This week we received a batch of PCBs and amongst them was the latest revision of our USB TFT breakoutboard. This board is the first board that features a new ICSP footprint, which occupies less space on the PCB and … Read more
Some time ago a forum member brought up Taobao as a cheap alternative to eBay. Since we like to shop on a budget, we decided to give it a go. Shopping on Taobao is not as easy as shopping on … Read more
Like so many others, we found a nice 1.8″ TFT display in China, and we decided to make a breakout for it. Instead of just breaking out the pins, and perhaps adding the micro SD card holder, we equipped our … Read more
Shenzhen is well known for locally produced and customized technology. From custom cell phones to personalized push buttons, you can find it in Hua Qiang Bei. Sjaak found a building that consists entirely of USB flash disk sellers. There’s a … Read more
The SEG Market in Shenzhen, and the other markets too, are a maze packed with lots of small shops and goodies. It’s hard to find that shop with a special bargain again after you wander away. Below the fold are … Read more
We all bought one of these USB microscope at the SEG Market. We were immediately fond of the heavy base and the smooth adjustment of the camera. We bargained a bit and bought it for 260 RMB ($40), that’s half … Read more
What all maker faires have in common is that the local hackerspace(s) come up with some kind of badge with a coincell and a blinking LED. In China things aren’t much different and we did see a few. This one … Read more
We are constantly developing prototypes, so we end up with a large pile of unused components. When we moved to a new location we realized some components sat untouched since the previous move. A while ago we read about the … Read more
Don’t you hate it? A big bag of SMT parts arrive from Mouser, DigiKey or eBay, but your carefully manufactured PCBs are still under way? Or the firmware needs to be done ASAP? Or you got this super cool USB … Read more
Sjaak stayed a little bit longer in Tokyo and had more time to score some nice parts. As we already said the big plus of shopping in Akihabara is you can actually touch the stuff, but it also has a … Read more
Several weeks ago we posted about an X-Mas giveaway from Iteadstudio. We were surprised to see that it arrived during our stay in Tokyo! As it was shipped like a regular letter, we suspect it blasted past bigger parcels and slipped … Read more
Yesterday we tracked down the designers of two random open source PCBs we received from Itead’s OpenPCB service. Today we look at two more PCBs: a reprap board, and one of our own. Itead has a PCB exchange option when … Read more
Some time ago we reported on Itead’s OpenPCB Service. They offer basic PCB prototyping of 10pcs 5x5cm PCB for $9.90 and 10pcs of 10x10cm for $24.90. For 10 cents extra you can participate in a PCB exchange. 2 extra boards of your design are produced … Read more
A couple of days ago we discussed some cute little PIC 12F chips. As promised, here is a post about hand-soldering one. Tools we used: Soldering-iron and hot-air rework station. Curved tweezers. Scalpel or hobby knife. Kapton tape Fine solder … Read more
In the forum we get questions like ‘what PIC should I use’ or ‘is this the right PIC for my purpose?’. We mostly use big PICs with lots of I/O, plenty RAM, and heaps of Flash. Not because we really … Read more
As promised in the review of the Sure WiFi board , a new WIFI web platform/server design is up for review in the forum. The purpose of this board is to control a digital DSLR camera through a webpage. The … Read more
We covered Sure’s WIFI web server module previously. This board has a MRF24WB0MB wireless module and a PIC24FJ256GB106 with USB (host and slave) capabilities. As a bonus the board also has a mini-sd connector for storing webpages. At a first … Read more
Today a parcel come in with lots of goodies from MDFLY. We are prototyping a lot so every useful gadget that helps us a lot. Follow below for a look at the jumper cables, resistor kits, and pogo pins in … Read more
Microchip has a new USB->serial converter chip called the MCP2200. We suspected they made this chip from a 20-pin PIC. The MCP2200 pinout is like other PIC uCs, and it has similar reset pin and internal voltage regulator circuits. We … Read more
John repurposed GE Christmas lights into scrolling marquee. Via Hack a Day.
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