If you cultivate an interest in building radios it’s likely that you’ll at some point make a simple receiver. Perhaps a regenerative receiver, or maybe a direct conversion design, it’ll take a couple of transistors or maybe some simple building-block analogue ICs. More complex designs for analogue radios require far more devices; if you’re embarking […]
Unless you are over a certain age, you probably take it for granted that electronic gadgets you buy have some FCC marking on them. But it wasn’t always true. [Ernie] submits that the FCC’s regulation of the computer industry was indirectly the result of the success of CB radio in that same time period. Today, […]
Back in 1966, a suitable toy for a geeky kid was a radio kit. You could find simple crystal radio sets or some more advanced ones. But some lucky kids got the Philips Electronic Engineer EE8 Kit on Christmas morning. [Anthony Francis-Jones] shows us how to build a 2-transistor AM radio from a Philips Electronic […]
Any radio amateur will tell you about the spectre of TVI, of their transmissions being inadvertently demodulated by the smallest of non-linearity in the neighbouring antenna systems, and spewing forth from the speakers of all and sundry. It’s very much a thing that the most unlikely of circuits can function as radio receivers, but… teeth? […]
If I’m honest with myself, I don’t really need access to an off-grid, fault-tolerant, mesh network like Meshtastic. The weather here in New Jersey isn’t quite so dynamic that there’s any great chance the local infrastructure will be knocked offline, and while I do value my privacy as much as any other self-respecting hacker, there’s […]
Some parts of the world still have ample 2G coverage; for those of in North America, 2G is long gone and 3G has either faded into dusk or beginning its sunset. The legendary [dosdude1] shows us it need not be so, however: Building a Custom 2G GSM Cellular Base Station is not out of reach, […]
Have you ever wanted to find a Bluetooth device out in the wild while looking like the comic relief character from a science-fiction series? You might like Dendrite, the direction-finding hat from [SolidStat3]. Dendrite is intended for hunting down Bluetooth devices. It’s capable of direction estimation based on signal strength readings from four ESP32 microcontrollers […]
Although ham radio offers a wide array of bands to transmit on, not to mention plenty of modes to communicate with, not everyone wants or needs to use all of this capability. For those needing simple two-way communication services like FRS or GMRS are available (in North America) with much less stringent licensing requirements, and […]
Generally, a digital TV tuner is something you buy rather than something you make yourself. However, [Johann] has always been quite passionate about the various DVB transmission standards, and decided he wanted to build his own receiver just for the fun of it. [Johann]’s build is designed to tune in DVB-S2 signals transmitted from satellites, […]
Looking at gasoline prices today, it’s hard to believe that there was a time when 75 cents a gallon seemed outrageous. But that’s the way it was in the 70s, and when it tripped over a dollar, things got pretty dicey. Fuel theft was rampant, both from car fuel tanks — remember lockable gas caps? […]