On a recent business trip to the Middle East, I had the pleasure of spending a few nights in the desert with a camel herder. Base camp consisted of a makeshift trailer with an old generator a few dozen yards away for power and lights. In the quiet of the desert, the generator was piercing. We voted to go without the floodlights to enjoy the silence.
It’s difficult to ignore the ‘go green’ mantra that’s sweeping through the media and permeating virtually every industry. The way I see it, most of the activity is focused on marketing and printing consumer-friendly green stickers that proclaim enhanced efficiency of sorts for the same old products. Even so, it is time for us to take responsibility for our carbon footprint by using what we have more intelligently, by buying more efficient products in the first place, and — for electronics enthusiasts — by designing with efficiency in mind.
In the current economic downturn, it may be difficult for you to rationalize spending what’s left of your dwindling disposable income on electronic components, test equipment, and other non-essentials. However, your electronics avocation needn’t be an all-or-nothing proposition. There are numerous ways of cutting costs without diminishing your enjoyment. In fact, if your focus is circuit design, then you’ll probably find the engineering challenge of getting the most from affordable components more rewarding than simply ordering and using the latest generation chips. And there are also options for construction enthusiasts.
There’s a deep sense of satisfaction that results from developing, building, testing, and ultimately using a circuit of your own design. It’s the creative process, after all, that attracts most electronics enthusiasts. Given the expense of components and tools relative to the price of finished electronics products, it’s difficult to rationalize the investment in time and energy simply to have a working device. However, whereas anyone can afford an electronic gadget, few can address the myriad challenges associated with the circuit development process.
This simple electronic version of a photocell makes it convenient to do lighting control without the use of the sun. Read More...
This project will be music to your ears if you’ve ever wanted to construct your own stringed axe. Read More...
We’ll be adding a boot loader and combining everything in our design onto a single printed circuit board. Read More...
Take a look at how digital techniques have changed and improved analog radios. Read More...
Taming the DualShock 3 Beast. Get ready to rumble with this Playstation game controller with USB driver code that gives access to all its pushbutton, joystick, and position sensor data. Read More...
IR sensors, batteries, electric fence indicators, datasheet errors, dial lamp modifications, garage door lights, intercom systems, DC-to-DC regulators, and high voltage regulators are discussed. Read More...
Getting Started With Surface-Mount Soldering. In order to finish our multiplexed LED project, we’ll need to construct a strip board version of the circuit. Read More...
May 01 - Hack an LED Desk Lamp Jim, In a Wiki article at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AA_battery it lists the ratings using 500mA for AA batteries of various types. Let’s…
March 07 - Events, Advances, and News RE: TECH Knowledge 2013, March Pg 10, “Slicing with sound” The photo comment says, “Artificial kidney stone with 150 m…
February 06 - Build Your Own PIC Trainer from Surplus Hi, Thanks for the interest in the Trainer. I design all my own PCBs with an archaic program (runs under…
February 02 - Build Your Own PIC Trainer from Surplus I loved this article on the PIC trainer and want to make one for myself. The only problem is I…
January 21 - The Desktop Contemplator I finally made the changes to the files and it is now downloading and running. I have no word back…