Ideas - inspirations experiments & notes

Ideas tagged with Hardware:

Sayonara Ikutaro Kakehashi - Roland founder and legend

A fond farewell to Ikutaro Kakehashi, the man from Roland who gave the world the SH101,MC202, TB303, TR606, TR707, TR727, TR808, TR909... The list goes on. Thank you for the noise. What a legend... I was lucky enough to own several of these iconic machines over the years, and every one I ever encountered, I fell in love with.

DIY Nest-style WiFi thermostat

Check out my ongoing project to develop a cheap Nest-style WiFi home thermostat from off-the-shelf components.

Another eye tracking idea: powertool safety

Just been using some power tools in the sunshine and it was very easy to let the attention stray as people passed by or cars bleeped behind me. Power tools often have some form of dead man's switch which cut the power if you let go, but surely by then you may literally be a dead man. It got me thinking (after I'd turned off the power tools) that some [...]

DIY project: Recreating the Eames Musical Tower

Some information about my ongoing project to recreate a piece of classic 1950s modern design from Charles and Ray Eames - the gravity-powered "Musical Tower" glockenspiel.

Homebrew Time Capsule Project

Just a walkthrough of my homemade Time Capsule based on some old hard drives and low-cost hardware. Spent a bit of time last week hacking a Seagate GoFlex Net into an old rackmount server case which I cut down and converted to use SATA drives. Result is a nice super low-power network accessible storage array in a small space-saving casing.

SU700 solderfest - fixing my jumpy encoders

How to replace misbehaving or jumpy rotary encoders on the Yamaha SU700 digital sampler, with links to the components I tested. Fire up your soldering iron!

Why your iPhone home button doesn't work...

iPhones have a few common problems that come up again and again. Cracked screens, splitting cases and dodgy headphone connections often occur but the most common problem seems to be the hardware buttons; either the sleep/power button or the home button just stop responding, or become inconsistent. This can be caused by one of two issues: the contacts [...]

£50 Wacom Cintiq tablet

Firstly a clarification: there is no way short of looting you will get your hands on a Cintiq pen display for less than three figures. They are extremely expensive bits of kit and for good reason. However, the pace of global technology development and the subsequent rampant obsolescence of all things technological means that you can get a Wacom pen-enabled [...]