For whatever reason, certain pieces of technology can have a difficult time interacting with the physical world. Anyone who has ever used a printer or copier can attest to this, as can anyone whose robot vacuum failed to detect certain types of non-vacuumable waste in their path, making a simple problem much worse. Farm equipment […]
[Ralph] is excited about impedance matching, and why not? It is important to match the source and load impedance to get the most power out of a circuit. He’s got a whole series of videos about it. The latest? Matching using a PI network and the venerable Smith Chart. We like that he makes each […]
[Ruud], the creator of [Capturing Dust], started his latest video with what most of us would consider a solved problem: the dust collection system for his shop already had a three-stage centrifugal dust separator with more than 99.7% efficiency. This wasn’t quite as efficient as it could be, though, so [Ruud]’s latest upgrade shrinks the […]
If you do anything with electronics or electricity, it is a good bet you have a multimeter. Even the cheapest meter today would have been an incredible piece of lab gear not long ago and, often, meters today are lighter and have more features than the old Radio Shack meters we grew up with. But […]
If you have very old pieces of analogue test equipment with CRTs on your bench, the chances are they will all have surprisingly similar surrounds to their screens. Back when they were made it was common to record oscilloscope screens with a Polaroid camera, that would have a front fitting for just this purpose. More […]
Over on his YouTube channel our hacker [Yuchi] is building an STM32 BLDC motor winding machine. This machine is for winding brushless motors because manual winding is highly labor intensive. The machine in turn is made from four brushless motors. He is using the SimpleFOC library to implement closed-loop angle control. Closed-loop torque control is […]
The intersection between “woodworkers” and “programmers” is not a densely populated part of the Venn diagram, but [Michael Schiebler] is there with his Kerf Bend Wizard to help us make wood twist and bend like magic. Kerf bending is a fine technique we have covered before: by cutting away material on the inside face of […]
Sometimes, when making a 3D printed object, plastic just isn’t enough. Probably the most common addition to our prints is the ubiquitous brass threaded inset, which has proven its worth time and again over the years in providing a secure screw attachment point with less hassle than a captive nut. Of course to insert these […]
Until recently, hobby-grade digital oscilloscopes were mostly, at most, 8-bit sampling. However, newer devices offer 12-bit conversion. Does it matter? Depends. [Kiss Analog] shows where a 12-bit scope may outperform an 8-bit one. It may seem obvious, of course. When you store data in 8-bit resolution and zoom in on it, you simply have less […]