We traded the physical boundaries of dedicated rooms for the convenience of our always-on digital lives -- but recently I've been building those walls back up.

I picked up a Palo Alto Cloudgenix ION 2000 off of eBay and decided to try and stick OPNsense on it. It has a ethernet ports, 4GB of RAM, 128GB SSD, and an Intel Atom CPU. What I hadn't considered…

The following is a message from John (W2JLD): HERE WE ARE FELLOW HAMS FAST APPROACHING AMERICA'S 250TH BIRTHDAY BASH!! Join me on JULY 4TH on the hf bands and help me help you celebrate America's…

Posted 28 June 2026 When I work on significant projects like the vision-enhanced robot project, I generally hold two different but related mental maps for the overall project. One map describes the…

I haven’t worked Field Day in years. I used to go out with the Ohio State club (W8LT) back in the early 2000’s, but haven't done much with it since. I didn’t have any real plans to operate this year…

HP T1500 G3 UPS monitoring software 2026-06-28 | [misc] Another old UPS from the eWaste bin, but this is a nice one! It is pure sine wave output, and can do 950 Watts, from a 36V Lead acid cell. I…

USING ACTIVE FET PROBE TO WATCH SIGNAL DURING FAILURE I had been plagued by the inability to watch what happens when the sporadic failure occurs since the oscilloscope probe and the logic analyzer…

Valve’s new 2026 Steam Machine has created a lot of discussion online given it’s pricing. In this quick blog post I will look at specs of the Steam Machine and try create a barebones equivalent or…

Way back in 2016, I initially tried out an ultrawide monitor in hopes of simplifying my desk setup. Instead of running two different monitors connected to a desktop and my work laptop, I thought a…

I use my keyboards a lot, my job as a software engineer involves quite a lot of typing, I also spend quite a lot of my spare time in front of a computer. I’ve been daily driving small keyboards…

I learned about the Sub-1€ TRX challenge from Ismo (OH2FTG) - thank you (maybe for getting me addicted?). The constraints Sub-1€ TRX, with LCSC parts. This excludes the PCB, so it can be 10x10…

The constraints 5V (~500mA) power from mobile phone 1W RF output required Very compact with less "moving" parts 14 MHz capable The design We use INNOTION YG401530VB MMIC in this design. 100n Si5351…

Last Thursday I talked about retiring my RTX 3070 for a new AMD RX 9060 XT. This garnered a few questions from you fine people, which I’ve aggregated here. Why not the 9070 XT? Price,…

I was not really happy with the CH32V307 Ethernet Version. It is a all-included & cheap version. But it's only 10 Mbps and there is not enough flash/sram to comfortably host swindle. The ESP32S3 wifi…

It’s been a hot week, my brain is melting, and AI is starting to suck some of the joy out of my job. It’s the perfect time for my brain to be in fantasy land.I was thinking about the…

27 Jun, 2026 gaming pc hardware channels right now are posting loads of videos like THIS PC KILLS THE STEAM MACHINE DEAD AND IS $100 CHEAPER then show a build with a CPU cooler bigger than the entire…

Items used: Connector mapping: ESP32 MAX7219 VIN VCC GND GND D23 DIN D18 CS D19 CLK platformio.ini: main.cpp: The post ESP32 Clock using 8×32 LED panel appeared first on Praveen Nair's CTO…

  During my visit to AXPONA 2026, there were several outstanding new products that made my show highlight list. One of the most impressive was the new Synergistic Research Quark streaming…

Compact, generative texture synthesizer view in DIY synths database

I volunteer at a train, trolley, and subway museum, including working on restoration of full-sized rail vehicles and maintaining railway infrastructure. As a non-authoritative, hobby project…

Processing-Using-SRAM - When the Cache Becomes the Processor We have seen enough magic happen in DRAM via RowClone, Ambit and SIMDRAM. As I progressed in the later chapters of the primer I came…

Introduction Overview Hardware design and philosophy Hardware development Software development Conclusions Acknowledgements Introduction Our camper van now has three different "smart" energy-related…

Sometimes I see something on the streets or on the internet which makes me say "hey, that's cool! Maybe I can do it?" and then I need to have the tools to scaffold. Most of these times, I do need…

