If you’ve ever thought of designing your own BoosterPack for the TI Launchpad, here’s your chance to build your own BoosterPack (BYOB). TI is conducting a TI BoosterPack Design Challenge for hobbyists and makers in the continental US. Prizes include a trip to Design West 2013. Judging criteria include originality and creativity, quality and marketability. Contest entries are being accepted by TI until March 1, 2013.
You can view the official contest rules and prize list at TI.com.
Here’s a project log covering the build of an adjustable constant current load. It’s capable of sinking up to 7A, and can withstand input voltages up to 60V. The log covers the design, perfboard assembly, and case assembly.
An adjustable power load is a piece of test equipment that often comes handy in the development of a certain electronics projects. For example, when you are building a power supply, it will come a time when you need to “simulate” a load to see how well your design performs as the load varies. Adding power resistors to the output can sometimes do in a pinch, but often you will not have the right resistor value handy with the right power rating for the test. This is where an adjustable electronic load comes handy. In this article, I’ll show how you can build one using common components available to the electronics hobbyist.
Via Electronics Lab.
Here’s an interesting art piece for your living room. It’s a Bluetooth controlled 32×32 LED matrix mounted in a picture frame. It’s designed to display pixel art uploaded from your android device. The LED matrix is controlled via an Android device through the IOIOMint board.
PIXEL is open source – both the hardware and software. The hardware portion of PIXEL is based on the open source IOIO platform which controls a 32×32 LED matrix equalling 1,024 RGB LEDs in total. For those familiar with Arduino, IOIO is similiar with the primary difference that IOIO comes with dedicated Android libraries and firmware meaning you only need to focus at the Android application layer. The lower level stuff (firmware, Bluetooth connectivity, etc.) is all taken care of for you. A separate Arduino like sketch on your microcontroller board for example is not required. Just develop in Android using the IOIO java libraries which handle communications (digital I/O, analog inputs, PWM outputs, SPI, TWI) to the hardware for you.
Cosminnci posted pictures of his free DP6037_SMT.v1 PCB build. This is a universal breakout board for SOIC microcontrollers. It features a USB power supply and data lines, a quartz crystal, breakouts for all the pins and a small prototyping area.
This board was really fun to build, I wanted to get a PIC18F2550 breakout board, but now I made it on this nice pcb.
If you build a free PCB we’ll send you another one! Blog about it, post a picture on Flicker, whatever – we’ll send you a coupon code for the free PCB drawer.
Here’s a web video series from Analog Devices describing thermocouples (TC) and how to get the most out of them. TC is a temperature sensor that outputs a voltage dependent on the temperature difference between these two ends.
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:
The crew from the German HIVE Project are developing a retro style DIY computer with Parallax Propeller chips. The design includes three Propeller chips (containing a total of 24 RISC processors), VGA graphics, video output, stereo sound, about 1 MB of RAM, SD Card reader, LAN, mouse and keyboard. The design uses all DIP and through hole components.
The original project site (in German) contains full details on the project. The page translated into English by Google can be accessed here. The project is open source and is well documented (see the Downloads link on their site for hardware and software files.)
A comprehensive project by a dedicated crew. If you’re into retrocomputing or Propeller dev, you’ll want to check this out.
Here’s a tutorial on output current capability of DC-DC buck converters that output a lower voltage from an input voltage. The article outlines the theory of buck converters, and how to calculate output current:
Due to the widespread availability of highly integrated DC-DC switchmode converter devices, system design engineers no longer have to put much effort into the design of low-power converters for many applications. A little bit of analysis, however, can allow the system designer to make sure that an IC switching regulator is being utilized to its full capability.
We often use the peripheral pin select (PPS) feature of PIC24F devices. This feature gives you the option to map some peripherals onto many different pins, instead of being locked onto specific pins. Here’s the reference manual for PPS.
Most of the PIC24F family devices support the Peripheral Pin Select (PPS) feature. The PPS constitutes pins which users can map to the input and/or output of some digital peripherals.
In this presentation from the recent 29C3 conference, Travis Goodspeed provides an interesting explanation of his from scratch implementation of a USB Mass Storage disk in user-land Python for the Facedancer board. . He also covers aspects of antiforensics are they relate to thumbdrives. His demo show how a thumbdrive’s own firmware can recognize and defend itself against disk imaging and other forensic tools, wiping itself to an innocent state whenever it detects disk imaging, undeletes, access by the wrong operating system, or the presence a write blocker.
Interesting stuff!
Here’s a tutorial from On Semiconductor describing noise that comes with inductor based DC-DC convertors. The article highlight the key areas where noise is generated in such systems, and provides suggestions on how to tackle them.
The main purpose of this document is to clarify the source of such a noise, and assess the risk of system’s EMI pollution. The NCP5007 device, together with a PWM based structure, will be used as vehicles to perform the associated engineering test in a real application, but the same may apply to other Boost converters, such as the NCP5005
Madox is designing a RGB LED matrix consisting of 30 addressable RGB LED strips with 24 LEDs each. The LEDs are controlled through the Teensy 3.0 Arduino board over an I2C interface.
