Making Your Wireless Keyboard Truly Low-Power

The basics of keyboard design are tried and true at this point, but there are still a few aspects yet unconquered. One of them is making your keyboards wireless. You might think it’s easy, bu…

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The Microlino is a space-saving, electric bubble car with: Two seats, range of up to 230 km, 12.5 kW power and top speed of 90 km/h.

Altoids Tin Spy Radio Goes Solid State

[Helge Fykse (LA6NCA)] has a type, as they say. At least as far as radios are concerned, he seems to prefer elegant designs that keep the BOM to the minimum needed to get the job done. And Altoids …

Off-Grid Radio Also Repairable Off-Grid

Low-power radios, often referred to in the amateur radio community as QRP radios, have experienced a resurgence in popularity lately. Blame it on certain parts of the hobby become more popular, lik…

Want Lower Power? Add More Cores!

[Jacob Beningo] over at Embedded.com recently posted his thoughts on how to do a low-power microcontroller design. On the surface, some of his advice seems a little counter-intuitive. Even he admit…

Exploring The Early Days Of QRP Radio

Morse code might seem obsolete but for situations with extremely limited bandwidth it’s often still the best communications option available. The code requires a fair amount of training to us…

Tube Amplifier Uses Low Voltage, Sips Battery

Much like vinyl records, tube amplifiers are still prized for their perceived sound qualities, even though both technologies have been largely replaced otherwise. The major drawback to designing ar…

An Ultra Low Power Dash Cam

Dash cameras are handy as they provide a video recording of interactions on the road. However, their utility comes from the fact that they are always recording while driving. This always-on means p…

Low-Power Wi-Fi Includes E-Paper Display

Designing devices that can operate in remote environments on battery power is often challenging, especially if the devices need to last a long time between charges or battery swaps. Thankfully ther…

Low Power Challenge: The PotatoP Runs Lisp For Months Without Recharging

A common complaint among laptop users is that while battery technology has vastly improved over the past decades, a simulltaneous shrink in form factors has meant that a typical laptop today doesn&…

Low Power Challenge: Weather Station Runs For Months Thanks To E-Ink Display

Having a device in your living room that shows weather information is convenient, and building one of those is a great project if you enjoy tinkering with microcontrollers and environmental sensors…

LED Driver Circuit For Safety Hat Sucks Single AAA Cell Dry

[Petteri Aimonen] created an omnidirectional LED safety light to cling to his child’s winter hat in an effort to increase visibility during the dark winter months, but the design is also grea…

Snail Mail Notifier’s Simple Power Management To Maximize Battery Life

There are no weird, specialized components nor esoteric sleep mode tricks behind the long battery life of [Zak]’s WiFi mail slot watcher. Just some sensible design and clever focus on the dev…

Tiny GPS Logger For The Internet Of Animals

[Trichl] creates a tiny GPS logger, called ‘TickTag’, that was designed as an inexpensive location tracking option for animal studies. The low cost, tiny form factor, and large power de…

Aluminum Foil 20 Cm Antenna For 10 M Operation

[David], DL1DN, is an Amateur Radio enthusiast with a penchant for low-power (QRP) portable operations. Recently he was out and about, and found that 10 m propagation was wide open. Not discouraged…

From Nanoamps To Gigahertz: The World’s Most Extreme Op Amps

The operational amplifier, or op amp, is one of the most basic building blocks used in analog circuits. Ever since single-chip op amps were introduced in the 1960s, thousands of different types hav…

Raspberry Pi Server Cluster In 1U Rack-Mount Case

[Paul Brown] wants to take advantage of off-site server colocation services. But the providers within [Paul]’s region typically place a limit of 1A @ 120V on each server. Rather than search o…

Astronomical Clock Uses Your Spare Clock Motors

We’ll admit we are suckers for clock projects, and the more unusual, the better. We liked the look of [Peter Balch’s] astronomical clock, especially since it was handcrafted and was a r…