Once upon a time, getting at the circuitry of a consumer product was a piece of cake. Remove a few screws, pop off the back, and there it was. Providing access to the inner workings was a tradition begun in the vacuum tube days, when...

The computers jammed (and later engineered) into cars in the late 20th century did nothing for the shade-tree mechanic. Previously, mechanics could make do with a shop manual and some oddly shaped tools. Computer-controlled engines, transmissions, and instruments, different in each manufacturer’s cars and lacking any...

Figure 1 shows the block diagram for the fish tank monitor. The design includes sensors for key parameters, including temperature, pH, and salinity (which we plan to measure using a conductivity sensor). The challenge in the design is (aside from finding the sensors themselves) to interface these three...

Following the guidelines above, you’ll have built the capability to feed good- to high-quality music stored in your computer to your stereo, and to control playback remotely. That’s just the basics, though—take a look at some other ideas for what you can add to your jukebox. Very...

Build Your Own Jukebox, Across the street from the university near where we live is a wonderful pizza place called The Pie, a tiny room in a basement under a pharmacy. In the very back of The Pie, in a dark corridor off the main room, sits an ancient-looking...