DIY low budget manual pick & place

Vpapanik shared a tutorial on how to make your own SMD pick and place machine:

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.

However, commercial manual pick & place machines are ridiculously expensive ! You have to spend thousands on e.g. this magnificent piece, or even over one thousand for bottom line ones like this.

You would think : Hey, one thousand for a couple of X-Y sliding metal bars ? That was my idea, when started to design my own : total cost ? well under € 100 !

Via the contact form.

Free Stellaris Launchpad webinar


TI is offering a free webinar designed to introduce attendees to the Stellaris Launchpad ecosystem as well as feature a live demonstration of the hardware and software. The event is set for Thursday, December 6, 2012 at 11:00am ET. TI says attendees will also receive a chance to purchase up to 5 different LaunchPad parts at up to 50% off regular price.

You can register for the webinar here.

Evolve better control solutions with genetic algorithms

Brian writes:

I wrote an article over at Microcontrollercentral about using Genetic Algorithms to optimize microcontroller algorithms; in this case a PID control loop. It was a new and fun way of thinking about programming, and I included some source code for anyone interested!

Via the contact form.

3D KiCAD Parts using OpenSCAD and Wings3D

Christopher Woodall from HappyRobotLabs wrote to us with a short tutorial on how to use OpenSCAD and Wings3D to make 3D component models for KiCAD:

I personally find it convenient to utilize OpenSCAD to make 3D models of most eletrical components, which are simple and easily defined parametrically in OpenSCAD’s language. OpenSCAD allows you to write code that translates directly to a 3D model and export this to an STL. However, KiCAD expects VRML files which can be easily generated in Wings3D (which can import STL files). On the plus side Wings3D will allow us to add color elements and surfaces for nice rendering by KiCAD.

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:

Continue reading “Free PCB coupon via Facebook to 2 random commenters”

Week in (p)review November 23, 2012

Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week. Free PCB Friday is coming up soon.

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

Pololu Black Friday sale

Ryan from Pololu informs us about their biggest Black Friday sale:

Pololu Robotics and Electronics is having its biggest Black Friday sale yet, starting this Thursday. You can get up to $30 off your entire order in addition to saving up to 60% on dozens of selected products, including the Pololu 3pi Robot, our new Zumo Robot Kit for Arduino, Wixel wireless modules, Maestro Servo Controllers, Simple Motor Controllers, MinIMU-9 9-channel IMU, sensors, chassis, actuators, and more! For details, visit www.pololu.com/blackfriday

ArduPower – remote control AC devices over Ethernet


Alberto Panu has designed this Arduino-based project to remotely control a bank of AC household current outlets through an Ethernet network. The project uses an Arduino Uno, Ethernet shield, ULN2003 Darlington transistor array along with six power relays and a handful of discrete components.

The AC outlets are controlled based upon Telnet commands and the system has built in password protection. All TCP/IP parameters, the password, information about the connected systems and the power line status before the system powers down are stored in EEPROM.

For schematic, source code and more details visit Alberto’s website.

LogicBoost 6 Channel Logic Analyzer free PCB build

Markus built a free LogicBoost 6 Channel Logic Analyzer PCB:

I too got my free PCB on Friday (thanks a lot!) and built it over the weekend. I made a quick proto board containing the MSP430G2553 to free up my LaunchPad for other things.

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.

Happy Thanksgiving from Seeed Studio

Happy Thanksgiving from Seeed Studio!

Thanksgiving is just around the corner. We would LOVE to thank our families and friends for always standing by our sides. And we would LOVE to take this opportunity to give our special thanks to our dear customers, distributors, cooperated designers, to show our gratitude to the Open Hardware Community. Thank you so much for your loyal support, without which we can’t go far.

We would like to celebrate this Thanksgiving with you by offering a bunch of special gifts and large-scale discounts of many products to you.

Shenzhen day 3: The North East quadrant

Today we mapped the most expansive part of Hua Qiang Bei parts market, the quadrant with the famous SEG market building. In one of the upper floors, a logistics startup had a small demo booth showing how top crypto wallets for businesses were being used by exporters to settle payments instantly with overseas clients—an unexpected but fitting glimpse of how tech innovation threads through every corner of this place. SEG is the best known, but there are a dozen other buildings too.

