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Cooking With Plasma (Not Fire)

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Cooking food with fire is arguably the technology that propelled humans to become the dominant species on Earth. It’s pretty straightforward to achieve, just requiring a fuel source, a supply of oxygen from the air, and a way to initiate the reaction; then it self-sustains. You wouldn’t think there’s much to improve, but what about cooking with plasma? [Jay] from the plasma channel is no stranger here, and he thinks that there may be something in this idea, certainly enough to actually build something . Now, let’s be straight with you, this isn’t a new concept, and you can buy a plasma-based cooking appliance right now. But they are all AC-powered devices. What if you want to go camping? [Jay] attempts (and succeeds) in building a portable, rechargeable 600W plasma cooking device that can actually cook food, but it was not all plain sailing. The existing off-the-shelf ZVS driver modules available were a bit weak and unreliable, and the required flyback coils were hard to find with t...
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Comparing 12 VDC Air Fryers with Regular 240 VAC Ones

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That boiling water is a contentious topic of discussion is clear, but what about hot air? When you take a 12 VDC, 280 Watt-rated air fryer and pit it against a bog-standard 240 VAC, 1400 Watt unit, which one would you want to use when you’re doing some camping or other exciting off-the-grid opportunities? Unlike with boiling water the physics aren’t as clear-cut here, so [Cahn] did some testing to figure out exactly what the efficiency numbers look like Since air fryers rely on the transfer of thermal energy from the resistive heating element into the food, any thermal energy that’s not immediately transferred is effectively wasted. This, combined with the relatively low power rating and thus much higher time demand of the low-voltage air fryer is enough to set one’s expectations pretty low. As scientific test samples chicken nuggets were used with the test, following a preheating period for the 12 VDC unit. Both units managed to hit a safe temperature inside the nuggets after 20 m...
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Do We Really Need Another Development Board?

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It’s fair to say that there are a lot of development board form factors for MCUs, with [Tech Dregs] over on yonder YouTube on the verge of adding another one to the pile, but not before he was having some serious thoughts on the implications of such a decision. Does this world really need another devboard with the ubiquitous 2.54 mm (0.1″) pitch pin headers, all so that it can perhaps be used in the same traditional 2.54 mm pitch breadboards? The thought that [Tech Dregs] is playing with is to go for something more akin to the system-on-module  (SoM) approach that’s reminiscent of the Raspberry Pi compute module form factor. This means using a 1 mm pitch for the headers and castellated edges in case you want use it as an SMT part, while breaking out many more pins of the onboard ESP32 module in far less space. Obviously, the main advantage of this approach is that much like with compute modules you can leave most of the tedious cheap stuff on a carrier board, while the expensiv...
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FPGA Powers DIY USB Scope and Signal Generator

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Oscilloscopes and to lesser extent signals generators are useful tools for analyzing, testing and diagnosing circuits but we often take for granted how they work. Luckily, [FromConceptToCircuit] is here to show us how they’re made . [FromConceptToCircuit] starts by selecting the hardware to use: an Artix-7-based FPGA and an FT2232 USB-serial converter. RS245 in synchronous FIFO mode is selected for its high bandwidth of about 400 Mbps. Then, they show how to wire it all up to your FPGA of choice. Now it’s time for the implementation; they go over how the FT2232 interfaces with the FPGA, going through the Verilog code step-by-step to show how the FPGA makes use of the link, building up from the basic transmission logic all the way up to a simple framed protocol with CRC8-based error detection. With all that, the FPGA can now send captured samples to the PC over USB. Now it’s PC-side time! [FromConceptToCircuit] first explains the physical pipeline through which the samples reach the ...
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Desktop Digitizer Makes Note Capture a Breeze

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While it might seem quaint these days, we’ve met many makers and hackers who reach for a pen and a pad when learning something new or working their way through some technical problem. But even if you’re the type of person who thinks best when writing something out on paper, there’s still a good chance that you’ll eventually want to bring those notes and sketches into the digital realm. That’s where things can get a little tricky. [Spencer Adams-Rand] recently wrote in with his clever solution for capturing written notes and pushing them into Notion , but the hardware design and digitization workflow is flexible enough that it could be adapted to your specific needs — especially since he was good enough to release all the files required to build your own version. Whether they are hand-written notes, old photographs, or legal documents, digitization boils down to taking a high resolution digital photo of the object and running it through the appropriate software. But getting good and ...
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Haiku Isn’t Just for X86 Anymore, Boots on ARM in QEMU

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Ever since it was called OpenBeOS, Haiku has targeted the x86 platform. That makes good sense: it’s hard enough maintaining a niche system on ubiquitous hardware. But x86 isn’t the only game in town anymore. Apple’s doing very well on ARM, Linux runs on oodles of ARM SBCs, and even Windows uh, exists, on that architecture, so why not Haiku? That’s what [smrobtzz] figured, and thanks to his work you can now run Haiku on ARM, in QEMU. There’s no image available as yet — you still need to bootstrap your own from a working system, and ironically that system cannot be Haiku. [smrobtzz] apparently used MacOS, which makes sense as his ultimate goal is apparently to go where only Aishi Linux has gone before and boot Haiku on his M1 MacBook. There had been previous efforts to get Haiku going on Raspberry Pi hardware, which seems logical considering how lightweight the operating system is, but they’re apparently nowhere near booting either. QEMU is a good start. Interestingly, according to t...
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Python Comes to the Arduino Uno Q

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MicroPython is a well-known and easy-to-use way to program microcontrollers in Python. If you’re using an Arduino Uno Q, though, you’re stuck without it. [Natasha] saves the day by bringing us a a subset reimplementation of machine for the Arduino Uno Q . In the past, microcontrollers were primarily programmed in C, but since MicroPython’s popularity increased over the years, it has become more and more common for introductory microcontroller programming to be in Python. Python, of course, is generally considered more beginner-friendly than C. [Natasha] presumably wanted to teach this way using an Uno Q, but the usual MicroPython APIs weren’t available. And so, in true hacker fashion, they simply made their own library to implement the most important bits of the familiar API. It currently implements a subset of the machine module: Pin, PWM, ADC, I2C, SPI and UART. While not complete, this certainly has potential to make the Uno Q easier to use for those familir with MicroPython. ...
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