This Raspberry Pi Pico-Powered Compact Keyboard PCB Breaks Unused GPIO Out to 3.5mm Jacks

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Designed to make the most of the RP2040 microcontroller, this clever compact keyboard includes a rotary encoder and two expansion ports.


Reddit user “stewartd430” has designed a Raspberry Pi Pico-powered compact keyboard, complete with an expansion port for adding extra hardware to the microcontroller’s general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins.

“I designed a keyboard PCB for the Pico,” Stewart explains of his project, which builds on earlier efforts including a simpler 20-key macro keypad driven by the same Raspberry Pi Pico board with RP2040 microcontroller. “65 percent layout, with 15 added macro keys and rotary encoder.”

DIY Reflow Plate

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I’m preparing a video where I show you how to make the PCB design and order the panel version for your board and then solder all components at once. In that way you can save time and finish your product faster so they will be ready for sale. To do that I need a reflow hot plate and that’s what we will build today using a second-hand clothes iron. We need to measure the temperature, show the power and that temperature on a screen so the user could see the values, we need to control power and in this case a lot of power because my iron is of 3000W, and then we need to have some sort of menu or control in order to select the settings. Let me show you what parts we need, the connections I will do, how to measure and control the temperature at high power and also show you the code. Finally, let’s see if this homemade reflow hot plate will work and if I can reach the desired temperature curve, so what do you think, will it work? So, guys, let’s get started.

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RGB LED Etch-A-Sketch

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A modern take on an old classic — create colour pixel art by turning two rotary encoders to control the horizontal and vertical position of the cursor, click to change colour. All controlled by an Arduino Nano.

How it works

  • Turning the left encoder moves the cursor left and right. Pressing it cycles forward through an array of eight colours
  • Turning the right encoder moves the cursor up and down. Pressing it cycles backwards through the array of colours
  • When you move the cursor, the selected colour remains in the previous ‘pixel’
  • The cursor is shown brighter than the other pixels so users can see where it is.

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Emulate the legendary Altair 8800 on your Arduino Mega

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The Altair 8800 is one of the most important machines in computer history and many consider it to be the first personal computer. But not many computer users today would recognize it as such. At release, it couldn’t even output video and users could only interact with the Altair 8800 through a terminal or the front panel. Now you can relive history by emulating an Altair 8800, complete with front panel, on your Arduino Mega.

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This liquid cooler’s CPU block is also a 1440p monitor with its own HDMI input

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Sometimes it can feel like if you have seen one all-in-one (AIO) liquid cooler, then you’ve seen them all, with only minor variations in appearance from one to the next. Barrowch, a cooling product maker in China, found a way to stand out from the crowd: Put a high resolution display on a series of modular CPU water blocks, each complete with an HDMI port.

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Creality’s Economical New ‘CR-SCAN 01’ 3D Scanner

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Chinese 3D printer manufacturer Creality has announced the launch of a cost-effective yet highly-capable new 3D scanner. 

Known as the ‘CR-Scan 01,’ Creality’s latest entry into the scanning market is easy-to-use but features high-end specifications, and is able to capture details down to 0.1mm in size. Thanks to its adjustable modes, multi-pose alignment and enhanced scanning width, the system ultimately allows designers to recreate anything from small items to furniture, with impressive simplicity, affordability and precision. 

According to Creality, the increasing popularity of VR and AR technologies has created a rising demand for scanners that are easy to operate, yet capable of capturing the data needed for producing quality models. To address this perceived demand, the company says that it has developed a new UI to make the CR-Scan 01 so user-friendly, that it’s “as simple as a fully-automatic washing machine.” 

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