Category Archives: relay

Spoiler Alert! Repairing A Race Car Can Get Complicated, Fast.

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[Big Fish Motorsports] has a vehicle with an adjustable rear spoiler system that broke in the lead up to a big race. The original builder had since gone AWOL so the considerable talents of [Quinn Dunki] were brought to bear in getting it working again.

Cracking open the black control box of mystery revealed an Arduino, a ProtoShield and the first major road block: the Arduino remained stubbornly incommunicado despite several different methods of trying to read the source code. Turns out the Arduino’s ATMega324 was configured to be unreadable or simply fried, but an ATMega128 [Quinn] had proved to …read more

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Keep Pedaling to Keep Playing

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It’s been said that the best way to tackle the issue of childhood obesity would be to hook those children’s video game consoles up to a pedal-powered generator. Of course, this was said by [Alex], the creator of Cykill. Cykill interfaces an Xbox to an exercise bike, so to keep the video game going you’ll have to keep pedaling the bike.

While there is no generator involved in this project, it does mimic the effect of powering electronics from a one. The exercise bike has a set of communications wires, which are connected to a relay on the Xbox’s power …read more

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iPad, not Flux Capacitor, Brings DeLorean Back to the Future

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Add a flux capacitor and a Mr. Fusion to a DeLorean and it becomes a time machine. But without those, a DeLorean is just a car. A 35-year old car at that, and thus lacking even the most basic modern amenities. No GPS, no Bluetooth — not even remote locks for the gullwing doors!

To fix that, [TheKingofDub] decided to deck his DeLorean out with an iPad dash computer that upgrades the cockpit experience, and we have to say we’re impressed by the results. Luckily, the space occupied by the original stereo and dash vents in the center console is …read more

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Vintage Telegraph Sounder Clicks Again

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It’s sad, when you think about it: a retired railroad telegraph operator, who probably once pounded out code at 40 words per minute, with a collection of vintage sounders silently gathering dust on a shelf. [kthrace] decided to do something about that, and built this Morse sender to bring those old sounders back to life.

As archaic as Morse might seem, it’s a life skill, one the 92-year old former brass-pounder for whom this was built was eager to practice again. There are code practice oscillators, of course, but dits and dahs are no substitutes for the electromagnetic clicks and …read more

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Oscillating Fan Controller Used As Relay

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The most brilliant hacks we see aren’t always the thousand-dollar, multi-year projects spanning every facet of engineering. Rather, the most ingenious projects are ones that take an everyday thing and use it in a simple but revolutionary way. By that measure, it’ll be hard to top [Robert]’s latest hack which uses the controller board from an everyday oscillating fan to build a three-way remote-controlled relay board.

Most oscillating fans have a speed selector switch. What that does might be somewhat different between different types of fan, but in general it will select either a smaller portion of the fan’s motor …read more

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Relay Computer Starts with an Adder that Makes a Racket

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Computers built using discrete logic chips? Seen it. Computers from individual transistors? Impressive, but it’s been done. A computer built out of electromechanical relays? Bring on the ozone!

The aptly named [Clickity Clack]’s new YouTube channel promises to be very interesting if he can actually pull off a working computer using nothing but relays. But even if he doesn’t get beyond the three videos in the playlist already, the channel is definitely worth checking out. We’ve never seen a simpler, clearer explanation of binary logic, and [Clickity Clack]’s relay version of the basic logic gates is a great introduction to …read more

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Relay Computer Starts with an Adder that Makes a Racket

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Computers built using discrete logic chips? Seen it. Computers from individual transistors? Impressive, but it’s been done. A computer built out of electromechanical relays? Bring on the ozone!

The aptly named [Clickity Clack]’s new YouTube channel promises to be very interesting if he can actually pull off a working computer using nothing but relays. But even if he doesn’t get beyond the three videos in the playlist already, the channel is definitely worth checking out. We’ve never seen a simpler, clearer explanation of binary logic, and [Clickity Clack]’s relay version of the basic logic gates is a great introduction to …read more

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Early Electromechanical Circuits

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In the days before semiconductor diodes, transistors, or even vacuum tubes, mechanical means were used for doing many of the same things. But there’s still plenty of fun to be had in using those mechanical means today, as [Manuel] did recently with his relay computer. This post is a walk through some circuits that used those mechanical solutions before the invention of the more electronic and less mechanical means came along.

Coherer Morse Code Receiver

The circuit shown below is a fun one, especially if you’ve played with crystal radios. It receives Morse code that’s transmitted as bursts of radio …read more

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Relay Computing

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Recently, [Manuel] did a post on making logic gates out of anything. He mentioned a site about relay logic. While it is true that you can build logic gates using switch logic (that is, two switches in series are an AND gate and two in parallel are an OR gate), it isn’t the only way. If you are wiring a large circuit, there’s some benefit to having regular modules. A lot of computers based on discrete switching elements worked this way: you had a PCB that contained some number of a basic gate (say, a two input NAND gate) and …read more

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Arduino Lighting Controller With Remote Twist

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The time for putting up festive lights all around your house is nigh, and this is a very popular time for those of us who use the holiday season as an excuse to buy a few WiFi chips and Arduinos to automate all of our decorations. The latest in this great tradition is [Real Time Logic]’s cloud-based Christmas light setup.

In order to give public access to the Christmas light setup, a ESP8266 WiFi Four Relay board was configured with NodeMCU. This allows for four channels for lights, which are controlled through the Light Controller Server software. Once this is …read more

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