Archive for the ‘Electronics’ Category

A 2.4GHz Spectrum Analyser

A week or two ago something was causing interference to my wifi signal so I lost my internet connection on the laptop, tablet and the iPhone for almost an hour. Although the WiFi Analyzer on the tablet showed nothing untoward, that App will only detect genuine WiFi signals. Unfortunately, there’s a myriad of other devices […]

E-Prance HD 1296P Dashcam (Mini 0803)

I recently ordered this dashcam from Amazon. Although apparently dispatched from China, I was amazed that it arrived in just 7 days. There’s a very good review of it on Techmoan’s site so the following is just a quick summary of a few points I’ve found. I wasn’t able to tuck it out of the […]

Printed Manuals

Getting a proper printed manual with new electronic equipment is very rare these days. Except for the usual “Quick Start” guide, if you want to know anything more advanced, you need to copy the manual from the supplied CD – or even have to download it from the manufacturer’s website – and view it on […]

Happy New Year!

For one reason and another, this is the first opportunity since the New Year I’ve had to spend some time at the computer to write up some odds and ends. Firstly, the “mystery” object hinted at in my last blog post is a Brake Lights Tester. A little gizmo to help check your vehicle’s brake […]

A Busy Year!

I’ve just been gathering together the collection of electronic projects I’ve built this year. I didn’t realize that I’d made so many! The question mark? A small mystery project that, hopefully, will be ready early in the New Year.

A Game for Christmas!

Just finished a simple Arduino-based multi-game and put the details up on my site… for anyone interested! All the games are really old-style 70’s type games – 15 puzzle, Minefield, Lunar Lander and Draughts (just). Full details on my main site here.

Computer Woes

My first desktop computer’s operating system was called DOS 6.2. When you fired it up, once the computer had run though its own system checks (called the BIOS POST – Basic Input/output system, Power On Self-Test), you were shown a prompt on an otherwise black screen: DOS > To run a program, say a word […]

Mini Project

Most of my electronics projects these days use micro-controller chips because they allow quite complicated circuits to be built with relatively few components. My “favourite” micro-controller is the ATmega328. It has 28 pins, most of which can be used to connect input devices, such as switches, buttons, light sensors, temperature sensors, and so on or […]

Rain Gauge

About a week ago, before the nice weather came to an end, I decided to clean the ‘tipping bucket’ in the rain gauge for my weather station. Unfortunately, over the years, the case had become amazingly brittle. I hardly touched it and it fell apart into dozens of pieces. It was made from a 100 […]

Packaging!

During the Bank Holiday weekend, I ordered some tiny electronic components for the latest project I’m building. I’d already bought most of the parts but had overlooked these. CPC is one of my favourite suppliers because they have no minimum order charge and online orders are sent postage free. As you can see, the parts […]