Began plotting the Box of Nixies project. This is the nixie socket holder board for IN12s and IV22s (yes, VFDs actually). A universal driver board will sit behind it and all the other various nixie holders. Boards will probably go out today or tomorrow. Started cataloging workshop videos on a new wiki page. Episodes now […]
Author Archives: DP
Temperature and relative humidity logger with the chipKIT Uno32
Here is another chipKIT Uno32 tutorial on a PC-based temperature, and humidity logger. The examples are simple enough for electronics novices to get started. This project is about building a PC-based temperature and relative humidity logger using the chipKIT Uno32 board and the DHT11 sensor. The project setup requires no additional wires (other than the […]
Stellaris LaunchPad is another cheapie dev-board to get you hooked
Texas Instruments is set to release a LaunchPad development board for their Stellaris Cortex M4 based DSPs. The release date is set for 25th of September. If your register on their site, you’ll have the ability to pre-order these boards for $5. The cheapie dev-boards just keep on coming.
Electromagnetic Field Camp UK update
An update from the organizers of EMF Camp: We’ve got a lot more information about the festival up now on the site and wiki – there’s a rapidly-expanding and fascinating list of talks and workshops, and we’ve revealed our lovely camp badge which all campers will get for free. As well as being Arduino-compatible (including […]
FT245RL IC testing software
Qubbeks made a piece of software that lets you play with the FT245R USB to IO IC. It gives you an easy way to interface with electronics. Each pin can be both input and output, thus giving you 8 digital channels to interface with. Via Electronics Lab.
Workshop Update for August 21st, 2012
With about a month until Maker Faire New York we’re scrambling to get things together. We’ve contacted some shops about showing up for a tour today. A few bugs in the IR Toy code were isolated. Squashing will continue on Friday. We’re also considering building a huge nixie thing with all the tubes sitting around. […]
#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 design toolkit update
Here’s an update on the PCB design toolkit we posted about earlier: Saturn PCB Design Toolkit Version 5.8 including the new IPC-2152 Update! Changed the formula for Sr in the IPC-2251 Method of the Bandwidth Calculator IPC-2251 stated formula is in error More work to come on the Signal Properties calculator Added Alron 85N to […]
Power a microcontroller with frickin laser beams
A cheap laser pointer shining into an LED can create small voltages, the photovoltaic effect. Wardy uses it to power an ultra low power ATTiny5 microcontroller: I may have raised an eyebrow slightly to see 2.50V appear on the screen. Hmmmmmm. I had been expecting something like 0.25V or something in that region, based on […]
Web browser Arduino interface tutorial
Luca wrote another tutorial on interfacing the Arduino with a ENC28J60 Ethernet controller. This tutorial covers how to control an Arduino through a web browser. This is his 7th tutorial in the ENC28J60 series, if you are interested in Arduino web interfaces check out the earlier tutorials as well. When I published my first example about using […]
Workshop Update for August 20th, 2012
Today we evaluated a bunch of new project designs, and started on the 7400 Contest mini site. There will be an official announcement soon, but we can reveal there is already one really exciting sponsor on board. Time to book hotels and plan any eating challenges for the Open Hardware Summit and Maker Faire in […]
Energia: Arduino like IDE for MSP430 MCUs
Energia is a fork of Arduino’s Processing IDE for TI’s MSP430 microcontrollers. Support is also expected for the Olimexino-5510, a TMS430F5510 Arduino like development board. Via the contact form. Thanks Uwe!
Perfectly spaced circular layout in Eagle
Mats shared his method of aligning, and positioning all the LEDs on his clock in a perfect circle. He wrote an online PHP script that outputs Eagle commands that position, and rotate the LEDs depending on the parameters you enter into it. I have written a php script that generates a bunch of moves and […]
Simple input devices source and examples
Need a way to sense or measure something? This list of simple input devices has source and examples for capacitive sensors, PS2 scroll mouse, PS2 keyboard, push-buttons, and resistive touchscreens. Via the forum
App note: Understanding microphone sensitivity
Analog Devices discusses the sensitivity of analog and digital microphones. Sensitivity, the ratio of the analog output voltage or digital output value to the input pressure, is a key specification of any microphone. Mapping units in the acoustic domain to units in the electrical domain determines the magnitude of the microphone output signal, given a […]
App note: Ceramic input capacitors can cause overvoltage transients
This app note from Linear Technology describes why ceramic capacitors aren’t an ideal replacement for tantalum based caps. The higher internal inductance of ceramic capacitors creates high voltage spikes: Applying a voltage step to a ceramic capacitor causes a large current surge that stores energy in the inductances of the power leads. A large voltage […]
App note: Theory behind the CMOS analog switches
Maxim has a tutorial describing the theory behind CMOS analog switches, and tips for selecting the right ones for your projects. This tutorial presents the theoretical basis for analog switches and describes some common applications for them. The special features of calibration multiplexers (cal-muxes), fault-protected switches, and force-sense switches are discussed as well.
App note: Using PIC32s with wireless data and navigation equipment
Microchip covers how to use PIC32s with GSM/GPRS/GPS wireless data and navigation systems. It uses their Machine to Machine board with a GSM/GPRS/GPS communication module: [Machine-to-Machine] uses a device to capture an event, which is then relayed through a network to an application that translates the event into meaningful information. A common application of M2M […]
Workshop Update for August 17th, 2012
Today we worked on Bus pirate v4 firmware, cut some video for next week, and started cleaning the workshop. Sjaak’s gift from our recent food crawl disappeared into the morass. Update: found it! Also – hating on the Facebook push plugin. It’s our fault for misconfiguring it. There’s a ton of options across all our user […]
Intervalometer turns on the air conditioning at night automatically
Matseng designed an IR remote control intervalometer. He got tired of waking up and turning on his air conditioner during the night, so he built a project to do it for him. The device sends on/off IR codes to the air conditioner, controlling it at set intervals. He designed it on our DP7043 standard PCB template, […]