The Commodordion is an 8-bit accordion primarily made of C64s, floppy disks, and gaffer tape. Article includes a video of the Commodordion in action.
A 6502 game console (h/t hackaday.com)
Directly controlling an OLED display via HDMI.
Doug Ford's classic 2009 article on how oscilloscope probes work including how 10x probes use lossy coax to improve frequency response.
Jay Carlson's excellent write up of the very inexpensive Padauk microcontroller's.
I enjoyed this presentation by Ted Yapo about his DIY sampling scope.
Writeup on an effort to design and produce 200 little flyback converters (meant for powering Nixie tubes).
Successfully executing a replay attack against a wireless key fob using inexpensive hardware and GNU Radio (based on Samy Kamkar's original hack).
This is an entire PC-compatible single-board computer implemented with an 8051 microcontroller (!) running an x86 emulator.
I've been able to find very little about the Appotech AX-2005 System-on-chip, just the first page of its datasheet (it runs at 125Mhz):
This TTL computer looks like an interesting design:
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It implements an 8-bit RISC CPU with an 8-instruction CPU using a surprisingly small number of chips: just 36 standard TTL chips, a ROM, and an SRAM chip.
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The VGA output is generated entirely in software with no additional graphics hardware (other than a resistor DAC). User code runs only during the hsync and vsync periods.
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The ROM kernel takes care of all the VGA timing and runs a virtual machine which presents itself as a 16-bit CPU and includes an interpreter so programs can be written in a high level language.
A very nice project report on the design and build of a simple Nixie tube clock including an unexpectedly in-depth section on the design of the custom flyback boost converter. The tubes are driven by individual transistors, controlled by an stm32 uC, powered and programmed over USB-C, and housed in a custom machined stainless steel case.
This review makes me want to play with these microcontrollers.
Arduino started as a fork of a microcontroller library/IDE/dev board called Wiring. Here the creator of Wiring weighs in a bit on the origins of and some of the drama surrounding Arduino.
A comparison 21 different microcontrollers — all less than $1.
A concise writeup of a homebrew z80 game console which uses two Atmega1284 uC as a double-buffered graphics accelerator.
I'm not sure where this came from (some class handout?) but it is a very nice guide to hand-drawing Bode plots.
Educational electronics weblog with a good name I came across today.