Dave Jones has made a great video that gives a high level overview of how different regulators work. You might be surprised to see that the classic 7805 and a new LDO regulator are actually quite similar. Dave also goes over how a switch mode power supply operates under the hood. It’s good information to have in the back of your head because you never know when it will pay
It has been many years since we made an article on our Photo Etch Circuit Board Process. Next time I make some boards I will definitely use hydrogen peroxide and muriatic acid as by copper etchant. I have been using ferric chloride for many years but it is very messy and is quite expensive. In the video above Daniele Nicolucci shows a nice step by step process of making a
UPDATE: The project is complete have a look at everything here. Nerf Gun Hack part 1, part 2, part 3 This is part 2 of the Nerf Gun hack, you can see part 1 of the project here. Last time some wiring was done to allow us to remotely control the three internal motors. This time the control wires are connected to a simple circuit that uses two darlington transistors
Thanks to Protostack for sponsoring the contest this week. They will be providing a ATMEGA168 Development Kit and a USBASP AVR Programmer to the winner. The development kit contains everything you need to start building ATMEGA168 circuits. The AVR programmer is based on the Thomas Fischl’s USBasp design and connects to your computer’s USB port. The USB interface is achieved by using an atmega processor and the rest is done
Designing a circuit requires reading lots of data sheets. The data sheets contain lots of parameters, for Flash memory one of those values is the number of times the device can be read and written to. In the case of a Microchip 24AA01-I/P 128byte I2C EEPROM the rated number off write cycles is 1 million. Our friend Ian Lesnet from Dangerous Prototypes has designed a device he calls the Flash
Our friend Carlos Asmat documented the process of installing a DIY Wind Turbine. The build has been broken down into 3 parts, The Wind Turbine Part 1: General Idea, The Wind Turbine Part 2: Design and Materials and The Wind Turbine Part 3: Building the Generator. As you will see not everything went as planned, I don’t think you would even consider the need to remove a huge swarm of
We have seen quite a few multi propeller RC choppers but the MegaHex – 6 Propeller RC Chopper takes the cake! This bad boy has enough power to soar to great heights carrying a decent payload. Watch the nice clear video to see MegaHex in action. The MegaHex weighs 2.8kg without batteries and with its 1kg of batteries it can fly for 14 minutes. I am thinking that this technology
