ghent360 writes:
For those of you who want to program a PSOC4 based device I have a firmware for FX2LP device + PC software to perform the operation. It has the same hardware interface as the device here: PD0-SWDIO;PD2-SWDCL;PB2-XRES. You can also use any “cheap as chips” board from ebay or amazon.
Here are the sources for the project
Via the forum.
Logic Pirate is back in stock at Seeed Studio. It is an inexpensive, yet capable open source logic analyzer. It can sample 8 channels at 20 million samples per second, and may be overclocked for even faster acquisitions. It’s designed to support the open source SUMP logic analyzer protocol with software available for most operating systems.
You can get a Logic Pirate for $30.
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. 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”
Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week. Free PCB Friday is coming up soon.
Coming up:
ytsuboi wrote an open letter to CEO of NXP, and get replied:
I sent this e-mail to the CEO of NXP Semiconductors. (23 July 2014, 4:36am JST)
To: NXP Semiconductors N.V
Richard L. Clemmer, Executive Director, President and CEO
Dear Mr. Clemmer,About a week ago, I found an unbelievable information about LPC1114FN28 on Digikey and Mouser. That was “LPC1114FN28 has been marked as obsolete and is being discontinued.” I confirmed LPC1114FN28 is in your 2014 Mid‐Year Product Discontinuation list. (On the top of page 11) As well as I know, LPC1114FN28 is in the list of your longevity, 10-year promise list. By that list, longevity date of LPC1114FN28 is 2022-08-08. Here is the archive of your web page.
For this year, I spent a time to port mbed SDK for some of your products. As you may know, NXP is introducing mbed as one of your “Tools Ecosystem”. As well as I know, 1,000+ people are using LPC1114FN28 on online compiler of mbed. We purchased LPC1114FN28 through NXP’s official distributor, but I’ve never got any accurate information from those channels.
So, I have a few questions.
– Which information is correct? Will you discontinue that at the end of the year or not?
– Why NXP is showing inconsistent information? I thought discontinuance is very important decide for semiconductors.If you will discontinue that,
– What is your “promise”? How can we believe you will keep your words from today?
– I know 1k something is not large number for semiconductors, but why are you ignoring us?Hope to hear your sincere attitude.
Regards,
Yoshihiro TSUBOI# This is an open letter, I already published this e-mail on my blog. And I will publish your reply on my blog. http://www.ytsuboi.org/wp/archives/2281
I got a reply at 24 July 2014 15:05pm, JST. Thank you, NXP. I really felt your sincerity.
Continue reading “An open letter to NXP Semiconductors about LPC1114FN28”
A sound activated switch project by Rajkumar Sharma of Electronics Lab:
Clap switch/Sound-activated switch designed around op-amp, flip-flop and popular 555 IC. Switch avoids false triggering by using 2-clap sound. Clapping sound is received by a microphone, the microphone changes the sound wave to electrical wave which is further amplified by op-amp.
555 timer IC acts as mono-stable multi-vibrator then flip-flop changes the state of output relay on every two-clap sound. This can be used to turn ON/OFF lights and fans. Circuit activates upon two-clap sound and stays activated until another sound triggers the circuit.
@0xPIT tweeted, “PCB production and free delivery took just exactly 4 weeks to DE. Good quality. Thanks @DirtyBoardsPCBs
Ray Wang at Rayshobby has been working on reverse engineering a wireless soil moisture sensor. He writes, “At the Maker Faire this year I got lots of questions about soil moisture, which I knew little about. Recently I started learning about how to build my own soil sensor, and came across this cheap 433MHz wirelss soil sensor available from Amazon. I’ve experimented with some similar wireless sensors (temperature, humidity, rain etc.), so it didn’t take me long to figure out the signal encoding pattern of this one. I wrote an Arduino program (also adapted to R-Pi) to listen to the sensor and print out the soil moisture level to the serial monitor. This provides a convenient and low-cost solution to integrate soil sensors to my home automation projects.”
Via the contact form.
Dr. Brian Feldman and his team at Stanford University have developed a new microchip. It promises to streamline and simplify diabetes diagnoses. Ben Coxworth of Gizmag writes:
For people who don’t already know, here’s the difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetes: the body produces little or no insulin in the case of type 1, and isn’t able to utilize the insulin that it does produce in type 2. It’s a significant difference, so it’s important that patients are diagnosed correctly. Thanks to a new microchip developed by a team at Stanford University led by Dr. Brian Feldman, doing so could soon be quicker, cheaper and easier than ever before.
