Collaborate Disseminate
Seeing the unseen is one of the great things about using an infrared (IR) camera, and even the cheap-ish ones that plug into a smartphone can dramatically improve your hardware …read more Continue reading Lock-In Thermography on a Cheap IR Camera
Most reverse engineering projects we see around here have some sort of practical endpoint in mind. Usually, but not always. Reverse-engineering a 40-year-old cable modem probably serves no practical end, …read more Continue reading Ancient Cable Modem Reveals Its RF Secrets
When we recently featured an Amiga upgrade project, [EmberHeavyIndustries ] was prompted to share one of their own, an adapter to allow a modern USB HID mouse to be used …read more Continue reading An Amiga Mouse, The Modern Way
Software-defined radios or SDRs have provided a step-change in the way we use radio. From your FM broadcast receiver which very likely now has single-application SDR technology embedded in a chip through to the all-singing-all-dancing general purpose SDR you’d find on an experimenter’s bench, control over signal processing has moved …read more
Computer mice existed long before the Mac, and most of the old 8-bit computers had some software that could use a mouse. These mice had balls and quadrature encoders. While converters to turn these old mice into USB devices exist, going the other way isn’t so common. [Simon] has developed the answer to that problem in the form of SmallyMouse2. It turns a USB mouse into something that can be used with the BBC Micro, Acorn Master, Acorn Archimedes, Amiga, Atari ST and more.
The design of the SmallyMouse2 uses an AT90USB microcontroller that supports USB device and host mode, …read more
For those of us whose interests lie in radio, encountering our first software defined radio must have universally seemed like a miracle. Here is a surprisingly simple device, essentially a clever mixer and a set of analogue-to-digital or digital-to-analogue converters, that can import all the complex and tricky-to-set-up parts of a traditional radio to a computer, in which all signal procession can be done using software.
When your curiosity gets the better of you and you start to peer into the workings of a software defined radio though, you encounter something you won’t have seen before in a traditional radio. …read more
Continue reading If The I And Q Of Software Defined Radio Are Your Nemesis, Read On
For those of us whose interests lie in radio, encountering our first software defined radio must have universally seemed like a miracle. Here is a surprisingly simple device, essentially a clever mixer and a set of analogue-to-digital or digital-to-analogue converters, that can import all the complex and tricky-to-set-up parts of a traditional radio to a computer, in which all signal procession can be done using software.
When your curiosity gets the better of you and you start to peer into the workings of a software defined radio though, you encounter something you won’t have seen before in a traditional radio. …read more
Continue reading If The I And Q Of Software Defined Radio Are Your Nemesis, Read On
Human input devices are a consumable on our computers today. They are so cheap and standardised, that when a mouse or a keyboard expires we don’t think twice, just throw it away and buy another one. It’ll work for sure with whatever computer we have, and we can keep on without pause.
On earlier machines though, we might not be so lucky. The first generation of computers with mice didn’t have USB or even PS/2 or serial, instead they had a wide variety of proprietary mouse interfaces that usually carried the quadrature signals direct from the peripheral’s rotary sensors. If …read more
Human input devices are a consumable on our computers today. They are so cheap and standardised, that when a mouse or a keyboard expires we don’t think twice, just throw it away and buy another one. It’ll work for sure with whatever computer we have, and we can keep on without pause.
On earlier machines though, we might not be so lucky. The first generation of computers with mice didn’t have USB or even PS/2 or serial, instead they had a wide variety of proprietary mouse interfaces that usually carried the quadrature signals direct from the peripheral’s rotary sensors. If …read more
Rotary encoders are great devices. Monitoring just a few pins you can easily and quickly read in rotation and direction of a user input (as well as many other applications). But as with anything, there are caveats. I recently had the chance to dive into some of the benefits and drawbacks of rotary encoders and how to work with them.
I often work with students on different levels of electronic projects. One student project needed a rotary encoder. These come in mechanical and optical variants. In a way, they are very simple devices. In another way, they have some complex …read more
