The Cantareel is Hurdy-Guitar Turned Inside Out

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Sometimes, all you need to make something work is to come at it from a different angle from anyone else — flip the problem on its head, so to speak. That’s what [Keizo Ishibashi] did to create his Cantareel, a modified guitar that actually sounds like a hurdy-gurdy.

We wrote recently about a maker’s quest to create just such a hybrid instrument, and why it ended in failure: pressing strings onto the fretboard also pushed them tighter to the wheel, ruining the all-important tension. To recap, the spinning wheel of a hurdy-gurdy excites the strings exactly like a violin bow, and...

The 555 Writ Large

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Few electronic ICs can claim to be as famous as the 555 timer. Maybe part of the reason is that the IC doesn’t have a specific function. It has a lot of building blocks that you can use to create timers and many other kinds of circuits. Now [Stoppi] has decided to make a 555 out of discrete components. The resulting IC, as you can see in the video below, won’t win any prizes for diminutive size. But it is fun to see all the circuitry laid bare at the macro level.

The reality is that the chip doesn’t have much...

Get Roped Into Magnetic Core Memory with this 512 bit Module

Magnetic Core memory was the RAM at the heart of many computer systems through the 1970s, and is undergoing something of a resurgence today since it is easiest form of memory for an enterprising hacker to DIY. [Han] has an excellent writeup that goes deep in the best-practices of how to wire up core memory, that pairs with his 512-bit MagneticCoreMemoryController on GitHub.

Magnetic core memory works by storing data inside the magnetic flux of a ferrite ‘core’. Magnetize it in one direction, you have a 1; the other is a 0. Sensing is current-based, and erases the existing value, requiring...

TermDriver 2 is a USB-to-serial adapter with a built-in color display (Crowdfunding)

USB-to-serial debug boards are commonly used for board bring-up, checking for issues when a board does not boot, or accessing the serial console in systems without networking or video output. You’d just connect GND, Tx, and Rx wires to the target board, and a USB cable to the host, before running a terminal program like Putty, Minicom, or Bootterm with the correct parameters, and you should be good to go. That’s the theory, but sometimes Tx and Rx may be inverted, the baudrate is not advertised, and so on. So Excamera Labs decided to make the TermDriver 2, an improved...

Measuring the Impact of LLMs on Experienced Developer Productivity

Recently AI risk and benefit evaluation company METR ran a randomized control test (RCT) on a gaggle of experienced open source developers to gain objective data on how the use of LLMs affects their productivity. Their findings were that using LLM-based tools like Cursor Pro with Claude 3.5/3.7 Sonnet reduced productivity by about 19%, with the full study by [Joel Becker] et al. available as PDF.

This study was also intended to establish a methodology to assess the impact from introducing LLM-based tools in software development. In the RCT, 16 experienced open source software developers were given 246 tasks, after which...

DIY X-Rays Made Easy

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Who doesn’t want an X-ray machine? But you need a special tube and super high voltage, right? [Project 326] says no, and produces a USB-powered device that uses a tube you can pick up two for a dollar. You might guess the machine doesn’t generate X-rays with a lot of energy, and you’d be right. But you can make up for it with long exposure times. Check out the video below, with host [Posh Arthur].

The video admits there are limitations, of course. We were somewhat sad that [Project 326] elected not to share the exact parts list and 3D printed...

Designing a CPU with only Memory Chips

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Building a simple 8-bit computer is a great way to understand computing fundamentals, but there’s only so much you can learn by building a system around an existing processor. If you want to learn more, you’ll have to go further and build the CPU yourself, as [MINT] demonstrated with his EPROMINT project (video in Polish, but with English subtitles).

The CPU began when [MINT] began experimenting with uses for his collection of old memory chips, and quickly realized that they could do quite a bit more than store data. After building a development board for single-chip based programmable logic, he decided...

An Induction Lamp Made on the Same Principle as Ordinary Fluorescent Lamp

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Over on YouTube, [Technology Connections] has a new video: Induction lamps: fluorescent lighting’s final form.

This video is about a wireless fluorescent light which uses induction to transfer power from the electrical system into the lamp. As this lamp doesn’t require wiring it is not prone to “sputtering” as typical fluorescent lights are, thus improving the working life by an order of magnitude. As explained in the video sputtering is the process where the electrodes in a typical fluorescent lamp lose their material over time until they lose their ability to emit electrons at all.

This particular lamp has a power rating...

RISC-V-Based FireBeetle 2 with ESP32-P4 Starts at $11.90

The FireBeetle 2 ESP32-P4, previewed earlier this year, is now available from DFRobot starting at $11.90. This compact board handles real-time image processing and video streaming, combining the ESP32-P4 SoC with an ESP32-C6 co-processor for wireless projects. The board uses a 360 MHz dual-core RISC-V processor with single-precision FPU and AI instruction extensions, enabling the direct […]

Radxa Fanless Network Router Offers 4 GbE Ports and NVMe Storage Up to 4TB

The Radxa E24C is a fanless network computer based on the Rockchip RK3528A processor, designed for routing, edge networking, and industrial tasks. It combines four RJ45 ports, 4K HDMI output, and an M.2 NVMe slot for high-speed storage in a compact enclosure. The Radxa E24C uses the same RK3528A processor found in the Radxa E52C […]