Author Archives: Ian

Free PCB Sunday: through-hole Infrared Toy

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 professionally-made PCBs from one of our past or future projects, or a related prototype. Our PCBs are made through Seeed Studio’s Fusion board service. An all through-hole version of […]

Week in (p)review: September 12, 2010

Here’s some highlights from the past week, in case you missed them: An EventGhost plugin for the USB IR Toy The final USB LCD backpack design was posted A PIC programming tutorial An updated Bus Pirate v4 design is in the forum for review Software is in development for the LCD backpack Discussion continues on […]

XT IDE disk controller for vintage computers

XTIDE is an open source IDE disk controller for old XT computers that only have 8bit ISA expansion slots.  The Vintage Computer Forum designed this controller so their retro gear could keep rolling with modern IDE storage like harddrives and compact flash cards. Most of the ICs are simple 7400 series logic chips. They cut […]

Alternative Logic Sniffer client v0.8.4

Jawi just released version 0.8.4 of the forked SUMP logic analyzer client that works with the Logic Sniffer. Here’s the changelog: Updated zoom behaviour to zoom “dead center” Added additional toolbar button cancel a capture of the OLS All decoder tools now annotate the capture data with their decoding results All user settings are now […]

Programming PICs with a programmer

A new tutorial covers the basics of programming a PIC with a PIC programmer supported by MPLAB, like a PICkit or ICD. This frequently-requested tutorial is geared towards programming the bootloader into a project like the Bus Pirate. Bootloaders make it easy to upgrade firmware without dragging out (or owning) a programmer. Just activate the […]

EventGhost plugin for the IR Toy

EventGhost now supports the USB IR Toy directly via a new plugin, download it here. EventGhost is an open source program that converts remote control signals to actions on a computer. The IR Toy already works with EventGhost in IRman-compatible mode and with the WinLIRC plugin, providing home theater enthusiasts a powerful way to map […]

Free PCB Sunday: USB RGB color changer

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 professionally-made PCBs from one of our past or future projects, or a related prototype. This is a USB controlled RGB color changing light. Someone made some minor modifications to […]

Week in (p)review: September 5, 2010

Here’s some highlights from the past week, in case you missed them: USB Infrared Toy firmware v07 with bug fixes Updated WinLIRC plugin supports transmitting with the IR Toy SparkFun has the Logic Sniffer in stock. Thanks for helping us raise awareness of this open source project Honken demoed the first open source USB stack […]

Computer controlled power supply update

The computer controlled power supply being developed in the forum is progressing nicely. We got a big boost when Fenugrec posted a few circuit simulations based on a common commercial power supply typology. The simulated circuit is now available as an Eagle Schematic. We also transcribed the “Dave sink” constant current load from DaveCAD to […]