MORE ABOUT Elektor.TV

Its black box won’t win any beauty contests. Its printing volume is, let’s say, compact. Too compact, some say, but on reflection, in a volume of 115 x 65 x 155 mm you can print quite a few things! The thickness of the layers printed by the Photon is in the order of 10 microns. To distinguish that, you need a good eye…and a good magnifying glass. Also, to find a 3D printer which does more, you’ll pay 5 or 6 times the price of the Photon.

If electronics, microcontrollers and measurement, notably of very low currents, interest you – which is logical because you are reading these lines – I’m sure you will waste no time in looking at this week’s episode of Elektor TV, having glanced at the title. It’s a comparative review of the µCurrent Gold from Dave Jones of EEVblog fame, and the Current Ranger from Felix Rusu of Low Power Lab, here used with an ESP32.

An honorary mention has been awarded to Cocktail Joe, an affable robotic barman with a light show, at the electronica Fast Forward contest. All through 2018, startup enterprises created by brilliant electronic engineers, have strived in the hope of winning their share of a €150,000 total prize pool. Congratulations to all the finalists, whom you can see in this video of the awards ceremony at Munich.

In an interview with Jan Buiting, Eben Upton explains: “If you can make a device that will withstand a child’s bedroom, it will certainly withstand a factory!” […]. When those who have bought their first RPi for their own edification, at home, then taking it into their professional lives, they have to explain to their colleagues that this board, seen as a toy, is more reliable than a lot of devices that claim to be industrial.”

Elektor LABS proudly present a kit to help you assemble your VFD-tube Clock from the article published half a year ago. You’ll build it within about 4 hours, pre-cut acrylic sheet case included, using normal soldering tools and any computer with Arduino IDE. To keep the time synchronised our new VFD-tube clock employs an NTP server. Besides time, it also displays date and temperature in several display formats. Various sensors are supported. The RGB background lighting is user configurable (with a wireless Android app).

The point of offering these videos on (de)soldering is to encourage practical experience, conquer the fear of the unknown, and to close the gulf between the keen electronics enthusiast and those miniature components. For example, an interesting faultfinding video with these damned surface mount devices (SMDs)! Some believe they are impossible to handle without specialised tools. For others, changing a BGA has become a boring task. This week, for this episode of Elektor TV, I didn’t find what I wanted, but I hope that what I did find will pique your curiosity.

In his workshop, the author of this video removed the bodywork and all the awkward bits for his examination of the Tesla Model 3. Then he put it all back together, so that it works, to film it. He writes in effect that the information he gives comes from his intense personal study of the external and internal electrical and electronic systems of this model. For that, he did what all curious DIYers do – he took it apart to find out how it works!

Edition 3/2018 of Elektor Magazine has this project which scrolls text on a pretty row of eight 8 × 8 LED matrix displays. Its ESP-12F Wi-Fi module (based on the ESP8266) is easily programmed with the Arduino IDE. So, from your mobile phone or any other Wi-Fi device, it suffices to send the text to display and the speed and brightness controls to an ESP8266 webserver.

NeoPixel LEDs are cheap and easy-to-use RGB LEDs, digitally addressable. Example code, libraries and supporting content can be found easily everywhere. In the September-October 2018 issue of Elektor Magazine one can read the extensive description of an ESP8266 web server for NeoPixel LED strips. Both the PCB and the ESP module are available from our online store.

Taking full advantage of the Raspberry Pi’s open architecture, you can customise and program the NanoSound HiFi DAC. With the Volumio software or any other player software and the Infrared Remote Control, NanoSound gives you the best audio performance and experience you can expect from such an audio player.