Reading ambient temp is useful in electronics, and reading it from your handy multimeter is even better. Raj added a thermometer feature to his DMM, by hard-wiring it into the case. He used an LM35 analog temperature sensor and a slide switch connected to the multimeter inputs. You just flip the knob to the 200mV […]
Category Archives: DIY
DIY IR Toy and CPLD breakout boards
DIY etched boards are the quickest way to get a project up and running. This is just what Noy did with his IR Toy, and CPLD breakout boards. He modified our projects to a single layer design. Used the toner-transfer method to copy the traces, and etched the boards with a mix of hydrochloride acid […]
Homebrew electronic tubes
Ante Vukorepa draws our attention to this video of Claude Paillard, a French radio amateur (F2FO), making his own tubes (also known as thermionic valves) from scratch. “The video depicts the whole process, from winding the filament through making the glassware, assembly and vacuuming, to testing. Pretty awesome!” For more information on Claude’s activities as […]
Homemade flux, flux, flux reference page
Homemade soldering flux has been a hot topic in the forum. Some people prefer it to most commercial stuff. Dpropicweb consolidated the recipes, tips, and discussion into a Flux, Flux, Flux wiki page.
Waking up is easy with automated breakfast and curtains
Not a morning person? Try this automated dorm room. Curtains open, eggs boil, and bread is toasted, all automatically. The motor mounts and gearing for the curtains are machined and laser cut. So here was my approach; Use a motor to pull the curtains and use a remote set to control the kettle and oven. […]
PCB macro photography without a macro lens
Torwag started a thread in the forum with lots of interesting tips for taking macro pictures of PCBs without buying an expensive macro lens: Many here know how difficult it could be to do good detailed images of your project. A lot of point and shoot cameras are not up to this (macro) task. DSLRs […]
Sound controlled 5x5x5 LED cube
This 5x5x5 LED cube uses a microphone and op-amp to react to sound. It’s run via an Atmega328P with an Arduino bootloader: ok, it is nothing new and far away from well done.. But its just amazing for me to see it working and i learned quiet a lot :) I just want to share […]
DIY soldering station for mains-powered soldering irons
Pantelis designed and built a DIY soldering station for mains powered soldering irons. He added a thermocouple temperature sensor to the heater, and controls the power to it via a microcontroller. The whole project is documented in pictures. Via PCB heaven.
Long distance SPI: Lessons learned
Protocols like SPI, I2C, and UART are intended for chips sharing a PCB, lots of problems crop up when you try to send them over long distances. Michu designed individually controllable LED modules controlled by SPI signals sent over long lengths of cable. Initially he had lots of noise and buggy control. After some debugging […]
Cool DIY acrylic cast case
Robert designed this awesome looking headphone amplifier. The circuit is assembled without a PCB, and done very ascetically. It looks so good without a case, that it would have been a shame to stick in a plastic box. So he pored some clear acrylic into a mold, and made this cool looking case. Via PCB […]
DIY tube-mosfet hybrid headphone amplifier
Diyaudioprojects feature a DIY tube-mosfet hybrid headphone amplifier. It uses 12AU7 tubes and the IRF510 mosfet. The schematics, and pcb files are available on their site. The circuit consists of two stages: 1. a common cathode tube volt amp stage (gain), 2. a MOSFET source follower for current gain (with a LM317 regulator used as […]
Another PIC18F2550 USB development board
Palma made a USB development board for the PIC18F2550. These chips are really popular, and there is a bunch of projects floating around the internet with them, even our own USB IR Toy, and USB LCD Backpack use them. This board is basically a breakout board, with decoupling capacitors, and a USB jack. We like […]
Interfacing Arduino with an HP LED display from the ’70s
John demonstrates how to interface a vintage LED display with the Arduino. The display in question is a HP 5082-745 model, found in calculators, and other products from this manufacturer in the ’70s. Using the display is very easy – kudos to the engineers at HP for making a simple design that could be reusable […]
Interfacing CMOS cameras to 8bit microcontrollers.
Here is an article from IKALOGIC describing how to implement CMOS cameras as sensors in 8bit microcontrollers. Processing color video in real time requires powerful DSPs or MCUs, but by downgrading the image to gray-scale, and using a lower resolution, processing becomes much easier to handle, so even small 8bit MCUs can handle it Many […]
Using the MSP430 LaunchPad to program MSP430 microcontrollers
Kerry wrote a tutorial on how to use the MSP430 LaunchPad to program external (off board) standalone MSP430 microcontrollers. To program an external MSP430G2 device, you need to simply remove all the jumpers from the LaunchPad develpment board and connect the TEST, RST and ground pins with your target device (see picture below). Since the […]
DIY USB slingshot joystick.
Here is a project describing how to build a DIY USB slingshot joystick. The platform is based on a small NXP LPC11U24 breakout board with USB capability, a 3-axis sensor, and a stretch sensor. It is all incorporated into real slingshot frame. It was inspired as a demo to show off how easy it is […]
DigitGrid huge display made of multiple 7-segment displays
Skot built a huge display made of many 7-Segment displays that can display animation. It’s driven via an FPGA board.
Followup: Driving multiple character LCD with only a few extra wires
Dccharacter responded to yesterday’s post about driving two character LCDs in parallel: Guys tested better idea on roboforum.ru: if you put all the lines but ENABLE in parallel, you can drive as many LCDs as you want by 10+N MCU pins (where N is number of displays, or 6+N – depending on mode 8 bits […]
DIY high precision clock synchronized with an atomic clock
Here is a DIY high precision clock that is synced to the DCF77 atomic clock long wave radio signal. The radio signal is broadcast form Frankfurt at 77.5 KHz and has a reach of about 2000 Km. DCF77 is the name of a german radio station on 77.5 KHz, which gives official time and date from […]
Digitaly enhanced vintage music box
A digitally-enhanced vintage music box: “Digital Enhancement” is an interactive sound installation consisting of an electrified Symphonion Brevet No. 28, a synthesizer, an amplifier and four headphones. The Symphonion musical box dates back to the beginning of the last century and its mechanical workings are combined with digital technology to convert it into a MIDI […]