Of all the plastics that surround us on the daily, the one we hear least about in the 3D printing world is probably polypropylene (PP). Given that this tough, slightly …read more
Open any consumer electronics catalog from around the 1980s to the early 2000s and you are overwhelmed by a smörgåsbord of devices, covering any audio-visual and similar entertainment and hobby …read more
The fifth generation mobile communications protocol (5G) is perhaps the most complicated wireless protocol ever made. Featuring wildly fast download speeds, beam forming base stations, and of course non-standard additions, …read more
Data centers and the electrification of devices that previously ran on fossil fuels is driving increased demand for electricity around the world. China is addressing this with a megaproject that …read more
As long as there have been games, there have been crackers breaking their copy protections. “Digital Rights Management” or DRM, is a phrase for copy protection coined near the end …read more
An adult human can produce about 100 Wh of mechanical power whilst cycling, which is a not inconsiderable amount if you can convert that to electricity with reasonable efficiency. In …read more
We’ve studiously avoided any mention of our latest interstellar visitor, 3I/Atlas, on these pages, mainly because of all the hoopla in the popular press about how Avi Loeb thinks it’s …read more
Candle clocks were once an easy way to build a clock without using complex mechanical devices: just observe how quickly a thin candle burns down, mark an identical candle with …read more
There’s long been a push to stop writing code as a sequence of lines and go to something graphical, which has been very successful in some areas and less so …read more
Organic Llamas have a rather restricted range, in nature: the Andes Mountains, and that’s it. Humans weren’t content to let the fluffy, friend-shaped creatures stay in their natural habitat, however, …read more
When is a Raspberry Pi not a Raspberry Pi? Perhaps when it’s a Pi Zero-shaped board with an RP3A0 SoC from a Raspberry Pi Zero 2, made by [jonny12375]. Back …read more
It’s hard to argue with nostalgia, but you can toss a bucket of cold facts over it. In the case of the recent rescuing of the Commodore brand from the …read more
Lately, this peculiar little single wheel monorail came to our attention. Built by [extraglide1976], all from Meccano. His build started with modest tests: one gyro obviously flopped. Two gyros geared …read more
Some people like their homelabs to be as big and fancy as possible, with racks of new or surplus server hardware sucking down power. [Hardware Haven] evidently has the opposite …read more
In FDM 3D printing cycles TPU is a bit of a special filament. Not so much because of its properties, but because it’s rather stretchy even as a filament, which …read more
Many of us have run a Blink program on a microcontroller before. It’s effectively the “Hello, World!” of the embedded space. However, few of us have ever thought about optimizing …read more
The late 1970s were an interesting time for microcomputers. The rousing success of things like the 8080, the Z80, the 6800, and the 6502 made everyone wanted a piece of …read more
Al Williams wrote up a seemingly innocent piece on a couple of rules-of-thumb to go between metric and US traditional units, and the comment section went wild! Nothing seems to …read more
Over on his YouTube channel [Construction General] shows us how to convert a drain into a hydropower facility. This type of hydroelectric facility is known as a gravitation water vortex …read more
It wasn’t that long ago that projects with cellular connectivity were everywhere, but with 2G no longer universally available, glory days of cheap 2G modules seem to be on their …read more