Cadsoft Eagle review by a new user

in software by DP | 5 comments

Pete decided to try out Cadsoft Eagle and write about his experience. The first impression wasn’t the best.

I finally decided to download and learn to use the industry-standard PCB and schematic layout software: Eagle. I’ve tried a bunch of others, and quite frankly, got tired of always using “also ran” software. The majority of the info on the web is for Eagle. It certainly doesn’t have the best UI or the best workflow, but it has absolutely the most amount of information and the best support from PCB manufacturers. It’s the industry standard, and like most industry-leading technical software (ever use industry-leading 3d modeling software? Gak!), it has some crazy issues.

We’d suggest that Eagle is more a hobbyist and open hardware standard, with much more expensive software dominating the most design shops. We stick with Eagle for exactly the same reasons though. Most people have it, and there’s a ton of documentation out there for it. We’d prefer an open program like KiCAD, but it’s not going to appeal to as many people.

Don’t let the file format dictate your choice though. Every PCB manufacturer worth using supports Gerbers, and every CAD program worth using should have a way to export them.

Using a ACS712 hall-effect current sensor

in tutorials by DP | 2 comments

Raj made a two part tutorial on how to interface a PIC microcontroller with the ACS712 hall-effect current sensor. The first part covers hall-effect theory and basic operation of the ACS712. The second part covers the actual PIC interface, which is simply reading the output voltage of the sensor.

Sensing and controlling current flow is a fundamental requirement in a wide variety of applications including, over-current protection circuits, battery chargers, switching mode power supplies, digital watt meters, programmable current sources, etc. One of the simplest techniques of sensing current is to place a small value resistance (also known as Shunt resistor) in between the load and the ground and measure the voltage drop across it, which in fact, is proportional to the current flowing through it. Whereas this technique is easy and straightforward to implement, it may not be very precise because the value of the shunt resistor slightly varies with its temperature, which in fact is not constant because of the Joule heating. Besides, this simple technique does not provide an isolation between the load and current sensing unit, which is desirable in applications involving high voltage loads.

28C3: Soundcard based radio direction finding

in RF, talks, techniques by the machinegeek | 1 comment


In this lightning talk presentation from the 28C3 conference, the zunkworks crew outlines their work using simple RF hardware and a Linux laptop with soundcard to experiment with Radio Direction Finding (RDF). RDF has long been used in commercial and public safety activites, and the approach employed here attempts to bring RDF development down to a practical, affordable level for the average radio experimenter.

Project details can be found on the zunkworks RDF page and you can view the PDF of the 28C3 presentation slides here.

Posted in RF, talks, techniques | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Week in (p)review: January 27, 2012

in week in review by DP | 1 comment

Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week. Free PCB Friday is coming up soon:

Coming up:

  • Workshop video: Flux trials (sorry, a rendering error prevented us from releasing it this week)
  • App notes on the weekend
  • Free PCB Sunday
  • Free PCBs via Twitter on Tuesday
  • Free PCBs via Facebook on Friday
  • Weekly roundup and preview every Friday

What are you hacking this week?

Posted in week in review | Tagged , | 1 Comment

We get letters: More SEO and Realize Inc rapid prototyping spam

in site by Ian | 1 comment

I need your help. Realize Inc. is a competitor of mine. I fired my SEO firm for spamming everyone. However, I’m now on page 2 while Realize is top of page 1. They have an unfair advantage over me because I won’t engage in spamming practices. Is there any way that you know of to get Google to push them down or for me to compete without spamming? They are hurting my business tremendously.

We don’t have much advise aside from what what was in the Realize Inc editorial. There’s no way to manipulate search engines in the long run, Google et al have rooms of PhDs dedicated to search quality. Search engines want fresh content and will reward you for it. Start a blog and write about what’s happening in your company, post something every day. Make how-tos about designing for your rapid prototyping processes. Show your machines and give a tutorial on how they work. People will enjoy it and link to you on their blogs, the search engines will eat your yummy content, and your (prospective) customers get extra info to help use your services. Win, win, win. If you do any cool how-tos or tutorials please give us a shout and we’ll post it on our blog.

There’s also a HUGE DIY community doing 3D modeling. Get involved and your name will be synonymous with these services. Many people doing SLA, etc for a hobby are doing it during the day for a big company too (or are students about to move to industry). Realize INC is specifically avoiding this market, but the links from a few DIY blogs are worth a thousand times more than the crappy forum spam links Realize is posting.

