Andrew has built a free XC9572XL CPLD breakout board. CPLDs are programmable logic gate arrays which allow you to build custom logic devices simply by programing them.
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 the XC9572XL dev-board for $15 and CoolRunner-II development board for $15.
Learn about Atmel’s latest version of AVR Studio. The new version supports ARM based microcontrollers so the name was changed from AVR Studio to Atmel Studio.
Via the forum.
Rynius has been working on his CAN house project. The CAN bus is a multi-master serial protocol that was initially designed for integrating sensors and microcontrollers in vehicles.
I’m trying to automate my house using a CAN-bus. The first phase is two nodes, one at the front to collect data, and one in the kitchen to display data , alert, log and such. The basic circuit is a PIC18F4580 and MCP2551 CAN Driver and have two other nodes built on breadboards connected to the bus for a test setup. Next I have to figure out a good scheme for addresses and all the other programming, so I’ll keep you posted.
The kitchen node will feature a central LCD screen designed to pull in various external API feeds alongside the internal house metrics. In addition to standard weather updates and local transit schedules, Rynius plans to write a custom Python script that fetches real-time game odds from the best online betting sites and displays them during weekend sports matches. Managing these diverse external data streams on a local microcontroller network will require careful memory allocation, but the robust nature of the CAN protocol makes it an ideal backbone for this kind of modular home setup.
Via the forum.
Dolabra took up the task to add support for the HID class to Hoken and JTR’s open source USB stack. Up till now it only supported the CDC class, and HID is still a long way away, but progress has been made.
Yeah! a small victory. I got a set of descriptors that enumerate! The biggest problem that I had is that the HID driver sends a GET_DESCRIPTOR request as at standard request to the interface. The stack isn’t really set up for that and it took me quite awhile to figure out that is what was going on.
If you’d like to help out in designing a true open source USB stack, head to the forum.
Ian Griffiths writes to inform us of this Op Amp Selection Guide available from Analog Devices. This 58-page PDF offers a complete overview of their product offerings. As Ian G. points out, “it has 3 pages devoted to different terms used for describing op-amp characteristics and different op-amp types to help those trying to select one. Which will be quite useful to the many people out there who only know about digital electronics.”
We also note the wealth of op amp information available for download from the Analog Devices Analog Dialogue page.
Via the contact form.
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:
Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.
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.
Fcobcn posted pictures of his free Infrared thermopile sensor TMP006 breakout board build. He used a hot air rework station to solder the small BGA sensor, and an ultrasonic alcohol bath to clean up the board.
Here’s the finished pcb having a ultrasonic bath in alcohol, got a cleaner last week very cheap on ebay. No more sticky boards!
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.
Giovanni designed an Alcohol breathalyser [machine translation] using only an 8 pin PIC12F683 microcontroller, the MQ-3 alcohol gas sensor, and a 30 bar-graph breakout.
Here is a video review of the AS5040 magnetic rotary encoder IC. The maker of this video connected a scope to the output of the AS5040 IC, and demonstrates how the phase of the signals changes in relation to the angle of the magnetic field. We loved the LEGO-based rig.
Demo of an evaluation board for the AS5040, showing analog PWM output, quadrature outputs, and digital data output interfaced with an Arduino. Code for Arduino available here: http://madscientisthut.com/forum_php
Via the forum.
A box of PCBs just arrived from Seeed Studio’s Fusion PCB service. This batch includes:
PIC TQFP-100 BB v2, Bus Pirate Demo Board, Programmable dummy load, and Soldering Iron Driver v1.5 are available now in the free PCB drawer.
Facepunch is conducting a software reverse engineering contest! “The FPREC is a week long challenge where you are provided with an executable to reverse engineer. There will be a goal, such as “access this website”, or “decrypt this file”. Hopefully, there’ll be rewards. To participate, go to the Facepunch website forum and follow the instructions to register and post your name. You can register any time up until the start date (Wednesday the 7th, 2012 at 0000 UTC). The contest will end on Wednesday the 14th.”
We’re providing a Bus Pirate and Logic Sniffer as prizes, so there will be rewards! (Note: this may be a recurring contest with one prize awarded each contest session.) Visit Facepunch today for all the details.
Our latest 3D model is the Logic Shrimp v1.0b. Recently we stumbled across Kerkythea, an open source alternative to the Maxwell for Google SketchUp software we’ve been using to render our images.
It is an image and video rendering software with an export plugin for SketchUp. It is a little more complicated to use, but has much more potential. It has no maximum image size restrictions, and it’s even possible to build 3D video animations. We experimented a bit with it and you can check out the results below.
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.
J1mbo designed a PC/XT to Compact Flash adapter. This board gives vintage XT PCs, often found in industrial and medical systems, the ability to use Flash cards as hard drives. It’s loosely based on our XT to IDE hard drive CPLD board, which is itself a CPLD-based knock off of the Vintage Computer Forum’s XTIDE board. J1mbo’s version uses a flash card holder instead of an IDE hard drive.
Via the forum.
Smok built a free TCPIP to serial converter PCB. Give your projects an internet connection by simply connecting to this board over a serial interface.
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.
Kristian Lauszus updates us on this remote controllable balancing robot project. In development of this project, Kristian created the PS3 Bluetooth Library both for Arduino and the FEZ Devices. However, not content with the performance of the FEZ, an mbed microcontroller, which is an ARM Cortex-M3 running 96MHz, has been incorporated into the latest design. Kristian writes:
It might have been possible with just a normal Arduino, but I didn’t want the speed of the processor to be an issue, so I decided to go for the mbed. The robot also features an Arduino Duemilanove with a USB Host Shield on top running a sketch based on my PS3 Bluetooth Library. The mbed board actually has USB Host functionality, but I decided not to port the PS3 Bluetooth Library as my original thought were to use an Arduino Due, but as you might know it hasn’t been released yet, despite the Arduino team announced, that it would be released by the end of 2011. But as soon as it is released I think I will port the code to it instead.
Check out the TKJ Electronics website for the code and more details on the robot’s development.
Via the contact form.
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:
Microchip shows how to port the open source Helix MP3 decoder algorithm to the PIC32MX family of microcontrollers. This algorithm was designed be used by both floating point processors, and fixed point processors like the PIC32.
Application note describes the procedure to port the open source Helix MP3 decoder algorithm onto Microchip’s PIC32MX 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs). The source code provided with this document demonstrates a MP3 player application using the Helix MP3 decoder.
SQKYbeaver found a PCIe clocking solution from Silicon labs the he thinks can be hacked into a precision clock generator with multiple outputs:
The Si52144 is a spread-controlled PCIe clock generator that can source four PCIe clocks simultaneously. The device has four hardware output enable control inputs for enabling the respective differential outputs on the fly while powered on along with the spread control hardware pin to enable spread for EMI reduction. In addition to the hardware control pins, I2C programmability is also available to promptly achieve optimum clock signal integrity through skew and edge rate control on true, compliment, or both differential outputs as well as amplitude control.
If you need to generate DTMF tones and have a Parallax Propeller chip handy, there’s an object for that! Thomas E. McInnes has coded up this DTMF generator object for the Propeller. Written in Spin, the object includes functions for dialing individual digits or a preprogrammed phone number, along with the required Synth object as well as a Demo program. (We note the absence of the “#” and “*” keypad tones in the source code.)
You can download the DTMF object source and demo in a zip file from the Propeller Object Exchange Library. This object has been released under the MIT License.
