This fun PCB from [Nick Brown] features a miniature railroad implemented with 0805-sized LEDs. With an eye towards designing his own fun interactive PCB badge, the Light-Rail began its journey. He thoroughly documented his process, from shunting various late-night ideas together to tracking down discrepancies between the documentation of a part and the received part. […]
[Charmed Labs] are responsible for bringing numerous open-source hardware products to fruition over the years, and their latest device is an adorably small robotic camera platform called Goby, currently crowdfunding for its initial release. Goby has a few really clever design features and delivers a capable (and hackable) platform for under 100 USD. Goby embraces […]
Running a dairy farm used to be a rather hands-on experience, with the farmer required to be around every few hours to milk the cows, feed them, do all the veterinarian tasks that the farmer can do themselves, and so on. The introduction of milking machines in the early 20th century however began a trend […]
No doubt many readers have at times wished to try their hand at blacksmithing, but it’s fair to say that acquiring an anvil represents quite the hurdle. For anyone not knowing where to turn there’s a video from [Black Bear Forge], in which he takes us through a range of budget options. He starts with […]
How it started: a simple repair job on a Roland drum machine. How it ended: a scratch-built FM drum synth module that’s completely analog, and completely cool. [Moritz Klein]’s journey down the analog drum machine rabbit hole started with a Roland TR-909, a hybrid drum machine from the mid-80s that combined sampled sounds with analog […]
If you’ve spent any time on two wheels, you’ve certainly experienced the woes of poor bicycle shifting. You hit the button or twist the knob expecting a smooth transition into the next gear, only to be met with angry metallic clanking that you try to push though but ultimately can’t. Bicycle manufacturers collectively spent millions […]
If you had to guess, what do you think it would take to build an ocean-going buoy that could not only survive on its own without human intervention for more than two years, but return useful data the whole time? You’d probably assume such a feat would require beefy hardware, riding inside an expensive and […]
We’re suckers here for projects that let you see the unseeable, and [Ayden Wardell Aerospace] provides that on a budget with their $30 Schlieren Imaging Setup. The unseeable in question is differences in air density– or, more precisely, differences in the refractive index of the fluid the imaging set up makes use of, in this […]
This project by [Miro] is awesome, not only did he build a replica Enigma machine using modern technologies, but after completing it, he went back and revised several components to make it more usable. We’ve featured Enigma machines here before; they are complex combinations of mechanical and electrical components that form one of the most […]
If your shop comes complete with a MIG welder, an acetylene torch, and an air hammer, then you have more options than most when it comes to removing broken bolts. In this short video [Jim’s Automotive Machine Shop, Inc] takes us through the process of removing a broken manifold bolt: use a MIG welder to […]