2016

Monoprice MP Mini 3D Printer

  This might be the time to jump onto the 3D printer bandwagon. The place that provides cheap good quality cables looks to now be the place to pick up a cheap and reliable 3D printer. At $200 it has some features that you wouldn’t expect to see such as a nice full color display to view settings such as platform temperature so you can easily keep your eye on

DIY Smart Glasses

  HARRIS’ ELECTRONICS is developing a prototype set of Smart Glasses. This is not an easy task! You can read about the development challenges here. Thanks for the tip James. “The glasses themselves are based around an STM32F051K8 microcontroller (LQFP32 for easy soldering!). All the firmware is custom written though I got the LCD driver initialization codes from the BuyDisplay examples. The firmware is written using a somewhat “co-operative scheduling”

Custom Word Clock

  Jeremy Blum built this Custom Word Clock. It has lots of non electronic parts such as the great looking case. Good thing Jeremy is no longer at Google and is now working at Shaper with use of a wood working shop. We have seen lots of word clocks here in the past but the main thing I like with this design is the LED panel based design. Most designs

Water Droplets Captured using a High Speed Camera Rig

    Check out these Water Droplets Captured using a High Speed Camera Rig. This system uses an Arduino to activate a solenoid, the solenoid releases a drop from a water container mounted at a specific distance above the table. The water falls at a repeatable rate, at the desired time the system triggers a camera flash. This allows a camera that is focused on the hit zone to capture some

Introduction to Analog to Digital Conversion (ADC)

  Bil Herd goes through a great Introduction to Analog to Digital Conversion. These days it is very simple to grab an analog reading and use it with a microcontroller with ease. This is because modern microcontrollers often have one or many ADC built in. Not that long ago a  would have been needed, this is still the case if a special ADC is needed for things such as high

18 Year Old Computer Collector Buys a IBM z890 Mainframe

  At 18 years of age he has already been collecting for years. Most of his collection are things like Commodore and Apple computers. These can sit on a shelf and be moved around with ease. When he saw an IBM z890 Mainframe up for grabs he jumped on it. With a bit of excavation he was able to get it into his parents basement.  

IOT Long Runtime

    With the adoption of IOT long runtime on battery power is something that is a huge concern. We don’t mind charging our smartphones daily but if we have a dozen IOT devices in our home we would like them to be invisible and just operate for as long as possible without needing attention. Andreas Spiess has done some research using the popular ESP8266 and a variety of batteries. In his test