Exercise 10 out of 12 render complete. We continue sourcing parts in Shenzhen. QFN footprints for proto-boards are being finalized.
DIY hamster wheel using an old hard disk drive
Can’t sleep because of a noisy hamster wheel? Felipe shows you how to easily make a very silent homemade hamster wheel using an old hard disk drive:
Felipe La Rotta from Cocodrilabs had a noisy hamster wheel. Hamster wheels like most other mass produced pet items are made as cheap as possible, that means that you won’t find a smooth spinning bearing in your hamster wheel. His solution was to make a Hard Drive Hamster Wheel. Most of us have a few used hard drives sitting around that will never be powered up again and inside there are a ton of precision parts including a very smooth bearing that turns out to make a great hamster wheel upgrade. Once you have upgraded your hamster wheel if you still have a few hard drives left have a look at some other Hard Drive Hacks that you can try.
Via Hacked Gadgets.
OWASP AppSec USA 2013 call for speakers
AppSec USA has announced a call for papers and trainers for their upcoming conference in NYC in November, 2013. AppSec USA is a software security conference for technologists, auditors, risk managers, and entrepreneurs. They invite all practitioners of application security and those who work or interact with all facets of application security to submit speaker and trainer proposals. The selection committee is seeking submissions on the following subjects: Web Application Security, Hardware, Physical Security, Forensics, Infrastructure, Android/iPhone/Windows Mobile research, Reverse Engineering Malware and Malware Analysis, Rootkit Detection, Cloud Security and Legal Issues around EULA.
AppSec USA is hosted by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) which “is an open-source, not-for-profit application security organization made up of corporations, educational organizations, and individuals from around the world.”
Applications will be accepted until April 30, 2013. Visit AppSec USA 2013 for more details on the submission process.
Interfacing an I2C GPIO expander (MCP23017) to the Raspberry Pi using C++ (SYSFS)
Hertaville posted a detailed tutorial on interfacing the MCP23017 to the Raspberry Pi using C++ (SYSFS):
In this blog entry I will demonstrate how to successfully interface the MCP23017 general purpose input/output (GPIO) expander from Microchip, to the Raspberry Pi over the I2C bus.
Sunrise alarm clock
Herpderp posted this picture of his sunrise alarm clock in the project log forum.
Workshop Update for April 2nd, 2013
Another day, another render. This is exercise 9 of the planed 12 for the Bus Pirate Edu kit. In Huaqiangbei we tested out some part sourcing services for our parts kits.
SMPS with battery backup and NiMH charger using the LM2595
Giorgos from PCBheaven designed an SMPS buck regulator with 2xAA NiMh battery trickle charger and power failure output:
Some time ago I presented a small circuit with the MCP1640, the High Efficiency Battery Boost Regulator using the MCP1640. My original intention was to combine it with this one and make a complete power supply unit with SMPS technology, dual voltage output, battery charger and power failure signal output. And here it is!
Use your launchpad as a BSL programmer
Kerry Wong shows us how to program a MSP430F5172 development board using a launchpad as a BSL programmer:
Fortunately, most of the MSP430 devices can be programmed using the built-in BSL (Bootstrap Loader). And TI’s MSP430G2 Launchpad has a convenient utility which turns a Launchpad into a BSL programmer. More detailed information on the Launchpad BSL programming can be found here.
Since BSL is a feature that people often overlooked and instructions are pretty sketchy on the web, I thought I would give a little bit more detail on this using the MSP430F5172 development kit from SchmartBoard as an example.
Via 43oh.
Mantis hexapod walking machine by Matt Denton
Matt Denton of Micromagic Systems built this Mantis hexapod robot powered by hydraulics:
After four years intensive R&D, inspiration, design and build, Micromagic Systems is proud to unveil Mantis — the biggest, all-terrain operational hexapod robot in the world.
This 2.2-litre Turbo Diesel-powered, British-designed and -built walking machine can be piloted or remote WiFi-controlled, stands 2.8 metres high with a five meter working envelope and weighing in at just under two tonnes.
Via Hacked Gadgets.
Bartendro serves up cocktails using open source
Bartendro is a robotic cocktail dispensing machine controlled by a Raspberry Pi. Dispensing of drink components is via peristaltic pumps which dispense a known volume with every revolution of the motor to precisely meter drinks. The Party Robotics developers explain, “Each pump combined with our custom electronics is called a “dispenser.” The dispenser boards use the same processor as an Arduino and connect through a RJ-45 connector to a “router board” which carries the Raspberry Pi (RPI) computer. Any normal networking cable will work, but we’ve custom made the cables that come with Bartendro to be just the right length. Router boards can handle up to 15 dispensers, while miniRouter boards can handle up to 3 dispensers. The RPI sets up a wireless access point and creates a WiFi network called Bartendro.”
The project is open source and has been fully funded via Kickstarter.
The link to this project’s source code can be found on GitHub.
#FreePCB via Twitter to 2 random RTs
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.
