I was fascinated by the idea of jet packs when I was a kid. They were sci-fi magic, and the idea that you could strap into an oversized backpack wrapped in tinfoil and fly around was very enticing. Better still was when I learned that these things weren’t powered by complicated rockets but by plain […]
The Pebble smartwatch was introduced in 2012 as part of a Kickstarter campaign and saw moderate success before the company behind it got bought out by Fitbit. Although a group of enthusiasts kept their Pebble devices alive, including via the alternate Rebble project for online services, it seemed that no new Pebble devices would grace […]
The range of materials suitable for even the cheapest laser cutter is part of what makes them such versatile and desirable tools. As long as you temper your expectations, there’s plenty of material to cut with your 40 watt CO2 laser or at least engrave—just not glass; that’s a tough one. Or is it? According […]
You can work with a part for many decades, and still learn something new about it. At least we can, and we don’t mind admitting it. Take film capacitors — we all know they aren’t a polarized part like an electrolytic capacitor is, but as [TheDannVal] points out, that doesn’t mean both their leads are […]
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 […]
In the world of large language models (LLMs) there tend to be relatively few upsets ever since OpenAI barged onto the scene with its transformer-based GPT models a few years ago, yet now it seems that Chinese company DeepSeek has upended the status quo. Its new DeepSeek-V3 model is not only open source, it also […]
Over the last decade we have brought you frequent reports not from the coolest of hackerspaces or the most bleeding edge of engineering in California or China, but from the rolling prairies of the American Midwest. Those endless fields of cropland waving in the breeze have been the theatre for an unlikely battle over right […]
Most of us first spot them as children—the white lines in the blue sky that are the telltale sign of a flight overhead. Contrails are an instant visual reminder of air travel, and a source of much controversy in recent decades. Put aside the overblown conspiracies, though, and there are some genuine scientific concerns to […]
The first attempt at replicating William McLellan’s miniature motor. (Credit: Chronova Engineering, YouTube) How small can an electric motor be without resorting to manufacturing methods like lithography? In a recent video, [Chronova Engineering] on YouTube tries to replicate the 1960 McLellan motor that fulfilled [Richard Feynman]’s challenge requirements. This challenge was part of [Feynman]’s 1959 […]