Homemade and chip optocouplers on a breadboard

How I spent a weekend reinventing a 50-cent chip

What an optocoupler is and how electrical isolation works, built from a discrete LED and phototransistor on a breadboard with measurements, then replaced with a real 4N35 chip, and where optocouplers show up in actual circuits.

April 25, 2026 · 6 min
Lilka ESP32 device used as a Kobo page-turner remote

DIY Bluetooth Kobo page-turner remote with ESP32 and Lilka

Building a DIY Bluetooth page-turner remote for a Kobo e-reader by making an ESP32-S3 Lilka device act as a BLE HID keyboard, including BLE debugging on Debian, testing on the Kobo Clara 2E, and the full project code.

January 23, 2026 · 6 min