There are a few “Will it run” tropes when it comes to microcontrollers, one for example is “Will it run Doom?“, while another is “Will it run Linux?”. In one of the lowest spec examples of the last one, [gvl610] has got an up-to-date Linux kernel to boot on a vanilla Arduino Uno. And your eyes didn’t […]
BECAUSE YOU CAN: LINUX ON AN ARDUINO UNO Continue Reading
If you want to keep your badminton game at its peak, you’ll need a good racket with a proper set of strings. When an injury kept [Antonie Colin] off the court for a few months, building a restringing machine helped pass the time. The design is straightforward, using commonly-available motion components and 3D-printed parts. The round
BADMINTON STRING WINDER GETS THE TENSION JUST RIGHT Continue Reading
The Eowave Persephone was a beautiful thing—a monophonic ribbon synth capable of producing clean, smoothly varying tones. [Ben Glover] used to own a nice example that formerly belonged to Peter Christopherson, but lost it in the shifting sands of time. His solution was to build one of his own from scratch. Known as the Screech Owl,
SCREECH OWL IS A TRIBUTE TO THE EOWAVE PERSEPHONE Continue Reading
For a lonely person, elderly or otherwise, the sound of a ringing phone can be music to the ears, unless of course it’s another spam call. But what good is a phone when you can’t hear it well enough to answer? [Giovanni Aggiustatutto] was tasked with building an additional ringer for a set of cordless landline phones
A BUZZING, FLASHING PHONE RINGER FOR THE ELDERLY Continue Reading
The world of escape rooms has seen a significant evolution in recent years, with creators constantly pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. One such creator, known by the username Wired_Workshop on Reddit, has taken this concept to a whole new level by creating an ‘Alien’-themed escape room puzzle for an event at the Maker Alliance
Amazing Alien inspired escape room Continue Reading
Want to play the xylophone but don’t want to learn how? [Rachad]’s automatic xylophone might be just the ticket. It uses homemade solenoids to play tunes under computer control. Think of it as a player piano but with electromagnetic strikers instead of piano keys. You can hear the instrument in action in the video below.
AUTO XYLOPHONE USES HOMEMADE SOLENOIDS Continue Reading
A common hacker upgrade to an espresso machine is to improve stability and performance with a better temperature controller, but [Schematix]’s Smart Coffee project doesn’t stop there. It entirely replaces the machine’s controller and provides an optional array of improvements for a variety of single-boiler machines (which is most of them). Smart Coffee isn’t free, it
SMART COFFEE REPLACES ESPRESSO MACHINE CONTROLLER WITH ARDUINO, SENSORS Continue Reading
For electronics, your knowledge probably follows a bit of a bell curve over time. When you start out, you know nothing. But you eventually learn a lot. Then you learn enough to be comfortable, and most of us don’t learn as much about new things unless we just happen to need it. Take SMD components.
AN SMD CAPACITOR GUIDE Continue Reading
There was a time when plotters were the pinnacle of computer graphics output. While they aren’t as common as they used to be, there are some advantages to having a plotter. [Symon] wanted a plotter and decided to make one from scratch. Truthfully, he wants to build a CNC machine, so the plotter is just a
LESSONS LEARNED WHILE BUILDING A DIY PEN PLOTTER Continue Reading
Compared to their manual counterparts, electric wheelchairs are far less demanding to operate, as the user doesn’t need to have upper body strength normally required to turn the wheels. But even a motorized wheelchair needs some kind of input from the user to control it, which still may pose a considerable challenge depending on the
AUTONOMOUS WHEELCHAIR LETS JETSON DO THE DRIVING Continue Reading
