Today we left for the Global Geek Tour of New York. Check out our wiki for more information about it, and contact us if you’d like to join the East Village food crawl and the New York electronics tour.
We go the Smoke Tester prepped for preview, and started a 3D Model of the board as well as a wiki page for it.
We also added directional info on all bidirectional buffer IC symbols (e.g. 74xx245) in our Eagle library.
We added the INA138 high-side current monitor to our Eagle parts library. This is the part used in the Smoke Tester to read current through a voltmeter. It basically mirrors the current going through its shunt resistor to a load resistor. By playing with these values you can get an easy shunt current to output voltage ratio to make calculating current a no-brainer.
Chris wrote extensive documentation on how to implement precise control of DC motors using FPGAs.
The goal of this project is to build a simple one input, one output system that will control a motor. The control input will come from a trimpot and the FPGA or CPLD’s job will be to use the input to create the proper duty cycle PWM output to the DC motor controller.
Via the Gadget Factory.
Here is the Smoke Tester. It’s a board designed to safely power prototypes for the first time and see if there are shorts. Current can be measured using a voltmeter. Here’s the full feature list.
Design files are available in our SVN.
This design is intended as a workshop tool, but if enough people like it might go into production as well. The current measurement feature was inspired by Schazamp’s “USB Power Supply with Resettable PTC“, we strongly suggest you check it out.
Prototype boards will go out soon with any updates. If you have any suggestions please leave a comments below, or check out the forum thread about it.
STMicroelectronics has introduced the M24LR04E-R 4-Kbit Dual Interface EEPROM with RFID. “The M24LR04E-R device is a dual-interface, electrically erasable programmable memory (EEPROM). It features an I2C interface and can be operated from a VCC power supply. It is also a contactless memory powered by the received carrier electromagnetic wave. The M24LR04E-R is organized as 512 × 8 bits in the I2C mode and as 128 × 32 bits in RF mode. The M24LR04E-R also features an energy harvesting analog output, as well as a user- configurable digital output pin toggling during either RF write in progress or RF busy mode.” This device operates on a single supply voltage between 1.8 – 5.5 volts when using the I2C interface, with RFID operation harvesting energy from the reader device.
Information on managing simultaneous I²C and RF data transfers can be found in STM app note 4125. Use as an NFC vicinity tag is discussed in STM app note AN3408.
Single unit retail pricing on the 8-pin TSSOP package is in the $1.50 range from DigiKey.
Product details can be found in the 142 page PDF datasheet.
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.
Mikelelere modified Actel’s DirectC 2.7 programming utility to support the Bus Blaster. With his modifications you should be able to program Actel’s FPGAs using programinn DAT files.
The Bus Blaster is a high-speed JTAG debugger for ARM processors, FPGAs, CPLDs, flash, and more. You can get a Bus Blaster v2 for $34.95 at Seeed.
Via the forum.
Fixed the website background color, it should look better in some feed readers now. Finalized (more or less) the open hardware USB VID presentation, and made up some kind of poster for the discussion session. Hope to squeak out a mini video yet for Thursday.
Today’s 3D model got rendered. We did some fact finding and some illustrations for an upcoming tutorial.
Cruised some helpful app notes from Lattice Semiconductor and from Linear Technology describing multiple power source power supply designs.
J1mbo updated his XT-CF adaptation of our XT-IDE CPLD board. You can check out his wiki page with all the details about the board, the BOM, and the source files. This board allows vintage XT computers to use CF cards as hard drives, which keeps lots of old industrial and medical equipment going using modern parts.
It’s loosely based on our XT to IDE hard drive CPLD board, which is itself a CPLD-based knock-off of the Vintage Computer Forum’s XTIDE board. J1mbo’s version uses a flash card holder instead of an IDE hard drive.
Via the forum.
This HP Printer Display Hack by Chris Miller is a simple background application that periodically checks the current price of a selected stock and sends it to the display of HP (and compatible) laser printers. It is a takeoff on the 1990s hack that used HP Job control language to change the text on the LCD status display. Written using Visual Studio Express, the program obtains the stock price from Yahoo financial and sends it to any compatible printer you specify.
Details and code (both C# and VB versions) can be found at Coding4Fun.
