Pocket TV Now Shows the Inspection Channel 24/7

Those little pocket TVs were quite the cool gadget back in the ’80s and ’90s, but today they’re pretty much useless at least for their intended purpose of watching analog television. (If someone is out there making tiny digital-to-analog converter boxes for these things, please let us know.)

Now that …read more

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Bright White Night Light Fights E-Waste

E-waste is a gigantic problem, and it can seem impossible as a lone individual to make any kind of dent in it. But [akshar1101] is trying to do their part by looking past the defective aspects of broken, discarded electronics to draw out the possibilities of what’s left.

This friendly …read more

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Sudden Death Rainbow Sorting Game Reveals Your True Colors

When [marzsman]’s eight-year-old daughter thought up a game they could play together involving rainbows, he was all ears. She is a certified rainbow expert, after all. They had a few R&D sessions and came up with a rainbow sorting speed trial game that looks fun to play and fairly easy …read more

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Solar Satellite Glows at Night

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If we were going to imitate one of master circuit sculptor Mohite Bhoite’s creations, we’d probably pick the little blinky solar satellite as a jumping off point just like [richardsappia] did. It’s cute, it’s functional, and it involves solar power …read more

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WaterAid Finds Potable Water and Stops Polluters

Millions of people all over the world don’t have access to clean drinking water, and it’s largely because of pollution by corporations and individuals. Solving this problem requires an affordable, scalable way to quickly judge water quality, package the data, and present it to an authority that can crack down …read more

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Slack Off from Home with a Networked Jam Session

Those of you who were regular office dwellers before the pandemic: do you miss being with your coworkers at all? Maybe just a couple of them? There’s only so much fun you can have through a chat window or a videoconference. Even if you all happen to be musicians with …read more

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Sunrise, Sunset, Repeat

Sunrises and sunsets hardly ever disappoint. Still, it’s difficult to justify waking up early enough to catch one, or to stop what you’re doing in the evening just to watch the dying light. If there’s one good thing about CCTV cameras, it’s that some of them are positioned to catch …read more

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Graphene Prints More Smoothly Under the Influence of Alcohol

If you’ve ever sloshed coffee out of your mug and watched the tiny particles scurry to the edges of the puddle, then you’ve witnessed a genuine mystery of fluid mechanics called the coffee ring effect. The same phenomenon happens with spilled wine, and with functional inks like graphene.

The coffee …read more

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Cool Off with a Piezo and a Glass of Water

Some cool-mist humidifiers work by flinging water at a vaporizer, but our favorite kind uses a piezoelectric transducer. These work by using high-frequency sound waves to pound the surface of the water with mechanical energy. That energy introduces standing waves that force the water to break apart into a fine …read more

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Print Your Way to Keyboard Stability

Keyboard key stabilizers, or stabs as they’re known in enthusiast circles, do exactly what you’d expect — they stabilize longer keys like the Shifts and the space bar so that they don’t have to be struck dead-center to actuate evenly. Stabs work by flanking the key switch with two non-functional …read more

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