This article is for educational purposes only, ripping off a poorly created system is still theft. That being said we can learn lots about how not to create a card payment system. Koala from Because life is a hack was curious what made his laundry card payment system work, after cracking open the case he was surprised to see an EEPROM inside. Using a Bus Pirate and a Openbench Logic
If I learnt about Lenz’s Law in high school I must have forgot about it. Watch the cool demonstration above where a stack of neodymium ring magnets are dropped into a copper pipe. Of course copper is a non magnetic metal so the magnets will not stick to it. You would probably guess that the magnets would simply fall at the same rate as if they were just dropped. Well
Collin Cunningham made a great video about the benefits of using perfboard for prototyping circuits. Via: Adafruit “When you think “DIY electronics,” one of the first images that likely comes to mind is of parts and wire soldered to a standard piece of perforated circuit board — and that makes sense. Perfboard is widely used because it’s so versatile. Essentially, it’s just a grid of potential solder-point connections.”
Youtube user vegmatic1966 has made lots of electronic experimentation videos. The two videos above explain a simple AM Transmitter that uses a 555 Timer and the video below shows off a AM Transmitter that uses a PICAXE microcontroller.
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
If you like video games and DIY electronics have a look at this cool version of Tetris that Adam Papamarcos and Kerran Flanagan made. It’s called Human Tetris since you need to use your body to simulate the puzzle shapes to play the game. This is another great project from the Cornell ECE 4760 Course. Unlike most of the 4760 projects this team went to the extra trouble of having
Fellow Canadian Rick Crammond demonstrates how effective shielding is using a fun demonstration. Have you ever stripped some shielded cable and found the foil wrapped around the wires or looked in some electronic gear and seen some some copper paint on the inside of the cover and wondered how effective it is? Well this demonstration shows you that a bit of thin metal can really do some amazing shielding.
