Feeding The Fire by Robot
It might seem a little bit counterintuitive, but one of the more carbon-neutral ways of heating one’s home is by burning wood. Since the carbon for the trees came out …read more Continue reading Feeding The Fire by Robot
Author Archives: Bryan Cockfield
Vroomba Gets Upgrades and a Spoiler
[Electrosync] is the creator and driver of the world’s fastest robotic vaccum cleaner, the Vroomba. It’s a heavily modified roomba capable of speeds of around 60 kph, well beyond the …read more Continue reading Vroomba Gets Upgrades and a Spoiler
Simulating a Time-Keeping Radio Signal
As far as timekeeping goes, there’s nothing more accurate and precise than an atomic clock. Unfortunately, we can’t all have blocks of cesium in our basements, so various agencies around …read more Continue reading Simulating a Time-Keeping Radio Signal
Laptop Memory Upgradable Again
For some computing components, the bottleneck to improved speed and performance hasn’t been power consumption or clock speed but physical space. But a new memory standard may provide all of …read more Continue reading Laptop Memory Upgradable Again
Saving PIC Microcontrollers With DIY Programmer
When working on a project, plenty of us will reach for an Atmel microcontroller because of the widespread prevalence of the Arduino platform. A few hackers would opt for a …read more Continue reading Saving PIC Microcontrollers With DIY Programmer
A Dashboard Outside The Car
One of the biggest upsides of open communications standards such as CAN or SPI is that a whole world of vehicle hacking becomes available, from simple projects like adding sensors …read more Continue reading A Dashboard Outside The Car
Pico-Sized Ham Radio
There are plenty of hobbies around with huge price tags, and ham radio can certainly be one of them. Experienced hams might have radios that cost thousands of dollars, with …read more Continue reading Pico-Sized Ham Radio
USB-C Power Supply Pushes Almost 2 kW
When the USB standard was first revealed, a few peripherals here and there adopted it but it was far from the “universal” standard implied by its name. It was slow, …read more Continue reading USB-C Power Supply Pushes Almost 2 kW
High-Resolution MIDI Controller
For an older standard, MIDI has remarkable staying power in the music industry. It remains the de facto digital interface between computers and instruments thanks to its open nature, but …read more Continue reading High-Resolution MIDI Controller
Getting Root Access on a Telsa
A growing number of manufacturers are locking perfectly good hardware behind arbitrary software restrictions. While this ought to be a bigger controversy, people seem to keep paying for things like …read more Continue reading Getting Root Access on a Telsa