Author: Jenny List

3058 Articles

A Ten Band SDR Transceiver For Homebrewers

February 26, 2025 by 9 Comments

Making a multi-band amateur radio transceiver has always been a somewhat challenging project, and making one that also supported different modes would for many years have been of almost impossible complexity best reserved for expensive commercial projects. [Bob W7PUA] has tackled both in the form of a portable 10-band multi-mode unit, and we can honestly say he’s done a very good job indeed.

As you might expect in 2025 it’s a software defined radio (SDR), but to show how powerful the silicon available today is, it’s all implemented on a microcontroller. There’s a Teensy 4 with an audio codec board that does all the signal processing heavy lifting, and an RF board that takes care of the I/Q mixing and the analogue stuff.

Band switching is handled using a technique from the past; interchangeable plug-in coil and filter units, that do an effective job. The result is a modestly-powered but extremely portable rig that doesn’t look to have broken the bank, and since the write-up goes into detail on the software side we hope it might inform other SDR projects too. We might have gone for old-school embossed Dymo labels on that brushed aluminium case just for retro appeal, but we can’t fault it.

It’s not the first time we’ve looked at a small multi-band SDR here, but we think this one ups the game somewhat.

Thanks [Pete] for the tip!

BlackBerry Keyboard Makes This Handheld Pi Stand Out

February 25, 2025 by 14 Comments

In the decade or more since small inexpensive Linux-capable single board computers such as the Raspberry Pi came to the mainstream, many a hardware hacker has turned their attention to making a portable computer using one. With such a plethora of devices having been made one might think that the Pi handheld was a done deal, but every so often along comes a new one of such quality to re-ignite the genre. So it is with [Taylor Hay]’s BlackberryPi Handheld. As you might guess from the name, it uses a BlackBerry keyboard along with a square LCD screen to create a beautifully executed Pi handheld in an almost GameBoy-like form factor.

It starts with a beautifully designed and executed case that holds a Pi and a Pimoroni HyperPixel screen. Unexpectedly this is a full-size Pi, we think a Pi 4. The keyboard is a USB enhanced Blackberry module which also has the famous trackpad, and there’s a bezel on the front to protect the screen. The power meanwhile comes from three 18650 cells inside the back of the case, with a power bank PCB. The surprise here is how simple he’s made it by careful choice of modules, the usual rats-nest of wires is missing.

The files are available so you can make your own, and he’s actively encouraging people to remix and improve it. We like this project, a lot, and after you’ve seen the video below the break, we think you will too. Oddly, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen someone try this combination.

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3D Print An Instant Camera

February 24, 2025 by 8 Comments

Instant photography occupies a niche in film photography that has endured despite its relatively high cost and the ease of newer digital technologies. There are two main manufacturers, Polaroid and Fujifilm, as well as a few smaller boutique camera makers. Into this comes [Toast], with an entirely 3D printed instant camera, not a Polaroid as he calls it, but one for Fuji Instax Mini film.

Currently available instant film comes in cartridges in which each picture is a layered design with a sachet of developing chemicals at the end. Once the film part has been exposed it is developed by passing through a set of rollers which squeeze the chemicals evenly over the film, allowing it to develop. The camera in the video below the break is simple enough, a pinhole box camera design, but the huge challenge and the interesting part of the video comes in the developer attachment which has those rollers. It’s considerably more challenging than it might at first appear, and he goes through many iterations before getting it right with some steel rollers.

The 3D print files are available but only at a price, and despite that we think there’s enough in the video below for anyone who wants to experiment for themselves. For the rest of us it’s an insight into a technology we all know about, but maybe have never looked closely at.

Instax has appeared here before, usually as an instant back for older cameras, but sometimes for far tastier projects.

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Old IPad To New Screen

February 24, 2025 by 5 Comments

Turning surplus LCD panels into stand-alone monitors with the help of a driver board is an established hack, and a search of eBay or AliExpress will turn up boards for almost any widely available panel. [Drygol] has a couple of old iPad screens, and has done exactly this with them. What makes these two projects stand aside from the crowd is their attention to detail, instead of creating a hacky monitor this is almost something you might buy as a product.

