This post documents the fruits of my first proper attempt at designing a full transceiver from scratch. I should make clear that this isn’t meant to be a guide on how to design a transceiver - I’m not an expert and this is only for fun. All I’m doing here is sharing a few methods for designing radio circuits that work for me and that I can understand. Your mileage may vary! …

I was looking for a way to stream audio over my home network so I could play music on my stereo from my phone/computer wirelessly - it turns out what I was looking for was quite expensive. So I decided to attempt to make something more affordable and that met my needs exactly. My idea was to make a standalone USB DAC that could be used to drive a line level input and high impedance headphones using one USB connection for power and audio data. …

Working on electronics without a way of generating signals involves a lot of guesswork and dead ends. Since a proper function generator is a bit out of my price range, I set out to try and create my own specifically for audio and RF projects! On the whole the project was a success, although it is far from perfect and there are quite a few things I’d like to change and implement in a future version before making the CAD files and firmware publicly available. …

My recipe for a coffee mead that comes out at about 14%. High alcohol and high caffeine content are always a good mix. For me it took about 10 weeks to ferment out, and took another good 2-3 months before it lost its jet fuel tang. Completely rank when I first bottled it but it slowly became really pleasant. Probably more of a winter drink than a summer one. Yields 5l (1 UK gallon). …

Imaginary Landscapes creates a random, constantly evolving colour and soundscape in your web browser. The music it creates isn’t of any value on its own - it’s not really meant to be directly listened to at all, rather passively consumed. For best results play at low volume on headphones or external loudspeakers and add some context. Leave it on in the background while you’re doing something else, while on the train, while reading a book, having a conversation. …