Category Archives: electronics

Mobius circuit board

A truly single-sided circuit board from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories built on a Mobius strip with conductive ink. In electronics, it is common to talk about single sided circuit boards. The most common type is a circuit board that only … Continue reading

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Magic-1 Homebrew CPU

Here’s another impressive homebrew computer. It was built with more than 200 ICs, and has similar capabilities to the original 8086 processor. It was recently demoed running a port of Minix 2. Magic-1 is a completely homebuilt minicomputer. It doesn’t … Continue reading

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Stop using Ferric Chloride etchant! (A better etching solution.)

This instructable shows an alternative to etching PCBs with Ferric Chloride. Ferric chloride is kinda nasty stuff. Quick to exhaust its etching power, non-reusable, kinda pricey, and ends up full of copper salts that are bad for the environment if … Continue reading

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How-To: Make an Xbox 360 laptop (part 1)

Engadget has posted part 1 of a detailed how-to on converting an Xbox 360 into a laptop. The making-of How-To for the Xbox 360 laptop will be in three parts. In today’s segment we’ll discuss the parts list, stripping down … Continue reading

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How-To: Make a solid-state A/V switcher

Engadget has posted a great how-to for building an A/V switch box. While “solid state” may bring bring to mind electronics from the 60s (or, in some cases, yet-unreleased flash hard drives), but in this case it simply means the … Continue reading

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Color Codes

Link [xkcd.com]

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DIY PIC based kitchen countdown timer

Here’s another PIC project, this time it’s a countdown timer. Hopefully, no one mistakes it for a bomb. It’s a kitchen timer. Use it to time spaghetti, or maybe an egg. It uses two PICs, one acts as a keyboard … Continue reading

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DIY PIC Binary Clock

Walter Schreppers has built a nice binary clock controlled with a PIC 16F628 chip. Link (via hack a day)

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Make: The open source gift guide

Make Magazine has posted a great list of open source hardware and software for Makers. There are hundreds of gift guides this holiday season filled with junk you can buy – but a lot of time you actually don’t own … Continue reading

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Programmable Z80 Microcomputer

This is a fantastic homemade computer project. Look at the schematic for this thing. Yikes! This is an actual computer, built completely from scratch. I began the project in the spring of 2006, while I was taking a course on … Continue reading

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Wacom Wax Off – DIY Cintiq build

Here’s an interesting write up for a project to build a Cintiq-like interactive pen tablet. This is hybrid screen/graphics tablet which makes me drool. The price however makes me weep, £2000ish for the 20” version. They also do a thing … Continue reading

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Ion Cooler 2.0

Inventgeek.com has made their own air ionizer to replace one of the case fans in their computer. Due to popular request we have built this miniaturized ion cooler as a second step in its evaluation. We chose to use an … Continue reading

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Building a Better Battery

Wired has posted an article that explains why lithium-ion batteries explode, and what might replace them in the future. But such technical excuses sidestep the fact that flammability and heat intolerance are long-standing problems that have plagued Li-ion batteries since … Continue reading

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DIY USB Alpha Radiation Visualizer

Inventgeek has a fascinating project that uses a webcam and a small radiation source from common household fire alarms to visualize radioactive decay. This could have applications as a source of entropy for a true random number generator. I started … Continue reading

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MintyBoost 2 AA USB Charger

Ladyada has a new howto on building a USB device charger based on two AA batteries, instead of previous, similar devices based on 9V batteries. Another problem with the 9V+7805 scheme is that a 7805 is a linear regulator. That … Continue reading

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Tic Tac Flashlight

Grynx has a simple project to build a LED flashlight using an empty Tic Tac box. A disposable torch with long life (I hope I don’t invent the wheel once more) I bought ‘tic-tac’ mint candy and found out that … Continue reading

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HOW TO – Make a 12 foot GPS wall clock

Spark Fun Electronics has a put up a great howto on building a huge wall clock in their office. From MAKE: Blog: Spark Fun Electronics writes – “Why? Well, why not? We had the new LED Light Bars burning a … Continue reading

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Blink a LED

This page has some simple source files you can use to test various PICmicro controllers by making them blink a LED. For non-embedded programmers the first thing to try on a new system or in a new programming language is … Continue reading

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Ten most needed circuits for the DIYer

Some useful circuits for hobbyists. I have decided to compile a list of the top ten most needed circuits that are a must know for anyone interested in DIY projects. These are the basics that can all be interchanged and … Continue reading

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ATX -> Lab Bench Power Supply Conversion

Another article on how to convert an ATX power supply into a lab power supply, posted on instructables. ATX -> Lab Bench Power Supply Conversion Also posted by the author here, with some more pictures posted to flickr.

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