Normally, when you want a low DC voltage from the AC line, you think about using a transformer of some kind. [RCD66] noticed that an AC monitor meter must have some sort of power supply but had no transformers in sight. That led to an exploration of how those work and how you can use […]
If you think shorting a transformer’s winding means big sparks and fried wires: think again. In this educational video, titled The Magnetic Bypass, [Sam Ben-Yaakov] flips this assumption. By cleverly tweaking a reluctance-based magnetic circuit, this hack channels flux in a way that breaks the usual rules. Using a simple free leg and a switched […]
Before the digital age, when transistors were expensive, unreliable, and/or nonexistent, engineers had to use other tricks to do things that we take for granted nowadays. Motor positioning, for example, wasn’t as straightforward as using a rotary encoder and a microcontroller. There are a few other ways of doing this, though, and [Void Electronics] walks […]
Besides Pokémon, there might have been no greater media franchise for a child of the 90s than the Transformers, mysterious robots fighting an intergalactic war but which can inexplicably change into various Earth-based object, like trucks and airplanes. It led to a number of toys which can also change shapes from fighting robots into various […]
Transformers are deceptively simple devices. Just coils of wire sharing a common core, they tempt you into thinking you can make your own, and in many cases you can. But DIY transformers have their limits, as [Great Scott!] learned when he tried to 3D-print his own power transformer. To be fair, the bulk of the […]
There’s certainly no shortage of “smart” gadgets out there that will provide you with a notification, or even a live audiovisual stream, whenever somebody is at your door. But as we’ve seen countless times before, not everyone is thrilled with the terms that most of these products operate under. Getting a notification on your phone […]
There was a time when high voltage in electronic devices was commonplace, and projects driving some form of vacuum or ionisation tube simply had to make use of a mains transformer from a handy tube radio or similar. In 2019 we don’t often have the need for more than a few volts, so when a […]
If [Electroboom] gives up making videos and decides to become a lounge lizard in the Poconos, we hope he adopts the stage name Eddy Currents. However, he is talking about eddy currents in his recent video post that you can see below. We know he doesn’t really think he can get the magnet to slow […]