Collaborate Disseminate
There was a time not that long ago when every tool was cordless. But now, cordless power tools have proliferated to the point where the mere thought of using a …read more Continue reading Battery Bot Makes Sure Cordless Tool Packs Are Always Topped Up
This mini handheld chainsaw by [Make it Extreme] is based around an electric motor from a car door, the same ones used to raise and lower car windows. They are …read more Continue reading Electric Window Motor Becomes Mini Chainsaw
If you’re like us, the expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam inserts that protect many packages these days are a source of mixed feeling. On the one hand, we’re glad that stuff arrives intact thanks to the molded foam inserts. But it seems so wasteful, especially when chucking it in the garbage …read more
Continue reading Whirling Sawblades Turn Foam Packaging Into Wall Insulation
When life hands you the world’s smallest chainsaw, what’s there to do except make it even more ridiculous? That’s what [JohnnyQ90] did when he heavily modified a mini-electric chainsaw with a powerful RC car engine.
The saw in question, a Bosch EasyCut with “Nanoblade technology,” can only be defined as a chainsaw in the loosest of senses. It’s a cordless tool intended for light pruning and the like, and desperately in need of the [Tim the Toolman Taylor] treatment. The transmogrification began with a teardown of the drivetrain and addition of a custom centrifugal clutch for the 1.44-cc nitro RC …read more
Continue reading Micro Chainsaw Gets a Much Needed Nitro Power Boost
Say what you want about the current crop of mass-marketed consumer-grade cordless tools, but they’ve got one thing going for them — they’re cheap. Cheap enough, in fact, that they offer a lot of hacking opportunities, like this portable bench power supply that rides atop a Ryobi battery.
Like many of the more common bench supply builds we’ve seen, [Pat K]’s more portable project relies on the ubiquitous DPS5005 power supply module, obtained from the usual sources. [Pat K] doesn’t get into specifics on performance, but supplied with 18 volts from a Ryobi One+ battery, the DC-DC programmable module should …read more
Continue reading Cordless Tool Battery Pack Turned into Portable Bench Supply
Even though he’s a faithful DeWalt cordless tool guy, [Richard Day] admits to a wandering eye in the tool aisle, looking at the Ryobi offerings with impure thoughts. Could he stay true to his brand and stick with his huge stock of yellow tools and batteries, or would he succumb to temptation and add another set of batteries and chargers so he could have access to a few specialty lime green tools?
Luckily, we live in the future, so there’s a third way — building a cross-brand battery adapter that lets him power Ryobi tools with his DeWalt batteries. [Richard]’s …read more
Continue reading Cross-Brand Adapter Makes for Blended Battery Family
While it’s true that your parts bin might have a few parts harvested from outdated devices of recent vintage, there’s not much to glean anymore aside from wall warts. But the 3×48-character LCD from [Kerry Wong]’s old Uniden cordless landline phone was tempting enough for him to attempt a teardown and reverse engineering, and the results were instructive.
No data sheet? No problem. [Kerry] couldn’t find anything out about the nicely backlit display, so onto the logic analyzer it went. With only eight leads from the main board to the display module, it wasn’t likely to be a parallel protocol, …read more
While it’s true that your parts bin might have a few parts harvested from outdated devices of recent vintage, there’s not much to glean anymore aside from wall warts. But the 3×48-character LCD from [Kerry Wong]’s old Uniden cordless landline phone was tempting enough for him to attempt a teardown and reverse engineering, and the results were instructive.
No data sheet? No problem. [Kerry] couldn’t find anything out about the nicely backlit display, so onto the logic analyzer it went. With only eight leads from the main board to the display module, it wasn’t likely to be a parallel protocol, …read more
Long before everyone had a smartphone or two, the implementation of a telephone was much stranger than today. Most telephones had real, physical buttons. Even more bizarrely, these phones were connected to other phones through physical wires. Weird, right? These were called “landlines”, a technology that shuffled off this mortal coil three or four years ago.
It gets even more bizarre. some phones were wireless — just like your smartphone — but they couldn’t get a signal more than a few hundred feet away from your house for some reason. These were ‘cordless telephones’. [Corrosive] has been working on …read more
Continue reading Exposing Dinosaur Phone Insecurity With Software Defined Radio
A water pump is one of those items that are uncommonly used, but invaluable when needed. Rarer still are cordless versions that can be deployed at speed. Enter [DIY King 00], who has shared his build of a cordless water pump!
The pump uses an 18 volt brushed motor and is powered by an AEG 18V LiPo battery. That’s the same battery as the rest of [DIY King]’s power tools, making it convenient to use. UPVC pipe was used for the impeller — with a pipe end cap for a housing. A window of plexiglass to view the pump in …read more
