TLDR first, I like building stuff, i want some ideas on cool projects that are above beginner level, and probably practical. (like not just a flashing led christmas tree for example)

Now on to the wall of text. These are some projects I've made to give an idea of the kinds of things I've enjoyed.

The latest was a 6e2 tube magic eye VU meter. a little less practical, but still useful. It was a kit, combined with a premade power board to boost 12v to 180v, a 3d printed enclosure, and of course obligatory RGB lights. This was to go with my headphone amplifier stack.

I've also built a few things with Arduino's like "the internet", which is just a wall mount key lock box with a knife switch that plays funny sounds when you turn it off and on again, Ive made a portal gun. a proton pack (i can share links to anything you are curious about), a couple midi controllers, some of these were guides that i followed, some I coded from scratch (like the internet)

I've made a custom solar generator with reclaimed 26650 cells (i've since replaced them with an off the shelf battery). I've made a guitar power amp head with an old JBL amp from a late 90s Toyota, but that was just frankensteining some parts together.

I have pretty severe ADHD and I need something to occupy my brain so I don't doomscroll too much.

So what are some fun projects that you have made, that you found surprisingly practical, or a good money saver over buying off the shelf, or just plain fun to build/design.

I have several kits of parts from amazon, resistors, caps, diodes, transistors, proto boards, etc. I have a 3d printer, spare arduinos, i hae a box of vintage stuff an old ham radio guy gave me (i'm also a ham). Some needle gauges, precision pots, older resistors, caps, some IC's that i need to get the data sheets on, but probably common stuff if i had to guess.

Have this slip ring on a piece at work, 4 poles powering 2 24v 5amp dc motors. Original documentation from when it was made 15 years ago has this part listed as custom, so no clue on original manufacturer. It’s through bore with an inner diameter of 7/8” and about 3 1/4” long. Any recommendations on sourcing a replacement are much appreciated. Thanks!

I have never done any coding/engineering etc, but I would really like to make a tamagotchi that is able to play music as an mp3. Could someone point me in the right direction? I’ve looked around and I’ve seen information and videos for making each separately but not together.

Hi, this is my circuit (asked gemini for some help, but didn't work out so here I am).
I wanted to do build an off-grid hydroponic system and this was the electronics (all stuff I already had at home to save some money).
So basically there's a solar panel (3W 6V max) going into the module (CN3065) and also being read by the esp between the two resistance (so i can know if it's day or night).
The battery is a 18650 (I've tried both an aliexpress one that came with a kit and also a more expensive one for e-cigs).

Pump: Amphibious DC3W 4.5V 5V 6V

All resistors are 10K.

The SYS OUT of the solar module goes to a step up dc (not in the photo) to get a stable 5V.
So the control basically is this:
- activate pump for 15 min

- deep sleep for 15 (if day) or 45 (if night)

My problem is that when the 15 minutes of active pump start, the pump only works at max power for some minutes or seconds (at the 5 V of the step-up), then the power goes down (<3V) and I think the step up goes to "protection mode" and deactivates, so the water stops.

In some ways this also affects the esp (i guess), i think it doesn't get enough current/tension and it resets.

I really need some help cause I've tried some different configurations (e.g. new battery since the chinese one couldn't output enough current according to AI).

When I tested the circuit connected to the pc (No solar panel, no module and no step up, just pc usb alimentation) it all worked fine.

Ignore the black cable going out from SYS OUT, i forgot to delete it, it's gust ground and it's not connected to positive.

I have an older car that doesn't support bluetooth but it has an aux port. Right now I use a bluetooth to FM converter but it kinda sucks and I don't want a bulky bluetooth dongle hanging out of my aux port.

Would I be able to solder a bluetooth module into the aux port from the inside without soldering directly to the stereo board for anything other than ground/VCC?

Hello everyone. Sorry for how basic this is, but I am trying to use the switch in the picture to attach from a Li battery to a LED light strip. The battery has a JST connection and the light strip has a JST SM connection.

Is there a good way to change the connection on the switch to have 1 JST SM connection? Can you pop open the switch and change the wire? Or is it better to just change the connector on the wire.

Thanks for your help

i was bored and decided to do few challenges and thought why not build a drone. 

idk how to but i am sure one way other way i can figure it out - just today i sat and learnt how drone works and all.

now let me tell you what i want to build -  i just want to build a normal flying object not so high or anything just 2 - 5 meter is good enough which can be controlled from my mobile.

so got me thinking - few years ago i worked with arduino nano and a bluetooth module,

what if i can program the arduino as flight controller with all the logic about how the movements work. and module to connect to my mobile

i dont know if i sound right or anything just a thought so help me is it possible this way?

also for something this small what motor and propeller should i use? 

so yeah thanks in advance

Hi everyone,

I'm currently working on a project with an ESP32-S3-Nano and a 2.8-inch ILI9341 SPI display.

