Building a C-3PO You Can Really Talk To

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=wB2CJm4sHcM

C-3PO is one of the more famous movie robots out there. However, we don’t see a lot of replicas built, perhaps because in speech and mannerisms, he’s quite hard to replicate. Of course, that feat has become much more achievable with modern AI tech, as [Samuel Potozkin] demonstrates.

We’re not looking at a full C-3PO build here, it’s just the head—but for the project’s purposes, that’s all that was really required. The build relies on a Raspberry Pi 5 as the brains of the droid. It’s running a mic hooked up to a real time speech to text engine, and that...

Matching Transistors

https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=_HBGh2izzaM

Transistors in some circuit configurations work together and, frequently, need to be matched. This is so common that you can sometimes find ICs that are just a pair of transistors made with the same piece of silicon, so they should be matched very closely by default. But with discrete transistors, two devices of the same type are not always identical. [Learn Electronics Repair] covers the topic and explains how to match devices in the video below.

Depending on the circuit, the matching parameters may be different, but generally, the idea is that you want similar gains or matching saturation characteristics. The...

Prunt Board 3 3D printer control board offers smoother and quieter operation (Crowdfunding)

Prunt Board 3 is a 3D printer control board with six TMC2240 stepper drivers, two 15A heater outputs, four fan outputs, four thermistor inputs, and four endstop inputs that is designed to offer smoother and quieter operation. The hardware is said to offer better ESD protection than boards such as the Duet 3 Mini 5+ or BTT SKR 3 EZ and supports hardware-accelerated step generation, but the magic happens with the Prunt firmware and associated server, which enable a 31-phase velocity profile for smoother operation and higher-quality prints compared to boards running Klipper or Marlin firmware. Let’s have a look...

Universal TFT Display Backpack 2

This is an updated version of my Universal TFT Display Backpack, a microcontroller board based on an ATtiny814 that can accommodate a range of different Adafruit and AliExpress colour TFT displays:

The Universal TFT Display Backpack displaying the BarChart example on
an AliExpress 3.5" 480x320 TFT display.

It's ideal as the basis for applications based on my TFT graphic libraries. 

Like the earlier board Universal TFT Display Backpack it has the following features:

SBC Clusters are a terrible value, but they're fun anyway

Pictured above is the new DeskPi Super4C installed in an 8U mini rack. The Super4C is a 4-node Raspberry Pi CM5 cluster board that solves two pain points I had with the older Super6C.

I was testing this board around the same time I helped kick off the SBCC 2026, the Single Board Cluster Competition for students. A dozen or so university teams squared off to run the best mini HPC cluster with a budget of $6,000, and a couple days to benchmark six HPC workloads.

Электровакуумные геттеры. Бариевые газопоглотители

Взглянув чуть более внимательно на изготовление электронных ламп — нехитрых в сущности приборов, с прискорбием выясняется неутешительное — нагрев и пониженное давление превращают привычные, казалось бы, надёжные и незыблемые материалы, натурально, в предателей и прохвостов, так и норовящих подложить свинью и испортить лампу [1]. И только последовательная тщательная и большая подготовительная с ними работа и длительное маринование электровакуумных приборов (ЭВП) на откачном посту заставляет внутренние металлы, стекло, слюду ламп держаться приличий. Если подготовка и очистка, дело неизбежное, то длительную (иногда до суток и более!) откачку ламп на громоздком, сложном, дорогом и энергоёмком оборудовании позволил фантастически сократить некрупный специальный элемент внутри колбы прибора — газопоглотитель, иначе — геттер.

Являясь местным миниатюрным одноразовым высоковакуумным насосом, он поглощает остатки газов, сокращая...

ESP-FLY DIY Kit is a tiny ESP32-S3-based DIY micro drone kit

ESP-FLY DIY kit is a miniature DIY drone kit based on Seeed Studio’s XIAO ESP32-S3 board that was initially introduced as a DIY project on Instructables by Max Imagination, but is now available as a complete kit for $59.99 on Seeed Studio. It’s certainly not the first ESP32 drone, but the ESP-FLY drone must be the smallest, as the miniature (67 x 67 x 31mm) quadcopter design allows users to store into any pocket or small boxes. It’s mainly designed for STEM education,  hobbyist DIY Projects, and indoor flight practice. ESP-FLY drone kit key features and specifications: Main Controller –...

Палиха П-750. Последний телефон с АОН двухтысячных

Приветствую всех!

Когда-то давно, когда стационарный телефон имелся практически в каждой квартире в крупном городе, стали набирать популярность аппараты с определителем номера. Были они очень у многих, с ними связано много воспоминаний, про них спустя годы было написано немало статей, ну а для кого-то бизнес на их сборке вообще стал возможностью пережить тяжёлые девяностые.

В двухтысячные годы такие девайсы начали потихоньку уходить в историю, заменяясь импортными моделями с Caller ID. Один из последних таких аппаратов мы сейчас и рассмотрим.

Сегодня мы посмотрим, что умеет и как устроен самый топовый городской телефон той эпохи. Заодно узнаем, зачем подключать телефонный аппарат к компьютеру и можно...

ESP-FLY micro drone kit offers ESP32-S3-based flight control and ESP-NOW support

The ESP-FLY DIY Kit is a compact micro drone platform built around the Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-S3, developed as a collaboration between Seeed Studio and Max Imagination. The kit targets educational and hobbyist use, combining a small airframe with wireless control options and a customizable firmware environment. The system is delivered as a DIY kit […]

$4,290+ Unitree R1-A5 and R1-A7 humanoid robots features grippers or dexterous hands, fixed or wheeled base

Unitree has extended its R1 dual‑arm humanoid robot family with new R1-A5 and R1-A7 models, which can be fitted with 2-finger grippers or 3 or 5-finger dexterous hands, and attached to a fixed base or a wheeled base for indoor mobility. The new robots appear based on the low-cost Unitree R1 platform launched last year, which can dance, walk, run, perform kung-fu moves, and chat with users, but is otherwise not overly useful since it lacks dexterous hands. The R1-A5 and R1-A7 won’t be able to dance, since they don’t come with legs, but the upper body comes with a...