Author Archives: DP

Giveaway: Three “BB Prince” kits

Mats has amazed us with his board a week projects, and now one of them could be yours!  Today Mats is giving away three “BB Prince” kits.  It’s a small utility board for your breadboard that have some of the most common things you need when building a microcontroller-based project on the breadboard. He’ll give these […]

PCB a Week 12: BB Prince – breadboard utility PCB

Mats continues his challenge of designing one PCB every week.  In week 12 he came up with BB Prince, a small multi-purpose utility for your solderless breadboard: This PAW is a small utility board for your breadboard that have some of the most common things you need when building a microcontroller-based project on the breadboard. […]

RAPIRO: The Humanoid robot kit for your Raspberry Pi

Here’s an interesting Kickstarter project the RAPIRO designed by Shota Ishiwatari.  It’s designed to work with a Raspberry Pi and comes with a Arduino-compatible servo controller.  Switch Science is one of the collaborators of this project: RAPIRO is a cute, affordable, and easy to assemble humanoid robot kit, which comes with 12 servos and an […]

App note: Getting started guide for the Atmel Lightweight Mesh

Here’s an getting started guide from Atmel describing their Lightweight Mesh wireless protocol. The purpose of this application note is to introduce users to the Lightweight Mesh network protocol stack and typical application development process from Atmel. This document describes how to start quickly with the Lightweight Mesh SDK, by setting up the development environment […]

App note: Implementing a Manchester decoder using the CLC and NCO peripherals

Here is an application note from Microchip describing how to implement a hardware Manchester decoder using the CLC and NCO peripherals found on some of their PIC microcontrollers. The objective of this document is to demonstrate how the NCO and CLC peripherals found on PIC16F devices can be used as a Manchester Decoder. Traditional algorithms […]

PCBmodE: Make your PCB a work of art

Saar of BoldPort developed an open source software for creating artistic and functional printed circuit boards, the PCBmodE: We wanted to create circuit boards that have curvey traces, meandering paths, and multiple soldermask layers, so we developed PCBmodE (say “PCB mode”), an open source Python software that unshackle us from the constraints imposed by traditional PCB […]

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 June 28, 2013

Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week. Free PCB Friday is coming up soon. FT2232H breakout board, Soldering iron driver v1.5 PCBs and Bus Pirate v4 Acrylic case kit v1 are back in stock Check out Kevin’s Mini 7-segment clock and Mats’ MrRef voltage/current reference Coming up: Free PCBs via Facebook on Friday […]

Open Programmer v0.8.x

Alberto Maccioni posted an update on his multi-chip opensource programmer based on a PIC18F2550.  It supports PIC, I2C-SPI-MicroWire EEPROMs, some ATMEL AVRs, and (soon) other devices: In the last few years, as serial and parallel interfaces have almost disappeared, electronics enthusiasts find even more difficult to program microcontrollers; old time programmers don’t work any more; […]

The MAX7219 LED display controller – real or fake?

John Boxall over at Tronixstuff has a detailed review of the differences between the real MAX7219 and the others: A few people have been asking me of late, and there’s only one way to find out … so over the last month I ordered eight random “MAX7219s” from different suppliers on ebay and will compare them […]

WyoLum Emergents G+ : FREE Bus Pirate contest!

Justin Shaw over at WyoLum Emergents G+  is giving away Bus Pirate V3.5c: Seeed Studio has generously donated some cools open hardware to giveaway. This week: Bus Pirate V3.5c Please describe your awesome plans for this Bus Pirate v3.5.  Winner agrees to post progress, schematics, and code to the final project. To apply, post in WyoLum […]

Avalanche pulse generator build using 2N3904

Kerry Wong documented his avalanche pulse generator build using 2N3904: The majority of avalanche pulse generators hobbyists built used 2N2369, the same transistor used in Jim Williams’ original experiment. One of the main benefits of using 2N2369 is that it can avalanche at a relatively low voltage (under 90V). But most general purpose NPN transistors […]

Arduino Uno 3 million samples per second logic analyzer

Bob Davis has built an Arduino powered three Million samples per second six channel logic analyzer: In the video below you can see what the live display looks like. He is using a 74 series decade counter to divide down a 10Mhz crystal so that he has some nice fast stuff to sample. He experimented […]