esp32

The creator of ESPARGOS, an ESP32-based antenna array from the University of Stuttgart, explains how it senses phase and amplitude of WiFi signals to localize devices and build a WiFi camera. It demos the Python library and project.

CNLohr explains how he made an ESP32 produce valid LoRa packets without a LoRa radio, using aliasing and clever signal tricks. It walks through the RF math and shows how far the signals reach.

A two-minute demo of SmartKnob View, an open-source input knob built from a brushless gimbal motor, magnetic encoder and round LCD. Closed-loop torque control gives software-defined detents and end stops.

Ben Eater's short update announcing his plan to build another 8-bit computer from scratch on camera. It kicks off the breadboard computer series that became widely known.

Tom Murphy (suckerpinch) shows 'reverse emulation', using a Raspberry Pi in an NES cartridge to give an unmodified NES new abilities such as playing SNES games. The video starts in a strange way and gets stranger.

Ben Eater starts a series building a working computer on breadboards around the 6502 microprocessor. In this first part he gets a 'hello world' running from scratch.

A WIRED Future Cities documentary on Shenzhen, covering its hardware-prototyping culture and shanzhai copycat manufacturing. It looks at how the city's ecosystem evolved and what the rest of the world can learn.

Chuck Moore, inventor of Forth, presents GreenArrays' 144-core asynchronous chip at Strange Loop 2013. He explains how idle cores draw almost no power and how tight code minimizes energy use.

Ben Eater explains how VGA signals work and builds a breadboard circuit that produces correct sync timing so a monitor recognizes the signal. He then builds toward displaying an image from simple logic chips.

Ben Eater explains how a USB keyboard communicates, covering the electrical interface, bit and packet encoding, packet contents, and a comparison with PS/2.

A maker's time-lapse of building a working computer inside a LEGO-style brick, using a tiny 0.42-inch OLED screen, with a demo at the end.

Sam Zeloof shows the upgraded second iteration of his homemade silicon integrated circuit fabrication process, producing chips with around a thousand transistors in his garage. It is a short overview of what the home fab can now do.

Ben Krasnow of Applied Science explains how electrophoretic e-paper displays work and how he modified the driver firmware and waveform lookup tables of a 4.2-inch panel to reach roughly 3Hz partial refresh. It covers the tweakable constants in the refresh process and touches on colored e-ink microcapsules.

Khalil Estell's CppCon 2024 talk argues C++ exceptions can reduce binary size in firmware. He digs into how exceptions work and how to shrink their code footprint on embedded platforms.

The first part of Robert Baruch's series on building a 6800 CPU on an FPGA with nMigen, a Python-based hardware description language. It introduces the HDL while implementing a simpler 6800 core.

Veritasium visits the Micromouse competition, where small autonomous robots race to solve mazes at extreme speed. It covers the competition's technical history, including fans and ground effect enabling very high-g turns.

Johnny Lee demonstrates head tracking with a Wii remote and a head-mounted pair of IR LEDs, so a screen acts like a window into a 3D scene as your head moves.

Mike of mikeselectricstuff shows his heavily modified old BBC Micro system in a 28-minute tour of 8-bit hardware archaeology.

Part one of Look Mum No Computer's series on buying a whole church pipe organ, covering how it was removed from its home. The series goes on to restoring it and rewiring it for MIDI.

Linus Akesson demonstrates the Commodordion, a fully functional 8-bit accordion built around Commodore 64 hardware with bellows made of floppy disks. He performs Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag and tells the story of the build.

A maker builds a talking banana that reads YouTube and Twitch comments aloud on stream, then fights viewers who abuse it with profanity. He ends up building a pronunciation-based filter to catch bad words.

A look inside Dr Abrasive's lab as he engineers a flash-card replacement for the Sega Saturn optical drive after cracking its CD protection 20 years on.

A short music video by the Japanese group Electronicos Fantasticos, led by Ei Wada, playing festival-style music on repurposed old electronics. Instruments include CRT TVs, a barcode reader, an electric fan harp and TV taiko drums.

A roughly three-hour screen recording of designing a barebones STM32F4 board in KiCad, covering schematic, four-layer layout and routing, USB and a buck converter. It ends with ordering manufacture and assembly through JLCPCB.

A Strange Loop 2019 talk by Aaron Cummings on the computing systems aboard Voyager 1 and 2, which control the spacecraft and record and return data decades after launch in 1977.

Ben Vallack walks through designing a custom keyboard PCB from scratch using Ergogen and KiCad, ending with a gerber file ready to order from a PCB fabricator. The example is a split keyboard.

The Thought Emporium builds a homemade multi-electrode array, grows human neurons on it and attempts to take readings. It is the first part of a series aimed at connecting living neurons to a computer.

Dave Jones of EEVblog looks at a sub-3-cent microcontroller from Padauk and other obscure Chinese manufacturers. He shows how to find such parts and where to buy them in stock.

A 100-minute tutorial from Phil's Lab on designing an STM32-based 'black pill' PCB in KiCad 6. It covers schematic capture, two-layer layout and routing, USB, and sending the board for manufacture and assembly.

Tom Scott explains how he built his emoji keyboard, which turned out to be a series of bodged-together tools including AutoHotkey and LuaMacros. He tells stories about the value of quick-and-dirty solutions.

Ben Krasnow of Applied Science builds and operates a simple mass spectrometer, using it to measure potassium isotopes in a salt substitute. He explains the design choices and the theory behind it.

Shawn Hymel of DigiKey introduces KiCad and explains how printed circuit boards are manufactured. It is the first part of a beginner series that builds a 555 badge project.

Jeri Ellsworth shows step by step how to make an NMOS transistor at home using a kiln, rust remover, spin-on dopant, eBay wafers and vinyl stickers.

The Thought Emporium shows how to receive clear images directly from GOES-15, 16 and 17 and Himawari 8 geostationary weather satellites with software-defined radio. It covers the extra effort needed to receive GOES data.

David Sachs of InvenSense explains how gyroscopes, accelerometers and compasses work on their own and together, demonstrated on a modified Android handset. He covers sensor fusion algorithms and why rotation math such as Euler angles matters.

A PyCon 2012 talk by Kurt Grandis on building an automated water-squirting turret that uses Python and computer vision to detect and drive off squirrels from a bird feeder.

Dave Jones builds the Evil Mad Scientist discrete-component 555 timer kit, then tests it and explains the internal circuitry of the 555 at transistor level. He finishes with scope waveforms.

Applied Science builds a replica Apollo DSKY using an electroluminescent driver circuit and screen-printed conductive ink, with source and PCB files published.

Joe Grand recounts being hired to hack a Trezor One hardware wallet and recover $2 million of cryptocurrency. He describes three months of experimentation, voltage glitching, failures and high-stakes attempts with only one chance to get it right.

Jeff Geerling interviews Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton about the Pi shortage, the RP2040, RISC-V, the Sony investment and the origin of the name.