This pump came to us a few years back on a Sylvania CFL bulb outgas rig. We had to condemn the rig however the pump seemed like it had some life in it. Initial test were not very promising with…

littleBits is a hardware company that aims to put the power of electronics in everyone’s hands. The company sells electronic modules that snap together with magnets, making them accessible to…

When the UK experienced its hottest day of the year, most solar owners were expecting record-breaking generation. After all, more sunshine should mean more electricity... right? Not necessarily.…

June 2026 is busting out with fresh amateur radio gear at DX Engineering! Today, we’re featuring a product that makes it incredibly simple to securely mount a mobile antenna for […] The post…

This guide walks you through a simple FM receiver circuit built around a BF256 FET and LM386 audio amplifier IC. Whether you are a beginner hobbyist or an electronics enthusiast, this project…

Around 18 years ago I made a program to control a "Cooltek" LCD display over the parallel port from a PC. Since parallel ports are hard to come by these days I had to make an update. I happened to…

SIMDRAM - Turning DRAM Into a Programmable SIMD Engine After reading RowClone and Ambit, as we progress in the Processing-Using-Memory saga I wanna introduce you guys to a framework called SIMDRAM.…

In this video I cover charging efficiency between AGM & LFP. I also explore multiple absorption voltages for LFP and their effect on SoC. Also, quite by accident, I get to show you the effects of…

The XSR Spire is a rugged, high-performance mission computer launched by Spectra Defense Technologies. Designed for tactical edge computing, the mean-looking PC targets space-constrained and harsh…

Ongoing notes on the Hydrasynth Explorer (manual) to help me remember how to do things with it as I swim deeper into synth worlds. First off, some user interface and own particularities: Orange…

I thank ASM for organising a technical discussion on lithium ion battery interconnects. A typical battery pack could contain anywhere from a couple to thousands of cells depending upon whether it's…

Notes on the ELEGOO ESP-32 Super Starter Kit with Tutorial and Development Board USB-C Dual Core Microcontroller Support AP/STA/AP+STA, CP2102 Chip Compatible with Arduino IDE.…

The federal legislation prevents HOAs from enacting restrictive antenna rules. Use the link in the article to send your letters of support. It’s quick, easy, and will make a difference. […] The…

Nordic's nRF54L15 Tag is a dual-antenna, coin-cell Channel Sounding prototyping platform. A hands-on look at the board, why the second antenna matters, and ranging against it from a phone.

A buyer's guide to local LLM hardware, ranked by the one spec that actually decides generation speed: memory bandwidth. Plus where ROCm really stands on Strix Halo.

Enough to flip its flush-mounted hairtrigger power switch

Folks We’ve had a problem with delivery of enough enclosures for the FCD, so unfortunately we remain out of stock in our eShop. However, we have managed to source enough to be able to supply…

The odyssey of disk emulators has finally gotten to an end. At least a status where I can say, new hardware designs are very unlikely, has been reached. After many iterations of new disk emulators up…

Sometimes I get weird projects stuck in my head. I’ve always wanted to do a “quantum” hardware project; in my PhD and postdoc I’d messed about making fluorescent dyes and proteins that were…

One of my favorite pastimes is finding and collecting patterns from vintage Yamaha beat boxes. It’s been a long time coming — the Yamaha AN200 Loop Factory. The AN200 is renown for its…

and USBODE (USB Optical Drive Emulator): "Ever wanted a GoTek for CDs? If you have a Raspberry Pi Zero W or 2 W, USBODE turns it into a virtual optical drive. It allows you to store many disk…

I should write something longer to help organize my feelings about the Norns because it feels messy, but I don't have time for that now. Norns rocks Norns forever and also I feel like I'm forever…

B etween two "high-tech" developments, back to pure 80s style. This is about adapting a USB keyboard to the computer developed by Frederick John Milens, which I have already mentioned on this blog.…

When we moved into our current place, we knew pretty quickly we'd want to change our bedroom ceiling fan. That thing easily covered a quarter of our ceiling, wobbled like crazy, and I could not…

I've been following WisdPi's development of various 5 Gbps and 10 Gbps Ethernet adapters for the past couple years. They use newer Realtek Ethernet chips, which sometimes have performance quirks—most…