Even if you don’t want to do low volumes for hobbyists, there’s other ways to get into the DIY community. We’ve been applying to Protomold for their Cool Idea free mold program because we have a case for one of our projects, but are not big enough to afford a custom mold. They will give us the mold if we win, we buy the actual cases at normal prices – and they get lots of quality info on the web.

None of this is without effort, which is why were so upset with Realize INC. They stole our ranking to improve their own, and justified it because they didn’t have time to write content and had a family. Well…us too! We reported them to various databases for spamming, but I imagine it takes several reports before anything is done otherwise the system is too easy to abuse. However, for a while our editorial about Realize INC spam appeared as the second search result for Realize INC.

Posted in site | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

2012 Digilent design contest with FPGA and PICs

in contest by DP | 0 comments

Diligent has announced its 8th annual design contest. Student are invited build electronics projects based on their FPGA and PIC development boards. So far the contest has been announced in the US and EU. Unfortunately the EU region registrations are over. The entrants will receive Diligent development systems pertaining to their project needs, which they will be allowed to keep.

To develop innovative projects using Digilent products. These can be:

  • Digital design projects featuring Digilent’s FPGA boards, developed in environments such as Xilinx ISE WebPack or ISE Foundation, National Instruments LabView, etc.
  • Microcontroller projects featuring Digilent’s PIC-based embedded control boards, developed in environments such as Microchip MPLAB, MPIDE, etc.

Via Embedded-Lab.

Open source USB stack for PIC18F and PIC24F updated

in open source, USB by DP | 2 comments

JTR released a major updated to the open source USB stack that’s been brewing in the forum. It’s been designed to work with a generic echo demo, the Bus Pirate v4, the USB IR toy, the LCD Backpack, the Locgic Shrimp, and the Logic Sniffer. So far only the CDC class is supported, meaning only virtual COM port communication is possible.

Pretty much this is getting to be the final work on the current generation USB stack and the DP hardware. At least for the time being… While the usb stack is not the latest I have it is the best trade-off between many competing issues and at a level that is fully understood should I need to revisit it. Some hardware got an improved stack and some got rolled back a level so that it was all compatible and modular.

We started a wiki for instructions, notes, demos, and more.

Via the forum.

Control your garage door via WiFi interface

in project logs by DP | 0 comments

This WiFi garage door controller is based on an RN-XV WiFi module, a small WiFi capable microcontroller with 8 GPIOs, and 3 ADCs.

The inspiration for this project was simple. My daughter has a habit of forgetting her house key, and we’ve had mixed results with the wireless garage door opener keypad. Time for a new solution. Plus, it’s a great excuse to play with electronics!!! She has an iPhone and it never leaves her side, so that seemed like a reasonable interface to use. Plus, if I network attached it, I could do some other nifty things like control it from the office.

iOS communicating with Arduino demonstration


This video from OSCON, the Open Source Convention, features Alasdair Allen demonstrating the use of Maker Shed’s RedPark Breakout Pack for Arduino and iOS. This demo the Redpark Serial Cable for iOS, which is an Apple-approved cable for connecting your iOS device to almost anything using serial communication.

For more information and a link to the code for the Paduino program referenced in the video, see Alasdair’s Daily ACK website.

Alasdair Allen is the author of the book “iOS Sensor Apps with Arduino.”

Via MAKE.

Workshop video: USB Persistence of Vision Toy firmware

in POV Toy, Videos by Ian | 1 comment

After more than a year of off and on development, there’s finally a working firmware for the USB Persistence of Vision Toy. With a bit more tweaking we’ll be ready to release the code. This week’s workshop video is an overview of the POV Toy project.

  • Displays pattern or words when waved in the air
  • USB interface for pattern uploads, firmware updates
  • Accelerometer tracks hand motion to sync display
  • See the prototype history

We also break out the updated POV Toy PCB. It’s shaped to be easy to hold, and includes a LiPO batter charger. Prototype PCBs are available in the free PCB drawer.

Posted in POV Toy, Videos | Tagged | 1 Comment

Bus Pirate mentioned in Bruce Perens open hardware lecture

in open source by DP | 0 comments

Bruce Perens, the author of the Open Source Definition, and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative,  held a lecture on the topic of “The State Of Open Source, And Introducing Open Hardware”. He mentions the Bus Pirate and our CPLD breakouts as positive examples of open hardware. The Gadget Factory’s Papilio One FPGA development board also gets a shout out.

