Artemis music synthesizer


Chris Woodall writes: “I just finished my writeup for my Music Synthesizer kit project. The kit was made for a soldering workshop for the Boston University Artemis Project, which is a Women In Technology Summer Program for rising high school freshmen. I work for the BU EDF which normally makes electronics for physics experiments, but we also do outreach electronics programs.

Normally the workshop would have contained a POV light toy, but we wanted a change of pace and I took lead to develop a music synthesizer with an 8 button keyboard, which can also act as a sequencer. There is a phototransistor which can pick up a light based message generated by this page, which my coworker Sam Damask made to program in sequences and new waveforms.” After mixing your music, you may partner with an IIP DDS distribution company to help release your songs.

The design files and firmware can be found on the project GitHub page.

Via the contact form.

Bus Pirate v4 case

Systems tech posted pictures of a case he built for his Bus Pirate v4. He cut up a standard small case to have access to the IO header, LEDs, and the USB jack. Some foam padding is keeping everything tight.

See our case video from a few weeks ago, and even more awesome DIY cases from Bus Pirate fans.

Check out our Sick of Beige cases, and a tutorial on how to customize them.

Get an assembled Bus Pirate v4 for $40, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.

Via the forum.

#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”

Eagle Parts: 5mm pitch terminal blocks and an SMD USB A-type female connector

Today we added 2pin, and 3pin 5mm pitch wire-to-board terminal connectors, and a SMD USB type A female connectors to our Eagle library. Pictured above is the 2pin terminal connector.

Continue reading “Eagle Parts: 5mm pitch terminal blocks and an SMD USB A-type female connector”

Renesas RX62N Demo Kit promotion


Renesas is offering a free development board to those willing to register and give up some information about a potential project. This time it’s the RX62N Demo Kit. The Renesas RX62N is a MCU with the following features: 32-bits, DMA, 9 DSP instructions, Connectable SDRam Interface, 10/100Mbps Ethernet Controller, USB 2.0 with OTG possible, CAN module, AD converter, DA converter, 100MHz max operating frequency, CRC Calculator, plus many more.

The demo board has a lot of interesting features to play with: Ethernet, USB Host/OTG, CAN, LCD, microphone, speakers/audio out, Micro SD, serial port, temperature sensor, and 3-axis accelerometer

To learn more or to register go to the Renesas Promotion Board webpage. The offer is limited to residents of the United States, Canada and Mexico and is good while supplies last.

This is the same board which we posted about in late 2010.

Baystray via the contact form.

Workshop Update for August 6th, 2012

Today we continued our Global Geek Tour of Singapore with Kobe electronics shops. Check out our prize in the picture above.

We modeled, and rendered the Sick of Beige v2 case for today’s 3D model post.

The Bus Pirate Demo Board v5 firmware continues to move along, with PWM generator implementation now nearly completed.

Global Geek Tour Singapore: Koba Electronics shop

Today we made one last trip back to Koba Electronics in Singapore’s China town to pick up some gifts and goodies. Here’s the latest pictures from our Twitter feed. They couldn’t fit anything else in this shop if they tried. Very extensive selection of parts, especially connectors.

If all goes well, we’ll have our Geek Tour video up by Thursday. Check out more parts in this crammed shop below.

Continue reading “Global Geek Tour Singapore: Koba Electronics shop”

GIVEAWAY: Two OSH Park prize packs winners

Today we announce the winners of the  two OSH Park prize packs.  There were lots of great ideas for projects based on the OSH Park prize packs, thanks for your submissions.

Rodrigo wins an OSH Park prize pack to use in a lab with his students:

I work in school and help a lot of students that study automation industrial. There are good equipaments, but nothing compared at buspirate, which can read differents signals on your inputs.

Another winner is Brad from the LVL1 hackerspace for the toy laser tag gun project:

I’m trying to build replacement electronics for these toy laser tag guns, to add features like easy expandability, new game modes, new weapons, new sounds, wireless score-keeping, and things like laser taser tag.

A bus pirate and some protoboards would be great tools for developing this!

 

Thank you for participating, there were a bunch of great ideas. As always feel free to share your projects in the forum.

3D Model: Sick of Beige v2 case

Today’s 3D model is the Sick of Beige v2 case for the Bus Pirate v3.6. It features laser cut acrylic rings instead of standoffs. This design has a dual benefit of being more compact, and providing side protection that SoB v1 lacked.

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 v3.6 with the Sick of Beige v1 case for $33 at Seeed, shipping included.

CPiLD: CPLD board for Raspberry Pi

Brian designed a CPLD expansion board for the Raspberry Pi. It features a Xilinx XC9572 CPLD, and a i2c buffer connected to Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins, and I2C port. It is designed to extend R-Pi’s GPIO, and allow for easy solderless bread board prototyping.

CPiLD allows for easy breadboarding with fewer wires as it can reroute pins. It also provides a simple board to learn about logic circuits and hardware description languages.

If enough interest is generated, he will Kickstart this project, and produce it through fulfillment. The schematic is available, and his site mentions the board files will be available as soon as revision 2 of the board is tested.

Via the forum.

Tutorial: wireless sensor applications using Dorji RF modules

Raj has posted this tutorial at Embedded-Lab on building wireless sensor applications using Dorji’s DRF4432S and DRF5150S RF modules. “The interesting part of these RF modules is they have an additional preprogrammed microcontroller on board that allows direct connection of selected analog and digital sensors to the modules.” Raj’s article describes these two modules briefly, and illustrates how to put them together to construct a simple wireless sensor application where data from a remote sensor are received and displayed on a PC, without using any external microcontrollers.

He also includes a link to the Processing source code and executables for Windows, OSX and Linux.

Via the contact form.

App note: 2-wire virtual remote sensing for voltage regulators

Here is an app note from Linear Technology describing the use of virtual remote sensing of wiring voltage drops in power supply designs.

Here, the LT4180 Virtual Remote Sense™ (VRS) IC alternates output current between 95% and 105% of the nominal required output current. The LT4180 forces the power supply to provide a DC current plus a small square wave current with peak-to-peak amplitude equal to 10% of the DC current. Decoupling capacitor CLOAD, normally required for low impedance under transient conditions in non-VRS systems, takes an additional role by fi ltering out the VRS square wave excursions.

 

 

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”

App note: Understanding and interpreting logic IC datasheets

This app note from Texas Instruments focuses on understanding and interpreting datasheets for logic ICs.

To assist component and system-design engineers in selecting Texas Instruments (TI) standard-logic products, this application report is a synopsis of the information available from a typical TI data sheet. Information includes a brief description of terms, definitions, and testing procedures currently used for commercial and military specifications. Symbols, terms, and definitions generally are in accordance with those currently agreed upon by the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association for use in the USA and by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) for international use.