Albert blogged about his mini pro shield project:
Just finished my little mini pro shield which makes it a little easier to use the mini pro with projects and it now also makes the mini pro easier to use with test and trial projects.
The shield has a 3.3V and 5v power supply on board with power rails so every sensor can be used
If any of you guys want those board . I shared the board on OSH park here.
It works like a charm
OpenSAM by OHM – a 3D Printed Camera Stabilizer:
Welcome to OpenSAM, our 3Dprinted self-built three Axis stabilizer. It is handheld and the entire mechanical construct is built using 3D printed parts. Brushless motors ensure the camera is stable and they can be controlled using a joystick. The design is developed by three engineering students at the Technical University of Denmark.
Now gimbals like this may exist in plenty, but we think ours is unique because of its use of additive manufacturing. That makes the system very cheap to build and easy to reconstruct. All the files are open source and you can download them here.
Check out our manual: OpenSAM Manual (PDF)
All the files are available on GitHub.
Via Open Electronics.
Here’s a teardown & repair of the Siglent SHS810 100MHz 1GS/s portable oscilloscope & multimeter from The Signal Path:
In this episode Shahriar examines the failure of a Siglent SHS810 100MHz 1GS/s portable oscilloscope and multimeter. The instrument’s multimeter inputs are functional, however the neither of the oscilloscope inputs display the correct waveform. The displayed signal varied largely as soon as a coax cable is connected and the instrument is powered from an external signal source. This hints to a grounding problem. Further examination of the probes also shows large damage to the ground pads from a possible high-voltage short circuits through the shared ground between the scope inputs.
The disassembly of the unit reveals heavy damage to the ground PCB traces of the input channels. After thorough cleanup of the PCB, the ground traces are repaired using copper tape. The new ground plane corrects the problem and the scope can now be used to measure RF signals correctly.
Brian Dorey has designed and built a PIC24 development board, that is available at GitHub:
One problem we found was trying to prototype code using this microcontroller as unlike Arduino and any ARM microcontrollers there isn’t a small easy to use prototyping board available for the PIC24 chip. Microchip make an Explorer 16 Development Board which is designed to work with the PIC24 microcontrollers but it is large and fairly expensive and is designed to work best with other Microchip addon cards.
With this problem in mind we decided to design and build a small prototyping board that would work with the PIC24FJ128GC006 as well as one of Microchips DSPIC33EP256MU806 dsPIC series microcontrollers.
The prototyping board was designed with removable daughter boards for the microcontroller.
Project info at Brian Dorey’s blog.
Steve did a teardown and refurbishment of a Cambridge Audio A4 Amplifier:
In this video, Steve disassembles a Cambridge Audio A4 Integrated Amplifier which he rescued before it was thrown away. The amplifier is refurbished with new electrolytic capacitors and a clean inside before performing a modification to make the dials on the front panel glow.
Details at SDG Electronics site.
Every Tuesday we give away two coupons for the free PCB drawer via Twitter. This post was announced on Twitter, and in 24 hours we’ll send coupon codes to two random retweeters. Don’t forget there’s free PCBs three times a every week:
Some stuff:
We try to stagger free PCB posts so every time zone has a chance to participate, but the best way to see it first is to subscribe to the RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, or like us on Facebook.
TruPlay – controlling bluetooth A2DP devices using MSP430and OVC3860 from Rohit Gupta:
I wanted it to 3D Print a new case but couldn’t so, made a PCB that would sit on the Top of the adapter and command it. I was lucky to have a 3.3V Regulator inside the adapter so, an extra regulator was not required. For the project i used the MSP430G2553 microcontroller in a TSSOP20 package running @ 16Mhz and programmed using Energia! I added some standard condiments like a LED and an extra SMD tactile switch to further expand capabilities.
Project details at Rohit Gupta’s blog.
Check out the video after the break.
Continue reading “TruPlay- Hacking into an OVC3860 based bluetooth A2DP adapter using the MSP430”
Zach writes:
I first posted on how to reprogram a “Programmable Message Fan: Model 45 Series” POV fan a few years ago, and the code I posted no longer works with the current versions of the Octave and Arduino software. The original post still describes how the fan works and how I went about figuring it out, and this is just an update to the software to reprogram it.
Project info at Zach’s blog.
