Music consumption has followed a trend over the last decade or more of abandoning physical media for online or streaming alternatives. This can present a problem for young children however, for whom a simpler physical interface may be an easier way to play those tunes. Maintaining a library of CDs is not entirely convenient either, […]
Split keyboards are becoming more popular, but because they’re still relatively niche, they can be rather expensive if you want to buy one. So why not make your own? Sure, you could assemble one from a kit, but why not take a cheap mechanical keyboard, slice it in half and just waves hands connect the […]
The Pomdoro technique of time management has moved on a little from the tomato-shaped kitchen timer which gave it a name, as [Rukenshia] shows us with this nifty ESP32 and e-paper design. It’s relatively simple in hardware terms, being a collection of off-the-shelf modules in a 3D printed case, but the software has a custom […]
When the AMSAT-OSCAR 7 (AO-7) amateur radio satellite was launched in 1974, its expected lifespan was about five years. The plucky little satellite made it to 1981 when a battery failure caused it to be written off as dead. Then, in 2002 it came back to life. The prevailing theory being that one of the […]
We recently got a note in the tips line from [Tavis Gustafson], who is one of the developers of Tronbyt — a replacement firmware and self-hosted backend that breaks the Tidbyt smart display free from its cloud dependency. When they started the project, [Tavis] says the intent was simply to let privacy-minded users keep their […]
We ran a story about a wall-mounted plotter bot this week, Mural. It’s a simple, but very well implemented, take on a theme that we’ve seen over and over again in various forms. Two lines, or in this case timing belts, hang the bot on a wall, and two motors drive it around. Maybe a […]
Tektronix must have been quite a place to work back in the 1980s. The company offered a bewildering selection of test equipment, and while the digital age was creeping in, much of their gear was still firmly rooted in the analog world. And some of the engineering tricks the Tek wizards pulled off are still […]
As everyone knows, no matter how many drill bits one owns, one inevitably needs a size that isn’t on hand. Well, if you ever find yourself needing to drill a hole that’s precisely 13 mm, here’s a trick from [AvE] to keep in mind for doing it with a 1/2″ bit. It’s a hack that […]
How do you get images downlinked from 30 km up? Hams might guess SSTV — slow scan TV — and that’s the approach [desafloinventor] took. If you haven’t seen it before (no pun intended), SSTV is a way to send images over radio at a low frame rate. Usually, you get about 30 seconds to […]
[ombates] shares a step-by-step method for making a conductive bio-string from scratch, no fancy equipment required. She demonstrates using it to create a decorative top with touch-sensitive parts, controlling animations on an RGB LED pendant. To top it off, it’s even biodegradable! The string is an alginate-based bioplastic that can be made at home and […]