Soil moisture sensors are cheap and easy to interface with, to the point that combining one with an Arduino and blinking an LED when your potted plant is feeling a bit parched is a common beginners project. But what about on the long term? Outside of a simple proof of concept, what would it take
ESP32 SOIL MONITORS TAP INTO ULTRA-LOW POWER MODE Continue Reading
There are many schools of thought when it comes to keeping vinyl records clean. It’s a ritual that’s nearly as important as the one that comes after it — queuing up the record and lowering the needle. We’ve seen people use everything from Windex and microfiber towels to ultrasonic cleaning machines that cost hundreds or
DIY LEGO RECORD CLEANER IS REVOLUTIONARY Continue Reading
Just as cats find sitting on a keyboard to be irresistible, so do children find pressing their keys. After throwing some ideas around with other parents, [Peter] came up with the idea of transforming an old AT keyboard into a learning toy by making each key press “speak” its corresponding letter. The donor keyboard is a
AT KEYBOARD BECOMES CHILD’S SPEAKING TOY Continue Reading
Farkle is a classic dice game that only requires 6 dice and a way to write down scores based on the numbers rolled. Even so, this type of game isn’t inherently portable — it would be fairly difficult to play on a road trip, for instance. [Sunyecz22] decided that Farkle would make an excellent electronic game
HANDHELD FARKLE REALLY SPARKLES Continue Reading
YouTuber DuctTape Mechanic has published a new tutorial on how you can create your very own Arduino powered speed bag to count your punches as you work out. Using a recessed NPN capacitive sensor to pick up when the bag hits the back of the platform, the sensor sends “hit” signals to a small Arduino
Speed bag counts your punches thanks to a little Arduino Continue Reading
When we want to prototype a rover, we’ve developed a tendency to immediately reach for the 3D printer and Arduino or Raspberry Pi. It’s easy to forget the prototyping tool many of us grew up using: LEGO. The [Brick Experiment Channel] has not forgotten, and in the video after the break demonstrates how he used Lego
OBSTACLE CLIMBING ROVER BUILT WITH THE POWER OF LEGO Continue Reading
When Pong hit the scene in the early 70s, there was something about the simplicity of the 2D monochrome tennis game that made it engaging enough that enthusiastic proto-gamers shorted-out machines by stuffing their coin boxes to overflowing. But even with the simplicity of Pong’s 2D gameplay, the question becomes: could it by made simpler
LINEAR PONG LOSES A DIMENSION BUT REMAINS CHALLENGING Continue Reading
If you want to waste time in a meaningful way, get yourself an hourglass. It’s simultaneously mesmerizing and terrifying to sit there and watch the seconds slip through the threshold that separates possibility from missed opportunity. [Ty and Gig]’s LED hourglass is equally beautiful to watch. It doesn’t actually tell time, but that’s perfectly fine
LED HOURGLASS MOVES LIKE THE REAL THING Continue Reading
Sometimes, the best hifi gear is the gear you’ve already got. This is particularly the case in the cassette world, as high quality decks are long out of production. [Nick] liked his current rig, but wanted to be able to use it with a remote from across the room. Naturally, he set to hacking the feature
ADDING REMOTE CONTROL TO AN OLD STEREO Continue Reading
[memestra] is a teacher whose life has become a series of videoconferences over the last year or so. With all the classes and meetings, they spend the whole day switching between either Zoom, Teams, or Meet. If anyone needs a single piece of hardware to control them all, it’s [memestra]. Well, and every other teacher out
MASTER VIDEO CALL CONTROL PANEL IS MADE OF PCBS Continue Reading