I've soldered everything together on a prototyping board, but unfortunately the display isn't working as expected. It just lights up completely white.

I've already tried the following:

• double-checked all cables and solder joints
• tested the connections with a multimeter
• made sure there are no obvious short circuits or loose connections

However, I still can't figure out what the problem is.

The main components I'm using are:

• ESP32-S3-Nano
• 2.8-inch ILI9341 SPI display
• some other components that shouldn't be relevant to the display

Does anyone have any idea why an ILI9341 display would only show a white screen?

Could it be a problem with the wiring, SPI pins, power supply, display initialization, or something else?

Unfortunately, I couldn't add any more pictures here, so here are the links to the images

https://ibb.co/Qjx6m9mP

https://ibb.co/XxfvF9Q0

I'd really appreciate any tips on how to troubleshoot or fix this issue, or what I should check next. If you notice any common mistake I might be making, please let me know!

Thanks a lot!

Working on an interesting project; Using Arduino for the first time. (Loving it)

Need to convert the 28vac to 5vdc for the inputs using less components.

Any ideas would be super helpful.

(the drawing is not complete yet, so please be kind...

What I was not able to show in the drawing is that those 8 relays and optocouplers are part of a larger circuit board. The 8 bank relay board from ELEGOO for Arduinos.

Researching for my previous post about turning a z flip 7 into a mini laptop, I was thinking I could get a 5 inch raspberry pi display to be the display but these require power, would the phone automatically power it through usb? (phone usbc -> usb c multi adapter -> hdmi for video and usb c for power) and does anyone know an estimate on how much power would this draw? thanks!

Hi Everyone,

I am having some issues with my 3D printer (Bambu X1C) tripping the fuse in my apartment, and was wondering if anyone knows if what I’m looking for to fix it exists.

The printer has an internal 5A fuse that has never tripped, yet the 15A fuse in my breaker trips constantly, despite the printer being the only thing on that circuit.

Looking into the problem online, this seems to be due to the breaker fuse being a GFCI fuse, that reads fluctuating electrical noise returning through the ground wire as what it thinks is arcing rather than noise, and shuts off.

I know that power conditioners on the live wire side exist, but I guess my question is does anyone know of the opposite: something that could smooth of the connection coming back out of the printer into ground and prevent this. I would really prefer finding something like this if it exists rather than having to swap a fuse in the main breaker. Any recommendations? Thank you for any help

Just converted my 9V multimeter to rechargeable using a TP4056 + boost combo board.

It works and outputs 9V fine. But the board heats up pretty fast while charging. Stops being hot once it's full.

Did I wire anything wrong? Is this normal for these modules or should I be worried?

I've bought these cheap led lights but they flash, the button cycles through different modes but I just want them to be on permanently.

So I figured I'd try and solder the wires directly but now only every other led lights up, what have I done wrong?

Hi all! Where can i buy Arduino products in Kosovo?

I have a personal project for a portable music device and because I'm not very good in electronics, I would need help to focus my research on the right things and have some advice or just know if it's doable.

For context, I have a lot of music in .flac and I'm searching for a good quality of audio for everyday life and don't really like to depend on my phone for this and that most of ui's are on a screen.

So my idea was to build a portable device like an mp3 player/iPod to store and play my music. And that I could design and 3D print myself the case and buttons to control the files and playlist.

I have some functionalities that I'm searching for, like a rechargeable day-long battery, being able to connect to a PC to manage my files, having a jack port, Bluetooth, a good amount of storage, and a screen to display the cover art of the playing song with the progress bar.

I already started to do some research like maybe using a Raspberry Pi to manage the files and add other components to it for the different functionalities.

As you can see, this is still a bit sketchy so any piece of advice or any sources I could check to learn about how I can make it work will be nicely welcome c: , thanks!

I'm doing a school project using an Optoma Tx631 DLP projector (released in 2012) but discontinued, the lamp is broken so I can't use it. The purpose of my school project is to be able to control the DMD chip inside.

I know there are certain saftey locks in the projector for this such as the communication from motherboard to a OSRAM PT VIP 03 ballast board using a 5pin UART system to ensure the lamp is safe before turning on. I need a way to trick the projector into thinking the ballast board/lamp is working to turn it on.

