New to astrophotography, [Jason Bowling] had heard that the Raspberry Pi’s camera module could be used as a low-cost entry into the hobby. Having a Raspberry Pi B+ and camera module on hand f…

Fair warning: [Justin Atkin]'s video on how to make plasma, fusors, and magnetrons is a bit long. But it's worth watching because he's laying a foundation for a series of experiments with plasma, whi...

Want to know which way to point your WiFi antenna to get the best signal? It’s a guessing game for most of us, but a quick build of a scanning WiFi antenna using mostly off-the-shelf componen…

Security for anything you connect to the internet is important. Think of these devices as doorways. They either allow access to services or provides services for someone else. Doorways need to be s…

We love to see projects undertaken for the pure joy of building something new, but to be honest those builds are a dime a dozen around here. So when we see a great build that also aims to enhance p…

This Saturday is a great day to change the world. It's Earth Day. There's a National March for Science where millions will demand evidence-based change. We're doing our own thing. We're leading a Worl...

Remember all the talk about modular smart phones? They sounded amazing! instead of upgrading your phone you would just upgrade the parts a bit like a computer but more simplistic. Well it seems mod…

Photography is all about light. It's literally right there in the name - stemming from the Greek word, photos. This is why photographers obsess over the time of day of a shoot, why Instagrammers coa...

For most of us, a memory lapse is as harmless as forgetting to bring the garbage to the curb, or maybe as expensive as leaving a cell phone and cup of coffee on the roof of the car before driving o…

Machine shop wisdom says the lathe is the king of machine tools. We ascribe to that belief, although the common aphorism that the lathe is the only tool that can make copies of itself seems a bit o…

3D printing is one of the best things that has happened to the maker community in recent years, however the resulting output has always been prone to damage when used in high temperature applicatio…

When we are introduced to the internals of a microprocessor, it is most likely that we will be shown something like one of the first generation of 8-bit CPUs from the 1970s. There will be the famil…

Although we have strong suspicions that the model’s designer failed entomology, this spider robot is very cool. [Hari Wiguna] made one, and is justifiably thrilled with the results. (Watch hi…

You’d be forgiven for thinking this was going to be an anti-IoT rant: who the heck needs an IoT rice cooker anyway? [Microentropie], that’s who. His rice cooker, like many of the cheapo…

We're suckers for any project that's nicely packaged, but an added bonus is when most of the components can be sourced cheaply and locally. Such is the case for this little laser light show, housed in...

Anyone who is into photography knows that the lenses are the most expensive part in the bag. The larger the aperture or f-stop of the lens, the more light is coming in which is better for dimly lit s...

The human body has a lot to tell us if we only have the instruments to listen. Unfortunately, most of the diagnostic gear used by practitioners is pricey stuff that’s out of range if you just…

One of the best smart home hacks is implementing an energy monitor of some kind. It's easy enough to say that you're trying to save energy, but without the cold hard data, it's just talk. Plus, it's e...

Cheap stuff gets our creative juices flowing. Case in point? [Andy Grove] built an eight-sensor HC-SR04 breakout board, because the ultrasonic distance sensors in question are so affordable that a …

In the home computer boom of 1980s Britain, you could describe Amstrad as the third-placed home-grown player after Sinclair and Acorn. If you were a computer enthusiast kid rather than a gamer kid,…