Juan posted a video of his free infrared thermopile sensor TMP006 breakout board build. These board breakout the TMP006 non contact temperature sensor that comes in a hard-to solder BGA package.
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.
Hendrik built a Bus Pirate v3b breakout v3.2 free PCB. This little board breaks out all the pins of the Bus Pirate IO header into separate ports for various different buses and modes.
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.
Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.
Emeryth designed a breakout board for the Stellaris ARM Cortex 3 microcontrollers from Texas Instruments. It supports either LM3S3748 (USB device/host) or LM3S6938 (Ethernet). The LM3S6938 requires and additional Ethernet daughter board.
He based his design of Texas Instruments evaluation boards. You can download the source files from his site.
Via the forum.
Jameco Electronics presents a challenge to correctly identify power connectors as male or female. While most connector genders are determined by common characteristics and become set in terminology, this is apparently not the case for barrel type power connectors.
Jameco is conducting a survey to determine which of the above connectors should be characterized as male and female.
One of our favorite designers Marcus, creator of the Hybrid SID player, made a PIC32 development board that works with the snap-together Grove rapid development system. An operating system called StickOS runs simple BASIC programs.
His work is now on sale at Seeed Studio.
Via the forum.
PIC TQFP100 Breakout boards are designed to quickly get you prototyping with any Microchip PIC microcontroller or dsPIC digital signal processor that comes in 100pin 0.4mm pitch TQFP (designation ‘PT’) packages. We’ve checked support for PIC32s, PIC24s, and dsPIC33s, but others may be supported as well.
In version 2 we fixed some bugs and added some features:
You can get the PIC TQFP-100 Breakout Board v2 in the free PCB drawer.
Global Geek Tour Seoul, South Korea roundup:
0.5mm pitch xQFP breakout boards are back in stock at Seeed Studio. These boards make your QFP prototyping faster and easier. They’re available in 0.50mm, 0.65mm, and 0.80mm pin pitch for just $3.
Schazamp assembled his Part Ninja free PCB. The Part Ninja is a electronic component testing tool. It identifies electronic components like transistors and FETs, determines the pinout, and measures basic specifications. Several SMD footprints are included so surface mount parts can be tested too.
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.
In the very last hour of scouting we stumbled into surface mount part heaven, the place we have always been looking for.
Feet tired, batteries dead, and SD cards full – we almost didn’t bother to climb yet another flight of stairs. On the third and four floors of “building A“* there are dozens of shops selling SMD parts by the meter and reel.
Resistors, capacitors, inductors, chips, connectors, name it. Microchip, Atmel, Analog Devices, Maxim, and more were all available from distributors with small glass offices packed with boxes and parts.
By the time we were there most were closed. It isn’t browser friendly, and it’s definitely not intended as a tourist destination. You’re best off with a Korean speaking guide, we were shown around by a local we met earlier in the day. Hacker Space Seoul hopes to make this easier on visitors to any part of Cheonggycheon by mapping out friendly shops that they like to use. See the highlight of our trip below.
*Let us know if there’s a name. Sae Eun Sang Ga, or Sae Eun Arcade. Thanks Paco!
Continue reading “Global Geek Tour: Cheonggycheon surface mount components in ‘building A’”
Building B has an entire floor, running half the length of Cheonggyecheon, with arcade game restoration shops. There were buttons and replacement part shops, repair shops, and old arcade games everywhere. This isn’t a retail outlet like Super Potato in Akihabara. You can definitely pick up spare parts for your own restoration, but there’s no games to play.
Retail is only a small part of Cheonggyecheon, there’s a ton of work going on too. On one block there’s a dozen laser cutting shops. In another area there’s metal working, and even a cluster of glass blowers making neon and lab glass.
Continue reading “Global Geek Tour:Cheonggyecheon acrylic, metal, and glass work”
Building C on the Cheonggyecheon map has a bunch of through-hole parts shops and distributors. Asekakorea.co.kr is printed on the building but it’s not a valid address.
This shop counter has examples to test, and you can buy the bulk bags stocked on the shelves.
