Construction Projects

  • Here you will find details of completed (or as completed as they are going to be) projects. All the related documentation I have for each project is here.


Work In Progress

Like all mad scientists, I’ve got more projects on the go or sitting on the “back burner” than the mind can comfortably comprehend. Some of these are waiting for inspiration, parts, funding, or just the enthusiasm to get on with them. I’ll release technical details as I go along but it goes without saying that you construct, build and ticker with any of my ideas and designs at your own risk, with the additional risk they may not actually work or get completed.


Breadboard Things

I do a lot of prototype work with breadboards and I will list designs and projects that can be built on breadboards. You will also find hints and ideas that can make using breadboards easier.


Reviews

Sometimes I stumble across a tool, component or gizmo that I think is worthy a review.


Help & Tips

In this section I will list any pearls of wisdom, datasheets, advice and information. In fact, anything that I personally don’t want to forget and that I think others may find useful.


Reference Information

Here you will find useful reference information.


Documentation Archive

Here you will find documentation, manuals, instructions and other hobby related documentation that I don’t want to lose.


Software Projects

Some of my projects are more software than hardware related and details of these will be found here.


Total Articles & Blog Posts

  • So, over the last few evenings I’ve managed to finish the first useful board for my new extendable PSU; a 5v board that can supply around 3 amps. It has a trim control that allows the output to be adjusted from 5v to 6v, and two op-amps wired as voltage comparators that illuminate a couple of…


  • I’m currently working on a +5v plug-in module for my new PSU (see previous blog post).I had several requirements for this module including the ability to withstand a dead-short circuit and the final output voltage to be trimable to +/- 0.5v. Because of this I decided not to use the existing +5v rail that’s already…


  • Yesterday evening I completed the first of the plug in modules that simply allows me switch the thing on and off, monitor the output voltages and fault conditions. This is as basic a module as you can have, consisting of only LEDs and resistors. Later, I will create a better monitoring card that can actually monitor…


  • The long bank holiday weekend arrived and I decided I would complete a battery powered project that’s been sitting around for a while; I have a lot of half completed projects sitting around the workshop.I needed to calibrate the software that monitors the internal rechargeable batteries and realised I didn’t have any type of suitable data…


  • When I started PIC programming 15+ years ago hobbyists used to build their own PIC programmers and as such, came out with their own ICSP (In-Circuit-Software-Programming) interface connection pin-outs which they would adopt for their own designs. I don’t remember giving my own pin-out much thought and it was probably based on the easiest way…


  • n June 2012, I wrote a blog article on how to update the PICKIT2 to support the 18F25K22 PIC device. This is easy to do and just requires updating the local software device file, and I provided a link to the page on the Microchip site where you could download the required updates. Unfortunately, and…