Author Archive

130-Year-Old Sound Recordings

Playback: 130-Year-Old Sounds Revealed article tells that in the early 1880s, three inventors—Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter, collectively making up the Volta Laboratory Associates—brought together their creativity and expertise to record sound. These recordings were made using a variety of methods and materials such as rubber, beeswax, glass, tin foil and

SparkFun: Why Open Source?

Over the past few years, SparkFun has had some amazing success. And that’s due in no small amount to the idea of open source. SparkFun: Why Open Source? article tells about how SparkFun ended up open sourcing many of their electronics products.

The Commodore 64 is 30

Commodore 64 was the most successful 8-bit micro ever according to The Commodore 64 is 30 article. Commodore 64 made its public debut at the 1982 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), though it wouldn’t go into production until later in the year before going on sale in the US market in August and few months later

WANem network emulator

There are many cases when need to emulate various networking conditions and scenarios. Usually the most practical way to test the application on different networking conditions is to use some kind of WAN emulator that lets you control the various networking characteristics. WANem is a free WAN emulator suitable for this task. WANem allows the

Scheme-it on-line schematic tool

Digi-Key Corporation and Aspen Labs launched around one month ago one-of-a-kind online ‘Scheme-it’ tool for drawing schematics. Scheme-it is a new on-line design tool that allows engineers, students, and enthusiasts to quickly create and share electronic schematics from directly within their web browser. “Digi-Key is excited to launch Scheme-it, the industry’s only fully-online schematic tool,”

Haitz's Law

As manufacturers strive for market share in the burgeoning LED lighting market each tries to outdo the other with ever-improving efficacy claims. But just how far can the LED chip makers go and how soon will they get there? Equally important: LED cost is plummeting. Thanks to a phenomenon known as Haitz’s Law, LED cost

Video and movie shooting with a smartphone

As the technology that powers smartphone cameras has steadily improved, the point-and-shoot has become an endangered species. The video capabilities of smartphones have greatly improved, and nowadays the best phones can shoot good quality high-definition video at good lighting conditions. Still, smartphone cameras have some limitations. For example, because of the constraints of the lens,