An LCD, Touch Sensor, USB-C, And A Microcontroller For A Buck

[CNLohr] has been tinkering with some fun parts of late. He’d found out that ordinary LCD screens could be used as simple touch sensors, and he had to try it for himself. He ended up building…

USB-C For Hackers: Reusing Cables

Your project needs a cable, and since USB-C cables are omnipresent now, it’s only natural to want to reuse them for your evil schemes. Ever seen USB 3.0 cables used for PCIe link carrying dut…

Power Supply With Benchtop Features Fits In Your Pocket

[CentyLab]’s PocketPD isn’t just adorably tiny — it also boasts some pretty useful features. It offers a lightweight way to get a precisely adjustable output of 0 to 20 V at up to…

PicoROM, A DIP-32 8-Bit ROM Emulator

As we all know, when developing software for any platform or simply hacking a bit of code to probe how something works, the ability to deploy code rapidly is a huge help. [Martin Donlon], aka [wick…

Open-Source, 3D Printed Trackpad

Touchpads, or trackpads, have been around since the 1980s. Today, you can often find them in laptops and notebook computers as pointing devices. With no moving parts, a trackpad are easy to integra…

Ubiquitous Successful Bus: Version 2

I’ve talked a fair bit about USB-C before, explaining how it all works, from many different angles. That said, USB-C is just the physical connector standard, plus the PD part that takes care …

Need High-Power Li-Ion Charging? How About 100 W

Ever want a seriously powerful PCB for charging a Li-Ion pack? Whatever you want it for, [Redherring32] has got it — it’s a board bearing the TPS25750D and BQ25713 chips, that lets you …

Add USB-C To Your AirPods The Easy Way

While the death of Apple’s Lightning Connector can’t come soon enough, swapping the ports on their products as “category-defining innovations” seems a bit of a stretch. [Ken…

HP WebOS TouchPad Gets With The USB-C Times

Despite HP shuttering their WebOS project some time ago, the operating system has kept a dedicated following. One device in particular, the HP TouchPad, was released just a month before webOS went …

Review: IFixit’s FixHub May Be The Last Soldering Iron You Ever Buy

Like many people who solder regularly, I decided years ago to upgrade from a basic iron and invest in a soldering station. My RadioShack digital station has served me well for the better part of 20…

Rescuing High-Res Displays From Older Macs

When Apple started rolling out its Retina displays, it multiplied the amount of pixels compared to their standard, non-Retina displays by four. This increased pixel density while keeping the standa…

Universal Power Bank Customized To Your Liking

One of the most troubling trends of almost every modern consumer product that uses electricity is that the software that controls the product is likely to be proprietary and closed-source, which co…

USB-C Powered Hotplate Is Not For Food

Once upon a time, it was deemed mostly silly to try and schlep power from a computer’s ports. Then it was kind of amusing to do so with USB, and before you knew it, we were running whole lapt…

USB PD On CH32V003 Teaches You Everything

How do you talk USB Power Delivery (PD)? Grab a PHY? Use a MCU with one built-in? Well, if you’re hardcore enough, you can do it with just a few resistors and GPIOs. [eeucalyptus] shows you t…

Split A USB-C PD Port Into Three Port-ions

There’s no shortage of USB-C chargers in all sorts of configurations, but sometimes, you simply need a few more charging ports on the go, and you got a single one. Well then, check out [bluep…

Design Review: USB-C PD Input For Yaesu FRG7700

Today is another board from a friend, [treble], who wants to convert a Yaesu FRG7700 radio to USB-C PD power. It’s yet another review that I’ve done privately, and then realized I&#8217…

Soldering The Elusive USB C Port

Many SMD components, including some USB C ports, have their terminals under the component. When installed, the pins are totally hidden. So, how do you solder or unsolder them? That’s the prob…

Designing A USB-C Upgrade PCB For The MX Ergo Mouse

As the world of electronic gadgetry made the switch from micro USB to USB-C as the charging port of choice, many of us kept both of the required cables handy. But it’s fair to say that these …

A Basic USB-C Primer

Over the last five years or so there has been a quiet take-over of the ports on laptops, phones, and other devices, as a variety of older ports as well as the familiar USB A and micro USB sockets h…

Getting Started With USB-C And Common Pitfalls With Charging And Data Transfer

USB-C is one of those things that generally everyone seems to agree on that it is a ‘good thing’, but is it really? In this first part of a series on USB-C, [Andreas Spiess] takes us th…