Speak your mind and help RadioShack suck less

radio_shack

We can all agree that RadioShack isn’t exactly the DIY mecca it once was.

What used to be a haven for amateur radio operators, tinkerers, and builders alike has devolved into a stripmall mainstay full of cell phones and overpriced junk. RadioShack knows that they have fallen out of your good graces, and since you are the demographic that … Read the rest

Music tank puts the boom in boombox

music_tank

When you think of Memorial Day weekend, what comes to mind? Well around here, all we can think about is this tank cum boombox that Instructable user [Elian_gonzalez] put together.

This build is actually the third version of his Music Tank, and it comes with all sorts of improvements over previous models. The tank is primarily constructed out of plywood, … Read the rest

64-bit OS written entirely in assembly

The folks at Return Infinity just released a new version of their BareMetal OS, a 64-bit operating system written entirely in assembly.

The goal of the BareMetal project, which includes a stripped-down bootloader and a cluster computing platform is to get away from the inefficient obfuscated machine code generated by higher level languages like C/C++ and Java. By writing … Read the rest

chipKIT Uno32: first impressions and benchmarks

Following Maker Faire, we’ve had a few days to poke around with Digilent’s 32-bit Arduino-compatible chipKIT boards and compiler. We have some initial performance figures to report, along with impressions of the hardware and software.… Read the rest

Minimalistic 555 Adding Machine

How many 555 timers does it take to add up two 10 digit numbers? [Alan's] 555 Adding Machine does it with 102 of them, he designed the machine as an extreme entry to the 555 contest and the original plan was to make it even more complicated. This machine uses the 555′s to implement a nine decade accumulator and multiplexer, … Read the rest

Adding persistent memory and Ethernet to vintage arcade machines

z80_bus_tapper

If you are a frequent reader, you are undoubtedly familiar with hacker [Sprite_tm]. He has been working with fellow members of the TkkrLab hackerspace to get things ready for their official grand opening on May 28th, and wrote in to share a project he recently completed to kick things off.

As part of their preparations, they have been stocking … Read the rest

Low-cost, low-bandwidth wireless Arduino to Android communications

android_nfc

[Joe] was experimenting with his Arduino when he started thinking about how he could get it to communicate wirelessly with his Android phone. Bluetooth is an option, but it requires some extra components, and Google’s ADK works as well – just not wirelessly.

Instead, he thought it would be neat to see if he could get the two devices to Read the rest