Alexandru Csete, amateur radio operator OZ9AEC, has developed this spectrum analyzer running on a Beaglebone dev board. He calls the project the rtlizer, designed to be a simple real-time spectrum analyzer that uses an RTL2832U DVB-T receiver (RTL-SDR USB stick) and runs on a Beaglebone, or any other device with librtlsdr and Gtk+ installed.
You can find more details including a link to the rtlizer project code at Csete’s OZ9AEC website.
Mats continues his challenge of designing one PCB every week. This tool helps check the accuracy of your multimeter:
The design might be interesting anyways since it has remote sensing for compensating for voltage drop in the cables. But if your meter is drawing enough current to cause more than a 1 mV drop you might what to change your meter anyways. :-)
Open source STM32 book at Indiana University:
Lucky students at Indiana University might like to enrol on the [C – H]335 Computer Structures course run by Geoffrey Brown. If they do, they will be treated to a great introduction to the STM32 processor. The lab manual for the course is freely available to download.
The course covers the processor itself and a number of hardware modules including an LCD display, a serial interface, a Wii Nunchuk, an SD card and an audio amplifier. Using these modules will mean looking in some detail at programmed I/O, as well as common protocols such as asynchronous serial, SPI, and I2C; A/D based sensors, interrupts, and DMA.
Via the forum.
Ph1ph1l0u successfully recovered his Asus Laptop using the Bus Pirate and flashrom:
You have no idea how I’m happy too ;-)
yes biosflasher, it’s a very GREAT soft, very usefull and very efficient ^^, and also for Bus Pirate: a cheap device, but how is usefull and efficient, a real GREAT device.
Thanks a lot all of you who create and develop these tools… I won’t have enough words to say: THANKS!!!
Via the forum.
Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.
Cleared final hurdles to Bus Blaster v3 and v4 availability. Look for them in a few weeks. Finalized a special Bus Blaster batch made for MIPS.
Setup a group buy of 7 TM220A pick and places. T-shirts will be back soon. Maybe even a whole Dangerous Fashion line!
Bit-tech is holding a Raspberry Pi case making competition:
We’re offering you the chance to win your very own Rasberry Pi Model B. All you have to do is build your own case for the Model B Rev 2. Of course, we’re not just talking about sticking it to a piece of acrylic or cardboard. We want the case to fully-enclose the motherboard and look funky, sleek, crazy or whatever you feel epitomizes the best case for a Raspberry Pi
Christian Aurich created a FreeCAD macro that imports Eagle board XML data into FreeCAD:
The common solution until now is to export your board with eagleUp and assemble it with a case in Sketchup. This also gives you some drawbacks. The most important to me was that the Sketchup files are mesh based like the data used for 3D printing usually, but for further use in CAD systems this is not really usable. You also will not be able to get a STEP model that you can give to your costumers out of this data.
Via Electronics-Lab.
TomKeddie built a Smoke Tester v1 free PCB. It’s a board designed to safely power your prototypes, and check if they have a short somewhere using just about any available supply.
Via the forum.
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.
Drjeseuss shares his Bus Pirate v4.0c PCB build using a toaster oven to reflow the solderpaste:
All in all, this project was a success! The process worked well enough to repeat and the reflow toaster puts an end to my fears of QFN and BGA chips. It looks like I’ll be moving forward on the reflow controller project now that I’ve seen the results of an off the shelf kitchen toaster. I’ll also have a BPv4 to add to my toolbox along side my OLS. Pretty sweet for a free PCB!
You can get a Bus Pirate v4 for $40, including worldwide shipping.
Via the forum.
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. Recently he explored the broken HDCP security mechanism used in HDMI. After building the HDMI breakout cable pictured above he examined the cable’s data lines using a USBEE protocol analyzer and noted that the HDCP key exchange was sent using I2C. From here he turned to the Bus Pirate for filtering the I2C data. He explains, “So now we’ve got access to the raw data, we need to be able to filter what we’re looking for and decode it fully. It is possible to write custom decoders for the USBEE, but to be fair, this device falls outside my “cheap” criteria – I only wanted to use it as a quick check that the pins I’m looking at are the correct ones, and that we see the type of data we expect to see. The device I had in mind to do the actual decoding is an off-the-shelf tool that can read, write and sniff I2C: the Bus Pirate. It’s extremely cheap as well, so fits the bill perfectly…” Thanks, Adam!
