electronics
Take your gardening project to the next level with a SHT-10 based soil sensor. The sensor includes a temperature/humidity sensor module from Sensiron in a sinter metal mesh encasing. The casing is weatherproof and will keep water from seeping into the body of the sensor and damaging it, but allows air to pass through so that it can measure the humidity (moisture) of the soil.
Soil Temperature/Moisture Sensor [SHT10] ID: 1298 - $49
Hackerspaces are community-operated physical places, where people can meet and work on their projects. This website is for Anyone and Everyone who wants to share their hackerspace stories and questions with the global hackerspaces community. Regular Events Call-in - Call-ins provide an opportunity for existing hackerspaces to provide an update and highlight upcoming events, and new/planned hackerspaces can ask questions. First Sunday each month.
HackerspaceWiki
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Arthur C. Clarke)
Senseless Words: Computing with Transistors
Bi-Color 8x8 Matrix | Adafruit LED Backpacks
This version of the LED backpack is designed for these bright and colorful square=pixeled 8x8 matrices.
Because I was annoyed that every time I came home I had to take out my keys, I wanted to make my front gate keyless. At first I considered options like a keypad or RFID, but those all involved installing extra hardware at the gate and running extra cables.
Janus, The gatekeper | devae.re
So I've got a project coming up (that may have something to do with this tweet ) that will require a few LED matrix displays. I found a suitable candidate online and ordered one to play around with. Since I already had the display, I thought it'd be fun to run it through the paces and build a little circuit out of it using some parts I had lying around.
The Laser Doodler | ch00ftech Industries
Adafruit customer Philippe Chrétien built a quiz buzzer system for his mother. Last Christmas I built a Quiz Buzzer System for my mother. She is a big fan of television quizzes and love to organize some with her friends and family. The particularity of this project is that you can choose your team buzzer sound from a list of more than 30 digital sounds. The system is composed of a main console, 8 buttons, a power supply and a set of telephone cables. The core of the console, built in a plastic project box, is made of an Arduino Duemilanueve micro-controller coupled with an Adafruit wave shield.
DIY Arduino Based Quiz Buzzer System
Blog: More Printed Circuitry
It’s been quite a while since I've done an update on the metal printing front, so I thought I'd do an update of where we are. In my last blog post I set out about choosing a low melting point metal which would have some unusual properties which would help with printability - mainly choosing a temperature which would minimise damage to our traditionally printed plastic components on to which our metal would be deposited, and also using a non-eutectic to attempt to minimise the effects of surface tension. One of the main problems I previously had was solubility. Running molten metals were acting as solvents for my heated nozzle - resulting in the nozzle slowly dissolving during a print.
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SMT Soldering–It’s easier than you think! is our new Manga Comic that shows you step by step tips and techniques for learning to solder SMT parts . We’d love to get your feedback on the comic.
Disney researchers put gesture recognition in door knobs, chairs, fish tanks
Imagine a door that locks when you pinch the knob. Or a smartphone that can be silenced by a hand gesture. Or a chair that adjusts room lighting when you recline into it.
Adaruit Resistor Helper by adafruit
Download Circuit Playground for iPhone and iPad from Adafruit! ------> adafruit.com/circuitplayground Adafruit invests time and resources providing this open source design, please support Adafruit and open-source hardware by purchasing products from Adafruit! This papercraft resistor calculator was designed by Adafruit with Matthew Borgatti: har.ms/drones
Partlist Wednesday: Lithium-polymer battery charger chips
Lithium-polymer batteries are an excellent choice for portable projects. They are relatively cheap, hold a significant charge, and last for a long time. The drawback with these batteries is that they require rather complicated charging protocols. You have to watch out for overcharging, undercharging, overheating, etc… We are looking for a standard part to use in our projects, so we decided to do a roundup of open source lithium polymer chargers from SparkFun , Seeed Studio, and Adafruit . With the exception of Seeed, all the chargers are based on Microchip’s MCP738xx family of battery management ICs that come in SSOP and DFN packages.DE0-Nano power efficiency mod » The Lair of Mako
I recently bought a DE0-nano FPGA development board, which I’m currently using to mine Bitcoins. It’s kind of a neat board, but one downside to it is that it uses linear regulators to provide the 1.2V core supply to the FPGA, and they’re incredibly inefficient at this. Only about 25% of the power supplied to them actually goes into the 1.2V supply; the other 75% is wasted as heat in the regulators.IRFP260N image from warf.com. Pins are Gate, Drain, Source from left to right. If you need to switch high current and or high voltage loads with a micro controller you’ll need to use some type of transistor. I’m going to be covering how to use a MOSFET since it’s a better option for high power loads. This guide will be just a brief introduction that will discuss how to drive a MOSFET in a simple manner with the ultimate goal of making it act like an ideal switch.
A Beginner’s Guide to the MOSFET « ReiBot.org
robotics