A box of PCBs just arrived from Seeed Studio’s Fusion PCB service. This batch includes:
All of these PCBs are available now in the free PCB drawer.
David built a free USB LCD backpack PCB. This board controls LCDs with up to 16 interface pins at 3.3 volts or 5.0 volts. This includes common HD44780 character LCDs and larger graphical LCDs.
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.
Today we had rested up from our Mumbai leg of the Global Geek Tour of India. Out of Mumbai and onwards to Bangalore. Great time and great video. Thanks to everyone who joined us!
Flew to Bangalore for part two of the tour. Enjoying the Indian driving style. Doesn’t bother the drivers, pedestrians, or Ian, but Skillz ruined his gotchies.
In the workshop we started amending our xQFP protoboards. We want to extedn the pads on our universal QFP footprints to give more leg room for soldering. This however requires that we extend the dimensions of the boards a little as well..
Looking for Halloween do-it-yourself project that will make your friends have a frightfully fun time? Check out T0m’s flickery LED candle:
Here’s a 1 chip wonder. i wouldn’t call it the height of originality — just a bit of fun for Halloween! :)
Build something that uses or abuses a logic chip and get amazing boards, tools, and other swag. The Open 7400 Logic Competition promotes awareness of the basic building blocks of modern circuits. Devious geeks ignited the computer revolution with discrete logic computers, what can you do? Details and entry form here.
Via the forum.
Bearmos designed a 3-axies CNC stepper motor controller. It has a ATX connector, allowing it to be powered from a computer power supply. The motors are driven via onboad driver chips, while commands are received from the computer Via the parallel port.
This board is mainly designed to be inexpensive, have lots of indicators for showing what’s going on (making troubleshooting a bit easier). It includes integrated driver chips (not modules that need to be purchased at $15 ea), which should also help out with heat dissipation.
The only (relatively) novel thing about this design is that it includes some circuitry to automatically reduce the current (~1/3 of “active” current) to the stepper motors after they’re inactive for a period of time (probably around 1 sec). A small PIC, an analog mux, and a resistor network are included to take care of this task.
Via the forum.
At the recently concluded Toorcon conference in San Diege, CA, developers Michael Ossmann and Jared Boone released the latest version of the HackRF board. “The HackRF project is developing an open source design for a low cost Software Defined Radio (SDR) transceiver platform. SDR technology allows a single piece of equipment to implement virtually any wireless technology (Bluetooth, GSM, ZigBee, etc.), and we hope the availability of a low cost SDR platform will revolutionize wireless communication security research and development throughout the information security community.” Such affordable equipment is crucial for independent analysts who routinely stress-test the wireless integrity of everything from modern smart-grid meters and medical telemetry devices to the localized mobile infrastructure that securely routes a user’s session with a casino online. Known as Jawbreaker, this current incarnation is based on the MAX2837 WiMAX transceiver and MAX5864 analog front end (quadrature ADC and DAC). This combination will get and convert signals to/from 2.4 GHz to digitized quadrature baseband data streams.
We note that they used the Bus Pirate in their testing of the MAX2837.
The files for this open source project are available on GitHub.
Latest part to be added to our Eagle library is a 4way + a button surface mount joystick. Featured in mobile phones in the pre-touchscreen era, these devices are nifty to use with menus.
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.
Heart of Lamington market . Oldest street. Many big names in India got started here. Follow the pics live with our twitter feed.
More pics below the fold. Continue reading “GLOBAL GEEK TOUR: Lamington market Mumbai, India”
We ran around Mumbai. Avoided the drum sellers like the plague. Also didn’t but the giant inflatable clubs. That’s what we call success.
Did not get killed by wild traffic. Bought Sjaak an LCD, touch screen, and a really wild joystick. Bought the fabled counterfeit flash drive. 32 GB for $2…. yeah right. Well investigate further when were back in the workshop.
Also scored two potentially off-license Nintendo games though they look legit. More investigation is needed.
Mike posted his hardware RNG based on discrete logic chips for the Open 7400 Logic Competition.
