Mats tipped us to this high speed pick and place machine that’s currently about $3600 on Taobao. It features 15 automatic reel feeders, and the top speed of the machine is 6000 parts per hour. The placement head can handle parts as small as 0402, but it doesn’t use a vision system so accuracy will be limited.
This video explains a simple reflow PCB assembly technique. The board is first prepped with solderpaste using a stencil. Then a manual pick and place machine populates the board. This is followed by a 5-6 minute cook in the reflow oven.
Today we’re editing the video tour of Freak Labs with Akiba. Complete Sick of Beige case set is ready to go on sale and should be listed at Seeed shortly. Also complete and ready for sale is a DP6037 sized proto-board. It’s a classic 0.1″ pitch perforated board that is designed to fit our DP6037 sized SoB case.
As part of the documentation for the square sized SoB cases, today we worked on a rendering of the same.
Here’s a project that let’s you measure the internal resistance of Lithium Polymer batteries. It measures the total current as the battery discharges through a 1 Ohm resistor. From the known voltage and the discharge current the internal resistance can calculated.
This device can be used to measure the internal resistance of Lithium Polymer batteries used in electric RC models. The power consumption of these models is quite high, and the batteries wear out in 100-200 recharge cycle. The internal resistance is a good measurement of the age of the batteries. New cells are below 5mohm, and the ones at the end of their life are above 20mohms. It also depends on the original quality.
We added the TXB0108 dual supply 8-bit bidirectional voltage level translator (TSSOP-20 package) to our library. As the title suggests it translates 8 channels between two voltage levels. There is no direction control. All the pins are bi-directional at all times, and the directions of each pin are independent of one another.
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.
Matseng started a challenge for himself where he intends to post a PCB project a week. The first project is “NanoUtils Xtal” – a crystal oscillator breakout board. The board is designed to be interfaced with microcontrollers that have their oscillator pins next to a ground pin.
This board is a breakout containing a SMD crystal, two caps and a resistor meant to be used in breadboards when building something with an Atmel ATmega or a Microchip PIC that have the two crystal pins next to a GND pin. For instance the atmega328 or pic18f2550.
Chris from PyroElectro writes about his holiday project. “It’s an all-digital-hardware LED Christmas tree we’re calling the Christmas Tree O’Digital Logic. The tree itself is composed of 64 LEDs built into a spiral sitting on a piece of protoboard. Underneath, the controller uses shift registers and a 555 timer to create two modes of display: a predictable pattern and a random pattern. This should light up any desk or shelf and bring merriment to your readers. Happy Holidays!”
You can find all the details on Chris’ Yuletide project on his PyroElectro website.
Continue reading “Christmas Tree O’Digital Logic”
We mailed a big batch of free PCBs today. We’ve given away over 600 PCBs since the Zencart store was brought online last year. Server maintenance will happen shortly. It should fix some bad lag for logged-in WordPress users (mostly blog authors).
We ordered some Bus Pirate giveaway sets for Tokyo Hackerspace fundraiser. Tracked down some missing PCBs and sent 7 boards out to be manufactured. Arranging a bulk sticker buy, free stickers with PCBs will be back shortly.
We model and rendered the Bus Pirate and breadboard holder. Which may or may not be used in documentation for a Bus Pirate kit we are designing.
This week we received a batch of PCBs and amongst them was the latest revision of our USB TFT breakoutboard. This board is the first board that features a new ICSP footprint, which occupies less space on the PCB and should improve testing and programming times at Seeed.
Continue reading “Testing the new reduced-sized ICSP connector”
Tom chose to redeem one of his coupons for a Bus Pirate v3 from the scratch and dent category of our free PCB drawer. On arrival it was faulty, but he was quick to diagnose a problem with the FT232RL USB-to-serial IC on board. After replacement the Bus Pirate came to life.
