Friday, December 24, 2010

Merry Christmas !

I wish you merry christmas, good health and lot of luck.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

8 LED Shift Register

Hi there, well Christmas are quickly approaching so I don’t have too much time to create something, because as always I’ve forget to buy gifts. But today I will show you one of my older projects which became pretty popular. It’s a 8 LED shift register, it uses CD4017 which is decade counter you can find circuit at video description on YouTube. 

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Portable Soldering Iron



Hi few days ago I’ve shown you how to make a 12V power supply. Today I will show you how it works and how can you use it.
  


I forget to count with one thing, and that's that when soldering iron is turned on it drains too much power from batteries and when I connect fume extractor at same time, fan don't turn on. And also batteries are very quickly drained by soldering iron, because of they aren’t lithium and I’m wondering if I will use lithium 1,5V batteries or maybe rechargeable.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Altoids Tin Portable Breadboard with Power Supply

Hi there, today I would like to show you another one of my projects. Someone who works with electronics like me surely know what is the breadboard. Breadboard is board with solderless contacts, so it comes in handy when you’re trying new circuit, because you don’t have to destroy your parts and if you make mistake you just change position of the parts.
But when you’re using breadboard you need somehow supply it with voltage. I were using just a battery with 2 leads, but I always hated it, because usually they’ve jumped out, I didn’t noticed it and I was thinking that circuit is bad. After some time I’ve decided to create a supply for breadboard and I’ve also wanted it to be portable. So I’ve decided to create something small, portable and useful. So I’ve created Altoids Tin Portable Breadboard with Power Supply. It uses 9V battery but there’s also DC plug and it has switch with which you can choose 9V or 5V. There’s also space for parts. There are some photos and video. You can find tutorial here Altoids Tin Portable Breadboard with Power Supply




Monday, December 13, 2010

Tutorial : Make your own 12V portable power supply for small soldering iron

Hi there so I've finally decided to create my first video tutorial, hope you'll like it . Today i will show you how to make a 12V portable power supply for 12V soldering iron, which you can use outside for fixing small stuff.
TUTORIAL : 

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Joule Thief

Hi there today I would like to show you an exciting thing, it’s called Joule Thief. What’s Joule Thief? It’s a simple circuit which consists from single transistor and bifilar coil. It’s circuit that will allow you to turn on LED on 1,5V.

Well Joule Thief it’s a great thing, you can use your old almost dead batteries to light up LED at full brightness. So I’ve decided to create it at first I’ve tried to use industrially created coil’s, but they weren’t good, so I’ve bought ferrite toroid and I’ve wounded coil. I’ve tried few transistors and few versions of coils and I’ve ended with BC549C and with something like 40 turns on coil. I was able to create 36 volts from almost dead 1,5 v battery. So build yourself one and try what you can do with it. Down there you can see circuit and videos of mine Joule Thief.


Later I've tried to hook up Joule Thief to a kitchen batteries, which are ones that uses electrolytes from stuff you can find in kitchen just like vinegar, baking soda and lemon drain.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Fume Extractor

Hi today I would like to show another one of my gadgets. Well I’m creating lot of gadgets which means that I’m soldering a lot. When you are working in a small room (like I do) you have to keep air clean, because when solder getting real hot it creates fumes. Those fumes contain heavy metals and breathing air like that isn’t very healthy.
Here comes Fume extractor. It’s a device that has Fan and some sort of filter. Fume extractor is sucking fumes through the filter and from the other side of fan comes out pure air. Few years ago in make magazine there was an article about it and there was instructable of how to build altoids mini fume extractor. Well few years ago I wasn’t soldering that much as I do now, so I’ve decided to created because it was strong enough.

But as I’ve said at these days I’m soldering more often so I was thinking about bigger fume extractor. Of course you can buy industrial fume extractors, but those are mostly big and expensive. So I’ve decided to create my own. I’ve bought 10 Watt Fan and filter from active carbon. Now I feel much healthier, I’m not saying it’s 100%, but for that price it’s the best solution.
Here you can see some pictures, 3D overview and video of how it works.




this is the first version

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Altoids Tin Portable Helping Hands (with Fume Extractor)

Here's the first gadget I would like to show you, it's a very useful helping tool : Portable helping hands with fume extractor.

Few months ago my cousin sent me few altoid tin cans, (because in Slovakia we don’t have Altoids) so I’ve decided to create something from them. First idea that came to my mind was that I should build a portable soldering station which would consist from few parts. First part was this project: portable helping hands. Creating them was quiet easy. After I made it I found out that they’re very useful because they have 4 alligator clips, fume extractor and also bright white LED. Here you can watch video of assembling it and some pictures. Later this week I will add a tutorial or you can check tutorial here:  http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-Altoids-Tin-Portable-Helping-Hands-with-Fu/




Blog is finally here






So finally I’ve decided to create my own blog, where you will be able to find all of my projects, gadgets, videos and tutorials. I hope that you will like things you will see here.

Here’s my mail: legwinskij@gmail.com