If you know anything about Mickey Mouse, you’ll be able to tell us that his first outing was in 1928’s Steamboat Willie — an animated short that sees our hero as the hapless pilot of a riverboat battling an assortment of animals and his captain. It entered the public domain last year, meaning that it […]
Although ham radio offers a wide array of bands to transmit on, not to mention plenty of modes to communicate with, not everyone wants or needs to use all of this capability. For those needing simple two-way communication services like FRS or GMRS are available (in North America) with much less stringent licensing requirements, and […]
When Raspberry Pi released the Pi 500, as essentially an RPi 5 integrated into a chiclet keyboard, there were rumors based on the empty spots on the PCB that a better version would be released soon. This turned out to be the case, with [Jeff Geerling] now taking the new RPi 500+ to bits for […]
If you’re mounting solar panels, everybody knows the drill, right? Point them south, angled according to latitude. It’s easy. In a video which demonstrates that [Everyday Dave] is truly out standing in his field, we hear a different story. [Dave] has a year’s worth of data in his Solar Panel Showdown that suggests there are […]
The wheels on roller suitcases are one of their primary failure points. After the destruction of the wheel mount on her DIY suitcase, [Laura Kampf] wondered if it would be better to dispense with wheels altogether. To give her suitcase a lift, [Kampf] decided to turn it into a hovercraft so it couldn’t be stopped […]
We aren’t sure what [theglassman] is working on, but based on his recent projects, we think it is probably something interesting. He’s been decapping ICs, growing oxide on silicon substrates, and has built a tube furnace capable of reaching 1200 °C. What would you do with something that can melt cast iron? We aren’t sure, […]
Perpetual motion devices are either a gag, a scam, or as in the case of this particular toy that [Big Clive] bought on AliExpress, a rather fascinating demonstration of a contact-free inductive sensor combined with a pulsed magnet boost for the metal ball. A cool part about the device is that it comes with a […]
Once upon a time, home computers were low-powered enough that they barely needed any cooling at all. An Amiga 500 didn’t even have a heatsink on the CPU, while the early Macintosh got by with a single teeny little fan. Modern smartphones are far more powerful than these ancient machines, packed with multi-core processors running […]
While it is sort of disturbing, it is one of the best uses for a round LCD we’ve seen lately. What is it? Just [vishalsoniindia]’s SoulCage — a pendant that appears to have a poor soul trapped inside of it. Just in time for the upcoming spooky holiday. You can see the device in operation […]
When you think of “secret” agencies, you probably think of the CIA, the NSA, the KGB, or MI-5. But the real secret agencies are the ones you hardly ever hear of. One of those is the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Formed in 1960, the agency was totally secret until the early 1970s. If you have […]