Here are the most popular blog entries of the past week from the ElectronicsWeekly.com blogosphere.

Gadget Freak led the way this week, with Italian designer Flavio Dellepiane’s plant watering watcher getting the most hits this week. The Made by Monkeys’ entry on Microsoft’s Xbox faults came in at second.

Rambus has certainly been flavour of the week, with everyone in the electronics world talking about the ongoing Rambus court proceedings and our blogs were no exception, with the Mannerisms entry on the firm coming in the top 10 blog entries.

1. CMOS quad Schmitt makes gardening easy (Gadget Freak)

Plant watcher ensures your plants won’t go thirsty. This is the gadget green fingers across the globe have been waiting for. Italian designer Flavio Dellepiane put together a plant watering watcher that flashes an LED at a low rate when the soil in the pot plant becomes too dry. With extremely low 3V power consumption, there’s really no reason for your plants to get anything less than five-star treatment. Put your feet up this summer and take the guess work out of your plant’s next drink.

2. Xbox faults cost Microsoft (Made by Monkeys)

The Register reports that Microsoft is taking a $1bn hit to fix Xbox 360s due to residual hardware faults that are resulting in a high number of repairs.

3. Motion sensors leave office workers in the dark (Made by Monkeys)

David Mery works in an office where then light is controlled by a single motion sensor that is relatively far from most of desk-bound employees.

4. Wall St killing IC innovation, says Dwight Decker (Mannerisms)

It was shocking to hear Dr Dwight Decker, Chairman of the Global Semiconductor Alliance and Chairman of Conexant, say that the financial institutions are holding back innovation in the semiconductor industry.

5. Arduino Sound – Part one (Gadget Freak)

This is the first in a series of articles about generating sound with an Arduino. The goals are to generate good quality sound which can be used to play simple tones, stored music, sampled sound and even act as a MIDI synthesiser.

6. Ten worst symptoms of big company disease (Mannerisms)

Tsuyoshi Kawanishi, legendary former CEO of Toshiba Semiconductor, quotes in his book Chip Management, ten symptoms of big company disease, as compiled by Professor Yoshiya Teramoto of Meiji Gakuin University.

7. Lights, camera … staircase! (Gadget Freak)

From Alan Parekh’s tome of knowledge comes the stair lighting kit. The lighting control unit is microcontroller based. The stair lights are connected to the control unit and an Infrared transmitter and receiver are used at the top and bottom of the staircase to generate a beam of invisible light.

8. Neuroti-Kart: Home-made electric go-kart (Gadget Freak)

After extensive tinkering in his shed, this inventor created Neuroti-Kart, the home-made electric go-kart. His design goals were to make something “electric powered, quiet, fast, capable of doing donuts in my street”.

9. Rambus set for another decade of litigation (Mannerisms)

The latest of an endless series of court judgements involving Rambus is in Rambus’ favour, but all that yesterday’s judgement in the US Appeals Court does, is to refer the case back to the FTC for re-trial.

10. Meet Andrew’s blast from the past (Gadget Freak)

Back to the future. Sometimes the best way to take a step forward is to take a step back in time. So Andrew Smith designed a fully-functional toy oscilloscope, made out of parts he found in his junk box, such as the EF91, EF80 and EF184 valves. Using a DC-DC converter to power the old (but still working) 7cm CRT he discovered in his loft, Andrew housed it in the same wooden box as the rest of the circuitry. The whole system runs from a single regulated 12.6V DC supply, which can be derived from a “wall-wart” PSU. Doc Brown would be proud.