Author: Bryan Cockfield

1817 Articles

Ebike Display Uses Reflective LCD

May 31, 2026 by 2 Comments

Although LCD displays have been used in almost every type of consumer electronics display over the last two decades, many of these screens have a few downsides that limit their usefulness in certain situations. As any owner of an early digital watch, an early laptop, or an early digital camera will testify, these displays often completely fail in direct sunlight. And, a currently new technology often using inexpensive displays in full sunlight conditions is ebikes, so [Volos Projects] decided to use a unique LCD display to solve this issue.

The display is called a reflective LCD (RLCD) and is actually a fairly old but overlooked piece of technology. Displays like these have a reflective layer that bounces ambient light back to the user, increasing contrast and readability in high light, especially when compared to more common transmissive displays. This build is based on a board from Waveshare, which includes the screen and its driver components, and [Volos Projects] integrated this into a test stand that mimics an ebike’s speed sensor and other hardware like turn signals. The display shows the bike’s speed and a few other indicators, and thanks to the screen, this information can be easily seen in full sun.

Although he doesn’t have it on an actual e-bike yet, he hopes it will be useful for those who want to try out something like this with their substandard e-bike displays. The code he’s used is available on a GitHub page for anyone interested. We’d imagine that a low-cost display like this would pair well with an open-source ebike like this one.

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Take The Reins Of This Unique Controller

May 29, 2026 by 5 Comments

Many simulator-style games have their own dedicated controllers, from racing sims with pedals, steering wheels, and shifters to flight sims which have their own joysticks and sometimes entire cockpits. But for how prevalent riding horses is in a wide array of video games from Red Dead Redemption to Zelda to The Witcher we’re not sure we’ve ever seen a controller built specifically for riding virtual horses, at least not until [Squalius] built this horse riding controller.

[Squalius] has been working through a few prototypes of his OpenRidingController and has a fairly complete riding setup now, complete with reins and stirrups for controlling one’s in-game companions. The reins are attached to infrared distance sensors which can send analog signals to the game for controlling steering, and are attached to each other through an elastic band to provide a more realistic feeling when both are pulled to ask the horse to stop. The stirrups can be pulled to tell the horse to move at various speeds, and although a horse doesn’t need to be commanded to jump in real life, this controller provides a method for jumping an in-game horse as well.

Although we’ve mentioned a few games famous for using horses already, [Squalius] also added a handheld joystick to enable his controller to be used in less-conventional games like Minecraft where the player can use a mod to add a horse, and has also used his controller to play DOOM as well. As its name suggests it’s also open source and the code for it is all available on the project’s GitHub page. It’s a type of controller we didn’t realize we were missing until now, and perhaps we would have expected to see one before something like a controller meant for a virtual trombone.

Thanks to [Keith] for the tip!

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A Special Type Of Mower For Rocky Fields

May 29, 2026 by 19 Comments

Ever since wealthy European landowners started displaying vast, unused swaths of turfgrass as status symbols, regular folk have been chasing that perfectly mown and tended lawn for similar reasons. In the modern era, most mowers used to maintain these spaces use a spinning blade attached to a motor of some sort, but this can be dangerous especially on rocky fields like [Greenhill Forge] needs to mow. For these fields it’s best to use a different type of mower, and he’s built one from scratch.

This type of mower is called a flail mower, which has hinged, sharpened hammers attached to a central rotating drum. Since the flails have less rotational speed at the ends, they are less dangerous if they strike solid objects like rocks. To build one, he first builds the central drum and flails, then the enclosure to mount it to his tractor, and then a drivetrain to attach it to the tractor’s PTO. Since everything is getting built in [Greenhill Forge]’s metalworking shop, many of the parts needed to be fabricated from scratch, which involved several jigs for the plasma cutter as well as forging some steel to make some of the thicker parts.

Although not many of us have fully-stocked metalworking shops like this, it shows that almost anything can be built with the right tools. A forge is actually fairly accessible for those looking to start smithing; we’ve seen them built from little more than an off-the-shelf unmodified microwave or from a propane torch and some cookware.

Medication Reminder Uses Only One Button

May 29, 2026 by 13 Comments

As anyone who takes medicines regularly will attest to, the days have a tendency to blur together, making it hard to remember if you did something like take that day’s dose or not. There are plenty of products available to help keep track of medication reminders but many are overly complicated, so [Jeroen] built this one which keeps simplicity and usability as its core design principle.

[Jeroen] calls it the MedMinder, and it’s a small, compact, rectangular device with a four-character display meant to sit on a countertop. When it’s time to take a medicine, the display will show that medicine’s four-letter code until the user pushes the single button under the display, signalling that they’ve taken their dose. If many different medications have to be taken at the same time, it displays the first priority until the button is pushed, and then displays whichever one is next after that.

Programming is a little less straightforward, as the medications need to be added to the source code and uploaded to the Arduino that sits at the center of this build, but with the source code available this isn’t too difficult for someone with minimal experience with microcontrollers.