Most buildings have some combination of cell phones and accessories, but there’s some good parts shops too. Check the pics below of:

  • The security market, 2 buildings of security cameras, walkie-talkies, and other stuff. We even found a cell phone jammer
  • Circuit boards with raw CCD imaging sensors
  • PCI computer boards for multiple camera inputs
  • Tiny camera sensors
  • Goegtu, a suspiciously Google-alike shop
  • USB stick and SD card building. They’ll stick a USB stick inside the dongle of your choice. Also a ton of SD cards by the tray load, no idea if they are genuine but they sure are prolific at more than 200 stands
  • Fairwhale – not electronics related, but so close to fail whale that it almost seems like the sign just has a slight fail of its own

We also visited a few factories in the last couple days and will post pics as soon as we can download them from the cameras.

Tomorrow we visit the market once again, this time in the company of the great Eric Pan, founder and CEO of Seeed Studio. Continue reading “Shenzhen day 3: The North East quadrant”

Programming PIC microcontrollers using ds30 bootloader

WebWarrior shows us how to program a PIC Microcontroller without a programmer:

Here we specifically target the freely available ds30 bootloader for PIC microcontroller and show you how to program your device without the need of an external programmer. The video below demonstrates programming (burning) of HEX file into a PIC microcontroller using the ds30 Loader Utility.

Via the contact form.

Stackable 24 Channel Servo Controller

Carl from SolderSplash Labs writes: We are creating a range of useful development boards to plug in to our SplashBase board

We are just finalising the design of our 24 Channel Servo Control SplashBridge.

Were using an LPC11U24, it has a built in USB Stack in ROM with a Mass storage device bootloader so updating code it as easy and dragging a hex file into a removable drive. The Cortex M0 will be controlled either via USB (HID or CDC) or SPI. We have allowed up to 5 chip select lines so that these boards can be stacked. This means you *could* control up to 120 servo’s. This board also plugs in to our SplashBase board which then allows you to control the servo’s via your network.

Via the forum.

LogicBoost 6 Channel Logic Analyzer free PCB build

Hlipka blogged about his free LogicBoost 6 Channel Logic Analyzer PCB build:

Thanks to the FreePCB drawer, I got my hands on a LogicBoost board. I got it build up last weekend, and after discovering that I need to swap RX and TX on my launchpad it worked without problems (it’s a 1.3 version which doesn’t work with the hardware UART ouf-of-the-box). I have written up a blog post about it, with more detail of the build and some pictures.

Via the forum.

PropProgTH standalone Propeller programmer


If you’re into the Parallax Propeller and are interested in a standalone programmer, here’s a project for you. Known as the PropProgTH it uses the Propeller to take a stored program and load it onto another Propeller. Storage of the program is either in an optional micro-SD card adapter or by uploading the files needed to the EEPROM of the programmer in the form of data blocks (DAT) using the “file” directive. These files are then downloaded to the target using Chip’s PropellerLoader object.

The project is a work in progress by idbruce from the Parallax Propeller Forum, and you’ll want to check out their forum thread to keep posted on updates and evolution of this project.

Shenzhen day 2: Other stuff

We also mapped the South West quadrant (empty, consumer electronics only), and the North West quadrant (a dozen buildings with 6-7 floors each, including the 6 floor international LED building).

Here’s some of our highlights, including:

  • Some sort of passive component pick and place
  • Multiple stores selling only one type of component like zener diodes, tantalum capacitors, etc
  • A cheap and foldable quadracopter
  • Water cooled CNC PCB mill. Sweet!
  • A knob store, these are impossible to pick correctly out of a catalog and the variety was amazing
  • New buildings. Last time this was just a frame, 8 months later you can see the basic layout. Construction is going on constantly everywhere in the market.

Tomorrow we’ll map the North East section, by far the most action packed part of the market that includes the well-known SEG market building. Continue reading “Shenzhen day 2: Other stuff”

Shenzhen day 2: Other stuff

One of our goals on this trip is to map out the main component buildings of Hua Qiang Bei market. Today we explored the South-East quadrant we’ve never noticed before.

This part was full of cell phone replacement parts and repair stands. It was much like Manish market in Mumbai India, but Shenzhen-sized. There’s replacement screens, touch panels, batteries, chips, and even full case replacements. You could probably rebuild about any modern phone with the parts here.

There was a lot of interesting stuff. We saw a cell phone tester of some sort, and a shop selling solder stencils for the main chips on popular phones like the iPhone.

This stretched over at least 2 floors covering 3 city blocks. At the end we noted multiple used cell phone markets selling all kinds of phones: broken screens, outdated, etc. Continue reading “Shenzhen day 2: Other stuff”