Peter Oakes goes over a Arduino based Industrial PLC system called Industrial Shields. If you are an Arduino programmer and are looking to incorporate your design into something that is a bit more robust this might be for you. I was thinking the system would just use some of the standard Atmel chips that are common in Arduino systems and just use the IDE for programming but it actually incorporates the real
John Schuch does a Solar Security Light Teardown, the device is to be used in his HackaDay Prize Entry. It often makes sense hacking an off the shelf product instead of designing and building your own especially when the device needs to last in the outdoor elements. John has seen first hand what happens to unprotected powered electronics when exposed even for a short time to the elements on his
Ever see a little solar dancing flowers on someones desk? This Dancing Pumpkin is the Halloween version of that little decoration. I spotted it in a store for around a dollar and it was wondering how they could make it this cheap. Watch the video to see what’s inside, not knowing their was a coil glued to the base I almost destroyed the coil while with my screwdriver while
This teardown that thegeekgroup did reminds me of technology gone by. There are lots of variations of this. The one I used had a different type of ink ribbon cartridge it was a ink impregnated cloth that would auto recycle so your text would just get fainter and fainter over time. If you want to change the font you just replace the font wheel. I am surprised that there
A look inside an inexpensive Sound Activated Touchlight. This product was purchased from Princess Auto in the surplus section. There are just a handful of components that makes it work since this was probably a 4 or 5 dollar product when it was in a regular retail store. I purchased it for about a dollar. In touch mode the push dome simply presses a push on/push off button. In
Easiest way to take a step back in time is to crack open the top of some old tech gear. Kerry Wong got a Wavetek 1045 RF Power Meter from eBay and cracked it open. It was built in the 80’s. I love how far everything is spaced out and that it looks to be built with serviceability in mind. Via: Dangerous Prototypes “All boards are double sided and components are mounted
I had one of these Siemens 100 Amp Double Pole Breakers go bad I was curious what went wrong. The failure mode was one phase was good under a load of 20 or 30 amps but the second phase dropped to around 60 or 70 VAC under load. You can see in the video that the copper braided cable had a weld that failed. I make some wrong assumptions
