Electronics Search Results

How To: Clean an RC vehicle kit, engine and air filter

If you call yourself a hobbyist or a kid at heart, you know that remote-controlled vehicles are more than just fun. If you're a serious R/C man, you'll know all about doing everything to your model truck or car, like fixing wheels, vamping the pinion gears, waterproofing, troubleshooting, electronic diagnostics, setting up, programming and finally... racing. As much as you know about these remote-controlled vehicles, it will never be enough, you'll always be looking for more...

How To: Attend Defcon Without Looking Like a Noob or Spending a Fortune

Defcon is the largest hacker conference with something for everyone, whether it be the talks, parties, villages, or any of the hundreds of events. In this guide, we'll take a holistic view at everything that goes into attending the con for the first time, from securing your electronics and making the most of your time to the logistics of getting there and finding the right place to stay.

How To: Make an SMS Intruder Alarm

This tutorial shows you how to create an intruder alarm that sends you text message alerts when motion is detected. This may sound complicated but I am pretty confident any beginner with electronics should be able to do this just fine. The range sensor senses motion and tells your Arduino board to send the text (SMS). So you can leave the intruder detector at home, connected to your network, and still receive the SMS alerts, no matter where you are, as long as you have cell phone service.

News: This DIY Mini Tesla Coil Packs 380,000 Volts of Lightning

At one point in time, Tesla coils were actually used for things like wireless telegraphy and electrotherapy, but as technology advanced, they shifted to a slightly more enjoyable purpose—entertainment. What's even more entertaining than using a Tesla coil? Building your own. One of the best portable Tesla coils out there is this mini acrylic version by Daniel Eindhoven, aka TeslaCommander. It's made almost entirely of acrylic plastic, minus the steel sphere, and copper wire and tubing. When t...

How To: Are Your Gadgets Safe from Solar Storms and Nuclear Attacks?

It's September 1st, 1859, and the Earth looks more or less like something out of an apocalyptic movie or Sci-Fi novel. All communications have failed, it's so bright outside at midnight that people are getting up and making breakfast, and people all over the world are seeing auroras. The solar storm that produced the electromagnetic pulse and caused all this mayhem is known as the Carrington Event, and storms like it happen about about once every century.

How To: Fix Defective Pixels & Improve Image Quality on LCD & LED Monitors

I have owned quite the plethora of electronics in my life. A commonality between most of these devices' screens is frozen or dead pixels. This is probably the most annoying thing about buying new hardware—your LCD, or worse, LED display has one or more pixels that continues to stay lit. Most of the time, this will appear in the form of a brightly colored pixel that never changes, or a pixel that never displays the right color. Once you notice it's there, you just can't stop staring at it. It ...

News: The Magic of Magic Leap's Hardware — Here's What We Know

It finally happened! In a world of "go big or go home," Magic Leap has finally done something other than tease us with vague promises and rendered video concepts. Although, other than actually showing us what the developer's kit will look like, it seems little more than a slightly different kind of a tease. To demystify this new product, we here at Next Reality decided to put together what we know about the hardware.

NR50: The People to Watch in Mobile Augmented Reality

While the world is only recently becoming aware of its existence, augmented reality has been around in some form or another since the '90s. In the last decade, with the advancement and miniaturization of computer technology — specifically smartphones and tablets — AR has become far more viable as a usable tool and even more so as a form of entertainment. And these are the people behind mobile AR to keep an eye on.

News: Playing an Electric Guitar With 100,000V

Video: . I made this Tesla Coil using the myRIO and LabVIEW. It uses electricity to play the music, which can be Star Wars, Harry Potter or even Hunger Games! The music is played by the spark heating the surrounding air (causing it to expand) then the spark turning off (causing the air to cool and contract). This expanding and contracting cause's longitudinal waves - or sound waves.

News: Hack Proves Android Wear Can Work with iPhones (Demo)

With wearable tech becoming the latest trend in electronics, it's a shame that most smartwatches are locked down to one ecosystem. If you purchase a smartwatch, you can expect that it will not work with devices from competing manufacturers. That will be the case for the Apple Watch when the product finally hits shelves, and it has been the case for Android Wear devices like the Moto 360 for quite some time now.

CES 2015: Solar-Powered WakaWaka Is a Light & Charger That Helps You Be More Socially Conscious

With over 1.5 billion people on this planet without electricity, it's hard for those of us in developed nations to even fathom how anyone can read, write, repair, or do anything else that we take for granted without any lights. While some of our First World problems pale in comparison, they remain issues nonetheless, one of the biggest being constant battery drain from portable electronics.

How To: Quick-N-Dirty Circuit Board Repair: How to Patch Faded or Corroded Traces with Pencil Lead

You may already know that you can build a functional circuit on a sheet of paper with the graphite from a pencil, but you'd probably never think of using it to fix an electronic device. This same principle can be used to bring back a bricked phone, but can also repair a damaged or corroded trace in a printed circuit board. Redditor 404ClueNotFound spilled water on his favorite computer keyboard (like so many of us have done before). The damage was minimal, but after drying it out, one key sti...

How To: Unlock Your Front Door Without Keys Using This DIY Keyfob Entry System

Keys are on the way out. They're clunky, take up precious space, and slow you down when you have tons of identical-looking gold ones on your keyring. Everything we can open with keys can now also be opened with wireless technology in just a click—so why use keys anymore? Sure, you can pay hundreds of dollars for an automated lock system on your house—but why do that when you can build it yourself!

Meet Tanky: The Super Smart DIY Tank Robot That Can Map Its Own Surroundings

There are plenty of tank robots out there, but how many of them can recognize 3D objects and map their environment? Tanky, the tracked mobile robot, can do all that and more while rolling around on his bicycle chain treads. Created as a Master's thesis project, Tanky is made almost entirely of parts you can find at your local hardware store. It was built in two "layers" with the motors, electronics, and batteries on bottom and the processing unit, a laptop, on top. The motors came from cordle...