You can support our open hardware efforts by purchasing a Bus Pirate or CPLD development board. Check out all our other open source hardware too.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in. Via the Gadget Factory, contact form.

C library for the Bus Pirate binary scripting mode

in Bus Pirate by DP | 1 comment

Bquoitin developed a C library for interfacing with the Bus Pirate binary scripting mode. So far he has successfully used it to communicate with various SPI devices:

“libbuspirate” [is] a short C library that allows easy interaction with the Bus Pirate. It was written a few months ago and I’ve been using it several times to interface with SPI devices such as the CC2500 and MRF24J40 RF transceivers and lately with the ENC28J60 Ethernet controller.

Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.

Via the contact form.

Posted in Bus Pirate | Tagged , | 1 Comment

FIRST DRAFT: Programmable dummy load

in Prototypes by DP | 4 comments

 

This is a programmable current sink, usually used to simulate  different current loads for power supplies. We have always wanted to build one, but we’ve stalled several times. This design is based on the simple analog load posted by Bearmos. It’s not intended to be a final project, it’s just an experimental prototype to see what might go into an eventual project.

We’re using an MCP4725 I2C 12bit digital to analog converter to set the current instead of a pot. Everything is controlled via the USB capable PIC18F2550 microcontroller, The relevant data is displayed on a 2X16 character HD44780 LCD. The UART interface is also available for datalogging and debugging. You can check out the schematic below.

Continue reading →

DIY geomagnetic storm monitoring


With the recent increase in solar storm activity, Alexander Avtanski bring our attention to his DIY magnetometer project.

The activity of the Sun varies on a cycle with a period of approximately 11 years. Periods of low solar activity are followed by a few years of sharply increased number of solar spots, flares, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), disrupting Earth’s magnetic field and causing magnetic storms. With the next Solar cycle maximum approaching I wanted to get on the fun too, so I set to build my own device for detecting and recording those magnetic storms, a.k.a. a magnetometer.

Continue reading →

DaisyLink Gadgeteer module connects many devices to one port

in Development by DP | 3 comments

Here is module for the .NET Gadgeteer that allows you to connect other modules in daisy-chain configuration using only one port.

This is a proof of concept for Arduino based Gadgeteer DaisyLink module.The Gadgeteer DaisyLink protocol allows to chain up to 126 various modules on one socket. The protocol is based on I2C-based EEPROM interface.

Apple fails to ban Samsung Galaxy Tabs in the Netherlands, again

in News by Ian | 5 comments

Last year Apple successfully sued to stop the sale of the Samsung Galaxy Tab in Australia and most of Europe over copyright and patent disputes. In Australia the injunction was based on the “pinching” input jesture, which Apple “owns”.

Over the past six months the vast majority of the cases have been dismissed on appeal. Samsung even claims the lawsuits made the Tab a household name and helped it succeed.

Today a Dutch court overturned another attempt to block sales of the Tab:

A Dutch appeal court rejected Apple’s claims that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab devices copied its iPads and iPhones, saying it could see enough differences in the hardware to dismiss the appeal.

Kudos to Samsung for this, too.

Posted in News | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Google tracking expands, threatens privacy

in News, surveillance by the machinegeek | 0 comments


Google appears poised to commence a program of tracking all users across all their services. The company will not allow you to opt-out. For example, they will pair info gained through their email service with search logs, ostensibly to target ads better. Of course such info is individually identifiable and stored for at least 9 months should the powers that be wish to seek it via subpoena. The changes will take effect on March 1, 2012. Google says the update to their privacy terms is “not the usual yada yada “, and that’s certainly true.

For hackers, reverse engineers and free thinkers everywhere, this is just one more thing to keep in mind when selecting and using a search engine in your research.

Via NPR.

Kendal 852D hot-air rework station teardown

in Teardowns by DP | 0 comments

Schazamp bought a cheap Kendal 852D+ 2+1 hot-air and soldering iron rework tool. He opened it up and took some pictures. Most of the 852-whatever clones look pretty similar inside, there’s probably one factory churning out clones under a bunch of different brand names. Like our Aoyue 968, it’s made with through-hole parts.

It’s a “Kendal” brand, whatever that means, and the ever popular 852D+ model number, like so many cheap knockoffs of its ilk. It arrived the other day, and my first thought was, “don’t turn it on, take it apart!”, so I did.

Via the forum.

Posted in Teardowns | Tagged , , | Leave a comment