Philipp Stenkamp wanted to power his Stellaris Launchpad with a spare LiPo battery, but found as shipped this wasn’t a plug-and-play operation. “The Launchpad expects 4.75-5.25 VDC on VBUS, nothing that a single cell LiPo could provide. I know that the system voltage is 3.3 VDC and that the voltage regulator on the board has […]
Author Archives: the machinegeek
Bus Pirate and DS1307 realtime clock interface
jokkebk from Code and Life wrote this short how-to on interfacing the Bus Pirate to communicate with the DS1307 realtime clock. A good description showing beginners how to connect a BP to components or breakout boards and establish communications quickly and easily. Want to simplify hardware hacking? Get your own Bus Pirate for about $30.
freeSoC PSoC dev board
The freeSoC is a Programmable System on Chip (PSoC) based development board currently being developed by Jon Moeller, a student at Texas A & M University. Freesoc uses the PSoC5 chip from Cypress Semiconductors, which is supported by their free, full-featured PSoC Creator IDE. These programmable logic devices are really amazing and are definitely worth […]
BSP430 – board support package for MSP430 MCUs
Peter(pabigot), the maintainer for mspgcc, has released BPS430, a board support package for MSP430 MCUs. “BSP430 is a set of C language adaptation layers simplifying cross-MCU library and application development on Texas Instruments MSP430 microcontrollers. The target audience is experienced embedded systems developers who need full control over the microcontroller but are willing to trade […]
The LED turns 50!
This month the venerable LED turns 50! The LED started life in October 1962 in a General Electric research lab in New York state and has progressed from the good ‘ol standby red to a multitude of colors today. You can view a short video by the LED’s inventor chronicling the device’s history on the […]
Puzzler: design an incandescent/LED headlamp differentiator
Noted electronics writer Forrest M. Mims, III, has proposed a puzzler. How would you design a passive, automatic sensor to accurately tell the difference between LED and incandescent headlights when viewing the light from a distance? Check out his puzzler page at Jameco and read his fictional scenario requiring such a device and possible solutions.
Reverse engineered layout of tiny TL-WR703N router
Squonk informs us that he’s reverse engineered the layout of the small TP-Link TL-WR703N 802.11n WiFi router using EagleCad. He writes: “Unlike what it is marketed for, the TP-LINK TL-WR703N is not a “3G travel router”: it does not include a 3G modem at all, it simply means that the firmware support external USB 3G […]
ARM board comparison chart
Avishay had been looking at several different ARM boards and wanted to find a comprehensive list of inexpensive boards. After viewing several lists which didn’t provide what he was looking for, he assembled this list of his own. It’s in tabular form, making it easy to compare board characteristics, and covers boards based on an […]
ActiviTea – physical data-scraping in action
The crew from Imagination Labs wanted to track the number of cups of tea consumed at their office. They designed Activitea, a project incorporating a series of sensors placed throughout the London Imagination office that count the cups of hot drinks made in every kitchen. “The prototype consists of 3 objects: 1. A ‘tea counter’ […]
BrewPi open source brewing controller
Here’s an interesting project to automate your home beermaking process. “BrewPi is an open source fermentation controller that runs on an Arduino (for now) and a Raspberry Pi. It can control your beer temperature with 0.1 degree precision, log temperature data in nice graphs and is fully configurable from a web interface.” The Arduino is […]
Bus Pirate and plasma TV parts
Miceuz discovered a plasma TV by the dumpster and used the BASIC interpreter on the Bus Pirate to play with some of the components cannibalized from inside. Above he shows the BP connected to a 6-LED indicator with a M62320FP chip and an I/O port expander for I2C. You can find more pictures and miceuz’s […]
Open source Bluetooth module firmware
Paul Sokolovsky developed a proof-of-concept open source firmware for common Bluetooth modules based on the CSR BlueCore4 cheapset. “BlueCore4-Ext is a popular Bluetooth chip used in many Bluetooth modules, some priced below $10. The idea is to create Wireless Sensor/Control Network using these modules, as Bluetooth is really ubiquitous technology nowadays, so any smartphone can […]
Hacking USB webkeys with Bus Pirate
Brad Antoniewicz has been exploring USB webkeys, the dongle devices used as marketing tools which guide Windows users to a seller’s webpage when plugged into the USB port. Essentially, webkeys function as a USB HID, emulate a keyboard and send commands stored in EEPROM to the host PC. Brad explored his webkey’s EEPROM using the […]
Earthmake debuts ArduinoLCD
Earthmake has announced the release of the ArduinoLCD, a combination Arduino UNO board and ezLCD into a single product capable of accepting all Arduino compatible shields. The ezLCD is a 3.5″ TFT color LCD with 320 x 240 resolution and 65k colors. The combo may be programmed using the Arduino IDE and the Arduino ezLCD […]
RIM hands out Arduinos at BlackBerry conference
At the recent BlackBerry Jam Americas conference, developers who filled out a survey about their experience at the conference were given Arduino boards for open source prototyping. The wireless device manufacturer handed out Arduino Uno boards with the hope of generating interest among third-party developers in developing coupled hardware and software solutions potentially with BlackBerry […]
Easy to build spirit detector
Halloween is just a few weeks away so why not be prepared with your own easy to build spirit detector! The simple circuit described in this post by fritsl from Let’s Make Robots uses only three BC517 transistors and three resistors connected to an LED, antenna and 6-volt power source to build a device capable […]
Imagination Labs #SMWsocialobjects Arduino badge
Jack Chalkey, Creative Technologist with Imagination Labs, has posted an outline of their Arduino based project for Social Media Week. The project was conceived by several lab members who returned from EMFcamp 2012 with some tech and an idea for badges. “The tech was badges (more like lanyards) with an onboard Arduino Leonardo, RF module, […]
PCB manufacture using Oracal vinyl film + laser printer
Drones refers us to this short but informative video demonstrating the manufacture of PCBs using a laser printer and vinyl stickers. He notes that the video shows laser printed toner being 100% transferred to a PCB using Oracal brand 651 adhesive vinyl film which is relatively inexpensive and widely available from online distributors and and […]
LED heart using PWM fading
With grandma’s birthday fast approaching Chris from Pyroelectro decided to combine fading LEDs and a heart to He writes: “The concept for this small birthday present was to create a small heart shape with red LEDs and then to draw a heart shape underneath it on the PCB as a backdrop. Then a small processor […]
Freescale debuts Kinetis L Series Freedom development platform
Freescale has inroduced their Freedom development board. The FRDM-KL25Z platform is enabled by Kinetis L Series KL1 and KL2 MCUs families built on ARM Cortex-M0+ processor. The board includes the MKL25Z128VLK4 MCU running at 48 MHz with 128 KB flash, 16 KB SRAM, USB OTG (FS), capacitive touch “slider,” MMA8451Q accelerometer and tri-color LED. The […]