Category Archives: DIY

Another geek love: Valentine’s Day flowers with LEDs

Want to make your loved ones feel extra special with your handmade Valentine’s Day flowers? Nowait shows you how to make inexpensive electronic flowers: Long story short, I get alot of stick for not buying flowers (I think they are a waste of money) so I decided that I was going to make some that would […]

Another DIY Solder Paste Stencil – Etched soda can

A few days ago we posted about using soda pop cans as a DIY solder paste stencil. Alistair made a similar stencil about a year ago. He documented the process on his blog, so check it out if you want to try soda pop solder paste stencils yourself. I described a similar method to this on […]

Simple and efficient 12V to 5V convertor

Fcobcn shared his simple and efficient 12V to 5v converter. It’s based around the TL2575 buck IC, and can output 1 amp of current. I’m using a TL2575 from ti, wich has a max efficiency of 88%, 1A, works quite well, previously were using a 7805 wich needed heat sinking. There’s apparently no heat coming […]

Another DIY programming pogo pin connector

Lately we’ve been experimenting with pogo pin connectors for programing our boards. Beth designed another DIY ICSP pogo pin connector using two PCBs to align the pogo pins properly. One board holds the pin connections, and the other stabilizes everything for alignment. In the end I decided to use two pcbs to make the pogo […]

re:load a cheap 0-3A general purpose dummy load

Nick designed re:load, a cheap 0-30A general purpose dummy load and posted it in the forum a few months ago. It’s got over-current, over-voltage, and over-temperature protection. While the circuit is similar to many other DIY dummy loads out there, the key to Nick’s safer solution is the usage of the BTS117 smart low side […]

£1 Lithium Ion battery charger

Here’s another custom Li Ion battery charger and holder. Yesterday we ran a post involving a custom battery holder for cell phone batteries, today it’s a holder for a more conventional 18650 type Li Ion batteries. To make a battery charger, just solder the red and black leads to the BATT+/- terminals on the charger […]

Open source DIY friendly Li Ion battery charger

Miceuz designed 2 open source single sided boards for Li Ion battery chargers. He used the MAX1555 and MCP73831 ICs as the charging controller, power is provided through USB. We especially like his battery holder rig. For a long time I wanted to enter the 21st century by stopping using NiCad or NiMH batteries and […]

Tips and tricks on how to tidy up your bench

If you’re like us then your desk is always a total mess of microcontroller programmers, prototype PCBs, wires, tools, etc… This article covers a few tips and tricks on how to tidy up your workspace. While the article is written for heavier tools and equipment than what we use, there are some cool universal tips […]

Part Ninja built on perfboard

JanW built a Part Ninja on perfboard. He used a DIP cased microcontroller and through hole parts. He also replaced the 2.5V voltage reference with the similarly specced  LM385-2.5. The connections were made with enamelled copper wire AWG 28. The lacquer is burned off by tinning it with a very hot soldering iron (400 ° […]

Double sided vinyl sticker PCB toner transfer

Mincior made a tutorial on DIY double sided PCBs using vinyl stickers as your toner transfer substrate. We wrote about his vinyl sticker method in an earlier post, but this one covers synchronization between the two layers as well. This is a different way of making a double sided PCB, having one feature in common […]

Email controlled Raspberry Pi dog treat machine

Give Judd (Visla breed K9) treats through emails, and get back a picture of him eating it. This is the idea behind the Raspberry Pi powered Judd treat machine. The Judd Treat Machine, as shown in the youtube video below, is a Raspberry Pi based dog-treat-dispensing machine!  A combination of various skillsets (CAD, machining, fabrication, […]

Hive retro computer

The crew from the German HIVE Project are developing a retro style DIY computer with Parallax Propeller chips. The design includes three Propeller chips (containing a total of 24 RISC processors), VGA graphics, video output, stereo sound, about 1 MB of RAM, SD Card reader, LAN, mouse and keyboard. The design uses all DIP and […]

Homebrew highspeed lo-Z scope probe

Paulo Oliveira was experimenting with probing high-speed signals with his oscilloscope. You might think that a 500 MHz probe would be adequate to probe a 125 MHz clock signal, but he demonstrates why this is not the case. In his article, he not only provides detailed insights into building your own high-speed oscilloscope probe but […]

DIY BT mouse using resistive touch screen

Vinod S acquired some resistive touchpads and decided to interface one with a Bluetooth module so it would function as a wireless computer mouse. He explains, “I have used a cheap ATtiny13 (8 pin) microcontroller which runs at an internal 9.6MHz clock. It samples two-channel analog voltage from the touchpad. One of the GPIO pins […]