In a curious historical twist, the “Twelve days of Christmas” are actually the days of revelry that followed the 25th. The preceding period, Advent, was traditionally a fast, not unlike Lent. When and why a fast became an excuse for chocolate calendars we cannot say, but this historical information is presented to explain that this […]
These days, sim racing is more realistic than ever. There are better screens, better headsets, and better steering wheels with better force-feedback, all of which help make you feel like you’re driving the real thing. If you’re looking for a stick shifter to complete such a setup, [DAZ Projects] might have just what you’re looking […]
Printing metal as easily as it is to printed with thermoplastics has been a dream for a very long time, with options for hobbyists being very scarce. This is something which [Rotoforge] seeks to change, using little more than an old Ender 3 FDM printer and some ingenuity. Best of all is that the approach […]
We seldom talk about 3D printing lenses because most techniques can’t possibly produce transparent parts of optical quality. However, you can 3D print something like a lens, as [Luke Edwin] demonstrates, and get all kinds of crazy pictures out of it. [Luke’s] lens isn’t really a lens, per se. There’s no transparent optical medium being used to […]
Key to efficient hardware emulation is an efficient mapping to the underlying CPU’s opcodes. Here one is free to target opcodes that may or may not have been imagined for that particular use. For emulators like the RPCS3 PlayStation 3 emulator this has led to some interesting mappings, as detailed in a video by [Whatcookie]. […]
Disposable cameras are a fun way to get into classical photography. However, they can also be a valuable source of interesting parts that can be put to other uses. For example, as [Billt] demonstrates, their viewfinders can be repurposed into a rather interesting lens for more serious cameras. [Billt] was lucky enough to score a […]
There are plenty of lovely e-readers out on the market that come with an nice big e-paper display. There aren’t nearly as many that come with two. [Martin den Hoed] developed the Diptyx e-reader with such a design in order to better replicate the paper books of old. The build is based around the ESP32-S3, a powerful […]
If you read about Hall effect sensors — the usual way to detect and measure magnetic fields these days — it sounds deceptively simple. There’s a metal plate with current flowing across it in one direction, and sensors at right angles to the current flow. Can it really be that simple? According to a recent […]
Currently quartz crystal-based oscillators are among the most common type of clock source in electronics, providing a reasonably accurate source in a cheap and small package. Unfortunately for high accuracy applications, atomic clocks aren’t quite compact enough to fit into the typical quartz-based temperature-compensated crystal oscillators (TCXOs) and even quartz-based solutions are rather large. The […]
There’s no accounting for taste, but it’s hard to argue with The Autopian when they declare that this Nixie tube dash by [David Forbes] is “the coolest speedometer of all time” — well, except to quibble that it’s also the coolest tachometer, temperature gauge, oil pressure indicator, and voltmeter. Yeah, the whole instrument cluster is […]