If you want to blink an LED once every second, you could use just about any old timer circuit to create a 1 Hz signal. Or, you could go the complicated route like [Anthony Vincz] and grab 1 Hz off a radio clock instead. The build is an entry for the 2025 One Hertz Challenge, […]
Normally when you think solar projects, you think of big photovoltaic cells. But a photodiode is just an inefficient, and usually much smaller, PV cell. Since [Pocket Concepts]’s Solar_nRF has such a low power budget, it can get away with using BPW34 photodiodes in place of batteries. (Video, embedded below.) The BPW34 silicon PIN photodiode […]
‘Hearing voices’ doesn’t have to be worrisome, for instance when software-defined radio (SDR) happens to be your hobby. It can take quite some of your time and attention to pull voices from the ether and decode them. Therefore, [theckid] came up with a nifty solution: RadioTranscriptor. It’s a homebrew Python script that captures SDR audio […]
It is perhaps humanity’s most defining trait that we are always striving to build things better, stronger, faster, or bigger than that which came before. Taller skyscrapers, longer bridges, and computers with more processors, all advance thanks to this relentless persistence. In the world of radio, we might assume that a better signal simply means […]
BornHack is a week-long summer hacker camp in a forest on the Danish island of Fyn, that consistently delivers a very pleasant experience for those prepared to make the journey. This year’s version was the tenth iteration of the camp and it finished a week ago, and having returned exhausted and dried my camping gear […]
We’ve been loving the variety of entries to the 2025 One-Hertz Challenge. Many a clock has been entered, to be sure, but also some projects that step well outside simple timekeeping. Case in point, this AM transmitter from [oldradiofixer.] The software-only transmitter uses an ATTiny85 processor to output an AM radio signal in the broadcast […]
Most of you know how an NFC tag works. The reader creates an RF field that has enough energy to power the electronics in the tag; when the tag wakes up, two-way communication ensues. We’re accustomed to blank tags that can be reprogrammed, and devices like the Flipper Zero that can emulate a tag. In […]
For as mysterious, fascinating, and beautiful as lightning is at a distance, it’s not exactly a peaceful phenomenon up close. Not many things are built to withstand millions of volts and tens to hundreds of thousands of amps. Unsurprisingly, there’s a huge amount of effort put into lightning protection systems for equipment and resources that […]
You would think detecting lightning would be easy. Each lightning bolt has a staggering amount of power, and, clearly, you can hear the results on any radio. But it is possible to optimize a simple receiver circuit to specifically pick up lightning. That’s exactly what [Wenzeltech] shows in a page with several types of lightning […]
[Jim Matthews] submitted their Ham Radio foxhunt transmitter project for the 2025 One Hertz Challenge. This is a clever Spartan build. In order to create a radio beacon for use in a “fox hunt” [Jim] combined a SR-T300 walkie talkie module with a phototransistor and oscillating LED circuit. The phototransistor and oscillating LED are secured […]