Here is a Propeller based quadrocopter, well isn’t that a play on words.
The control board is a Parallax Propeller protoboard (a quick prototyping board you can buy for about $20). The only sensor currently in use is a single 3-axis gyroscope (an ITG-3200). I have an ADXL-345 accelerometer mounted as well, but it’s not currently used. Without batteries, it weighs 1kg (or 2lb, 4oz)
Via Hacked Gadgets.
Later today we will announce the winner of the Simplecortex v1.3 Cortex M3 Dev Board with onboard debugger! Leave a comment on the original contest post with an idea for a cool project.
The Simplecortex v1.3 is available for $45.00 from ITead Studio.
Parallax has announced the availability of the Propeller GCC/SimpleIDE programming environment for the Propeller chip.
“Now you can program your Propeller based application in C or C++! Parallax is proud to announce that it is moving into the beta phase for Propeller GCC – Parallax’s new open-source, multi-OS, and multi-lingual compiler that targets the Parallax Propeller’s unique multicore architecture. Parallax has collaborated with industry experts to develop all aspects of the toolchain, including the creation of a new development environment called SimpleIDE.”
Propeller GCC is released under the licensing rules defined in GNU General Public License v3.0.
To download the package containing Propeller GCC and SimpleIDE visit the PropellerGCC Beta page. Give the Beta a try and submit your feedback to Parallax.
Finnair gave us almost-free tickets to Chongqing, China. We still had an entry left on our China visas so we hopped on a plane and spent the weekend. The pic above is of a LED shop, every big city in Asia seems to have a few. The pic below the fold is of a sign making shop. Notice the huge CNC machine in the back. There are at least 4 in a row on this central street.
In the workshop we made small changes to the Bus Blaster v4.1 silkscreen before sending it to Seeed for prototype PCBs. We made the jumper labels more informative by adding jumper marking for both MODE, and JTAG power source jumpers.
The previously mentioned secret project(@1min) firmware is under construction. We expect an alpha version to be ready by the end of the month. Today we mostly got familiar with the hardware, and thought up a basic workflow.
Bug management and patch submissions have gotten out of hand, so we implemented a project tracker and will have all our todos moved there by tomorrow. More on this soon, along a how-to on resetting your root MYSQL password…
Tomorrow we’ll have a workshop video, hopefully releasing another previously undisclosed project that we previewed in Shenzhen and the Bay Area Maker Faire. See you then!
BADnetwork made a Bus Pirate case out of an unrepairable transformer. We really like how he soldered a button to the PGC and PGD ICSP pins to enter the bootloader for updates.
I bought one of these on eBay, It turned out faulty, so stripped it down, turned out it was unrepairable. Looked at the case, and it looked similar to the size of my BP. Turned out its a very nice fit. After cutting a cable access on the top, a cut out for usb, mounting a button for activating the bootloader, and a bit of double sided foam tape to mount it – it was put together. I’ll post an image later (I can’t find my camera).
Total Cost – £2.40
Many thanks to Ian, and the rest of the developers for the Bus Pirate. Its been invaluable in my project development.
See our case video from a few weeks ago, and even more awesome DIY cases from Bus Pirate fans.
Get an assembled Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.
Via the forum.
Fortysevenfx shared this tweet with us:
Debugging the SPI on motherboard with the Logic Sniffer.
Get a Logic Sniffer for $50, with free worldwide shipping.
As far as we know Eagle doesn’t offer an option for making plated slots. Here are two hacks we found on the subject.
Check out our previous tutorial on building footprints in Eagle. You can also skim through our Cadsoft_Eagle other tutorials on the wiki.
Continue reading “HOW-TO: Crude ways of making plated slots in Eagle”
Spansion together with Avnet has announced a marketing promotion for Spansion FL Serial Flash memory.
“Spansion FL Serial Flash memory offers a reduced pin count for lower system cost while providing optimal read/write performance for a variety of automotive, networking, consumer electronics and industrial applications. With read speeds up to 133 MHz clock speed in Single/Dual/Quad IO mode and 66 MHz for double data rate (DDR) modes, the FL family delivers up to 66 MBytes/sec of read throughput.
Together with Avnet Electronics Marketing, Spansion is offering qualified registrants six FLS flash samples. Devices offered include the S25FL128SAGMFI001, S25FL128SAGMFI010, S25FL128SAGNFI001, S25FL128SAGNFI011, S25FL256SAGMFI001 and S25FL256SAGMFI011.Offer ends November 30, or while supplies last.”
To obtain more information or to register to receive samples, visit the Spansion FLS Flash Offer page.
