Although we generally assume that opacity is the normal look for animals like us humans, this factoid is only correct for as long as you maintain the dissimilar optical refraction indices of skin and the more aqueous underlying structures. What if you could change the refraction index of skin? If you could prevent the normal […]
While version control used to be reserved for big corporate projects, it is very mainstream these days. You can attribute much of that to Git, the software that has nearly displaced other version control. Git works well, it is versatile, and it scales well. It is easy to use as an individual developer or as […]
Whenever you buy a servo, it usually comes with a little baggie full of various plastic horns. Most of us pick our favorite and use it in our projects. Some of us hack them up, glue them back together, and do all kinds of weird things with them. And others skip them entirely, going for […]
Look, if something happened to you every three weeks or so to basically turn you into a different person and factored heavily into whether any new humans were created, you’d probably want to keep abreast of the schedule, yeah? Yeah. So, while there are, of course, a ton of ways to do this with your […]
As technology progresses, we generally expect processing capabilities to scale up. Every year, we get more processor power, faster speeds, greater memory, and lower cost. However, we can also use improvements in software to get things running on what might otherwise be considered inadequate hardware. Taking this to the extreme, while large language models (LLMs) […]
Polypropylene (PP) is a thermoplastic that has a number of properties that sets it apart from other thermoplastics which see common use with 3D printing, including PLA, ABS and nylon (PA). Much like ABS (and the similar ASA), it is a pretty touchy material to print, especially on FDM printers. Over at the [All3DP] site […]
The Bluetooth SIG recently released the core specification for version 6.0 of Bluetooth. Compared to 5.x, it contains a number of changes and some new features, the most interesting probably being Channel Sounding. This builds upon existing features found in Bluetooth 5.x to determine the angle to, and direction of another device using Angle of […]
It’s 2024, and there’s no getting around it. Grid energy is expensive. [Darrell] realized that a lot of his money was going on water heating, and he came up with a neat solution. What if he could hack in some solar power to slash his bills at a minimum of fuss? It worked so well […]
We’ve seen a great many cat feeders over the years. Some rely on the Internet of Things, and some rely on fancy microcontrollers. [Larry Cook], on the other hand, built his using a simple 4060 binary counter chip. The feeder is built out of old plywood, and the whole thing runs off an old 12-volt […]