This is a timer project I recently made.
I am really into productivity techniques and I think using the Pomodoro technique is a nice way of working when you need to be productive.
You work hard for 25 minutes, then take a 5 minute break.
Also, I have found that the sound of a gong makes me really relaxed and focused. So I decided to build a timer project with a gong.
I wanted the gong to “gong” at the start to make me focus, then “gong” at the end to make me relax during the break.
This is an electronics project of mine. It’s a 1937 Philips radio modified into a docking station.
The reason I did it was because I had this old Philips radio laying around. And I couldn’t use it because it only had an AM receiver. So, I thought it would be cool to make it into an iPhone dock =D
The first thing I did was to remove old the old parts from it.
In this Arduino shield tutorial, I will show you how to create a 4×4 LED matrix Arduino shield. You can make any shield you want using this method.
The tutorial consists of three videos:
I have been looking for a good stereo amplifier circuit diagram for a long time. I am not a HiFi geek, I just wanted to build a simple stereo amplifier that could drive some speakers for my desktop computer.
All the schematic diagrams that I could find seemed to involve lots of hard-to-find components or you had to use it together with a pre-amplifier or some other amplifier stage. It was always something that made me hesitate.
But recently I found this awesome little chip called TEA2025! You only need a few capacitors to make a decent stereo amplifier out of it. It is so simple to build that I put it together on a stripboard in just a few hours.
I learned about the basic electronic components by going to the library and reading books.
I was just starting out.
And I felt like a lot of the books explained everything in a difficult way.
In this article, I will give you a simple overview, with an explanation of the basic electronic components – what they are and what they do.
In this short and simple tutorial I am going to walk you through how to use the Eagle autorouter with net classes.
The net classes feature lets you select different widths for each net. This is useful if you for example want your power traces to be thicker than your signal traces.
In this example we’ll set up a new net class for our ground net. And we’ll set the default width for all the other nets.
Scroll down to the bottom if you prefer a video tutorial instead.
Here is a really cool and huuuge recycling machine we built for a music festival in 2010. It is an interactive recycling station. The idea was to make recycling fun.
When you put garbage in it, the machine detects it and moves the ball on the left side one step up. When the ball has made its way all the way to the top, it is released down a pinball-ish slope while a “Tivoli” kind of tune is playing with lots of blinking lights.
The machine was on display for the first time at Øyafestivalen 2010 in Oslo. It was a real hit! Lots of people came by and recycled their garbage to get the ball to the top. People even picked up trash from the ground to put in it =)
In the following video, you can see it in action at Øyafestivalen. Elias (from thing-printer.com) is pretending he doesn’t know what it is and asks one of the girls who work there how to use it.
There are so many cool things you can make with mini radar circuits. I thought I’d share some examples from my time in the radar business. Then end with a few examples of where you can get a hold of a radar circuit.
Just to be clear: A radar is a sensor that uses electromagnetic waves for sensing. This is NOT ultra-sound. This is the real deal.
Buying electronic components online is an easy way to get the components you need. There are many stores that sell electronic components and many can ship worldwide in just a few days.
If you are a beginner, it might be useful for you to read about the basic electronic components found in circuits.
The BBC once talked about the maker movement and how building electronics is available for everyone now. And I wanted to follow-up on that, because that is really true. And that is something that I am really passionate about; getting more people to build electronics.
But first, I want to deal with the naysayers.
Do it yourself printed circuit boards or DIY PCB is possible in 3 different ways:
Before you can create your own Printed Circuit Board (PCB), you need to design your board on a computer. I’ve written a guide to designing PCBs here.
Chris @ PyroElectro is one of those interesting guys who does a lot of cool projects. His projects include an amazing 8x8x8 cube and animatronic heads.
When I got the chance to interview him I had to ask – would he rather be a resistor or a capacitor? He had to admit it was
Seeed Studio has been my goto-shop for creating prototype circuit boards for a long time. They also have lots of prototyping tools to help people create cool stuff.
SparkFun Electronics is one of my favorite online shops for cool electronic modules. I have always had a really good impression of them. They seem to have lots of fun all the time!
Last week I got the idea that I wanted to build a prototype circuit board that would tell me when to water my plants. I got the idea from an interview I did with Massimo Banzi (co-founder of Arduino).