Today, we take office software suites for granted. But in the 1970s, you were lucky to have a typewriter and access to a photocopier. But in the early 1980s, IBM rolled out PROFS — the Professional Office System — to try to revolutionize the office. It was an offshoot of an earlier internal system. The […]
Luna 9 was the first spacecraft to soft-land on the moon. In 1966, the main spacecraft ejected a 99-kg lander module that used a landing bag to survive impact. The problem is, given the technology limitations of 1966, no one is exactly sure where it is now. But it looks like that’s about to change. […]
Sometimes you’re looking for a component for a project that you know should exist, but you just cannot find it. Something like a 14-segment LED display, but not just one with a fixed color, instead you want some of that sweet addressable RGB-ness. Unfortunately for [EastMakes], this particular display was nowhere to be found, so […]
Sometimes the simplest objects need some overthinking. This is exactly what [Chris Borge] realized when using his 3D scanner and finding that the included rotation table left quite a bit to be desired — providing him the perfect excuse to build a new one. One of the main features of a rotation stage is the, […]
Airport runways seem pretty simple, just another strip of asphalt or concrete not unlike the roads that our cars drive upon every day. We can even use these same highways as landing strips in a pinch, so you’d assume that the engineering for either isn’t that dissimilar. Of course, you can use a highway for […]
The door sensor in its new enclosures. (Credit: Dillan Stock) A common sight in ‘smart homes’, door sensors allow you to detect whether a door is closed or open, enabling the triggering of specific events. Unfortunately, most solutions for these sensors are relatively bulky and hard to miss, making them a bit of a eyesore. […]
When [101 Things] didn’t want to copy Morse code, he decided to build a Pi Pico system to read it for him. On the face of it, this doesn’t seem particularly hard, until you look at the practical considerations. With perfectly timed dots and dashes, it would be trivial. But in real life, you get […]
As popular as the game of chess is, it has one massive flaw. This being that it requires two participants, which can be a challenge. Although playing chess on a computer against an AI has been a thing for many decades, it’s hard to beat physical chess boards that give you all the tactile pleasure […]
There are many adapters, dongles, and cables designed for interfacing display standards, and no doubt some of you have them in the glue of your entertainment system or work space. They’re great for standards, but what about something that’s not quite standard? [Stephen] has an arcade cabinet with a CRT that runs at an unusual […]
When it comes to knowledge there are things you know as facts because you have experienced them yourself or had them verified by a reputable source, and there are things that you know because they are common knowledge but unverified. The former are facts, such as that a 100mm cube of water contains a litre […]