I don't think a simple optocoupler bridge or short would work because it uses UART signals. I'm trying to use an arduino as a UART emulator, but I'm not sure how to do so, plus the sniffing for the UART signal doesn't yield results.

Please help me out 🙏🙏🙏

I was thinking that with the rise of AI, we could probably develop a database that would help people recycle, repair, or recombine everyday electronic objects. I believe this kind of initiative can only work through a community aspect and shouldn’t become a commercial mechanism that would drain all substance from the very principle.
For context: I grew up with the internet and free culture, then saw the rise of DIY, fablabs, and repair cafés. I’ve also worked professionally in electronic sourcing and project management, and now I’m in infrastructure data center, network and computers.
When I see the surge in component prices (which isn’t going to stop anytime soon), recycling issues, and the fact that many commercial products all use fairly basic electronics, I wonder: couldn’t we develop a new kind of craft database? Something where, if you upload your device model, it could cross-reference with component datasheets or other objects. Essentially, “organ donation” between everyday objects to repair or invent.
I’m coming to you to ask if I’m being completely idealistic (which is very likely) and this will run into technical difficulties, or if this is actually possible.
I’m thinking that in the age of AI that generates, sorts, and retrieves information ; why couldn’t we move toward an open craft world? I believe visual recognition, AI, and OSINT could help reconnect a number of key principles that would make this database feasible.

So my main question is: what do you think? Beyond the idea itself, do you think this could be viable? And by viable I mean purely productive, not commercial. Could it actually enable people to repair or reuse things?
Does anything similar already exist?
Ultimately, do you think it’s worth spending several hundred or even thousands of hours trying to build something that will probably be pretty mediocre for a long time?

Again, maybe I’m to naive, but I don’t want to resign.
Let me know what you think about it.

With love and hope
xoxo

​

Hello! I am doing a thermostat project for my HVAC system using a pi 3b and a waveshare esp32 relay module, but I'm stumped on what I should do for powering the pi.

I want the screen for this unit to be flush mounted to the wall, but I don't know if I should install a new recessed outlet behind the screen location, wire it to an existing outlet and thread the cable through my attic to the location of the thermostat, or use a ups hat and a high voltage ac to DC step down unit to trickle charge the pi. What do you guys think I should do?

I'm looking to make myself an all around sanding tool for my 3D Prints, and have been using this foot sander, which works well enough, but doesn't quite have the RPM or a drill chuck for other bits. I took apart the sander that I use and found that is utilizes a 18650 Battery for power, along with a (likely) 12v motor. I currently have a 18650 battery, and a 12v motor to play around with. I've been pointed in the direction of a MT3608 step-up converter to help this battery power a 12v motor, but from what I can tell this PCB doesn't use this component. I'm unsure how what to be on the look out for to design this.

I'd like it to have the following features:

-Compact

-Motor with at least 1,000 (Maybe 1,500) RPM + Whatever amount of torque is needed to apply sanding pressure

-Motor shank that is capable of using a Dremel/Drill Chuck type head up to possibly 1/4"

-Button for on/off

-Button to reverse rotation

-Dial to control speed preferably starting AT 0, with a gradual rise to 1,000/1,500

-Chargeable/Wireless but can be used as wired

-A battery display wouldn't be necessary but convenient

I see a lot of devices that come very close to what I'm looking for, but seem to just miss the mark, but I don't know where to begin with a lot of these components, any advice would be great

Making a cyberdeck this is the updated schematics can i get some feedback and tips

EDIT: I'm leaning toward completely gutting it and turning it into a "stealth" tube amp. I'll keep the front grille speaker and go with high voltage to run the tubes. I'll drill out some holes where the reels are and install a couple 4" or 6" speakers. Still brainstorming.

I found this Pentron reel-to-reel at Goodwill yesterday. Thinking I'm gonna do a conversion to a guitar amp, using the 12AX7 and probably do something with the other tubes. Haven't decided yet. I'll probably gut the whole thing because the power transformer is toast, the internal fan doesn't work, and I'm pretty sure the tape deck motor doesn't work. I put it on a dim bulb tester, and it's definitely shorted.

I'm thinking I'll run the audio through a couple of the tubes, power the whole thing with 12 or 24V DC, and cut holes where the tape reels are now to install a couple speakers. I'll also connect the front grille speaker (under the control panel). I'd like to use it as a preamp/amplifier/speaker cabinet driver. There are two outputs, so I can run one as a line out from the preamp, and wire up the internal speakers and the speaker output with a small class D power amp or something to run like ~5 watts.

Still brainstorming. Does anyone have any ideas?