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 PCBs from one of our past or future projects, or a related prototype. Our PCBs are made through Seeed Studio’s Fusion board service. This week two random commenters will get a coupon code for the free PCB drawer tomorrow morning. Pick your own PCB. You get unlimited free PCBs now – finish one and we’ll send you another! Don’t forget there’s free PCBs three times every week:
Capacitor-coupled switched shunt regulator (CCSS) App note from Microchip. App note here.
Shunt regulators consist of two elements: a voltage regulator in parallel with the load (the shunt), and a series element between the supply and load to limit current. The parallel shunt regulates voltage by varying its conduction to maintain the desired voltage across the load. As the load current decreases, the shunt compensates by conducting more current. This results in high standby current consumption.
The switched shunt regulator operates similarly to a linear shunt regulator except current is proportioned between shunt and load in a switched (on/off) manner. When the switch is in the lower position it acts as a zero-ohm shunt. When in the upper position it diverts input current to the output. Since the switch is ideally zero ohms, it conducts current with no losses.
App note from Microchip on their EL lamp drivers circuits utilizing (Supertex) HV823 and HV825, App note here.
This application note presents fourteen EL driver circuits utilizing the Supertex HV823 and HV825 drivers. They have been optimized for a variety of applications and may be used as-is or used as a starting point in designing a circuit for a particular application.
Understanding and using cyclic redundancy checks with Maxim 1-wire and iButton products, application note here (PDF!) from Maxim:
All 1-Wire® devices, including iButton® devices, contain an 8-byte unique registration number in read-only memory (ROM). This registration number is used as a unique network address on a 1-Wire bus. To ensure data communication integrity, one byte of each registration number is a 1-Wire CRC byte. This application note explains how to calculate this 8-bit 1-Wire CRC. It also goes on to explain the 16-bit CRC that is used to verify records saved in the memory of the devices. Both the 1-Wire CRC and the CRC-16 are generated in hardware of select 1-Wire devices to validate data.
Every Friday we give away some extra PCBs via Facebook. This post was announced on Facebook, and on Monday we’ll send coupon codes to two random commenters. The coupon code usually go to Facebook ‘Other’ Messages Folder . More PCBs via Twitter on Tuesday and the blog every Sunday. Don’t forget there’s free PCBs three times every week:
Continue reading “Free PCB coupon via Facebook to 2 random commenters”
@ursudima tweeted picture of his free Bus Pirate v3.8 PCB build. The Bus Pirate is an open source hacker multi-tool that talks to electronic stuff.
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.
Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.
Paul over at DorkbotPDX has written an article on Teensy Audio Library with S/PDIF support:
Thanks to the amazing effort of Frank Boesing, the Teensy Audio Library now has native S/PDIF output.
Using a $1 TOSLINK connector, or just a red LED, you can get optical S/PDIF digital audio output.
Steve’s TinySensor server project, that is available at Github:
Well after almost a year I decided it was time to update this project with improvements to both its hardware and software.
On the hardware side, the server is still the original Raspberry Pi model B, but I’ve mounted the nRF24L01+ radio on a neat little Slice of Pi board. (These boards also have traces for mounting XBees with their unusual pin spacing. And they’re cheap!)
Project details at Bits on a Board blog.
Rohit Gupta made this LiTiny project, a tiny LiIon charger:
In the end I had a LiIon charger capable of charging batteries @700mA restricted due to thermal dissipation limits of home made PCBs.
Project details at Rohit’s blog.
MatthiasW over at DebuggingLab posted his DIY Weller station clone project, that is available at Github:
At the fpv-community.de Forum I read about a DIY Weller station. Basically an Arduino shield to drive a Weller soldering tip. As there is not much to it, the board simply contains an precision OpAmp, a power MOSFET, 2 buttons for adjusting the temperature and a display to show the current values. This design looks like a good starting point for my own advanced project. As I have lately discovered a 1,8 inch SPI TFT at banggood.com for an amazing price ( ~ 4.60 $ / 3,70 €), I started using them regularly in my projects. So I surely wanted to use it with this soldering station as well.
Via the comments.
Dilshan Jayakody writes:
This is a quick post about EAGLE parts list generation script which I was written to replace existing “part2html.ulp”. This script generates more organized and detailed BOM HTML file and it can directly replace “part2html.ulp”.
This script is tested with EAGLE 6.6.0, but it can also work with older versions of EAGLE software.
This script is available to download at github with usage details.
