Collaborate Disseminate
Flexible circuits have been around longer than you might expect, although they only recently rounded the bend and bounced into the hobbyist’s toolbox. When Boldport fanatic [Laura Lindzay] found out about them, her immediate dream project was to make an origami butterfly that does something cool, though she wasn’t sure …read more
Continue reading Origami Butterfly: A Flex PCB Adventure Unfolds
Selecting electronic components can be a frustrating process, one of trawling through the websites of distributors such as DigiKey, Mouser, or RS, and then poring over manufacturer data sheets. These documents produced as detailed guides to the technical specifications of a device contain enough to give an engineer everything they …read more
As regular readers will know, here at Hackaday we are great enthusiasts for the PCB as an art form. On a special level of their own in that arena are the Boldport kits from [Saar Drimer], superlative objets d’art that are beautifully presented and a joy to build.
The trouble some people find with some of their Boldport kits though is that they are just too good. What can you do with them, when getting too busy with hacking them would despoil their beauty? [Paul Gallagher] has the answer in one case, he’s used not one kit but two of …read more
Continue reading The Boldport Cordwood And Cuttlefish, Together As A Guitar Tuner
If your path has taken you through any work with hi-fi audio, you will be aware of the effects of distortion on sound quality. The tiniest non-linearity in a component can ruin the result, and people who work at the extreme end of the hi-fi spectrum will go to impossible lengths to chase the tiniest percentages of distortion that no human could possibly hear.
[Monta Elkins] has a Boldport kit, the Lite2Sound, which as its name suggests translates a light level to an audio signal. Given a laser diode and a source of country music from his Amazon Echo then, …read more
Regular Hackaday readers will be familiar with the work of Boldport’s [Saar Drimer] in creating beauty in printed circuit board design. A recent work of his is the Widlar, a tribute to the legendary integrated circuit designer [Bob Widlar] in the form of a development board for his μA723 voltage regulator chip.
The μA723 is a kit of parts from which almost any regulator configuration can be made, but for [tardate] it represented a challenge. The μA723 is so versatile that what you can create is only limited only by the imagination of the builder. Having done the ordinary before, …read more
Over the last decade or so, the cost to produce a handful of custom PCBs has dropped through the floor. Now, you don’t have to use software tied to one fab house – all you have to do is drop an Eagle or KiCad file onto an order form and hit ‘submit’.
With this new found ability, hackers and PCB designers have started to build beautiful boards. A sheet of FR4 is no longer just a medium to populate parts, it’s a canvas to cover in soldermask and silkscreen.
Over the last year, Star Simpson has been working on a …read more
Continue reading Building Beautiful Boards With Star Simpson