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Polaroid 312 LED Camera Light – Teardown and Repair
My camera light has been having issues almost since I bought it, so I tore it apart: Here’s a picture of the light, it’s made by Polaroid. I bought it at Amazon. Polaroid 312 LED Camera Light...
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RGB Rotary Encoder on a Raspberry Pi
I interface an RGB Rotary Encoder to my Raspberry Pi: I really should have taken some more pictures… I suggest watching the video for most of the details — I actually whiteboarded the schematic and...
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Sinometer VC2000 Frequency Counter Review
A while ago, I purchased a frequency counter for my RF projects: This particular frequency counter has a range from 10Hz to 2.4GHz. I’ve only tested it up to a few hundred megahertz because that’s all...
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DIY Digital RF Attenuator
I build a digital RF attenuator for the bench: So what do I need a digital RF attenuator for? This started out with my DIY RF Generator project. I started out trying to use a plain ordinary...
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Eico 369 RF Sweep Generator
There’s something fun about using period tools to work on old radios: This is my second tube RF generator, and my fifth RF generator overall. Why did I buy this one? I think having an old-school RF...
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Aoyue 128 Soldering Tip Polisher Review
Unable to resist yet another gadget, I bought a soldering tip polisher. Someone please save me from myself… The tip polisher costs about fifty bucks. There’s a lot of plastic in the construction of the...
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Sparkfun third hand kit – review and modifications
I’ve always wanted a sparkfun third hand kit, so I bought one on Cyber Monday: Here’s a still shot of the third hand kit as assembled: Third Hand Kit, assembled The first thing you’ll notice is that...
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Eico 430 Oscilloscope
I can’t resist buying vintage test equipment: The Eico 430 is a tube-based oscilloscope. By that I don’t simply mean that it uses a Cathode Ray Tube, but that it uses vacuum tubes for the amplifiers...
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Raspberry Pi Switching Power Supply Shield
I like to power my projects from 12V, and the Raspberry Pi only natively supports 5V. Often I’ll add a small switching power supply to my designs to accommodate this. I finally got around to making a...
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DIY Nixie Tube Frequency Counter
In this video, I build a Nixie Tube Frequency Counter. I’ve always wanted a Nixie Tube Frequency Counter, but never did find one on eBay that really jumped out at me… So I just decided to go ahead and...
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Magic Eye Tube interfacing with a Raspberry Pi
This blog post has two videos. In the first one, I bought a magic eye tube kit from eBay for about eight bucks, and I try it out: In the second video, I use an op-amp that allows me to convert a...
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Magic Eye Tube PC Monitor
This is my third video in a series on magic eye tube projects. For background, please view the earlier blog post on magic eye tubes first. Overview The idea behind this particular project is to control...
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Magic Eye Tube Audio Spectrum Analyzer
This is the fourth and final in my series of magic eye tube projects (well, unless I can find something else interesting to do with them!) For background, please see my first magic eye tube post. This...
View ArticleProduct Reviews: Mooshimeter, Raspberry Pi Black Slices Case, Powerhorse...
Here are a trio of product reviews. The first is the Mooshimeter: Mooshimeter is a DMM accessory for use with your iPhone, iPad, or Android device. It communicates over bluetooth to the device. It...
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Building the Dutchtronix Scope Clock
I was browsing the forums one day at EEVBLOG (where they like to talk about oscilloscopes and DMMs all day long, every day) and I saw mention of the Dutchtronix scope clock. Deep down I knew it and...
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Intro to Z80 Retrocomputing
I’m going to do a series of blog posts on retrocomputing. In this first video, I introduce the retrocomputing platform that I’m going to be using. It’s the RC2104, by Spencer, who goes by the handle...
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Z80 Retrocomputing 2 – Real Time Clock for the RC2014
In this post, I create a Real Time Clock (RTC) board for the RC2014 This is the second in my series of Z80 retrocomputer blog posts. If you haven’t already done so, then it might be helpful to start at...
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Z80 Retrocomputing 3 – Bus Monitor Board
I wanted more lights on the retrocomputer, so I decided to add a bus monitoring board. For a brief introduction to my retrocomputing posts, please start at the first one. So what exactly does the bus...
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Z80 Retrocomputing 4 – Bus Supervisor
This is the fourth in my series of Z80 retrocomputing blog posts. For background, I suggest starting with the first post. So what exactly is the purpose of the bus supervisor board? I wanted to do some...
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Z80 Retrocomputing 5 – Single Stepper for RC2014
In this blog post, I design a single step module for the RC2014. [TODO: Insert Video Here] If you haven’t read my introduction to retrocomputing yet, then please start there, as it describes the Z80...
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