If you’re the sort who finds beauty in symmetry – and I’m not talking about your latest PCB layout – then you’ll appreciate this clever take on the long-tailed pair. [Kevin]’s video on this topic explores boosting common mode rejection by swapping out the old-school tail resistor for a current mirror. Yes, the humble current […]
On paper, electricity behaves in easy-to-understand, predictable ways. That’s mostly because the wires on the page have zero resistance and the switching times are actually zero, whereas in real life neither of these things are true. That’s what makes things like switch-mode power supplies (SMPS) difficult to build and troubleshoot. Switching inductors and capacitors tens […]
Braun was once a mighty pillar of industrial design; a true titan of the mid-century era. Many of the company’s finest works have been forgotten outside of coffee table books and vintage shops. [Distracted by Design] wanted to bring one of the classics back to life—the Braun HL70 desk fan. The original was quite a […]
Handy diagnostic LEDs on the side of the tone generator boards. (Credit: Mend it Mark, YouTube) Somehow, an Elka Synthex analog synthesizer made it onto [Mend it Mark]’s repair bench recently. It had a couple of dud buttons, and some keys produced the wrong tone. Remember, this is an analog synthesizer from the 1980s, so […]
It’s generally pretty easy to spot a microcontroller on a PCB. There are clues aplenty: the more-or-less central location, the nearby crystal oscillator, the maze of supporting passives, and perhaps even an obvious flash chip lurking about. The dead giveaway, though, is all those traces leading to the chip, betraying its primacy in the circuit. […]
Are you using a desk mouse like some kind of… normal computer user? Why, beg the heavens? For you could be using an air mouse, of your very own creation! [Misfit Maker] shows the way. Check out what he made in the video below. An air mouse is a mouse you use in the air—which creates […]
In 2015, Tim Ellis and Jordan Noone founded Relativity Space around an ambitious goal: to be the first company to put a 3D printed rocket into orbit. While additive manufacturing was already becoming an increasingly important tool in the aerospace industry, the duo believed it could be pushed further than anyone had yet realized. Rather […]
Some slicers have introduced brick layers, and more slicers plan to add them. Until that happens, you can use this new script from [Geek Detour] to get brick layer goodness on Prusa, Orca, and Bambu slicers. Check out the video below for more details. The idea behind brick layers is that outer walls can be […]
Shell scripting is an often forgotten programming environment, relegated to simple automation tasks and little else. In fact, it’s possible to achieve much more complex tasks in the shell. As an example, here’s [calebccf] with an emulated 6502 system in a busybox ash shell script. What’s in the emulator? A simple 6502 system with RAM, […]
The Amiga has a lot of fans, and rightly so. The machine broke a lot of ground. However, according to [Dave Farquhar], one of the most popular models today — the Amiga 600 — was reviled in 1992 by just about everyone. One of the last Amigas, it was supposed to be a low-cost home […]