Paul over at Dorkbotpdx has written an article about his DMX lighting sequence player:
Portland CORE effigy at Burning Man will be using DMX controlled lighting this year. At least that’s the plan, but a low-cost and low-power way to automatically play the lighting sequence (without a PC) is needed. Here’s a little board I made for the purpose.
Bus Pirate v4 is back in stock at Seeed Studio. The Bus Pirate is an open source hacker multi-tool that talks to electronic stuff. It’s got a bunch of features an intrepid hacker might need to prototype their next project.
You can get a Bus Pirate v4 for $40, including worldwide shipping.
At the recently concluded TROOPERS13 conference in Heidelberg, Germany, presenters Michael Ossmann and Dominic Spill revealed the details on their Project Daisho, an open source hardware and software project to build a device that can monitor high speed communication links and pass all of the data back to a host system for analysis. They describe, “a passive tapping circuit can be used to monitor a 100BASE-TX connection, but no such circuit exists for 1000BASE-T networks. Daisho will include a modular, high bandwidth design that can be extended to monitor future technologies. The project will also produce the first open source USB 3.0 FPGA core, bringing high speed data transfer to any projects that build on the open platform.
For more information, visit Mossmann’s blog.
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.
Carl over at SolderSplash Labs posted his WiFi DipCortex in the project log forum:
Just completed another prototype, this one is a variation on our DipCortex, a 40 pin dip cortex M3 board.
It adds WiFi using the popular CC3000MOD, giving you a tiny breadboard-able WiFi dev board. Because of it’s size and the thermal dissipation we needed for the LDO it’s a four layer PCB.
Via the forum.
Mats has amazed us with his board a week projects, and now one of them could be yours! Today Mats is giving away three “BB Prince” kits. It’s a small utility board for your breadboard that have some of the most common things you need when building a microcontroller-based project on the breadboard.
He’ll give these away to 3 random commenters, just leave a comment on this post.
For more information visit the project’s Tindie site.
Oakkar7 made this cool Bus Pirate housing made from a necktie clip case:
After getting BP, I try to make a case as usual. Mostly, I prefer acrylic style case like my OBLS and PICKit2. DP calls it “Sick of Begie” case. This time, I found out something which was suitable for the Bus Pirate case. Yes, a necktie clip case.
Get an assembled Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.
Mats continues his challenge of designing one PCB every week. In week 12 he came up with BB Prince, a small multi-purpose utility for your solderless breadboard:
This PAW is a small utility board for your breadboard that have some of the most common things you need when building a microcontroller-based project on the breadboard. It’s a small (2.5×1.5cm / 1×0.6”) PCB with a Power Led, a Reset button with a pullup and goes low when pressed, a Signal button with pulldown that goed high when pressed and two general Indicator Leds that are connected to ground via resistors.
BB Prince kit giveaway coming up soon! Stay tuned!!
Here’s an interesting Kickstarter project the RAPIRO designed by Shota Ishiwatari. It’s designed to work with a Raspberry Pi and comes with a Arduino-compatible servo controller. Switch Science is one of the collaborators of this project:
RAPIRO is a cute, affordable, and easy to assemble humanoid robot kit, which comes with 12 servos and an Arduino-compatible servo control board. It is designed to work with the Raspberry Pi and its camera module.
Check out the video after the break.
Continue reading “RAPIRO: The Humanoid robot kit for your Raspberry Pi”
Cybergibbon has been working on reversing the digital protocol used by a wireless alarm system he recently acquired. He began by observing the alarm sensor’s signal using first an RF Explorer, then using RTL-SDR and SDR# to record the signal, which he analyzed with Audacity. Next, he cracked open the sensor itself to investigate the circuit, finding a TI CC1150 transmitter. From there he analyzed the SPI signal between the sensor board’s MCU and the CC1150, with the ultimate goal of developing a circuit and code to emulate the alarm sensor’s RF output.
You can find the eight steps (and counting) in this odyssey at Cybergibbons’ blog.
Via the contact form.
Here’s an getting started guide from Atmel describing their Lightweight Mesh wireless protocol.
The purpose of this application note is to introduce users to the Lightweight Mesh network protocol stack and typical application development process from Atmel. This document describes how to start quickly with the Lightweight Mesh SDK, by setting up the development environment and programming devices with sample applications.
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:
Pong is the classic video game, essentially the “Hello world” of gaming development. James Bruce, working at the parhaat uudet nettikasinot company, has developed a simple implementation of Pong for the Arduino which requires the addition of only an RCA jack, two 10K potentiometers, a pushbutton and a handful of resistors. The video output is made possible through the use of the TV Out Arduino Library. (Use the TVoutBeta1.zip download.)
You can find the project details and code link at MakeUseOf. The code can also be directly accessed from Pastebin.
Processing version 2.0 is available for download.
“The Processing 2.0 release focuses on faster graphics, new infrastructure for working with data, and enhanced video playback and capture. It also expands the potential of the programming environment. The new Modes feature allows other programming systems, such as JavaScript and Android, to be easily used from within the development environment. The new Contributions Manager makes it simple to distribute and install extensions developed by the community. The P2D and P3D renderers are now built using modern OpenGL, and programs can now utilize custom GLSL shaders.”
Here is an application note from Microchip describing how to implement a hardware Manchester decoder using the CLC and NCO peripherals found on some of their PIC microcontrollers.
The objective of this document is to demonstrate how the NCO and CLC peripherals found on PIC16F devices can be used as a Manchester Decoder. Traditional algorithms can be firmware intensive and leave very small amount of CPU cycles to service other application needs. The following approach involves using blocks that operate independently of the CPU clock and have zero CPU utilization, allowing designers to service their applications along with data encoding and decoding.
Saar of BoldPort developed an open source software for creating artistic and functional printed circuit boards, the PCBmodE:
We wanted to create circuit boards that have curvey traces, meandering paths, and multiple soldermask layers, so we developed PCBmodE (say “PCB mode”), an open source Python software that unshackle us from the constraints imposed by traditional PCB design tools. We use the power of Inkscape – the leading open source vector graphics editor — to achieve any shape imaginable. Together with our powerful back-end tools, we can manufacturable beautifully functional boards.
Via EvilMadScientist.
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”
Johannes Ahlebrand has released version 1.3 of SIDCog. This Spin language object emulates the famous sound chip in the Commodore 64 running in a single Propeller cog. The developer reports it’s much closer to the 8580 than the 6581 when it comes to filter emulation and combined waveforms. Features include a 31kHz sample rate, >16bit internal resolution and includes full filter support (any combination of Lowpass, Bandpass and Highpass filter) and full envelope support with a logarithmic release/decay curve (uses the same logarithmic approximation as a real SID). Square, Saw, Triangle and Noise waveforme are supported.
For more information and to download the object visit the SIDCog page at the Propeller Object Exchange,
Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week. Free PCB Friday is coming up soon.
Coming up:
Alberto Maccioni posted an update on his multi-chip opensource programmer based on a PIC18F2550. It supports PIC, I2C-SPI-MicroWire EEPROMs, some ATMEL AVRs, and (soon) other devices:
In the last few years, as serial and parallel interfaces have almost disappeared, electronics enthusiasts find even more difficult to program microcontrollers; old time programmers don’t work any more; common solutions include using USB to serial adapters (which can’t accept direct access but only slow API calls), or add-on interface chips, like FTDIxxxx, which appear substantially as serial interfaces and require custom or proprietary drivers.
So why not use PIC controllers and their native USB interface?
After searching a while I couldn’t find an USB programmer which was at the same time functional, free, and open source, so I decided to design one.