Easy Pulse board used as biofeedback for virtual jogging
Easy Pulse board used as biofeedback for virtual jogging:
Sergej Stoetzer and two of his students just finished their virtual jogging project, where the Easy Pulse board has been used to provide a biofeedback to their system. They interfaced an ear-clip sensor to the Easy Pulse board to detect the heart beat during virtual jogging. The output of the Easy Pulse board goes to a Lego Mindstorms NXT-Brick, which in turn hits the Arrow Up key on a keyboard connected to PC. On the PC, a Google Street view is opened which moves forward every time the Arrow Up key is hit. So, the idea is to give you a virtual scenic run while jogging on a treadmill. The Easy Pulse detects the heart beat and the Lego Mindstorms NXT hits the Arrow Up key after every 4th pulse. More you jog, faster would be your pulse rate, and the scene changes on the PC screen accordingly. It was a very interesting project. Thanks to Sergej for informing us about this.
Via Embedded Lab.
Workshop Update for April 1st, 2013
We continue to source parts for the upcoming kits in Shenzhen. Taking pictures as they arrive, and assembling an instructional booklet. Work on the in-depth documentation continues.
Another image was generated. At your request we changed the angle a bit. We also generated the standard up-front view of this exercise, which you can check out below.
DIY ethernet temperature and humidity logger
Kerry Wong built an Ethernet temperature and humidity logger:
I used an ENC28J60 Ethernet module along with an ATmega328p microcontroller to log the temperature and humidity readings and then process the data on my web server for display.
To plot the data points, I used Google Annotated Timeline so that you can easily zoom into the desired date/time range.
Via Hacked Gadgets.
Madparts, the functional footprint editor
Here’s an open source functional footprint editor the Madparts by Andete, that is available at github:
Being somewhat annoyed with the cumbersome task of creating footprints for ICs I decided to make my own program for it two months ago.
Last Friday I finally released version 1.0 as fully open source software
Via the forum.
Authoritative GNU Radio training videos
Want free, in depth training on GNU Radio from an authoritative source? Then you’ll want to spend four hours viewing this series of videos by Tom Rondeau, KB3UKZ, the GNU Radio project manager since 2009. Tom provides a detailed, in-depth study of this Software Defined Radio experimental and development system. These videos are taken from the 2012 ARRL/TAPR Digital Communication Conference, held in Atlanta, GA.
Here are the links to subsequent presentation hours:
—Hour Two.
—Hour Three.
—Hour Four.
NOTE: Per the conference organizers, the Linux/GNU Radio live DVD mentioned in these videos is NOT available for purchase or download due to licensing issues. (This is understandable, but on an editorial note it’s regrettable that the open source movement in general, and SDR related projects in particular, seem to be increasingly mired in licensing controversies.)
Shrunk down an Arduino to the size of a finger-tip!
RFduino: A finger-tip sized, Arduino compatible, wireless enabled microcontroller, low cost enough to leave in all of your projects!
The RFduino runs Arduino code and can do everything an Arduino can, plus much more. Using the RFduino USB shield, simply plug the RFduino into a USB port of any computer and use the Arduino IDE to load your Arduino sketch, which automatically begins running on the RFduino.Then you can detach the RFduino USB shield and plug the RFduino directly into your project.
Via Electronics Lab.
DIY corflute project enclosure
Sleemanj posted pictures of his simple DIY case from a corflute:
So I wanted to put one of my handy dandy LM2577 DC-DC SEPIC’s in a box with some binding posts. Being of an incredibly cheap-ass nature genetically there is no way I’m shelling out for an actual project box if I can avoid it!
So, I present, Corflute as a simple DIY project enclosure material, all you need is hotglue, and a knife :-)
Via the forum.
App Note: How to test power supplies
Here is a video from Texas Instruments describing how to test DC-DC power supplies. Measurement of ripple and transient noise of switching power supplies is described in detail.
SDR Touch Android app for RTL-SDR
Here’s an app which purports to turn your radio equipped Android device into a SDR. It called SDR Touch and is available for free download from the developer’s website. According to the developers, its designed to work with the familiar RTL-SDR dongles, and Android 3.1 and up. According to the developer Martin Marinov the app:
Turns your mobile phone or tablet into an affordable and portable software defined radio scanner. Allows you to listen to live on air FM radio stations, weather reports, police, fire department and emergency stations, taxi traffic, airplane communications, audio of analogue TV broadcasts, HAM radio amateurs, digital broadcasts and many more! Depending on the hardware used, its radio frequency coverage could span between 50 MHz and 2.2 GHz. It currently demodulates WFM, AM, NFM, USB, LSB, DSB, CWU and CLW signals. You can get a compatible USB receiver for under $20 online from eBay. Just plug in your rtl-sdr compatible USB DVB-T tuner into your Android device using a USB OTG Cable and turn on SDR Touch. For list of supported Realtek RTL2832U based dongles, please see the end of the description. Those features are supported via a driver that you will need to download from Google Play.”