Electronics Archives - Page 3 of 7

DIY Portable 100W LED Torch

TslaNovember 14, 2022March 2, 20240

In this post, I’ll show the portable 100W LED torch floodlight I made. I originally bought the 100W LED and lens kit many years ago but have just recently decided I would finally make an LED flashlight out of it. A lot of the flashlights online usually don’t have a very large battery capacity and need to be recharged quite often if you use them for an extended period. The problem is a lot of those flashlights also use 16850 batteries that have to be taken out of the flashlight to be recharged with a charger. This prompted me to create my own flashlight with a large battery capacity that is also easily rechargeable without having to take out the batteries every time.

DIY Raspberry Pi Microscope

TslaSeptember 27, 2022March 2, 20240

In this post, I’ll show you a Raspberry Pi microscope I made for soldering and inspecting PCBs. The great thing about it is that it has a long working distance. This enables the microscope to be mounted on the shelf above my workbench so it doesn’t get in the way. An additional benefit is that the image doesn’t shake if you bump the table when working.

measuring the length of coax with an oscilloscope setup

Measure The Length Of Coax With An Oscilloscope

TslaAugust 30, 2022June 10, 20230

In this post, I’ll show you how to measure the length or find a break in a coaxial cable with the help of your oscilloscope and waveform generator. We can do this using signal reflection that occurs when a transmission line is not terminated correctly.

Measuring Capacitors And Inductors With Your Oscilloscope

TslaAugust 29, 2022June 10, 20230

In this post, I’ll show you how to measure the value of capacitors and inductors with your oscilloscope and waveform generator. To measure the capacitor we’ll simply which will charge(periodically with a square wave) it through a resistor and measure how much time it takes the capacitor to charge to 63% we can then calculate its value according to the RC time constant formula which is t = RC. We’ll rearrange it to C = t/R to get out the capacitance.

Random Projects

TslaAugust 24, 2022November 11, 20250

In this post I will document some of my smaller projects that don’t deserve a whole blog post of their own.

Cheap DIY Spectrum Analyzer

TslaAugust 23, 2022March 2, 20240

In this post, I’ll show you how to make a cheap portable spectrum analyzer from a TV receiver dongle. The dongle gets sold as a TV (DVB-T) however its an SDR(software defined radio) which means that it can be used to receive pretty much any RF signal(depending on the chip used up to 1-2 GHz) and turn it into a digital one to be later processed by software.

IR Distance And Motion Sensor

TslaAugust 22, 2022August 22, 20220

Usually, you would just buy the whole IR module which contains the transmitter, receiver, and amplifier. However, in this post, I’ll show you how you can make your own IR distance sensor/motion detector module.

Plasma Speaker

TslaAugust 22, 2022August 22, 20220

In this post, I’ll show you a plasma speaker I made many years ago in fact, over 13 years ago. I originally saw this on Instructables and thought it was really cool so I decided I would make one myself. Unlike a traditional speaker which moves air with a diaphragm, a plasma speaker makes sound by utilizing a high voltage electric arc to move air.

DIY Handheld Induction Heater

TslaAugust 20, 2022March 2, 20240

In this post, I’ll show you a handheld induction heater I made. I bought the ZVS driver circuit board and coil quite some time ago but I just recently saw someone made a very neat 3d printed case for it on thingiverse and decided to make a handheld induction heater out of it. This one is smaller and much less bulky than the other one I made wrote about in this post.

DIY Induction Heater

TslaAugust 18, 2022March 2, 20240

In this post, I’ll show you the induction heater I made. I bought the board and coil as it’s easier and quicker than making them on your own. It’s rated for 2000W but the maximum power I can get out of it is 1200W because that’s as much as the power supply I’m using can supply.