Collaborate Disseminate
There was a time when the very idea of building a complex circuit with the intention of destroying it would have been anathema to any electrical engineer. The work put …read more Continue reading Retrotechtacular: Circuit Potting, and PCBs the Hard Way
Mouser and Digi-Key are great for servicing most needs, and the range of parts they offer is frankly bewildering. But given the breadth of the hardware hacking community’s interests, few companies could afford to be the answer to everyone’s needs. …read more
Continue reading Homebrew Doorknob Caps for High-Voltage Fun
At some time or another, we’ve all had an idea we thought was so clever that we jumped on the Internet to see if somebody else had already come up with it. Most of the time, they have. But on the off chance that you can’t find any signs of …read more
Continue reading Designing and Building a Custom Optical Fuel Sensor
[Adosia] has some interesting videos about their IoT platform controlling self-watering plant pots. However, the video that really caught our eye was the experience in sealing up sensors that are going to be out in the field. Even if you aren’t using the exact sensors, the techniques are useful.
We …read more
Continue reading He Comes To Bury Sensors, Not To Praise Them
Regular Hackaday readers will know that the clearance section of your local big box retailer is a great place to pick up oddball gadgets and gizmos for dirt cheap. In an era where manufacturers are rushing to make their products “smart” whether they need to be or not, the occasional …read more
Planned obsolescence, as annoying as it is when you’re its victim, still has to be admired. You can’t help but stand in awe of the designer who somehow managed to optimize a product to live one day longer than its warranty period. Seriously, why is it always the next day?
The design of products that are never intended to live long enough to go obsolete must be similarly challenging, and [electronupdate] did a teardown of a cheap LED blinky toy to see what’s involved. You’ve no doubt seen these seizure-triggering silicone balls before, mostly at checkout counters and the like …read more
Continue reading Lessons in Disposable Design from a Cheap Blinky Ball
We always enjoy watching [Mr. Carlson’s] videos because he looks like he is taping in a rocket ship set from a 1950s drive-in movie. In a recent video, he identified an old oscilloscope that had a transformer assembly that is potted with a pair of capacitor inside. The capacitor failed so [Carlson] decided he would repair it. The problem? The transformer and capacitor are potted together with some sort of tar compound. You can see the result in the video below.
He actually didn’t know for sure the capacitor was really in the transformer, but they were in the schematic …read more
Continue reading Repairing a Capacitor inside a Potted Transformer
We’ve all been there — a steamy night in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea, sweaty slumber disturbed by the unmistakable sounds of gnawing. In the morning we discover that a rodent of unusual tastes has chewed the microphone cable of our transceiver right half in two, leaving us out of touch with base camp. If we had a nickel for every time that’s happened.
It may sound improbable, but that’s the backstory behind [Marius Taciuc]’s 3D-printed mic cord repair. Even with more mundane failure modes, the retractile cords on microphones are notoriously difficult to fix. Pretty much any of …read more
Continue reading Repairs You Can Print: Fixing a Rat-Attacked Mic Cord
TL;DR — Don’t use silicone to pot electronics.
That’s the conclusion [GreatScott!] comes to after trying out several methods for waterproofing electronics. His efforts stem from a recent video in which he discovered that water and electricity sometimes actually do mix, as long as the water is distilled and the electronics in the drink are relatively simple. He found that the main problem was, unsurprisingly, electrolytic corrosion, so he set out to experiment with various waterproofing coatings. In a series of careful experiments he goes through the pros and cons of both conformal coatings and potting compounds. The conformal tests …read more
There’s a fairly good chance you’ve never tried to embed electronics into a chunk of concrete. Truth be told, before this one arrived to us via the tip line, the thought had never even occurred to us. After all, the conditions electronic components would have to endure during the pouring and curing process sound like a perfect storm of terrible: wet, alkaline, and with a bunch of pulverized minerals thrown in for good measure.
But as it turns out, the biggest issue with embedding electronics into concrete is something that most people aren’t even aware of: concrete is conductive. Not …read more
