IO user [monte] was pointed towards an 1898 display patent issued to a [George Mason] and liked the look of the ‘creepy’ font it defined. The layout used no less than 21 discrete segments to display the complete roman alphabet and numerals, which is definitely not possible with the mere seven segments we are all […]
When your steam engine build requires multiple microscopes, including those of the scanning electron variety, you know you’re building something really, really tiny. All of the usual tiny superlatives and comparisons apply to [Chronova Engineering]’s latest effort — fits on a pencil eraser, don’t sneeze while you’re working on it or you’ll never find it. […]
[Breaking Taps] has a look at “parkerization” — a process to coat steel to prevent rust. While you commonly see this finish in firearms, it is usable anywhere you need some protection for steel parts. The process is relatively easy. It does require heat and a special manganese solution made for the purpose. You scuff […]
While it’s the ideal choice for mass production, injection molding is simply no good for prototyping. The molds are expensive and time-consuming make, so unless you’ve got the funding to burn tens of thousands of dollars on producing new ones each time you make a tweak to your design, they’re the kind of thing you […]
The bulbs inside scanners (before transitioning to LED, anyway) were cold cathode fluorescent tubes that emit a fairly wide bandwidth of light. They were purpose-built to produce a very specific type and shape of light, but [Julius Curt] has taken this in a new, upcycled direction. Instead of just producing light, the light itself is […]
Beyond the power variant, it sometimes seems as though we rarely encounter a discrete transistor these days, such has been the advance of integrated electronics. But they have a rich history, going back through the silicon era to germanium junction transistors, and thence to the original devices. if you’ve ever looked at the symbol for […]
Usually, when you need to sense something in a project, the answers are straightforward. Want to sense air temperature? There’s a sensor for that. Particulate content in the air? There’s a sensor for that, too. Someone sneaking up on you? Get yourself some passive infrared sensors (PIRs) and maybe a smart camera just to be […]
If there’s a constant in the world of electronics, it’s change. Advancements and breakthroughs mean that what was once state-of-the-art all too soon finds itself collecting dust. But there are exceptions. Perhaps because they’re so much more visible to us than other types of components, many styles of displays have managed to carve out their […]
NEMA-17 steppers are (almost) a dime a dozen. They’re everywhere, they’re well-known to hackers and makers, and yet they’re still a bit hard to integrate into projects. That’s because the motor alone isn’t much use, and by the time you find or build a driver and integrate it with a microcontroller, you’ve probably expended more […]
The new Raspberry Pi Pico 2 with its RP2350 microcontroller has only been with us for a short time, and thus its capabilities are still being tested. One of the new peripherals is HSTX, for which the description “High speed serial port” does not adequately describe how far it is from the humble UART which […]