In this episode Shahriar repairs an Anritsu 37347A 20GHz Two-Port Network Analyzer. The unit does not boot up and as a result its internal state is unknown. The boot fault is traced to a bad RTC module which has a built-in integrated battery. A replacement unit is located which allows...

Dexter Johnson has a writeup about flexible, water-loving logic circuits and sensors without the need of semiconductors. They constructed the chemoelectronic devices by coating gold nanoparticles with any of four types of organic molecules called ligands. Each ligand produces a...

Jeff Ciesielski has published a component manager for KiCad layout software. The goal of this app is to ease the bom management burden on designers who choose to use Kicad for their layout and schematic capture needs, allowing for faster, easier data entry, and to provide a part...

Ethan Zonca has designed a programming adapter for use with STM32 programmer. After making the switch from AVR to STM32 microcontrollers, I redesigned my old 6-pin ICSP pogo-programming adapter for SWD. The new design allows programming with pogo pins or a small pin header soldered...

Here is a nice idea of a business card solar smartphone charger with USB plug. The charger is 3mm thick and can provide 50mA @ 5V Smartphone Solar charger card -...

Dan Watson has designed a development board for the Atmel SAM D09 microcontroller: The Atmel SAM D series of 32-bit microcontrollers includes several devices, each with a long list of features at great prices. Perhaps the best known of the series in the maker community is the SAM D21...

Ken Boak has designed a tiny 16-bit computer around a FRAM based MSP430 microcontroller. He writes: In this post we look at a new MSP430 FRAM based device – the MSP430FR2433. It has 15K of FRAM, 0.5K of Info FRAM and 4K bytes of SRAM. As well as the memory, there are 3 serial...

adafruit has published an IoT  Migrane or Allergies Detector. This project uses Feather HUZZAH ESP8266 wireless microcontroller board to pull a forecast from the accuweather.com web site, then distills this to its barest essence: good news or bad news? An ambient information...