September 2010

Wooden LED Desk Lamp Project

If you are looking for a new desk lamp don’t go to Walmart, get out some hand tools (or a CNC or Laser Cutter) out and make your own. This crazy Wooden LED Desk Lamp Project design was done by jeff-o. He installed a 3 watt LED in the head for a nice amount light. “The majority of the lamp is made of 1/4″ and 1/2″ Baltic Birch plywood.  I

WDTV Remote Control External Power Circuit

With all the technology around us there will often come a time when you wish it would work in a slightly different way. Well unless you work as one of the design engineers in the company that made the product chances are you will just have to suck it up and live with what was produced. Well when Matt from Openschemes was in this situation with his Western Digital WDTV

How to use External Interrupts on an ATmega168

Daniel Garcia from Protostack has made a good tutorial describing the steps to Understand How to use External Interrupts on an ATmega168. It is nice to forget about manually coding to look for changes in state of inputs and other conditions within the microcontroller. Interrupts allow us to keep on doing real work while the system keep monitoring for changes. “Microcontroller interrupts are just like that. The microcontroller is executing

1953 Radio upgraded and now plays MP3s

I had never heard of the system that this radio used to be used on. It was tied into the telephone system and received the audio programming over the phone line. Since this system has been discontinued the 1953 Radio was upgraded to play MP3s and FM Radio. The neat thing about the conversion is that it still uses all the original electronics to make the sound so it still

IR Jammer Review

John Boxall of Tronixstuff is known for his electronic kit reviews, he recently did a hands on build review of our IR Jammer Kit. You have to love his Fluke meter, if you haven’t seen one of these before you might think it’s a meter the size of a display but it’s actually a normal sized meter with a removable display. This would allow the display be placed in a

Windows Home Server built into Fine Furniture

Check out this great Windows Home Server built into Fine Furniture build over at Once Around the Block. The build is broken down into build post 1, 2 and 3. The finished system looks great but I think my favorite feature is the power on light which is an edge lit piece of plastic that has been inserted into the edge of a drawer. The power on button has also

Name the Thing Contest - 147

The prize this week is a loupe magnifier, this will let you get a close look at whatever you are working on. This contest will run for one week (Sept 4 – 10, 2010) . Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item pictured above and give an example of what can be done with it. Please do not give the answer in the comments.