So you’re back from holidays spent somewhere in a hot and sunny place, enjoying the a hotel or beach resort with organized activities like morning aerobics in the swimming pool and loud parties at night and where you karaokeed your lungs out of your body, and now you are missing that festive ambience? Then it is time to build this great all-analog, all-through-hole microphone amplifier and impress your friends and family once again with your vocal capabilities.

A softly burning and quietly crackling fireplace has imminent attraction to people and pets, but not everyone can afford to have the real thing in their living room. So, without further ado, here’s an all-embedded, all-MP3 alternative to smoke, odors, flying embers and wood cleaving (out there in the cold or heat, depending on the season). This project does not generate any significant heat, making it useful in summer as well as winter.

Here is a project that nobody actually needs but that everybody will want to own. It is a gadget, a device that is often thought of as a novelty, and that crosses the boundary between functionality and frivolity. The What-Remains-of-the-Day Clock — actually it’s a Day Remaining Clock — fits this definition nicely as it aims to make people more aware of the passing of time during the day.

Transmitting data from a capsule dangling from a weather or sounding balloon is not easy as it often involves expensive and sophisticated equipment. Luckily, cheap alternatives exist. This project together with a standard radio transmitter and GPS receiver can be used to beam down up to six analog signals and position data from a balloon, and all of that at very low cost.

Of course you can use your super-duper multimeter to measure the gain (hfe) of a transistor, but isn’t it much more fun to program a microcontroller to do this? Or an Arduino? You might actually learn something from it in the process. Here is a simple project that lets you do just that. Although the software is written in BASIC and intended for an ATmega8 or -88, it should also work on the 328 of an Arduino. Read the source code to figure out how to wire everything together.

Browsing Elektor Labs from old to new I came across an interesting project from 2013 to transform a remote controlled cable car into a Wi-Fi controlled car. At the time Wi-Fi modules (and martphones) were still new, expensive and a bit complicated to use, but today, thanks to the ESP8266 adding Wi-Fi to any device has become cheap and easy. So, why don’t you let this project inspire you? Find an old (or new) cable car and turn it into a cheap, Wi-Fi-controlled car.

We opened all the windows at Elektor Labs and whoosh, a whole stack of 25-euro gift certificates was blown out. Catch them by posting a project you did or you are working on at Elektor Labs! And if you put in some real effort and originality, your project may even be selected for publication in Elektor Magazine, meaning that you will get paid an author’s fee too!

Measuring current with an oscilloscope is difficult because the common of the oscilloscope’s input is internally connected to the protective earth of the mains voltage. Current clamps can measure the current without potential, but are slow and usually do not have an output to connect to an oscilloscope. Current clamps for oscilloscopes exist, of course, but are expensive. The circuit presented here shows that a potential-free current measurement can be realized with relatively few but high-quality components.

Parking spaces in buildings are as small as possible to avoid wasting precious real estate. Furthermore, such parking spaces are often surrounded by concrete pillars or delimited by walls, making it difficult to move a car into such a tiny reserved space without scratching its precious metallic paint. Add to this that cars only get bigger and you will understand the need for an electronic parking aid. Here is a simple solution based on cheap ultrasonic transceiver modules.

The amount of negative oxygen ions in the ambient air seems to affect the psychological and physical state of many people. The air in the mountains and near the sea contains relatively high numbers of negative ions compared to elsewhere and this is one of the reasons that you feel better in this type of environment. You can improve the air quality at home too, when using the ioniser described in this project.