A Bus Pirate tutorial is now available in Chinese. A big thanks to Canghaiwuhen! We’ll get this moved to the wiki soon. All translations are appreciated.
Category Archives: how-to
Workshop videos roundup
Here’s a list of the videos we’ve posted in the last few months. More are on the way. Our goal isn’t to replace written content. Videos don’t get indexed by search engines, and you can’t print it out and take it to your workbench. We just want to show what’s going on in the workshop, […]
Hand soldering a BGA using the SchmartBoard|ez
Ball Grid Array chips have multiple rows of contacts under the chip. These are difficult to solder by hand, as we found out when Sjaak tried to solder a TMP006. Zeta tipped us to this video of hand soldering a 400 pin BGA chip to a SchmartBoard breakout. The breakout board has a via under […]
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 […]
Connect multiple tact switches to a single microcontroller pin
How to get input from multiple tact switches with a single input pin: A technique of interfacing multiple tact switches using a single ADC input pin was demonstrated using the PIC12F683 microcontroller. A digital input from four tact switches were individually read through the AN0 ADC channel and displayed it back on an LED. While […]
Nokia 1100 LCD interfacing with a microcontroller
Circuitvalley posted a step by step guide to interfacing Nokia 1100 LCDs with a microcontroller. Via the comments.
Connecting Arduino to Mathematica on Mac OS X
Mathematica is a comprehensive computational platform that purports to automate workflow involving computing results, “from building a hedge fund trading website or publishing interactive engineering textbooks to developing embedded image recognition algorithms or teaching calculus.” (It’s not open source, but a hobbyist license is available.) William J. Turkel teaches a course on interactive exhibit design […]
Build a digital spirit level using SCA610 accelerometer
A spirit level is an “an instrument designed to indicate whether a surface is horizontal (level) or vertical (plumb).” Here’s a demo by Shawon Shahryiar of an electronic spirit level made using a Microchip PIC16F684, a SCA610 accelerometer and a handful of other discrete components. Shawon writes, “This project used a one-axis accelerometer chip and […]
TI Launchpad plays Bad Apple
Simpleavr writes to inform us of his project using the TI Launchpad to play “bad apple” on a Nokia 5110 LCD breakout. This was his entry into the 43Oh project of the month contest. He notes that the Launchpad can also play Nyan cat but at a barely recognizable 1 bit color. Nevertheless, the bad […]
Rescuing an ArduinoBT board with the Bus Pirate
Rohit de Sa has used the Bus Pirate with STK500v2 firmware to rescue a damaged ArduinoBT board. A few days ago I help a friend recover his ArduinoBT board. He had somehow managed to mess up the Bluetooth bootloader on the Arduino, and with wireless comms being the only way to program the board, he […]
0-99 minute timer
Raj decided to make a tutorial on how to implement a 0-99 minute timer on a PIC16F628A microcontroller. His design uses a HD44780 compatible 2×16 text LCD, to setup and display the count-down timer. One pin of the PIC should be used to drive a relay, but for testing purposes Raj used a LED instead […]
Soldering the Bus Pirate v4
Watch us solder the Bus Pirate v4. The Bus Pirate is an open source hacker multi-tool that talks to electronic stuff. For a comprehensive overview check out our previous post. Here are the main differences and advantages of V4 over V3: Integrated USB in the microcontroller (faster) Data storage EEPROM to hold settings Pull-up voltage […]
Microcontrollers for newbies
If you’re at that stage as a beginner where you wonder what’s going on behind the scenes on an Arduino board you should check out jumperone’s tutorial on using microcontrollers. There you’ll learn what’s needed to take a bare microcontroller and load your own program onto it. Both PIC and Atmel chips are covered, with […]
AnalogDemo: Plot data on Pachube from Arduino
Luca made a tutorial on how to read data from an Arduino, and upload it to Pachube. Pachube is a site that allows you to upload, share, and plot real-time data from sensors. Via the contact form.
Basic RF sniffing with the Bus Pirate
s3c describes on his website how he used the Bus Pirate as an RF sniffer. He connected the BP to a 433 MHz RF data receiver and successfully captured some garage door opener RF traffic. Simple yet fun to try. Get your own Bus Pirate from Seeedstudio.
Get your 5v LCD running on 3.3V
Here is a hack that will let you use some 5v HD44780 LCDs at 3V. On some common LCDs you can short the resistor labeled R7 and interface with the LCD at 3.3V. Via the forum.
DIY stereolithography 3D Printer
Andy built a 3D stereolithography printer, and provided instructions on how to build your own. Resin is cured in layers using a UV laser. A linear actuator moves the stage down slightly after each layer is hardend, slowly building the 3D object in layers. Check out a time-laps video below the fold. Via the contact […]
Soldering the Bus Pirate demo board v5
Watch us solder the Bus Pirate demo board v5. The simple process of making a demo board for the Bus Pirate turned out to be far more complicated then we expected. Previous versions used many different chips and turned out to be more expensive then the Bus Pirate itself. For version 5 Sjaak came up […]
Desolder SMD ICs
Here is another tutorial for desoldering SMD ICs. You can remove an SMD IC without damaging it or the PCB using a bent piece of copper wire and a soldering iron. Via the contact form.
Professional techniques for hand soldering
BFX tipped us to this video of professional soldering techniques in the comments of our Soldering the 8bit PIC SchmartBOARD post. The video shows how to prepare, solder, and clean a board with SMT components. Amongst other things, this tutorial shows how to solder one side of a fine pitch QFP device in one swoop […]