Liquid Metal Ion Thrusters Aren’t Easy

What do scanning electron microscopes and satellites have in common? On the face of things, not much, but after seeing [Zachary Tong]’s latest video on liquid metal ion thrusters, we see that…

Saving A Samsung TV From The Dreaded Boot Loop

[eigma] had a difficult problem. After pulling a TV out of the trash and bringing it home, it turned out it was suffering from a troubling boot loop issue that basically made it useless. As so many…

Building A Generator That Runs Off Hose Power

[Paul Junkin] bought a curious product off the Internet. It was supposed to generate electricity when hooked up to a running hose. Only, it didn’t do a very good job. His solution was straigh…

A Surprisingly Simple Omnidirectional Display

Old-school technology can spark surprising innovations. By combining the vintage zoetrope concept with digital displays, [Mike Ando] created the Andotrope, a surprisingly simple omnidirectional dis…

Don’t Forget Your Curve Tracer

As cheap microcontrollers have given us an impressive range of test equipment trinkets to play with, it’s easy to forget some of the old standabys. A curve tracer for example, the relatively …

Combining Gyro Stabilisation With Weight Shift Balancing

Gyroscopes are perfect to damper short impulses of external forces but will eventually succumb if a constant force, like gravity, is applied. Once the axis of rotation of the mass aligns with the a…

A Look Inside A Canadian Satellite TV Facility

If you’ve ever wondered what goes on in the ground facilities of a satellite TV operation, you could go banging on the doors or your local station. You’d probably get thrown out in shor…

Small Steam Generator Creates Educational Experience

Steam turbines have helped drive a large chunk of our technological development over the last century or so, and they’ll always make for interesting DIY. [Hyperspace Pirate] built a small tur…

Keeping Tabs On An Undergraduate Projects Lab’s Door Status

Over at the University of Wisconsin’s Undergraduate Projects Lab (UPL) there’s been a way to check whether this room is open for general use by CS undergraduates and others practically …

Overcomplicating The Magnetic Compass For A Reason

Some inventions are so simple that it’s hard to improve them. The magnetic compass is a great example — a magnetized needle, a bit of cork, and a bowl of water are all you need to start…

Experimenting With MicroPython On The Bus Pirate 5

I recently got one of the new RP2040-based Bus Pirate 5 (BP5), a multi-purpose interface debugging and testing tool. Scanning the various such tools in my toolbox already: an Analog Discovery 2, a …

Photochromic Dye Makes Up This Novel Optical Memristor

Despite being much in the zeitgeist lately, we have to confess to still being a bit foggy about exactly what memristors are. The “mem” part of their name seems to be the important bit, …

Why Use A Sensor When A Pseudo-Sensor Will Do?

Usually, when you need to sense something in a project, the answers are straightforward. Want to sense air temperature? There’s a sensor for that. Particulate content in the air? There’…

Proper Mag Lev Controller Makes Snail Lamp Much Cooler

Magnetic levitation has not quite revolutionized the world of transit the way some of us might have hoped. It has, however, proven useful to [mrdiytechmagic], who has put the technology to grand us…

Simple 3D-Printed Table Loom For Complex Weavings

The loom has been a transformative invention throughout history, shaping the textile industry from simple hand looms to complex, fully automated machines. Now, thanks to advancements in 3D printing…

Working Through The Art Of Electronics Exercises

[The Engineering Experience] has an ambitious series of videos. He’s working through circuit examples from the awesome book “The Art of Electronics.” In the latest installment, he…

New Additive Manufacturing Contenders: HIP And Centrifugal Printing

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a field of ever-growing importance, with many startups and existing companies seeking to either improve on existing AM technologies or market new approaches. At the R…

Candle Powered Lantern Isn’t As Silly As You Think

[Gilles Messier] at the Our Own Devices YouTube channel recently took a look at an interesting device — an electric lantern powered by a candle. At first glance, this sounds completely absurd…

Try Out MCUs With This Jumperable TSSOP20 Adapter

There are so many new cool MCUs coming out, and you want to play with all of them, but, initially, they tend to be accessible as bare chips. Devboards might be hard to get, not expose everything, o…

Make A Super Cute LiDAR Measurement Module

This ultra-cute tiny LiDAR rangefinder project by [gokux] can be thought of as a love letter to the incredible resources and components hobbyists and hackers of all types have access to nowadays. I…