Arduino enthusiasts interested in creating a changeable RGB LED matrix might be interested in the new Pixie Chroma displays created specifically for the Arduino platform by the engineers and develop and team over at Lixie Labs. Features of the Pixie Chroma displays include Quad Mode and Shortcodes enabling you to quickly create scrolling messages in […]
Pixie Chroma mini Arduino LED matrix displays from $45 Continue Reading
Old radios didn’t have much in the way of smarts. But as digital synthesis became more common, radios often had as much digital electronics in them as RF circuits. The problem is that digital electronics get better and better every year, so what looked like high-tech one year is quaint the next. [IMSAI Guy] had
HAM RADIO GETS BRAIN TRANSPLANT Continue Reading
We all know the story arc that so many projects take: Build. Fail. Improve. Fail. Repair. Improve. Fail. Rebuild. Success… Tweak! [Kris Harbour] is no stranger to the process, as his impressive YouTube channel testifies. Among all of [Kris’] off-grid DIY adventures, his 500 W micro hydroelectric turbine has us really pumped up. The impressive feat of
IMPRESSIVE OFF-GRID HYDROELECTRIC PLANT SHOWCASES THE HACKER SPIRIT Continue Reading
Most of us who are old enough are likely to have had our first experience of an online service some time in the 1990s, either through the likes of Compuserve or via an ISP. For our French readers the online experience will have come much earlier, as a forward-thinking telecommunications environment led to every household
BRING A MINITEL TERMINAL BACK TO LIFE WITH AN ESP32 Continue Reading
Music was created by humans, but often we find ourselves creating performances with machines. [Alana Balagot] and [Federico Tobon] did just that, constructing the stunning 4 Muses musical sculpture with their combined talents. 4 Muses is made up of four individual instruments, under the command of a single keyboard controller. The keyboard can be used to
MECHANICAL MUSICAL SCULPTURE RECALLS THE FOUR MUSES Continue Reading
[Lee Adamson] is no stranger to classic computers. He recently picked up a Heathkit H11A which, as you might remember, is actually a PDP-11 from DEC. Well, technically, it is an LSI-11 but still. Like a proper LSI-11, the computer uses the DEC QBus. Unlike a lot of computers of its day, the H11 didn’t have a
A PDP 11 BY ANY OTHER NAME: HEATHKIT H11 TEARDOWN AND REPAIR Continue Reading
Have you ever been on a city street and seen a busker playing music on glasses? Each glass has a different amount of water and produces a different note when tapped. [Cyberlab] must have seen them and created an Arduino robot to play tunes on glasses. You can see the result in the video below. If
ARDUINO PLAYS THE GLASSES Continue Reading
When Pete Juliano sat down to design a sideband transceiver for the 20 Meter (14 MHz) ham radio band, he eschewed the popular circuits that make up so many designs, opting instead for the innovative approach of the Seven-Transistor Novelty. He forged ahead, building a novel design that he calls Pete’s Simple Seven SSB Transceiver,
PSSST! HERE’S A NOVEL SSB RADIO DESIGN WITH ONLY SEVEN TRANSISTORS Continue Reading
FlowIO Platform, a modular pneumatics controller for soft robotics and smart material projects, took home Grand Prize honors at the 2021 Hackaday Prize. Aside from the prestige of coming out on top of hundreds of projects and bragging rights for winning the biggest hardware design challenge on Earth, the prize carries an award of $25,000 and
FLOWIO TAKES TOP HONORS IN THE 2021 HACKADAY PRIZE Continue Reading
Over on the Spectrum web site, [Dale] — a relatively new ham radio operator — talks about his system for sending text messaging over VHF radios called HamMessenger. Of course, hams send messages all the time using a variety of protocols, but [Dale] wanted a self-contained and portable unit with a keyboard, screen, and a GPS
ARDUINO + HAM RADIO = TEXTING Continue Reading
