Mini Maker Faire in Portland, OR, USA Sept 15-16, 2012

Erict let us know about the Mini Maker Faire taking place in Portland, Oregon on the 15th, and 16th of September. The venue will take place in the north parking lot of OMSI.

Portland Oregon is going to have it’s first Mini Maker Faire on Sept. 15-16, 2012. It’s going to be held in the north parking lot of OMSI. You can see more about the Mini Maker Faire at OMSI’s website. I’m a new forum user so I can’t post a link just yet :).

Low Voltage Labs is going to have a booth at the Faire and I will also be speaking Sunday on how to create a printed circuit board using open source software KiCAD.

Via the forum.

Workshop Update for September 10th, 2012

Relocated the workshop studio for more space and storage. Picture of the mess that accumulated in the old workshop above.

Paid Q3 federal (September 15th) and Iowa state (September 30th) taxes. Remember federal taxes a few days early so you can use the free EFTPS system instead of a commercial payment service. For more on our approach to US taxes for Dangerous Prototypes check out our tax overview.

Modeled, and rendered the Sick of Beige template design that for the DP5031 sales pages. Working on some new tutorials.

Finished the ATX Breakout Board v2 in KiCad. More on that in the forum tomorrow, and the blog later in the week.

 

Open 7400 prize: MegaMini and Amani64 from JK Devices

JK Devices  is a sponsor of this year’s Open 7400 Competition. They’ve kicked in 4 MegaMinis and 2 Amani64s with programer.  Get your entry in and this cool hardware can be yours.

MegaMini is an Arduino compatible Atmega2560 development board.  It is specifically designed to be extremely small while providing all the same features of it’s bigger brothers. Picture below the fold.

Amani 64 is a low-cost entry-level CPLD development kit, stackable with the Arduino, other Amanis, and Arduino-compatible shields.

A huge thanks to JK Devices for sponsoring the 2012 Open 7400 Logic Competition!

Continue reading “Open 7400 prize: MegaMini and Amani64 from JK Devices”

Part tester and Superprobe rolled into one

Dolabra is designing Donatello, a Part Ninja and Superprobe combo. Instead of having a display on the board, like the Superprobe and Part Ninja, he delegated the display to a host computer over USB.

My intention is to make a combination part ninja and super probe. The idea is a USB device and a couple resistors to to measure transistor, caps, etc., generate signals, count frequency, etc, etc, etc. whatever I can jam into the code. My intention is that it will be a HID device and a PC program to display the results and post process raw data, so no display on the device and only raw data collection on the device. I have designed it based on the basic part tester design that has been discussed here, with one small change. I have used a 2×3 header for the probe to bring out the 3 pins for part testing plus power and ground to allow me to create “active probes”, like thermocouple amplifier for example.

Via the forum.

Popular Science likes the Bus Pirate

The Bus Pirate gets a mention as one of Popular Science’s favorite advanced development tools!

This tool greatly simplifies prototyping. It can speak most common bus protocols, which allows me to play with new chips from a serial console or in software before building hardware around them

The Bus Pirate was in a great crowd. Other testing gear included a sound-pressure meter, a non-contact tachometer, and a logic analyzer. Thanks for the shout out Vin!

Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.

Via twitter.

3D model: Sick of Beige v1 template design

Sick of Beige v1 DP5031 cases are done, so we needed a generic image for the sales page. Today’s rendering is an image of a DP9056 standard size to use at Seeed.

The basic case is simple, cheap, easy to assemble, and fits our Sick of Beige standard PCB sizes. Check out our tutorial on how to customize Sick of Beige cases if you want to cut your own with Seeed Studio’s cheap laser cutting service.

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.

Guest Review: Chipquik smd291nl no-clean tack flux

Sheldon has been using the Chipquik SMD291NL no clean tack flux, here is his review of it:

Very tacky, can hold qfn and dfn by itself, once heated it  becomes very sticky and is hard to clean even with 91% ipa.
It works great though, have not had any problems with it not wicking solder under tight parts.

