Workshop Update for September 5th, 2012

Today we built up some prototypes to go to Seeed later this week. We did new PCB intake and scanning (look for them in the free PCB store soon). Added some more warnings and clarifications to the free PCB store to hopefully avoid some confusion about the whole system. Picked up one India visa, dropped one off.

We made clearance adjustments to the ATX Sick of Beige case, and we prepared the new files for production. We also continued working on tutorials.

We continued our work on the ATX v2 board in KiCad. We had a major breakthrough when Sjaak pointed us the the Eagle-to-KiCad library conversion script.

Open 7400 prize: Zigduino and 4×4 Driver Shields

Logos Electromechanical donated 2 Zigduino and 2 4×4 Driver Shields to the Open 7400 Competition. Get your entry in and this and other cool hardware can be yours.

The Zigduino is an Arduino-compatible microcontroller platform that integrates an 802.15.4 radio on the board. The radio can be configured to support any 802.15.4-based protocol, including ZigBee, Route Under MAC/6LoWPAN, and RF4CE.

The 4×4 Driver Shield is designed to enable users to switch DC loads up to 5A at up to 30V with no heat-sinking. It is ideal for such applications as driving solenoids, relays, and small DC motors.

Thank you to Logos Electromechanical for sponsoring the 2012 Open 7400 Logic Competition!

Bus Blaster v4 free PCB build and test

Mikelelere verified the Bus Blaster v4 design.

I checked the board via the test program, and it successfully passed the tests (see the attached photographs). I’ve also succesfully used it to program a Coolrunner II CPLD board and a Lattice ISPMach128v CPLD, and I can confirm that the board is working flawlessly.

Bus Blaster is an experimental, high-speed JTAG debugger. Version 4 features an even larger CPLD to support an optional (and rarely used) feature of the new type of ARM debugging protocol (SVO feature of SWD).

We have no idea when v4 will be released. V4 will be more expensive than v2 because of the higher pincount CPLD and extra chips. v2 (or a variant) will continue to be available for $35.

Get your own handy Bus Blaster v2 for $35.

Via the forum.

Reverse engineering remote control helicopter IR protocol

Kerry reverse engineered the infrared remote control protocol used by a Syma S107G remote controlled helicopter. He took the remote control apart, probed it with a scope, and analyzed the signals:

This tiny remote control helicopter is a rather amazing toy. Not only its movement is very stable, but the rotor speed, forward backward movements and turning can be all proportionally controlled as well. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at its control protocol to see how things are done. And yes, I do have a video at the very end showing controlling the S107G using the reverse engineered remote control.

Arduino source code for controlling the helicopter can be found on his blog.

GIVEAWAY: Another chipKIT uC 32 and chipKIT Wifi shield

Tomorrow we’ll give away another chipKIT uC 32 and a chipKIT Wifi shield! Leave a comment on yesterday’s post with a project idea, and these boards could be yours on Thursday.

The chipKIT uC32 is available for $34.99 and chipKIT Wifi shield for $49.99 from Digilent.

Continue reading “GIVEAWAY: Another chipKIT uC 32 and chipKIT Wifi shield”

Customized Sick of Beige case built

Riktw designed a case for his CMSIS-DAP ARM debugger based on our Sick of Beige templates, and standard PCB footprints for eagle. You can find his laser cutting design files in the forum.

I also made a small casing for my PCB, first time ever I used Sketchup, think it came out alright :)

Check out out Sick of Beige customization tutorial explaining how to fit your project into our Sick of Beige cases. See our case video from a few weeks ago, and even more awesome DIY cases.

Via the forum.

DakaRand 1.0: revisiting clock drift for entropy generation


In a recent post on his blog, security researcher Dan Kaminsky builds on the work of Matt Blaze and D.P. Mitchell’s TrueRand from 1996 while expanding on his Defcon 20 talk. In summary, any system with two clocks has a hardware number generator. The clocks’ tolerances lead to jitter, producing unmodelable noise in the system.

In his own words: “As announced at Defcon 20 / Black Hat, here’s DakaRand 1.0. Let me be the first to say, I don’t know that this works. Let me also be the first to say, I don’t know that it doesn’t. DakaRand is a collection of modes that tries to convert the difference between clocks into enough entropy that, whether or not it survives academic attack, would certainly force me (as an actual guy who breaks stuff) to go attack something else.”

If you’ve followed Dan’s past projects, you’ve got to figure he’s onto something here even if you don’t quite understand all the implications at first.

The slides from this talk at Defcon 20/ Black Hat can be viewed here. For a complete discussion of Dan’s project and to download DakaRand’s code visit Dan Kaminsky’s Blog.

Workshop Update for September 4th, 2012

We received a box of PCBs and laser cut acrylic case parts for the ATX breakout board from Seeed Studio. We also received Ihsan’s Little Wire freebie – thanks Ihsan!

Made a big Mouser order to push out a bunch of new stuff by the end of the week. We started work on some electronics tutorials.

We continue learning KiCad EDA. Today we focused on creating modules, KiCad term for footprints.

