Electronics hobby blog

WeMos D1 mini is an ESP8266 based board that can be programmed with Arduino IDE. In this blog I will describe how to make a simple WiFi based server that is being powered by a Li-Po battery and shows temperature and humidity inside your browser window.

ESP8266 is Wi-Fi microchip which can be programmed just like a normal Arduino board. For that purpose some additional software needs to be installed inside the Arduino IDE.

Browsing though Chinese online webshops, I came across a DVB-T+DAB+FM USB dongle that claimed to be modded into a SDR (Software Defined Radio). The price was under 10 euros, so I decided to give it a try. After some tryouts I managed to get it working.

Blink LED is a Hello World! application for micro-controllers. If you manage to get it running, you can assume that you are all setup and ready for further developments on your board. In this blog item I will cover how to do that on a STM32F407 Discovery board.

After the inside of the mancave was finished it was time to create the power distribution / fuse box that connects all the power wires and lights.

An important thing for a man is to be able to retreat to his own space and do stuff inside it what one likes. Although I have an area on the attic it didn't give me the feeling of complete dominion, so I have decided to create a mancave inside the shed that was outside of the house.

A while back I have assembled this bench power supply kit, which I received as a gift from my friend Eric. The kit was published in a Dutch electronics forum (Circuits online) as PCB Lab voeding. It was time to create a casing for it as it was just lying around in my drawer and was not really being used.

18650 batteries are known for it's high energy density, but this comes at a price. In order to protect the battery from overcharging or over-discharging a number of ICs need to be used. Luckily these charge and protector circuit boards are readily available for sale in all shapes and sizes. In this blog post I am going to build a charger that uses such a circuit.

Not only the charger can use protection circuitry, but also the battery itself. When buying the batteries make sure that they are protected. I have bought mine in a Chinese online webshop.

It is easy to mod your 3D printer to become a laser engraver / cutter. All you need is a laser module. The one that I have used had a power of 2500mW, which is enough to engrave and cut thin sheets of plywood.

MicroPython is a programming language that is derived from his big brother Python and is optimised to run on microcontrollers. In this blog we will focus how to get it running on ESP32 with a SSD1306 OLED display.