Overall it is an ok product, was meant for the chipquik remover system, but is sold by itself.

8 out of 10

Via the contact form.

App note: SEPIC-Ćuk Converter gives split rails from a single supply

Analog Devices describes the SEPIC-Ćuk Converter. This type of DC/DC converter is used to create two outputs with the same voltage, but different polarities. This is particularly useful for powering the two rails of op-amp based circuits.

A better solution is a SEPIC-Ćuk converter. This topology consists of an unregulated Ćuk converter tied to the same switching node as a regulated SEPIC converter. This combination results in two supplies that track each other very well under all but a 100% load mismatch.

Free PCB Sunday: Pick your PCB

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:

Continue reading “Free PCB Sunday: Pick your PCB”

DeepSec 2011: patching vehicle insecurities


In this talk from the DeepSec 2011 conference Constantinos Patsakis and Kleanthis Dellios discuss their theory for developing more effective automotive security anti-theft systems.
They explain: “In order to patch known security breaches and create a more extensible in-vehicle computer system, we propose the use of a TTP (Time-Triggered Protocol) entity inside the vehicle, which sends the ignite signal to the engine only if the main parts of the vehicle have properly been authenticated. The vehicle’s MCU takes the role of the TTP, therefore applying a ‘Deny all’ policy towards any possible malicious hardware injection. In order to secure the MCU from software attacks, the MCU resides inside an application firewall which filters incoming traffic.”

App note: Reducing acoustic noise in PWM controlled fans

Microchip describes techniques to reduce acoustic noise in pulse width modulator controlled fans. One solution is to use an RC filter to decrease the slew-rate of the PWM pulses.

Fan speed control extends fan service life and decreases airflow noise and average fan current. The most efficient way to implement fan speed control is to use low frequency pulse width modulation (PWM). However, PWM fan speed control can sometimes introduce unwanted acoustic noise at a frequency equal to that of the PWM itself. This is especially noticeable when PWM control is used with higher operating current (>300 mA) fans and at low operating speeds. This application note discusses the source of this acoustic noise and a method to suppress it.

LED audio frequency analyzer using Stellaris Launchpad


Jordan is a software developer for Texas Instruments Stellaris team. While he’s not working on the Launchpad project, he was able to snag a rev0 board a few months ago, which led to this project. He informs us he’ll be updating his blog with a few other project ideas in the future, and releasing the project code for this frequency analyzer on Github in the near future.

Via the contact form.

Workshop Update for September 7th, 2012

Today we soldered up Nixie tube thing blocks. We wrote a small sketch for the Arduino to turn on/off each filament on the Nixie board in a loop. It works great. We also played around with a VFD tube (pictured above), trying to get it to light up.

We wrote and scheduled the app note posts coming this weekend. Continued working on upcoming tutorials.

We fixed the dimension on the IN-12 Nixie tube footprint, based on actual measurement. Continued to tweak the ATX Breakout Board v2 in KiCad, this time moving some outputs around, and fixing up silk issues. We made our silk logo in KiCad.

ATX Breakout board free PCB build

Dolabra built an ATX Breakout board free PCB. The ATX breakout board routes the -12, 3.3, 5 and 12 volt ATX outputs to screw terminals, each protected by a 1.25 amp resettable polyfuse.

It wouldn’t be a free build if something wasn’t bodged together. In my case it was the ATX connector. I got all the parts from ebay — I couldn’t find a right angle ATX connector on ebay, so I got a vertical one. I thought it would fit, but it didn’t. So I ended up making it a right angle by bending the bottom row of pins and extending the top row of pins with 18ga finishing nails! It actually worked better than I expected. Also the push button I got from ebay was smaller than the footprint, but I was able to make it fit. The downside of buying from ebay.

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.

Available for $13.80 at Seeed Studio.

Via the forum.