Via Electronics Lab.
IR remote controlled light appliance application for the 32×32 RGB LED Matrix by Craig Lindley, that is available at Github:
My latest creation, the Light Appliance. This device displays various graphical routines (plasmas, fractals, etc.), animated GIFs, displays time, date and temperature, can be an open or closed sign for a business and a mood light. This is a quick demo to show what it can do
Check out the video after the break. Continue reading “Light Appliance – Remote controlled 32×32 RGB LED Matrix”
Do you need a strip feeder for your pick & place? Felix of LowPowerLab shows you how to easily make a DIY strip feeder:
So let’s make a strip feeder. I have lots of components that are less than a full reel (exotic resistors, transistors, crystals, caps, mosfets etc). Most of these are 8mm and 12mm tape, rarely 16mm. So it would be perfect to have a strip feeder that can be placed in a fixed position in the machine. To reload you just cut the pre-determined length, feed it through and align the first pocket to a marker on the side, reset component count for that row, and machine already knows where to continue, quick and easy.
Check out the video after the break. Continue reading “Lasercut strip feeder for your pick & place”
ntractiv’s another project from Dirty PCBs, the Microphone PCB:
Sholto wrote this instructable detailing the build of his digital zoetrope:
A zoetrope is a mechanical device that animates a series of pictures by spinning them fast enough that the images appear to merge together and move, My digital zoetrope works on a similar principal, by flashing the LEDs while they are spinning it is possible to display text, patterns and possible even simple animations. My design uses an Arduino Pro mini powered by a system of brushes and a magnet and hall effect sensor for position detection.
Check out the video after the break. Continue reading “Digital Zoetrope”
Viktor describes on his website how he used the Bus Pirate to recover a laptop after a failed BIOS update:
Once I had to open the laptop to fix it I decided to take this opportunity to explore the options there are for fixing the broken BIOS and compile my findings in this article. In the process I tried all of the methods described below, some on the actual laptop I fixed eventually, some on (really-really) dead motherboards.
There are several ways of getting the right BIOS back in the computer – in the following I am going to present a number of ways to get your laptop back on its feet. There are probably more ways to do it, but this should be a good starting point for someone in the same shoes as I was.
Via the contact form.
Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.
Yet another laser cut Open Bench Logic Sniffer case by builttospec:
This one is a bit thinner thanks to the use of brass inserts and 0.06″ acryic for the board layer. The PCB is nice and secure and the buttons are easily accessable without the use of a paper clip or big holes in the case for fingers.
Get a Logic Sniffer for $50, with free worldwide shipping.
electronics-diy shows you how to easily make a mini FM transmitter:
It transmits FM waves so you could easily receive the signals on your mobile phone, radios, etc. As the name and the picture indicates it is very small and is approximately the size of a 9v battery clip. With this FM transmitter you could start your own mini FM station. The circuit uses BC547 transistor to amplify the signal and then frequency modulate it. It uses “frequency modulation” most commonly known as FM, the same principal to transmit audio signals captured by the microphone.
Components
BC547 Transistor
An microphone
A variable capacitor 47pf
An Inductor (see steps for description)
4.7k Resistor
330ohm resistor
1n capacitor (102)
10p capacitor
9V battery
LED(optional)
Via Hacked Gadgets.
This article shows how to hack a manual control into a cheap DMX dimmer by Miceuz and Rxdtxd of wemakethings;
One of our friends wanted to have a manual-control LED dimmer for his stop motion setup. We had several of these cheap Chinese DMX dimmers. How does one adds potentiometer control to something like this? Just cut a trace from the RS485 transceiver into the unmarked micro, add another micro to act as a DMX master, and patch into the serial line via a SPDT switch.
The hacked-in micro just reads three potentiometers via ADC and spits their values into the DMX bus. We’ve found some DMX master code online and copied some stuffs into it
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.
Joshua shows us how he sniff the I2C traffic with the Bus Pirate:
As far as wiring and software setup, it’s the exact same from the previous post with the exception of adding on the Bus Pirate connections to the SDA and SCLK pins, along with a ground. Also, I swapped out the Bus Pirate from being my Serial to USB converter in order to be the I2C sniffer and used a MCP2200 Breakout Module instead.
Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.
