As mentioned in my DIY e-kayak series, I have been working on a breakout board for a cool little button circuit I found! For the kayak controller, I found myself wanting a single button UI that controlled power and provided inputs to the system. I wanted to save space and keep a minimal design so …
One Button to Rule Them All: Single Button for Power and Input! Read More »
In Part Two of my e-kayk series, I started on the kayak remote control that mounts to the paddle. I showed the bread boarded electronics, firmware and teased the 3D printed housing. Now I’ve got it ready for prime time. In this part three, we shrunk down some of the electronics with a few custom …
DIY e-Kayak: Part Three (Remote Control Finished) Read More »
I am building the e-bike of kayaks. So how do you control a DIY electric kayak? With a phone app? With a remote control? All while trying to hold a kayak paddle? I wanted the user interface to feel as natural as possible without removing you from the actual experience of kayaking. This Instructable shows …
DIY Electric Kayak: Part Two (Oar Remote Firmware) Read More »
I’ve always loved the water. I was a life guard, work on UUVs (Unmanned Under Water Vehicles) as a career and I’m Norwegian. Living in Seattle, being surrounded by so much water, I’ve wanted to build my own electric kayak for a long time! I have also wanted to do a project involving machine learning …
The power source is a vital part of every electronics project. From solar energy and EVs to portable game consoles and smart phones, batteries make up the vast majority of these power sources. So why do most engineers never learn about battery sizing in school? I’ll walk you through how to choose the right battery …
How to Choose the Right Battery for Your Project Read More »
A Schmitt Trigger is a very practical circuit that helps eliminate switching noise on an input signal by implementing what is called hysteresis. Imagine you have a system that feeds a 0 – 5V signal into a rising/falling edge GPIO interrupt. With no Schmitt Trigger, the interrupt would trigger anytime the signal rises or falls …
The need for complex graphics and communication stacks in modern embedded projects has grown exponentially. WIFI, Bluetooth and MIPI are just a few examples that come to mind. This is where embedded linux thrives. If the extra costs can be absorbed, the use of embedded Linux will save tons of hours in development time for …
Whether graduation, Christmas or Birthdays, I am notoriously hard to shop for. Most of what I want is related to electronics or tools that my family members have no interest in. Sifting through the endless tacky engineering shirts and cheap hacky “tools” can be overwhelming for the uninitiated. So I have done the endless scrolling …
Although UARTs (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter) are one of the easiest ways to communicate with a microcontroller, there are many incompatible standards, converters and cables to figure out. Sorting through all of this as a new engineer can be overwhelming. This post will teach you everything you need to know about UART vs RS232 and …
