Today we worked on the homemade flux video.
Documentation for the Part Ninja continued. Most of the part recognition diagrams are uploaded, and the information on how the Part Ninja identifies different parts was added.
Today we took a look at the Bus Blaster, and how we could improve it. This project is very far in the future, and for now we are just playing around with different ideas for future development.
Bennyboy built the PIC18F2550 Breakout Board, it has all the pins along one edge so it’s easier to use in a breadboard. The PIC18F2550 is a really popular USB chip from Microchip. There are lots of projects floating around the internet for it, as well as some of our own like the USB IR Toy, USB LCD Backpack, etc…
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.
A while ago we asked What gerber viewer do you use and why?. The general consensus is that the gerber files need to be checked before you send them go get your PCBs made.
ZofzPCB is a gerber viewer geared to make verification quick and easy. It shows the board and layers in 3D so it’s easier to spot errors. It can also make each trace a different color so the location is clearer.
Flux is a wonderful goo that makes soldering faster and easier. In previous videos we compared different types of commercial flux (Flux off 1, Flux off 2), but did you know it’s possible to make a simple and effective flux at home? We’ll get you started, and don’t miss the giveaway at the end of the video.
Arhi shared his method of dissolving rosin into a solvent. Rosin is an inexpensive processed tree sap, used on violin bows, art, etc. It’s also the primary ingredient in many fluxes. Followup comments revealed an expired patent with a simple flux recipe:
Ignoring the Cationic flurocarbon surfectant, everything is readily available.
A reader donated a kilo of craft rosin, but you can find it a craft and music stores. We powdered it in an envelope with a hammer to it would dissolve faster. The nearest drug store had both isopropyl alcohol (96%) and glycerin. One thing the video doesn’t mention is the alcohol strength. It should be 96%, not lower strength 70% rubbing alcohol.
We mixed test batches in 3 proportions:
Glycerin is optional, but is said to prevent the rosin from burning and discoloration under high heat. We added just a few drops, but skip it without worry.
Is it any good? Actually, it beats a lot of the commercial flux off contenders. It barely smokes, it doesn’t smell bad, and it didn’t discolor. The residue can be left on the board, or wasted off with more alcohol or acetone.
If you’re ready to try it yourself, we’ve giving away four 100g bags of flux. Just leave a comment below and we’ll pick the recipients tomorrow. Bonus points for interesting formulation proposals.
A huge thanks to the reader who sent the rosin and made the video and giveaway possible.
The ROBOTC dev-team has released their first Public BETA of “ROBOTC for Arduino”.
“ROBOTC is a powerful C-based programming language with a Windows environment for writing and debugging programs, and the only programming language at this level that offers a comprehensive, real-time debugger.” It has previously been released in a paid version for the the NXT, TETRIX, RCX, VEX and Lego Mindstorm robotic platforms.
The new version of ROBOTC has support for all of the popular official Arduino boards – Diecimila, Duemilanove, Uno, MEGA 1280 and MEGA 2560.
This 120-day beta distro includes all ROBOTC features found in releases for other boards, including motor and sensor control, the ROBOTC debugger, sample program library and other features. The 120-day free beta will be offered for the summer and can be downloaded here.
ATAKOM released remote controlled power supplies that you can drive form any device with internet access.
The major advantage of 73xxL series power supplies is the ability to be remote controlled via LAN or USB. Innovative software called AKTAKOM POWER MANAGER allows user to set and pre-set inputs, graph, as well as, time control the power supplies output. AKTAKOM POWER MANAGER works on any PC, IPHONE, IPAD or Android mobile device.
Via Electronics-Lab.
Raj made a in-depth tutorial series on the chipKIT Uno32, PIC32 based Arduino compatible boards.
I have started this new tutorial series on chipKIT, and I believe they will be helpful for beginners to start using this platform for their own embedded projects and designs. Because I am also new to the Arduino and chipKIT world, I would really appreciate your opinions, comments and suggestions regarding these tutorials.
The tutorials cover his learning experience with the Uno32 boards. So far there are 4 tutorials covering:
Today we mixed up a few batches of homemade Rosin based flux recipes, the results in tomorrows workshop video.
Documentation on the Part Ninja continued today, with concept and overview documented on the part specific testing page. We hit a snag with a USB cable that kept disconnecting the Part Ninja while we were collecting data for various different parts. We fixed the problem by replacing the cable.
We finalized the DP Badge now named, “DP Badge custom v1.0”. We added a button, and a light sensor that will be used to update the scrolling message from a computer monitor.
Benedykt built the PIC18F2550 Breakout Board free PCB. The PIC18F2550 is a really popular USB chip from Microchip. There are lots of projects floating around the internet for it, as well as some of our own, like the USB IR Toy, USB LCD Backpack, etc… This is a breakout board for the 28pin SOIC package version that will help you get started with PIC18F2550 USB design.
