Multi-LED Joule Thief

I believe it is inevitable that most newcomers to electronics will at one point or another build a Joule Thief circuit. To me it is the hello world of circuits and was one of the first circuits I prototyped on a breadboard when I first started experimenting with electronics. This multi-LED PCB is a callback to those days, something I wanted to do the first time I laid out a hand wound transformer, transistor, and LED on a breadboard.

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Repair – Remove that Cap

I discovered while cleaning up an old Pentium 4 Gateway PC that one of the electrolytic capacitors on the motherboard had gone bad. I could tell it had gone bad since the aluminum can was puffed up and the top vent was opened,the capacitor had heated up and vented a majority of its electrolytic. The computer was still functional with the bad capacitor but I decided to fix it anyways just in case.

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3D Printed YoYo

Recently someone at work got me thinking about 3D printing a yo-yo. I had lying around an unused Ball-Bearing Yo-Yo Kit from Lee Valley. This kit includes all the hardware and instructions to make a wooden turned yo-yo. I never got around to making a wooden yo-yo with this kit so I thought it would be great to use it as the internals of a 3D printed yo-yo.

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An Office Prank

After finding an old style desk telephone in the trash at work I decided to use it in an office prank, the phone that shouldn’t ring but does. The goal, modify the phone so that it will ring without any connection to the phone line. The stretch goal was to also have a message play on the handset when it is answered, maybe a creepy voice or loud breathing. Now to modify the phone.

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Pen Durability Cycling Machine

Have you ever wondered how many clicks a simple ball point pen will last for? To solve this question I designed a pen durability machine. What does this machine do? If you have watched the above video you might have a good idea of its function. Essentially all I designed my machine to do is repetitively click a pen, similar to a nervous office colleague who annoys the entire area with their constant pen clicking. This design is a little louder then Steve down the aisle but still accomplishes the same task.

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