In many systems, temperature control is fundamental. There are a number of passive and active temperature sensors that can be used to measure system temperature, including: thermocouple, resistive temperature detector, thermistor and silicon temperature sensors. These sensors provide temperature feedback to the system controller to make decisions such as, over-temperature shutdown, turn-on/off cooling fan, temperature compensation or general purpose temperature monitor.
After using rapid-prototyping tools such as Arduino and Grove to finish your prototype, you must desire to DIY PCB and PCBA to make your designs more concise. To make PCB manufacturing easier and more affordable, we’ve provided 2-layer Fusion PCB Service & 4-layer Fusion PCB Service, which have been extremely welcome in the community. As we’ve promised to provide more services to the community, now we come up with Laser Cut SMT Stencil Service, making DIY PCBA easier for you.
Today I put the Part Ninja to good use, it came in handy when I was troubleshooting an old Philips PM5132 function generator.
While I was working on a project I wanted to take a break and switched the signal gen off, later that day I came back and the damn thing failed on me. I switched it on and the only thing I got from it were -22 volts at the output. Luckily I had disconnected the circuit under test or it would have gotten fried as well.
We have all see some complex home automation systems, this video made by Jeremy from The Custom Geek gives a good overview of what is involved behind the scenes. This system lives in the garage and interfaces audio, video, phone, intercom, lighting and alarm system. Since the system is all connected it can do things like mute your pounding music when the door bell rings. Jeremy is also making custom hardware like this RGBW LED Controller to add to the capabilities of automation systems.
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:
Free PCB Sunday. The classic. Every week, get free PCBs right here on the blog comments
Tweet-a-PCB Tuesday. Follow us and get boards in 144 characters or less
Facebook PCB Friday. Free PCBs while you wait for the weekend
One of the things I have noticed missing, for a pretty long time, is a good *safe* lithium cell charger that also supplies a load with a good efficient regulator. My answer, I hope is the BLiVIT. This is a moderate-sized board that incorporates charging from either USB or a wall wart, efficiently manages a single Li+ or LiFePO4 cell, has a power-on/off soft switch (Just like my Powah-1), a fully isolated load supply (no need to blow up my scope when the wall wart is connected), and an efficient boost/buck regulator that supplies either 3.3V or 5V.
Google engineers J.J Barrons and Joe Fernandez have developed this lawn irrigation system. Dubbed Irrduino it uses Android, Ardiuno, Python, Dart and the Google App Engine.
The project hardware details can be found on JoesHacks blog. The source code can be downloaded from Google code. The files include an Arduino based controller using an Android ADK board and an Arduino Ethernet Shield; an Android application that can control the Arduino; and a Python, Google App Engine application that can control the Arduino module as well as communicate with the Droid app. There’s also a game written in Dart called Lawnville that is a bit like Farmville, but it results in a real lawn being watered.
I have an external hard drive connected to our satellite receiver for quite some time (to have it work as a PVR). But for some reason the disk won’t power down even with the receiver switched off (I verified – the disk itself is configured properly). So yesterday I went ahead and added small circuit to the enclosure switching it off when the USB master (the receiver) is turned off. The circuit I used looks like this.
AMX has written a command line tool to modify device files that are used by the pk2cmd tool:
This gives a new device file named “pk2dev.dat”.
I was able to dump and recompile the PK2DeviceFile.dat I am using and checked that the files are identical using “diff”. There are probably
still some bugs but I think it might be usable already. I attached the source code, you need libconfuse to compile it and it probaly wont work under windows natively (because the are some system(“mkdir …”) calls as well as “/” in filenames …).
SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Access) signals are commonly used to monitor and control utility and indusrial system. They use digital modulation and operate in the sub-1 GHz range of the RF spectrum. Atlas of D00M presesnted this talk at the recent 2013 Shmoocon conference in Washington, DC wherein he covered the current state of security for wireless SCADA comms, how to attack them, what that means, and some things we can do about it.
Kevtris presents this post explaining the process for designing and building this awesome NANDputer:
What is a NANDputer? it’s a computer made out of nothing but NAND gates of course! I dunno why, but I thought it’d be fun to make this. I first had to work out how various parts of a CPU would be made out of NANDs, did a bunch of tests and went to town.
I’d love to get into Arduino… but I don’t know how to solder. Which got me thinking about using through-hole sockets on a PCB. As the title of this post… a Betty Crocker Arduino. Add your through-hole components, mix, and bake your ideas.
The Betty Crocker-ness part of this design is using female machine pin headers – mounted in the PCB (I break them out of the strip to mount them directly into the over-sized holes). Primary PCB components can then be press-fitted into the PCB. Voila!
We stopped by our Taco pilgrimage in Hong Kong, before heading crossing over to Shenzhen. In the workshop work continues on the Bus Pirate Edu Kit Documentation.
I’m working on a solenoid control board, that would allow me to do sensorless position control (the algorithm is based on the varying inductance of the solenoid depending on the plunger position).
The prototype for my Propeller accessory is pretty much finished now. The final one will be a proper PCB with hopefully FOUR Propeller chips on it! I’m using one for this prototype to ensure that the basics are working such as I2C and bidirectional serial comms between the Pi and the Prop.
Interested in new open source digital radio protocols? Check out FreeDV.
FreeDV is a GUI application for Windows and Linux (MacOS and BSD are in testing) that allows any SSB radio to be used for low bit rate digital voice.
Speech is compressed down to 1400 bit/s then modulated onto a 1100 Hz wide QPSK signal which is sent to the Mic input of a SSB radio. On receive, the signal is received by the SSB radio, then demodulated and decoded by FreeDV.
FreeDV was built by an international team of Radio Amateurs working together on coding, design, user interface and testing. FreeDV is open source software, released under the GNU Public License version 2.1. The FDMDV modem and Codec 2 Speech codec used in FreeDV are also open source.
In addition to the FreeDV software you also need an interface device which connects between your PC soundcard and the speaker and microphone on your amateur radio transceiver to provide isloation between the devices. FreeDV may also be used with a shortwave receiver for listening only. In this case you may be able to get away with a direct connection between your shortwave receiver’s headphone jack and your PC’s microphone or line-in jack, though this does not provide protection for your PC soundcard.
All audio processing is done by the PC, with I/O via the PC speakers and microphone. Most FreeDV ops are centered around 14.236 MHz. FreeDV is distributed as open source software and is available for Windows and Linux from FreeDV.
Here is an example of Screen Printing PCB Manufacturing. It is very time consuming but your PCB factory could make screen printed t-shirts on the weekends. :) It looks like they are setup for medium volume but it looks very time consuming compared to modern PCB manufacturing.
A couple of weeks ago, I just post a review of my MCP23017 breakout board. As the board configuration allows to connect up to 8 of these boards, I decided to do it and see that it really works. My goal is interface 8 LCD displays with two wires: SDA and SCL from an I2C bus. With direct IO`s of a microcontroller, you need at least 48 lines to control all the displays. With this option (and a little of software, of course), you can do this with only two lines.
Before crossing into China I always stop at Taco Loco half way up the mid central level escalators on Hong Kong Island. very easy to get here from the terminus of the airport express train. As always, a couple carnitas on soft corn shells and a Sol.
Worlds longest escalators on way to taco loco.
Some carnitas tacos. Best this side of California/Mexico that I’ve found. Don’t even ask about the Japanese tacos with scrambled eggs….
