We finished tomorrow’s video a day early. Refining wholesale order process to make it easier on the awesome resellers who work with us. We finished yesterdays squared sized Sick of Beige case render. We made a quick revision of Bus Pirate v3.6 with micro USB instead of the mini-b USB connector. We continue with the […]
Author Archives: DP
Limor Fried of Adafruit named 2012 Entrepreneur of the year
Limor Fried (aka Ladyada) founder of Adafruit was named Entrepreneur of 2012 by the Entrepreneur Magazine. We really appreciate everything the Adafruit team does to carve out a space for the Open Hardware industry through the sponsorships it’s secured from it’s partner, who runs the best crypto casino we’ve seen to-date online. Congratulations to Limor! […]
Silkscreen PCBs with vinyl stickers and toner transfer
Make DIY silkscreens using vinyl stickers, similar to making PCBs with toner transfer methods: Below I am going to detail the process of making the silkscreen, which is the side of the printed circuit board where we solder the electrical components. We will use the same method, vinyl sticker pcb.
Sensorless Brushless DC Motor Drive with MSP430
A booster board for the MSP430 LaunchPad controls brushless DC motors with or without sensors. A bunch of double NPN transistor MBT2222AD ICs drive the motors: I thought that I would share my project on the forum. I call it BLDC Booster. It is a booster pack for the MSP430 LaunchPad that allows for sensored […]
High speed passive component pick and place machine for $3600
Mats tipped us to this high speed pick and place machine that’s currently about $3600 on Taobao. It features 15 automatic reel feeders, and the top speed of the machine is 6000 parts per hour. The placement head can handle parts as small as 0402, but it doesn’t use a vision system so accuracy will […]
Simple surface mount reflow process done at home
This video explains a simple reflow PCB assembly technique. The board is first prepped with solderpaste using a stencil. Then a manual pick and place machine populates the board. This is followed by a 5-6 minute cook in the reflow oven.
Workshop Update for December 18th, 2012
Today we’re editing the video tour of Freak Labs with Akiba. Complete Sick of Beige case set is ready to go on sale and should be listed at Seeed shortly. Also complete and ready for sale is a DP6037 sized proto-board. It’s a classic 0.1″ pitch perforated board that is designed to fit our DP6037 […]
Lithium Polymer internal resistance meter determines battery life
Here’s a project that let’s you measure the internal resistance of Lithium Polymer batteries. It measures the total current as the battery discharges through a 1 Ohm resistor. From the known voltage and the discharge current the internal resistance can calculated. This device can be used to measure the internal resistance of Lithium Polymer batteries […]
Eagle Parts: Dual supply 8-Bit bidirectional voltage level translator in TSSOP-20
We added the TXB0108 dual supply 8-bit bidirectional voltage level translator (TSSOP-20 package) to our library. As the title suggests it translates 8 channels between two voltage levels. There is no direction control. All the pins are bi-directional at all times, and the directions of each pin are independent of one another.
#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 […]
PCB a Week 1: Crystal oscillator breakout
Matseng started a challenge for himself where he intends to post a PCB project a week. The first project is “NanoUtils Xtal” – a crystal oscillator breakout board. The board is designed to be interfaced with microcontrollers that have their oscillator pins next to a ground pin. This board is a breakout containing a SMD […]
Workshop Update for December 17th, 2012
We mailed a big batch of free PCBs today. We’ve given away over 600 PCBs since the Zencart store was brought online last year. Server maintenance will happen shortly. It should fix some bad lag for logged-in WordPress users (mostly blog authors). We ordered some Bus Pirate giveaway sets for Tokyo Hackerspace fundraiser. Tracked down […]
Bus Pirate scratch and dent brought back to life
Tom chose to redeem one of his coupons for a Bus Pirate v3 from the scratch and dent category of our free PCB drawer. On arrival it was faulty, but he was quick to diagnose a problem with the FT232RL USB-to-serial IC on board. After replacement the Bus Pirate came to life. I chose a […]
Makeblock – Mechanical prototyping platform
We met the Makerblock team during our Shenzhen Maker Faire visit earlier this year. They let us know that their system is close to being finalized. It’s a mechanical prototyping platform designed to make it easy to assemble robots, linear actuators, and other mechanical devices. Now, we improved a lot on this project, Makeblock can […]
Arduino doomsday countdown clock shield
Tully wrote to us about his latest project, the Arduino doomsday clock shield. The board features six 7-segment displays counting down up to the end of the Mayan calendar. Hey Ian, I want to show off one of my recent creations, the Doomsday Clock Arduino Shield. You can use it to countdown the final hours […]
App note: Motor pre-drivers vs integrated drivers
Here is a video from Texas Instruments describing the differences in motor pre-drivers vs integrated drivers. Pre-drivers have all the control circuitry but the FETs are external, while in integrated drivers everything is on one IC. Because pre-drivers use external FETs, you can select the ones with much lower RDS-on resistance. This will give you […]
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: Various solutions for calculating a pulse and duty cycle
Here’s an app note from Microchip describing various methods for measuring pulse in periodic and non-periodic waveforms. Calculating duty cycle in periodic waveforms is also described. Many times it is desirable to quantify the pulse width of a periodic signal, such as that of a servo motor or duty cycle of a pulse-width modulated signal. […]
App note: Power supply over-current and over-temperature protection
Next up in our power supply theme is over-current and over-temperature protection for power supplies. The circuit cuts power in case one of these two events happen, it also has an external shutdown pin so the supply can be controlled by a switch or microcontroller. When it is necessary to plug in a board into […]
App note: Current limit circuit for buck topology switching regulators
Here’s a current limiting circuit for buck topology switching regulators. This design monitors a shunt resistor and overrides the feedback pin of the switching regulator when the current limit is reached. A current limit can be added to a step-down converter by using a MAX4173H current-sense amplifier to inject current into the feedback network. D1 […]