Once upon a time, laptops and other computer hardware often came with a fancy leather case for protection. That’s not really the case anymore, but it was in the golden …read more
The reciprocating engine has been all the rage for at least three centuries. The first widely adopted engine of this type was the steam engine with a piston translating linear …read more
The CAN bus, accessible through the OBD-II port, is the channel that holds all the secrets of the modern automobile. If you want to display those for your own perusal, …read more
Most of the time, if you’re looking for a MIDI controller, you’re going to end up with some kind of keyboard or a fancy button pad. The saxophone is an …read more
It used to be that building the Linux kernel was not easy. Testing and debugging were even worse. Nowadays, it is reasonably easy to build a custom kernel and test …read more
USB-C Power Delivery has definitely made the big mess of wires a bit smaller but not all cables are created equal — some of them can handle upwards of 100 …read more
Engineers tend to worry about uptime, whether it’s at a corporate server farm or just our own little hobby servers at home. Every now and then, something will go wrong …read more
Have you ever pulled into a car park with your favorite song blaring, only to lament the fact that the music cut out when you stopped the engine? Some modern …read more
This beautiful little radio may look like an art deco relic from a hundred years ago, but it is actually from 2023. When [Craig Lindley] first saw this design on …read more
Halloween may have come and gone for another year, but we’re still finding neat spooky projects lurking out on the Interwebs. Case in point, the Ghost Detector 9000 from [Jules]. …read more
Everyone loves sharing photos, and with most pictures being taken on smartphones now, digital frames are more convenient than finding a photo printer. [Wolfgang Ziegler] used an e-ink screen to …read more
Turn signals in most of the world are mandated to be a flashing orange light, distinct from other bulbs on a vehicle. However, there has been a trend in the …read more
If you need to send data from sensors, there are plenty of options, including a bewildering selection of wireless methods. Trouble is, most of those protocols require a substantial stack …read more
Analog computers have been around in some form for a very long time. One very obvious place they were used was in military vehicles. While submarine fire computers and the …read more
It used to be only high-end test equipment that had some sort of remote control port. These days, though, they are quite common. Historically, test gear used IEEE-488 (also known …read more
Sound cards used to be a big part of gaming machines in the 90s and 2000s but have largely gone extinct in the wake of powerful CPUs doing the sound …read more
The Coleco Adam? A not-so-great home computer that likely contributed to the downfall of the company. The keyboard, however, is a different story, and worth repurposing. [Nick Bild] has created …read more
If there’s anything people hate more than being locked into a printer manufacturer’s replacement cartridges, it’s proprietary batteries. Cordless power tools are the obvious example in this space, but there …read more
Some of our readers may know about Zork (and 1, 2, 3), the 1977 text adventure originally written for the PDP-10. The game has been public domain for a while …read more
Humans have loved looking up at the night sky for time immemorial, and that hasn’t stopped today. [MattHh] has taken this love to the next level with the Pi-lomar Miniature …read more