Plywood is an interesting material: made up of many layers of thin wood plys, it can be built up into elegantly curved shapes. Do you need to limit it to just wood, though? [Zach of All Trades] has proved you do not, when he embedded a light guide, LEDs, microcontrollers and touch sensors into a […]
As the saying goes, modern problems require modern solutions. When the modern problem is that your smart light is being hijacked by the neighbors, [Wjen]’s modern solution is to reverse engineer and replace the mainboard. The light in question is a Phillips Hue Ambiance, and [Wjen]’s excellently-documented six part series takes us through the process […]
The RP2350 has a few advantages over its predecessor, one of which is the ability to load firmware remotely via UART, as [Thomas Pfilser] has documented on his blog and in the video below. [Thomas] had a project that needed more PWM than the RP2350 could provide, and hit upon the idea of using a […]
The Intel 8051 series of 8-bit microcontrollers is long-discontinued by its original manufacturer, but lives on as a core included in all manner of more recent chips. It’s easy to understand and program, so it remains a fixture despite much faster replacements appearing. If you can’t find an original 40-pin DIP don’t worry, because [mit41301] […]
Morse code can be daunting to learn when you’re new to the game, particularly if you need it to pass your desired radio license. However, these days, there are a great many tools to aid in the learning process. A good example is the Morse Master from [Arnov Sharma]. The Morse Master is a translator […]
Recently [Glen Akins] reported on Bluesky that the Zigbee-based sensor he had made for his garden’s rear gate was still going strong after a Summer and Winter on the original 2450 lithium coin cell. The construction plans and design for the unit are detailed in a blog post. At the core is the MS88SF2 SoM […]
A quadrature encoder provides a way to let hardware read movement (and direction) of a shaft, and they can be simple, effective, and inexpensive devices. But [Paulo Marques] observed that when it comes to reading motor speeds with them, what works best at high speeds doesn’t work at low speeds, and vice versa. His solution? […]
The Star Trek tricorder was a good example of a McGuffin. It did anything needed to support the plot or, in some cases, couldn’t do things also in support of the plot. We know [SirGalaxy] was thinking about the tricorder when he named the Tinycorder, but the little device has a number of well-defined features. […]
The advantage of a radio-controlled clock that receives the time signal from WWVB is that you never have to set it again. Whether it’s a little digital job on your desk, or some big analog wall clock that’s hard to access, they’ll all adjust themselves as necessary to keep perfect time. But what if the […]