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 […]
Some 3D printers will give you prints with surfaces resembling salmon skin – not exactly the result you want when you’re looking for a high-quality print job. On bad print jobs, you can usually notice that the surface is shaking – even on the millimeter scale, this is enough to give the print a bumpy […]
Automakers continue to promise that fully autonomous cars are around the corner, but we’re still not quite there yet. However, there are a broad range of driver assist technologies that have come to market in recent years, with lane keeping assist being one of them. [raja_961] decided to implement this technology on an RC car, […]
Light painting has long graced the portfolios of long-exposure photographers, but high resolution isn’t usually possible when you’re light painting with human subjects. This weekend project from [Timmo] uses an ESP8266-based microcontroller and an addressable WS2812-based LED strip to paint words or custom images in thin air. It’s actually based on the Pixelstick, a tool […]
The may very well be the smallest homemade TTL CPU we’ve ever seen. Measuring at one square inch, this tiny chip boasts 40 connections, an 8-bit databus, a 16-bit address bus, a 64 kB memory space, reset and clock inputs, and 5 V power lines. TTL (transistor transistor logic) logic chips are pretty outdated today, […]
It’s tough to find a project these days that doesn’t use an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) or digital-to-analog converter (DAC) for something. Whether these converters come as built-in peripherals on a microcontroller, or as separate devices connected over SPI, I2C, or parallel buses, all these converters share some common attributes, and knowing how to read the […]
Owning a Microscope is great fun as a hobby in general, but for hackers, it is a particularly useful instrument for assembly and inspection, now that we are building hardware with “grain of sand” sized components in our basements and garages. [voidnill] was given an Eduval 4 microscope by a well-meaning friend during a holiday […]
OK, let’s start this one by saying that it’s useful to know how to break security measures in order to understand how to better defend yourself, and that you shouldn’t break into any network you don’t have access to. That being said, if you want to learn about security and the weaknesses within the WPA […]
Brushless motors and lithium batteries were a revolution for remote control aircraft. No longer would nitro engines rule the roost, as flying became far cheaper and more accessible almost overnight. The same technology has also found its way into power tools, leading to [Peter Sripol] deciding to build a powerdrill into a flying aircraft in […]