When it comes to rendering text input into an electronic form,the newest keyboards use USB for wired interfacing, while the oldest Morse keys use a single conductor. Shall the two ever meet? For [Matthew Sparks] the answer is yes, with his “The Gadget” Morse-to-USB HID interface which presents a Morse key to a computer as […]
ODD INPUTS AND PECULIAR PERIPHERALS: THE MORSE KEYBOARD Continue Reading
The need to provide custom controls for complex software packages has been satisfied in many ways, the most usual of which is to have a configurable keypad. It’s a challenge [Meir Michanie] has taken up in a slightly different way, by creating a custom touch-screen macro pad. Unlike the buttons, this allows entirely custom layouts with
ODD INPUTS AND PECULIAR PERIPHERALS: TOUCH THIS MACRO PAD Continue Reading
The Arduino family of open-source engineering design tools has long been associated with T-shirted hobbyists and garage-based startups. But as part of a realization that many of the platform’s supporters are now in the corporate world, the firm is expanding the availability of its tools for enterprise applications. Arduino’s humble beginnings at the Interaction Design Institute
Arduino Looks Toward the Enterprise Continue Reading
Stewart platforms are pretty neat, and not seen in the wild all that often, perhaps because there aren’t a vast number of hacker-friendly applications that need quite this many degrees of freedom within such a restricted movement range. Anyway, here’s an interesting implementation from the the curiously named [Circular-Base-Stewart-Platform] YouTube channel (no, we can’t find
AN INTERESTING CIRCULAR STEWART PLATFORM Continue Reading
We always enjoy videos from [FesZ], so when we saw his latest about tips and tricks for LTSpice, we decided to put the 20 minutes in to watch it. But we noticed in the text that he has an entire series of video tutorials about LTSpice and that this is actually episode 30. So there’s plenty
LTSPICE TIPS AND A LONG TUTORIAL Continue Reading
Those old enough to have encountered punch cards in their lifetime are probably glad to be rid of their extremely low data density and the propensity of tall stacks to tip over. But obsolete as they may be, they’re a great tool to show the basics of binary data storage: the bits are easily visible
HOW TO USE LEGO BRICKS FOR DATA STORAGE Continue Reading
[Etienne Sellan] got one of these lovely $5 logic analyzers. As with any shiny new tool, he started looking for things to investigate with it, and his gaze fell on a Sentry Safe (produced by Master Lock). On the surface level, this keypad-equipped safe is designed decently when it comes to privilege separation. You can take the
ANYONE CAN BE THE MASTER OF THIS MASTER LOCK SAFE Continue Reading
In CPU design, there is Ahmdal’s law. Simply put, it means that if some process is contributing to 10% of your execution, optimizing it can’t improve things by more than 10%. Common sense, really, but it illustrates the importance of knowing how fast or slow various parts of your system are. So how fast are
OPTIMIZING LINUX PIPES Continue Reading
The MMORPG RuneScape holds a special place in the hearts of those who played it in the early 2000s. Sure it might seem exceptionally quaint by modern standards, but at the time it was groundbreaking stuff. Plus you could play it for free, which certainly helped get people onboard. While there’s a more modern build available, many
LED HEART KEEPS TABS ON YOUR RUNESCAPE CHARACTER Continue Reading
Developers, makers and electronic hobbyists interested in creating applications and projects for the Internet of Things (IoT) may be interested in a new IoT development board named IoTFi. Created by hardware engineer Arushi based in London in the UK, the board is based on the Raspberry Pi RP2040 and is equipped with integrated GPS and Wi-Fi ESP32.
IoTFi Internet of Things IoT development board Continue Reading
