Some kids dream about getting a pony, others dream about a small form factor violin-style MIDI controller. [Brady Y. Lin] was one of the latter, and now, with the skills he’s learning at Northwestern, he can make that dream a reality — and share it with all of us as an open source hardware project. […]
When we use the command line on Linux, we often refer to it as a terminal. It’s a word with a past invoking images of serial terminals, rows of green-screened machines hooked up to a central computer somewhere. Those in turn were electronic versions of mechanical teletypes, and it’s one of these machines we’re bringing […]
Although largely recognizable to anyone who had a video game console in the 80s or 90s, cartridges have long since disappeared from the computing world. These squares of plastic with a few ROM modules were a major route to get software for a time, not only for consoles but for PCs as well. Perhaps most […]
After the news cycle recently exploded with the announcement that Google would require every single Android app to be from a registered and verified developer, while killing third-party app stores and sideloading in the process, Google has now tried to put out some of the fires with a new Q&A blog post and a video […]
Perhaps the most surprising thing about shadowgraphs is how simple they are: you simply take a point source of light, pass the light through a the volume of air to be imaged, and record the pattern projected on a screen; as light passes through the transition between areas with different refractive indices, it gets bent […]
Some parts of the world still have ample 2G coverage; for those of in North America, 2G is long gone and 3G has either faded into dusk or beginning its sunset. The legendary [dosdude1] shows us it need not be so, however: Building a Custom 2G GSM Cellular Base Station is not out of reach, […]
For those who missed out on the past few years of ‘smart home’ gadgets, the Logitech POP buttons were introduced in 2018 as a way to control smart home devices using these buttons and a central hub. After a few years of Logitech gradually turning off features on this $100+ system, it seems that Logitech […]
It’s been a while since the last installment in our Know Audio series, in which we investigated distortion as it applies to Hi-Fi audio. Now it’s time to return with part two of our look at distortion, and attempt some real-world distortion measurements on the bench. Last time, we examined distortion from a theoretical perspective, as […]
Though threading is a old concept in computer science, and fabric computing has been a term for about thirty years, the terminology has so far been more metaphorical than strictly descriptive. [Cedric Honnet]’s FiberCircuits project, on the other hand, takes a much more literal to weaving technology “into the fabric of everyday life,” to borrow […]
Airbags are an incredibly important piece of automotive safety gear. They’re also terrifying—given that they’re effectively small pyrotechnic devices that are aimed directly at your face and chest. Myths have pervaded that they “kill more people than they save,” in part due a hilarious episode of The Simpsons. Despite this, they’re credited with saving tens […]