The Geek Group has lots of interesting equipment but the Thumper Project is one of the most impressive. The system has gone through 7 revisions so far and more are in the works. Our friend Bob Davis has been making lots of similar devices but on a bit of a smaller scale. “Thumper is a High Energy DC Impulse Generator that is capable of producing a 1,800 Volt discharge of
Vassilis Papanikolaou has made a nice Motorcycle Universal Gear Indicator Circuit which allows you to easily see what gear you are in. I am now curious how my first motorcycle indicated the current gear, there was a single 7 segment display between the speedometer and tachometer. I am guessing that it was probably all mechanical but who knows, it might have been this complex! Thanks sending it in Vassilis. “The
This robot by Oddbot is a great example of what can be done with IR light. `The eye consist of 4 IR LEDs and 4 pairs of photo transistors. The phototransistor pairs are connected in parallel to increase their sensitivity. The phototransistor pairs are then connected to your analog inputs the same way you would connect an LDR. This circuit is really 4 FritsLDRs but using phototransistors instead of LDRs.
There was a thread over at DIY Audio that got Toon Beerten thinking about putting together a new amp. I have heard about all these strange amp classes but I haven’t been following them for many years. This Class D amp is actually a class T amp but because of some trademark issues it is branded as a class D. “I considered to construct the AMP6 kit from 41Hz Audio
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
