Introduction to My Blog

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Hi, my name is Nick and I'm an electronics enthusiast and hobbyist.  I've started this blog to document some of my electrical endeavors, including circuits, devices, and other projects.  My hope is to share some of my techniques and experiences so that others can learn with me about electronics.  I hope you enjoy this site!

-Nick

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Counter Mk1 Prototype

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 I just finished building this prototype during my free time in class. For now, it's just a STM32F103C8T6 development board connected to a breadboard with an I2C screen, a power supply, and some buttons. You can increment, decrement, or reset the counter using the three buttons, and the small screen will display the current count.  I intend to make this into a finished project with an ergonomic 3D-printed case and some bigger buttons. Its purpose is to help with counting something, while being easily held in an unoccupied hand.
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Car Chronicles

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 One of the first real projects I ever completed was an RC car. As a 13 year old with no money, I did not have a 3D printer at the time. I guess cardboard will have to do. This "Mark Zero" iteration was not much more than a breadboard and a few motors taped to a piece of cardboard. Using a salvaged infrared sensor and a TV remote, I was able to communicate with the device from afar. An Arduino Nano set in the breadboard recorded different keypresses so I could associate them with moving the motors in different sequences. A servo motor in the front rotated a set of wheels spinning in a straw, while a small motor in the back drove a gearbox to propel the rear wheels. After this project, I got a 3D printer for Christmas. So I immediately started on the next iteration. This one was 3D-printed. It also used a 2.4GHz nRF24L01 radio module, and an STMF103 dev board. 3D printing opened a huge number of possibilities, though I'll be the first to admit I was...
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Birkeland Eyde Reactor

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This is my chemical reactor that uses the Birkeland-Eyde process to generate nitric acid from nothing but water, electricity, and atmospheric reagents.  The device uses an electric arc to ionize nitrogen in the air into nitric oxide, which then reacts with oxygen in the air to produce nitrogen dioxide. The nitrogen dioxide is then bubbles through water, forming nitric acid. The chemical process can be seen in the flowchart below. I was successfully able to generate nitrogen dioxide, whose presence can be confirmed by a brown gas in the chamber.  The water, however, did not show any signs of significant acidity. This is likely because the reactor was not given sufficient time to produce any measurable molarity of nitric acid. I was only using pH strips to confirm the presence of acid, so it is possible there were trace amounts of acid. A titration is necessary to be certain. My reactor is built using a 12v air compressor, an olive jar reactor chamber, and a pasta jar bubbling f...
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