8051-compatible MCU samples from Microchip


For those of you who like the 8051 chip, we notice that Microchip has 8051 compatible MCUs available in 40-pin PDIP, part number SST89E516RD-40-C-PIE, available as samples.
According to the datasheet:

The SST89E516RDx and SST89V516RDx are members of the FlashFlex family of 8-bit microcontroller products designed and manufactured with SST’s patented and proprietary SuperFlash CMOS semiconductor process technology. The splitgate cell design and thick-oxide tunneling injector offer significant cost and reliability benefits for SST’s customers. The devices use the 8051 instruction set and are pin-for-pin compatible with standard 8051 microcontroller devices.

Open source HDD POV clock

Jason designed a persistence of vision hard drive clock. He etched numbers on a copper disk and added 8 LEDs below it. Each LED represents a character on the display and blinks when the corresponding digit passes over it. His project is Arduino-based, and the project files can be downloaded from GitHub.

My replacement platter  was cut out of FR4 single sided copper clad board using a 70mm holesaw. A smaller holesaw (19mm I think) was used to cut out the centre, which was then filed to snugly fit the hub of the 2.5″ laptop drive. The digits were actually laid out in EAGLE (PCB designer) since it was the only package I had to hand which let you type in rotation angles for characters. This worked OK, but a decent vector drawing package will have more interesting font options. The platter was etched just like a PCB.

Via HackedGadgets.

PROTOTYPE PREVIEW: New protoboard under way

Don’t you hate it? A big bag of SMT parts arrive from Mouser, DigiKey or eBay, but your carefully manufactured PCBs are still under way? Or the firmware needs to be done ASAP? Or you got this super cool USB SOIC uC you’d love to try out and you can’t wait? We run into this all the time, which is why we love to design protoboards.

This new SOIC protoboard is based on our in-house version, beefed up with a few improvements. This board has room for:

  • A max 32 pin SOIC chip
  • Each pin is broken out to prototype area and can be easily connected through a resistor or capacitor (0805 or 0603) to Vcc or GND
  • Each pin also has a through-hole via to easily solder wires
  • 2 standard 4×4  buttons
  • PTH or SMT HC49 crystal, with capacitors
  • USB connector, with all pins broken out
  • Regulated power from USB through a SOT23-5 or SOT223 LDO voltage regulator (both fixed and adjustable version supported)
  • Room for a 1206 polyfuse to prevent excessive currents and shorts
  • Small 0805/0603 playground

More below.

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PROP-6502 Propeller laptop


Dennis Ferron developed this Parallax Propeller Laptop with a 6502 co-processor and 64K of static RAM as his entry to a Parallax Propeller design contest. He observed that hardware prototyping has evolved from building-block hardware (TTL) to programmable hardware (PLA’s and FPGA’s). He believes that the Propeller chip represents the next revolution: 100% software-based virtual hardware, and he built this laptop to prove it! While his design does not go so far as to prove that this computer can emulate every other 6502 computer (like the Commodore 64, Apple II, or even Nintendo NES), the possibility exists. This project earned David an Honorable Mention in the Parallax contest.
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Reverse engineering car parking sensors

James decided to reverse engineer car ultrasonic parking sensors. These sensors have integrated electronics that handle all the measurements. They are connected to the car’s internal computer via a low-speed single wire CAN network. James provides pinouts, protocol interface, and some source code to interface with them.

Since I know a thing, or two, about ultrasonic sensors and systems, I thought I would give back to the community with some insights. There are many millions of ultrasonic sensors produced each year for the vehicle manufactures. To date, I don’t see any of these sensors getting reused by the hacker community. I’m guessing this is simply due to a lack of understanding of these sensors. The automotive ultrasonic sensors would make great hobbyist’s sensors. The sensors are almost indestructible as compared to the hobbyist sensors I see used today. Below are a couple of advantages of the automotive ultrasonic sensors.

Via the forum

BootDrive loads Arduino sketches from an SD card

Kevin wrote an Arduino bootloader that loads sketches from an SD card. BootDrive is open source and available on GitHub.

Announcing the formal release of BootDrive for Arduino. If you’ve been reading the blog, you know that I’ve been working with Justin Shaw of Wyolum labs to enable their I2SD (Arduino clone with a micro-sd card) to bootload a program onto another Arduino. After battling several issues, mostly related to porting avrdude code to the Arduino (assumptions about infinite memory, etc!) it’s working well enough people can fool around with it.

Via lucadentella.it.

MCP2200 breakout board free PCB built

Megabug built a free MCP2200 breakout board. MCP2200 are USB-to-UART converter chips by Microchip. In fact they are PIC18F14K50 microcontrollers programmed with the USB-to-UART firmware.  We were able to hack one and program an open source USB stack into 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.

23K256 breakout board free PCB built

Ian Griffiths built a free 23K256 breakout board. The 23K256 is a 256Kb SPI SRAM memory chip, but it comes in DIP too so we nixed this project.

