Author Archives: Ian

Scripting Bluetooth on Android

Brian writes: I have just finished writing up info on an Android application I am calling BlueScripts along with a demo embedded application BlueZigbee for the Eridani development board. Many embedded system applications need simple message communications between two devices of a repetitive nature. Good examples are any remote control application. These types of of […]

Thermal Tweeter fail, that’s all folks @dangerousproto

It looks like Thermal Tweeter has come to an end. After 15 rolls of paper the printing is light and the paper isn’t feeding properly. We tried adding some extra delays in the software, but even at 4 seconds delay per line the problems still happen. It’s supposed to have a life of 30 miles […]

Protostack dev-board and programmer winner

Today we announce the winner of the Protostack ATmega168A development board and USBasp programmer. There were lots of great project ideas. Congratulations to oakkar7, his idea is to construct a digital signal generator with a key pad and LCD based on the AVR DSS: AVR DDS signal generator V2.0 is a firmware based DDS signal […]

Plunify online FPGA compiler conference call

MP3 download Plunify is an online compiler for Altera and Xilinx CPLDs/FPGAs. The developers’ goal is to build an interface to instant license and computer resources for large FPGA projects. Download the MP3 to hear more about their start-up and some of the difficulties they face with compiler licensing. We’re interested in Plunify because it […]

Dangerous Prototypes has never and will never show ads, period

My name is Heather and I am a Marketing Administrator for (removed). We have a client that may be interested in advertising on your site dangerousprototypes.com. Is there a good person to contact about options and rates? There’s ads on the web? Dangerous Prototypes has never displayed ads or participated in paid referral programs, and we […]

Thermal Tweeter wins Adafruit/Instructables challenge!

Thank you for sending tweets and voting the Thermal Tweeter to first place in the Adafruit/Instructables Make It Tweet Challenge! There were so many great entries, congratulations to everyone who entered for making a great project! A special thanks to Sjaak for the original idea, and for allowing his printer to be tortured for a […]

Touchstone TS1001 op-amp demo board unboxing

Touchstone Semi sent a demo board for the record-breaking, low power, low voltage TS1001 op-amp. We covered their design competition earlier. The demo board has a complete support circuit so the parts are ready to evaluate.  It’s populated with two TS1001 op-amps, in inverting and non-inverting configurations. Attention component manufacturers: this is how to sample […]

Dangerous Prototypes: Interview with HotHardware

HotHardware has an interview with Dangerous Prototypes: Dangerous Prototypes is a two-year old organization with the stated mission of producing “one new open source project every month.” In its nearly two years in existence, DP has created about 30 projects, such as the Flash Destroyer. All are being sold by another interesting company, Seeed Studio. […]

Partlist Wednesday: Ceramic capacitors

Every Wednesday we highlight a component from the updated partlist. This week: surface mount ceramic capacitors. Ceramic capacitors are cheaper than aluminum and tantalum SMD caps, but come in smaller values. Typical values are in the pF to 1uF range, but we’ve noticed some 2uF+ ceramic caps at Mouser recently. Most have a maximum rating […]

Dangerous Prototypes: Interview with EDN

EDN published the first-ever article about Dangerous Prototypes. Open-source hardware suits kitchen-table start-up: Seeed Studio noticed an untapped need in the United States from engineers who have good ideas but lack the know-how and capital to start a production line. Seeed Studio’s first partner is Ian Lesnet, whose protocol debugger, Bus Pirate, became the first […]

Boldport flow: Makefiles for FPGA projects

  saardrimer writes: ‘boldport flow’ is a web-based tool that allows you to easily generate a build environment for your FPGA projects and run them on your machine. At its current form, it’s a Makefile generator with a web-based front end (now supporting Xilinx, FPGAs, and Linux). The “theory” behind the structure boldport uses is […]