Collaborate Disseminate
On our travels round the hardware world we’ve encountered more than one group pursuing the goal of making their own silicon integrated circuits, and indeed we’ve seen [Sam Zeloof] producing …read more Continue reading Almost Making a Camera Sensor From Scratch
There’s perhaps nothing harder to throw away than a good power supply. Whether it’s the classic “wall wart” whose mate has long since been misplaced or a beefy ATX you pulled out of a trashed computer, it always seems like there should be something you could do with these little wonders of modern power conversion. So into the parts bin it goes, where it will stay evermore. But not for the [TheRainHarvester], who figured out that the secret to putting a drawer full of old laptop chargers to use was combing them like hacker Voltron.
Using three old IBM …read more
Continue reading Laptop Chargers Team Up To Get The Juice Flowing
[Eric Brasseur] built a radio-detecting snake that consists of a LED that lights up when around reasonably strong radio waves. Near an FM radio mast you’ll find a huge amount of waste energy being dumped out in the 88 to 108 MHz range.
[Eric]’s rig consists of a pair of 1N6263 Schottky diodes, flip-flopped with one set of ends soldered to the antenna and the other ends soldered to the leads of the LED with about a foot of wire in between. The antenna can be a single wire as the diodes are soldered together. This one is around 4 …read more
As active devices go, it doesn’t get much simpler than a diode. Two terminals. Current flows in one direction and not in the other. Simple, right? Well, then there are examples with useful side effects like light emitting diodes. [GreatScott] points out that there are other useful diodes and, in particular, he posted a video covering Schottky and Zener diodes.
These special diodes have particular purposes. A Schottky diode has a very low voltage drop and fast switching speed. Zener diodes have application in simple voltage regulation.
If you ever wondered, these exotic diode names because of their inventors. [Walter …read more
