Multichannel music generation for Arduino
[Drew] wrote a library for playing multichannel music on an Arduino. The project connects multiple piezo buzzers to the popular prototyping platform and handles the dirty work involved in modulating...
View ArticleRetrotechtacular: First laser transmitter built 50 years ago
Most of the time we feature hokey film footage in our Retrotechtacular series, but we think this hack is as cool today as it was fifty years ago. [Clint] wrote in to tell us about Operation Red Line....
View ArticleRetrotechtacular: Fundamentals of AM and FM Radio Communication
How radios send and receive information can seem magical to the uninformed. For some people, this week’s Retrotechtacular video, “Frequency Modulation – Part 1 Basic Principles”, from the US Army...
View ArticleThe Basics of Frequency Modulation
[brmarcum] takes us back to analog building block basics with his Frequency Modulation and Demodulation tutorial. Frequency Modulation (FM) sounds simple at first, but understanding the electronics...
View ArticleTransferring Audio to an AVR at 12kbps
Back in the bad ‘ol days of computing, hard drives cost as much as a car, and floppy drives were incredibly expensive. The solution to this data storage problem offered by all the manufacturers was...
View ArticleHams Talk Digital
Morse code qualifies as a digital mode, although organic brains are somewhat better at copying it than electronic ones. Ham radio operators that did “phone” (ham-talk for voice) started out with AM...
View ArticleSuddenly, 4G Feels Slow
Researchers at University College London successfully transferred data over an optical transmission system at a rate of 1.125 Tb/s. That’s over ten times as fast as typical commercial optical systems,...
View ArticleSending Music Long Distance Using A Laser
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen DIYers sending music over a laser beam but the brothers [Armand] and [Victor] are certainly in contention for sending the music the longest distance, 452 meter/1480...
View ArticlePhase Modulation With An FPGA
There are two radio modulation schemes everyone should know. Amplitude modulation changes the amplitude — or ‘volume’, if you will — of a carrier frequency and turns all radio into channels owned and...
View ArticleHybrid Technique Breaks Backscatter Distance Barrier
Low cost, long range, or low power — when it comes to wireless connectivity, historically you’ve only been able to pick two. But a group at the University of Washington appears to have made a...
View ArticleMIDISWAY Promises to Step Up Your Live Show
If you like to read with gentle music playing, do yourself a favor and start the video while you’re reading about [Hugo Swift]’s MIDISWAY. The song is Promises, also by [SWIFT], which has piano phrases...
View ArticleMike Ossmann and Dominic Spill: IR, Pirates!
Mike Ossmann and Dominic Spill have been at the forefront of the recent wave of software-defined radio (SDR) hacking. Mike is the hardware guy, and his radio designs helped bring Bluetooth and ISM-band...
View ArticleReverse Engineering the Nintendo Wavebird
Readers who were firmly on Team Nintendo in the early 2000’s or so can tell you that there was no accessory cooler for the Nintendo GameCube than the WaveBird. Previous attempts at wireless game...
View ArticleWhy is Donald Duck on the Radio? Math Behind Single Sideband Explained
AM, or amplitude modulation, was the earliest way of sending voice over radio waves. That makes sense because it is easy to modulate a signal and easy to demodulate it, as well. A carbon microphone is...
View ArticleESP32 Makes for World’s Worst Radio Station
We can say one thing for [bitluni]: the BOMs for his projects, like this ESP32 AM radio transmitter, are always on the low side. That’s because he leverages software to do jobs traditionally...
View ArticleMusical Mod Lets MRI Scanner Soothe the Frazzled Patient
Hackers love to make music with things that aren’t normally considered musical instruments. We’ve all seen floppy drive orchestras, and the musical abilities of a Tesla coil can be ear-shatteringly...
View ArticleDriving a 16×2 LCD with Voltage Modulation
The basic 16×2 LCD is an extremely popular component that we’ve seen used in more projects than we could possibly count. Part of that is because modern microcontrollers make it so easy to work with; if...
View ArticleHiding Data in Music Might be the Key to Ditching Coffee Shop WiFi Passwords
In a move guaranteed to send audiophiles recoiling back into their sonically pristine caves, two doctoral students at ETH Zurich have come up with an interesting way to embed information into music....
View ArticleRF Modulation: Crash Course For Hackers
When you’re looking to add some wireless functionality to a project, there are no shortage of options. You really don’t need to know much of the technical details to make use of the more...
View ArticleName that Unknown RF Signal with a Little FFT Magic
Time was once that the amateur radio bands were an aurally predictable place. Spinning the dial up and down the bands, one heard familiar sounds – the staccato of Morse, the [Donald Duck] of sideband...
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