Author Archives: DP

Weekly tutorials on the Papilio FPGA development boards

Gadget Factory started a weekly series of tutorials for their Papilio FPGA development boards. First tutorial covers the board’s interface headers. The first topic? How the Papilio Wing Slot scheme works, did you know that you can address the Papilio pins using several different referencing schemes? If you are writing sketches you can address the […]

ITead mystery PCB: High-power RGB LED driver

Schazamp received a few mystery PCBs from Itead’s open PCB service. He contacted the designer of the PCB and got more info about this board, as well as the schematic. It’s a controller for driving two 3 watt RGB leds in series, you need 6 pin RGB leds for this, you can also use it […]

Nook Tablet hardware protection hacked with the Bus Pirate

The Nook Tablet hardware protection was hacked with some help from the Bus Pirate. The Bus Pirate was used as a simple USB to UART bridge so nook hackers can talk directly to onboard ICs and bypass the standard bootloader. The device was released  allowing ADB to be accessed.  Barnes and Nobel quickly patched this […]

Microchip anounces new cross-platform MPLAB XC compilers

Microchip has announced that it will release new cross-platform MPLAB XC C compilers by the end of March. They come in 3 versions depending on PIC family: XC8 is for 8bit, XC16 for 16bit, and XC32 for 32bit microcontrollers. Microchip is releasing MPLAB XC C compilers in the upcoming weeks.  There will be three, one […]

Cadsoft EAGLE scripts to tweak settings and layers

Vimark made some new scripts to make our life easier. We use Cadsoft Eagle a lot and these scrips automate some of the more boring aspects of design. wherelabs_default.scr – scripts changes wire width to 10mil and via shape to round. hide_label_layers.scr – Hide top and bottom part names and part values layers. show_all_top_layers.scr – […]

DorkbotPDX is organizing an SMD soldering workshop

DorkbotPDX, a hackerspace in Portland, is organizing an SMD soldering workshop on the 29th of January. No tools or prior experience is necessary. For $8 you’ll get a kit to assemble in their shop. Learn how to work with surface mount technologies. This workshop is suitable for newcomers to SMT as well as more experienced […]

ITead mystery PCB: Current consumption monitor

Schazamp received a few mystery PCBs from Itead’s open PCB service. He contacted the designer who was kind enough to leave contact information on his PCB. The board is a current consumption monitor: It’s basically a current monitor based off an AtMEGA328, which I am programming using the Arduino bootloader. Really quite simple stuff :) […]

Bus Pirate firmware v6.1 now available

Bus Pirate firmware v6.1 is now available for download. This version fixes a big bug with the SUMP logic analyzer mode, and includes other small updates for hardware v3 and v4. Download release package (most people want this) Download source archive (code, junk, everything) Update instructions Bus Pirate firmware v6.1 changelog: Fixed broken SUMP logic […]

Clamshell “Yet Another Bus Pirate Case” design

Dsm posted updates on his “clamshell” yabp case design for the Bus Pirate v4. Instead of the screws I had been using, this version of the “clamshell” yabp case uses neodymium magnets to hold the top case and bottom case together. This change should make it easier to open and close the case (no lost […]

PIC16F145X: Full-Speed USB with no external crystal

Microchip is about to release the PIC16F145X family of microcontrollers. This little guy is advertised to have Full-Speed USB capability without the need of the usual external oscillator. From the product brief it appears that this uC will use the host USB signal to tune the internal 48 MHz oscillator and comply with the USB […]

Logic Sniffer client version 0.9.5 final released

Jawi released the version 0.95 final of his Logic Sniffer client. It has these updates: Client now also runs on Java 7, but remains backward compatible with Java 6 Fixed issues #82, #81, #79, #77, #76, #75, #74, #70 and #40 Use PureJavacomm as experimental serial library instead of RXTX Major cleanups in Tool/Device API […]

Microchip TQFP-100 breakout board tested

We recently received our Microchip TQFP-100 breakout boards. We tested them with PIC24F and dsPIC33 chips and a “Blink LED” demo firmware. Both chips worked fine. These boards are intended to be breakouts for all Microchip devices that come in TQFP-100 packages (0.4mm pitch, designation PT). These include the PIC24, dsPIC33, and PIC32 families of […]

#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 […]

PIC32 development board giveaway

Olimex is giving away 1000 dev boards at the Embedded World Exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany: If there are developers from Europe on this forum I would like to let them know that Olimex and Microchip will give away 1000 pcs PIC32MX220F032D development boards on Embedded World exhibition. These boards are PINGUINO compatible, and are based […]

Open source soldering iron driver test videos

Arhi made some videos of his open source soldering iron driver tests. SID is capable of driving any soldering iron with RTD or ThermoCouple sensor. In this video I’m testing the HAKKO soldering iron and a HAKKO clone iron made by GORDAK. In the next test he compares the heater/sensor readings to the actual tip […]

Bus Pirate v4 LCD adapter free PCB build

BrentBXR posted a picture of his free Bus Pirate v4 LCD adapter PCB build. The LCD adapter lets you test HD44780 comparable LCDs without any extra parts. 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 […]