We’ve installed a second, duplicate WordPress blog to try to sort our the comments posting problem. We also searched for and wrote up the app note posts for this weekend.
Logic Shrimp v2b free PCB build
Mikelelere built a free Logic Shrimp v2b PCB. This board uses a single 23LC1024 SRAM to capture data on 4 inputs. The current v1 uses four 23K256s with each recording a single channel. Aerial data lines (SD0 – SD3) are now bi-directional as well.
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.
Numato Lab’s New Year’s giveaway
Numatu Lab is starting a New Year’s giveaway. Commenting on their Facebook post guaranties you a random gift from their store. Three randomly chosen winners will get a Elbert Spartan 3A FPGA Development Board.
Sharing some of our joy with our readers, we are doing a new year mega give away. We are inviting everyone to participate and receive a guaranteed giveaway. Random things will be given to random people, but everyone will get something. And three lucky winners will receive a Elbert Spartan 3A FPGA board as well.
Via the contact form.
Free PCB coupon via Facebook to 2 random commenters
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
- Check out our video on how we mail PCBs worldwide.
Continue reading “Free PCB coupon via Facebook to 2 random commenters”
29C3 Chaos Communication Congress video stream
The 29C3 Chaos Communications Congress is in full swing. The annual conference, held this year from December 27 through 30 at the CCH Congress Center Hamburg, Germany, attracts thousands of hackers from around the world and focuses on “technology, society and utopia”. For those unable to make it this year, the CCC crew is making streaming event videos available. Visit the CCC media webpage for links and more information.
Week in (p)review December 28, 2012
Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week. Free PCB Friday is coming up soon.
- WORKSHOP VIDEO: Beers in Akiba’s Workshop
- 3D Model: Bus Pirate and breadboard holder 2
- Unbricking a laptop with the Bus Pirate
- Home soldered Sick of Beige compliant Bus Pirate v4
- DP6037 Protoboard v1 PCBs and all the Sick of Beige case sizes are now available at Seeed Studio
- USB Infrared Toy v2 is back in stock at Seeed Studio
- Paddle Clock free PCB build
- Christmas PCB giveaway
- Scheduled server maintenance complete
- Workshop Update for December 27th, 2012
- Workshop Update for December 26th, 2012
- Workshop Update for December 24th, 2012
- Workshop Update for December 21st, 2012
Coming up:
- Free PCBs via Facebook on Friday
- App notes on the weekend
- Free PCB Sunday
- 3D model on Monday
- Eagle parts and tips on Tuesday
- Free PCBs via Twitter on Tuesday
- A new tutorial on Wednesday
- Workshop video on Thursday
- Weekly roundup and preview every Friday
DIY portable CNC machine
Want to show of your cool DIY CNC machine, but it’s just to cumbersome to take it with you? Here’s a portable DIY CNC machine (machine translation).
Enclosed inside the plywood box is the CNC, along with a computer running LinuxCNC, a monitor, and an interface controller. The work area is 120mm/40mm/80mm in the X/Y/Z axis.
Via Hacked Gadgets.
Workshop Update for December 27th, 2012
Getting back from the holidays, new electronics toys in hand. Blog comments are much improved and all the server errors seem the be fixed. Posting a comment still takes 10-15 seconds though, so we ran the blog with some debugging plugins. No specific problem has been located yet, but we’re getting closer.
Finished Beers in Akiba’s Workshop video and added special guest voice over. That’s the final video from our trip to China and Japan, next week we’ll have a good old fashioned Thursday Workshop video.
DIY Theremin
Erdabyz want’s to build a DIY Theremin. This is a musical instrument controlled without direct physical contact. The device has two antennas which in conjunction with the operators body (representing the capacitance) complete two LC oscillators. By moving your hands closer or farther from the antennas, pitch and volume of the tone are controlled.
My girlfriend is a musician (well, for now she’s a student) and some days ago she came to me saying that a teacher had told the class about some weird electronic instrument that you played without touching it and that was used to make alien sounds for movies. Being the electronics freak I am I automatically knew she was talking about a theremin.
A look at our spammer friends
The Akismet spam filter service we use on blog comments seems to be letting lots of spam through lately. We’re moderating all comments with links, as well as first time posters. That requires human interaction and increases lag between posting and seeing a comment, so we’ll continue to look for better options. Thanks to everyone with keys to the blog who helped moderate comments.
For fun, here’s a few common examples of the spam received this week. All were moderated, none actually went live on the blog.
Ahaa, its pleasant dialogue regarding this paragraph here at this blog, I have read all that, so at this time me also commenting here.
Ego spam – How nice, thanks! They hope us lonely bloggers will be so vain we don’t notice the link to uggs boots used as a home page. Since the product is not related to the search terms it’s a very low quality link from Google’s perspective. Difficult to spot because everything they say is so true! This linked to clothing store.
I adore Lady Gaga!!!?????????? ??????????? ?????? ???? ??? ?????!
Can you spare an interrobang‽ – An exuberant fan of Lady Gaga stopped by with Swiss replica watches.
…best product personality usually working at a multi functional big carton electronics storeDid John kick the bucket however chock – full relating to doubts,or did the response this individual received from Jesus satisfy him,all of these that your puppy famous eight in your peace? We should just do not Understaffed, overflowing hospitals,minus power,have been unable for more information on allow you to have either quite possibly the most minimal treatment Then they began for more information about do you know around us momentum and started losing weightA by the hand approach bright white papers can take a pick (and already has),but take heart in the following paragraphs an all in one a tiny amount of tips thatll provide you with you 90% of what all your family really need…
The prolific poster – This word salad is a mix of key search terms that probably come out of an article ‘spinning’ program. This linked to the same clothing store as the Ego spam above.
