ROM dumper test rig

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EschatologicalEngineer developed a useful test jig for use in ROM analysis. “Greetings, I thought I would share a picture of my ROM Dumper rig. I used a Teensy 2++, ribbon cables and a “Glomper Clip”. I first learned of these clips from the brilliant works of Don Lancaster. I was able to purchase the clip from Electronics Surplus Inc. for about $5, (SPC Technology, 28 Contact, IC Test Clip, Type No. SPC21094). It works perfectly along with male-to-female cables to handle the large amount of data and address pins of a ROM.

My target ROMs are AM27C128 from boards made in the 1980’s that feature MC68B09P processors.

I hope that by sharing this information, others interested in building a ROM dumper or interfacing with similar DIP ICs will see how tidy and helpful the combination of a test clip, M-F cables and a Teensy2++ can be.”

Via the contact form.

HackRF based radio spectrum analyzer


Jared Boone displayed this project at the recent Maker Faire.

This project is built around the HackRF, a software-defined radio transceiver. I programmed it to sample 20MHz of radio spectrum from an antenna, do a frequency analysis on the data, and display the results on a Noritake vacuum fluorescent display. I added the tuning wheel mid-afternoon on Sunday, and it really improved the interactivity of the display. It felt really cool to spin the wheel around and watch the spectrum scroll back and forth. Too bad I didn’t capture that in the video…

Project details can be found at SharedBrain Technology.

Protostack 40 pin AVR development board and ATMega32A development kit

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Protostack has announced the release of their two newest products, the 40 pin AVR development board and ATMega32A development kit:

The board allows you to build microcontroller circuits using the 40 pin AVR microcontrollers.  It measures 127 x 93.98mm, includes a large breadboard style prototyping area and many power supply options.

Smart audio box

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Dilshan Jayakody has written an article about his open hardware project known as Smart Audio Box (SAB):

Smart Audio Box (SAB) is microprocessor controlled audio switch and amplifier system, which is specifically design for audio composers and for audio engineers. SAB consist of 4 high impedance stereo inputs and two output modes. One output mode can drive stereo headphone/earphone and other output mode can drive pair of 8W speakers. In prototyping stages we identify those modes as “Personal Mode” (headphone output) and “Audience Mode” (power amplifier output).

Free PCB coupon via Facebook to 2 random commenters

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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:

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Week in (p)review June 07, 2013

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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
  • 3D model on Monday
  • Eagle parts and tips on Tuesday
  • Free PCBs via Twitter on Tuesday
  • A new tutorial on Wednesday
  • Workshop video on Thursday
  • Weekly roundup and preview every Friday

DIY benchtop power supply

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Tom blogged about his benchtop power supply using the ATX breakout board he won in the 7400 competition:

This time the build was going to be so much easier. I had the great fortune to win an ATX breakout board from Dangerous Prototypes in the 7400 logic competition. Once I had liberated the power supply from the PC tower, the work of 4 minutes 59 seconds, I simply plugged the large connector into the back of the PCB. Bada bing. It literally took me longer to find the “ON” switch.

You can get one for $14 at Seeed Studio.

You can also get a Sick of Beige case for your ATX breakout board for $4 at Seeed.

AVR programmer on PIC

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Jaromir shared his AVR programmer in the forum:

Just from pure passion to see how low-end PIC exercises AVR, I made this programmer.
Basically it is STK500 port on PIC16F1825. I took this tuxgraphics.org one, did some clean-up, wrote new hardware layer for PIC16 and voila – new programmer is born. It was done in one evening and night, ready to work in the morning. I didn’t bother with USB (though there is a lot of DIP USB MCUs from microchip), as It would contain extreme amount of ICs – probably one more than this implementation – and I wanted to keep it simple and transparent. One can use FT232RL instead of MAX3232.

Via the forum.

Free digital design text book: Digital McLogic design

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We previously covered the Free VHDL book.  Now Viswa tipped us to this Free digital design text book : Digital McLogic Design

This text presents introductory digital logic design concepts and introductory VHDL modeling concepts. This book focuses on block-level design and has removed many of the unimportant low-level digital design details typically found in introductory digital design texts. This book results from the authors’ experience from working with students and teaching digital logic design.

Via the contact form.

