Field-Programmable Gate Arrays and the languages for programming (ahem, configuring them) have the reputation of being difficult to master. I still remember when I heard for the first time: at the…

My office is a little small and barely able to contain all the machines I’ve accumulated. The 3D printer I turned into an etcher for specular holograms was obnoxiously tall, and really…

It's a Training Ground for Engineers (And We've Been Ignoring It) Let's drop the nostalgia and say something uncomfortable: If you think ham radio is just people talking into microphones, you're not…

I spent a day taking orders from a frontier LLM to debug a thermal problem on my eNSPanel PCB. Then a stranger on Reddit fixed it with one question.

By Michael Kalter (W8CI) Xenia, Ohio The World’s Greatest Amateur Radio Event Returns to Ohio Every May, tens of thousands of radio adventurers from every corner of the globe descend on a fairground…

Here’s a post from way back in 2005. It falls into the category of “notable VHF contacts,” so I am reposting it here. Last July, my wife and I were walking along the beach on the…

Not too long ago I saw a post by Kent Walters via Hacker News where, after finding himself disgruntled with the ergonomics of his MacBook Pro, he literally filed down the front edge below the palm…

Ten moduleurs. That's it. One unique synth every two weeks.

Real Time Kinematic (RTK) Basics Real Time Kinematic positioning is a way to achieve 1-3 centimeters of accuracy using Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) or commonly referred to as GPS. GPS…

CYD Hackathon On the 2nd and 3rd of May 2026 Duncan Thomas was kind enough to put on a hackathon at his alumni university of Aberystwyth inspired by conferences badges found at events such as DEFCON…

After purchasing an Aqara Smart Hub M3 to manage my smart home ecosystem, I configured its security features, set the internal alarm volume to 100 percent, and armed the system by switching it to…

I’ve been a ham radio enthusiast for a long time — long enough that the words ‘estate planning’ no longer make me change the subject. Not that I’m in any hurry to go, but a timeline has been crossed…

Do you remember the early punching KTT tactiles called ‘Waveriders’? Well, they’ve officially got a V2 version now, though there’s a couple of strange differences with them. Blue sparkly housings, a…

Empirical thermal load testing of two Waveshare serial-bus servo driver boards across four scenarios (2 A / 10 min, 5 A / 5 min, 7 A / 2 min, 10 A / 30 s) at 12 V. Compares barrel-jack vs…

Just like Superbooth, this year we are a decade into modular synthesizers. This coincides with our 10 year wedding anniversary. After our honeymoon – Boom festival in Portugal, Bath in the UK and…

Turn an old Kindle into a low-power e-ink dashboard. Compare DIY jailbreak, TRMNL, and Home Assistant approaches with real hardware picks.

I am building a box whose whole job is to listen to the TV and hit mute when commercials start. Not a browser extension. Not a smart-TV app. Not a cloud service trying to understand my living room. A…

I have a pre-installed pool heat pump - an “AcquaSource” branded unit, the kind you can buy at any pool store in Europe - which supports WiFi. The App called “Pool Panel” wasn’t pretty, but it worked…

Running the existing patchbay DSL on a microcontroller

I've always wanted a network rack for all my stuff but just never got around to actually buying one or figuring out all the pieces I would need to get one set up. Well I recently came across a…

Strix Halo mini PCs doubled in price in six months. Here's what's worth buying for local LLMs in 2026, what to skip, and the 120W gotcha nobody mentions.

Hey everyone — Cifer here 👋 This project started as a simple experiment, the kind where you just want to test an idea quickly and see if it works, but somewhere along the way it turned into a full…

Reverse engineering the Wahoo ELEMNT Bolt v3 BLE protocol to unlock a hidden developer debug mode

In this post, I explore whether the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 can act as a rudimentary oscilloscope. Some theoretical considerations about the Pico 2’s ADC are presented. These are then put to the…

NLIGHTD L3 MAO LEP Torch Specifications Introduction Torch in use Build quality LED, bezel, lens, reflector and beam Size and comparison User interface Batteries and charging Performance Beamshots…

There are many things that make me extremely uncool, but one of my particularly nerdy interests is the London Underground. The evolution of its iconic map, showing long-forgotten stations; old…

On getting the RSGB Amateur Radio Foundation Licence.

I got my hands on a Geekom minipc which has a AMD Ryzen 7 8745HS w/ Radeon 780M Graphics, 32GB RAM. It is a very nice and fast minipc that runs FreeBSD well. All was going well until this morning my…

Quick update on my last post which you read here . Mostly the update is that I was wrong! I was all wrong about the leakage current thing. I replaced the JFET and the diode and no change which got me…

Pictured above is the new DeskPi Super4C installed in an 8U mini rack. The Super4C is a 4-node Raspberry Pi CM5 cluster board that solves two pain points I had with the older Super6C. I was testing…

About 6 months ago I wanted to upgrade the microphone that I use at home, and so I got myself a Rode NT USB+. I didn’t want to hassle of having a separate audio interface and microphone, so I…

I’ve been contemplating getting into FPV since I was in high school, but since I lived in Chicago at the time (and I didn’t own a car) there weren’t many places for me to fly a racing drone. But once…

What it actually looks like to cross from symbol-world into atoms-world, brick a board in the process, and spend the day at a Latin Mass written in 1975.

This year I decided to treat myself with a new keyboard, and I’ve chosen the Keychron Q3 Max; this post is a short summary of my impressions after a few weeks of use.

NEXTORCH eStar Specifications Introduction Torch in use Build quality LED, bezel, lens and reflector Size and comparison User interface Batteries and charging Performance Beamshots Thermal Images…

Exploring the world of circuit bending, and how an inexpensive toy camera can be a great gateway to it.

The past couple of weeks, I've been working with an ESP32 chip. I'm making experiments at this moment: my goal is to find out if these chips are good enough now. Many years ago I started with ESP8266…

In this guide, I will explain how to flash Meshcore firmware onto any device. One thing that people might not know is that most of the devices that are sold with Meshthastic firmware, can be flashed…