This video describes how to make and test your own YBCO superconductor by Ben Krasnow. More info on his blog here.
Category Archives: how-to
Low cost single cell battery pack simulator
Mare writes: There are many battery cell simulators available which could simulate battery cell(s). Unfortunately, none is emulating any of the digital protocols used by fuel gauge devices. Optimal solution to efficiently emulate given smart battery pack is to use custom solution based on battery cell simulator and fuel gauge protocol emulator. Both parts could […]
Custom 3D printed magnetic encoder disks for robotics projects
A how-to on making a custom DIY magnetic disk encoder by Erich Styger: I’m making great progress with the firmware for the new Mini Sumo Robot (see “New Concept for 2018 Mini Sumo Roboter“). The goal is a versatile and low-cost Mini Sumo robot, and the robot comes with the feature of magnetic position encoders. […]
Programming STM32F103 Blue Pill using USB bootloader and PlatformIO
Coyt Barringer wrote a post on his blog showing how he program the Blue Pill STM32F103 using USB Bootloader and PlatformIO: This is the infamous Blue Pill board – a $2 ARM STM32F103 development board with all the capabilities of a Teensy 3.x at a fraction of the price of an Arduino. So what’s the […]
Rework and probe wires for circuit boards
Tips & tricks to add probe wires for low-voltage, low-current signals on small fine pitch circuit boards. Via Electronupdate.
Cheap DIY USB MIDI to CV
A how-to on making a DIY USB MIDI to CV from DIY Synthesizer: This one is simple and does not require any expensive Teensy’s or STM32. It runs on the ATtiny85 using V-USB. The ATtiny is programmed with the Micronucleus bootloader and is firmware upgradeable incircuit. More details at DIY Synthesizer homepage.
Overdrive guitar effects pedal
Eddie over at Bantam Tools shared detailed instructions of how to build this DIY overdrive effects pedal: This project shows you how to make your very own effects stompbox! We’ll go through the steps of downloading the .brd file, loading the file into our software, milling the board on the Bantam Tools Desktop PCB Milling […]
How to configure I2C sensors with Arduino
Edward Mallon writes: I’ve spent the last year in the ‘uncanny valley’ of the Arduino. That’s the point where you understand the tutorials at Arduino.cc, but still don’t get much from the material on gitHub because trained programmers would never stoop to using the wire.h library when they could just roll their own in native […]
ZX81 internal 16K RAM (reversible version)
Dave Curran wrote a post on his blog showing how he upgrades the ZX81 internal 16K RAM with a reversible version: One of the common issues with the ZX81 is the good old RAM pack wobble. Depending on the state of your edge connectors on your ZX81 and RAM pack, it sometimes does not take […]
Microcontroller action potential generator
Scott Harden writes: Here I demonstrate how to use a single microcontroller pin to generate action-potential-like waveforms. The output is similar my fully analog action potential generator circuit, but the waveform here is created in an entirely different way. A microcontroller is at the core of this project and determines when to fire action potentials. […]
TTL triggered stimulus generator
Scott Harden has a nice build log on his TTL triggered stimulus generator project: I was presented with a need to rapidly develop a pulse generator to take a TTL input and output a programmable output (for now 0.1 ms pulses at 20 Hz for as long as the input is high). I achieved this […]
How to: STM32F103C8T6 as an USB device (Virtual serial port / CDC)
In this video Hugatry shared detailed instructions of how to use the STM32F103C8T6 as an USB device with virtual serial port: Cheap STM32F103C8T6 development board Blue STM32F103C8T6 development boards, also known as “BluePill”, are cheap way to get started with 32bit ARM microcontrollers. The STM32 development board can sometimes be bought for less than $2 […]
Display Arduino analog input using LabVIEW
Zx Lee shared detailed instructions of how to display the Arduino measurements using LabVIEW: To get started, I will explain what is actually going on in Arduino. In this project, I am using an Arduino Nano to acquire signals and send the data to PC. As mentioned earlier, two analog input channels (A0 & A1) […]
3D POV display
Gelstronic shared detailed instructions of how to build this 3D POV display, project instructables here: In my project i use a spinning helix of LED strips. There are a total of 144 LEDs that can displays 17280 voxels with 16 colors. The voxels are arranged circularly in 12 levels. The LEDs are controlled by only […]
Build an open source laser reflection barrier
Boris Landoni from Open Electronics writes about an open source project laser reflection barrier: It allows us to detect the presence and passage of an object thanks to the combination of a laser diode which emits a light ray and a phototransistor which detects reflected light. Robotics applications and industrial control systems normally make use of optical […]
DIY thermal vision shoots 360 panoramas
Saulius Lukse has posted his DIY 360 panoramas: It might seem simple task but it involves some tricks to control motors and read sensor data from two separate controllers. One of the challenges I faced is meshing position and temperature data. Feedback received from each controllers is timestamped. After scan is complete timings are being analyzed […]
Dumb thermometer gets digital output
Saulius has finished a new project article, a dumb thermometer gets digital output: Some time ago I purchased 4 channel thermometer. Soon after tried few optical character recognition (OCR) techniques on 7 segment symbols including pytesseract, they worked but I was not happy with results. Few days ago pyimagesearch published article detailing his approach. So […]
The 1 bit = 6 dB rule of thumb, revisited
Steven writes: Almost ten years ago I wrote an entry about the “1 bit = 6 dB” rule of thumb. This rule states that for each bit you add to a signal, you add 6 dB of signal to noise ratio. The first derivation I gave then was focused on the noise, where the noise […]
Simple 3 phase Arduino energy meter
Simple 3 Phase Arduino energy meter from The DIY Life: Again, with this meter I was going for simplicity. Sure, for perfectly accurate measurements you need to measure both the supply current and voltage but for this application and in the interests of keeping the energy meter simple and safe – only requiring a non-contact […]
Ultrasonic Transducers – measurements and horn design
Lindsay Wilson writes: Over the past few years, I keep getting inquiries from people asking about how to measure the resonant frequency of these transducers, how to design horns, tune the length etc. I decided it was time to do a video about the entire process – hopefully I’ve covered everything relevant. If you check […]