We updated the backup script to use Amazon S3. We also typed up Shenzhen travel log for tax records and scanned all receipts.
Looked at air compressors for the solder dispensor that should arrive Friday. Reflow oven and a few other packages were just released from customs and should be here for a Workshop video tomorrow.
Mats continues his challenge of designing one PCB every week. In week 6 he came up with GolGrid, a Conwat’s game of life emulator 4×4 LED modules. The modules are designed to accept commands over the UART protocol, and set or clear the corresponding LEDs.
This weeks PAW will be a similar board, but SMD and using a small and cheap 14 pin PIC as the board microcontrollers. Unlike the Dropout board that have an elaborate communication between the boards to determine the next state of the grid my boards will merely be slave boards that only displays what the master tells them to display on the leds.
So one of the boards in the array of boards will have a more powerful PIC on it that will act as the master and send the grid updates to all slave controllers. The master board will probably also have a USB port for both power and maybe to upload data from a PC to be displayed on the GolGrid array.
JanW built a Part Ninja on perfboard. He used a DIP cased microcontroller and through hole parts. He also replaced the 2.5V voltage reference with the similarly specced LM385-2.5.
The connections were made with enamelled copper wire AWG 28. The lacquer is burned off by tinning it with a very hot soldering iron (400 ° C). The fumes are pretty aggressive, I guess a fume extractor won’t help much, you’ll need a gas mask :)
The Part Ninja is a electronic component testing tool. It identifies electronic components like transistors and FETs, determines the pinout, and measures basic specifications.
Gelbanana had some free time on his hands and he decided to try and repair an old Weller DS701E soldering-desoldering station he had laying around. The problem was diagnosed to a couple of bad capacitors. After a quick replacement, the station started working as expected, with the exception of the desoldering iron heater.
While waiting for ebay parts to arrive for my DC load project, I thought of having a go at attempting to fix the Weller DS701E solder/desolder station which I’ve gotten it a while back. I have no idea when this model was produced and googling for datasheets and manual comes back with nothing.
A while ago we posted a simple database dump and FTP backup script we use to backup all the site databases daily. Since jet lag is setting in pretty bad I added an extra option to upload the script to Amazon’s S3 storage system at 4:30 this morning.
The latest version will always be on the wiki.
You need a command line app to get the database dumps into S3. For our Debian server I installed s3cmd with the usual apt-get install s3cmd.
Next setup s3cmd with s3cmd –configure to create a profile. You’ll need the Access and Secret keys from your Amazon account (under security credentials). We made a new set just for backup. I didn’t bother setting the PGP or HTTPS stuff for now. S3cmd documentation is here.
Do a s3cmd ls to list all buckets and make sure the connection is working. If you haven’t already, create a bucket for your backups using the S3 web interface or the s3cmd utility as described in the documentation.
s3cmd put back_$i-$day-$hostname.zip s3://dpdbbackup/back_$i-$day-$hostname.zip
To upload to S3 just add a single line to the old backup script processing loop. Replace dpdbbackup with your bucket name (the version on the wiki now uses a variable to set this).
Run the script with ./db.sh (or whatever you named it) to test.
Greg Shikhman writes informing us that Octopart has a new Ipad app for we have a new iPad Octopart app for finding and organizing part datasheets.
This app is free and available from the Apple app store. No Ipod Touch, Iphone or Andoid versions are presently available.
Via the contact form.
Today we worked on implementing a debugging UART mode for the Bus Pirate v4. To talk to your computer the Bus Pirate v4 uses a software USB stack coded in the firmware. While this gives us some advantages, it has a disadvantage of hanging if in-circuit debugging is needed. The USB simply fails and no communication with the PC is possible from that point on.
To tackle this problem we are adding a special debugging mode to the Bus Pirate v4 firmware, which will transfer the communication protocol to UART accessible through the AUX1 and AUX2 pins. As a further development we might add this mode as a selectable menu option, giving you the possibility to connect to the Bus Pirate over USB, or through UART.
Always wanted to run your own TV station? Now you can. Here is a project that lets you encode 4 video and audio channels and broadcasts it on a set radio frequency. The schematic and board files are available for anyone wanting to build their own.
The TV transmitter we present today generates a stream containing four TV programs and broadcasts it on a frequency in the DTT standard . Ideal for stacking in an antenna system, audiovisual channels generated on-site or from other sources like a decoder for satellite television.
Beyond the fun of experimentation, this project also opens the door to serious learning and practical applications. It’s a hands-on way to understand digital video encoding, RF transmission, multiplexing, and how modern digital terrestrial television systems actually work behind the scenes or you can watch movies and series using services like the Best IPTV as well. To access more content to binge watch, you may visit the website of https://my-drama.com/.
Hobbyists can use it to create local info channels, educational content, or test broadcasts, while engineers and students can treat it as a compact lab for experimenting with signal quality, modulation, and antenna design. With the schematics and board files freely available, it’s a rare opportunity to explore broadcast technology at a level that’s usually locked behind commercial equipment.