FUN BitPack is designed for developing games on Orbit16 PIC24 and PIC32 development boards. It has a Nokia 3310 display, a Joystick, two buttons, and a buzzer:
FUN BitPack is suitable for making hand-held videogames such as our “ORbitSnake”, a Snake game version for ORbit16 (see Below). To enter the bootloader with FUN BitPack attached, use the reset button and the Up Button on the board.
The Nokia 3310 display and two-button input make the FUN BitPack well suited for arcade-style titles where the core loop is simple and the challenge comes from speed and timing. ORbitSnake is the obvious starting point, but the joystick and buzzer open up possibilities for reaction games, rhythm matchers, and basic slot-reel animations. One hobbyist on the ORbit16 forum built a stripped-down card game that mimicked the payout animations of a crypto casino bonus round, using the buzzer for win sounds and the Nokia display’s limited pixel grid for card sprites. The project was more a proof of concept for sprite-layering techniques than a playable product, but it demonstrated how much visual feedback the 3310 screen can deliver when the draw routines are optimized.
For anyone getting started, the Snake example in the repository is worth studying before attempting anything more complex. It covers joystick polling, frame timing, and basic collision detection, which are the same building blocks you’ll need for any game running on this hardware.
Via the contact form.
Today’s 3D model is the Bus Pirate v4c, also know as the Sick of Beige compatible version. The Bus Pirate is an open source hacker multi-tool that talks to electronic stuff.
Check out out Sick of Beige customization tutorial explaining how to fit your project into our Sick of Beige cases.
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. Check out the 3D view below. You can zoom and rotate the model.
You can get a Bus Pirate v4.0 (not Sick of Beige) for $40 at Seeed, shipping included.
Here is another open source Nixie clock. It’s built with 3 boards stacked on top of each other. One for the high voltage power-supply, one for the control, and one to hold the nixies in place.
Uses an Atmega328P microcontroller with Arduino bootloader and firmware preloaded. The firmware is written in Arduino, and is fully open source. Anyone can reprogram their Nixie clock using a simple FTDI Adapter and a USB mini-b cable.
Via Electronics-Lab.
TitanMKD is designing an STM32F4 based debug board using a DP6037 standard PCB size and a Sick of Beige case. The board features a Bus Pirate-like serial terminal interface.
This board is intended to be used as a portable multi-purpose debug/hack tool with very fast peripherals and MCU and use standard Dangerous Prototypes Sick Of Beige DP6037 case format.
Sick of Beige basic case v1 is designed to be simple, cheap, and easy to assemble. The project PCB is sandwiched between two laser cut acrylic sheets, and the whole assembly is held together with aluminum screws and standoffs.
Check out our current range of $3 Sick of Beige cases at Seeed Studio.
Via the forum.
After days of soldering off and on, 14 nixie thing modules are good to go.
Sequentially connecting optocouplers for better isolation slows things way down, digital isolators don’t suffer as much. The advantages of digital isolators over opto-couplers [PDF!] in layered isolation:
Creating double insulation barriers with sequential optocouplers is problematic because the data integrity is poor, and there is no compact inexpensive way to provide power to the interface between the barriers. With the advent of high performance digital isolators like iCoupler, and integrated power in isoPower devices, creating high voltage isolation
barriers by layering isolators is now a viable solution.
Energy Micro is conducting a design contest based on their EFM32 product line. The contest is looking for great low power design ideas based on an EFM32 and is open for entries until October 31, 2012. From those entries an Energy Micro jury will then select up to 40 submissions that will receive a free Giant Gecko STK (pictured above) to use in the subsequent stage of the contest.
For complete contest details visit the EFM32 contest page.
Viswa via the contact form.
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:
A circuit collection of switching and linear 5 volt to 3.3 volt step down regulators. The article has good fundamentals, but it was written in 1993 so keep in mind that some of the information is a bit out of date.
This application note contains a collection of 3.3V regulator circuits, each optimized for a 5V input and surface mount technology. The circuits are split into two categories, linear and switching, and further arranged by current capability.
Maxim takes a look at the reference point in electronic circuits we commonly call ground:
For safety reasons we keep our circuits referenced to our surroundings. In most cases this is earth ground. This application note explains how a proper understanding of local circuit ground as a reference point frees our thinking to consider other simple circuits.
