With the days of dial-up and pitiful 2G data connections long behind most of us, it would seem tempting to stop caring about how much data an end-user is expected …read more
Even with teachers with names like Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, old Heinrich Hertz himself likely didn’t have the slightest idea that his name would one day become an SI unit. Less …read more
Thunderstorms were raging across southern Germany as Elliot Williams was joined by Jenny List for this week’s podcast. The deluge outside didn’t stop the hacks coming though, and we’ve got …read more
The Estes line of flying model rockets have inspired an untold number of children and adults alike, thanks in part to their simplicity. From the design and construction of the …read more
Something rather significant happened on the Internet back in May, and it seems that someone only noticed it on September 3rd. [Youfu Zhang] dropped a note on one of the …read more
Before you decide to click away, thinking we’re talking about some heart rate monitor that connects to a display using WiFi, wait! Pulse-Fi is a system that monitors heart rate …read more
If you’re working with a microcontroller that reads a sensor, the chances are that at some point you’re faced with a serial port passing out continuous readings. The workflow of …read more
A look underneath the water’s surface can be fun and informative! However, making a device to go under the surface poses challenges with communication and water proofing. That’s what this …read more
It’s not every day we hear of a new space propulsion method. Even rarer to hear of one that actually seems halfway practical. Yet that’s what we have in the …read more
Over on his YouTube channel our hacker [Jerry Walker] repairs a Tektronix 577 curve tracer. A curve tracer is a piece of equipment which plots I-V (current vs voltage) curves, …read more
How hard can it be to create your own inductors? Get a wire. Coil it up. Right? Well, the devil is definitely in the details, and [Nick] wants to share …read more
When you think about highly-precise actuators, stepper motors probably aren’t the first device that comes to mind. However, as [Diffraction Limited]’s sub-micron capable micro-manipulator shows, they can reach extremely fine …read more
Using digital techniques has caused a resurgence of interest in VLF — very low frequency — radio. Thanks to software-defined radio, you no longer need huge coils. However, you still …read more
Developing Android applications seems like it should be fairly straightforward if you believe the glossy marketing by Google and others. It’s certainly possible to just follow the well-trodden path, use …read more
An overriding memory for those who used 8-bit machines back in the day was of using BASIC to program them. Without a disk-based operating system as we would know it …read more
If you ever develop an embedded system in a corporate environment, someone will probably tell you that you can only use 80% of the CPU or some other made-up number. …read more
Over on his blog our hacker [Scott Baker] restores a Prompt 80, which was a development system for the 8-bit Intel 8080 CPU. [Scott] acquired this broken trainer on eBay …read more
If you are interested in retrocomputers, you might be like us and old enough to remember the old systems and still have some of the books. But what if you …read more
Eggs are perhaps the most beloved staple of breakfast. However, they come with a flaw, they are incredibly messy to work with. Cracking in particular leaves egg on one’s hands …read more