Florin made a head to head comparison of Seeed and ITead’s inexpensive PCB services. He made the orders with the same design files, on the same day. While the Seeed order came in after 4 weeks, ITead’s came just 15 days after the order was made. The author however suspects it might have been a […]
Author Archives: DP
Hack: Fit an Arduino on a breadboard
Here is simple hack that allows you to use a breadboad with the Arduino. Alex simply bent the Arduino’s digital IO header so it would fit the standard 0.1” pitch of breadboards. Via the forum.
Workshop Update for July 24th, 2012
We ordered a new batch of stickers for the Singapore Maker Faire. An order of Sick of Beige cases came from Seeed today, so we started preparing for the casing workshop video early. We continued the case designs for the Bus Blaster v3, and the Part Ninja. The Bus Blaster case is complete, while with […]
Eagle Parts: Serial 1.8” TFT and 2×10 shrouded header update
Lately we’re playing around with a 1.8” serial interface TFT which can be bought from eBay for ~$6. We added it to our Eagle part library. We also found some errors on the standard Eagle footprint for 2×10 shrouded headers we use in the Bus Blaster v3. Image of the new, fixed shrouded header’s footprint, […]
GIVEAWAY: MSP430 LaunchPad
This week we’re giving away an MSP430 LaunchPad! We’ve amassed a couple of these as freebies, now one of them can be yours. Leave a comment on this post with a project idea, and this board could be yours on Thursday.
#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 […]
AltOR32: An OpenRISC CPU for small FPGAs
Ultra-Embedded designed a soft core 32bit openRISC CPU with basic ISA functionality for small FPGAs. It fits on the Spartan 3 featured on the Papilio One 250k development board, and comes in pipelined and multi-cycle versions. AltOR32 is an OpenRISC 1000 architecture derived RISC CPU targeted at small FPGAs and contains only the most basic […]
Arduino task scheduler
Brad shared an Arduino library he wrote schedules when specific functions will be executed. The code is open source and available on github. This library allows you to create a schedule queue of functions to be executed at specified times, on specified intervals. For example, say you’re trying to log some sensor data and update […]
Workshop Update for July 23rd, 2012
Tickets are booked for the Singapore Maker Faire August 4 and 5. Ian will give a presentation at the Singapore Hackerspace on Friday around 5:30 before the regular pizza and beer night. We’ll have videos of Singapore’s electronics shops, the Hackerspace, Maker Faire, and more. Bus Blaster v3 and v4 prototype boards arrived and will […]
Library for OLED displays using SSD1306 chipset
Library for OLED displays based on the SSD1306 chipset. It was developed for the PIC32 and PIC24 microcontrollers used on the ORbit16 development boards, but it should be easy to port any PIC24/32 project. I’ve uploaded a new library and a new demo for using the OLED display on ORbit16™. The kind of display used […]
One wire control of HD44780 LCDs
Does the minimum 6 pins needed to control an LCD give your little microcontroller a sad? In the forum we’re discussing low pin-count control methods for common HD44780 parallel displays. This one uses is a simple serial UART adapter similar to our USB and Serial LCD backpack: Here’s a reasonably economical 1-pin Serial interface solution. […]
EJTAGproxy: Use your PicKIT2 or PicKIT3 to connect PIC32s to the GNU Debugger
SergeV let us know about EJTAGproxy, a command line utility, that lets your PicKIT2 or PicKit3 act as a JTAG debugger for PIC32 MCUs. It’s a command-line utility, which connects GDB to ICSP port of pic32 via pickit2 or pickit3 scripting edition. A standard GDB remote serial protocol is implemented. It also can be used […]
App note: Common IC interface problems
A somewhat humorous app note describing the common IC interface protocols like I2C, SPI, and GPIO. Also covered are some problem with these interfaces that turn happy faces to sad. How can an interface change a happy face to a sad face? Engineers have happy faces when an interface works properly. Sad faces indicate failure […]
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: Bridge circuits
Another app note from Jim Williams and Linear Technology [PDF!], describing various bridge circuits. Bridges described here are mostly made of passive components, and should not be confused with bridge motor drivers. Bridge circuits are among the most elemental and powerful electrical tools. They are found in measurement, switching, oscillator and transducer circuits. Additionally, bridge […]
App note: Improving USB system reliability with transient suppressors
Adding transient suppressors to USB devices [PDF!] can help prevent damage from static discharge. This is important because USB devices are handled without protection, carried in pockets, tossed in bags, etc. Because frequent human interaction with the USB system occurs as a result of its attractive hot-plugging ability, there is the possibility for large ESD […]
App note: Graphic displays with the PIC32
Pretty user interfaces with a PIC 32: As the demand for Graphical Embedded Applications becomes more popular, so does the need for developing cost effective solutions. Many companies today offer solutions involving an additional internal or external graphics controller as part of a system, which may result in higher costs and more complicated designs. In […]
Workshop Update for July 20th, 2012
We’re committed to Maker Faire Singapore now, so suddenly there’s a ton of planning and connections to make. Thanks to everyone who wrote in so far to let us know you’ll be there, there could be five or more people on the electronics tour. A draft of the laser cutting guide for Sick of Beige […]
USB POV Toy free PCB build
Here’s one you don’t see often. Matseng built a free USB POV Toy PCB. These almost never get built due to the challenging QFN chip. The POV Toy is a hand-held persistence of vision toy that can be updated over USB. Check out our workshop video about the latest developments on this project. If you […]
Olimex discounts for open source developers
Long time reader IPenguin let us know Olimex started the OLinuXino open source developer discount initiative. Basically you develop open source software for their OLinuXino Linux boards, and they give you a 15-50% discount code: What are the requirements? An open Source project based on a OLinuXino board. The project has to be published somewhere, […]