Free PCB Sunday: Pick your PCB

xQFP50 plus65 Protoboard-W800

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:

Continue reading “Free PCB Sunday: Pick your PCB”

Ambient Backscatter: Wireless Communication Out of Thin Air


Trev writes to inform us of a wireless communication device without a dedicated power source has emerged from the Networks and Wireless lab of the University of Washington.

According to the developers, “We present the design of a communication system that enables two devices to communicate using ambient RF as the only source of power. Our approach leverages existing TV and cellular transmissions to eliminate the need for wires and batteries, thus enabling ubiquitous communication where devices can communicate among themselves at unprecedented scales and in locations that were previously inaccessible.

To achieve this, we introduce ambient backscatter, a new communication primitive where devices communicate by backscattering ambient RF signals. Our design avoids the expensive process of generating radio waves; backscatter communication is orders of magnitude more power-efficient than traditional radio communication.”

The 13-page PDF project abstract can be downloaded here.

Via the contact form.

MC HCK hacker’s DIY $5 MCU board

mchck-r1-programming-small
The MC HCK is an entirely open source dev board based on the Freescale MK20DX32VLF5 which supports USB for easy programming. It features 8KB RAM, 32KB program flash + 32KB data flash. ““MC” is short for microcontroller, and “HCK” stands for “hacking”, “hackers”, “hackspaces”, but shorter, smaller. Like the MC HCK board itself.”

Its developers claim you can build it yourself for $5. You can check out their project repository to get the latest source and KiCad design files.

We note that the board is even Bus Pirate compatible as explained in Ben Gamari’s blog.

Free PCB coupon via Facebook to 2 random commenters

Dp-qfp-proto-v2

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 August 23, 2013

Excercise4_2_W600

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

44CON to include HackRF presentation

logo44con
We understand that Michael Ossmann will deliver a talk entitled ” Reverse Engineering with HackRF” at the 44CON conference. This talk will consist of one long demonstration of how to use HackRF to reverse engineer a proprietary radio system.

44CON is an annual Information Security Conference and Training event taking place in London. Designed to provide something for both the business and technical Information Security Professional, it will be held at the Millennium Conference Centre. Conference days are the 12th and 13th September 2013, with the Training days on the 10th and 11th September 2013. For tickets contact 44CON.

Lattice debuts iCEstick FPGA Evaluation Board at $24.99

icestick-reva-front-2400
Lattice Semi has released their iCEstick eval board. This board has a high-performance, low-power iCE40HX1K FPGA on board and has a USB thumb drive form factor. IO connectors include 16 LVCMOS/LVTTL (3.3 V) digital I/O connections on 0.1” through-hole connections and a 2 x 6 position Digilent Pmod connector for other peripheral connections. The board’s FTDI 2232H USB device allows iCE device programming and UART interface to a PC. On board devices include a Vishay TFDU4101 IrDA transceiver and five user LEDs. The board also includes a Discera 12 Mhz MEMS oscillator, Micron 32 Mbit N25Q32 SPI flash and is powered directly from the USB connector.

The iCEstick is supported by Lattice iCEcube2 design software for HDL development. Programing the onboard iCE40HX-1k device’s SPI flash is done with Lattice Diamond Programmer.

More details can be found in the 21-page PDF iCEstick user manual.

The Lattice iCEstick evaluation board is available from Lattice Semi’s online store for $24.99.

Breakout board uses HB100 doppler motion sensor


limpkin has been working on a dev board for the HB100 microwave sensor. He developed a breakout board that allows the module to operate as a motion sensor. “I’m sure you’re quite familiar with the Doppler effect: you send an RF signal at a given frequency to a target, and if this object/person is moving the reflected signal’s frequency will be shifted. The HB100 outputs a low level voltage (few uV) whose frequency represents the speed at which an object is moving towards or away from the sensor. The output can be very noisy, so in addition to amplifying the signal, we need to filter out frequencies that don’t match what we expect from ordinary objects.” His design uses op amps and supporting discrete components to accomplish this.

You can find project schematic, KICAD files and all details on Limpkin’s Blog.

Via the contact form.

#FreePCB via Twitter to 2 random RTs

xQFP80-+65-Protoboard-W800-600x474

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:

  • Hate Twitter and Facebook? Free PCB Sunday is the classic PCB giveaway. Catch it every Sunday, right here on the blog
  • Tweet-a-PCB Tuesday. Follow us and get boards in 144 characters or less
  • Facebook PCB Friday. Free PCBs will be your friend for the weekend

Some stuff:

  • Yes, we’ll mail it anywhere in the world!
  • Check out how we mail PCBs worldwide video.
  • We’ll contact you via Twitter with a coupon code for the PCB drawer.
  • Limit one PCB per address per month please.
  • Like everything else on this site, PCBs are offered without warranty.

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.