Open 7400 prize: Tautic Electronics uBoost battery voltage booster

Tautic Electronics LLC donated 4 uBoost battery booster boards to the Open 7400 Competition. Get your entry in and this and other cool hardware can be yours.

These boards are based on the MAXIM MAX1724 Step-Up DC-DC Converter. They accept voltages from 0.8 to 5.5 VDC, and output 5V at 150mA maximum current. The board itself is in a small form factor of 1.5”x 0.5”.

A huge thanks to Tautic Electronics LLC for sponsoring the 2012 Open 7400 Logic Competition!

Texas Instruments power management reference design library

Texas instruments released the Power Management reference design library. It’s filled with schematics, design notes, gerber files, and any technical document you might need to get over 300 reference designs up and running.

Texas Instruments PowerLab™ Power Management Reference Design Library contains hundreds of reference designs for any application. Each reference design contains supporting technical documentation that includes a circuit schematic, printed circuit board (PCB) layout, bill-of-materials (BOM), test report and gerber files. Use the search below to quickly find a fully tested and working design to accelerate your next project.

Via Electronics-Lab.

#FreePCB via Twitter to 2 random RTs

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:

  • Hate Twitter and Facebook? Free PCB Sunday is the classic PCB giveaway. Catch it every Sunday, right here on the blog
  • Tweet-a-PCB Tuesday. Follow us and get boards in 144 characters or less
  • Facebook PCB Friday. Free PCBs will be your friend for the weekend

Continue reading “#FreePCB via Twitter to 2 random RTs”

GIVEAWAY: Another chipKIT 32-bit board and Wifi shield

Another chipKIT 32-bit Arduino-compatible board and Wifi shield to give away this week. Leave a comment on this post with a project idea, and these boards could be yours on Thursday.

The chipKIT uC32 is based on the popular Arduino open-source hardware prototyping platform and adds the performance of the Microchip PIC32 microcontroller.

The uC32 is the same form factor as the Arduino Uno board and is compatible with Arduino shields. It features a USB serial port interface for connection to the IDE and can be powered via USB or an external power supply.

The chipKIT uC32 is available for $34.99 and chipKIT Wifi shield for $49.99 from Digilent.

Continue reading “GIVEAWAY: Another chipKIT 32-bit board and Wifi shield”

Offline high voltage AC power supply

Dilshan designed an offline high voltage AC power supply primarily for SMPS testing. It outputs a square wave, so hooking it up to a mains-transformer based linear supplies is not a good idea, as the transformer will overheat. It’s open source hardware, so the schematics and design files are available.

This is a high voltage, low current, offline, AC adjustable power supply for electronic/electrical experiments. This power supply is mainly design for switch mode power supply (SMPS) experiments and to drive basic high voltage electrical circuits. Thanks to the isolated step-up transformer this power supply breaks the ground loop and provides shock free – safer high voltage output. This offline (or isolation) feature preventing accidental current from reaching ground through a person’s body.

GSM GPS shield for Arduino


Boris Landoni draws our attention to the GSM GPS shield for Arduino designed by Open Electronics. “The shield is designed and based on the module GSM/GPRS SIM900 or the GSM/GPRS & GPS module SIM908, to make calls, voice and data connections via GPRS. This new version has several new hardware features, that allow maximum customization and provide many configurations. With a microphone and a headset with a 3.5 mm jack (just the standard headphones for computers), you can make a voice call from Arduino!”

For more details and library download links see the Open Electronics website. They are also making a kit version available from the Open Electronics store. (Note that the kit does NOT include the GSM/GPRS or GSM/GPRS & GPS Breakboard included in the photo above, which they sell separately.)

Via the contact form.

Workshop Update for September 3rd, 2012

We edited the video we shot in Sjaak’s workshop this week. Mouse died. Bought a new mouse that is truly awful – no feed back clicks on the scroll wheel, and it takes a ton of force to press the middle wheel button.

We modeled and rendered the TFT Backpack board for today’s post. We also started work on the DP7043 sized Sick of Beige blank case (pictured above).

We continue playing with KiCad and the ATX v2 board.

Open 7400 prize: Digilent Analog Discovery bench tool

Digilent donated 2 Analog Discovery mixed signal bench tools to the Open 7400 Competition.  Get your entry in and this and other cool hardware can be yours.

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.

A huge thanks to Digilent for being the first sponsor of the 2012 Open 7400 Logic Competition!

Announcing the Open 7400 Logic Competition 2012

By popular demand the Open 7400 Logic Competition is back! Build a kooky, intriguing, or over-complicated project that makes use of a discrete logic chip and you could score some amazing sponsor swag.

7400 TTL, 4000 CMOS, logic built from discrete transistors, or logic implemented in a CPLD – it doesn’t matter. Just have fun and impress the judges with your logic-themed creation. Get inspired by last year’s entries.

This year kicks off with a fantastic prize: 2 Analog Discovery mixed signal tools from Digilent:

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.

The competition runs until October 31, 2012. Submit your entries and get more info here.

Like last year, the Open 7400 contest is an open source, crowd sourced competition. Every day we’ll announce new prizes and celebrity judges. If you’d like to get involved please drop us a line.

Good luck on your project!

Continue reading “Announcing the Open 7400 Logic Competition 2012”