Author Archives: Glen

Positioning a Synchro Receiver’s Shaft from a Terminal Window

In the last project, I built a synchro-to-digital converter to display a synchro’s shaft angle on a small OLED display. In this project, I reverse the process and build a digital-to-synchro converter that sets a synchro’s shaft to the angle … Continue reading

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Resolving a Synchro Shaft Angle Using Modern Hardware

This project uses modern data acquisition hardware to track the shaft angle of a synchro transmitter as the shaft is turned through various angles. How difficult could it be to get the absolute angle of a position sensor from the … Continue reading

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Converting a WW2-era Landing Gear and Flaps Indicator into a USB Peripheral

In this project, I convert a WW2-era landing gear and flaps indicator into a USB peripheral using a Raspberry Pi Pico development board and eight channels of programmable current sources. This project is similar to my WW2-era engine cowl flaps … Continue reading

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Converting a WW2-era Engine Cowl Flaps Indicator into a USB Peripheral

In this project, I convert a WW2-era engine cowl flaps indicator into a USB peripheral using a Microchip PIC16F1459 microcontroller and four Microchip MCP41HV31-502 digital potentiometers. This project is reminiscent of my USB analog panel meters project but the drive … Continue reading

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Building a DIP Switch USB Stick Using the Microchip PIC16F1459

Tired of editing XML and JSON files to store configuration settings for your hardware or software? What if we could go back to using DIP switches for configuration settings? Well, with the DIP switch USB stick, you can! No more … Continue reading

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The Scramblepad Hardware and Protocol

I first saw a Scramblepad on the door of an office building I worked at while in high school in the late ’80s. I always wanted to own one or to make my own based on seven-segment LED displays but … Continue reading

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Building a Simple RFID Door Access Controller

In this project, I build what is quite possibly the world’s simplest (and least intelligent) door access controller to let me open and close my garage door using my mountain bike helmet. We’ll take a look at my motivation for … Continue reading

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USB Knob Box Doubles as a Blackmagic Designs Camera Remote

I have a Blackmagic Designs Micro Studio Camera I wanted to use as a webcam for video conferences. Even with a 16mm sensor, it has better quality than any small sensor webcam. The only issue is all the exposure and … Continue reading

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The Interesting Multiplexing Scheme of the Grass Valley Series 300 Crosspoint Switch Panel

After reverse engineering parts of a Grass Valley Kalypso video switcher control panel and after making a YouTube video describing how I modified a Grass Valley Series 300 transition logic panel to be a USB peripheral, it was time to … Continue reading

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USB Panel Meters Enclosure and Windows 10 App

In the first part of this project, I acquired four round HUA SO-45 10 mA analog panel meters and built a board to control them over USB as a vendor-defined USB HID device. The next steps in this project are … Continue reading

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