquarium’ aesthetic, which includes adding a window to their cooling blocks so that they see the water flowing through the window from behind the case’s window. Traditionally PMMA acrylic is used for these windows, as it’s quite durable and easy […]
[Hans Rosenberg] has a new video talking about a nasty side effect of using resistors: noise. If you watch the video below, you’ll learn that there are two sources of resistor noise: Johnson noise, which doesn’t depend on the construction of the resistor, and 1/f noise, which does vary depending on the material and construction […]
ST’s VL53L5CX is a very small 8×8 grid ranging sensor that can perform distance measurements at a distance of up to 4 meters. In a recent video,[Henrique Ferrolho] demonstrated that this little sensor can also be used to perform a 3D scan of a room. The sensor data can be combined with an IMU to […]
Sometimes you just know that you have the best ever idea for a hardware product, to the point that you’re willing to quit your job and make said product a reality. If only you can get the product and its brilliance to people, it would really brighten up their lives. This was the starry-eyed vision […]
Over on YouTube [Andrew Neal] has a Function Generator Build for Beginners. As beginner videos go this one is fairly comprehensive. [Andrew] shows us how to build a square-wave generator on a breadboard using a 555 timer, explaining how its internal flip-flop is controlled by added resistance and capacitance to become a relaxation oscillator. He […]
[Prof MAD] runs us through The Hidden Power of Inductors — Why Coils Resist Change. The less often used of the passive components, the humble and mysterious inductor is the subject of this video. The essence of inductance is a conductor’s tendency to resist changes in current. When the current is steady it is invisible, […]
When you think of a toy tractor, what probably comes to mind is something with fairly simple lines, maybe the iconic yellow and green, big rear tires, small front ones. Well, that’s exactly what [James] built, with simple, clean lines and a sturdy build that will hold up to driving around off-road in the garden. […]
Although not intended to be a game console, the CD-i would see a a couple of games released for it that would cement its position in gaming history as the butt of countless jokes, some of which still make Nintendo upset to this day. That aside, it’s still a fascinating glimpse at the CD-based multimedia […]
One of the good things about simulating circuits is that you can easily change component values trivially. In the real world, you might use a potentiometer or a pot to provide an adjustable value. However, as [Ralph] discovered, there’s no pot component in LTSpice. At first, he cobbled up a fake pot with two resistors, […]
Famously, the save icon on most computer user interfaces references a fairly obsolete piece of technology: the venerable floppy disk. It’s likely that most people below the age of about 30 have never interacted with one of these once-ubiquitous storage devices, so much so that many don’t recognize the object within the save icon itself […]