If you want to dabble in audio digital signal processing, you would probably think of grabbing a dedicated DSP chip. But thanks to [WeebLabs], you could just pick up a Pi Pico and use this full-featured DSP library. The system supports plug-and-play USB audio interface that enumerates on Windows, Linux, macOS, and iOS. It can handle […]
Many microcontrollers can spit out simple analog video signals if that’s something you desire. However, it normally requires a bit of supporting hardware and, of course, the right connectors to work with your other video equipment. [Arnov Sharma] took that into account when whipping up this neat VGA board for the Raspberry Pi Pico. VGA […]
Ham radio operators may be familiar with slow-scan television (SSTV) where an image is sent out over the airwaves to be received, decoded, and displayed on a computer monitor by other radio operators. It’s a niche mode that isn’t as popular as modern digital modes like FT8, but it still has its proponents. SSTV isn’t […]
An audio amplifier was once a fairly simple analogue device, but in recent decades a typical home entertainment amplifier will have expanded to include many digital functions. When these break they are often proprietary and not easy to repair, as was the case with a broken Pioneer surround-sound device given to [Boz]. It sat on […]
Spectravideo is not exactly the most well-known microcomputer company, but they were nevertheless somewhat active in the US market from 1981 to 1988. Their computers still have a fanbase of users and modders. Now, as demonstrated by [electricadventures], you can actually upgrade your ancient Spectravideo machine with some modern hardware. The upgrade in question is […]
VGA isn’t much used anymore, but it’s not hard to get a hold of monitors with that input. How about the older standards like EGA, CGA, or MDA? Well, it’s good luck on eBay or at the recycling yard to get a period-appropriate monitor, but the bulky, fragile CRTs seem to have been less likely […]
Hyperspectral cameras aren’t commonplace items; they capture spectral data for each of their pixels. While commercial hyperspectral cameras often start in the tens of thousands of dollars, [anfractuosity] decided to make his own with the Waverider. To capture spectral data from every pixel location in the camera, [anfractuosity] first needed a way to collect that […]
Last time, I showed you how to throw together a few modules and make a working macropad that could act like a keyboard or a mouse. My prototype was very simple, so there wasn’t much to debug. But what happens if you want to do something more complex? In this installment, I’ll show you how […]
I recently picked up one of those cheap macropads (and wrote about it, of course). It is surprisingly handy and quite inexpensive. But I felt bad about buying it. Something like that should be easy to build yourself. People build keyboards all the time now, and with a small number of keys, you don’t even […]
We’re all used to emulating older computers here, and we’ve seen plenty of projects that take a cheap microcontroller and use it to emulate a classic home computer or gaming platform. They’re fun, but serve mostly as a way to relive old toys. As microcontrollers become faster though it’s inevitable that the machines they can […]