resistor

Book Excerpt: Radial Raindrop Earrings from Kilobyte Couture

Kilobyte Couture is a fun new book written by Brittany Forks and published by Watson-Guptill. Brittany offers simple tutorials on how to make jewelry from easy-to-find computer components. In the introduction, Brittany writes: For most of my college career, I worked in the Electrical and Computer Engineering building. This gave me access to more geeks […]

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When to use a resistor with an LED (and why)

When to use a resistor with an LED (and why)

As usual, Alex at Tinkerlog does an excellent job of clearly describing some electronics arcana, in this case, exactly why one needs to use current limiting resistors on LEDs (and when you can do without them). If you apply a specific voltage to a resistor, you can compute the resulting current with: I = V […]

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Glowing cube

Glowing cube

Intructables member Alex the Great has a clever Awesome LED Cube project. Use the cube to slow, stop, or reverse time, or even turn ordinary technology into transformers. Your choice. This project looks like a great way to introduce kids to a number of valuable skills we have covered here at Make: Online, such as […]

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Takira shows the thermistor

Thermistors are pretty cool little items. They convert heat into resistance. By having the temperature available as resistance, you can use the value to control other things like circuits and programs. Photo cells do the same thing with light, and they are in lots of common devices from night lights to dimmers on clock radios. […]

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