Category: Electronics Projects

  • Sorting out the Velleman MK170 Christmas Star

    Last Christmas I bought a Velleman MK170 Christmas Star project for my Wife to build.  She often shows interest in my various electronics projects and I thought it would be a good way for her to build something that she could show off to friends and family, whilst at the same time teaching her a […]

  • Simple circuit for controlling LED brightness

    Recently I was asked to produce a circuit to create a variable ‘dim’ control for an existing LED based exhibition. I decided to go with a simple 555-timer based design which provides control of the pulse width of an output, whilst keeping the oscillation frequency fixed. The circuit is shown below.  It’s an unusual design, […]

  • Happy Valentines Day Project

    Happy Valentines Day! A few years ago I created a little valentines day project, shown in the video at the end of this post.  It’s basically just a multi-vibrator circuit with two groups of LEDs, arranged as an inner and outer heart: The full schematic is shown here, click on it for a full enlarged […]

  • RC5 Decoder

    Introduction I completed this design a number of years ago when I was still learning to program.  In fact, this was my first “proper” project that I directed my new-found programming skills towards.  My programming skills have improved by many orders of magnitude since, and with that in mind I was a bit ambivalent about […]

  • Hacking a Nokia7710 GLCD

    Hack! The other day I stumbled across an old Nokia mobile phone sitting helplessly in the drawer.  It’s not really that old, but already it’s pretty useless in terms of what we expect from a mobile phone in this day and age.  What should I do with it? Throw it away? No! What self-respecting electronics […]