TechBitar shared his latest project the BridgeDuino with boards from DirtyPCBs: BridgeDuino is a Swiss army knife PCB for rapid networking of inexpensive wireless communication modules. Breadboards are super for one-off experiments. But after prototyping half a dozen wireless prototypes involving more than just two Arduinos, the wiring mistakes and associated debugging grew more time consuming. […]
Author Archives: DP
#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 […]
Guitar booster pedal (MPX-1)
Bastl3r wrote this instructable detailing the build of his guitar booster pedal project: I chose an overdrive pedal design off of generalguitargadets.com (Schematic) and modified it like this: added a simple positive/middle/negative supply added a noise filter I found on beavisaudio.com right after the DC Jack (Huminator) took away the clipping diodes on the output connected […]
Burn c into other chips using Arduino Duemilanove
Kathy Yang writes, “We may often encounter such situation as bootloader falls off when using Arduino, this thing can freak us out especially when we got no bootloader tools on hand. So what shall we do? Here we’ll introduce a way on how to burn c via Arduino, which is rather practical in cases when without […]
A 5c lithium ion battery charger
Nerd Ralph writes: As various sites explain, lithium-ion rechargeable batteries should be charged to 4.2 volts. USB ports provide 5V, so all I needed was a way to drop 5V down to 4.2 or less. Standard diodes have a voltage drop of 0.6 to 1.0 volts, so I pulled up the datasheet for a 1n4148, […]
Proximity sensing LEDs
Here’s a proximity-sensing LEDs project by Will_W_76. He writes a complete step-by-step instructions here: So how does this all work? What makes it proximity-sensing? Remember in the explanation above that the photo-transistor acts like a switch. So when the photo-transistor is off, no current is flowing across it to our blue LED and the LED […]
DirtyPCB Charliecube
kjetilei shared his Charliecube project, inspired by the instructions provided by SobiGuy at SobiSource: I showed the cube at my local makerspace and proposed a build day. The interest was high enough to bulk order the various items needed for 10 kits. Just before ordering the batch of protoboards I started to think about making […]
App note: Unique and novel uses for ON Semiconductor’s new One-Gate family
One-gate logic uses and their benefits application note (PDF) from ON Semiconductor. One–Gate logic devices have been in use for several years, and are nothing more than single–gate derivatives of their multi–gate cousins. Traditional ICs were packaged in 14 and 16 pin Dual–in–line Packages (DIPs), and the goal of the IC manufacturer was to get […]
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: Ambiguity of the peak power rating of TVS devices
Here’s a tip app note (PDF) from ON Semiconductor on selecting specs for an TVS diode. There are two important properties of a TVS device during an electrical stress. The TVS must be able to self-protect and survive the stress current, and the TVS must clamp the protected line to a low voltage during the […]
App note: Sorting through the low voltage logic maze
Here’s how to guide (PDF) from NXP in choosing the right standard logic from various choices that fit your application. Digital systems are running at faster speeds, operating at lower voltages, and they are becoming more highly integrated. Many functions can be integrated into FPGAs or ASICs, however, this does not mean that generic standard […]
App note: Low Voltage Agile I/O GPIO Input/Output Characteristics
App note (PDF) on NXP’s Agile I/O expander, discussing its capabilities and how to use it efficiently. I2C-bus GPIO devices are widely used and expand a control processor’s pins to 8-, 16- or 24- bits of general-purpose input or output. The characteristic of these I/O needs to be accurately known to efficiently use them in […]
DIY 60W adjustable electrical load
A DIY 60W adjustable electrical load project from Electro-Labs: In this project, we are building a useful board which should take place on your bench. It is an adjustable electrical load which can sink up to 5A @ 60W continuously. This board will come to aid when you need to draw an exact amount of current […]
A four channel remote control using EnOcean Pi
A four-channel remote control built using the EnOcean Pi by Kerry Wong: In my last couple of blog posts, I did a brief overview of the EnOcean Pi sensor kit from Newark and demonstrated how to compile and run the example code using a Raspberry Pi. In this blog post, I will show a real world example […]
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. More PCBs via Twitter on Tuesday and the blog every Sunday. Don’t forget there’s free PCBs three times every week: Free PCB Sunday. The classic. Every week, get […]
Week in (p)review August 23, 2014
Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week. Free PCB Friday is coming up soon. ATX Breakout Board V1.1 Acrylic case is back in stock A real fix for the commenting bug that crops up from time to time Check out Aon’s visual feedback timer in the project log forum Coming up: Free PCBs […]
Simple wav player using Arduino
Kathy Yang of Elecfreaks writes: Integrated with the homemade low-pass filter, this Arduino-based simple WAV player is to send out PWM signal generated by UNO, then through the low-pass filter and make the PCM data stored in the flash of UNO into sounds. Basically, the player cannot be regarded as a pure WAV playback, because […]
MESR-100 ESR meter review and teardown
Alan Parekh of Hacked Gadgets did a teardown of a MESR-100 ESR meter: I purchased a MESR-100 Meter from eBay for around $55 USD shipped to my door in Winnipeg (Canada). The meter came well packaged in a retail box, this is a nice change from many other items from China that are simply wrapped in […]
Teensy MIDI USB foot controller for controlling Mobius Looper
Thrifleganger wrote this instructable detailing his Teensy MIDI USB foot controller for controlling Mobius Looper: The concept is quite simple and straightforward. You press a button, the arduino interprets the signal arriving from the button as a midi “control change” signal (typically represented as MIDI CC), and this signal can be mapped to respond to any of […]
Node-RED hacking – audio library front-end
Paul over at Dorkbotpdx writes: When I started the Audio library, a nice GUI (like Puredata or Max/MSP) seemed an impossibly distant dream. Then, in this forum thread, I learned of the open source Node-RED project. Over the last few days I’ve been coming up to speed on modern Javascript tools like jQuery and D3, to […]