I really heart coiled cords. I think coiling is a very elegant way of dealing with the problem of unsightly slack cables, and often I find myself wishing that this or that appliance had come with a coiled cord. Replacement cords that are factory-coiled can usually be purchased and installed (if necessary), but that may be an unnecessary expense because, with some simple tools, it is easy to coil a straight cord yourself.
Taking a torch to an IC package to see what’s inside.
Heat pipes, I am obliged to point out, are awesome. When somebody first explained to me how they work, I was like, “No way. Uh-unh. Don’t believe you.” And yet they persist in existing, and working, in spite of my disbelief. I’m still getting over the pain. Lots of people sell heat pipes to overclockers/PC […]
On uC Hobby, they took apart an old desk phone, scavenged it for parts, and wrote up what they found: The easiest way I have found with modern technology to identify parts is to type all of the markings on the part into a Google search, and refine your search from there. If you then […]
Jim, from TechShop, has a nifty how-to on Instructables covering the sponge and Ferric Chloride method of quick n’ dirty PCB etching. He writes: This weekend I tried this sponge and ferric chloride method to etch 3 Arduino shield boards I am prototyping for our RFID-enabled member access system at TechShop (TechShop is the 15,000 […]
Limor has posted another installment of her exceedingly excellent sensor tutorials, this one on that most marvelous of switches, the tilt sensor. When you just have to know which end is up, you need to strap on one of these puppies. Here’s how. Sensor tutorials – Tilt sensors! More: Force Sensitive Resistor (FSR) tutorial Ladyada’s […]
Our friends over at Sparkfun have announced their decision to officially make some of their kits open source. Nathan and company have always been supporters of OSH, but now they’re going to be putting links to the engineering files up to at least some of their kits. The first is the ClockIt kit, an alarm […]
