September 2024

Practical Electronics magazine has something for everyone! This month’s issue heralds the start of a new chapter in the evolution of Britain’s favourite hobby electronics magazine, as we pass the editorial and publishing reins to our partners at Silicon Chip magazine. We’ve published for many years the constructional projects devised in-house by Silicon Chip and readers will know that these represent the cream of the crop of hobby projects, and they will challenge and satisfy electronics hobbyists everywhere.

Readers can rest assured that the spirit of Practical Electronics continues unabated – all the regular features that readers enjoy every month will continue as they are, and we’re also adding eight extra pages, bringing the total to 80 full colour pages, to bring you more new features and even better value for money!

Subscribers: please see the note in this month’s Editorial in case the way you pay for your subscription may have changed slightly.

This month’s highlights

Build Your Own Calibrated Microphones

This phantom-powered, balanced and calibrated microphone is ideal for measurement applications but it’s also great for recording work. You can choose from multiple different microphone capsules that can be calibrated to produce an almost flat response. Both discrete through-hole and surface-mount circuit boards are offered, along with practical ideas for constructing an enclosure for them.

Modern PIC Programming Adaptor

It’s nearly 30 years ago since we published our first ever “Simple PIC programmer”, and this month we offer an up-to-date design capable of handling modern era MCUs. You can now program most newer 8- to 40-pin micros, and with suitable adaptors surface mount packages can also be utilised.

“Salad Bowl” Speakers

Here’s a novel loudspeaker enclosure design to test your fabrication skills! Our designer utilised a couple of IKEA wooden salad bowls to form a compact but attractive spherical speaker housing capable of turning in a surprisingly good performance. They can be table-top or floor mounted and are capable of delivering 50W RMS per channel. Full details of the housing and crossover network are included.

Using Electronic Modules:
1.3” 128×64 px OLED display

We give the low-down on getting the best out of these ready-made, budget-priced displays that are capable of rendering clear text and simple graphics on an Arduino Uno or compatible device.

Audio Out
Audio Switching  – Part 4: real world electronic switching

More practical theory and discussions about the merits of mechanical switching compared with solid-state switching in audio circuits.

Teach-In 2024
Learn electronics with the ESP32
Part 7: Telling the Time – Utilising the Network Time Protocol (NTP)

How to connect an ESP32 to the Internet and utilise NTP to fetch the current time with high accuracy.

Also in this issue:

• Techno Talk – history could be repeating itself as AI is now appearing everywhere
• The Fox Report – the perils and pitfalls of relying too much on a smartphone; and ideas for rejuvenating batteries using discarded vape power cells.
• Net Work – in this, the last of the large-format Net Work columns, we look at AI robot dogs, check out USB flash drives, and there’s space updates and bad news from the EV sector and more besides.
• Circuit Surgery – advanced theory covering the filter requirements of digital signal processing.
• Max’s Cool Beans – Arduino Boot Camp Part 21: BCD to 7-Segment decoders.

Next month

In the October issue – SMD Microcontroller Programming Jigs; Test signal generator for the 2m VHF band; 500W Class-D Monoblock Audio Amplifier. Contents may be subject to last minute change.