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:
Tomorrow we’ll give away Simplecortex v1.3 Cortex M3 Dev Board with onboard debugger! Leave a comment on the original contest post with an idea for a cool project.
The Simplecortex v1.3 is available for $45.00 from ITead Studio.
Today was mostly documentation day. We wrote another Eagle tutorial, this time on how to make plated holes for your PCBs. We will run it tomorrow, as our regular “HOW TO” post.
We also continued with some renders of a soon to be released product. We spent lots of time editing the render in Photoshop, trying to add a transparency layer. This is nifty when using the renders in different backgrounds, like sales pages, and brochures.
Mmattice shared pictures of his milled aluminum Bus Pirate case. The Bus Pirate is a hacking multi-tool that can talk to many common electronic chips.
I make use of my BP at both home and work, and wanted something to encase it in. I started with a printed case I found on thingiverse, but that wasn’t very good for several reasons. The least of which was that the mini-usb cable wouldn’t fit inside the end with the lid on. I’m a member of a local hackerspace that is leasing a giant CNC mill from one of its other members, so I decided I’d learn a bit and make a case for myself.
See our case video from a few weeks ago, and even more awesome DIY cases from Bus Pirate fans.
Get an assembled Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.
Via the forum.
We added a 2×07 0.1″ pitch shrouded pin header in our Eagle parts library. We extended the shrouded header footprint, as the previous version was slightly smaller than the actual part. We also updated the 2×5 and 2×6 headers.
This header could possibly replace the 12 pin header on Bus Pirate v4. The v4 2×6 shrouded header proved to be very difficult to source outside major electronics capitals like Shenzhen.
Download this, and other common part we use, in out Eagle parts library.
Lars designed and produced these LCD touch and button Boosterpacks for the MSP430. It’s an LCD breakout with 4 tactile buttons or 4 cap buttons, depending on the version. It sits on top of the 430 LaunchPad, but can also function independently if a microcontroller is soldered on.
This pack is a good component if you want to show text and graphics as part of your project. It can be run while connected to a Launchpad or standalone by soldering on an MSP430 in the space provided. The board also has space for connecting a regulator and 2 servo connectors. The display is an SPI-based Powertip PE9665WRF with the ST7579 controller, drawing approximately 0.2mA current. The display has backlight, but this is not connected by default. To turn on the backlight, you need to solder on a resistor to the board according to the instructions.
Eric Schmiedl writes, “See the signals that make your muscles move… all it takes is an audio recorder and $10 worth of foil, coax, and duct tape. Oh, and some sugar syrup.” Eric constructed these DIY EMG sensors which he interfaced with an audio recorder to record his muscle activity.
Continue reading “Simple DIY EMG sensors”
We are giving away a Simplecortex v1.3 Cortex M3 dev-board with an on-board debugger! Leave a comment on yesterday’s post with a project idea, and this board could be yours on Thursday.
The Simplecortex v1.3 is available for $45.00 from ITead Studio.
Dan Mikesell writes in Hacker Space Seoul- Open group: ‘this is some serious mad scientist hacking‘
In this exclusive video, you can watch how the animal was turned into a power source. Through slits cut in its shell, electrodes coated with enzymes are implanted in its body. Glucose and oxygen in the snail’s blood become fuel to generate electricity when the electrodes are hooked up to an external circuit.
Warning, a snail was probably hurt during the experiment.
Today we worked on the 3D model and rendering of the XC95144XL CPLD breakout board. Later we also made some renders for soon to be released product.
We continued routing the Bus Blaster v4 board. We optimized some signal trace lengths, and added ground vias near decoupling caps. We also fixed some silk labels.
Schazamp built the XC95144XL CPLD breakout board free PCB. The board has 39 of the CPLD pins broken out to a “Blade” style configuration, while the remaining pins are broken out to two dual-row headers featured on top corners of the board.
I didn’t populate the top headers — I forgot to include them in the order with the IC, and didn’t want to wait for another order to come in. The TQFP-100 package was really hard to solder this time — the first time I tried it, it didn’t line up as well as I thought, so I had to redo it all with my hot air rework station. I also skipped the external clock. I have one more of those crystals, but I’ve had a lot of trouble soldering them on, so I thought I’d wait until I needed it.
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.
Via the forum.
The counter gets activate and deactivate in positive edge of the input signal. Thanks to the wider operating voltage of the CMOS ICs this counter may be able to handle +5V to +15V of input signal. At the end of the counter session system release total tick count to the RS232 interface and it can receive through any serial terminal software. When applying the inputs it is recommended to maintain minimum of 100ms of interval between each session.