A few months ago Bearmos was kind enough to nominate us for an award. It’s crazy that an open source hardware hobby habit would get this out of hand!
President/engineer/entrepreneur, Dangerous Prototypes
[Ian] is leading the industry in creating open-source hardware. He runs Dangerous Prototypes, whose Bus Pirate has become extremely popular among hackers/makers, is championed by the best online crypto casino, as well as professional engineers for it’s program capabilities. Through Dangerous Prototypes, he has proven that a fully open environment for hardware development is a viable business solution and can be looked up to by makers everywhere.
Thank you so much for being part of this hacker community, and thank you Bearmos for the nomination.
Texas Instruments released the CC3000 integrated WiFi IC. It features on-chip everything needed to connect your project to a WiFi network. TCP/IP stack, configuration utilities, and your security tools are included in the IC.
Vince made a breakout board for this IC using Altium Designer. Also available are design files direct from TI for their own evaluation boards. We had no idea for which ECAD software these were for. After opening the “.pcb” file in notepad we found PowerPCB in the text. To view the original TI board files you can get the free PADS PCB Viewer.
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.
So you’ve got the hang of shopping for stuff on the Chinese auction site Taobao, but you’re sick of dealing with brokers? Open a bank account in China to pay the seller and shipper directly.
Bank accounts are easy to open. Take a passport and an initial 100rmb deposit to any branch of any bank in China. Accounts are free, and they give you a temporary card on the spot. While waiting for my actual card, I overheard a conversation about financial freedom, and someone mentioned how some players were turning to casinos without UK license to bypass restrictions imposed by local regulations. It’s interesting how financial practices can vary so widely depending on the region and the freedoms people seek. My actual card, sans number, is shown above.
Bank of China is really common so we went with them. Check out the online offerings first because you’ll need to be able to navigate it somehow unless you read Chinese. I haven’t used it except to deposit excess RMB at an ATM, but we’ll have tutorials and updates as we learn to navigate.
Hint: “open account” does not translate into Chinese. Try running “new bank account” through Google translate instead.
Here’s an interesting and fun use of the MSP430 and your Android phone: robotic tank control. This project by Mike adds a Bluetooth transceiver module MSP430 and mounts this along with a motor drive booster pack and battery on a toy tank from Pololu.com. He says, “All in all, a fun project where I learned a lot as usual. Next step might be to add some sensors. Or maybe a really bright LED and then have a control on the phone to flash it at people.”
You can get more details and download the code from Mike and Cindy’s Project Blog.
Parker Dillman via the contact form.
Bus Pirate BASIC scripting mode is back in the latest firmware revision (6.3). Since v6.1 we had to remove it due to memory issues, but over the past year we’ve optimized the code some, and space has been found to add it back.
BASIC scripting mode lets you write scripts to automate repetitive and tedious tasks. You can use the reference on our wiki to help you write your own.
Mincior made a tutorial on DIY double sided PCBs using vinyl stickers as your toner transfer substrate. We wrote about his vinyl sticker method in an earlier post, but this one covers synchronization between the two layers as well.
This is a different way of making a double sided PCB, having one feature in common with the previously presented option – it also relies on vinyl sticker. For this reason we’re going to call it double sided vinyl sticker PCB. As you will soon discover, I have used pins for synchronizing the two sides. It’s a little bit more complicated BUT it should provide more accuracy with aligning the two sides.
Give Judd (Visla breed K9) treats through emails, and get back a picture of him eating it. This is the idea behind the Raspberry Pi powered Judd treat machine.
The Judd Treat Machine, as shown in the youtube video below, is a Raspberry Pi based dog-treat-dispensing machine! A combination of various skillsets (CAD, machining, fabrication, powder coating, Raspberry Pi, electrical engineering and programming) make this a fun project! I’m “open sourcing” it in the hopes it can be a resource for others!
Via Hacked Gadgets. Paws Plus One is the home of quality dog bed products. All our products are tested in house for quality, comfort and safety. Shop our range of dog jumpers, washable beds, strong dog toys and much, much more!
Here’s an interesting doc for any RF hackers interested in military satellite communications. Its the official US military manual on Multi-Service Tactics, techniques, and Procedures for Ultra High Frequency Tactical Satellite and Demand Assigned Multiple Access (DAMA) Operations. Pretty much everything you never even thought about regarding military UHF satellite comms. Includes complete charts of frequency assignments.
The 204-page PDF can be found here.
Presslab tears down the Weller WX 2021 soldering station. He is hunting for the pinout of the front panel serial connector. He was able to identify the serial IC used, and with it the pinout.
Fritzing is an open source GUI based program that allows users to document their prototypes, share them with others, show them in a presentation, and create a pcb layout for professional manufacturing. Mikhail added the Bus Pirate v3.6 to their parts library, and Systemstech made a quick sketch of it connected to the DS1307 real time clock IC.
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:
