Magnetic Swipe Cards are used everywhere, probably the most common one that we all have in our wallets is the one that is built into our bank and credit cards. Craig from the Flashing LEDs blog was had a reader that was sitting around with no purpose. He swiped his University ID through it and found that the only thing on track 2 was university ID number, this card system
The guys over at Motocross Boards have built some cool looking motorized boards, they remind me of the Wheelman that we saw about 4 years ago but check out this battery operated version! The MXB Shocker has a 1,500-watt, 48-volt brushless DC motor that is capable of pushing the machine to 35 mph. This looks like one amazingly fun ride and when you get to where you need to go
Jee Labs has some interesting modules that can be used as cool building blocks or if you want to build your own based on their ideas you can because all of the design details have been released. This Indoor Temperature, Dewpoint, Humidity and Pressure Monitoring System is a great example of what can be done with a few of these modules.
If you ever wanted to connect your microcontroller project to a VGA monitor this AVR Microcontroller VGA Output project by LucidScience will contain lots of great information. The bare bones part of the project is very interesting to see how little is needed to interface with VGA. A free port and a few resistors and diodes is all that was needed. To generate better quality images read further into the
This little robot by Ted Larson packs a bunch of processing power which is spread across 10 PIC processors! “This robot is turning into a reusable platform that could be used for more than the tabletop challenge….perhaps even a Trinity fire-fighter! Here is a shot of the board stack that Bob and I designed for this robot. Lots of MCU processing horsepower in there. All total there are 10 PIC’s
YourITronics has a good article on making a Constant Current Source using a Texas Instruments TPS54232 chip.The TSP 54232 is a flexible little chip but you will need to get out the fine pitch soldering iron tip and cut down on the coffee since it is only available in a surface mount package. There is an interesting DIY thermal via system that is used on the board to allow the
Felipe La Rotta from Engallamientos de La Rotta has built a number of cool DIY projects, this DIY Bench Power Supply is one of my favorites. Everyone who is tinkers with electronics will eventually need to progress from a battery as a power supply to a plug in wall wart then eventually to variable supply. This DIY supply quite a good variable supply since it is based on a computer
