Author Archives: DP

Weller RT type tip teardown and reverse engineering

Raj has been designing a soldering station that would support Weller’s RT type tips with temperature sensor and heater built into them. A stereo-type jack on the iron connects them to the soldering station cable. So far Raj has reverse engineered the pinout of the jack and how to read the temperature. The tip has […]

PCB ecthing at home using photo transfer method

Blondihacks wrote an in-depth tutorial on how to make PCBs made at home using pre-sensatived photo-PCBs. We especially liked the board design optimization for home etching tips. Wide traces, big vias, and using a ground plane are all strategies we use to get good DIY photo-transfer PCBs too. DIY etching is the fastest way to […]

SignalTap II integrates a logic analyser into your Altera FPGA projects

SignalTap II is a tool that embeds a logic analyzer into your FPGA project so you can see what is happening in the design. Kiran made a video tutorial on the basics using Altera’s Quartus II IDE. The advantage is that, there are no need to connect any wire or probe to the circuit. Every signal […]

3D printed wire stripper with a wire contact indicator

Bjbsquared designed a wire stripper tool with a LED indicator that flashes when contact with the wires is made. To built it you’ll need to get the model laser cut from acrylic or 3D printed. This is one of the best wire strippers I have ever used. If setup correctly, it can be very precise […]

App note: Designing the oscilator circuit for PIC microcontrollers

Here is an app note from Microchip describing how to design oscillator circuits for your PIC projects. The article advises designers to think about the conditions the project will be used in and design their oscillator circuits accordingly. Also provided are examples how to test and tweak the oscillator circuit to get the best result. […]

App note: Using hardware SPI on XMEGA microcontrollers

Here is an app note from Atmel describing hoe to use the SPI module on their XMEGA microcontrollers. Also provided are source code examples for implementing both interrupt driven SPI communication and the polled method for slave and master devices. SPI is a full duplex interface, and at a low cost enabling high-speed communication between […]

App note: Implementing a 9-axis sensor fussion on the MSP430F5xx using the Direct Cosine Matrix algorithm

Here is an app note from Texas Instruments explaining how to implement the Direct Cosine Matrix algorithm on a MSP430F5xx to integrate date form 3 sensors. A magnetometer, gyroscope, and a an accelerometer were integrated to provide a 9-axis sensor. When creating an AHRS, also known as Magnetic, Angular Rate, and Gravity sensor (MARG), a […]

Review of the Hakko FX-888 soldering station

John reviews the Hakko FX-888 soldering station. It’s the latest iteration of one of the most cloned soldering stations, the Hakko 936. The stations are simple and sturdy, with a wide selection of tips. The tips are backward and forward compatible, 900M tips fit the FX-888 and the T-18 tips fit older 936 stations. Although […]

Week in (p)review: February 24, 2012

Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week. Free PCB Friday is coming up soon: HOW-TO VIDEO: Visit Akihabara Electric Town SOIC protoboard in this week’s status update post 3D Model: Bus Blaster v2.0a1 Altera MAX3000A CPLD breakout board, MCP2200 breakout board, USB LCD Backpack PIC18F24J50, USB IR Toy and 23K256 breakout board free PCB built Review […]

DIY Magnetic rotary encoder with AS5043

Sebastian would like to build a high-res 3D printer, and to this end he needs a precise way to ascertain the exact positions of various moving parts. Instead of buying an expensive stepper motors he decided to build a magnetic rotary sensor with which he could calculate the distance traveled. By placing a neodymium magnet […]

FT232BL USB to serial breakout board

Dchcaracter built a breakout board for the common FT232BL USB to UART IC. Most hardware sellers have one in the $10-$15 range. He released his design files in the forum. The board has the following features: Jumper-selected slave scheme voltage: 5V or 3,3V (50mA max) RTS is out (with a wire cut, can be changed […]

Altera MAX3000A CPLD breakout board free PCB built

Pietja built a free Altera MAX3000A CPLD breakout board. These CPLDs come with 64 macro-cells running up to 200 MHz. If you build a free PCB we’ll send you another one! Blog about it, post a picture on Flicker, whatever – we’ll send you a coupon code for the free PCB drawer. Via the forum. […]

Open source HDD POV clock

Jason designed a persistence of vision hard drive clock. He etched numbers on a copper disk and added 8 LEDs below it. Each LED represents a character on the display and blinks when the corresponding digit passes over it. His project is Arduino-based, and the project files can be downloaded from GitHub. My replacement platter  was cut […]