Alan Parekh

Extreme Low Power Microcontroller Design Considerations
DIY Hacks

Sparkfun has an interesting article on some considerations to keep in mind when working on an Extreme Low Power Microcontroller Design. When you have a design that will be running on battery power it is important to keep power consumption in mind so that the system will work for days and not hours on battery power. I was quite impressed to read that the cheap Sparkfun meter has a uA

Remote Control IR Jammer around the Net
Cool Gadgets

    Thanks to Mark Frauenfelder (Boing Boing), Charlie Sorrel (Wired), Wesley Fenlon (Tested) and David Ponce (Oh Gizmo) for writing about the Remote Control IR Jammer! Mark calls it a TV-B-Gone-B-Gone, that’s a funny concept. Just think if the CES booths has some of these on hand in 2008, Gizmodo might not have had as much fun shutting down all the TV systems .

Electric Mountainboard Version 2
Complex Hacks

1

You might remember  the first version of the Electric Mountainboard that Andres Guzman-Ballen had made. Well he just send in a tip about his second version which is very cool. Watch the video above and see some of the details below. Even though it is a single prototype Andres has gone to great lengths to make it very safe, there is a push button on the device that will kill

Solar Paint
Complex Hacks

1

When most of us think of solar power we think of solar panels or the new round Solyndra solar tubes that we were starting to see, too bad it looks like Solyndra is gone for good though. Is the future going to be solar paint? That would sure allow for growing the possible surfaces to harvest solar energy from. I can just imagine a future where vehicles have a solar

Alarm Clock Build
DIY Hacks

4

Ben Heck shows how he designed his Super Alarm Clock in the video above. I like the use of the simple push button rotary knob that is used to adjust the time. Gone is the array of small buttons along the top which have lettering so small it takes longer to figure out how to adjust the time than it does to actually make the adjustment. Having the clock know

Name the Thing Contest - 188
Contests

21

The prize this week is a solar flashlight, if you want to use this as a flashlight you better charge it during the day and not keep it hidden in a drawer. 🙂 I am thinking that the housing could make for a very small surface mount project. Not sure if the solar cell would have enough power to energize a very low current circuit but I would think it