I chose a bus pirate v3 pcb in a dangerousprototypes.com scratch and dent giveaway. To my surprise I received an assembled unit that was faulty. The USB wasn’t responding so I replaced the ft232rl and bing it came to life. Updated the boot loader and then the firmware, now I’m about to use it to talk 1wire to the ds18s20 temp sensors that have been gathering dust in my parts box.
Thanks for running such a great site.
Via the contact form.
Today’s model is a Bus Pirate and breadboard holder we designed for a kit we are prototyping. The holder board was designed in Sketchup and the design SVG files were sent for laser cutting. Free PCB to the first one to guess what IC is in the breadboard.
Check out our tutorial on how to build 3D models from Cadsoft Eagle board files, as well as the tutorial on how to render life like images with Kerkythea.
The models will be published in the Dangerous Prototypes 3D warehouse collection.
David Hayward over at CNET UK has posted an article describing how he designed a solar powered FTP server based on the R-Pi. The additional hardware consists of a solar cell array and 4 NiMH batteries. The solar panel is by Cottonpickers, but you could use any appropriately rated panel. (Be sure to include appropriate voltage regulation, as the R-Pi is very voltage sensitive.) The article provides step by step instructions on how to install and configure the necessary software to turn the Pi into an FTP server.
Such a solar powered setup could be useful for downloading sensor data from a remote monitoring station, though solar conditions and the project’s current draw could limit the amount of functional time.
Via CNET UK.
We met the Makerblock team during our Shenzhen Maker Faire visit earlier this year. They let us know that their system is close to being finalized. It’s a mechanical prototyping platform designed to make it easy to assemble robots, linear actuators, and other mechanical devices.
Now, we improved a lot on this project, Makeblock can be used to build many kinds of wheel robot, track robot, robot arm or linear motion mechanism, this is a perfect choice for geeks or makers to turn their ideas into success, I think the readers of your website will be very interested in Makeblock.
Via the contact form.
Tully wrote to us about his latest project, the Arduino doomsday clock shield. The board features six 7-segment displays counting down up to the end of the Mayan calendar.
Hey Ian,
I want to show off one of my recent creations, the Doomsday Clock Arduino Shield. You can use it to countdown the final hours until the end of the Mayan Calendar, or learn how by Charlieplexing all 64 LEDs are controlled by only 9 digital pins on the Arduino.
Via the contact form.
Here is a video from Texas Instruments describing the differences in motor pre-drivers vs integrated drivers. Pre-drivers have all the control circuitry but the FETs are external, while in integrated drivers everything is on one IC. Because pre-drivers use external FETs, you can select the ones with much lower RDS-on resistance. This will give you much better thermal characteristics, but you sacrifice board space.
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:
Kaspar sent in a link to this video trailer for the indie film Software Wars. Its stated focus is “about how free software will save you thousands of dollars and lead to a better world.” They report having conducted many hours of interviews thusfar, with a goal of producing a 90 minute movie in the next 4-5 months.
The movie is being developed by Indiegogo using a Flexible Funding campaign. (Think “Kickstarter for indie films.”) You can find a complete explanation of their approach and progress updates on their site.
Via the contact form.
Here’s an app note from Microchip describing various methods for measuring pulse in periodic and non-periodic waveforms. Calculating duty cycle in periodic waveforms is also described.
Many times it is desirable to quantify the pulse width of a periodic signal, such as that of a servo motor or duty cycle of a pulse-width modulated signal. There are other instances where a pulse that is non-periodic needs to be measured, such as those commonly found in a Capacitive Discharge ignition circuit. This application note describes six different strategies to measure a pulse of both periodic and non-periodic waveforms as well as six methods for calculating a duty cycle of a periodic waveform using an 8-bit PIC device.
Next up in our power supply theme is over-current and over-temperature protection for power supplies. The circuit cuts power in case one of these two events happen, it also has an external shutdown pin so the supply can be controlled by a switch or microcontroller.
When it is necessary to plug in a board into a system that is currently powered, it is critical to control the inrush current to prevent damage/system fault conditions. This application provides a simple circuit to achieve this function as well as an easy method for resetting the system and monitoring against temperature issues.
