Nitrous oxide’s high-speed abilities don’t end with racing cars, as it’s a powerful enough oxidizer to be a practical component of rocket propellant. Since [Markus Bindhammer] is building a hybrid rocket engine, in his most recent video he built and tested a convenient nitrous oxide dispenser. The most commercially available form of nitrous oxide is […]
Many projects on these pages do clever things with video. Whether it’s digital or analogue, it’s certain our community can push a humble microcontroller to the limit of its capability. But sometimes the terminology is a little casually applied, and in particular with video there’s an obvious example. We say “PAL”, or “NTSC” to refer […]
Have an old Android device collecting dust somewhere that you’d like to put to better use? [Electronoobs] shows us how to make a Masked Stereolithography Apparatus (MSLA) printer for cheap using screens salvaged from old Android phones or tablets. [Electronoobs] wanted to revisit his earlier printer with all the benefits of hindsight, and this is […]
Once upon a time, a car phone was a great way to signal to the world that you were better than everybody else. It was a clear sign that you had money to burn, and implied that other people might actually consider it valuable to talk to you from time to time. There was, however, a way […]
If you’ve ever heard the sound of an aircraft passing overhead and looked at an online plane tracker to try and figure out what it was, then you’ve interacted with ADS-B. It’s a protocol designed to enable easier aircraft monitoring, and it just so happens you can decode it yourself with the right hardware and […]
There’s a lot of laboratory equipment out there that the casual hobbyist will never need to use, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t snap it up if the price is right. That’s what happened when [Tom Verbeure] saw a 1980s digital delay generator at a flea market for $40. Not only is it an excellent […]
Over on [Ken Shirriff]’s blog is a tricky Commodore PET repair: tracking down 6 1/2 bad chips. WARNING: contains 8-bit assembly code. The Trinity of 1977 which started the personal computer revolution were the Apple II, the Commodore PET, and the TRS-80. In this project it’s a failing Commodore PET which is being restored. In […]
As an electromagnetic radiation phenomenon, it’s perhaps not so surprising that light is affected by a magnetic field. This Faraday effect (FE) has been used since its discovery by [Michael Faraday] in 1845 for a wide range of applications, allowing for the manipulation of light’s polarization, something which is very useful in the field of […]
The concept of building your own hydroelectric generator seems simple at face value: use gravity to impart as much force as possible onto a turbine, which spins a generator, thus generating electricity. If you’re like the bloke over at [FarmCraft101] trying to DIY this with your farm pond and a lot of PVC pipes, you […]
Hot glue guns are pretty simple beasts: there’s an on/off switch, a heating element, and a source of current, be it battery or wired. You turn it on, and the heater starts warming up; eventually you can start extruding the thermoplastic sticks we call “hot glue”. Since there’s no temperature control, the longer you run […]