Ambient Backscatter – Wireless power and communication with no batteries Ambient Backscatter transforms existing wireless signals into both a source of power and a communication medium. It enables two battery-free devices to communicate by backscattering existing wireless signals. Backscatter communication is orders of magnitude more power-efficient than traditional radio communication. Further, since it leverages the […]
Author Archives: DP
Arduino 28BYJ-48 stepperbot
Bajdi’s another robotic vehicle with 4 28BYJ-48 stepper motors: The Arduino IDE comes with a stepper library, but I decided to write my own stepper code. For 4 stepper motors I would have needed 16 digital pins and then another 4 pins for the servos. Controlling a stepper motor is not that difficult. It’s just […]
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: VCO enables a hands-free car kit for cell phones
Locally broadcast your cell phone through FM band using MAX2606 from Maxim. App note can be found here. This design idea presents an integrated IF voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) that can retransmit the audio signal from a cell phone to the FM broadcast band. By placing the cell phone’s speaker near the microphone, the user can […]
App note: Biasing and decoupling op amps in single supply applications
Op amps needs dual supply in order to get a full output swing from its input fed signal, here’s a good app note from Analog Devices on powering op amps using only a single supply. Battery-powered op amp applications such as those found in automotive and marine equipment have only a single available power source. […]
App note: Power supply layout and EMI
Reduce EMI by determining large alternating currents carrying areas and making them compact, this minimizes radiation and spilling of unwanted signal to other part of your PCB. More of these methods are shown from Linear Technology’s app note. PC-board layout determines the success or failure of every power supply project. It sets functional, electromagnetic interference […]
App note: Measuring temperature with PIC16F84A WDT
Here’s an app note from Microchip on how you can use the watch dog timer of an old trusty PIC16F84A as temperature sensor. Almost all temperature sensor circuits use some form of discrete component (such as a thermistor or a solid-state sensor) to actually measure the environment?s temperature. It is left to the microcontroller to […]
Rapid development board for PIC12F series microcontrollers
Here’s Embedded Lab’s new development board for PIC12F series microcontrollers: The 12F series of PIC microcontrollers are handy little 8-pin devices designed for small embedded applications that do not require too many I/O resources, and where small size is advantageous. These applications include a wide range of everyday products such as hair dryers, electric toothbrushes, rice […]
Purpleheart ornamental clock
Wardy wrote a post on his blog detailing his ornamental clock build: I wanted to use my new Adafruit Neopixel Ring to build an ornamental clock, using this interesting woodworking technique. Plus I figured that my milling machine might make this a feasible prospect. Milling, in my very limited self-taught experience, is best done using a material […]
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 November 29, 2013
Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week. Free PCB Friday is coming up soon. Steve shares his impressions of the Bus Pirate as a prototyping and test tool Check out kehribar’s UDP bootloader for Atmega328p + ENC28J60in, Mats’ POTONG6 – Potentiometer & Slide switch breakout and MCC8 – PIC24 based CHIP-8 game emulator the project log forum Coming […]
OSUS – Open source USB Stack test board (Master)
Here’s another cool project by Mats the OSUS Master board: A long while ago I wrote about that I might make a series of boards for easier testing of the open USB stacks. Testing all different version of mcu’s and crystal speeds to make the right #defines and linker maps for the firmwares can be a […]
STM32F4xx libraries
mux writes: I wrote a tutorial before on how to setup a toolchain and build the STM32F4xx standard peripheral drivers into one convenient library, since then, a few people have asked me about the library, so to make life easier, I downloaded the latest StdPeriph/CMSIS, in addition to a few other libraries that I might […]
Digitstump’s Black Friday sale
Ihsan informs us of Digitstump’s Black Friday sale: We are pleased to announce that Digistump.com will be offering some amazing deals for Black Friday thru Cyber Monday – while we can’t compete with the big stores, because we don’t have 2-3x mark-up like they do, we hope these deals will help you buy engaging, educational, electronic gifts […]
Micro Python: Python for microcontrollers
Torsten came across an interesting project on Kickstarter called Micro Python by Damien George. He writes: It has some very nice new design ideas as well as a totally new way of dealing with uC. I often do prototyping of a certain algorithm in python because it is very easy to debug and test. After that, I go an implement it in […]
POTONG6 – Potentiometer & Slide switch breakout
Mats shared his Potentiometer & Slide switch breakout -POTONG6 in the project log forum: This is just a small utility board that I added to a previous batch of PCBs. Nothing fancy at all. :-) Sometimes I need a pot or two when I test a design on a solderless breadboard and it’s always a PITA […]
IR remote control station for SensoDuino
TechBitar writes, “This hack intercepts sensors data from an Android phone, sends data to a Bluetooth HC-05 module to Arduino which then translates it into an IR remote control code to trigger actions such as lower/increase TV volume, increase/decrease heater temperature, and any action that can be triggered with about 12 sensors found in Android […]
Rover 5: encoder speed control
Bajdi writes: I’ve dusted of my Dagu Rover 5 :) While I’ve had my Rover 5 for almost 2 years I’ve never really used the encoders. Unfortunately my Rover 5 was delivered with an encoder that didn’t work right. So I decided to have a look at it and try to fix it. It turned […]
MotionMote – Moteino motion sensor
Felix of LowPowerLab writes: I’m calling it MotionMote because it detects motion and because pretty much every type of wireless sensor or Moteino node name ends in “mote“. The possibilities for home security are endless, put this little guy in a corner near a door or on top of a cabinet somewhere and detect them intrudaz! […]
SquareWear 2.0 — an open source wearable Arduino
SquareWear 2.0, an open source wearable Arduino by Rayshobby: This is SquareWear 2.0, an open-source, wearable Arduino microcontroller board. This version measures 1.7″x1.7″ in size, and has built-in LIR2032 rechargeable Lithium coin battery. It also has a number of integrated components (see below). It is designed to be sewable: you can stich conductive threads through the […]