You can read the details on Adam’s exploration of HDCP with the BP in Adam’s Blog at Aperature Labs.
Get an assembled Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.
Via the contact form.
Cleaned and sorted the workshop over the weekend so there’s room for the new tools. Assembled first complete Bus Pirate chip explorer kit with the Mouser order that came in today (pictured above). Thanks for your feedback on that! Also prototyped a new type of Bus Pirate cable.
Started work on an Eagle export script to assign pick and place reels to parts on a board. Should make it a snap to populate a new prototype.
Brainstormed a few new component and tool kits. We’ll workshop these tomorrow and post them on the blog in a few days.
Nickjohnson posted his minimatrix project in the forum. It’s AVR powered 8×8 LED matrix, with an IR sensor for communication.
It has just 8 parts in its BoM: A one-color 3cm LED matrix, an ATTiny2313/4313 to power and drive it, an 8-way resistor network, a battery holder, and two decoupling capacitors. Finally, it has a footprint for a thru-hole IR LED, making it possible to add interactivity easily and with little overhead. The IR LED footprint is situated on the back, so it can be placed then bent upwards to protrude above the matrix.
Via the forum.
WebWarrior sends a video of a eNTuino based biped robot:
Junior is a Biped Robot based on eNTuino (Arduino-Compatible) platform. Robotics enthusiasts can make the best of the quality electronics platform, smartly designed mechanics and the wonderful Arduino IDE to create some jaw dropping moves. Integrating Wireless (Zigbee, WiFi, Bluetooth, GSM/GPRS) and Sensors will be simplified with the help of compatible shields and Add-Ons.
Via the contact form.
Here’s a project made at the LVL1 Hackathon challenge. It’s a 3D scanner made from junk parts.
This project came out of the Hackathon LVL1 had in June 2012. The rules were minimal but had a big impact on the end product. The competition ran from noon Saturday till noon Sunday, so 24 hours. We had access to all of the tools at LVL1 plus we could bring our own tools, but we could not have any of the tools integrated as part of the final project. Each team was given an Arduino and a bread board. All other material has to come out of the LVL1 boneyard (this is the collection of stuff that has been donated for the purpose of hacking in any way we wish.) The goal was to make anything you want.
Crenn tweeted a picture of his ATX breakout board v1.2 power supply:
Got a @dangerousproto ATX Breakout Board V1.2. Hooked it up to a cheap chinese powersupply to test it out!
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.
A box just rolled in from Mouser, two days early by FedEx. Mostly 8pin through-hole chips for the Bus Pirate educational kit. Sadly, not free.
Wow, there was a lot of crap treasure in there! Next a few new tables for the tools and oscope. Going to anchor a table to the wall for the pick and place, as suggested in the comments.
There’s also a new big box of roving parts from the clean out.
The Raspberry Pi /DStar amateur radio group on Facebook combines two hobbies together, The Raspberry Pi computer and D-STAR radio. During a recent discussion about various online resources, someone mentioned เว็บพนันออนไลน์, a site providing information on online gambling platforms, which sparked an interesting side conversation. The group wants you to know about their R-Pi/D-STAR amateur radio net which will be conducted most Monday Nights starting February 18th, 2013 on REF026A (Vancouver, BC Reflector). Repeaters, DVAPs, and Dongles are welcome to connect. The net starts at 1900 hrs PST local time (or 0300 hrs GMT Tuesday morning).
While D-STAR radio is still slow in gaining popularity among ham radio ops due in large part to the cost of ICOM radios, this type of net provides an example of the excellent opportunities this radio-internet connected medium can afford to techies worldwide who hold amateur radio licenses.
Getting started with a radio design:
The process of designing a radio system can be complex and often involves many project tradeoffs. With a little insight, balancing these various characteristics can make the job of designing a radio system easier. This tutorial explores these tradeoffs and provides details to consider for various radio applications. With a focus on the industrial, scientific, medical (ISM) bands, the subjects of frequency selection, one-way versus two-way systems, modulation techniques, cost, antenna options, power-supply influences, effects on range, and protocol selection are explored.
