Hardware
A comprehensive and humorous guide comparing FDM/FFF and SLA 3D printing technologies for home use, debunking common myths and describing the real difficulties users face with both approaches.
Hardware
I disassembled a disposable vape, found an ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller with 24 KiB of flash and 3 KiB of RAM inside, and turned it into a working web server — using SLIP over semihosting and the uIP TCP/IP stack.
Hardware
A hands-on security teardown of a ~2,000-ruble "smart" door lock reveals five distinct attack vectors — from marketplace photo reconnaissance to a 15-second physical bypass using two needles. Fancy biometrics and Bluetooth can't save a device whose entire control board is glued to the outside with double-sided tape.
Hardware
The iconic "Turbo" button on 1980s-90s PCs didn't speed anything up — it actually slowed the processor down to 4.77 MHz for compatibility with software written for the original IBM PC.
Hardware
A deep technical teardown of real Russian elevator control stations (UKL/UL) explaining their microprocessor boards, safety circuits, matrix wiring, and sensor systems — and why cheap microcontrollers like Arduino are fundamentally unsuitable for life-safety applications.
Hardware
A practical guide to building a 10BASE-T1L Ethernet media converter using the ADIN1100 transceiver, enabling 10 Mbps Ethernet over a single twisted pair at distances up to one kilometer.
Hardware
A comprehensive guide to VHS-Decode, an open-source tool that achieves professional-quality VHS digitization at a fraction of the cost by capturing raw RF signals from the tape head preamplifier instead of the traditional composite video output.
Hardware
An investigation into why popular TWS earbuds artificially limit AAC bitrate to 128 kbit/s, making them sound like low-quality MP3s. Bluetooth traffic analysis reveals it's a deliberate firmware choice, not a hardware limitation.
Hardware
The story of ELBEAR ACE-UNO — an Arduino-compatible board from Siberia built on Russia's only domestically manufactured RISC-V microcontroller MIK32 Amur, from first failed prototype to educational robotics kits.
Hardware
A detailed journey of designing and building a homemade FPGA computer from scratch — from soldering BGA chips at home to booting Linux at 1080p with a custom SoC.
Hardware
For decades, the standard approach to designing coaxial and twisted-pair cables has had a fundamental flaw: engineers optimized for impedance at a single frequency rather than across the full signal bandwidth. This article examines the physics behind the problem and what a correct design methodology looks like.
Hardware
Many people know that Xiaomi and other Chinese brands outsource assembly — but what if they do not even develop their own phones? A look at the invisible ODM giants that manufacture most of the world's budget smartphones and explain why they cost so little.