It’s reasonable to say that LoRa and LoraWAN are pretty established as a platform when it comes to networked sensors. With projects like The Things Network, it is pretty simple to get up and going connecting sensor nodes and gateways. It can be tricky though, or expensive, when you want to move from a breadboard or prototype sensor board to deploying rugged dependable sensors. As such it’s great to see products like the Agrosense Barometric Pressure Sensor hitting the market. The Agrosense is compatible with both the US and EU frequency bands allocated for LoRaWAN. It looks straightforward to ..read more

The Arkanoid is a compact sound generator that skillfully packs the functionality of a theremin into your pocket. Drawing inspiration from the classic Atari Punk console, the Arkanoid is ready to become a unique and irreplaceable part of your synth setup, effortlessly controlled with just two tiny light sensors. For over a century, the theremin has captivated musicians with its ability to be controlled entirely without physical contact, becoming a centrepiece of musical experimentation. Traditionally consisting of two long metal antennas, theremins detect the position of your hands using each ..read more

It’s fair to say that Tindie has lots of variety. For example, a casual search reveals that it’s pretty trivial to find boards and systems in the Tindieverse ranging all the way from 64-bit down to 1-bit! Sat at the lower end of the scale is the 4-Bit Microcontroller Trainer V2 board from Subsystems. This excellent little device is the second version of the project and is a little more affordable than version 1 as fabrication has moved to surface mount technology. The trainer simulates a 4-bit microcomputer that can be programmed in machine language. There are 31 different instructions in the ..read more

We are always on the lookout for interesting little interface doohickeys! This small button cluster caught our eye as it looks really neat and could add a touch of industrial design to your next project. The Navigator Plus is simply 5 buttons on a PCB. The buttons are neatly clustered to create a circular array with a button in the centre. Each of the outer buttons has an arrow marker and the centre button has a dot. Each of these acts as a diffused window to 5 individual white LEDs built into the module. Each button has a broken-out pin and an internal pull-up resistor. The other side of eac ..read more

Who doesn’t love a good 286 motherboard? Screaming along at up to 25MHz, powering through floating-point workloads with a 287 co-processor, addressing multiple megabytes of RAM! What an absolute powerhouse! Well, if you want to power that powerhouse, you’ll either need to find and restore an AT power supply from the time or generate the required -5V that was removed when AT became ATX. The Voltage Blaster from PCRestoration does exactly that! It plugs into the ISA backplane and generates the -5V rail that many ISA cards require. And as a nice touch, it has LEDs showing each power rail so you ..read more

Pentesters and security researchers have all sorts of neat gadgets for practicing their trade. A popular tool are USB dongles that can quickly enter text and mouse movements at a completely inhuman rate. This can be used to exploit security holes during a physical pentest, or it can be used for totally innocuous purposes. The PicoUSB is an inexpensive, Pico-based version of the original device, called the Rubber Ducky. While the PicoUSB is based on the concept of the Rubber Ducky, it uses a slightly different syntax for its scripts. Make sure to check out the GitHub repo to see some example c ..read more

When it comes to LEDs Tindie is well served! We see lots of different addressable RGB LED projects on here and it’s nice to think Tindie is helping bring a little brightness and colour to the world. At the very very small end of RGB LED products, we spotted these excellent MicroMatrix panels. The MicroMatrix panels are sold as a pack of 4 which are thankfully pre-assembled as these tiny 1.5mm square addressable LEDs would be a challenge to hand solder! Each individual panel is populated as an 8*8 LED display. The LEDs are SK6805-EC15 which are WS2812 compatible, meaning most NeoPixel code wil ..read more

The new and improved version of the CardClock is not only stuffed with more LEDs, but it now has a gorgeous swappable wooden front plate. The circular LED array on the left shows time in a traditional analog clock style, and the right-hand 223 RGB LED array shows the time digitally with all sorts of crazy patterns and colours! Not only is it roughly the size of a credit card, meaning it can be used just about anywhere, but it’s powered by USB using the included 90-degree USB cable. This makes a nice and neat appearance (though it’d be cool to have the option of having the cable exit rearward ..read more

Soft cards are becoming increasingly popular for vintage computers. Because the cards have modern processors or FPGAs on them, they can easily emulate just about any peripheral ever made for vintage systems, as well as expanding the limits of what can be done on these machines! This ESP32 SoftCard Expansion for the Apple ][ features the ESP32-WROVER-E, a powerful dual-core processor with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built-in. Data is loaded from an SD card, and the list of features is absolutely jaw-dropping. Like the original Z80 SoftCard, it enables 80-column video output, but this card additionally ..read more

Although I never actually owned one I do remember playing with an iPod touch wheel when they first came out. Such a lovely way to interact with lists, but a touch wheel can be used for so much more. If you want to experiment with capacitive touch in a circular form then the Touchwheel0 from Todbot Synth Toys is definitely worth a look. It’s a 30mm diameter wheel on a neat rectangular PCB with mount holes. Sold as a bare board it is supplied with three 0805 surface mount resistors that need soldering to the board. 0805 packages are pretty chunky and are straightforward to solder even for relat ..read more