 You probably have a handful of USB drives around your computer, they are useful and ubiquitous. After reading this article and watching the video below you might think twice before plugging in a found USB drive or one from a casual acquaintance. USB was dreamt up way back in 1994 and has gone through many versions since then. USB has a simple 4 pin contact, two for power
When your hard drive electronics dies you can ship your hard drive to a recovery company and for some serious dollars they will connect your spinning disks to known good electronics and retrieve your data. That’s fine when your drive electronics are mounted on a removable PCB in a large chassis. Now think of the same issue when talking about the embedded system inside an SD card which handles
 Wigman27 on the EEVblog has built a great looking Dummy Load. The nice and bright 4 line LCD display shows us voltage, current, resistance and power. This gives some great detail at a glance. The large lugs on the front and simple adjustment knob interface make this a great addition to your bench. The thread is interesting, he discusses the circuit design and shows some nice pictures of
Do you still cut your lawn by dragging an antiquated gas powered spinning blade back and forth across the grass? If so you might want to build an autoCut. The autoCut is a robotic lawn mower that is powered from LiPo batteries and the brain comprises of a Raspberry Pi. The goal is to have completely autonomous operation but I think an IP camera would also be a great
If you are concerned with having power when the grid is down this Mini Solar Power Plant project will allow you to build a that will help you out in a pinch. “Arduino fan Kurt (from Kurt’s Arduino Projects), designed his ‘Mobile Sun Tracking Solar Power Plant to keep civilization running smooth. To get the solar panel to track the sun, Kurt used a cheap (little more than $1)
If you are into cool clocks have a look at this Voltmeter Clock Project. It is based on the version that I built but has been enhanced with a ton of features such as master clock sync. “I have used three voltmeters and mounted them on a wooden plinth with a clear Perspex cover to give the clock an industrial look. I have modified Alan’s code to run on
Our friend Dave from the EEVBlog took apart this Vintage Precision Power Supply. With a quick look at the front panel you might think this is something that you would have got from Radio Shack 40 or 50 years ago for your hobby kit but this is a 0.001% precision power supply! It was designed by Power Designs Inc of New York back in 1964. When you see the
