Remember the days when you had to define a separate music card and sound card for DOS games? When your mate’s Wavetable Soundblaster AWE32 was the bees knees? When you had a vast collection of .MID files to listen to? Ahhh, the days of MIDI. What happened to those days? Where did FM Synth and Wavetable cards disappear to? Let’s delve in.
Month: October 2020
This bike blinks brightly to the beat!
Natasha (AKA TechnoChic) is a member of a bicycle club that goes for rides at night during the summer, and while off-the-shelf lights are fine, she wanted something a bit more interesting. To accomplish this, while learning more about the technologies involved, she decided to equip her bike with an array of addressable LEDs.
The bike frame’s NeoPixels run on an Arduino Nano 33 IoT, which is connected to a boombox via a 3.5mm jack that enables the LEDs to react to the music. Two other Nano 33 IoT boards are used to drive the lights on each of the wheels, with the eventual goal of linking them wirelessly for central control. The system is powered by a 10,000mAh battery pack along with a pair of 2000mAh LiPos for the wheels to keep things glowing for several hours.
Overkill DIY intervalometer and timelapse setup for flash and continuous light
I wanted to photograph plants for over on the new channel, but my little intervalometer just wasn’t giving me what I needed. It’s a great intervalometer that has never failed me, but this project just requires something that it can’t give me. Computer-controlled lighting!
The Oregon Trail Micro
Trying out the tiny little Oregon Trail micro arcade game handheld console thing from Super Impulse. Neat idea! Lots of concessions made to the form factor… “Is died of a dysentery.”
Running PUBG on a 16-BIT Console?
In this episode of Coding Secrets, I look at whether 16-Bit consoles would ever have been able to run a game that plays like PUBG.
KEYESTUDIO Smart Home Starter Kit – KS0085 Unboxing and Review
This is a smart home kit from Keyestudio. It’s a really fun way to learn Arduino.
Game Gear Micro Review
We take a look at the new Game Gear Micro! Sega’a latest handheld, coming in at only a few cm long!
Jacek Fedorynski Creates a Mouse Hat and Human Trackball
Jacek Fedorynski has recently created an air mouse, a device that attaches to a hat and functions like an actual mouse. Hat mouse, you ask? Instead of controlling it with hand movements, it requires you to use your head. Based on Adafruit’s Feather nRF52840 Sense, this air mouse works by reading accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer data, and connects via Bluetooth to run on Windows, Mac and Linux.
Leadscrew Buddy upgrade for 70 year old lathe
My lathe is quite old. It is a Myford M type. This design was originally manufactured by British company Drummond until Myford took over manufacture in 1941.The manufacturer’s plate of my lathe has 1949 stamped on it.
It’s a pretty basic lathe, but it fits into the very limited space I have in my garage workshop. Recently I needed to use power feed on the lead screw, which is when I realised it could do with a modern upgrade.
As with most low tech lathes, the lead screw is driven from the spindle via a set of gears, and by changing these the feed speed can be set. On my lathe the gears are proper 1940s metal things, and the gear assembly involves interlocking them with pins and adjusting two mounts that can be swivelled to allow for the differing diameters.
Windows’ Hidden Self Destruct Code | Nostalgia Nerd
There was once a piece of code, buried deep within Windows, designed to detect competitor operating systems, and upon finding them, CRASH… or at least, make the user feel like something was seriously wrong. This was Microsoft’s attempt to truly kill Digital Research’s DR-DOS, and although it worked, it wasn’t long until the true nature of Microsoft’s practices was uncovered.