If you’ve had the classic engineering education, you probably have a hazy recollection of someone talking about control theory. If you haven’t, you’ve probably at least heard of P…

Brushless motors have a lot of advantages over traditional brushed motors. However, testing them can be a bit of a pain. Because the resistance of the motor’s coils is usually very low, a sta…

Who doesn’t like old tools? Even if they aren’t practical to use for production, plenty of old tools still have a life to offer the hobbyist or home worker.  Some tools might seem a bit…

Encryption is one of the pillars of modern-day communications. You have devices that use encryption all the time, even if you are not aware of it. There are so many applications and systems using i…

Two years ago we wrote about a giant robot battle between the USA and Japan. After two years in the making, MegaBots (team USA) and Suidobashi (team Japan) were finally ready for the first giant ro…

Think about an Internet-connected device that never needs charging, never plugs into an outlet, and will never run out of power. With just a small solar cell, an Internet of Thing module can run fo…

Sometimes we see projects whose name describes very well what is being achieved, without conveying the extra useful dimension they also deliver. So it is with [Prasanth KS]’s Windows PC Lock/…

[tomwimmenhove] has found a vulnerability in the cryptographic algorithm that is used by certain Subaru key fobs and he has open-sourced the software that drives this exploit. All you need to open …

When you’re sick or have a headache, you tend to see things a bit differently. An ill-feeling human will display a cognitive bias and expect the world to punish them further. The same is true…

Thieves beware. If you prowl around [Matthew Gaber]’s place, you get soaked by his motion activated super-squirter. Even if he’s not at home, he can aim and fire it remotely using an iP…

If you are beyond a certain age, you will recall when getting on the Internet was preceded by strange buzzing and squawking noises. Modems used tones to transmit and receive data across ordinary te…

The world of RC can be neatly split into two separate groups: models and toys. The RC models are generally big, complex, and as you’d imagine, more expensive. On the other hand, the RC toys a…

Volta’s pile — the first battery — was little more than silver and zinc discs separated by paper soaked in salt water. A classic classroom experiment is to build a pile from coppe…

Ever hear of the Soviet Luna program? In the west, it was often called Lunik, if you heard about it at all. Luna was a series of unmanned moon probes launched between 1959 and 1976. There were at l…

How do you classify something that is gigantic and miniature at the same time? LEGO kit 850, from 1977 when it was known as an Expert Builder set, was 210 modular blocks meant to be transformed int…

[visualkev]’s friend was putting on his own fireworks show by lighting each one in turn, then running away. It occurred to [visualkev] that his friend wasn’t really enjoying the show himself becaus…

A diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, is devastating. Outlier cases like [Stephen Hawking] notwithstanding, most ALS patients die within four years or so of their diagnosis, after h…

The wristwatch was once an absolute necessity, as much fashion statement as it was a practical piece of equipment. Phones in our pockets (and more often than not, in our faces) replaced the necessi…

We must all have at some time or another spotted a hack that seems like an incredible idea and which just has to be tried, but turns out to have been stretching the bounds of what is possible just …