There’s no doubt a 3D printer is a useful tool for electronics engineers. You could for example use it to print a missing lid for some housing etc. It’s difficult however, to justify the outlay for such a machine that you will most likely only use occasionally. How about if it costs less than $ 100? The BuildOne, is a 3D printer with Wi-Fi for just $ 99!...

Cheap ISM-band radio modules are great for making simple remote-controller toys. When a greater degree  of control is needed, for instance when running servos for controlling a model plane's rudder, elevator, aileron and a brushless motor while at the same time receiving feedback from each of those actions, you need something like this 4-Channel, 2-Flavor Remote Control with XBee or nRF24 radio modules.

Programming a traffic light controller on a microcontroller is not too complicated, and an easy job for Arduino. But, wait a minute… it can be done even simpler if you could program it as a PLC with a ladder diagram. There are more people out there that know how to program a PLC than who know how to program an Arduino. Besides, a nice open source compiler for doing ladder diagrams on PIC and AVR micros is available for free, so let’s give it a try.

During a visit from some friends recently I was trying to think of some interesting activity for the older children in the party who seemed to be looking a bit bored. It dawned on me that they were about the right age for the Velleman Solar Energy Experiment Kit I had bought recently. The prospect of actually making some physical experiments definitely got a positive reaction, they stopped swiping their screens…

Many people who "do" electronics as a pastime or as a career feel the urge to convey their knowledge and experience to the younger generation. To do that, all sorts of systems have been proposed, but only few are as simple as the one presented here. Draw a schematic on a sheet of paper, stick it on a piece of wood, at the wire junctions hammer in some nails, then solder the parts to the nails. Great fun and not unlike the way radio and TV electronics got assembled in the fifties and sixties.

Sometimes you just want to make something simple, just for the fun of it or to get high on the delicious fumes of hot 60/40 solder and flux. This electronic dice is such a project: easy to build, easy to get to work, and easy to use. Need more than one? Build more than one; it's that simple. No microcontrollers involved, no switched-mode power supply, no Cloud connection, just a 555 and a 4017 Johnson counter. Perfect to get your mind off daily worries or to improve your soldering skills.

Practical – useful – indispensible. Many of the problems encountered with 3D printers, particularly those used in a nonprofessional setup, can be put down to excessive moisture in the plastic filament material. PrintDry is a specially designed filament dryer which guarantees improved results at relatively low cost...

Machines that you would once only have found in industrial settings are becoming neater, more compact. Small enough in fact, to fit on a desktop and plug into a standard domestic mains outlet. Just such a machine is the WAZER water-jet cutting machine...

No man needs a holiday so much as a person who has just had one [sigh]. You now get back to work [sigh], but your kids aren’t back to school yet [sigh]. Cheer up, here is Makey Makey, a simple invention kit to keep them busy in a creative way. Ages 8 to infinity.

When products evolve over time they tend to adopt technologies as they emerge. Not this project however, as it seems to embrace only disappearing technologies. It started with not-so-recent OTA’s and even more old-school germanium diodes, this time the designer managed to replace the output opamp by a 3046 transistor array. This famous part from the seventies of the last century, obsoleted several years ago, has been reintroduced by Texas Instruments a few years back. Extrapolating the path this project is going along we may expect version three to be built around tubes and rev 4 out of wood and flint.