John Slee writes: Anyway, I decided to try to make my own clock divider. Didn’t take long to get something working, and you can see the results in the video above. The genuine Arduino Uno is generating a simple square wave on pin 13, which you can observe with the built-in LED. The Freetronics clone […]
Author Archives: DP
USB to RS485 adapter
Brian Dorey made this DIY USB to RS485 adapter, that is available at Github: We looked for a full-duplex ready-made adapter but all the ones we found are only half duplex devices and as we needed to be able to supply 12 volts via the RJ45 connectors on the slave boards we decided to make our […]
Announcing OpenSprinkler Bee (OSBee) Arduino Shield v1.0
Another open source project from RaysHobby, the OpenSprinkler Bee (OSBee) shield: OpenSprinkler Bee (OSBee) shield is an open-source Arduino shield for battery-operated (latching solenoid) sprinkler valves. It’s useful for gardening, lawn watering, flower and plant irrigation, and other watering applications. OSBee has a built-in boost converter and H-bridges to control up to four independent valves. […]
Hacker Camp Shenzhen: Yet another video from Gary Fletcher
By DP Gary Fletcher shared this Shenzhen trip video he made: So anyway, here is a snippet of our 10 days in China/Hong Kong — a stretch that included everything from street food stalls to a surprisingly long conversation with a hostel barmate in Wan Chai who reviewed top bitcoin casinos for a living and […]
App note: Power inductors 8-design tips
A practical guide for the selection of power inductors for DC/DC converters from Würth Elektronik. Link to the app note here, alternatively the whole article in PDF can be found here
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: USB port protection
USB port protection from EMI and ESD, a good app note from Würth Elektronik introduce you to their common mode chokes and TVS diodes solution. Whole article here in PDF. The USB-Interface might be the most distributed PC interface in the world. The usage in industry applications is more and more common. Let’s have a […]
App note: STM32 microcontroller system memory boot mode
Here’s an app note from ST discussing how the bootloader works and how it’s activated –the general concept of the bootloader (PDF!): The bootloader is stored in the internal boot ROM memory (system memory) of STM32 devices. It is programmed by ST during production. Its main task is to download the application program to the internal Flash memory through one […]
minDUINO v1.5, a small footprint, educational Arduino clone
Steve Smith G0TDJ of ProjectAVR writes: The minDUINO is designed to be easy to assemble, so it is a two layer through-hole design, not SMD. It has headers for FTDI, ISCP and port breakouts. Another project I designed was VAYU-NTX, a High Altitude Balloon Tracker. As expansion for this, I designed two small daughter boards for […]
DIY CNC pendant
A DIY CNC pendant made by Bob Davis. He wrote a post on his blog detailing it’s assembly: Last night I finished building my DIY CNC pendant and tested it out. I still need to add a manual jogger to it someday. It is made out of an old Zenith TV remote control. The key is […]
Free PCB coupon via Facebook to 2 random commenters
Every Friday we giveaway 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 free […]
Week in (p)review June 13, 2014
Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week. Free PCB Friday is coming up soon. Dockstar debricking with the Bus Pirate JTAG debugging with Bus pirate and OpenOCD Bus Pirate used as a serial interface to communicate with the MSP430 microcontroller Logic Pirate and Sick Of Beige basic case v1 (DP5031) are back in stock […]
Insomni’hack CTF 2014: Bus Pirate used as a serial interface to communicate with the MSP430 microcontroller
Bus Pirate was used to communicate to a MSP430 microcontroller at Insomni’hack CTF2014 challenge. q3k of DragonSector writes: The devboard is obviously a Texas Instruments MSP430 launchpad. Attached to it is a Bus Pirate used as a serial interface, and a round device of no obvious use… What could it be..? Nicolas, the author of this challenge, […]
Debricking Seagate Dockstar
ZsZs documented his Dockstar debricking with the Bus Pirate: Somehow I managed to brick my Dockstar. It was so simple like the first sentence :) The debricking process was quite long due to lack of experience and tools. Tools required: – A buspirate card (I have a v3.6) – openocd with buspirate support – An […]
Logic Pirate back in stock
Logic Pirate is back in stock at Seeed Studio. It is an inexpensive, yet capable open source logic analyzer. It can sample 8 channels at 20 million samples per second, and may be overclocked for even faster acquisitions. It’s designed to support the open source SUMP logic analyzer protocol with software available for most operating systems. […]
K8LH 2-Pin 74HC595 LCD “8-bit” Backpack
McLaren writes, ” here’s another 74HC595 Backpack design with a 2-pin interface that uses LCD 8-Bit interface mode. Driver is pretty simple. It takes about 100-usecs to send each byte. Please check it out” Via the forum.
2.4 megasamples per second continuous AVR logic capture
From the comments on our earlier Turning the Freedom board into a Logic Analyzer post, Ralph Doncaster writes: For situations where the samples will fit in RAM, this is good. For long sampling periods I used a USBasp and a PL-2303HX to make a logic analyzer that can sample 2 lines at 2.4 msps or 8 […]
LED VU Meter with LM3916
xristost has written an article about his latest project LED VU meter with LM3916: This was finished months ago and just now I had time to finish the article. LM3916 is a dedicated IC for VU LED meter. Unlike LM3915 which have 3dB step between voltage levels, the LM3916 have nonlinear steps: -20, -10, -7, -5, -3, -1, 0, […]
Mechanical ball clock
In this video Turnvater Janosch demonstrates his homemade mechanical ball clock: The clock runs for 12 hours, driven by a weight of 2.5 kg sinking approx. 1 meter during that time..Every minute a marble is lifted up and goes down a marble run with three flipping traps that count marbles for minutes, five-minute-steps and hours. The timekeeping […]
Counter project recorded in C
Ricardo of Electropepper writes: So i’ve decided to rewrite the code in C language using the MikroC compiler for the Counter project. I have chosen MikroC compiler for its easy of use and good documentation, unfortunatelly the IDE editor simple sucks big time, so it really is good for me to tolerate it. I also got […]