09 May 2012

It's a fair bet that most readers of SILICON CHIP enjoy their daily fix of internet access by courtesy of ADSL. While some readers are luxuriating with optical fibre - and an unhappy minority are still using dial-up - most of us owe our ongoing communication to the distinctly freakish technology of ADSL. But what exactly is ADSL and what came before it? How does it work and why is it often called a "freak" technology? Are your internet speeds painfully slow? Can anything be done to speed them up? Do you curse your ISP? Read on!

03 May 2012

The Australian Synchrotron is one of the nation's largest and most significant scientific facilities. It is a powerful machine of great utility that enables investigators to determine the structure and composition of all materials, including living specimens, with extremely high detail.

17 April 2012

Thousands of Maximites have now been built and have worked perfectly the first time. The design of the Maximite has proved to be remarkably robust, so if you have a problem with one you have just built, it most probably will be something specific to your Maximite and not a fatal design fault or software issue. However, there are some common problems that constructors do experience so we asked the designer, Geoff Graham to come up with the six most common....

11 April 2012

This PIC development board provides an easy way to program and debug 8-bit PIC micros. It can be used with C, Pascal and BASIC programming languages. The EasyPIC has pushbuttons, LEDs, USB ports and various other devices on-board while a variety of add-on modules such as LCDs, memory cards and network interfaces can plugged in for easy prototyping.

07 April 2012

31 March 2012

A vision of factory farming in the 21st century

25 March 2012

While we know that our revised MPPT Solar Charge Controller will be welcomed by many readers who had requested improvements, there are bound to be other questions, like "Can we now push the revised design to handle more solar panels?" The answers could be yes, no and maybe, as demonstrated by this selection of recent questions from readers. . .

19 March 2012

SILICON CHIP has a long record of using the latest available instruments to validate our designs - typical of this has been our use of the Audio Precision System One to measure all our high performance audio designs. This month we review the latest such instrument from Audio Precision, the APx525.

15 February 2012

Here's a method for the hobbyist to produce near-professional PCBs at home with consistent results. The equipment and materials required are readily available, reasonably priced and well within the capabilities of the average constructor.

09 February 2012

While it has been around for some years now, Digital Command Control or DCC is now becoming increasingly popular as more and more manufacturers incorporate it into their new models, along with various accessories such as complete locomotive sound systems.