App note: 1-Wire communication with a Microchip PICmicro microcontroller

appnote

Here’s an app note from Maxim on interfacing 1-Wire communications device with PIC microcontroller:

Several of Maxim’s products contain a 1-Wire® communication interface and are used in a variety of applications. These applications may include interfacing to one of the popular PICmicros® (PICs) from Microchip. To facilitate easy interface between a 1-Wire device and a peripheral interface controller (PIC) microcontroller, this application note presents general 1-Wire software routines for the PIC microcontroller, explaining timing and associated details. This application note also provides an included file that covers all 1-Wire routines. Additionally, sample assembly code is included, which is specifically written to enable a PIC16F628 to read from a DS2762 high-precision Li+ battery monitor.

Hacker Camp Shenzhen 2014 registration open

By ian

hcsz2014

Registration for Hacker Camp Shenzhen April 3-5, 2014 is now open. Check out the mini-site for news and updates, and grab your tickets here. The first camp is limited to 30 people. Tickets are $285 and will be available until February 28th, but will probably sell out in a few days. A special supporter ticket is also available for $385 if you want to help defray the costs of the event.

Cost breakdown

We estimate the workshop expenses will total $285 per person. This includes:

  • Soldering workshop tuition
  • Translation services
  • Copies and printed materials
  • A few drinks at social events
  • Wire fees and other overhead
  • A few extras

In the spirit of open source and hacking, you can see exactly where your money goes in the spreadsheet above. It’s not possible to customize the package.

Everyone is donating time to plan, organize and host the event. We will likely operate at a loss. No group or other discounts are possible. However, we will take extra money if you’d like to sponsor the event and help defray costs!

The workshop is a package deal, it’s not possible to pay for only one event. We don’t mind if you want to pay the full cost and attend only the events you like though.

Market tour only

Response to the workshop has been overwhelming. There’s not really any extra room on the market tours, so we ask for a $100 deposit/fee if you’d like to attend the tour only. The fee will be used to buy things during the tour and keep the vendors happy.

Please observe proper market behavior. Cameras are a complication…some of the “better” spots are very dicey about cameras and security guards will come and watch you delete photos from your camera if they catch you. Absolutely no big honking totally unsubtle SLRs. Vendors get really nervous when they have a dozen white guys with cameras crowding around them taking pictures of their iPhone parts.

See you in April!

We’re all looking forward to meeting you in April. Check back for updates, and we’ll have live coverage of the Hacker Camp and Maker Faire from Shenzhen, China.

Via Hacker Camp Shenzhen mini-site: Hacker Camp Shenzhen 2014 registration open

RTLAMR: an RTL-SDR receiver for 900 MHz smart meters


It never ceases to amaze how many projects are developed making use of the RTL-SDR dongle. Bemasher has developed a software tool which interprets the signals in the 900 MHz ISM band sent from smart electric meters which are growing in popularity among utility companies.

This project is a proof of concept software defined radio receiver for these messages. We make use of an inexpensive RTL-SDR dongle to allow users to non-invasively record and analyze the commodity consumption of their household.

Currently the only known supported and tested meter is the Itron C1SR. However, the protocol is designed to be useful for several different commodities and should be capable of receiving messages from any ERT capable smart meter.

Project information can be found on Bemasher’s site. The code is available on GitHub.

Via RTL-SDR.com.

Experiments and demo of an Agilent DSA-X 96204Q 160GS/s 62GHz oscilloscope

Shahriar writes:

In this episode Shahriar demos the world’s fastest oscilloscope! The Agilent DSA-X 96204Q offers 160GS/s of conversion rate with a bandwidth of 62GHz on two dedicated ‘RealEdge’ channels. It can also provide 80GS/s conversion rate and 33GHz of bandwidth on four simultaneous channels. The unit demoed in this video is equipped with all available options and is valued at over 0.5 million US dollars. The block diagram of various sub-systems of the oscilloscope are presented and the principle operation of the instrument is explained. A 56Gb/s PRBS-15 signal is applied to the scope from a Centellax 2G2P5A (now Agilent N4975A) and the resulting data pattern is examined in real-time. Various scope functions are also presented as well as the capability to observer bit failures at baud-rate using this instrument.

Free PCB coupon via Facebook to 2 random commenters

buspiratev38 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”

Week in (p)review February 14, 2014

ShenzhenChina

Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week. Free PCB Friday is coming up soon.

Coming up:

  • Free PCBs via Facebook on Friday
  • App notes on the weekend
  • Free PCB Sunday
  • Free PCBs via Twitter on Tuesday
  • Weekly roundup and preview every Friday

Hack your Valentine with HeartThrob

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A geek love by Boris Landoni: Hack your Valentine with HeartThrob

Today we present the perfect Valentine gadget: just shake it and it will turn on and crate incredible light animations. That will be cool for sure!

We know that, as it’s Valentine’s Day, looking at the device described in this post you’ll be inclined to think that this is the usual heart-shaped Valentine gadget: in reality this is something much cooler as it’s capable to create beautiful and complex light games. Is based on the smallest microcontroller manufactured by Atmel: the ATtiny85.

Check out the video after the break. Continue reading “Hack your Valentine with HeartThrob”

Build a robotic air-hockey opponent out of RepRap parts


Jose Julio likes to tinker with robotics; his daughter likes air hockey. From these mutual interests, an Arduino and a handful of surplus parts from a RepRap 3D printer, Jose devised an air hockey game with a robotic opponent.
“The project is based on standard RepRap 3D printer parts : NEMA17 stepper motors, drivers, Arduino Mega, RAMPS, belts , bearings, rods, printed pieces. The main advantage of use these parts is that they are cheap and easily available. First I started with the construction of the air hockey table. I choose a medium size (my house is small) and I wanted something easily transportable but comfortable to play. The final dimensions are 100x60cm.