[url=http://URL]Beats By Dre[/url] jvnu http://URL doko yros [url=URL]Cheap Beats By Dre[/url] rdmo hURL fmlj qzxz [url=URL]Beats By Dre UK[/url] mbjf URL jlre pcap [URLCheap Beats Dr Dre[/url] xgdp URL yhvp azky [url=URL]Beats By Dre[/url] jald URL xdlx
The lazy linker – Direct and to the point. A list of links hoping for search ratings and clicks from readers. Here we can score some knock off (?) Beats by Dre headphones. We experienced the real-life version of Beats spam in China recently – dozens of touts tried to unload them on us in every market. These are easy to catch and filter.
WORKSHOP VIDEO: Beers in Akiba’s Workshop
Akiba at FreakLabs brings wireless tech to the open hardware community. Recent geek credits include the Safecast radiation measurement project, and designing wireless EL wire controllers for Wrecking Crew Orchestra. You also saw him in our tour of Akihabara parts market last year. Recently he welcomed us into his Tokyo workshop for a tour and an Asahi tallboy.
Designs go from idea to prototype to low-volume product in this freakishly efficient and compact one bedroom setup. A CNC mill cuts PCB prototypes and solderpaste stencils. Parts are sourced from Akihabara. A desktop pick and place machine, the first the manufacturer installed in a bedroom, assembles PCBs. Stuffed boards are reflowed on a hot plate. Don’t miss the crazy DIP socket solder move for attaching through hole parts in a single swipe. There’s pictures of some of the tools here.
Hot air rework tools are on Akiba’s must have list. We talked about the no-name 852s and 968s that go under names such as Aoyue, Qwik, Atten, and others. Our review of the Aoyue 852 and 968 is here.
A huge thanks to Akiba for meeting up with us.
Thanks also to special guest Chris Gammell. Don’t miss him in Beers in Bunnie’s Workshop from our Singapore Geek Tour.
The Prelinger Archive deserves thanks for the amazing public domain video resources at archive.org. These otherwise abandoned materials helped us do something fun, sensible copyright expirations are a good thing! The intro is remixed from Frigidaire Presents Arthur Godfrey.
This is the final video from Tokyo. Normal Thursday workshop videos resume next week.
Do you have a favorite open source hacker? Let us know in the comments and we’ll try to have a beer with them the next time we’re in town.
Retro tech – magnetic logic
Jeri Ellsworth is facinated by retro computing technology. In her latest endeavor she’s researched the principles behind magnetic core logic, a technology used to store data in the pre-transistor days.
We’d have appreciated a close up of the device under test as well as the oscilloscope screen, but an interesting presentation nevertheless.
For more information on all magnetic logic computing, Jeri suggests a visit to SRI International.
Unbricking a laptop with the Bus Pirate
Nbssss successfully unbricked his ASUS G74SX laptop using the Bus Pirate. He used a Pomona 5250 SOIC clip to attach the Bus Pirate to the offending BIOS chip while it was still soldered to the board.
For those attempting this in the future, what worked was to connect the four signal pins to their counterparts (CS, MISO, MOSI, CLK), Ground to Ground, and also Vcc to 3V3, and disconnect the AC power and remove the laptop battery.
Get an assembled Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.
All Sick of Beige case sizes available at Seeed
All the Sick of Beige case sizes are now available at Seeed Studio for $3. This case is designed to be simple, cheap, and easy to assemble. The PCB is sandwiched between two laser-cut acrylic sheets, and the whole assembly is held together with aluminum screws and standoffs. The cases are compatible with standard PCB size templates available in our Eagle library.
Continue reading “All Sick of Beige case sizes available at Seeed”
Workshop Update for December 26th, 2012
Today we continued to organize our free PCB drawer. We sorted PCBs and started a year-end inventory.
USB Infrared Toy v2 back in stock
USB Infrared Toy v2 is back in stock at Seeed Studio. You can use it as a remote control with your computer, view infrared signals on a logic analyzer, capture and replay remote control buttons.
You can get IR Toy v2 for $22.05, including world wide shipping.
4 Channel electronic load
Need to test your power supply with a 20A capable electronic load? Gelbanana is designing just such a device. It’s an electronic load designed to spread the heat dissipation through 4 transistors each taking 5 Amps. So far he is testing the cooling system which consists of two massive aluminum heat sinks.
Paddle Clock free PCB build
Faultykyle built one module of the Paddle Clock, a clock kit project we worked on several years ago. The board consists of two 7-segment displays driven via tw0 ‘595 serial to parallel shift registers. The control and serial signals are routed to a PCB edge connecter, which was intended to to plug into the Paddle Clock base.
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.
USB to serial with COM port LCD display
Avishay writes informing us of his recent project, a USB-to-serial adapter with a small display that shows the COM port number of the adapter once connected to the computer. The design is based on an 18F2553 dev board. Avishay reports his project was the recipient a $250 2012 Wyolum innovation grant.
This project is still in the beta stage, with no RS232 line driver and only a single-digit port number display. Nevertheless, it looks like a potential timesaving concept, eliminating the need to check the OS for the COM port assignment every time a device is plugged in.
Visit Avishay’s website for project details and source code.
Via the contact form.
DP6037 Protoboard v1 PCBs are available at Seeed
A multipurpose 0.1″ pitch prototyping board that fits a DP6037 acrylic case is now available at Seeed Studio. This one is pretty small, just 60mm by 37mm, bigger boards are on the way.
We originally made this board for building up quick and simple reference circuits with through-hole chips, such as the DIP ARM chip (LPC1114FN28) Yoshi gave away at the Open Hardware Summit this year. Usually we toss test boards into a box where they get banged up pretty bad, eventually going in the trash or a big roving part box. Now we slap on a cheap acrylic sandwich case, and the board is protected and usable in the future.