We’ll be at the Make Tokyo Meeting 07 on December 3 & 4 as guests of tokyohackerspace. Make Meeting is Japan’s version of a Maker Faire. Ian, Sjaak, and Tayken will be hacking at the tokyohackerspace table, please stop by and give us a shout. On one of the days Ian will discuss manufacturing open […]
Author Archives: Ian
Seeed Studio video channel
Seeed Studio has started posting videos. This week they demo the Rainbowduino Cube, a color 3D LED matrix based on the Arduino. Mandarin is spoken, with English in subtitles. This is an idea Eric from Seeed mentioned when were on the subway to NYC Resistor this summer. If you’re learning Mandarin with Adafruit these videos […]
NEW PROTOTYPE: USB & serial LCD backpack
Small character LCDs can show new mail stats, system performance, news feeds, and more. The USB and Serial LCD backpack connects HD44780-compatible character LCD screens to your USB (or serial) port. Almost every open source hardware shop sells some type of serial LCD backpack. Our goal is to build an update to the classic serial […]
Dangerous Prototypes on Google+
Google+ introduced pages for organizations yesterday, you can now add +Dangerous Prototypes to your circle. You may have already added +Ian Lesnet in the past, but it looks like we can’t migrate the accounts.
Dangerous Prototypes source code visualization
See two years of source code development in a 6 minute visualization. Tayken used a script to visualize code development in the Dangerous Prototypes SVN repository at Google Code. Watch for the 2 big reorganizations, one in 2010 and again in 2011. In the beginning there’s a single long-term contributor, but around 2010 the number […]
Open 7400 competition winners
Thank you participating in the Open 7400 Competition. All the entries were amazing, check out the full list here. Four judges, Dave Jones from EEV Blog, Jayson Tautic CEO of TAUTIC ELECTRONICS LLC, Marc Alexander from Freetronics, and Dino Segovis from Hack A Week, and Ian from Dangerous Prototypes each made a top ten list. The […]
Home Camp: Dangerous Prototype’s presentations
Here’s a .zip file with our presentations from Home Camp 4. Day 1: open hardware manufacturing, and day 2: using the Bus Pirate with I2C EEPROMs.
Home Camp: Nanode internet radio
Andrew’s internet radio based on a modified Nanode network platform. An AVR microcontroller uses an ENC28J60 ethernet chip to grab MP3 feeds from the net. Packets are stored in a ring buffer in a 32K serial SRAM chip. The buffer is fed to a VS1033 MP3 decoder chip. All of the chips are controlled from […]
Home Camp: Ciseco energy and control wireless serial links
Ciseco energy and control demonstrated several different wireless serial links based on a CC1110 433MHz radio + 8051 processor chip from TI. The modules can be used for serial communication with an Arduino (or any board), and are capable of over-air remote updates using the standard Arduino bootloader. The project is not yet open source, […]
Home Camp: wireless Open Energy Monitor
Trystan and Glyn from the Open Energy Monitor project presented a 100% open source home energy monitoring platform based on the Nanode. Wireless sensors collect data and send it via radio to a RF->ethernet base station. The base station saves the data to a server, either the Open Energy Monitor’s servers or a self-hosted copy. […]
Home Camp: The Nanode
Ken Boak discussed the Nanode Arduino-based network node. The Nanode is an all through-hole network development board, designed specifically as a home monitoring and automation platform. Firmware built in the Arduino IDE using open source libraries reports statistics to Pachube, a website that shows real-time data from small internet devices. The hardware combines an Arduino […]
Home Camp 4: Summary
Home Camp is an “unconference” held in central London. The goal is to increase environmental sustainability in the home using technology, a mix of closed and open source projects were represented. This weekend we saw first hand what it’s all about. Day 1 stated with a keynote by Moixa Energy about a home solar power […]
7400 Competition: An ‘open source’ open source competition
The open 7400 logic competition is a collaborative, crowd sourced, open source competition. We started with a few prizes, but we crowd sourced our way to 20 sponsors and $1000s of dollars of swag. Judging guidelines, categories, and artwork were contributed by the community. Rules and materials are all open source, use then to get […]
7400 competition: Entries and reader’s choice
Here’s a (hopefully) complete list of entries in the Open 7400 Competition. Please share your favorites in the comments below, your favorites will receive a special reader’s choice prize. Voting ends in 24 hours. A few commenters will receive free PCB codes as a thank you for voting. Check out the list below.
Home Camp 4: Open source green technology meetup
We’ll be at Home Camp 4 in London this weekend. If you’re in the area pick up free tickets now, Home Camp scored a sponsor so now the event is gratis: Home Camp brings together members of the technical community interested in using open systems and low-cost, often repurposed hardware to bring about a positive […]
New 7400 Competition sponsor: Farnell
Farnell is a last minute sponsor of the Open 7400 Logic Competition. They’re donated the flux syringe and springy metal soldering iron cleaner thing we reviewed here on the blog. Get your entry in soon and this and other cool hardware can be yours.
USB IR Toy v2 free PCB build
Bennyboy built a free USB IR Toy PCB. 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. You can get IR Toy v2 for $22.05, including world wide shipping.
CoolRunner-II breakout free PCB build
Schazamp has built a free CoolRunner-II breakout board. He had success building a 8bit binary to 3X4bit decade converter which he will use to drive a 7 segment display via the 74hc4511 driver. If you build a free PCB we’ll send you another one! Blog about it, post a picture on Flicker, whatever – we’ll send […]
Superprobe free PCB build
Freddie sent us a picture of his free Superprobe PCB build. 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 contact form.
Clamshell yaobls case for the Logic sniffer
Dsm posted updates on his “clamshell” yaobls case design for the Logic Sniffer. He is down to prototyping stage and should have a finished case shortly. More awesome DIY cases. Get your own Logic Sniffer for $50, with free worldwide shipping. Via the forum.