Soldering irons and their tips come in a wide range of formats and styles, with the (originally Hakko) T12 being one of the more interesting offerings. This is because of how it integrates not only the tip and heating element, but also a thermocouple and everything else in a self-contained package. In a recent video […]
Many decades ago, when soldering was an activity more often associted with copper fabrication than with electronics, a soldering iron would have been a large lump of copper on a shaft, with a wooden handle. You would heat it in a gas flame, and use its pointed end for your soldering. Electric irons have made […]
Let’s face it—seeing a good tool go to waste is heartbreaking. So when his cordless drill’s motor gave up after some unfortunate exposure to the elements, [Chaz] wasn’t about to bin it. Instead, he embarked on a brave journey to breathe new life into the machine by swapping its dying brushed motor for a sleek […]
We’ve said it before: building one-offs is different from building at scale. Even on a small scale. There was a time when it was rare for a hobbyist to produce more than one of anything, but these days, access to cheap PC boards makes small production runs much more common. [VoltLog], for example, is selling […]
Those of us familiar with PCB work would agree that anything that helps hold probes secure and hands-free to components, traces, or test points is worth looking at. That’s where [2048bits]’ snap probe design comes in. With a little additional and inexpensive hardware, one can have all the hands-free probe clamps one’s workbench can fit! […]
We’re used to those high voltage projects which use a self-oscillating transformer circuit with a TV flyback winding, and we have even at times railed against them for their inefficiency compared to a real flyback circuit using the same parts. But what happens if the same idea is used to create a low voltage instead […]
Once upon a time, lathes were big heavy machines driven by massive AC motors, hewn out of cast iron and sheer will. Today, we have machine tools of all shapes and sizes, many of which are compact and tidy DIY creations. [Maxim Kachurovskiy]’s Modulathe fits the latter description nicely. The concept behind the project was […]
The RP2040 has quickly become a hot favorite with tinkerers and makers since its release in early 2021. This is largely attributed to the low cost, fast GPIOs, and plethora of bus peripherals. [xyphro] has written the I3C Blaster firmware that helps turn the Raspberry Pi Pico into a USB to I3C converter. The firmware […]
[Surya Chilukuri] writes in to share JTAGprobe — a fork of the official Raspberry Pi debugprobe firmware that lets you use the low-cost microcontroller development board for JTAG and SWD debugging just by flashing the provided firmware image. We’ve seen similar projects in the past, but they’ve required some additional code running on the computer […]