Generating truly random numbers using a purely digital circuit is not possible – after all, digital logic is supposed to give the same results given the same input! This circuit cheats a little – a 4049 is used in an analog manner, amplifying and digitizing diode noise.
Build something that uses or abuses a logic chip and get amazing boards, tools, and other swag. The Open 7400 Logic Competition promotes awareness of the basic building blocks of modern circuits. Devious geeks ignited the computer revolution with discrete logic computers, what can you do? Details and entry form here.
Electrostatic discharge (ESD) isn’t something you usually think about until after you’ve accidentally zapped a sensitive component and can’t figure out why it looks OK but isn’t working. Similarly, electromagnetic interference (EMI) usually isn’t taken into account unless it begins to negatively impact a new wireless design. TI has released a 41-page PDF entitled System Level ESD/EMI Protection Guide that draws attention to the importance of these concerns and potential solutions in the design of embedded systems. The guide includes product and application specific information, updated selection tables and key package details and can be downloaded without charge from TI. (Note: Registration and answering a short questionnaire is required prior to download.)
Here are the first images from our Global Geek Tour of India. This batch of images was taken at the Manish market in Mumbai. 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.
Continue reading “Mumbai’s Manish Market on our Global Geek Tour of India”
Today’s 3D model is the recently released Soldering Iron Driver v1.5. For now we’re only selling PCBs for $7 at Seeed. The project is purely experimental, and only supported as far as the community is willing to support it. The board is through-hole only, requiring a 24V AC fused mains transformer.
The completed PCB is the heart of a soldering station, able to control several types of name-brand (and clone) soldering iron pencils. The key to this universal design is the analog front-end which is capable of reading both thermocouple and PTC temperature sensors commonly used in most soldering irons.
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. They are also uploaded to our SVN. You can find them inside the “art” folders in the respective project folders.
Hardware hacking is more fun with open source, DIY tools. That’s why Arhi designed a completely open soldering station controller motherboard. And we designed a through hole version that is now available as a PCB only at Seeed for $7
The completed PCB is the heart of a soldering station, able to control several types of name-brand (and clone) soldering iron pencils. The key to this universal design is the analog front-end which is capable of reading both thermocouple and PTC temperature sensors commonly used in most soldering irons.
Tip status is monitored by a mircrocontroller, and accurately adjusted via PID temperature control. Temperature, configuration, and calibration settings are shown on a 2×16 character LCD display, and controlled with rotary encoder knobs. Soldering pencils currently tested by the community include Hakko 900 series irons (most commonly cloned soldering iron), Solomon irons, and Weller PES51 irons.
Features:
This is just a PCB. You will need to source parts, a transformer, and most importantly a suitable fuse.
WARNING
This PCB is intended to be used with hot pointy things and dangerous voltages. This is a community developed board, copies are available to interested experimenters. NO SUPPORT OR WARRANTY IS AVAILABLE WHATSOEVER. This project is not recommended for everyone.
xQFP breakout boards are back in stock at Seeed Studio. These boards make your QFP prototyping faster and easier. They’re available in 0.50mm, 0.65mm, and 0.80mm pin pitch for just $3.
How HDTV systems impact audio noise, and how to limit it:
Ensuring a pop and click free audio signal chain requires careful design on behalf of both the hardware engineer and software engineer. This article discusses how hardware system and software functionality issues cause pops and clicks and how engineers can prevent them
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:
Ray reports he’s just finished working on a new open source wearable electronics controller board called SquareWear. It’s small (1.6″x1.6″) and has built-in USB port (used for programming the microcontroller, USB serial communication, and charging battery). It also has 4 on-board MOSFETs for switching high-current load (up to 500mA). The board is based on Microchip’s PIC18F14k50, and includes a SquareWear library to make it as easy to use as Arduino. Check out RaysHobby website for the source code and programming guide.
Via the contact form.
A handy serial EEPROM cross reference guide from Microchip. Lists devices from Atmel, Catalyst, Fairchild, Philips, Rohm, ST, and Xicor that are interchangable with Microchip’s serial EEPROMs
