In this video Rick Crammond demonstrates his Hauksbee Generator:
The idea is that a triboelectric (electrostatic) effect occurs from sliding hands on glass. The voltage generated ionizes the gases in the globe, creating a blue plasma glow inside.
Our rotating globe is a pyrex lab flask containing air under a partial vacuum, is mounted on a bicycle axle with skateboard bearings, and driven by a remote-control model aircraft electric motor at up to 8000 rpm…”
Via Hacked Gadgets.
In this video a HackRF One is used to transmit commands to a RF remote controlled toy car. A GNURadio module is used to generate the control signal, and a Qt(PySide) GUI to listen for keyboard presses.
The open source code is available on GitHub.
X89300 shared his STM32 car tracker project, that is available at Github:
Features:
STM32 48/64 pins (F10X, F20X, F40X, L151)
GSM Telit GL685/GL868
GPS/GLONASS SL868/SL869
Accelerometer MMA7455
CAN bus (need MCU with CAN support)
2 input, 1 output signal
Standard SIM or SimOnChip
Only for 48 pins version
Side connector for extension pcb
Only for 64 pins version
Battery support with charger
USB support
EEPROM in SOT-5 case
Side connector to RFM70 or other module
Via the project log forum.
By ian
Today we previewed the Hacker Camp Shenzhen advanced soldering class to prepare translations and figure out how everything will work. Its way, way better than we had hoped.
In three hours we learned how to remove, reball, and replace a BGA chip. A couple of us did two. No special BGA reballing tools were involved, nothing but cheap hot air stations and $5 “fire starter” soldering irons.
We made a complete how-to pictorial, but we don’t want to spoil anything. The how-to and session videos will go up after the Hacker Camp. This is mind blowing stuff: simple, cheap, almost no tools needed. Really innovative stuff from the cell phone repair markets in Shenzhen, China.
Via Hacker Camp Shenzhen mini-site: BGA chips: remove, reball, replace the easy way
This Instructable by Husham demonstrates a simple circuit to play wav files using Arduino Nano V3.0:
This is a simple circuit to play wav files using arduino Nano V3.0, it consist from 4 buttons ,each one play specific wav file loaded to SD card.
Via Embedded Lab.
Open Electronics is launching a new contest for people who bought the printer 3Drag or K8200:
Thus here is this 3Drag Competition, reserved for those who possess a 3Drag or a Velleman K8200 3D printer (based on the same design).
Nowadays it’s plenty of this machines: in fact, thanks to the collaboration with Velleman, the 3Drag (recoded as K8200) had a widespread distribution throughout the world, spreading among students, hobbyists, new artisans, creating new skills and new job opportunities.
Visit the contest info page for details and rules.
Haris writes about his digital Thermostat project:
In the need of my new homemade energy saving fireplace (which boils water for the radiator) i designed and built a digital thermostat. The idea to design my own thermostat came when i came across with the following problem.
When i first fire the fireplace the water in the boiler around the fireplace is cool. After a few minutes the fireplace warms the water enough so that the water temp exceeds the thermostat limit. The thermostat changes state and drives an electric valve to move the water from the fireplace boiler to the radiators. The electric valve is slow enough and takes a few minutes to make a full turn…
Via the contact form.
Dillon He writes with an update on EasyEDA, a web based EDA tool for electronics engineers, educators, students, makers and enthusiasts. It is the work of a tiny hacker team over a period of three years and nine months. It can be used by all hardware and operating system, whether you are using Linux, Mac or Windows; Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, or Safari.
EasyEDA launches a free, zero-install, Web and cloud-based EDA tool suite, integrating powerful schematic capture, mixed-mode circuit simulation and PCB layout in a seamless cross-platform browser environment, for electronic engineers, educators, students and hobbyists. EasyEDA has extensive built-in schematic, spice and PCB libraries which can be easily extended using powerful symbol, model and footprint creation and editing tools.EasyEDA has integrated with DangerousPrototypes’ open source libraries, so the makers can build electronic stuff with DangerousPrototypes parts in EasyEDA easily.
Via the contact form.
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Mini-Circuits USB power sensor review by KF5OBS
Quick and brief look at the Mini-Circuits PWR-SEN-4RMS USB power sensor. It can measure the power of modulated and unmodulated signals between 50 MHz – 4000 MHz. The measurable power range is from -35 dBm to +20 dBm (100 mW).
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.
radioman wrote a small utility which generates the full TL866A firmware, based on custom serial:
For the uninitiated, the programmer TL866 (MiniPro) is one of the programmers Bestsellers in recent times among the best de-bricker/makers. It’s a small device that allows programming of a large number of memories (ROM / FLASH / NVRAM) and microcontrollers (MCU / MPU). But not only, program SRAM / DRAM, PLD / GAL / CPLD and performs the check of many logic gates.
