Desk clock idea

This idea was in my head for quite a while. It actually started from an idea to make a product that i can sell, or at least try to sell. The market does not need any more clocks, however i didn't see much of this kind of clocks.

Can open source outperform proprietary software?

Lately my YouTube algorithm decide i need to watch a lot of videos about Linus Torvalds, and how Linux was made. That was the start of this blog post. So thank you YouTube. To me, the open source software is so badass when compared to closed source. There is something

Smallest keyboard layout

Smallest keyboard layout possible is called 40% keyboard. It has about 40 switches, and those are all letters and couple of necessary keys for writing, like space, enter, backspace... In order to make something like that keyboard, a microcontroller with HID capabilities is required. In my case i used STM32F103

PI regulator in code

Goal of the day is understanding the PI regulator. Before anything there is a great resource that explains PI and other regulators in detail and its: controlsystemsacademy.com t = 0:0.01:10; % Time vector setpoint = 1.0; % Desired value Kp = 2.0; % Proportional gain(how strong the P part

Doing math the cool way (GNU Octave)

I remember in college, there was one math professor that did the problem examples on the whiteboard, but when he got stuck he will real quick go to his laptop, open GNU Octave and type in a short formula that will solve him the whole problem. And then he would

What's a proportional controller?

Even though system control was main subject for me for a while in college, i did not grasp on that subject too well. The main outline is clear to me. We got closed loop and in place of the controller it's possible to put all kinds of controllers.

Rotary Encoder is a cool component

I found this little rotary encoder. At first i didn't know what that is, it looks like a potentiometer, but pins are weird. The pins are: GND, VCC, MS, DT, CLK It turns out it's a mechanical rotary encoder. What's rotary encoder used for?

Cost of Making Mechanical Keyboard

Considering how this is my second post on the topic, and the first one didn't go well. I will try to redeem myself by performing a small exploration into how much it costs to make a mechanical keyboard from zero. Now there are some limitations to this. Of

Where to buy electronic components?

Once i started assembling my own project usually i just went with LCSC electronics, or Mouser electronics. Those two options are the ones everyone talks about and i just took their word. But what if i dig a little deeper. This post will be purely exploratory thinking, because only places

Mechanical Keyboard Economics

I can remember a long time a go while browsing for videos on YouTube, there were a lot of tutorials on how to assemble mechanical keyboard. I said assemble because I'm pretty sure they didn't use PCB to wire everything. Instead, they built a frame that

How to run a stepper motor with DRV8825

Right away i will skip the internals of the DRV8825 chip, and just show the simplest way to set up and run the stepper motor with the driver. However, if someone finds internals of the DRV8825 interesting i found this website that describes it nicely: Pololu - DRV8825 Stepper Motor

AS5600 Magnetic Encoder

First goal with AS5700 was to track the movement of a stepper motor, but as i dug in tutorial it seems that the IC is not meant for it. It works great for tracking the rotation of the motor shaft, but magnetic encoders are used in those rotating dials that