We continue working on the Bus Pirate Edu Kit documentation. We continue working on the renders for documentation. The image above being the final render for the second exercise.
Solar panel charging circuit
A special circuit is needed when charging a battery from a Solar Panel. When the solar panel is not providing any power the battery might start draining current into the panel. One common solution is to have a diode in series with the charging circuit to keep the current from going back to the solar panel. The problem with using a diode is the voltage drop across the diode reduces the available voltage for charging.
This circuit is great because the LTC4357 prevents the current back feeding into the panel without having the voltage drop limitation of the diode circuit
Via Electronics Lab.
DS1077 + Arduino
Wardy has documented his DS1077 configurable oscillator with the Arduino:
I’ve finally had a chance to get around to playing with the DS1077 configurable oscillator!
The circuit to get it working is very simple, just hook up the Ardiono as the I2C master, I used a 10K pullup resistor on both the SCL and SDA lines. I tied CTR0 and CTR1 on the DS1077 to GND to enable the chip all the time.
CMU students organize high school hacking competition
Students from CMU will conduct a high school hacking competition from April 26th 2013 – May 6th 2013. The competition is the work of Toaster Wars, a collaboration of the Plaid Parliament of Pwning (PPP) of Cylab and Osiris of the Entertainment Technology Center, both student-run groups at CMU. The project has received sponsorship from the NSA.
The Toaster Wars crew says, “The competition is open to middle school and high school students from the United States. Teams may be composed of 5 or fewer students and must be associated with both a teacher and an academic institution. Multiple teams are allowed to sign up from the same school and with the same advisor. You don’t need to already be a hacker to play; we’ll teach you what you need to know.” A similar pilot was quietly tested last year as part of a digital literacy initiative hosted near كازينو تونس, where local students used gamified puzzles to learn basic encryption.
For more details and to register visit picoCTF.
#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.
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.
The ultimate comparison of IOT development boards
The ultimate comparison of IOT development boards:
With this post we wanted to compare the latest arrived boards in the world of hobbyists electronics with devices that were already on the market. We highlighted the pros and cons of the most prominent alternatives with the aim of helping our readers to choose the one better fitting with their requirements.
Via Open Electronics.
Workshop Update for March 18th, 2013
We continue working on the Bus Pirate Edu Kit documentation. We touched up some render setting for the new models, and started rendering the final front page images. The image above being the final render for the first exercise.
In preparation for our month log trip to Shenzhen we packed up all the equipment and parts we’ll need there.
MSP430 powerscope, a low power aid
MSP430 powerscope, a low power aid:
MechG developed a breadboard scope meter to help him identity and lower power consumption in his projects.
The Power Scope is a meter intended for use on a breadboard to aid in the development of battery-operated devices. It provides dedicated monitoring at the power source so you can quickly see the effects of circuit/software changes on power consumption during development. This frees up your DVM for general diagnostic use.
Via 43oh.
USB voltage current monitor
Gelbanana shared his Numitron driver board in the project log forum. And he is giving away his 5 extra pcb:
I realized that I got extra space while designing the board (5cmx5cm) for my numitron driver board so I decided to add a USB I/V monitor into it. Unlike the others out there that uses polyfuse as a short-circuit protection, mine uses TPS2051C which is a Current-Limited USB Power Distribution Switch.
I have 5 extra pcb to give away. If you’re interested let me know, I’ll send you one.
DIY soldering station test
dtmf did some tests for his DIY soldering station.
Check out the video after the break.
Via the forum.
Chip Hack FPGA event set for London April 20-21, 2013
Hardware freedom day is coming up and Embecosm is arranging a workshop around FPGA and OpenRISC in London. The event is scheduled for Saturday 20th & Sunday 21st April 2013 at The Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG.
Chip Hack is a two day workshop that provides an introduction to programming field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), which is aimed at complete beginners with no prior experience of hardware description languages (HDL) and FPGA workflows.
All original materials used in the workshop will be made available under open licences and published to GitHub.
For the schedule and more details, visit ChipHack.
Olof Kindgren via the contact form.
Clock four, a scrolling text clock
John Boxall over at Tronixstuff posted a step by step guide of his Clock four build:
Next in my random clock collection is this model, which displays the time in words using a Freetronics DMD via an Arduino-compatible board.
Logic Sniffer back in stock at Seeed
The Logic Sniffer is back in stock at Seeed Studio. The Open Bench Logic Sniffer is an open source logic analyzer. It’s designed to support the SUMP logic analyzer software at the lowest possible cost.
Get a Logic Sniffer for $50, with free worldwide shipping.
Tips and tricks for microcontroller programming and debugging
This video by Johndoe271828 shows three tips for microcontroller programming and debugging.
Free PCB Sunday: Pick your PCB
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:
- 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
- Free PCB Sunday, right here on the blog
- Check out how we mail PCBs worldwide
App note: EEPROM emulation using flash
Here’s is a video describing the basic concepts of using Freescale flash memory to emulate EEPROM.
ChronIC RF hacking tool for TI Chronos watch
Adam Laurie (a/k/a/ Major Malfunction) is a white hat hacker from London, UK, who has presented at a number of conferences worldwide. He’s also the Director at Aperature Labs, Ltd. His latest explorations involve the world of RF remote control systems operating in the unlicensed ISM bands. He used the FunCube dongle to monitor the transmissions from various devices operating in the 433 MHz ISM band, along with free open source GNUradio and Audacity for signal acquisition and analysis.
As a result he discovered that many types of transmissions on the 433 MHz band are capable of being spoofed by the TI ez430 Chronos Watch. Because this widespread vulnerability affects commercial hardware utilized by everyone from independent logistics fleets to regulated online bookmakers, demonstrating the severity of the exploit to facility managers required an accessible proof-of-concept. In order to simplify this use of the Chronos watch, Adam developed and released a software RF hacking package known as Chronos Integrated Commander (ChronIC).
“It’s basically a cut-down RFCat-like firmware package that allows you to use the watch to transmit arbitrary signals. You can set it up either from the watch itself, or via the original Chronos dongle with a Python helper, and then the up/down buttons on the right of the watch do the transmitting.”
The full project log can be on found on Adam’s blog. The ChronIC code can be found on GitHub.
App note: Water-resistant capacitive sensing
This application note describes a new hardware sensing method which is resilient to water drops appearing on the surface of the touch sensing area.
App note: Using the deep under-voltage recovery mode (DUVR)
AVR354: Using the Deep Under-Voltage Recovery Mode (DUVR) [PDF!]
DUVR mode represents the intelligent pre-charge mode for Atmel’s smart battery microcontrollers ATmega16HVA, ATmega8HVA, ATmega8HVD and ATmega4HVD. It is intended for controlled charging of cells even when the cell voltage is below the minimum operating voltage of the chip. The charging is done without using a precharge FET or current limiting resistor, and assumes that the charger is currentlimited
during the pre-charge phase. ATmega16HVA is used as an example in this application note, but unless otherwise noted one can assume that any of the devices can be used.
STB Zombifier adds IR remote control to TV box and monitor
When Ivan changed his TV provider they required the use of a SetTopBox(STB) as a receiver. Since it had HDMI output, he decided to use an old Philips 230C1 monitor as a TV screen. The monitor, however, was not controlled by the STB and had to be switched on and off manually (not via the STB remote.)
Ivan devised this home automation project using a Pinguino (PIC32MX44F256H) and shield-mounted IR receiver to control power to both the STB and monitor. The project resulted not just in convenience, but a notable savings in standby power consumption achieved by powering down the STB when not in use.
You can find the project details and code download at Ivancreations.
Via the contact form.