Here is a what happens when art and electronics mix. This is LED covered wall is activated when a drop of water covers a small contact patch surrounding the specific LED. The basic principle is so simple yet the art created looks great. You can read more about this built on the link provided. Basically […]
Author Archives: DP
Smoke Tester: calculating the INA138 load and sense resistors
Yesterday we presented the Smoke Tester, a board designed to safely power prototypes for the first time and test for shorts. One feature of this design is the current measurement via the INA138 high side current monitoring IC. Below is a small tutorial on how we calculated the sense and load resistors for this IC.
Cute Little Wire case
Here is a custom case built for the Little Wire: This version of the Little Wire is the probably best derivative work i have ever seen! So cute and beautiful! Well done : ) Little Wire is multi-featured USB controlled open source hardware tool packed in a minimal form factor designed by Ihsan Kehribar. Even […]
Mechanical Donkey Kong
Martin designed the Arduino controlled mechanical Donkey Kong game. The game area is laser cut, while Mario is mounted on a metal rod, which is controlled via two servos, allowing it to move around and jump. Controls are read by the Arduino through a NES controller. Via Hacked Gadgets
Workshop Update for September 25th, 2012
Today we left for the Global Geek Tour of New York. Check out our wiki for more information about it, and contact us if you’d like to join the East Village food crawl and the New York electronics tour. We go the Smoke Tester prepped for preview, and started a 3D Model of the board […]
Eagle Parts: INA138 high-side current shunt monitor
We added the INA138 high-side current monitor to our Eagle parts library. This is the part used in the Smoke Tester to read current through a voltmeter. It basically mirrors the current going through its shunt resistor to a load resistor. By playing with these values you can get an easy shunt current to output […]
Precise control of DC motors using an FPGA
Chris wrote extensive documentation on how to implement precise control of DC motors using FPGAs. The goal of this project is to build a simple one input, one output system that will control a motor. The control input will come from a trimpot and the FPGA or CPLD’s job will be to use the input […]
PROTOTYPE PREVIEW: Smoke Tester
Here is the Smoke Tester. It’s a board designed to safely power prototypes for the first time and see if there are shorts. Current can be measured using a voltmeter. Here’s the full feature list. 5V and 3.3v voltage regulators 7V-15V input 3 possible input sources: USB, 2mm DC barrel jack, and screw terminals 3 […]
#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 […]
Program Actel FPGAs with the Bus Blaster using DAT files
Mikelelere modified Actel’s DirectC 2.7 programming utility to support the Bus Blaster. With his modifications you should be able to program Actel’s FPGAs using programinn DAT files. The Bus Blaster is a high-speed JTAG debugger for ARM processors, FPGAs, CPLDs, flash, and more. You can get a Bus Blaster v2 for $34.95 at Seeed. Via […]
Workshop Update for September 24th, 2012
Fixed the website background color, it should look better in some feed readers now. Finalized (more or less) the open hardware USB VID presentation, and made up some kind of poster for the discussion session. Hope to squeak out a mini video yet for Thursday. Today’s 3D model got rendered. We did some fact finding […]
Replace vintage computer hard drives with a CF card
J1mbo updated his XT-CF adaptation of our XT-IDE CPLD board. You can check out his wiki page with all the details about the board, the BOM, and the source files. This board allows vintage XT computers to use CF cards as hard drives, which keeps lots of old industrial and medical equipment going using modern […]
PIC-based game development platforms
FUN BitPack is designed for developing games on Orbit16 PIC24 and PIC32 development boards. It has a Nokia 3310 display, a Joystick, two buttons, and a buzzer: FUN BitPack is suitable for making hand-held videogames such as our “ORbitSnake”, a Snake game version for ORbit16 (see Below). To enter the bootloader with FUN BitPack attached, […]
The Akafugu nixie clock
Here is another open source Nixie clock. It’s built with 3 boards stacked on top of each other. One for the high voltage power-supply, one for the control, and one to hold the nixies in place. Uses an Atmega328P microcontroller with Arduino bootloader and firmware preloaded. The firmware is written in Arduino, and is fully […]
STM32F4 Debug Board in a Sick of Beige case
TitanMKD is designing an STM32F4 based debug board using a DP6037 standard PCB size and a Sick of Beige case. The board features a Bus Pirate-like serial terminal interface. This board is intended to be used as a portable multi-purpose debug/hack tool with very fast peripherals and MCU and use standard Dangerous Prototypes Sick Of […]
App note: Layered isolation with high power digital isolators
Sequentially connecting optocouplers for better isolation slows things way down, digital isolators don’t suffer as much. The advantages of digital isolators over opto-couplers [PDF!] in layered isolation: Creating double insulation barriers with sequential optocouplers is problematic because the data integrity is poor, and there is no compact inexpensive way to provide power to the interface […]
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: A boat load of 5volt to 3.3volt regulation possibilities
A circuit collection of switching and linear 5 volt to 3.3 volt step down regulators. The article has good fundamentals, but it was written in 1993 so keep in mind that some of the information is a bit out of date. This application note contains a collection of 3.3V regulator circuits, each optimized for a […]
App note: Where Is Ground?
Maxim takes a look at the reference point in electronic circuits we commonly call ground: For safety reasons we keep our circuits referenced to our surroundings. In most cases this is earth ground. This application note explains how a proper understanding of local circuit ground as a reference point frees our thinking to consider other […]
App note: Button debouncing with configurable logic cells
A while ago we heard about some new PIC microcontrollers with a tiny bit of integrated logic, a CPLD-lite that can replace a few external logic chips. This app note shows how to make a button debouncer with the peripheral. In this application note, a PIC10F322 is being used to implement a delay block/debouncer. The […]