TI’s offers free Medical Imaging Software Tool Kit (STK-MED)

18070-medical-imaging

TI is making its STK-MED Medical Imaging Software Tool Kit available for free download. This Windows XP compatible software toolkit is a collection of several standard ultrasound and optical coherence tomography (OCT) algorithms for TI’s C66x™ and C64x+™ architecture. The algorithms showcase how medical imaging functions can leverage the C66x and C64x+ architecture for efficient performance and low power consumption. The goal of STK-MED is to shorten customer development time of medical imaging systems by providing optimized implementations of commonly used processing blocks. The source code contained in the STK-MED can easily be extended or modified to develop customized and differentiated modules.

The software and related documentation can be found on TI’s Medical Imaging page.

Blackhat presentation slides: Android master key

DroidMasterKey
Bluebox CTO, Jeff Forristal’s presentation slide package entitled “Android: One Root to Own Them All” about his research that uncovered the Android Master Key is now available.

This presentation is a case study showcasing the technical details of Android security bug 8219321, disclosed to Google in February 2013. The vulnerability involves discrepancies in how Android applications are cryptographically verified & installed, allowing for APK code modification without breaking the cryptographic signature; that in turn is a simple step away from system access & control. The vulnerability affects a wide number of Android devices, across generations & architectures, with little to no modifications of the exploit. The presentation will review how the vulnerability was located, how an exploit was created, and why the exploit works, giving you insight into the vulnerability problem and the exploitation process. Working PoCs for major Android device vendors will be made available to coincide with the presentation.

You can download the 103-page PDF of the presentation slides from Bluebox.

Free PCB Sunday: Pick your PCB

chips

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:

Continue reading “Free PCB Sunday: Pick your PCB”

CxemCAR 2 – Android controlled RC car with video, Bluetooth, WiFi

robot_cam
Johnik has developed the CxemCAR2 project for controlling an RC car using WiFi and Bluetooth. “On the Internet there are many articles on the use of RC cars with IP or Web-based camera. But most of them used a laptop or an internal router with Open-WRT or DD-WRT firmware. Viewing of the video and control of the RC car in such projects is usually implemented with a PC or Laptop. This article describes the control of the crawler platform from any Android-device (tablet, smart phone, etc.), as well as allowing for viewing real-time video and rotation control pan/tilt of IP-Camera. All hardware has remained virtually unchanged in the first project CxemCAR, with changes were made to allow the Android-applications to work with the Wi-Fi IP camera.

The project is built on the Arduino, and control of the car is via a Bluetooth channel. For the IP camera I used the popular model Foscam FI8918 ($80-100).”

Via the contact form.

HackRF and POCSAG decoding


BinaryRF has posted a detailed tutorial on using the HackRF SDR to decode POCSAG pager traffic. He starts with the HackRF hardware connected to his Ubuntu Linux box. The basic procedure involves using gqrx, then pipingthe audio output to multimon decoding software using the pavucontrol program.

Open source plant watering alarm using ATtiny44A

Chirp_plant_watering_alarm

Here is  an open source plant watering alarm based around the ATtiny44A. It uses a humidity sensor to detect when a plant needs to be watered.

Your favorite plants need plenty of water to grow. If you keep forgetting to water your house plants you might be interested in this plant watering alarm device called Chirp. Chirp uses capacitive humidity sensing technique to measure the moisture level in the soil and alerts the user through short chirps when it is time to water the plant.

Free PCB coupon via Facebook to 2 random commenters

Dp-qfp-proto-v2

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 August 16, 2013

Excercise4_2_W600

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

AmbientMonitor Arduino Javascript dashboard project

am_schematics
Luca Dentella posted an example on his blog about creating a full-working dashboard for Arduino (charts and gauges) in Javascript, running entirely in a web browser without the need for a webserver.without the needing of a webserver it runs entirely in a web browser. In this implementation, Luca uses the Arduino connected to an AM2302 sensor to get temperature and humidity values, which are then displayed on the dashboard.

You’ll find a full project description on Luca’s blog, with the code also available on his GitHub repository.

Via the contact form.

Baudline signal analysis software

baudline

Baudline is a time-frequency browser designed for scientific visualization of the spectral domain. Signal analysis is performed by Fourier, correlation, and raster transforms that create colorful spectrograms with vibrant detail. Conduct test and measurement experiments with the built in function generator, or play back audio files with a multitude of effects and filters. The baudline signal analyzer combines fast digital signal processing, versatile high speed displays, and continuous capture tools for hunting down and studying elusive signal characteristics.

Explore, Analyze, and Discover.

Baudline is free to download and use, though you may not distribute or reverse engineer the code. It is available for use with Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, or Solaris operating systems.

Once you get the software installed and running, you might want to try your hand at analyzing Baudline’s “mystery signal”!

For more details visit Baudline.

Open source DIY cellphone

8575437814_4cbd9d0284_z

Here is a DIY cellphone based on the Arduino platform and the GSM shield. It features basic functionality of a cellphone including making calls, sending SMS, storing phone numbers and displaying the current time.

The DIY Cellphone is a working (albeit basic) cellphone that you can make yourself. It can make and receive phone calls and text messages, store names and phone numbers, and display the time. It builds on the hardware and software in the Arduino GSM Shield but extends it with a full interface, including display, buttons, speaker, microphone, etc.

Via the Electronics Lab.