For a start, both screens sit in very smart 3D printed cases. Behind them is the LCD driver, and perhaps this is where many people might leave it. But the point of an iPad is portability, so the first one receives a suitably large lithium polymer battery and its associated electronics. As such a thing is of limited use without a battery level monitor, so one is mounted flush with the case on the outside. The final touch is a Bluetooth audio board and speaker, making an all-in-one peripheral we’d be happy to carry with us.

The second screen is a slimmer version of the first case, with a different board that has an onboard audio channel. It’s mounted in a stand with a MiSter FPGA emulator, for a very neat and compact desktop set-up.

This project shows what can be done with these screens, and raises the bar. All the files are included, so it should be possible to make your own. We expect someone might stick a Raspberry Pi in there, to make… something like an iPad.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen an iPad screen mod.

UNIX Archaeology Turns Up 1972 “V2 Beta”

February 20, 2025 by 20 Comments

In 1997 a set of DEC tapes were provided by Dennis Ritchie, as historical artifacts for those interested in the gestation of the UNIX operating system. The resulting archive files have recently been analysed by [Yfeng Gao], who has succeeded in recovering a working UNIX version from 1972. What makes it particularly interesting is that this is not a released version, instead it’s a work in progress sitting somewhere between versions 1 and 2. He’s therefore taken the liberty of naming it “V2 Beta”.

If you happen to have a PDP-11/20 you should be able to run this operating system for yourself, and for those of us without he’s provided information on which emulator will work. The interesting information for us comes in the README accompanying the tapes themselves, and in those accompanying the analysis. Aside from file fragments left over from previous users of the same tape, we learn about the state of UNIX time in 1972. This dates from the period when increments were in sixtieths of a second due to the ease of using the mains power frequency in a PDP, so with a 32-bit counter they were facing imminent roll-over. The 1970-01-01 epoch and one second increments would be adopted later in the year, but meanwhile this is an unusual curio.

If you manage to run this OS, and especially if you find anything further in the files, we’d love to hear. Meanwhile, this is not the oldest UNIX out there.

Featured image: “PDP-11/20 Rocker Switches” by Don DeBold

Vacuum Forming With 3D Printed Moulds And Sheets

February 18, 2025 by 12 Comments

Vacuum forming is perhaps one of the less popular tools in the modern maker arsenal, something which surprises us a bit because it offers many possibilities. We’ve created our own vacuum forms on 3D printed moulds for ages, so it’s interesting to see [Pisces Printing] following the same path. But what you might not realize at first is that the vacuum forming sheets themselves are also 3D printed.

The full video is below the break, and in it he details making a mould from PETG, and in particular designing it for easy release. The part he’s making is a belt guard for a table top lathe, and the PETG sheet he’s forming it from is also 3D printed. He makes the point that it’s by no means perfect, for example he shows us a bit of layer separation, but it seems promising enough for further experimentation.  His vacuum forming setup seems particularly small, which looks as though it makes the job of making a sheet somewhat simpler.

The cost of a vacuum forming sheet of whichever polymer is hardly high, so we can’t see this technique making sense for everyday use. But as we’ve seen in previous experiments, the printed sheets so make it easy to add color and texture to the final product, which obviously adds some value to the technique.

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Get Ready For KiCAD 9!

February 17, 2025 by 58 Comments

Rev up your browsers, package managers, or whatever other tool you use to avail yourself of new software releases, because the KiCAD team have announced that barring any major bugs being found in the next few hours, tomorrow should see the release of version 9 of the open source EDA suite. Who knows, depending on where you are in the world that could have already happened when you read this.

Skimming through the long list of enhancements brought into this version there’s one thing that strikes us; how this is now a list of upgrades and tweaks to a stable piece of software rather than essential features bringing a rough and ready package towards usability. There was a time when using KiCAD was a frustrating experience of many quirks and interface annoyances, but successive versions have improved it beyond measure. We would pass comment that we wished all open source software was as polished, but the fact is that much of the commercial software in this arena is not as good as this.

So head on over and kick the tires on this new KiCAD release, assuming that it passes those final checks. We look forward to the community’s verdict on it.