Here’s an Instructable by ASCAS: Phone macro photography (HQ – using LED lens) You can purchase some macro lenses for your phone camera but with a bit of work and a spare LED lens you can make your own. Only thing to make sure is that the LED lens is high quality so that there aren’t […]
Category Archives: how-to
Build a robot arm
Want to build a robot arm yourself? This video by Jacobk42 shows you how to easily make a DIY robot arm: Using some assorted pieces of wood, springs, string and some odds and ends will allow you to make a cool looking Robot Hand! Looks like William Jakespear has lots more cool demonstration of what he makes […]
DIY laser cutter for PCB stencils
HardwareBreakout shared a tutorial on how to make your own laser cutter for cutting PCB stencils: Are you sick and tired of using a tooth pick to apply solder paste? Are you still using through hole components because you don’t want to deal with soldering surface mount devices (SMD)? If so, this post provides you […]
Interfacing an I2C GPIO expander (MCP23017) to the Raspberry Pi using C++ (SYSFS)
Hertaville posted a detailed tutorial on interfacing the MCP23017 to the Raspberry Pi using C++ (SYSFS): In this blog entry I will demonstrate how to successfully interface the MCP23017 general purpose input/output (GPIO) expander from Microchip, to the Raspberry Pi over the I2C bus.
TL-WR703N: Webcam streaming
Madox wrote a short tutorial on how to set up a streaming webcam: Connecting a webcam and using the router to stream video around the place should be one of the easiest things to do. A bit too easy in that I neglected to provide simple instructions on how to set it up. mjpg-streamer and […]
How ferrite beads can filter out EMI [Electronics]
Giorgos over at PCBheaven posted this video by Alan Wolke aka W2AEW about the basics of ferrite beads, and their uses for basic filtering applications: Here is an excellent tutorial on how ferrite beads can attenuate high frequency interference into data or power lines, such as EMI. I encourage you to watch this video!
Tips & tricks to sort and rework surface mount devices (SMD)
Tips & tricks to sort and rework surface mount devices (SMD): I’m a member of the Superstition Amateur Radio Club (SARC) and each month we have a presentation on a ham radio related subject. I volunteered to record and upload the club’s monthly presentations. There were two presentations at the March 2013 club meeting: Tips […]
Soldering 8AWG wire with lead free
jwhitley89 tweeted: “And this is how you solder 8 AWG wire with lead free”
STB Zombifier adds IR remote control to TV box and monitor
When Ivan changed his TV provider they required the use of a SetTopBox(STB) as a receiver. Since it had HDMI output, he decided to use an old Philips 230C1 monitor as a TV screen. The monitor, however, was not controlled by the STB and had to be switched on and off manually (not via the […]
Graphics LCD 2-wire serial interface
In this video Debraj demonstrates his 2-wire serial interface for use with a 128×64 graphics LCD. This design reduces the pin requirement from 14 to 2. Check in at hobbydebraj for schematic and source code links. Via the contact form.
Improve wireless doorbell
Trandi posted a step by step guide of his DIY wireless doorbell build: So this was the perfect pretext for a small electronics project, centred around the idea of a simple voltmeter that would notify us when the voltage goes below a safe level. This would most easily be done with a small micro controller […]
Homebrew Cray-1A on Xilinx Spartan-3E board
Chris Fenton has spent the last year and a half or so constructing his own 1/10-scale, binary-compatible, cycle-accurate Cray-1. He says this project falls purely into the “because I can!” category.” The actual design was implemented in a Xilinx Spartan-3E 1600 development board. For vintage computing enthusiasts, Chris also provides an interesting link to the […]
Controlling Arduino via Android mobile device
Kerimil over at Arduino forum posted this simple how to on controlling an Arduino board with an Android mobile device. He describes, “The circuit is just a Bluetooth module, Arduino UNO, LED, resistor and some wires. The LED can be switched on using buttons as well as voice activation (anything that contains the word ‘on’,’off’ […]
Controlling a high power RGB LED with Raspberry Pi
Thomas Sarlandie writes, “I have hooked up a high power LED driver that I designed and built a few months ago to a 40W led and to a Raspberry Pi. I had to fight the Pi a little to get clean PWMs out of it (without using an Arduino or external PWM generator) and the […]
Raspberry Pi VPN
The Hoz directs our attention to this Lifehacker article explaining how to setup the R-Pi as your own personal VPN. The project hardware requires only standard R-Pi peripherals, including keyboard, mouse, monitor, SD card and Ethernet connection. You’ll also need a free account with LogMeIn. (They point out that OpenVPN may be a good alternative […]
BP writing U-Boot to TP-Link WR741ND router flash
Musti is a fan of the Bus Pirate and writes to share his method for using it to unbrick a TP-Link wireless router. The router had been bricked during a failed firmware upgrade, and Musti was able to desolder the FLASH memory chip and rewrite the bootloader to it using BP along with Flashrom. Get […]
HOW-TO: MYSQL database remote backup script
Thanks to amazing Linux server admin Alex, this site is extremely well backed up. Every hour we make a complete copy of the local harddrive, and then incrementally sync any new data to an offsite storage location. If all this fails, we want to preserve the most important part of the site – the databases […]
Raspberry-Pi solar-powered FTP server
David Hayward over at CNET UK has posted an article describing how he designed a solar powered FTP server based on the R-Pi. The additional hardware consists of a solar cell array and 4 NiMH batteries. The solar panel is by Cottonpickers, but you could use any appropriately rated panel. (Be sure to include appropriate […]
Programming PIC microcontrollers using ds30 bootloader
WebWarrior shows us how to program a PIC Microcontroller without a programmer: Here we specifically target the freely available ds30 bootloader for PIC microcontroller and show you how to program your device without the need of an external programmer. The video below demonstrates programming (burning) of HEX file into a PIC microcontroller using the ds30 Loader Utility. […]
ESR meter rebuilt
MickM shares how he rebuilt his ESR meter: I just rebuilt my ESR meter. I found the schematic on the web, see ORIGINAL-schematic.png for author. This works well and is easy and almost free to build. It is analog (which I prefer), and uses a 50uA meter. Via the forum.