Collaborate Disseminate
Friday, November 15, 2019 – PASADENA. The 2019 Hackaday Superconference is getting into high gear as I write this. Sitting in the Supplyframe HQ outside the registration desk is endlessly entertaining, as attendees pour in and get their swag bags and badges. It’s like watching a parade of luminaries from …read more
Typically, amateur radio operators use the minimum power needed to accomplish a contact. That’s just part of being a good spectrum citizen, and well-earned bragging rights go to those who make transcontinental contacts on the power coming from a coin cell. But sometimes quantity has a quality all its own, …read more
Continue reading Well-Engineered RF Amplifier Powers Ham Radio Contacts
In a sure sign that we’ve arrived in the future, news from off-world is more interesting this week than Earth news. When the InSight probe landed on Mars last year, it placed the first operating magnetometer on the Red Planet. Since then, the sensitive instrument has been logging data about …read more
In a sure sign that we’ve arrived in the future, news from off-world is more interesting this week than Earth news. When the InSight probe landed on Mars last year, it placed the first operating magnetometer on the Red Planet. Since then, the sensitive instrument has been logging data about …read more
What’s in your crypto wallet? The simple answer should be fat stacks of Bitcoin or Ethereum and little more. But if you use a hardware cryptocurrency wallet, you may be carrying around a bit fat vulnerability, too.
At the 35C3 conference last year, [Thomas Roth], [Josh Datko], and [Dmitry Nedospasov] …read more
Continue reading Side-Channel Attack Shows Vulnerabilities of Cryptocurrency Wallets
Any grizzled electronic engineer will tell you that RF work is hard. Maintaining impedance matching may be a case of cutting wires to length at lower frequencies, but into the low centimetre and millimetre wavelengths it becomes a Dark Art aided by mysterious and hugely expensive test equipment beyond …read more
Antenna tuning at HF frequencies is something that radio amateurs learn as part of their licence exam, and then hone over their time operating. A few basic instruments and an LC network antenna tuner in a box are all that is required, and everything from a bit of wet string …read more
There’s something seriously wrong with the Arduino walkie-talkie that [GreatScott!] built.
The idea is simple: build a wireless intercom so a group of motor scooter riders can talk in real-time. Yes, such products exist commercially, but that’s no fun at all. With a little ingenuity and a well-stocked parts bin, …read more
Continue reading Fail of the Week: The Arduino Walkie That Won’t Talkie
In the RF world, attenuators are a useful test and measurement tool. Variable units that can apply different levels of attenuation in discrete steps are even better. [DuWayne] made a 63 dB step attenuator by putting two smaller units in series, with an Arduino Nano in control of them. With …read more
Continue reading A DIY Step Attenuator, By Gluing Together Two Smaller Ones
It’s one thing to know that your device is leaking electromagnetic interference (EMI), but if you really want to solve the problem, it might be helpful to know where the emissions are coming from. This heat-mapping EMI probe will answer that question, with style. It uses a webcam to record …read more
Continue reading Camera Sees Electromagnetic Interference Using an SDR and Machine Vision