Do you have any hobby electronics projects in progress?

Months ago, I bought a cheap USB footpedal with the intent to use it as a universal push-to-talk switch for my computer microphone, to mute and unmute. But when I tested it, I realized it only sends “switch down” events and no “switch up” event over USB - if you hold the switch down, it sends repeat “switch down” events like holding down a keyboard key.

So I soldered a microcontroller (Teensy) onto the pads of their PCB, wrote a little driver, and now have distinct “switch down” and “switch up” events, all using USB HID.

Aaaaand naturally the microcontroller won’t fit inside the actual footpedal case. Actually, it fits, but the rigid plastic around the mini USB connector on my cable takes up too much space. So I ordered a different Teensy with direct pads for the USB connection so I can strip the wire and solder it directly. It’s supposed to arrive next week - I’m excited to finally finish this project!

It’s definitely not a super difficult project, and I probably did lots of things wrong along the way, but I’m still learning and it totally works so I’m quite happy about it.

Yep! I bought a control panel module from Tindie, and I'm programming it to be a streaming controller for my stereo system. I want to be able to tune to internet radio stations without having to interact with a computer screen. Right now I'm powering and running it with GPIO pins from my Raspbperry Pi and Python, though I want to rewrite the software in Rust once I have a working prototype for the interface.

My goal is to be able to turn my stereo system on in the morning and pick a radio station without having to log in to anything or fiddle with my phone. It will eventually support things like becoming a Spotify Connect endpoint as well, and maybe I'll figure out a good way to sort through my ripped albums on that tiny screen, so I'll be able to put those on without using my phone either.

I've been working on an electronic totem! Basically a handheld signpost with a two-sided 64x8 LED sign at the top that can be communicated with via an Android app I made. It's powered by an Arduino. You can send short messages to the LED sign that will scroll across in a variety of colors.

At first, I made great progress - before starting, I really only had programming experience and no electronics experience. I managed to figure out how to cobble together an Arduino, battery, the LED sign, etc. into a working prototype. I built the app that can send messages to it, either directly though the app, or through intercepting SMS. The hard part has been figuring out how to construct it all - It needs to be lightweight enough to carry around a festival and fairly rugged (waterproof / shockproof to an extent). It was originally going to be used for a festival this July, however with COVID it has been postponed till next year.

I made a three phase alternator (AC Generator) its really educational project about magnetic area and electric production. Im very amator for that works. Me and my tools not quailified for this project, i produced the copper coils by wrapping leg of chair. I used basic wooden duralit table for stator disc. A sheet of metal, made by cutting an old oil can for magnetic disc base. That strator and non-linear magnetic disk rolls very closely and shifting magnetic area induces copper coils to produce AC electricity.

At finally i spend only 10-20 $ and i made a alternator that can produce only 0.1 Volt. Its seems bad but i dont thought very much for transitions of rotor. Probably alternator core could produce ~1V if it connect to wind turbine. Yes. my next project a homemade wind turbine :)

I picked up a Roland Juno-106 at auction recently, and I'm going to start learning EE to be able to maintain it, as one of the VCF chips (or the multiplexer, not sure yet which) is going out, and one of the voices has a dead/dying VCA.

That said, going from 0 to proficient is going to take a while. I've figured out I'll need a multimeter and a soldering iron, but aside from that I'm not sure what other tools are really "must-have" for general EE maintenance.

On the flip side, regarding knowledge, I have a couple breadboards and wires and resistors and stuff I can play around with (mostly from a Canakit Raspberry Pi maker kit) so I plan to "make my own homework as I go" with practical application to back up the reading. But as far as reading, it seems like there's so much to take in! Resistance, capacitance, voltage, amperage, wattage, it all just seems very overwhelming.

I'll probably do what I normally do and just dive in on a wiki page or something and do more research as questions pop up, but from a "structured learning" perspective, what's a good order to learn these things in?