electronics

Make magazine has just put up its $20 and under holiday gift guide, chock full of starter electronics kits like a barebones Arduino and tools for your favorite tinkerer. Or if you're the only one who solders in your circle, pick up a few kits now and give away the finished product.

I've built a number of kits from Make and they're a great way to learn and hone your DIY electronics skills, with super-clear instructions. After the jump, I add my five additions to their list, with an eye toward encouraging the young hijinks-prone Makers-in-training on your list.

Hi. My name is Vin and I'm an addict. I can't stop buying electronic junk. I know it's only filling up bins in my shop and taking money I could be pouring into more productive hobbies, like drinking and shooting guns. But what if the completion of some future project, some really crucial bit of hijinks, hinges entirely on my having a switch designed to discharge massive capacitors? Then what, huh?

Am I supposed to just assume my local Radio Shack will have my back? Not likely.

If you were anything like I was as a kid, you'll remember fondly the time spent soldering electronics kits. In recent years, I've been busy building things like pink camouflage tanks, and have mostly missed the recent electronic-kit resurgence. That is, until I had the need to broadcast live video images from the cockpit of a recent project to TV screens piled around the arena, and rediscovered an awesome kit source.

NEC and Rohm are going back and forth on new engineering breakthroughs that will allow integrated circuits inside chips to consume no power when they're briefly inactive between cycles. And unlike most chip-level developments on the edge, we may see the technology in consumer products by the end of the year.

Have you ever needed a low-value resistor for a low-voltage battery-powered circuit? Say, something in the range of 10-100 ohms? Finding this value of resistor can be difficult, if not impossible. In cases like this, you might be better off making your own resistor.

This multiple tape recorder removes the last obstacle to commercial recordings on magnetic tape -- the mass production of duplicate tapes. It makes eight duplicates at once at three times normal speed. It can also record two sound tracks on the same tape at the same time. Thus the machine can turn out eight hour-long recordings in 10 minutes, or 48 an hour.

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Introducing the PopSci Genius Guide: Home Entertainment

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Entertainment & Gaming, PopSci Staff, april 1, electronics, recording, tapes

The blaring techno, waifish models and $10 cocktails all seemed appropriate for a book release party/fashion show, but one thing was truly different from your usual runway moment: the clothes. Designer Diana Eng has become famous for her blend of style and science, mixing technology into her accessories and clothes whenever possible. PopSci.com attended her recent release party, and brought back some photos of the fierce fashion geekery.

Watch your carbon footprint grow fainter with Sharp's completely solar-run LCD TV. The sleek 26-inch wide, 20 mm-thick prototype made its grand debut this week at the G8's Summit's Zero Emission House. Appropriate timing considering what a hot topic the environment has been at this year's summit.