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.
The Bus Pirate uses the PIC24FJ64GA002 microcontroller, and can be used as a development board. In this tutorial we’ll read an analog voltage with an analog to digital converter, and then send it to the PC terminal via the UART. This is a culmination of the previous 3 tutorials ( blink the MODE LED, ADC demo, UART demo), and much of the code is better explained in them.
The code is broken up and explained section by section. If you want you can download the full MPLAB 8 project, or copy/paste the full code for main.c from the bottom of the page.
Continue reading “HOW TO: Bus Pirate as dev-board, read a voltage and view in terminal”
Graham designed a portable Tetris game on a PIC18F4520. It uses two 8×8 LED matrices as a display, and 4 buttons for control:
The 64 LEDs and four buttons are controlled by a single PIC (18LF4520) and two AA batteries. The source code operates very efficiently, and the program is extremely responsive. I was worried about the latter as I was determined to use algorithm based graphic rotations as compared to predefined constants. From here I could use a similar approach to create other interactive games!
Please excuse this test post, the WP to Twitter plugin that pushes blog posts to Twitter seems to be down.
Please enjoy this homemade flux in lieu of an actual post.
The Hardware Hacking guys have posted this brief tutorial with tips on improving the accuracy of ADC reading with the Arduino. They endeavor to do this by measuring the internal 1.1V reference voltage (it is available for ATMega 168 and ATMega 328 only) and, then, by normalizing the ADC.
Via the Arduino Blog.
Schazamp designed a small USB power supply with a resettable PTC fuse, and a ‘fuse blown’ indicator LED. When the fuse is blown a P-MOS gate is pulled low, and it turns on a LED.
Alan wanted to check out just how much performance he could squeeze out of the ATMega328P. He needed was a way to measure the amount of time the CPU actually uses while executing various tasks. Using the Logic Sniffer to read a pin, that he toggles ON when the CPU is executing a task, and OFF when it is not. His testing is well documented, and he added some very good tips to speed up your code:
- Wherever possible, use the hardware facilities of the AVR to offload work and help keep your application responsive.
- Wherever possible, use interrupts to respond to external events. Also use them to handle output where there is a significant delay between each step of the output.
- As far as possible, move anything other than trivial processing out of your ISRs into tasks which are prioritised relative to the other processing in your application.
- Any kind of polling or spin-waiting is to be avoided as far as possible, the CPU cycles that such approaches consume can better be used for ‘real’ work.
- Avoid using the standard Arduino libraries, because they are focused on simplicity and ease of use rather than performance.
- Watch out for ‘hidden’ costs creeping into your code, such as the use of floating-point arithmetic when you don’t absolutely need to use it – examining the symbol table of your application is a good way of figuring out if you’ve inadvertently triggered its use.
- A better algorithm will always outperform micro-optimisation approaches such as hand-coded assembler – I’ll discuss this further in a later post where I describe how I implemented the RGB LED handling
Via the forum.
Today we renewed websites, including 7400contest.com which is coming up again soon.
We patched an SPI speed error in the Bus Pirate binary access mode.
We had to cancel the company credit cards because 7 unexpected charges to Blizzard (World of Warcraft) and 4 to iTunes showed up today. In the process of checking the accounts we dug up some missing receipts for purchases in quarter 2.
Reminder – Q2 taxes are due the 15th (this week). We paid today via eftps.gov today because we remembered. Eftps transfers have to be scheduled at least 2 days in advance, but they’re free!
Part Ninja documentation has started. We are writing pages to describe the internal processes the Part Ninja goes through to identify the various different parts under testing. We have also added the Bus Pirate v3.6 hardware overview page, to document the changes in the latest release.
Jawi let us know that the “Big box of parts” is on it’s way to Spain. He took out the items pictured above, and then passed it along:
We had lots of stuff hanging around since our move to the new workshop, so we decided to send it around to forum members in the big box of parts. People take stuff out, and replace it with their own.
Via the forum.
Ihsan let us know that his pet project Little Wire is now on sale at Seeed in DIY kit form. The Little wire is an open source hardware, tinyAVR based multi-tool.
Hi !
The day has come. The product is orderable at Seeed studio right now :)Thanks everyone for their interest and good words about the project!
ihsan.
We watched it develop in the forum and on the blog. Congratulations on getting it made!
Via the forum.
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:
Parallax has launched a learning resources site for hobbyists and students. Known as learn.parallax.com, it’s the online home for materials relating to the Parallax Board of Education microcontroller development systems and robotics kits for BASIC Stamp, Propeller, and Arduino. The site is in the development stage, and is being populated with links to tutorials for all skill levels, with emphasis on encouraging their use in classroom instruction. If you are interested in developing with these Parallax products, check it out.
