microcontrollers

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jeff Geerling looks at a Sharp NEC commercial display with a slot for a Raspberry Pi Compute Module. It is a large screen without built-in smart TV features or tracking.

Disney Research presents Touche, a swept frequency capacitive sensing technique that recognizes complex hand and body configurations, and adds touch sensitivity to humans, liquids and everyday objects.

Marco Reps builds and tests an open-source 8.5 digit voltmeter based on CERN's high-precision ADC design. The video walks through assembly, soldering and measurement of the resulting instrument.

Tom Scott shows a full-size real-life emoji keyboard built from 14 keyboards and over 1,000 hand-placed stickers, covering all of Unicode 8.

A short demo of typing on the Modos Paper Monitor, an open e-ink monitor, using 4-level grayscale to show low latency.

A short video of the first TRON Smart House, built in 1989 as a demonstration of ubiquitous and ambient computing in the home. It comes from the uID Center, which promoted the TRON architecture.

The 8-Bit Guy reviews the Color Maximite 2, a modern ARM-based computer that boots straight into BASIC. He shows what it can do as a retro-style machine.

A hobbyist builds a prototype full-frame CCD camera from scratch, with open-source design files and a custom PCB. The video shows the first, still rough prototype.

CNLohr maps Wi-Fi signal strength at high resolution by moving an ESP8266 on a CNC mill, then visualizes the 3D data in WebGL. The result shows interference patterns in space.

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.

Samy Kamkar demonstrates OpenSesame, a device that opens many fixed-code garage doors in seconds by exploiting a newly found attack, built around a Mattel toy. The video explains the attack and which brands are affected.

GreatScott! tests ProLogium lithium ceramic batteries, a solid-state design. He measures their volumetric and gravimetric energy density, compares them to Li-ion and LiPo, and runs durability tests at the end.

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.

Ben Krasnow of Applied Science builds a DIY microbalance from an analog panel meter with an optical servo loop. It reaches about 5 micrograms of precision and is used to weigh a single eyelash at around 35 micrograms.

A Ben Heck Show episode tearing down the Nintendo PlayStation prototype, one of the rarest consoles ever, with its owners Terry and Dan Diebold. Part 2 then gets it working again.

Johnny Chung Lee shows how infrared light pens and a Wii Remote can make a very low-cost multi-point interactive whiteboard or tablet display. Software is available for download.

A very short demo of SmackBook, a hack that used the MacBook Pro's sudden motion sensor so that smacking the sides of the laptop switches desktop spaces.

A brief clip of a Nook Simple Touch e-ink reader running PlayStation 1 games through an emulator with a hacked fast refresh rate.

A demo of Deldo, an Emacs package that lets Emacs hooks trigger vibration events on computer-controllable sex toys. It is an absurd teledildonics project that is half performance art.

A short Google Japan promotional video, in Japanese, for Gboard Double-Sided, a keyboard with no back side that comes in a paper-craft version and a full electronics version. It is a playful April-Fools-style product concept.

Sean Hodgins shows the build of the Arduino-based glitter bomb package-theft trap he made with Mark Rober, covering the electronics and the problems that came up. The code and schematics are on GitHub.

A short video of someone playing Doom on a TI-83+ graphing calculator, with a link to the version used.

A demo of the Bad Apple music video played back at 60 FPS on an e-ink display, up from 2.4 FPS in an earlier attempt. It is part of the effort behind the open source Modos e-ink monitor.

A short demo of a 3D Wayland compositor built with Qt 5 and QtWayland, mapping input to and compositing the output of Wayland applications in a 3D scene, also running on a Raspberry Pi.

A demo of Quake's E1M1 rendered as vector graphics on a Hitachi oscilloscope. A laptop generates the audio signal that the scope draws.

A short project video in which Greg Raiz turns a 32-inch eInk display into a wireless digital newspaper showing daily front pages. It runs for months on battery, and the code is published on GitHub.

Ben Heck modifies a keyboard with magnets, Hall effect sensors and an Xbox controller so the WASD keys give analog control. He walks through the hardware build.

A short University of Washington demo of ambient backscatter, where battery-free devices communicate by reflecting existing wireless signals. It shows devices powered and linked by ambient RF.

Strange Parts spends four months, seven custom circuit boards and several disassembled iPhones adding a working headphone jack to an iPhone 7 in China. The build is documented in detail.