For the puck detection problem I decided to use a computer vision system. Initially I planned to use the CMUCAM5 (Pixy) sensor that fits very well in this project (and in near future I will prepare a version for this sensor), but the camera is not available yet, so I started a new route: Use the PS3 EYE camera with a PC to develop the vision system. I developed the vision system in C language using OpenCV libraries for capturing, thresholding, filtering and segmentation.”

Complete build details can be found on Jose’s site, with the code hosted on GitHub.

Via BoingBoing.

VGA framegrabbing with TVP7002

desaster blogged about his VGA framegrabber project:

The project got a nice boost when I found TVP7002 on TI’s site. It’s a video digitizing chip, featuring 3x ADC (one for each color channel) and a PLL system for generating the pixel clock from the HSYNC input. Compared to alternatives, this seemed to be quite nicely priced, and well available. In fact, TI was kind enough to provide me with free samples!

Its here and its manual override controller

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Mohamed Afzal writes:

Its been a while that i am working on an autonomous vehicle and some major parts are tested and still going on with the project. For this project its better to have a manual override control via RC remote controller.
After researching the RC controller and receiver i have found out the RC remote controllers use PPM signals to control the servo and ESC. In one of my earlier post’s i have mentioned reading the receiver outputs and tested how it can be controlled.

Via the contact form

Controller board for RGB LED Matrix displays update

Controller_board

EmbeddedCreations posted an update on his controller board for the 16×32 and 32×32 RGB LED Matrix displays:

The board looks significantly better with the Teensy soldered directly, instead of with the female headers, but I want to keep the option for people who want to remove their $20 Teensy board to use with another project. I plan to ship the kit with connectors for all the above options.
I made some revisions to the board, significant ones are listed below:

  • Replaced 3.5mm terminal block with 5.0mm terminal block that can accept larger gauge wire that may be required depending on the display power cable
  • Adjusted shrouded header to fit properly on the board
  • Added 3.0mm mounting hole to corner of board
  • Removed capacitor – testing showed it wasn’t necessary to provide a clean power supply to the Teensy

Ajax webapp for uploading Arduino sketches over network

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Luca Dentella has developed a webapp providing another way to upload sketches to Arduino Yun. The project allows you to upload a new sketch using a protected web page, easily accessible also over the Internet. It’s based on Ajax and can be found on Luca’s website.

Via the contact form.

A new Wi-Fi Shield to connect your Arduino to the internet

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Boris Landoni from Open Electronics writes about a new open source Wi-Fi Shield for Arduino:

Despite the proliferation of hardware to connect Arduino with the web, and especially despite YUN, we considered useful to design and propose a new WiFi shield for Arduino, which replaces the one already presented.
This time we indeed added an interface processor that manages the TCP/IP protocol: a definitely too challenging task for Arduino. Anyway a network interface card becomes really useful if it’s driven by software which simplifies as much as possible its use, especially in a context of reduced hardware resources such as with Arduino. For this reason we supplied the card with a Arduino library, that is easier than that for more complex hardware such as that of YUN.

Arduino libraries uploaded to GitHub

Github

Kerry Wong writes:

Over the years I have created quite a few libraries for Arduino. I finally uploaded them to GitHub a couple of days ago so that they are now all at one place and are easier to find.

Here’s a list of the corresponding posts:

  • MCP2210 Library — Reference
  • Interfacing DS7505
  • AD7705/AD7706 Library Revisited
  • Interfacing ADS1112 With Arduino
  • LM92 Library for Arduino
  • Arduino Library For LM95172 Temperature Sensor
  • A Simple Serial Protocol
  • TCA9555 Library for Arduino
  • Arduino Library For MCP342X

Mini 7-Segment clock V2, part II

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Kevin Rye writes about his Mini 7-Segment clock V2 project, we wrote about it previously:

Now for the moment of truth. I crossed my fingers and connected a battery pack. Woo hoo! It works! I love that feeling you get when you spend weeks working on a project, it all comes together in the end and it just works.
With the electronics working, it was time to put it in the enclosure. I cut the end off a SparkFun 5V DC power supply and soldered on a 2-pin Dupont connector. I then secured everything with a little heat shrink tubing.
I then took the acrylic panels that I designed and had laser-cut from Ponoko and secured them to the clock via some screws and standoffs.
It looks amazing! I’m really happy with the way that it came out. I also really like the “kelly” green segments on this display.

Site problems, update in progress

Earlier today I installed a new WordPress plugin to take reservations for Hacker Camp Shenzhen. It hosed the .htaccess file. I got that sorted, but now I can’t get the /docs/ projects wiki working again – all pages return 404 not found. No idea why. It’s a mess. Please hang tight, I’ll get it going as soon as I can.

Update: the project wiki seems to be working again. Please let me know if you have any problems!

Some minor things have been updated too, and we should have a Hacker Camp Shenzhen mini-site soon.

DEFCON 21: Arduino based vehicle tuning device


In this presentation from DEFCON21, Albert Garcia Illera and Javier Vazquez Vidal discuss the development, Houston TX enclosed auto transport and operation of an Arduino based device for controlling automotive functions in 2010 and newer model vehicles that use the K-Line protocol (although we’re told it could easily be modified with newer protocols.) Additionally they also cover basic forensic analysis of data stored by automobile ECU systems.

The 59-page PDF of the presentation slides can be found at DefCon media archive, and the code and related materials for the ecu-tool can be found on GitHub.