The latest update of client supports approximately 13137 ic.
scasagrande has designed this USB wrapper project, that is available at Github:
Have you ever wanted to charge your smartphone by using your computer, but you didn’t want all of your sync software to load? Maybe you want to use a friend’s computer but you don’t really want Windows to start trying to install drivers and for your device to open in USB transfer mode. Or maybe the power source is simply untrusted and you want to avoid a potential attack.
Inspired by the USB Condom, the USB Wrapper helps with the above by severing the USB data lines and only allowing the power lines to connect through. This ensures that no data information can be transfered between the power source and your device. This helps against known attacks such as juice jacking
An Arduino based Z Axis laser cutter controller by Martin Raynsford
The user pad has 4 buttons, one fast and one slow in either direction. If you push fast and slow at the same time the Z axis will datum in that direction, because the Z axis control system is now independent of the laser controller I’m able to adjust the Z height at any part of the program, this might not be the safest way of doing it but it’s pretty easy not to push the buttons while the laser is actually cutting.
Via Hacked Gadgets.
Kerry Wong writes:
One way to extend the resolution of a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is by employing a sigma-delta converter in software. The main disadvantage of such approach is the slow speed. Alternatively, we can use some extra hardware to extend the usable resolution of a DAC. In this post, I will illustrate one such method to extend an 8-bit DAC to 16 bits using a digital potentiometer.
So why do we want to extend the resolution of a DAC at the first place? Well, one of the key reasons is to lower cost. A 8-bit DAC usually costs less than a dollar, whereas a 16-bit DAC can easily cost ten to twenty times more. Fortunately, with the help of a potentiometer we can make a high resolution DAC out of a low resolution one.
By ian
Mobile data is key in China. Access to Google Maps, translation, and other info makes life so much easier. Mobile phone SIM cards with data plans are cheap and easy to get. Until recently you could buy them anywhere, but now you need to head to a phone shop and show a passport.
Major providers are China Unicom, China Telecom, and China Mobile. I prefer China Unicom for no particular reason, but shops for all are next door to the Hacker Camp Shenzhen meeting locations. Check the Google Maps layer here.
Click image for a larger view.
In China Unicom look for a sheet with a list of plans like the table above. There’s are two or three packages – A, B, and C. Since most people are interested in data, plan ‘A’ is probably best.
I’ve been using package A 96RMB ($16) plan with 300MB data for the past few months, before that I used the 156RMB plan with 500MB of data. If you’re here for a week 300MB is probably enough. More than a week with lots of exploring and searching – get the 500MB plan to be safe.
Find a Unicom shop, the orange and white signs stand out all over the place. There’s one near the workshop shown on the Google Map layer, as well as a dozen scattered throughout the market in Huaqiangbei.
Grab a sheet of plans and find someone at a counter. Show them your phone, point to the plan you want, and hand over your passport – someone at the shop may speak a tiny bit of English but don’t count on it. They’ll setup the plan, make a copy of your passport, and hand you a SIM. Data should work immediately.
Handing over a passport has never been a problem, it’s quite common in China. If you’re cagey about it, you can try to buy an ‘underground’ SIM in Hong Kong but they’ve not worked properly for the past year or so.
Please get a SIM upon arrival in China. It will make life much easier. I’ll send my contact number to hacker camp participants a week before the workshop.
Via Hacker Camp Shenzhen mini-site: Getting a data SIM card in Shenzhen
ATmega169 base 8bit Arithmetic and logic unit, an open source software project by Dilshan Jayakody:
ALU (Arithmetic and Logic Unit) is a digital system that performs integer arithmetic and logical operations. In this post we introduce ATmega169 base ALU simulation using Proteus. This is 8bit ALU, and functionally it is similar to other entry level ALUs such as Motorola MC14581, 74LS181, etc. This unit can perform 80 arithmetic and logic operations and all these operations are listed in here.
cburns shared his LED Matrix clock in the project log forum:
My latest electronic project, the LEDC which is a LED Matrix clock. It’s the size of a standard business-card, and battery powered. I wanted something that would sit on the desk and I thought, why not use business card holder? It works great, and it’s definitely a conversation starter. It’s battery powered, uses a Microchip PIC18 series processor which does everything from time keeping to display driving. The firmware has a lot of functionality (one might say too much):
Low power battery operation
Traditional digital clock mode
24 hour military style digital clock
Binary coded decimal clock mode
Binary Clock mode
Scrolling Date text mode
Hour Glass count down timer
Pomodoro Timer
Dice rolling mode
Scrolling text message mode
Built in buzzer for alerts with selectable volume
3 independent alarms
Multiple chime options
Multiple power saving options
Rob informs us that he’s made a Bus Pirate clone entirely from a FPGA (with custom soft processor, USB device RTL + SW). The design is based on the Xilinx Spartan XC6SLX9. “The whole thing is basically hosted on the FPGA, with just a SPI Flash, USB PHY and LDOs!”
You can check out the project details on Rob’s Ultra-Embedded 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:
