Last part we unboxed the Heathkit, looked at all the components, and started to build some of it. Now it’s time to finish off the build with the three main plates. This part is cool as you are able to see the creation come together before your eyes. We even created our own replacement part!
We also saw some cool vintage Heathkits at the Electronics Flea Market, and will show some pictures of those. Read on for more!
Ever wondered where some of the kit projects get their inspiration to strive for clear instructions, excellent documentation, and an overall fantastic DIY experience?
Heathkits were electronics kits popular in the late 1940s and 1950s. We have a mint AC Voltmeter kit that we will be building up over the next few days! We plan to document the experience and share it with all of you! Read on for more delightful photos and descriptions!
Continue reading The Heathkit Build – Part 1 – Unboxing & Components
Behold, in all its glory, the “HP Xpander.”
Not just a relic from the age of brightly-colored transparent plastic, but what could have been the future of HP graphing calculators. Continue reading The HP Xpander
Several years ago, we came across this interesting artifactat one of our local electronics surplus shops, and couldn’t really make heads or tails of it. But after the passage of the aforementioned several years– along with several dozen interesting suggestions from our readers –we haven’t been able to get much closer to an answer.
But then, at this month’s Electronics Flea Market, we came across what appears to bea related chunk of hardware:
One of our favorite longstanding projects– which we dropped a hint about some time ago –is converting old HP Nixie-tube counters into happily glowing Nixie clocks. Here’s how we do it.
Continue reading Making classic frequency counters into Nixie clocks
We’ve just posted a few pictures from last weekend’s fantastic Electronics Flea Market at De Anza College in Cupertino.
One interesting thing that we came across: a set of leadframes not so different from those that might be made from that photomask that we wrote about a couple of weeks ago.
Only one two more flea markets left this year, September 11 is the next one; mark your calendars and we’ll hope to see you there!
(For a few more, check out photos from another electronics flea market a couple of years ago here.)
Corrected 8/16/10: two more flea markets left for 2010– Sept. 11 and Oct. 9.
Happy birthday to us! Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has now been around for four years. We’ve collected some interesting projects from this past year to celebrate.
Microcontroller and Electronics Projects:
Moving from breadboard to protoboard
Revenge of the Cherry Tomatoes
Accelerometer with an AVR (updated)
Wallet-size LED Resistance Calculator
Science:
Gibberellic Acid and Giantism in Sprouts
Simple LED Projects:
Food Hacking:
Marmalade: easier than it looks
Kit Projects:
Crafty Projects:
Geek Design:
Typgraphical Character Coasters
And, don’t forget, you can win a Peggy 2 or one of 13 other prizes in our clock
concept contest, going on this week.
Related:
Well, someone else’s sponsors, actually.
We recently came into possession of this July 1976 issue of Popular Electronics, and scanned a few of the vintage ads– including a few from companies that you might recognize.
After our Tabletop Pong project, someone suggested that we should check out the Tomy Blip, a handheld game dating to 1977.
And so we did. We snagged one on eBay, and here it is: “Blip, the digital game.”
Blip is unlike any other handheld that I’ve played, and (as you’ll see) it’s quite a piece of engineering. In what follows, we give it a test drive, and then take it apart and see what makes it tick.
Continue reading What makes Blip tick?
Ever since our wine charm project, we’ve been amassing an ever-growing collection of interesting-looking electronic components. It turns out that they happen to make pretty good Christmas tree ornaments.
