How to Learn How to Use Electronics

In the following video, I demonstrate how to create a device capable of charging the body of anyone who wears it with static electricity, allowing a powerful shock to be discharged into anything that is touched. This grants the wearer the ability to do some pretty amazing thin ...more

This year, like every year before it, Black Friday sales are starting earlier than ever. A lot of stores will be opening their doors as early as 5pm on Thanksgiving to get a head start on the madness (and it really is madness). As we've discussed in the past, one of the keys t ...more

Whenever we make a homemade circuit, we use what are called through-hole components. Any components with long metal leads is a through-hole component. They are great for soldering to, but it's tough to fit enough through-hole resistors and capacitors into a smartphone. To get ...more

It's no secret that water and electronics don't mix well, but somehow, people always manage to combine the two. I've had my fair share of water-damaged electronics, everything from cheap headphones to a desktop computer. My devices are getting dunked in water so much, it's lik ...more

It turns out that the popularity of soft circuit electronics has leaked out of the interwebs and into the hands of the U.S. military. Soft circuit electronics allow you to literally sew electronics circuits into fabric using flexible conductive thread instead of wire. Soft cir ...more

I obviously do a lot of Steampunk projects, but there are a ton of things out there that I haven't tried yet. So, in an effort to broaden my horizons, I recently taught myself how to use Arduinos, which I plan to incorporate into some of my future Steampunk builds. Since ther ...more

Rockets are lots of fun when you are launching them. However, finding them can be an arduous if not maddening task. Fancy space rockets have lots of tracking equipment to make touchdowns as simple as pie. Today, we look at embedding LEDs into your hobby rocket for easy night f ...more

Just in time for Halloween, a collection of creepy, pulsating biological monstrosities designed by interactive media artist Mio I-zawa. Click through the gallery of videos below for the Mechanical Tumor (a fleshy visualizer that displays CPU usage, quivering as your computer ...more

If you want to control electronic devices, such as a relay or motor, you can do so using MicroPython with an ESP8266 and web browser. Usually, you'd program an ESP8266 using Arduino, but C++, which Arduino uses, is not always the easiest programming language for beginners to l ...more

Dan McPharlin has created some super-sweet retro electronics papercraft models. Click through to Dan's Flickr page to view the entire collection. Beautiful handmade cardboard models. Previously, Rotating Kinetic Transforming Gear Heart. Make Your Own Racist 1920's Mechanical ...more

It's one of the most popular queries on the web, meaning the wet electronic disaster is likely a common mishap. There are many answers out there, but if you're lucky enough to have never googled it, pay attention now. You never know when you may drop your cell phone or iPod in ...more

Why can't all electronic devices be waterproof like my watch? There are watches worth three times as much as my iPhone that I can wear into the hot tub without a worry in the world, but cleaning most of my electronics requires a lot of caution. If only I could toss my dusty l ...more

When you think of AR experiences, you typically think of something that either involves a headset or a handset. Augmented reality without either of those things has seemed impossible in the past. But if anyone is going to try to find a way to have an augmented reality experien ...more

I recently came across this amazing MIT media lab site, Kit-of-No-Parts. Though not directly related to the content Cory has been posting, it is an interesting "craft" approach to technology/science. The site was created as documentation of a student's thesis work in the High- ...more

Whether you just got a brand new laptop or you've had an old notebook for several years, it's in your best interest to maximize your laptop battery life so you get the most out of your computer. Make sure you "work" the juice in your laptop batteries by unplugging your laptop ...more

Age doesn't matter in the world of programming, only skills, and recent high school grad Jack Eisenmann definitely has them. He recently built a homebrew 8-bit computer from scratch, calling it the DUO Adept. A worn television makes up the monitor and speaker system, an old ke ...more

This awesome how to explains the construction of a DIY USB-charged flashlight! The coolest part is that there are no batteries! Two super capacitors hold the charge from the USB and release it to the LED light at the touch of a button! Image from La famille créative

To hack a Wi-Fi network using Kali Linux, you need your wireless card to support monitor mode and packet injection. Not all wireless cards can do this, so I've rounded up this list of 2019's best wireless network adapters for hacking on Kali Linux to get you started hacking bo ...more

The iPod changed the music and electronics industries when it was first introduced way back in 2001. It is credited with ushering in the age of "connected devices," and has held a huge market share of around 70% for years. At the height of its popularity, the iPod made up almo ...more

"What is dead may never die." That's easily one of the best lines (and episode title) from HBO's Game of Thrones series. While the saying may ring true for the Ironborn, it's not quite as catchy when it comes to batteries. Lithium-ion batteries power tons of consumer electron ...more

When it comes to squeezing as much battery life as possible out of our smartphones, most people aim for software solutions, or ones that can otherwise be easily managed right from the touchscreen. Managing Wi-Fi and data connections, fine-tuning screen brightness, and install ...more

There's a lot of conflicting information out there when it comes to the best habits for charging a smartphone's battery, so let's clear some of that up right off the bat. Lithium ion batteries (the type used in most modern electronics) start to lose their ability to hold a cha ...more

Search engines index websites on the web so you can find them more efficiently, and the same is true for internet-connected devices. Shodan indexes devices like webcams, printers, and even industrial controls into one easy-to-search database, giving hackers access to vulnerabl ...more

In this article, I'll be showing you how to make a simple yet effective static electricity generator. Basically, this device allows you to carry a constant static charge on your body and discharge it on anything grounded or of opposite polarity. The electricity generated is ar ...more

SentrySafe puts all sorts of measures in place to protect your valuables and important documents. This particular SentrySafe has an electronic lock, four 1-inch bolts to keep the door firmly in place, pry-resistant hinges, and it's able to withstand drops of up to 15 feet. Tha ...more

I have owned quite the plethora of electronics in my life. A commonality between most of these devices' screens is frozen or dead pixels. This is probably the most annoying thing about buying new hardware—your LCD, or worse, LED display has one or more pixels that continues to ...more

If you've recently joined the ever-growing ranks of the cable cutters, you're far from alone. More and more people (myself included) are getting fed up with service providers' outdated subscription models and absurd pricing—and canceling their service. And why not? There are ...more

Welcome to Microwave Energy—the next part of my Making Electromagnetic Weapons series. For the Electromagnetic Pulse Generator, check out the last three articles (One, Two and Three). I'm sure almost all of you have used a microwave at some point in your lives. As a child, I ...more

There's a lot that goes into making a nice crystal radio set, so this is going to have to be broken down into two parts. The first part is the actual making of a functional radio, and the second part is making the whole arrangement look nice. In this part, I'm actually going t ...more

Your home has walls for privacy, but Wi-Fi signals passing through them and can be detected up to a mile away with a directional Wi-Fi antenna and a direct line of sight. An amazing amount of information can be learned from this data, including when residents come and go, the ...more

It used to be that you only had to worry about maids rummaging through your belongings in your locked hotel room. But now anyone with 50 bucks of hardware and some programming skills can hack their way in—as long as it's locked by keycard. At the Black Hat security conference ...more

In this series, I'll be exploring electromagnetic weapons, how to build them, their function and application to the future, and the amazing possibilities electromagnetism has to offer. First, the electromagnetic pulse generator, or EMP. You've probably heard of these before, a ...more