So, February has come and (all-but) gone, but before we leap into March, let’s look back and see what has been most interesting to Gadget Masters this month. Everybody loves a good tear-down, so it’s good to see the third-generation Kindle getting the treatment; and…
Peter Griffiths – the man who made a lamp into a work of art and turned to LEDs for F1 gantry start-lights – returns with some LED chasing. This neat little circuit provides 8 LEDs directly driven from the PIC along with a single mode control switch. The firmware described drives…
Back to Bella Italia September’s Gadget master project features Italian designer Flavio Dellepiane and his design for power sockets that can be switched automatically by an embedded Control Socket. Put yourself back in control, and more easily determine the power status of a set of related devices. Simply access…
Back to Bella Italia Plant watcher ensures your plants won’t go thirsty This is the gadget green thumbs 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…
Now he’s got the power to cut lightning down to size People have always been fascinated by the fury of the heavens. Electronics prodigy Richard Hodgkinson created a lightning distance timer so he would no longer have to manually calculate the approach or retreat of a thunderstorm. He recycled…
Journeying 20,000 leagues under the sea, Jason built this underwater Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) so he could explore the depths of his bath tub, swimming pool and beyond. Employing mostly off-the-shelf parts, the ROV is controlled via Visual Basic commands sent over an RS232 serial port. Powered…
It’s all in the timing So he designed a battery-powered tea timer with a built-in LED display that will brew a perfect cup of tea every time. It’s simple: just fix a tea-bag on the tea timer’s extension arm, place a mug of hot…
Not satisfied with the low-tech method of suspending a tennis ball from a string, Ken Swanstrom devised a better garage locator device from a laser pointer. This simple circuit is powered by a 6V DC wall wort, adjusting the output to yield 3V DC as a substitute for battery…