hardware hack

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.

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 the PS/2 keyboard interface works, covering its clocked serial protocol and scancodes. He builds up the hardware-level understanding needed to read keypresses.

Loopop reviews the Polyend Tracker hardware tracker-style sequencer and walks through a tutorial from sampling to finishing a song. It covers most of the device's features.

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.

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

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.

The first lesson of MangoJelly's FreeCAD 0.20 beginner course, covering setup, preferences and navigation. The series teaches fundamentals through complete workflows such as sketching, Part Design and STL export.

Tech Ingredients shows how to build flat panel speakers from exciters and foam board, with construction guidelines, measured SPL comparisons and a complete system playing music.

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.

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

Big Clive gives a 38-minute beginner's guide to identifying common electronic components and what they do. He keeps the maths minimal and aims to fill gaps for people just starting out.

Andreas Spiess explains the basic principles of LoRa and LoRaWAN, their pros and cons, link budget and bandwidth. He shows his own gateway and client sending a message to The Things Network.

Tech Ingredients shows how to build cheap, high-performance flat-panel speakers using audio exciters on sheet materials such as foam-core board. It explains how distributed-mode speakers work and walks through experiments to find good designs.

Ben Eater finishes building a minimal VGA video card from logic circuits. He explains analog RGB signals, stores an image in an EEPROM and builds a simple digital-to-analog converter to display it.

The Thought Emporium shows how easily bacteria can be genetically modified to produce fluorescent proteins and even bioluminesce, with techniques doable at home. It links to companion videos on incubators, DNA extraction and gels.

NightHawkInLight shows how to make radiative sky cooling paint from grocery and hardware store materials, including a novel calcium carbonate microsphere synthesis. The paint can cool a surface below ambient air temperature in direct sunlight without electricity.

Dodoid gives an in-depth look at an SGI Onyx RealityEngine2, a $250,000 graphics supercomputer from 1993, covering its history, a physical overview, a teardown and some demos and games.