Bryan pointed us to the Pinoccio. It’s an Arduino compatible Wireless platform. It’s based on the ATMega128rfa1 microcontroller with an 802.15.4 compliant radio built in. It also features a LiPo charger and battery, making it easy to recharge over USB. The project is open source and hosted on github.
Via contact form.
Progress continues on the QFP protoboards. We rearranged the design a little as space became a premium. The goal of this board’s update was to extend each component’s pad length. To achieve this we had to pull some pretty neat tricks to make it all fit.
Kenneth takes apart a few old “tube” radio receivers and finds 8 Henry inductors inside, which is several orders of magnitude more then regular inductors we’re accustom to. He proceeds to hook it up to a 10 uF capacitor, and tests the ringing frequency of this LC circuit.
This LC pair resonates at 12Hz, which is crazy. Usually, getting an LC circuit to even resonate as low as audio frequencies is challenging, but here we’ve got one which resonates at infrasonic frequencies, and with plenty of arcie-sparkie to go with it.
Moral: Always dig through e-waste piles, and make sure you always have a friend with a pickup truck.
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.
At the 31th Annual ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference held last September in Atlanta, GA, FlexRadio VP Stephen Hicks N5AC gives an in depth presentation on SDR and its potential. He outlines his company’s new Flex 6000 series, a Linux based commercial product based on components used in government radios. While this is not an open source project, it’s still an interesting presentation on SDR from the commercial perspective.
Darryl via the contact form.
Ian takes a tour of the Tokyu Hands shop during his Tokyo Maker Faire visit. Pictured above are some basic electronic kits and LEDs. More pics below the fold. Continue reading “At Tokyu Hands shop in Tokyo”
Mat received his open 7400 contest prize, the Analog Discovery bench tool. He was quick to tear it down and find out how it ticks. The brain of the beast is a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA which works in conjunction with a few analog specific IC, like the AD9648 125 MSPS ADC, and a few ADG612 CMOS analog switches.
Analog Discovery is a 100 MSPS twin channel oscilloscope, 2 channel function generator, 16 channel digital logic analyzer, and 16 channel digital pattern generator with a USB interface. It also has +/-5 volt power supplies. It comes with a comprehensive software package WaveForms (Windows) for capturing and analyzing analog and digital signals.
Via the forum.
In the workshop we’re cooking up new versions of our QFP protoboards. We’re migrating them to the standard DP10080 PCBs. Since the old boards were also designed to fit Eagle’s 100mmx80mm limit, we’re having difficulties fitting the new PCB restrictions. (keepouts and mounting holes)
The Bus Pirate LCD adapter v3 is back in stock at Seeed Studio. This breakout board lets you drive, and test HD44780, and compatible LCDs with your Bus Pirate v3. We changed the PCB to one of our standard PCB sizes, namely the DP6037 v1.
Get an LCD adapter for $9.
Bored with having to pick up every component with tweezers, and having them always fall off at unfortunate moments. Build a manual pick ‘n’ place machine. Basically it’s a suction cup on X and Y movable axis, with a USB camera attached for higher precision.
If you are dealing with tiny SMD parts (e.g. 0402 resistors and capacitors), a manual pick and place machine is a helpful piece of equipment for prototyping and small-batch manufacturing. On the other side, traditional SMD placement using precision tweezers not only requires an ultra-steady hand but also becomes a tiresome drill, especially when working long hours upon fine-pitch PCB footprints.
Mat has gone through the trouble of filling up a spreadsheet with the cost breakdown of Seeed’s PCB service. It seems that the boards with the lowest cost-to-area ratio are the 10cmx10cm ones that are ordered in quantities of 10. For higher quantities it quickly becomes apparent that the larger boards have a lower cost-to-area ratio.
Via the forum.
Xilinx has an online searchable database of information on programming their CPLD devices. It includes a number of cool tips and code samples for implementing bidirectional signals, clock dividers, global nets as well as information on CPLD attributes, the schematic library and controlling I/O pin voltages. In many cases code examples are provided in VHDL, Verilog, and ABEL along with schematic.
If you really wanna jam as many components in the tightest space possible, dual side placement is the way to go. Luca made a tutorial for Eagle which describes how to place components on the bottom side of the board.
Here’s a handheld POV toy packed into an Altoids tin. The brain of this device is a Parallax SX microcontroller, while it’s powered with two AAA batteries. 7 LEDs provide the POV display that is capable of storing 32 messages.
There are 32 message slots — 16 are straight hard coded bitmaps, 16 are text strings of any length. The text strings are mapped to ASCII character bitmaps with one extra trick — the engine will look for a break in the text string (a space character) after a set number of characters, and show JUST THAT PORTION of the string for 4 seconds or so, then it moves on to the next portion of the string.
Via Hacked Gadgets.
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:
Here’s a tutorial from Maxim describing thermistors and how to use them in temperature tracking power supplies. Thermistors are resistors whose resistance changes with temperature, increases with PTC type and decreases with NTC.
This article provides a simple, intuitive tutorial on negative temperature coefficient (NTC) thermistors and how to make basic use of them in general, and specifically in power supply regulators. A good example application is their use to cancel temperature effects on LCD display contrast. Two simple NTC thermistor linearizing techniques are shown, and regulator design procedures and examples demonstrate their application. Each example includes a schematic and compares the measured output voltage versus temperature to the target.
Another one for the FACEFRAME series! with Tayken. Check out lots of pictures below the fold. Continue reading “More from Maker Faire Tokyo 2012”
Maker Faire Tokyo 2012 is packed to capacity! Follow the pics live with our twitter feed, or wait for them to pop up on the blog.
More pics below the fold. Continue reading “Tokyo Maker Faire 2012 Day 2”
“One of my favorite things about Tokyo Maker Faire is all of the crazy little flying machines”. We are twitting the pictures as we take them, so tune in to our twitter account, or wait till we post them on the blog.
Check out lots of pictures below the fold.
Here’s a video from Linear Technology describing how to power microcontroller systems with Piezoelectric energy harvesting power supply IC LTC3588-1. It incorporates a full bridge rectifier, and a switch-mode regulator into one IC.
New developments in ultralow power microcontrollers with their high level of integration are enabling monitoring systems which draw sub milliwatts of power. Various energy sources that were not useful as power sources for electronic sensors can now be used.
