Free Fresh Article: Homebrew PC for the Electronics Lab

An experimenting set for the Raspberry Pi that, after opening, resembles the briefcase used (in movies) by not-so-smart presidents to launch their arsenal of rockets? That demands closer inspection!

The Raspberry Pi is a tremendous device for controlling things around the house, but for many applications it is overkill. A platform based on a microcontroller is then more appropriate. The ESP8266 is a popular platform for IoT applications that connect via WiFi. It is Arduino based, you can find many cheap ESP8266 boards and you have access to various analogue and digital pins.

Since its introduction over 25 years ago the USB port has become the de-facto standard for communications between a PC and its peripheral equipment. In the meantime, in an effort to reduce the plethora of non-standard wall-wart mains adapters, most other devices with built-in rechargeable batteries like mobile phones, tablets etc. use the 5 V supply pins of this port for charging. It’s even possible to fit a mains outlet wall plate with a built-in 5 V supply and USB socket. With the introduction of Quick Charge the power supply communicates with the device being charged to negotiate an output voltage. A compliant charger can output a higher voltage and current beyond the typical 5 V / 2 A rating of the standard USB charger. With so many essential devices relying on a fully-functioning charger and so many different fast-charge standards emerging it is convenient to have a single unit that can quickly check that the charger is doing everything it should...

You can spend many days on YouTube watching videos about anything from tutorials to blogs to art to TV shows and what not, from silly to impressive. Out of this huge audio-visual ocean we dragged up a jewel that we would like to present here.

Disassembling electronic devices, broken or not, can be very instructive. After recovering a dead 30 W LED floodlight in the dumpster and taking it apart a so-called (sequential) linear LED driver was discovered.

If you use microcontrollers, play with Arduino or do other things that involve open-source software, you will most certainly have come across GitHub. After Sourceforge and Google Code, GitHub is currently the place where people share their work. All sorts of open-source projects can be found here, ranging from simple single-file Arduino sketches to huge cloud applications consisting of hundreds of repositories containing thousands of files. Things like CAD files and plain text articles are posted as well. Elektor Labs also publishes on GitHub. In this video we explain how to get our (and others') stuff from GitHub, a question we have to answer way too often.

Software Defined Radio or SDR is a radio technique that relies on software to do most of the hard radio work. The Elektor SDR Hands-on Kit helps you to get started in this fascinating and often mysterious world.

Hammond Electronics has launched its new 1552 family of hand-held enclosures. Initially available in six sizes, the IP54 rated UL94-V0 flame-retardant ABS enclosure features an ergonomic design that fits comfortably into the hand, enabling it to be used for long period in applications such as a machine controller or an electric hoist control.

ValCUN is making metal 3D printing affordable with their disruptive technology. The Belgian technology start-up expects to hit the commercial market in Q2 2021 with their print service for aluminium parts.

PocketBeagle Grove Kit® is an infinitely scalable tool for working with sensors and actuators aimed at helping beginners and professionals alike.

This is a submission from congatec. They announced that the new conga-JC370 3.5-inch SBC with 8th generation Intel Core processors (code name Whiskey Lake) has received excellent design ratings in independent studies carried out by Elektor Magazine and also earned phenomenal positions in UserBenchmark speed tests.