Today we are going to learn how to read the RPM of a PC Fan. This also works well for the Water Pumps used in PC Water Cooling as well as any dc pump or fan that has a rotation sense wire. This is accomplished by counting the falling edge of the square wave generated by the  Hall effect sensor that is located inside the fan or pump. All we have to do is use the arduino to do is count that data, do some math for us, and output the converted data onto an LCD Screen. Lets get started!  [node:read-more:link]

Today we are going to walk you through the process of reading temperature with your Arduino and displaying it on a  16x2 character parallel LCD. This set up has many uses including displayign temperatures during home brewing, fish tanks, PC Temperature display etc. The code will scale nicely and it is so simple that a 5 year old can do it. So lets get started!  [node:read-more:link]

This morning I woke up very early. Nothing was on TV, the interwebs were boring me and I was not in a mood to play a video game. So I sat down at my workbench and decided to make a theremin. I remember as a child a neighbor having a tube theremin that produced those eerie high pitched notes of classic b grade horror movies. When ever we would visit their home for a cook out or party I would play with the theremin every chance I got. To me, it was the coolest noise maker ever. The fact that I could manipulate the tone and pitch of the sound with out touching anything together was simply awesome. So with a theremin project in mind I jumped back on the web and a quick search yielded me this pocket theremin project from Popular Science. It is comprised of just 9 components, all of which I had on hand. So with the schematic chosen I sat down and bread-boarded my first theremin. [node:read-more:link]

The use of flux when soldering electronics is one of the fundamental skills that everyone who thinks of picking up a hot soldering iron should have. A lot of times, those new to soldering think that the application of flux is not a necessary component of the soldering process. Judging by the emails I get, this is mainly because of two reasons. They watched a youtube video of an inexperienced kid solder two wires together using $5 pencil iron and plumbing solder then state that flux core solder is all that is needed. The other reason I hear most often is that flux is too expensive for the average hobbyist. We paid $15 for the 2 flux pens we purchased last and $25 for the jar of liquid flux we purchased before that. Today we are going to show you how to create your own flux and create a large quanitity for much less than you would spend by purchasing it premade.

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