Waking up is easy with automated breakfast and curtains

Not a morning person? Try this automated dorm room. Curtains open, eggs boil, and bread is toasted, all automatically. The motor mounts and gearing for the curtains are machined and laser cut.

So here was my approach; Use a motor to pull the curtains and use a remote set to control the kettle and oven. For controlling all these thing one time, I had to use some kind of alarm which would go just before my normal alarm clock rings. So I bought a cheap little clock on ebay with alarm function and battery powered. Then I designed a circuit to control the remote boxes wireless and a motor controller due a simple mosfet. Here’s the circuit I came up with.

HOW-TO: Learn PIC serial UART with your Bus Pirate

The Bus Pirate is a handy debugging tool, but it’s also a 16 bit PIC 24FJ64GA002 development board. You don’t need a programmer to play, just upload the firmware over USB using the Bus Pirate’s nearly-impossible-to-brick bootloader. It’s easy to go back to the original Bus Pirate firmware at any time.

This demo is step two, you can find step one in our wiki, or check out the previous post. It shows how to setup the PIC to communicate with the FT232RL serial-to-USB IC over , and establish communication with your computer over the com terminal. The code below is broken up and explained section by section.

Continue reading “HOW-TO: Learn PIC serial UART with your Bus Pirate”

HP 5328A universal frequency counter teardown

Kenneth scored two HP universal frequency counters and popped them open. One generates the timebase from an uncompensated oscillator in a TO-5 package, while the other uses a large temperature controlled oven oscillator:

here is both of my counters measuring the same 1pps  taken from my AdaFruit GPS receiver.  The lower one with the  oven-compensated oscillator (which is marked as being calibrated in 1999) is spot on, while the top counter using an unprotected crystal oscillator drifts up and down 0.1-0.2ppm, and is almost 5ppm slow…The standard time base is rated for 2.5ppm drift between 0 and 50 degrees Celsius, where the [oven oscillator] time base has the much tighter 0.007ppm.  Since these counters display eight (or nine) digits, 2.5ppm is very visible, where 0.007ppm will at worst only effect the least significant digit.

Free ebook: Virtual Justice


Virtual Justice is a book concerning the laws of online worlds which author Greg Lastowka has made available free online. Virtual Justice is a comprehensive examination of the application of law to the virtual environment. It includes coverage of case precedents, virtual property law, gaming, hacking and copyright.

The 241 page PDF may be downloaded here.

WORKSHOP VIDEO #19: Part Ninja v1 testing and overview

The Part Ninja identifies electronic components like transistors and FETs, and measures basic specifications. Get an overview of this new project in this week’s workshop video. If you’re at Bay Area Maker Faire next month please stop by and see it in person.

We give a preview of the revision 2 board in the video. This project probably needs a couple more revision before it’s perfect, look for it in the fall at the earliest. To tide yourself over, why not use our gerbers to make your own PCBs and follow along with the development fun.

This project started in a forum thread that generated two projects. The first project, a new PCB layout for the AVR Transistor Tester, has already been tested by many users. The Part Ninja project combined elements of several designs to get better measurements. You can join the development of both projects in the forum.

You can also check out our 3D model of the Part Ninja which available in our Google 3D Warehouse collection, and our SVN.

Continue reading “WORKSHOP VIDEO #19: Part Ninja v1 testing and overview”

Control your Bus Pirate with an Android Tablet

N3mesys successfully controlled the Bus Pirate with an Android Tablet using the USB Serial Monitor app. This software lets Android enabled devices connect to FTDI USB-to-serial chips. The FT232RL and FT230X ICs are supported, so this works with older Arduinos and lots of other stuff with the common USB-to-serial chip.

The only thing you need is a little app from the Google AppStore that is called < Android USB Serial Monitor > (the lite version works fine for me). I don’t know if it works with other tablets with USB-Host function but my Archos works very very well. I have only tested the PWM and Servo test functionality and I have to say its so nice to have the great abilitys of the wonderful BusPirate on the go.

Via the forum.

ATMega328 RC vs quartz oscillator comparison

Kenneth compares the RC oscillator found on the ATMeg328 against an external quartz crystal. As expected there is a huge difference in precision and stability between the two.

This really demonstrates how both oscillators, but particularly the internal one, are very sensitive to temperature changes around the microcontroller.  This is why my counter’s oscillator is contained in a small oven, such that it’s held at a specific elevated temperature and doesn’t change temperature along with the room.

