Introduction A friend of mine asked me if I could jazz his Halo 4 Edition XBOX 360 wireless controller up a little bit in the short time he was visiting me. Originally, I offered to make this modification, but when I opened up his controller it soon became obvious that …
Introduction Panelizing PCBs is often required when making a smaller PCB than the minimum size a fabrication house accepts. However, it is not straightforward for the hobbyist to do it without expensive software tools. In the below example I am using Eagle 6.3.0 and a small design of mine, the …
Four different colours for the four different players Introduction A couple of days ago I was playing Halo 4 online when my team mates asked if I could change the colour of an XBOX 360 controller’s LEDs (around the start button). After a few milliseconds of thinking (how difficult can it …
Introduction For a number of my upcoming projects I need a rig to test the functionality of a solid state relay that would be driven by a microcontroller and switch the mains for other devices. Having done projects with similar requirements in the past I remembered how much pain it …
Finished unit mounted on the wall, in use. Introduction This project, like others before, has started out of need: our 30+ year old mechanical timer for the central heater of the house has finally given it up. It would have been faster and cheaper to get a replacement from the …
Introduction Towards the end of the ’80s, when I started out in electronics, one day I decided to make a special alarm clock: one, that, when the time comes, switches on some device in my room – be it a radio, TV or anything else. At the time microcontrollers were …
Introduction In the eighties most TV sets did not have the sleep function that is standard on today’s TVs. My grandfather was known to fall asleep about 5 minutes into watching any program on TV in the evening. Then, the TV would go on all night long. Those TVs in …
Introduction About a year ago we bought a new washing machine which seems to work nice, but it lacks a very important feature: it doesn’t notify me when the washing is done. I usually start a new load in the morning and, even though the programs usually finish in about an …
Introduction I have a few projects in mind for the near future which all have one thing in common – they all require remote controls to be operated. So I decided to experiment with remote controls a bit. A small selection of my huge pile of never or a very long …