Nashith rescued his Intel D945GCLF board using the Bus Pirate and flashrom: Got myself a locked out PC a few years ago, boot restrictions done via bios. Stumbled upon Bus pirate and Flashrom and decided to give it a go. Seaboot works great and flashing the bios with the bus pirate worked on first try. […]
Author Archives: DP
Sine waving into the New Year!
A RC Wien Bridge oscillator outputs a pure sine wave. The frequency depends on the resistor-capacitor combination in the oscillator. Embedded Eric built one using instructions from “Analog Circuit Design“: I have been slowly reading through Jim Williams “Analog Circuit Design” book. Not slowly because it is boring, it is actually very interesting and a […]
Open hardware multimeter concept
EEVblog has a video about DIY multimeters. A few months ago the EEVblog forum talked about designing their own multimeter, so Dave made a video about his ideas on the subject. We’ve also toyed with the idea of an open source digital multimeter, but ready-made devices are so cheap and ubiquitous it hasn’t become a […]
Precision function generator tear-down
Hak8or tore open a function generator and posted the pics for our enjoyment. Check them out in the forum.
Read and write 13.56 MHz RFID cards
Read and write 13.56 MHz RFID cards with OpenPCD: OpenPCD is a free hardware design for Proximity Coupling Devices (PCD) based on 13,56MHz communication. This device is able to screen informations from Proximity Integrated Circuit Cards (PICC) conforming to vendor-independent standards such as ISO 14443, ISO 15693 as well as proprietary protocols such as Mifare […]
Little Wire – Minimal AVR programmer update
Ihsan made some updates to his Little Wire project. In order to reach more people out there , i wrote a Processing library for the Little-Wire. It’s still in progress but i’m uploading an example Analog voltage plotting program screenshot that i tested. I used mainly two sources to achive this library. Here is one. […]
LM311 oscillator based LC meter
This is a simple inductor and capacitor measurement tool. The part to test is connected to an oscillator circuit, and the frequency of oscillation corresponds to the value of the capacitor. All I do is use the LM311 square wave output as pulses to a 16bit counter, and another 100mS periodic timer to count how […]
A non-copyright circumventing application of the HDCP master key
A non-copyright circumventing application of the HDCP master key: A man-in-the-middle attack on HDCP-secured video links is demonstrated. The attack is implemented on an embedded Linux platform, with the help of a Spartan-6 FPGA, and is capable of operating real-time on HD video links. It utilizes the HDCP master key to derive the corresponding private […]
Comments seem to be down on some posts
Our apologies, there is an an unknown error commenting on the workshop video post and some other posts (such as this one). We narrowed the error down and can hack around it for now. This post has the error and is left for testing. Sorry for the junky front page. We’ll try to get it […]
Infrared thermopile sensor TMP006 breakout free PCB build
Pietja posted pictures of his free Infrared thermopile sensor TMP006 breakout board build. This is a non-contact temperature sensor from TI, we looked at the dev board previously. Unlike us, Pietja successfully soldered both boards. If you build a free PCB we’ll send you another one! Blog about it, post a picture on Flicker, whatever […]
tehoLogistics component inventory tracking app
teho Labs’ logistics app tracks part inventory. It can import Mouser, Digikey, and Arrow invoices to track stock. Board part lists are imported to update the inventory as stuff gets used up. The app is multiplatform and written in Java: I have released a program called tehoLogistics which is for managing production of the boards […]
#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 […]
Boost converter shield for PIC programming with the Bus Pirate v4
The Bus Pirate can program a few PIC 18FxxJxx, 24F, and dsPIC33 chips directly. Older PIC 12F/16F/18F need a 13volt supply to jolt them into programming mode. Bus Pirate v3 already has a prototype high-voltage programming adapter, 100 beta units are in production now and should be available in a month or so. Tayken has […]
CPLD development boards back in stock
CoolRunner-II XC2C64A CPLD development boards are back in stock at Seeed Studio. Get the CoolRunner-II development board for $15 and XC9572XL dev-board for $15.
App note: Op-amp/comparator module for dsPIC
Some dsPIC33E and PIC24E microcontrollers have an comparator module that can function as an op-amp [PDF]. The module can be used as a simple non-inverting amplifier by adding two external resistors, no external op-amp chip needed. The output can be read internally by the ADC module, or routed externally to use in your circuit.
App note: Understanding and preventing LED Failure
When using LEDs in projects it’s good to know what could cause their failure, and design your device to prevent it: LEDs have a well-deserved reputation for high-efficiency operation, not to mention high reliability. Properly specified and implemented, LEDs should and do satisfy virtually every lighting application. Still, there are times when actual device lifetimes […]
Flower 2.2 Arduino Mega protoboard shield
Wortelsoft has a review of the Flower 2.2 protoboard shield for Arduino Mega. It has a unique solder pad that can be used with surface mount parts, and a via in each cluster of contacts can be used with through hole parts. The Flower protoboard is a clever new design which makes it easy so […]
Free PCB Sunday: New Year 2012 edition
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. Would you like to start off […]
ITead mystery PCB: TFT digital picture frame by Erick Aubin
Arhi received a mystery PCB with his last ITead PCB order: TFT digital picture frame with in built Real-Time clock and thermometer Designed by: Erick Aubin I assume B1 is a big capacitor, something like 22000uF or similar (judging from the size), USB-BUB is some ft232 or similar usb 2 uart board, x1 is some […]
App note: Interfacing 4/5/8 wire resisitve touch screens
Resistive touch screens are pretty cheap, and make it easy to interface with device without placing a lot of buttons. This app note describes how to interface with 4, 5, and 8 wire resistive touch screens on your next project. All analog touch screens consist of a ridged layer and a flexible layer with a […]