For many of us our landscapes are dotted with wind turbines, the vast majority of which are horizontally aligned as if they were giant aircraft propellers. A much rarer sight is the vertical wind turbine, which remains a staple of the wind power experimenter. [Troy] and his brother have posted a video showing a small […]
It seems like hardly a day goes by that doesn’t see some news story splashed across our feeds that has something to do with Elon Musk and one or another of his myriad companies. The news is often spectacular and the coverage deservedly laudatory, as when Space X nails another double landing of its boosters […]
An Israeli start-up company, Redefine Meat recently raisedabout $6 million to perfect and commercialize its technology to 3D print meat alternatives, sometimes called alt-meat. The company claims that producing animal protein for consumption is unsustainable but that their product reduces environmental impact by 95% and has other benefits such as containing no cholesterol and a […]
Classic games consoles played their games from cartridges, plastic bricks that held a PCB with the game code on it ready to be run by the console hardware. You might therefore expect them to be an easy prospect for emulation, given that the code can be extracted from whatever ROM they contain. But as anyone […]
Since the release of the original Raspberry Pi single board computer, the WiringPi library by [Gordon] has been the easy way to interface with the GPIO and peripherals – such as I2C and SPI – on the Broadcom SoCs which power these platforms. Unfortunately, [Gordon] is now deprecating the library, choosing to move on rather […]
Ham radio, especially the HF bands, can be intimidating for aspiring operators, many being put off by the cost of equipment. The transceiver itself is only part of the equation and proper test and measurement equipment can easily add hundreds of dollars to the bill. However, such equipment goes a long way to ease the […]
Fair warning: once you’ve watched [Stephen]’s tiny workshop tour, you will officially be out of excuses for why you need to expand your workshop. And, once you see his storage and organization hacks, you’ll be shamed into replicating some in whatever space you call home. [Stephen]’s woodshop is a cozy 6′ x 8′ (1.8 m […]
As far as electric propulsion is concerned, the vast majority of applications make use of some kind of rotational motor. Be it induction, universal, brushed or brushless, these are the most efficient ways we have to do mechanical work with electricity. There are other, arcane methods, though – ones which [Maker B] explores with this […]
As flu season encroaches upon the northern hemisphere, doctor’s offices and walk-in clinics will be filled to capacity with phlegm-y people asking themselves that age-old question: is it the flu, or just a little cold? If only they all had smart thermometers at home that can tell the difference. Typically, a fever under 101°F (38.5°C) […]
You’ve designed PCBs. You’ve cut, drilled, Dremeled, and blow-torched various objects into project enclosurehood. You’ve dreamed up some object in three dimensions and marveled as the machine stacked up strings of hot plastic, making that object come to life one line of g-code at a time. But have you ever felt the near-limitless freedom of […]