PCB macro photography without a macro lens

Torwag started a thread in the forum with lots of interesting tips for taking macro pictures of PCBs without buying an expensive macro lens:

Many here know how difficult it could be to do good detailed images of your project. A lot of point and shoot cameras are not up to this (macro) task. DSLRs might work nice, however, you have to cash out a big chunk of money to get a decent macro lens. The reverse lens trick is well known among photographers.

Basically you mount an ordinary lens with the help of a reverse ring adapter upside down on the camera body. This turns a small focal length lens into a super-macro lens.

Via the forum.

Sound controlled 5x5x5 LED cube

This 5x5x5 LED cube uses a microphone and op-amp to react to sound. It’s run via an Atmega328P with an Arduino bootloader:

ok, it is nothing new and far away from well done.. But its just amazing for me to see it working and i learned quiet a lot :) I just want to share it with you (because normaly i just hang around here, read about your projects/news and get inspired by you).

Via the forum.

Freescale Tower Trivia contest


You may be familiar with the Tower modular development system by Freescale. The Tower system consists of a family of MCU, sensor, RF and related modules which assemble into a cube-like structure through the use of side bus support panels which carry power and signals between modules. Freescale is currently conducting a Tower trivia contest to test your knowledge about their 50+ available modules. Freescale says:

With more than 50 development modules in Freescale’s growing Tower System portfolio, there may be a few things that you don’t know about our award-winning modular development platform. Now’s your chance to find out, so get ready to put your knowledge to the test!

Every week — 10 weeks in all — we’ll open a new Tower Trivia contest with a question about one of our modules. Correctly answer the trivia question and you’ll be automatically entered into the weekly drawing to win a Tower System module.

The correct Tower Trivia answer is that week’s prize — one of our 50 modules.

Check out Freescale’s Tower Trivia webpage for official rules.

Analog Discovery 2 channel scope, waveform generator, logic analyzer

Digilent’s Analog design kit is a 100 MSPS 2 channel scope, a 2 channel 100MSPS waveform generator, and a 16 channel logic analyzer built into one. The pricing ranges from $99 for US-students required to buy one for a class, to $249 for non-academics.

Updated specs, thanks Torwag!

Two 50 MSPS, 5 MHz differential oscilloscopes
Two 50 MSPS, 5 MHz waveform generators
Two fixed power supplies
16-channel logic analyzer
Trigger in and trigger out
USB-powered (cable included)

Thanks Dsm! Via the contact form.

PIC18F2550 Breakout Board free PCB build

Palma 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.

#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”

Shmoocon 2012: GHz or Bust!


Chronos hackers take note! In this presentation from the Shmoocon 2012 conference, atlas 0f d00m talks about using the USB RF dongle that comes with the EZ430 Chronos watch to conduct experiments in the ISM bands. This talk covers a lot of ground giving practical information on the ISM bands, modulation techniques, and the inner workings of the Chronos watch USB dongle.

The rfcat source and related code referenced in this talk can be found on the rfcat Google code page.

Long distance SPI: Lessons learned

Protocols like SPI, I2C, and UART are intended for chips sharing a PCB, lots of problems crop up when you try to send them over long distances. Michu designed individually controllable LED modules controlled by SPI signals sent over long lengths of cable. Initially he had lots of noise and buggy control. After some debugging and rewiring he got the system to work by eliminating ground voltage differences and buffering the signal. The link has a great writeup of the problem diagnosis and various solutions.

Via the forum.

Machined Bus Pirate v3 case

Timotet machined a case for his Bus Pirate v3. The bottom side of the case is machined on a CNC, while the top is made from acrylic cut to size.

I thought my Bus Pirate deserved a decent case. After all Its only a matter of time before I  inadvertently set it on something that causes a short! This is an awesome tool.

See our case video from a few weeks ago. More awesome DIY cases.

Get the Bus Pirate DIY edition PCB from the PCB drawer for $3.95. Get an assembled Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.
Via the forum.

Using SketchUp and Kerkythea to make lifelike project renderings

MrLaw used our 3D modeling and rendering tutorials to render an image of his project. The image to the left was done using the Kerkythea plugin for SketchUp, and the image on the right is the real board. Kerkythea is more complicated then the Maxwell Studio plugin, but provides overall better results.

Would like to say thanks for the tutorials on the 3D rendering, its great to see the more realistic views of the circuit boards and components. I have had a play around with the Maxwell render, then the Kerkythea renderer, i am liking the Kerkythea slightly better from a usage and rendering perspective.

You can check out our tutorials, on building 3D models in Google Sketchup, as well as rendering them in either Maxwell, or Kerkythea.

Via the forum.