BatLev, a LiFePo4 cell balancer

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Blarson posted his project the BatLev, a LiFePo4 cell balancer  in the project log forum:

Lithium Feric Phosphate cells are a lower engergy density variety of lithium-ion cells that don’t have the fire hazard and short life problems of the more common li-ion cells. They are popular for electric vehicles and are gradually making their way into marine and RV applications. When used in series (for higher than 3.2 volts), they need protection circiutry to avoid over-charging a cell.

This project is a cell balancer, that acts about like a zener diode. Over the set voltage, (variable over a small range) it acts as a load on the cell, turns on a red LED, and has a opto-isolated indicator for turning off the charger. The TL431A is followed by a two-transistor amplifier for the 3.3 ohm 5 watt load.

Custom standalone programming fixture

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Bryan Duxbury writes, ” I designed and built a custom standalone programming fixture for an upcoming manufacturing project. Fun with lasercutting, PCB design (hooray SeeedStudio!) and pogo pins!” Bryan’s design uses the Arduino Uno hardware with programming code based heavily on the AdaLoader project. Visit Bryan’s blog for project details and links.

Via the contact form.

Jeremy Blum remote controlled graduation cap

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Here’s a cool remote controlled graduation cap by Jeremy Blum:

Congrats to Jeremy Blum for graduating from Cornell University! He made a cool Remote Controlled Graduation Cap that he controls using a custom built wrist control box. The cap has an RGB LED in it and is capable of not only grabbing user submitted color suggestions but also a variety of pre-programmed ones. If you would like to see how it works Jeremy has made it open source and you can see the code here.

Via Hacked Gadgets.

Check out the video after the break.

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MIT’s silkworm-powered, fantastical, biological “3D printer”

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MIT’s silkworm-powered, fantastical, biological “3D printer” :

The primary structure was created of 26 polygonal panels made of silk threads laid down by a CNC (Computer-Numerically Controlled) machine. Inspired by the silkworm’s ability to generate a 3D cocoon out of a single multi-property silk thread (1km in length), the overall geometry of the pavilion was created using an algorithm that assigns a single continuous thread across patches providing various degrees of density.

Overall density variation was informed by the silkworm itself deployed as a biological “printer” in the creation of a secondary structure. A swarm of 6,500 silkworms was positioned at the bottom rim of the scaffold spinning flat non-woven silk patches as they locally reinforced the gaps across CNC-deposited silk fibers.

Check out the video after the break.

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DomiCopter pizza-delivering drone


A few years ago Joe Grand presented his team’s pizza delivering robot on an episode of Prototype This. (See the video here.) The idea was cool but never caught on with any major pizza chain, probably due to the use of a ground based robot, which would be difficult to reliably navigate in unpredictable urban terrain.

Now Domino’s Pizza is trying their hand at an aero drone-based delivery system. “Domino’s Pizza hired a creative agency called T + Biscuits to test the feasibility of octocopter drones that deliver a hot, delicious pizza to your doorstep. Heavily branded as the DomiCopter, the current prototype can deliver two, large pizzas in about ten minutes within a four mile radius of the store. While future versions could hypothetically use GPS coordinates to deliver the pie, the existing model is piloted from the ground by someone experienced in drone flight. The DomiCopter has eight spinning blades and includes the standard thermal insulation bag that’s carried around by Domino’s Pizza delivery drivers. Developed by a company called Aerosight, this type of drone is primarily used for capturing broadcast quality video with cameras.”

Via FoxNews.

Photodiode Gamma ray detector

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Alan over at vk2zay.net posted an article describing how he designed and built his gamma ray detector using a photodiode:

Gamma photons interacting with cheap photodiodes produce small current pulses which are easily amplified and allow detection of individual photon events. This offers the possibility of cheap, small and rugged radiation detectors of reasonable sensitivity. While not as sensitive as larger GM-tube detectors, this solid state device is still quite useful for determining if something is radioactive enough to be interesting/concerning.

Via Electronics Lab.

Mediacenter with Raspberry Pi

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Luca wrote a short tutorial on how to install and use Raspbmc.   ‘Raspbmc is a Linux distribution for the Raspberry Pi; it already includes the fantastic XBMC media player’:

The Raspberry Pi, thanks to the Videocore 4 GPU integrated in the Broadcom BCM2835 chip, is perfect for a home mediacenter; the GPU is indeed capable to decode full HD videos. In this tutorial I’m going to explain how to install and use Raspbmc.