Ben gets a lot of questions about whether discreet logic, an MCU, or a Raspberry Pi is best to use as the brains of a project.

Ben attempts to create a more efficient chimney that will circulate the heat from the rising smoke to the rest of the room. Will it work?

Featuring an ARM Cortex-A5 microprocessor, the Atmel Xplained SAMA5D4-XULT board allows users to evaluate, prototype and create high performance, application-specific designs. The development kit, now on sale at element14, includes 4Gb DDR2 external memory, one Ethernet physical layer transceiver, two SD/MMC interfaces, two host USB ports and one device USB port, one 24-bit RGB LCD and HDMI interface and debug interfaces.

Farnell element14 is selling the new Buccaneer 7000 Series from Bulgin. Available in plastic and metal these dust- and water- proof connectors are suitable for mains power applications in harsh environments such as Industrial Machinery and Building Automation. The connectors are available in both metal and plastic, boasts of IP66, IP68 and  IP69K ratings with a quick-turn locking mechanism which offers robust, rapid connections for harsh env...

The new RGB LED Lighting Shield with XMC1202 for Arduino from Infineon Technologies is now available from Farnell element14. It is one of the industry’s first easy-to-use, intelligent lighting solutions compatible with Arduino and the XMC1100 Boot Kit of Infineon. The solution features three independent dimming engines with nine independent Pulse Density Modulated (PDM) channels.

Panasonic’s new NFC Tags provide a number of value added connectivity features including high security, high speed Near Field Communication and data storage, high radiation resistance using 4kbit Non-Volatile FeRAM Technology and have ultra low power consumption. The products are compliant with NFC forum standards and support ISO/IEC14443 TypeB & FeliCa RF Interfaces.

Santa Ben gives his fans what they’ve been asking for - an Xbox One portable project! Since he’s not the the first person to attempt his, Ben wants to make his portable different and decides to go with a tablet form factor.

Ben finally tries out an idea he’s had in mind for years - a seeing-eye hat! Ben uses a Parallax Propeller, ultrasonic sensors, and rumble motors to create a hat that helps the wearer to sense their surroundings.

Farnell element 14 is stocking the Texas Instruments HDC1000 low-power, high-accuracy digital humidity sensor. It has an integrated temperature sensor, providing excellent measurement accuracy at very low power, and it uses a novel capacitive sensor to measure humidity.

Ben and crew are moved into the new workshop, but it could use some improvements. Ben gets to work building a cart to hold all his CNC materials. His second shop hack is to mod an old PC power supply into a bench supply he can use to test projects. Before the move he tossed the old, noisy power supply he had used in the past.

In the last year we’ve seen a lot of change in the PCB and electronics design industry, from the growth of development kits through to the introduction of new features that simplify the design process. By Richard Hammerl, CadSoft. So what does this mean for the market?

The Cirrus Logic Audio Card which is available exclusively from element14 opens up new levels of functionality and performance to avid audiophiles who wish to use the Raspberry Pi B+ for audio applications. The Audio Card offers Raspberry Pi A+ and B+ users the ability to input and output high definition audio from the Raspberry Pi. The high-performance audio card allows audio input using either line level analogue/stereo digital (SPDIF) or the o...

Farnell element14 has stock availability of STMicroelectronics‘ STM32 L0.The combination of an ARM Cortex-M0+ core and STM32 ultra-low-power features, makes the STM32 L0 an ideal solution for applications operating on battery or supplied by energy harvesting. The device’s dynamic voltage scaling further reduces the device's power consumption, by on-the-fly adaptation of the digital supply voltage to the operating speed.

In this episode Alyson comes out from behind the camera to learn how to solder. Ben shows her the basics and has her do some tests before soldering up a real circuit. Ben helps Alyson as she creates an audio circuit for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module.

Ben builds a 1970s style case to house the computer. When the sleek, wooden case is finished, he demonstrates the complete replica.

Farnell element14 has introduced the Avago APDS-9950 sensor providing red, green, blue and clear (RGBC) light sensing and proximity detection under a variety of lighting conditions and through a variety of attenuation materials, including dark glass. The proximity detection feature allows a large dynamic range of operations for accurate distance detection.

Farnell element 14 took a special vending machine to electronica this year. Vistors had the chance to win one of 600 free Dev Kits.

This video shows part two of Ben Heck's project to build an Apple 1 from scratch.

Ben decides to take on another retro 8-bit computer project and builds an Apple 1 from scratch. He wires the CPU, ROM, and RAM to a PCB and adds some logic gates for memory addressing.

Farnell element14 today announced availability of the Gizmo 2 DIY developer platform from GizmoSphere, a non-profit development board community. Built on the award-winning AMD Embedded G-Series SoC, Gizmo 2 is a second-generation open source x86-based single board computer (SBC) with 85 GFLOPS performance, providing the power of a high-performance computer and the I/O capabilities of a microcontroller.