jeanmarc78 posted his PID based thermostat built using the Flash Destroyer module in the forum:
After trying a few commercial thermostats for my central heating (hot water), i was not really satisfied. They don’t provide a smooth regulation. Then i decided to build my own one reusing my flash destroyer hardware board.
This presentation by Karsten Becker was given at this week’s 30C3 Chaos Communications Congress (CCC) conference in Hamburg, Germany.
In this talk I want to show you around in the mysterious world of
Field Programmable Gate Arrays, or short FPGAs. The aim is to enable you to get a rough understanding on what FPGAs are good at and how they can be used in areas where conventional CPUs and Microcontrollers are failing upon us. FPGAs open up the world of high-speed serial interconnects, nano-second event reactions and hardware fuzzing.In this lecture I will present you the basics of how FPGAs work and how to program them. I will also show-case some tasks where FPGAs really shine. As an example I will show how a 200 MHz FPGA can perform a discrete wavelet twice as fast as an 2.6 GHz i7. I will also show other applications where FPGAs are almost unbeatable, compared to a CPU.
At the end I will give you an overview of the market. What are hacker friendly boards, which vendors tool chain sucks the least etc. After this lecture you should be able to decide whether a CPU, a GPU or an FPGA could solve your problem the most efficient.
[The actual presentation begins at 09:00 minutes.]
eHaJo created a pcb with the new Wiznet W5500 chip (machine translation), SPI to Ethernet, and with the brand new atmel ATXMEGA8E5 chip on the pcb for the unique mac-address.
Kevin Rye posted an update on his Tesseract, we wrote about it previously.
With the software and hardware for the Tesseract complete, it was time to wrap up the enclosure.
mofosyne shared this Bus Pirate reference sheet [PDF!] he made in the forum:
Being new to bus pirate, I created my own printable stickers to cut and stick labels to the case and probes.
I also took the time to compile an A4 Bus Pirate v3.b reference sheet from various sources, that would be useful to somebody with a smartphone to scan the various QR codes on it. This was created in the mind of somebody who wont be using the Bus Pirate too often, and may occasionally need a refresher to jig their memory. Its free for anybody to use as it is just a handy compilation for me, all sources are linked to if you need to know more about it.
Via the forum.
Here’s Mats another holiday project the MainSlogger -Voltage and Frequency logger for the mains power:
The sensor board is done, working on firmware for the Analyzing/Displaying & Logging board.
Users of Microchip’s MPLAB will be interested to know about their latest addition to the IDE known as Harmony.
MPLAB Harmony is a new process for software design, development, testing and documentation. It consists of a set of peripheral libraries, drivers, system services, middleware, and third-party code that will make it easier to create all types of applications. It comes with examples that show proper abstraction and use of the new software tools, such as device drivers, that is new to the Microchip software development platform. The code is written in a highly reusable format, MPLAB Harmony will save everyone using it significant time and effort. As a direct result of the MPLAB Harmony process, users now have the capability of running more than one stack or more than one instance of a stack interface at a time. MPLAB Harmony also creates standard Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs), and naming conventions to improve consistency and ease of use. MPLAB Harmony implements an Operating System Abstraction Layer (OSAL), which allows seamless integration of commercial RTOS such as FreeRTOS, Micrium and others.
Produce high-voltages from low input sources as low as 2.5V, Maxim’s app note discusses three topologies and their limitations as well as their advantages on achieving these large voltages.
The biasing of avalanche photodiodes (APDs), piezoelectric transducers (PZTs), vacuum fluorescent displays (VFDs), and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) require high-voltage power supplies. This app note presents three topologies (Figures 1a, 1b, and 1c) for generating a high output voltage from a low input voltage. The advantages and disadvantages of each are discussed with focus given to power density and circuit size. The end of the app note presents experimental data to contrast transformer-based and inductor-based solutions.
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:
Here’s a graphical app note from TDK on the phenomenological “tombstone” when doing reflow soldering.
If temperature and solder quantity is inappropriate during substrate mounting, products may not be mounted properly, which causes tombstone
Here’s an old but quite clever approach app note from Microchip on utilizing microcontroller I/O’s to handle multiple display and switches with only few pins.
This application note demonstrates the capability of the PIC16C71 and has been broken down into four subsections:• Multiplexing Four 7-Segment LED Displays• Multiplexing Four 7-Segment LED Displays and Scanning a 4×4 Keypad• Multiplexing Four 7-Segment LED Displays and the A/D Channel 0• Multiplexing Four 7-Segment LED Displays with a 4×4 Keypad and 4 A/D Channels
We previously posted about the DSD digital decoding software and it’s usefulness with the RTL-SDR dongle and other signal sources. Now there’s a newly released version known as DSDPlus which promises to deliver improved decoding and clearer audio of unencrypted APCO Project 25 (P25) radio signals.
This program is designed to be used with your RTL-SDR receiver software such as SDR#, with the receiver’s output piped to the DSDPlus program using a program such as Virtual Audio Cable or similar. Unfortunately, DSDPlus is a Windows-only offering at this time, and the anonymous author isn’t releasing the source.
DSDPlus is available for download from MEGA. You can find more the program user guide in the README file.
Via RTL-SDR.com.
Kevin Rye documented his Tesseract build. Check out the project’s Part II.
Rupert Hirst writes, “I decided it was time to build my own version with the features that should have been in the official hardware”:
LCD Smartie is open-source (cough!) software which allows a character LCD display to be used as an auxiliary display device for a PC. The program has built in support for many systems statistics (i.e. CPU Load, Network utilization, free Disk space…), downloading RSS feeds, Winamp integration and support for several other popular applications. To support less common applications LCD Smartie uses a powerful plugin system.”
After being totally unimpressed by the overpriced, under featured & uninspiring “Official LCD Smartie Hardware.
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”
Ever wonder what it would take to code up an Android based spyphone app? In this presentation from the BlackHat 2013 conference, Kevin McNamee outlines his build of an Android SpyPhone service that can be injected into any application. “The presentation includes a live demonstration of how phones can be tracked and operated from a Web based command and control server and a demonstration of how to inject the SpyPhone service into any Android application. The presentation will also cover the APIs used to track the phone’s location, intercept phone calls and SMS messages, extract e-mail and contact lists, and activate the camera and microphone without being detected.”
The PDF of the presentation slides is available for download.
Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week. Free PCB Friday is coming up soon.
Coming up:
Dilshan Jayakody wrote a post on his blog about his 3W constant current LED driver:
This is quick post about 3W constant current LED driver which I was design to combine with some homemade furniture piece. The main components of this system is LM311 voltage comparator and IRF9640 P-Channel MOSFET.
This module is design to drive maximum of two 3W high power LEDs and it requires 8V – 10V DC (500mA) power source. In this given configuration this module may not need any heat-sink (for IRF9640) and consume maximum of 500mA of power.
What’s the best way to store your electronics components? Systemstech shared us his parts storage for all his components:
This is what I use and I haven’t had any troubles with it and static.
Via the forum.
Sjaak has been working on nixie clock project this holiday:
Finally try to finish my nixie clock.. it was due in september :) Nixies are working :D
