Shane has been working on making small robots and made a prototype of a matchbox car, a robot car that fits inside a matchbox: This build consists of a tiny DC motors ripped from a pair of 9g servos, a h-bridge motor controller, an el-cheapo 8 bit pic and a 100mAh 3.7V LiPo battery. Project […]
Author Archives: DP
Arduino-based “Analog” slow cooker controller
Dan Ternes blogged about his Arduino-based controller for analog slow cookers: With the AC power control figured out, I considered the User Interface. I opted for something simple. The Adafruit RGB LCD Shield would work well as it had both a display and buttons built in. Sure, I could have beat this project about the […]
#FreePCB via Twitter to 2 random RTs
Every Tuesday we give away two coupons for the free PCB drawer via Twitter. This post was announced on Twitter, and in 24 hours we’ll send coupon codes to two random retweeters. Don’t forget there’s free PCBs three times a every week: Hate Twitter and Facebook? Free PCB Sunday is the classic PCB giveaway. Catch […]
R/C Aircraft lighting controller
Ezflyr shared his R/C Aircraft lighting controller in the project log forum. He writes: I’m an avid R/C modeler, and I’m just finishing up my latest ‘winter building’ project, a 150″ wingspan Douglas DC-3! I wanted to add a continuously flashing strobe light on the vertical stabilizer of the airplane, and remotely controlled Red (left) […]
Homemade x-ray inspector reveals PCB secrets
John McMaster has written an article detailing his homemade x-ray scanner: In some previous posts I talked about getting an x-ray head working, reverse engineering an x-ray sensor, and working with LinuxCNC. In this post I put them all together so that I can take a bunch of x-ray snapshots across an entire PCB. This […]
Automatic feeder mod makes cat work for food
Here’s a cool automatic feeder for your cat that dispense food in exchange for a wiffle ball by Benjamin Millam. He wrote a post on his blog detailing its assembly: I used an Adafruit RFID reader to detect RFID tags embedded in the wiffle balls: the balls are cut slightly, enough to slip in an […]
ESP8266 Arduino NetIO Server demo
Peter Scargill writes: This week as regular readers know I was far away from our little home in Spain – in fact I was at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Boston, helping promote ESP8266 technology (why? because I could). Along the way I met up with Ivan Grokhotkov who as some of you know […]
Simple and small temperature fan control
Xristost published a new build, a simple and small temperature fan control: I published this schematic long ago in this article: Adjustable power supply and since then I made some improvements in PCB to make the board as small as possible. The idea is to be easy to attach the whole board to the heat […]
Free PCB Sunday: Pick your PCB
We go through a lot of prototype PCBs, and end up with lots of extras that we’ll never use. Every Sunday we give away a few PCBs from one of our past or future projects, or a related prototype. Our PCBs are made through Seeed Studio’s Fusion board service. This week two random commenters will […]
App note: Live insertion using low voltage differential signaling
Hot swapping capability of LVDS, app note from Fairchild Semiconductor. Link here (PDF) Supporting live insertion or hot swapping is important in certain applications such as the ones used in telecommunications systems. These applications require maintenance, upgrades, and repairs to be conducted without shutting down the system or causing disruptions to traffic on the backplane. […]
App note: LVDS Fundamentals
Here’s an app note on LVDS from Fairchild Semiconductor. Link here (PDF) With the recent developments in the communications market, the demand for throughput is becoming increasingly more crucial. Although older differential technologies provide significant signal integrity benefits compared to single ended technologies, many of them consume much more power at lower throughput than LVDS. […]
App note: Using feature set of I2C Master on TM4C129x microcontrollers
An application note (PDF!) from TI on using feature set of I2C Master on TM4C129x microcontrollers: The inter-integrated circuit (I2C) is a multi-master, multislave, single ended bus that is typically used for attaching lower speed peripheral ICs to processors and micocontrollers. The type of slave devices range from non volatile memory to data acquisition devices like analog-to-digtal converter […]
Experience with the DirtyPCBs
Iñigo of ElektroQuark shares his experience with DirtyPCBs (machine translation). He talk about how to order at Dirtypcbs.com and how to prepare files from KiCAD for DirtypPCBs. Via the contact form.
Free PCB coupon via Facebook to 2 random commenters
Every Friday we give away some extra PCBs via Facebook. This post was announced on Facebook, and on Monday we’ll send coupon codes to two random commenters. The coupon code usually go to Facebook ‘Other’ Messages Folder . More PCBs via Twitter on Tuesday and the blog every Sunday. Don’t forget there’s free PCBs three […]
WiFi smoke detector
An instructables on how to make a WiFi smoke detector by Proto G: This is a simple WiFI Smoke Detector that texts me when it senses smoke. I made this for my battery storage area in case of a lithium polymer fire. I still have all of my regular smoke detectors installed and I don’t […]
AMQUMO: A Xively AMbient QUality MOnitor built on ATmega328
Davide Gironi published a new build, AMQUMO -an ATmega328 AMbient QUality MOnitor: AMQUMO logs 4 environmental parameters: -Humidity -Temperature -Ambient Noise -Brightness The data it is logged to the xively.com platform, and displayed to the user through 4 bi-color leds. It can be used to monitor you Office Ambient Quality over the parameters logged. This project […]
Teardown, repair & analysis of a Rohde & Schwarz FSH3 3.0GHz portable spectrum analyzer
A teardown and repair of a Rohde & Schwarz FSH3 3.0GHz portable spectrum analyzer from The Signal Path: In this episode Shahriar examines a faulty R&S FSH3 100kHz – 3.0GHz Portable Spectrum Analyzer. This exceptionally dirty unit does not power on and is missing a power supply and battery. After verifying the correct operation of […]
Irrighino, a complete watering system based on Arduino Yun
Here’s Luca Dentella’s new project Irrighino, a complete watering system based on Arduino Yun. It features a user friendly AJAX interface and a fully-customizable open source firmware. The main features are: -a configurable number of solenoid valves -an AJAX web interface -a weekly schedule -manual activation / deactivation An Arduino Yun – the “brain” of […]
Making an intelligent cap with Crowtail modules
Need an idea for a present? Gebera shares us a present he made for his Dad, an intelligent cap: It can be a great help to let my father know the time and have a rest if the UV ray is too high and be careful when come back late in night. With this cap, […]
Bus Pirate v3.8 free PCB build
Kirby Yazzie tweeted picture of his free Bus Pirate v3.8 PCB build. The Bus Pirate is an open source hacker multi-tool that talks to electronic stuff. If you build a free PCB we’ll send you another one! Blog about it, post a picture on Flicker, whatever – we’ll send you a coupon code for the free […]