CircuitGeek

Nowadays, many cars claimed to reduce the carbon offset and being environmental friendly to the Mother Nature.

It seemed that the Riversimple Urban Car, or also known as ‘RUC’ is joining the lead as well. For your information, the RUC is fully-powered by fuel cell that combines hydrogen with oxygen from the air to release energy. As a result, it emits nothing more toxic gases than H2O (water).

By using hydrogen to power cars, it helps to cut down the urban pollution and carbon emissions. However, the makers are having difficulties to build the hydrogen cars’ fuel cells, which contain expensive platinum and the hydrogen they use is hard to store in very large quantities!

They have to overcome the above matters first, if they want to create the hydrogen cars. The developers said that they have figure out the way to solve up the problems, but it might takes time to do it.

If you refer to the above figure, you can see that RUC is having the same size of a Smart car, and weighs about 350 kilograms. However, it’s a little bit different from the Smart car, which uses a relatively cheap six kilowatt fuel cell. The RUC can reach up to 50 mph (80 km/h). In addition, the acceleration time from 0 to 30 mph for RUC is only 5.5 seconds (Not bad for a Hydrogen car, isn’t it?)[newscientist]

Did you think you’re a fanatic music lover, and you will take whatever, as long as you can build a music-based project? In this case, you must have a closer look on the simple music light player.

If you refer on the above figure, this simple music light player is built based on the Solfege syllable. For your information, the eight syllables normally used for the music practice in English-speaking countries are Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti and ‘Do.

Honestly, it’s a very simple and cheap music light player, which is fully powered and controlled from PC over the IPT port.

However, you need to find eight colorful pieces of pixel-glass to differentiate the music note accordingly. This is quite a simple project, where is only taken about a few hours to finish it. The paint and wires parts are costing much time, but it won’t be a big problem, especially for those home hobbyists who already an expert in the wiring niche!

Once you’ve done with it, then it’s time to place it in the dark and let’s the music light show begin right away…

Guys, is it possible to develop a current regulated LED tester, which is only the size of a small matches box? Well, it might sounds like the story in “1001 Arabian Nights”, but nothing is impossible, especially in this quirky 21^st century! DanZen from instructables made this real.

Well, for those who assumed that all LEDs could be powered with a constant 3V power source, please rise up your hand! Ok, did you know that LEDs in fact have a non-linear current-voltage, where the current grows exponentially with the voltage supplied. Furthermore, many people also misunderstood that all LEDs of a given color will have a specific forward voltage. Actually, the forward voltage of an LED doesn’t depend on the color alone.

By using the current regulated LED tester, it allows you to determine the exact voltage and current to supply to your LED.

Oh, you’re wondering how to use the current regulated LED tester? Well, there are two simple ways to use it. Firstly, you might want to plug it into the female header (You can refer on the above figure, where the anode is on the right hand side top, while the cathode is at the bottom one.) Or, you can use the magnetic SMD adapter and places the LED terminals on the adapter!

Every time, when you’re watching the science related movies, you will see many switches or tube amps in the geeky laboratory. Well, if you think it’s very cool to have these tube amps in your home too, maybe this stereo tube amp is the ideal project for you!

Oh, you’re wondering, “What’s so cool about this stereo tube amp and why I should build it?” Frankly, this project is a highly dangerous but a deadly awesome retro piece of electronics. The vacuum tubes are old electronic components, which act like transistors and control a lot of current with a little current. Isn’t the above feature cool enough for you?

You’ve probably heard about the tubes being used in guitar amplifiers, since it can distort in a way and suits guitar playing without any problem. Did you know that tubes could be used to amplify a stereo signal from another audio source, such as a CD or MP3 player?

Although the tube amps not the most practical things to be used in the electronic projects, but hey, they look damn awesome and cool. Furthermore, you’ve nothing to lose, if you built one for your own use, isn’t it?

Note: By the way, keep your eyes wide open; while you’re dealing with this project, as it contains really high voltages, where you’ll be probably get killed, if you’re careless during the project!

Go figure, you’re jogging and listening to the MP3 songs. All the sudden, the MP3 player is out of tune and you need to change the track, in order to keep it working continuously? Maybe, you’re having a great time with your loved ones watching TV, but feeling frustrated when you’re unable to find the remote control (It might probably has fallen and slipped between the your couch) all over the places?

Honestly, you can get the rid of the problem, by using the latest NTT DoCoMo. For your information, this NTT DoCoMo is a wearable gadgets that allows your body movements to control specific functions.

The DTT DoCoMo wearable gadgets equipped with the useful features by performing various types of movements. Let’s take an example:

When the wearer darts his/her eyes, it performs the fast-forwards on the specific household appliances,

Or, the wrist-watch allowing the wearer to use their arms as a remote control.

Although this NTT DoCoMo is very cool, but it’s still in the development and testing phase. However, the researchers said that it’s going to be a upbeat and awesome technology, after it officially launched into the market!

You have an Asus Eee PC and you don’t know how to connect it with GPS unit? Well, in this case, the RGM-3550LP GPS module might be the useful tool to help you overcome the problem!

The reason why you should use this RGM-3550LP GPS module, as it has an integrated antenna and is fully-powered by SiRF Star III technology. In this case, all you need to do is connecting the GPS module to the computer’s serial port by using a Max232.

If you’re using a notebook computer, then you should use a UART to USB bridge, since notebook don’t have a serial port! The FT232 is the most common used UART to USB Bridge, and it’s fairly cheap too, where it cost about $4! Don’t worry about it, as it’s very easy to use the chip and program some features saved in the internal EEPROM like the maximum bus power.

Although the FT232 has an internal regulator, where provides 3.3 V and 50 mA, but it’s better not to use it. As a result, you might need to use the TSP2148, where is a 3.3V LDO. The TPS2148 can handle all the current limitation without any further modification. [youritronics]

What are you mostly doing with the soda cans? If you’re an eco-greener, you might properly collects all the cans and recycle it!

Some of the people choose to sell the soda cans at the local recycling center. Honestly, you have to crash the cans first, if you want to sell it. The only problem is it totally a hassle to crush all the cans with your own hands.

Well, in this case, the 5KV defibrillator capacitor soda cans crusher will help you overcome the cans crushing hassle!

What is unique about this can crusher? Hehe, believe it or not, this powerful 5KV soda can crusher is able to squeeze/crush the soda can into an hourglass shape in a few seconds! Could you ever imagine, with the 5KV defibrillator capacitor, what will happen if it hooks on a person? Yeah, it’s pretty creepy, isn’t it?

Guys, have a closer look on the inside part of the 5KV defibrillator capacitor soda cans crusher. You’ll notice that the 1uF 2KV capacitor is mounted on a piece of plastic to insulate it from the chassis.