The project is a LED lamp that will be mounted on the wall. It comprises of 24 LED Strips of 30 LEDs each of which has an integrated WS2811 controller chip that enables individual addressing and 24bit RGB colour. The strips are driven by a Teensy 3.0, which then subsequently interfaces with a controller board that will do most of the processing. I hope to have it run games (e.g. Tetris) as well as turn on automatically at night, display the time and temperature and do some other random stuff.
January 18 is OpenRISC day and the OpenRISC project currently is conducting a fundraiser.
We are raising $250,000 to build the world’s first truly open source system on chip processor, tapping into global tech communities where affordable hardware drives growth in embedded systems and digital services. Help make this happen by donating to the project today.
Money raised will be used to fabricate a batch of OpenRISC SOC ASIC chips that will be available for sale to individuals and product manufacturers, including Canadian online casinos integrating such processors into their secure, high-performance platforms.
The processor will be affordable, and competitive in mobile and embedded applications. The 32 bit RISC chip will run at an estimated 250Mhz, support Video, DDR2 Memory, Gigabit Ethernet, USB, Audio, Serial, PCI and run the Linux operating system. Individual processors will be sold for an estimated $5 per unit, opening doors for broader adoption in interactive tech ecosystems.
Visit the OpenRISCday webpage for more info or to donate. To read more on the OpenRISC ASIC chip see their page at Opencores, or download an 8 page PDF of the chip’s proposed specs.
Olof Kindgren via the contact form.
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:
Continue reading “Free PCB coupon via Facebook to 2 random commenters”
Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week. Free PCB Friday is coming up soon.
Coming up:
Seeed Studios is currently (17.1.2013-20.1.2013) running a promotion where you get a $10 Fusion PCB service coupon with every PCB order. This is a push to promote the recent changes made to the ordering process. The service is now made through an automated online ordering process. You just upload your files, chose the specs and make the order.
Hi dear friends, we understand that you are very concerned about our Fusion PCB Service. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience occurred previously. And we never stop trying to make the service better meet your requirements. Besides the latest optimization in order steps, we’ve also made some improvements in our Fusion PCB Services (will be described in details later).
And we would LOVE to share this good news with you by coming up an activity. Enjoy our new and better Fusion PCB Service; and at the same time gain a $10 coupon!
Today we concentrated on completing the ‘clutch’ patch for the Bus Pirate. It keeps the pins in HiZ on the start of every protocol, and only sets them to output if the power supply command ‘W’ is entered. To disengage the clutch again you just need to turn off the power supplies with the command ‘w’.
While the Bus Pirate is in UART mode output pins were being read as input. This issue was addressed today as well.
Matseng continues his challenge of designing one PCB a week. His week 2 board, the DigiPot, has arrived and he assembled it. He did run into problems soldering the connectors which he unfortunately clustered under the encoder.
Soldering them was very hard and the leads on both the pin headers as well as the encoder must be cut flush to the pcb before soldering, and it was a very tight fit for the tip of the iron to reach down to the pcb. This PCB needs revising before anyone would like to solder more than one or two of them.
The December 2012 issue of the Australian electronics magazine Silicon Chip features the USB Power Monitor. It uses a PIC18F45K80 to monitor the power consumption of a USB device. The board acts as a bridge between the host and the device with a USB A male on one side, and the USB A female jack on the other.
This week some musing over a Bus Pirate educational/learning kit, and we received the PCBs for the VFD tube module of the Nixie Tube thing.
ARDX is an extremely popular electronics learning kit based on the Arduino. It has an Arduino, breadboard, motors, servos, ICs, and jumper wires. Enough bits and pieces for 11 experiments that teach basic microcontroller and electronics concepts. A guide explains each exercise, and printed breadboard overlays show exactly where to put parts. It was designed by the team at oomlout, but SparkFun, Adafruit, Seeed Studio, ProtoCentral, just to name a few, all build a licensed version.
The oomlout team accompanied us on a couple Global Geek Tours and suggested a similar kit for the Bus Pirate. Our kit will have a Bus Pirate and a breadboard, which can be mounted on an acrylic sheet. Wires, chips, and parts needed for about 12 projects, and printed documentation. All in a nice plastic box.
Picking a good mix of protocols and devices is a challenge because everything has to be through-hole (and cheap). Here’s some previous tutorials we’re using to mock up the lesson book, and some new ideas:
We thought of adding the Bus Pirate LCD adapter board to the kit, but it’s too cumbersome to fit inside the case. Instead we could include a few pots and make it and exercise using the breadboard.
Suggestions and comments are welcome. Especially appreciated are chip suggestions with UART, 1-wire, or using logic chips.
*Everyone at oomlout refused to appear in a Geek Tour video, but we did catch some rare Where’s Waldo shots. This week we show four clips where Aaron, founder of oomlout, can be spotted in New York, India, and China. There’s PCB coupons for 10 people who spot Waldo Aaron in other shots.
