Brian updated his MSPism RF transceiver design to version 2. He added a dual output low-drop-out voltage regulator and a LiIon battery jack.
MSPism is a X-Bee compatible RF transceiver with an onboard MSP430 microcontroller, using a cheap Nordic nRF24L01+ module. The firmware is currently under development.
Via the forum.
As promised, Zeta uploaded PCB and schematic files for his PSOC 3/5 programer we covered a few days ago.
Via the forum.
Here is a hack that will let you use some 5v HD44780 LCDs at 3V. On some common LCDs you can short the resistor labeled R7 and interface with the LCD at 3.3V.
Via the forum.
Later today we will announce the winners of the Energy Micro EFM32 dev-boards. If you’d like one just leave a comment on this post with a project idea.
Arhi tipped us to this starter kit for CoolRunner-II CPLDs:
I can highly recommend CoolRunner-II CPLD Starter Kit. I have this small board for a while and it’s more then you need to learn to use cpld’s and it’s fairly cheap ($60)… it’s of course proprietary, the atmel on board (that can be used to communicate with chips on board and to program cpld and to talk with your host computer via usb) has some proprietary firmware etc etc … but board is interesting, besides everything is broken out there’s a place for external oscillator, there’s internal oscillator on board with switch (10khz, 100khz, 1mhz) 4x7seg display, 2 switches, 2 buttons, 4 leds, LTC2494, LT3028 so you can follow voltage levels, current draw, temperature etc etc .. I highly recommend it
Via the forum.
Andy built a 3D stereolithography printer, and provided instructions on how to build your own.
Resin is cured in layers using a UV laser. A linear actuator moves the stage down slightly after each layer is hardend, slowly building the 3D object in layers. Check out a time-laps video below the fold.
Via the contact form.
Fcobcn posted a picture of his free PICqueño PCB build. We love the look a tall quartz crystal gives to this build.
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.
Minibloq ver 0.8 has been released. “Minibloq is a graphical programming environment for Arduino™, Multiplo, physical computing devices and robots. One of it’s main goals is to bring closer physical computing and robotic platforms to primary schools, kids and beginners.”
You can download this Beta version for Windows and OSX here.
A box of PCBs just arrived from Seeed Studio’s Fusion PCB service. This batch includes:
Xtide v1b, LPC development board v1, Bus Pirate demo board v1 and SMD practice board v1 are available now in the free PCB drawer.
Watch us solder the Bus Pirate demo board v5.
The simple process of making a demo board for the Bus Pirate turned out to be far more complicated then we expected. Previous versions used many different chips and turned out to be more expensive then the Bus Pirate itself.
For version 5 Sjaak came up with the idea to use a single low-cost microcontroller, a PIC16F1829, to emulate a bunch of devices over various protocols. The protocol and device mode are selected via jumpers.
By selecting jumpers in the DEVICE header, you can chose which function the demo board will perform. The options available are analog-to-digital converter, digital-to-analog converter, memory chip, and PWM output.
By selecting jumpers in the PROTOCOL header, you can chose the protocol. I2C, SPI, UART, and one we haven’t decided yet.
Prototype PCBs are available in the free PCB drawer. Follow our development in the demo board project log in the forum.
Tomorrow we’ll give away three EFM32 dev-boards. If you’d like one just leave a comment on yesterday’s post with a project idea.
Tarloth designed this cool hack to improve signal integrity of the Open Bench Logic Sniffer. Instead of using the standard 1×18 pinheader, he used a dual row 2×18 header. One row is connected to the board, while the other is connected to GND.
Unused signal pins are jumpered to GND using the extra header row. This improves signal integrity on the used channels. If this hack is used with a standard IDC cable, every channel wire has a GND wire on either side of it inside the cable, further improving signal integrity.
Via the forum.
Get a Logic Sniffer for $50, with free worldwide shipping.
Twitter syndication failed yesterday, so today is Twitter free PCB Wednesday.
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:
On Monday the usually trusty WordPress Tweeter plugin that pushes posts to Twitter stopped working. It wasn’t obvious until yesterday when there were no replies, and lots of complaints, about free PCB Tuesday. WP Tweeter hasn’t been updated in a long time, so we found something fresher. This post will hopefully be syndicated by the new WP to Twitter plugin, which was last updated a few weeks ago.
O’Reilly is presenting a free one hour webcast this Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 10:00 AM PT entitled “A Gentle Introduction to Embedded Systems Programming.” Elecia White will be the presenter.
Want to do some embedded software? Or worse, did you get handed a project and just want to know what is going on? There are some concepts you’ll need to understand: volatile variables, hardware registers, static keywords, memory maps, bit manipulation and function pointers, oh my! This webcast walks step-by-step through the most important concepts a software engineer will need to get started on the path to embedded systems.
You can register for the talk at the O’Reilly webcast page.
#twatch firmware v0f is now available for download. It updates the twatch to use new Twitter feeds and formats.
The Twitter streaming #twatch stopped working because Twitter disabled the feed we used to grab the current trending topics. The new feed needs a Yahoo! Where On Earth region ID in the url. We wanted worldwide trending topics, so we set the region to 1.
Additionally, there was a minor change in feed format that put the region into the trend results. This was fixed by modifying the search keys.
The update instructions are here, a .bat file is included in the firmware to save you some typing. Latest source is in SVN.
Vincent wrote a guide to compiling the open source cross platform GUI for the Bus Pirate. There’s also a new Windows binary for the project that doesn’t require installation, you can download it here.
Via the forum.
Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors..
Shaos is making a breakout board for PIC32 microcontrollers in DIP through hole packages. He based his design on his previous project the nedoCPU-16, a breakout for the PIC16F870 uCs.
There is a 3.3v power supply onboard along with all the bypass capacitors required for the PIC32 to function properly. As an added feature he placed over-voltage protection on most of the broken out pins. The board is designed to be inserted onto a breadboard using a single row of headers.
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:
TitanMKD wants to interface his UBW32 with a NFC Arduino shield. He decided to make a adapter board to easily connect and disconnect them together:
I have just developped a first version of arduino adaptor for UBW32, this version is basic because only Power Supply and SPI are connected in order to have a working NFC shield v0.9I will update it later with other pins connection to add analog pins and other GPIO (which requires power adaptation because they are limited to 3.3V on PIC32).
Via the forum.