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 contact form.

A basic introduction to Phase Locked Loops

Kenneth was curious about Phase Locked Loops so he decided to dive into them. PLLs generate an output signal that is phase-synchronized to an input signal. They are widely used in telecommunication, radio, and computer systems. One place we commonly find PLLs is the frequency multiplier circuit inside microcontrollers.

The inevitable next step was to break out the breadboard, put together a simple PLL, and just play with it some to try and really get the concept.  Luckily, the classic 4000 logic series includes the 4046 PLL chip, which includes both a voltage controlled oscillator and both types of phase detectors.  After putting it all together, I figured I’d record a video and let you enjoy the play-by-play as I try and break it all down for you.

Check out the video below the fold.

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Open source hardware presentation by Erik de Bruijn

Erik let us know about his presentation on open-source projects. It uncovers some of the motivation behind an open source project, as well as the means to achieve your goals in open source.

I talk about the non-rival nature of information and how a culture of sharing enables the emerging phenomenon of open hardware.

Via the comments.

#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.

This week we have a guest PCB, the Itead mystery pcb.  Use your coupon to pick this PCB, or any other in the free PCB drawer.

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

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Alpha testers needed for RX/TX Lab’s open source solar powered GPRS/GSM sensor platform

TX/RX Labs open source project BACON is nearing the alpha testing stage. They have released an announcement asking for any developers wishing to get involved with Alpha testing to contact them.

Project BACON is MSP430 based solar powered GPRS/GSM sensor platform. It has on-board battery management, GPRS/GSM modem, 3 axis accelerometer, mems mic, GPS, temperature sensor, and a strain gauge built in.

TX/RX’s Open Source Project to develop a low power solar based GPRS/GSM remote sensor platform is reaching alpha testing. We are looking for some people with electronics design/coding experience who would like to participate in determining the features and changes the project needs to go to Beta testing and produce something that will be useful to the community. Alpha Testers will be given loaner hardware to use during the test and will receive beta test hardware as well.

USB LCD Backpack PIC18F24J50 free PCB build

Dolabra built a free USB LCD backpack PCB. His version is one of our prototypes based on the PIC18F24J50 microcontroller, which is different to the one we sell at Seeed with a PIC18F2550 uC. He had to do some coding to adapt it to the new chip.

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 a USB LCD Backpack for $20 with shipping.

Via the forum.

Transparency Grenade blows WiFi privacy out of water


Created in January, 2012, by Julian Oliver for the Studio Weise7 exhibition at Labor 8, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, the Transparency Grenade represents a more physical approach to fostering the process of corporate and government transparency than the slow, tedious process of policy reform.

Equipped with a tiny computer, microphone and powerful wireless antenna, the Transparency Grenade captures network traffic and audio at the site and securely and anonymously streams it to a dedicated server where it is mined for information. Email fragments, HTML pages, images and voice extracted from this data are then presented on an online, public map, shown at the location of the detonation.

Whether trusted employee, civil servant or concerned citizen, greater openness was never so close at hand..

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43Oh’s “name a device using MSP430” contest


Our friends at 43Oh.com are conducting a contest. They ask: “Do you know of any devices or gadgets in the wild open market that have MSP430 microcontrollers in them?” They will be giving a Capacitive Touch BoosterPack to one lucky entrant! Their contest ends 12:00PM on 2/23/2012. Visit the 43Oh contest webpage for entry rules.

Review of the XC9572XL clone by Numato Lab

A few weeks ago Numato Lab ported our XC9572XL CPLD breakout board to KiCad. Hilipka got one of their assembled boards for free and wrote a review.

  • its quite a nice board, feeld of high quality
  • even included an oscillator
  • the JTAG header is not labeled at all, making it difficult in the beginning

I found one problem in common with the DP version: the Vcc pin of the JTAG header is connected directly to the on-board regulator, which might harm it (its not reverse battery protected). So currently one should not power the board that way, but always by 5 volts.

Get your own XC9572XL based CPLD dev board for $15 and start experimenting with programmable logic today.

Via the forum.

USB IR Toy free PCB build

Kenith built the USB IR Toy free PCB. You can use it as a remote control with your computer, view infrared signals on a logic analyzer, or capture and replay remote control buttons.

Dangerous Prototypes never ceases to amaze me with how they are poster child of open source hardware. You can literally go back in the forum archives and watch their products evolve as members bounce ideas back and forth. Then, in the end, they post everything online with an open license, get a batch of 100 put together to sell some, and let people with it as they will.

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.

You can get IR Toy v2 for $22.05, including world wide shipping.

Design Spark free schematic layout software


In examining the design files for the Maker Shed pulse sensor we noted that they weren’t produced using Eagle. Instead, the files were generated using Design Spark’s free Schematic Layout Software. This is a free (activation required at no charge) PCB design alternative and is available from the Design Spark website. These are the sample people who sponsor the chipKIT Challenge.
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