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ESP8266 powered DIY Geiger Counter

Posted on October 26, 2016 by R-B Leave a comment

DIY Geiger counter projects are very popular among hobbyists. They all use a Geiger-Muller (GM) tube, which is filled with an inert gas such as helium, neon, or argon at low pressure, to which a high voltage is applied. The tube becomes electrically conductive when it is impacted by a high-energy particle or photon. Earlier, we have seen a very simple Geiger counter circuit using 555 timer, where the timer IC is configured as an astable multivibrator to drive a step-up transformer through a MOSFET in order to generate the high voltage required for the GM tube. This ESP8266-powered DIY Geiger counter by

Setting up a Raspberry Pi arcade with no programming

Posted on October 25, 2016 by R-B Leave a comment

The Raspberry Pi computer has proven to be a great choice for building DIY arcade stations and playing retro games. With the program called RetroPie, you can easily turn your Raspberry Pi into a retro-gaming machine by just plugging in a screen and a keyboard. RetroPie builds upon Raspbian, EmulationStation, RetroArch and many other projects to enable you to play your favourite Arcade, home-console, and classic PC games with the minimum set-up. Bob Clagett from iliketomakestuff.com shows in his step-by-step-guide how to make a neat Raspberry Pi arcade table with no programming skills. You will need a Raspberry Pi computer board (obviously), an

Raspberry Pi audio processor and synthesizer

Posted on October 25, 2016 by R-B Leave a comment

With a lot of horse power built in, Raspberry Pi can do a lot of interesting things with audio such as creating artificial sound effects, synthesizing music, etc. PiOSCBOX is a similar low-cost project to build a stand-alone audio effects processor and synthesizer using Raspberry Pi 3 and an external USB sound card. The project features an interactive user interface using a 128×64 graphic LCD and six rotary encoders. The audio processing and synthesizing requires heavy DSP capabilities, which are implemented using Pure Data. Pure Data is an open source visual programming language for musicians and artists to create a software to generate audio/video effects and 2D/3D graphics.

Raspberry Pi animated GIF camera

Posted on October 24, 2016 by R-B Leave a comment

Most Raspberry Pi based cameras we have seen so far can take either photo, video or both. But Nick Brewer’s Raspberry Pi Zero camera is little different. It’s a fully customizable 3D printed camera using the Raspberry Pi camera with the capability to take short animated GIFs. The camera runs off a 2500mAH LiPO battery using Adafruit’s PowerBoost 500 charger board. The hardware is controlled with a bunch of softwares including PiCamera, GraphicsMagick, and GifCam. The 3D-printed case for the camera is neat and recalls the days of the disposable cameras. Everything about this camera is designed to be modified. Want the

Natural light alarm clock

Posted on October 21, 2016 by R-B Leave a comment

We are programmed to wake up gently with the natural light of Sunrise. Unfortunately, this rarely happens in modern days, where we are often forced to wake up with a loud noise of an alarm clock. However, things have started to change recently with the introduction of natural light alarm clocks, or sunrise alarm clock. A natural light alarm clock implements an artificial sunrise by emitting light that progressively increases in intensity and tells our body that the sun is rising up. Most of the commercially available natural light simulators are kind of expensive. But if you are a DIY person, there are simple ways to make

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