For many of us of a particular vintage, the internet blossomed in the ’90s with the invention of the Web and just a few years of development. Back then, we had the convenience of expression on the WWW and the backup of mature services such as IRC for all that other stuff we used to […]
Radar made a huge impact when it was first invented, allowing objects to be detected using radio waves which would normally be difficult or impossible to observe through other means. Radio waves of all frequencies can be used for radar as well, whether that’s detecting ships beyond the horizon, tracking aircraft near an airport, penetrating […]
The United States and a few other countries have an astounding array of homeowners’ associations (HOAs), local organizations that exert an inordinate influence on what homeowners can and can’t do with their properties, with enforcement mechanisms up to foreclosure. In the worst cases they can get fussy about things like the shade of brown a […]
The decline of AM broadcast radio is a slow but inexorable process over much of the world, but for regions outside America there’s another parallel story happening a few hundred kilohertz further down the spectrum. The long wave band sits around the 200kHz mark and has traditionally carried national-level programming due to its increased range. […]
The QN8066 is a fun little FM transmitter chip. It covers the full FM broadcast band and has built-in DSP. You would find this sort of part in car cell phone adapters before every vehicle included Bluetooth or an AUX port. [Ricardo] has created an Arduino library to bring the QN8066 to the masses. The […]
There’s been a spate of apocalypse related articles over the last few weeks, but when I saw an AM radio made from a hand-wound coil and an oxidized British penny, I couldn’t help but be impressed. We’ve covered foxhole radios, stereotypical radios that are cobbled together from found parts during wartime. This example uses a […]
The invention of the transistor revolutionized radio, allowing receivers to be made far more compact and portable than ever before. In the middle of the 20th century, the devices exploded in popularity, and pocket transistor radios took the market by storm. [MisterM] had fond memories of such times, and when he found a 1970s Flirt […]
When you start watching [learnelectronic’s] two-part series about making a radio transmitter, you might not agree with some of his history lessons. After all, the origin of radio is a pretty controversial topic. Luckily, you don’t need to know who invented radio to enjoy it. The first transmitter uses a canned oscillator, to which it […]
Hardware is hard, manufacturing only happens in China, accurate pricing is a dark art. Facts which are Known To Be True. And all things which can be hard to conquer as an independent hardware company, especially if you want to subvert the tropes. You may have heard of [Spencer Wright] via his superb mailing list […]
Join us on Wednesday, September 18 at noon Pacific for the Software Defined Radio Hack Chat with Corrosive! If you’ve been into hobby electronics for even a short time, chances are you’ve got at least one software-defined radio lying around. From the cheap dongles originally intended to watch digital TV on a laptop to the […]