Continue reading “Global Geek Tour: Cheonggyecheon through-hole parts in the Aseakorea building”
Kwang Jang Market is at the far end of the Cheonggyecheon area. It’s the perfect place to take a break from your tour and grab some lunch. We included this on the Cheonggyecheon map and our Google Map layer.
Continue reading “Global Geek Tour: Lunch at Kwang Jang Market in Cheonggyecheon”
Materials and tools for making are everywhere in Cheonggyecheon. This shop sells hand tools and light equipment like air compressors. We also spotted a dozen stands selling nothing but rivets, bolts, washers, or other fasteners.
More materials shops below.
Continue reading “Global Geek Tour: Cheonggyecheon materials, tools, and equipment”
Patrick Cambria posts this simple oscilloscope project using a Picaxe-08M microcontroller and a potentiometer. The Picaxe is programmed in BASIC and the entire MCU program follows:
main:
READADC10 1,B0
SERTXD(#B0,10)
goto main
The output from a potentiometer voltage divider is fed into an ADC pin of a PICAXE 08M then serially transmitted to a Serial Port in Visual Basic.NET and plotted over time in a line graph. (Patrick also notes you can also use a bar graph for a nice visual effect!)
For links to the schematic and Visual Studio source code visit Patrick Cambria’s website.
The northwest quarter is primarily through-hole electronics parts, switches, probes and sensors – all our favorite market stuff. Pathways snake by stands and shops the size of garages.
Like at Yongsan, most shops have a product display in the window, and orders are filled from big bags. We guess this part is bigger than the similar maze of shops that run though Akihabara in Tokyo.
Continue below for a look at some of the shops.
Continue reading “Global Geek Tour: Cheonggyecheon maze of electronic component stores”
Yongsan was cool, but if that was the end of the trip we’d go home disappointed. There were some good component stores, and a world-class computer market, but it was mostly cameras, TVs, netbooks, cellphones, and other consumer electronics.
Thankfully Hacker Space Seoul and a few commenters turned us onto Cheonggyecheon, Seoul’s hidden geek paradise. This market is a winding maze like Akihabara’s Radio Center, but it extends for a whole neighborhood. There’s countless winding paths though Cheonggyecheon, and each quarter has a unique personality.
The northwest quarter is a labyrinth of stores selling through-hole parts, connectors, and other electronics stuff. In the northeast there’s watches, batteries, power supplies, and LEDs available from hundreds of tiny stands. To the southeast there’s metal supplies and metal workshops, and to the southwest there are a hundred stalls with nothing but kilo bags of rivets, bolts, washers, and other fasteners. Everything is densely packed along tight pedestrian walkways with delivery motorcycles constantly zooming by. This market is all about tools, material, and equipment for making, there’s very few finished consumer electronics here.
This is an amazing market but it’s relatively unknown. Hacker Space Seoul suggested we work together to document Cheonggyecheon. We kept a survey of the area and turned it into the map above, we’ll pass on our source so members can pinpoint their favorite spots. See the complete map (and Inkscape source) on the wiki.
Dispatches from the labyrinths of Cheonggyecheon are coming up next.
Continue reading “Global Geek Tour: Map of Cheonggyecheon electronics market”
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:
Hacker Space Seoul is nondescript on the outside, but inside it’s the nicest Hacker Space we’ve ever seen. Clean, newly renovated, well organized, and lots of tools and parts. Only a week ago they moved into this building on the edge of Seoul’s urban electronic part market called Cheonggyecheon. They may be the only hacker space in the world located directly in a huge part market.
Help Hacker Space Seoul get to Maker Carnival 1 in China by voting for their Iron Hack project on Facebook.
Dan invited us over, and retrieved us when we got (understandably) lost in the neighborhood of tiny winding pedestrian paths. HSS members helped route a trip through the market, and pinpointed some of the most unique locations. We’ll share it all in our posts over the next few hours.
We recorded a couple great interviews with HHS members too, look for those on Thursday.
Continue reading “Global Geek Tour: Visit Hacker Space Seoul”
