DIY Solid State Tesla Coil

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Tesla Coils are always a blast to see and are relativity simple to build. While there are plenty of sites on the subject, [Michael's] newest instructable breaks building a solid state Tesla Coil down to 12 easy steps. Items that should be familiar to anyone who has even looked at a Tesla Coil include PVC pipe, Aluminum ducting, and wire … lots of wire. The PVC pipe is cut to length and a … [Read more...]

Bring your own name badge

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It used to be that the contents of your pocket protector directly mirrored your geek level. But that just doesn't cut it in our fast-paced digital age. We think [Jonathan] is headed down the right track though, by creating a scrolling LED name badge which he takes to conventions with him. With the right enclosure this could reach the same geek level as Woz's watch. There's a lot packed into the … [Read more...]

WiFi experiments with ATtiny microcontrollers

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[Quinn Dunki] got some free stuff from Element14 to evaluate, including this Mircrochip WiFi module. It's been used as the centerpiece of an Arduino shield in the past, and she grabbed a copy of that library to see if it would play nicely with an ATtiny chip. What follows is a struggle to de-Arduino the code so that it's portable for all AVR controllers. This module is one of the least … [Read more...]

Build your own 4-channel logic analyzer

SAMSUNG

If you're just getting into hobby electronics chances are there are lots of tools you'd like to get you hands on but can't yet justify the purchases. Why not build some of the simpler ones? Here's a great example of a 4-channel logic analyzer that can be your next project and will add to your arsenal for future endeavors. As you can see, [Vassilis'] creation uses a cellphone-sized LCD screen as … [Read more...]

Web game bot coded with Python

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We find the programming challenge of game-playing bots to be fascinating. Take a look at this Python bot which plays Burrito Bison all the way through (video after the break). This is a totally pedantic exercise which has no purpose, other than to hone your mastery of a certain programming problem. And to that we say Bravo! We looked in on a similar project which used some C# code to dominate … [Read more...]

Circuit Playground – An electronics reference app from Adafruit

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It’s not everyday that we review software around here, but the folks at Adafruit recently put together an iOS app that I figured might be of interest. Their iPad/iPhone compatible application is called “Circuit Playground”, and it includes all sorts of handy electronics reference tools. For the context of this review, it should be noted that I paid for the application myself, and that I have … [Read more...]

Tweets send your balls flying (on TV)

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Members from the London Hackerspace recently got a little on-air time with a ping pong ball launcher. They were invited to build something for the Click show on BBC. The launcher that they built responds to hash tags on Twitter by barraging the audience with balls. The hardware was built in two parts. The first is a dispenser that responds to incoming Tweets by releasing one ball onto a set … [Read more...]