Author Archives: Anool Mahidharia

Universal Quick-Release Bar Clamps

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The typical hacker can never say no to more tools. And when it comes to clamps, one just can’t have enough of them. From holding small PCB’s to clamping together large sheets of plywood, you need a variety of sizes and quantities. So it would be pretty neat if we could just 3D print them whenever needed. [Mgx3d] has done that by designing 3D printable bar clamp jaws with a quick release mechanism that can be used with standard T-slot aluminum extrusion. This allows you to create ad-hoc bar clamps of any size and length quickly.

The design consists of …read more

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Rapidly Prototyping Prosthetics, Braille, and Wheelchairs

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We live in an amazing time where the availability of rapid prototyping tools and expertise to use them has expanded faster than at any other time in human history. We now have an amazing ability to quickly bring together creative solutions — perfect examples of this are the designs for specialized arm prosthetics, Braille printing, and custom wheelchair builds that came together last week.

Earlier this month we published details about the S.T.E.A.M. Fabrikarium program taking place at Maker’s Asylum in Mumbai. The five-day event was designed to match up groups of makers with mentors to build assistive devices which …read more

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S.T.E.A.M. Fabrikarium Builds Assistive Tech in Mumbai

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Starting this weekend, a group of 65 invited Maker’s from various disciplines, along with 20 awesome Mentors, will gather at the Maker’s Asylum in Mumbai for the five day S.T.E.A.M. Fabrikarium program. The aim is to improve the capabilities of the differently-abled by building and expanding upon existing open source projects. At the same time, the teams will learn more about rapid prototyping techniques.

Among the participants will be at least 15 differently-abled people who will be a part of the whole process of learning as well as providing their inputs on the problems being tackled. Participants have an opportunity …read more

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Restoring a piece of Musical History

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Every restoration project involves various levels of grit, determination, gumption and doggedness. But [Darren Glen]’s restoration of a Jupiter-8 is an absolute labor of love. The Jupiter-8,  launched by Roland in 1981, was their flagship “polyphonic analog subtractive” synthesizer and was used by many legendary acts of the ’80’s. The synthesizer was rugged — built to withstand the rigors of travelling everywhere that the bands took it. More importantly, it could produce a wide range of sounds that came from dedicated and independent controllers. These, plus a host of other desirable features, makes the synth highly coveted even today and …read more

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Pi replaces Keiko-chan

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[Tobias Kuhn] built Crystal Signal Pi, a Raspberry Pi based low-cost alternative for a notification device that provides visual, audio and network warnings about server problems. [Tobias] works for a Japanese company where it is critical for their servers to keep humming nicely all the time. Any emergencies or error conditions must be broadcast immediately so the technicians can fix it ASAP. Network enabled warning light stalks are used to provide these alerts. A local company produces a series of indicator and hazard warning lights which are colloquially called as Keiko-chan. These are similar to the hazard warning tower lights …read more

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MeatBagPnP Makes You the Automatic Pick and Place

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It’s amazing how hackers are nowadays building increasingly complex hardware with SMD parts as small as grains of sand. Getting multilayer PCB’s and soldering stencils in small quantities for prototyping is easier than ever before. But Pick-and-Place — the process of taking parts and stuffing them on the PCB in preparation for soldering — is elusive, for several reasons. For one, it makes sense only if you plan to do volume production as the cost and time for just setting up the PnP machine for a small run is prohibitive. And a desktop PnP machine isn’t yet as ubiquitous as …read more

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Continuity Tester uses the ATtiny85’s Comparator

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There’s an inside joke among cyclists – the number of bikes you need is “n+1”, where “n” is your current number of bikes. The same probably also applies to the number of tools and equipment a hacker needs on their workbench. Enough is never enough. Although [David Johnson-Davies] has a couple of multimeters lying around, he still felt the urge to build a stand-alone continuity tester and has posted details for a super-simple ATtiny85 based Continuity Tester on his blog. For a device this simple, he set himself some tall design goals. Using the ATtiny85 and a few SMD discretes, …read more

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Modder puts Computer inside a Power Supply

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When building a custom computer rig, most people put the SMPS power supply inside the computer case. [James] a.k.a [Aibohphobia] a.k.a [fearofpalindromes] turned it inside out, and built the STX160.0 – a full-fledged gaming computer stuffed inside a ATX power supply enclosure. While Small Form Factor (SFF) computers are nothing new, his build packs a powerful punch in a small enclosure and is a great example of computer modding, hacker ingenuity and engineering. The finished computer uses a Mini-ITX form factor motherboard with Intel i5 6500T quad-core 2.2GHz processor, EVGA GTX 1060 SC graphics card, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 250GB SSD, …read more

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Precision Voltage Reference Source

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[barbouri] found a few old (vintage?) parts from the early ’80’s while rummaging through his parts bin, and quickly spun out a small PCB to build a 10.000 V reference using these old ICs. Throwing together a small number of parts, he was able to build a source which might be good enough to use as a reference for another circuit or provide a quick calibration check for some of his bench instruments that have a resolution of 1 mV or maybe even 100 μV.

The AD584* pin programmable precision voltage references have been available since the ’80’s and offer …read more

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Precision Voltage Reference Source

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[barbouri] found a few old (vintage?) parts from the early ’80’s while rummaging through his parts bin, and quickly spun out a small PCB to build a 10.000 V reference using these old ICs. Throwing together a small number of parts, he was able to build a source which might be good enough to use as a reference for another circuit or provide a quick calibration check for some of his bench instruments that have a resolution of 1 mV or maybe even 100 μV.

The AD584* pin programmable precision voltage references have been available since the ’80’s and offer …read more

Continue reading Precision Voltage Reference Source→