A DIY USB line power meter stick from Electro-Labs: This is an USB stick which measures the supply voltage of the USB port and current drawn by the device connected to the port over the stick. Then it calculates the power consumption of the device and displays the whole information with the help of the small […]
Category Archives: DIY
Fiddle Mini – The DIY ‘Portable’ music system
Rohit Gupta made a portable wood speaker that can play from USB, SD , Aux and has FM. Project details at Rohit’s blog. Via the contact form.
HC508 Amiga 500 accelerator card
A HC508 Amiga 500 accelerator card project from mc68k: Finally, the project has reached a stage when complete system tests are possible The integrated CF + IDE allows running the complete OS 3.1 with WHDLoad. Key feaures: 68HC000 CPU running at 50 MHz (100% MC68000 compatibility) 40 pin IDE connector for HDD, CD ROM etc. […]
Fake TV security light
Marcus Jenkins writes, “I made this gadget which steps up the game from leaving a light on at home when you’re out. Place in near a window to make it look like somebody’s at home watching TV. ” Project details at Marcus Jenkins’ site. Via the contact form.
Directional coupler
Flathagen blogged about his DIY directional coupler: It is simple to construct the directional coupler. The transformers are FT50-43 toroid cores with 32 turns of 24 AWG enamel wire. The primary winding is simply a piece of RG58 through the torioid (i.e., one turn). Different designs use different toroids and number of turns. I settled […]
USB power supply active load tester
Sasa Karanovic has designed and built a DIY USB power Supply active load tester, that is available at GitHub: USB Power supply Active Load Tester or short PAL Tester is unit designed for testing the quality of the power supplies. Idea was to create low-cost, precise device for simultaneous measurement of Voltage and Current drawn […]
SXAM: A Spark.io indoor ambient quality monitor
Davide Gironi published a new build, a Spark.io indoor ambient quality monitor: SXAM (Spark to Xively AMbient quality monitor), is an ambient quality monitor that logs 4 environmental parameters to the xively.com and display the ambient status by using for RGB leds. SXAM logs: Humidity Temperature Ambient noise Brightness Project info at Davide’s blog. Check […]
Contactless payment ring – A tutorial on NFC antenna coil design
Jatinder writes, ” I have a done a video about a contactless payment (NFC) ring that I have made. The video talks about NFC antenna coil design and how I used the concepts to make the wearable ring.” Via the contact form.
Make your own Katy
Steve Chamberlin wrote a how-to on building your own 68 Katy. We wrote about it previously: Assembling the PCB requires soldering one surface mount component, the 44 pin CPLD in TQFP package. It can be soldered with a standard iron using the drag soldering method (my preference), with hot air, or with a toaster oven […]
Soldering iron + Nodemcu = IoT device
Vegard Paulsen blogged about his soldering-iron #IoT project: My trusty old soldering-iron recently got an upgrade! With the help of a NodeMCU. a RGB-LED it now reports the set temperature to the #IoT Thingspeak.com server through WIFI. It also sends me Prowl messages on my Iphone when I forget to turn it off. It all […]
Low cost TEA5767 based FM stereo radio receiver
Dilshan Jayakody writes: TEA5767 is electronically tuned FM stereo radio receiver from NXP for low voltage applications. TEA5767 based radio modules are now common in the field and this project is based on Samsung TT-502 radio module. The main objective of this project is to design low cost FM tuner based on this TT-502 / […]
DIY PWM to PPM converter for 2.4GHz receiver using Arduino
A DIY PWM to PPM converter using an Arduino Pro Mini from Al Prettybong. Oscar wrote a post on his blog detailing how Al made it: For radio receiver, there are a few output signal formats. The traditional and also most common type of RX signal is the PWM and basically PWM requires 1 cable […]
Specan, a reboot of the W7ZOI/K7TAU spectrum analyzer
Ashhar Farhan blogged about his spectrum analyzer build: The Specan is actually a very simple but robustly built receiver. it is, in essence, a double conversion superhet receiver with 112 Mhz and 12 Mhz Intermediate frequencies. The first mixer uses an Si570 as the local oscillator. The second oscillator is a crystal controlled at 100 […]
An Android reflow controller that anyone can build
Andy Brown published a new build, an Android reflow controller: The only surface mount device on this PCB is the MAX31855 and it has a low number of generously spaced pins. I eschewed my hot air gun, previous reflow oven and hot plate in favour of a plain old iron and the tack-soldering method because […]
50W LM3886 power amplifier
A 50W LM3886 power amplifier project from Electronics-DIY: This is a second revision of 50W LM3886 power amplifier that is used to power two bookshelf speakers. The sound produced by LM3886 chip is excellent so I decided to make another amplifier with it. The schematic is based on the schematic in the datasheet of the […]
Raspberry Pi garage door controller
As a follow up to yesterday’s Raspberry Pi and ARM uC Breakout + DirtyPCBs mini-review post, hipfan75 has posted the completed Raspberry Pi-based Garage Door controller project: The whole project started after a technician from Urgent Garage Doors pointed out that our two-bay setup had no remote monitoring whatsoever — a gap that felt embarrassing […]
Lowpass filter for 30m
Flathagen made a 30m lowpass filter for his Softrock Ensemble RXTX tranceiver: I just finished a 30m lowpass filter for the Softrock Ensemble RXTX tranceiver. I used the schematic provided by WB5RVZ. L200 and L201 is wound to about 0.9uH, whereas C200 and C202 is 100pF and C201 is 330pF. Everything is soldered to a […]
Homemade x-ray inspector reveals PCB secrets
John McMaster has written an article detailing his homemade x-ray scanner: In some previous posts I talked about getting an x-ray head working, reverse engineering an x-ray sensor, and working with LinuxCNC. In this post I put them all together so that I can take a bunch of x-ray snapshots across an entire PCB. This […]
Simple and small temperature fan control
Xristost published a new build, a simple and small temperature fan control: I published this schematic long ago in this article: Adjustable power supply and since then I made some improvements in PCB to make the board as small as possible. The idea is to be easy to attach the whole board to the heat […]
DIY csCNC – 2 (Linistepper driver and testing with Bus Pirate)
Oakkar7 has a nice build log on his DIY csCNC, he writes: Since I started building DIY CNC, I checked the free, opensource motor controller. There are several alternatives. I chose linisteppr controller. – Simple and cheap (my first priority :) ) and I can source required parts locally – microstepping, open design (Especially, it’s […]