Over on his YouTube channel our hacker [CircuitValley] repairs an old TDS8000 scope. The TDS8000 was manufactured by Tektronix circa 2001 and was also marketed as the CSA8000 Communications Signal Analyzer as well as the TDS8000 Digital Sampling Oscilloscope. Tektronix is no longer manufacturing and selling these scopes but the documentation is still available from […]
Here’s a great hack sent in to us from [Simon]. He uses an e-paper photo frame as a weather map! By now you are probably aware of e-paper technology, which is very low power tech for displaying images. E-paper only uses energy when it changes its display, it doesn’t draw power to maintain a picture […]
When [Ben Eater] talks, hackers everywhere listen. In his latest video [Ben] shows us how to make computer noises using square waves and a 6502 microprocessor. [Ben] uses the timer in the W65C22 Versatile Interface Adapter to generate the square waves which generate a tone. He then adds support for a new BEEP command into […]
There’s a famous old story about [Charles Steinmetz] fixing a generator for [Henry Ford]. He charged a lot of money for putting a chalk X in the spot that needed repair. When [Ford] asked for an itemization, the bill read $1 for the chalk, and the balance for knowing where to draw the X. With […]
Over on his YouTube channel our hacker [Yuchi] is building an STM32 BLDC motor winding machine. This machine is for winding brushless motors because manual winding is highly labor intensive. The machine in turn is made from four brushless motors. He is using the SimpleFOC library to implement closed-loop angle control. Closed-loop torque control is […]
The Franck–Hertz experiment was a pioneering physics observation announced in 1914 which explained that energy came in “packets” which we call “quanta”, marking the beginning of quantum physics. Recently, [Markus Bindhammer] wrote in to let us know he had redone the experiment for himself. In the original experiment a mercury vacuum tube was used, but […]
Balancing robots are always fun to see, as they often take forms we’re not used to, such as a box standing on its corner. This project, submitted by [Alexchunlin], showcases a cool single motor reaction cube, where he dives into many lessons learned during its creation. At the outset, [Alexchunlin] thought this would be a […]
Today in old school nostalgia our tipster [Clint Jay] wrote in to let us know about this rotary dial. If you’re a young whippersnapper you might never have seen a rotary dial. These things were commonly used on telephones back in the day, and they were notoriously slow to use. The way they work is […]
Our hacker [Valve Child] wrote in to let us know about his Back to the Future lunchbox cyberdeck. Great Scott! This is so awesome. We’re not sure what we should say, or where we should begin. A lot of you wouldn’t have been there, on July 3rd, 1985, nearly forty years ago. But we were […]