Kacie Kinzer’s Tweenbots are small cardboard robots that roam the city helped by strangers. They have many wabi-sabi qualities and I make the case that empathy is one of them.
https://wabitronics.com/examples/tweenbots/

#wabisabi #electronics #robotics #itp #moma #empathy

My latest blog post: Reverse Engineering a Broken Night Light - Part 1 - Tear Down

https://mikecoats.com/night-light-part-1/

We bought our first Night Light when our daughter was born; within 3 years, it and its replacement had broken. Let's tear it down, reverse-engineer what's left, and build it back up with some extra 'smart' features.

#electronics #hardware#reverseEngineering

Do I know any Australian #electronics nerds who could use a small IR reflow oven? Yours for cost of postage.

This is a Qinsi QS-5100, purchased in 2013. Used only a few times, and probably not for ten years. I just fired it up and the heating element, fan, etc. all seem to work as expected - but it could use a thorough test at minimum.

There's a lot written about these ovens from back in the day, particularly by Ian of Dangerous Prototypes.

If, like me, you only assemble boards in ones and twos for prototypes then TBH you probably don't need this (I use hot air and a preheater). If you do frequent small-ish assembly runs and can be bothered dialling the temp curves in (in theory a one-time process) then it may be of interest.

Hello people! I've been on the Fediverse for couple of years now, so here's my re- #introduction

I'm Ari, better known by my tag APZ and this is my #pinball repair, #arcade and #retrogaming account. I mostly post about playing and repairing pinball machines, but I also work on #retrocomputing with all the classics.

An IT guy by day, I moonlight as a public pinball arcade here in #Finland with my partner @quester. This is purely a hobby of mine and I do this to keep my sanity and to keep pinball alive for the next generations of players. At the moment I own a bit over 30 pinball machines from 70s to 2020s.

A lot of what I do involves #electronics, #CAD for now obsolete parts and #3dprinting and tabletop #cnc to recreate them.

I love to #travel, usually to meet like-minded arcade collectors. I have a strong preference to #repair stuff instead of throwing it away. I'm a #linux user since mid-90s, having been part of #foss movement most of my life.

More fun graphics on circuit boards please.

#gamedad #electronics #retrogaming #linuxgaming #PiTin

So you replace a fuse with an iron nail, which causes a transistor to run so hot it burns a hole in the PCB. So what do you do? Apparently some fine repair tech came to this problem and the apparent solution was to jumper over the now totally burned traces and then add wires and hang the now missing transistor from those. Because why not?

This is a WhiteStar pinball platform driver board I got for spares long ago, but I think it's glorious in all of its tech goreness.

#pinball #arcade #electronics #techgore #retrotech

​It is done. I finished making the CNC machine. It draws circuits on a copper plate, just how i wanted. It is rare for me to finish a project. I'm so incredibly happy about it
The machine is still in kind of a rough shape. I will make proper power circuit and maybe a bluetooth for serial. Other then that, it is ready to be used

(Part 7: Finished)

#diy #cnc #arduino #electronics​

put today's tiny glass PCB and put it under the microscope to get some close up shots! it's really cool to see just how thick that 0.1mm copper is! there are still tons of flaws that become very apparently once you zoom in, some small bridges and some thin spots and breaks in in some traces. once you get up close it all looks very… organic.

#electronics #diypcb

wrote a new blog post with some tips and tricks for getting PCBs made with JLCPCB. various money saving tips and lesser-known things to watch out for that might trip you up.

https://blog.poly.nomial.co.uk/2025-07-05-tips-for-getting-pcbs-made-with-jlcpcb.html

#electronics

wheeee! I've successfully made a glass PCB! 0.1mm copper foil laminated onto a microscope slide using two component epoxy and a hot roller laminator, coated with cheap aliexpress dry film photo resist and etched in copper chloride.

turns out that most of my struggles during etching came from my bad exposure setup. The light source was way too diffuse and I way over exposed the photo resist. Going from 7.5 minute exposures down to 20 seconds really helped and switching from a very diffuse UV exposure box to a UV spot light mounted around 50cm away finally got me to an acceptable result.

Of course the one that ended up working was on my ugliest piece of copper on glass laminate but whatever. It finally works!

#diypcb #electronics

last but not least, a test fit with one of the chips. it fits! Wheeeeee!

#electronics #diypcb