In an idealized world, technology should make our lives simpler or easier, and this small device goes a long way towards helping with that goal. Especially for an important but mundane task that can be surprisingly easy to lose track of. Although we glossed over the accuracy of this device’s clock in this article, we do have a comprehensive guide for selecting the right real-time clock for microcontrollers like this.

Camping On Unconventional Watercraft

May 28, 2026 by 20 Comments

The fjords of Norway are world famous for their beauty, but even though the word itself is Norwegian, there are fjords all over the world in areas that used to be covered in glaciers. One of these areas is the Pacific Northwest of North America, we herit’s actually possible to travel by boat from the Seattle area all the way into Alaska without going to the Pacific Ocean, and although plenty of people make this journey by boat, [Matt] is planning on doing this journey on a jet ski with a custom camper on the back.

Normally a jet ski wouldn’t be the ideal platform for a multi-day on-boat adventure because of their size, but [Matt] found perhaps the largest jet ski ever made and he got a deal on it since it had previously been wrecked. Once he repaired the hull damage, he cut a sheet of plywood in half and put a hinge in the middle so it can unfold over the top of the jet ski but fold it away when he’s traveling. With the basic concept in place he took it right out on the water to a campsite before finalizing the construction of the rest of the tent, including the installation of a door, a window, and some interior lighting.

During that first night, a storm cropped up and pushed the craft out to shore while [Matt] was sleeping, so after realizing, waking up, and motoring back to shore, he made sure to tie the craft to a rock to avoid similar situations before going back to sleep. But besides some motion sickness which prevented him from cooking inside his camper, the rest of the adventure went off without a hitch. Before taking it on the Inside Passage he has been thinking of a few improvements like outriggers to keep it from rocking while he sleeps. [Matt] is no stranger to unusual camper builds, though, we recently featured his other camper which is an electric car converted to explore abandoned railroads.

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Three Arduinos Team Up To Make 80s-Style Computer

May 27, 2026 by 28 Comments

Back in the 80s, buying a home computer could easily mean an inflation-adjusted cost of thousands of dollars (or your equivalent currency unit of choice), and all for an 8-bit machine that might not have a hard drive and almost certainly didn’t connect to a network. Here in the future it’s easy to get spoiled by all the computing power and inexpensive devices practically falling into our laps, but using some modern low-cost microcontrollers can connect us to our early computing roots like [Joe]’s latest Arduino-based computer.

Taking design an engineering cues from computers like the Timex Sinclair 1000, Commodore PET, and TRS-80 MC-10, this computer uses a trio of Arduinos to accomplish what the best computer manufacturers once did with tons of integrated circuits. An Arduino Due handles all of the processing and traditional computing tasks, including a somewhat customized BASIC implementation, while an Uno performs audio processing duties. Taking care of the video processing is the much more capable Arduino Mega, outputting 40×25 monochrome NTSC composite video at 8×8 character resolution. There’s even WiFi courtesy of an ESP32 — certainly an upgrade compared to the source material.

After booting it up, the user gets a Commodore-like experience that replicates the 80s computing era quite well, and is even built inside its own keyboard case just like that era of computers usually were. [Joe] plans to release all three firmware images and the Python script used to get files onto the faux-retro machine, so keep an eye out for that.

In the event that you used rubles instead of dollars to pay for your expensive 8-bit machines back in the 80s, this computer might be more up your alley instead.

Low Head Turbine Generates Plenty Of Power

May 22, 2026 by 32 Comments

Engineering design makes all kinds of tradeoffs. Power trades off with torque, strength trades off with weight, and cost can trade off with quality. For designing a hydroelectric turbine, one of the main tradeoffs is hydraulic head with flow rate. Many large dams meant for bulk power generation will go with high head (or medium) designs, and for small dams with low head it’s usually not cost effective to build any generation. But if you’re really determined, you’ll want to build a low head water turbine like this one.

The build aims to use easy-to-find materials and simple tools. It uses 110mm and 160mm PVC pipe to not only siphon water up and over a dam, but to house the turbine as well. The turbine is built from a computer fan and sits inside the pipe with a shaft running through a Y-type fitting to the generator. The generator is built from a scavenged hoverboard wheel, and outputs a reported 3.3A DC at 60V for around 200 watts of power with only around 3m of head. The design allows the turbine to be placed at the point in the pipe that best suits the environment.

[OpenSourceLowTech], the creators of this project, make a compelling case that this build is cheaper than a 150W solar panel and it might even be able to produce more energy as well over certain timeframes, provided there’s a reliable source of water available and the owners of the dam don’t mind someone siphoning water over it continuously. The build video is worth a watch as well if for nothing else than the animation, which documents the build in excellent detail. Generating usable energy from hydropower doesn’t even need this big of a dam; if all you need is to charge your phone this tiny waterwheel will get the job done.

Thanks to [Keith] for the tip!

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