Andrew’s internet radio based on a modified Nanode network platform. An AVR microcontroller uses an ENC28J60 ethernet chip to grab MP3 feeds from the net. Packets are stored in a ring buffer in a 32K serial SRAM chip. The buffer is fed to a VS1033 MP3 decoder chip. All of the chips are controlled from a single SPI hardware module in the AVR.
Station information is shown on an LCD, and various station can be set from a potentiometer-based dial. See a close-up of the control interface below.
Boris built an open source Halloween project, check out the talking skull in action below the break.
In this project the skull speaks and moves the mandible according to the sound level. An Arduino analyzes the level sound of a audio source and drives a servo motor connected to the mandible. All very simple.
Via the contact form.
Ciseco energy and control demonstrated several different wireless serial links based on a CC1110 433MHz radio + 8051 processor chip from TI. The modules can be used for serial communication with an Arduino (or any board), and are capable of over-air remote updates using the standard Arduino bootloader. The project is not yet open source, but Miles hopes to publish it when he is prepared to handle user requests.
Continue reading “Home Camp: Ciseco energy and control wireless serial links”
Trystan and Glyn from the Open Energy Monitor project presented a 100% open source home energy monitoring platform based on the Nanode.
Wireless sensors collect data and send it via radio to a RF->ethernet base station. The base station saves the data to a server, either the Open Energy Monitor’s servers or a self-hosted copy.
Energy consumption is displayed on interactive online graphs, or via a wireless graphical LCD screen. The project is nicely packaged in a laser cut case, and kits are now available.
We saw a half-dozen presentations by developers and users of home energy monitoring applications or services at Home Camp 4. What made the Open Energy Monitor stand out is that everything is 100% open source, from hardware to the server applications. The vast majority of server backends, the part that collects data and displays graphs, are closed source software-as-service jobs like Pachube. The Open Energy Monitor software package is completely open, host with them or host your own, the perfect solution for open hardware.
If you’re interested in open source energy monitoring, this is definitely the package to check out.
Ken Boak discussed the Nanode Arduino-based network node. The Nanode is an all through-hole network development board, designed specifically as a home monitoring and automation platform. Firmware built in the Arduino IDE using open source libraries reports statistics to Pachube, a website that shows real-time data from small internet devices.
The hardware combines an Arduino with an ENC28J60 ethernet chip, and it’s available for around $40. Way cheaper than an Arduino + ethernet shield. On the bottom of the PCB there’s a footprint for an optional 25AA256 32K serial SRAM, and the next version will add a footprint for an RF module too.
A new internet controlled lighting project called SplashLight is being developed. It has 4 relays to turn lights on and off, and 3 PWM outputs to drive RGB LEDs. The core of the project is a Cortex M3 uC with an Ethernet PHY/MAC from Texas Instruments.
The project includes iPhone, Android, and web applications to control the board over the web. It looks like the PCB and schematic files will be made available in the future, but the license is still unannounced. Might be ripe for a remake.
Via the forum.
Randofo published the details on this flamethrowing Jack-O’-Lantern on Instructables. This bad boy is designed for remote control via Squidbee RF modules so you can shoot a one-second burst of flame on command. (As randofo observes, you should be able to substitute any Arduino/XBee combo for the SquidBee.)
This definitely qualifies as a Dangerous (Halloween) Prototype!
Get all the build details and the Arduino sketch at Instructables.
Happy Halloween!
Home Camp is an “unconference” held in central London. The goal is to increase environmental sustainability in the home using technology, a mix of closed and open source projects were represented. This weekend we saw first hand what it’s all about.
Day 1 stated with a keynote by Moixa Energy about a home solar power system prototype. The concept is to replace multiple inefficient AC->DC adapters with a solar-augmented home DC power supply. They solve the connector problem by using a smart USB3 socket that provides multiple voltages with specialized cables.
The morning continues with short presentations from:
We’ll have more on some of these projects later today.
From the start we wondered exactly what an unconference would be. The afternoon was open to short presentations and demos from all participants. Anyone who wanted to present put their topic on a post-it note and stuck it to a board. We heard from the developers and users of several energy monitoring platforms, as well as related topics like the psychology of energy conservation. Many participants had hardware projects with a growing community, so we gave our open hardware manufacturing overview.
Day two was filled with small group hardware demos in different rooms. We saw a wireless serial connection for the Arduino, an internet radio based on open hardware, and a Nanode live build. We did an EEPROM demo with the Bus Pirate, and used the Logic Sniffer to capture and verify the signals.
Home Camp was a great experience. Don’t miss it if you’re interested in home sustainability and open hardware. The participants were smart, motivated, and dedicated to improving the world through hacking and making.
Pedantine attended a seminar organized by Energy Micro about their new EFM32 Gecko processor that uses a Cortex M3. All attendees received a EFM32 starter kit.
The cool thing about this starter kit is that power consumption is constantly monitored. The debugging software shows how much power each line of code consumes.
Via the comments.
Megabug built a free Bus Pirate V4 PCB. After some initial debugging he got it to work.
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.
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:
We think DIY capacitive touch sensing buttons, and sliders are cool. Designing and shaping your capacitive panels can be a pain. Here is an app note by Microchip that covers all the basics required to get your capacitive touch sensing project started.
This app note starts with which pad shape and size is best suited for buttons. How the choice of material, and design of the covering plate impacts the sensitivity of a the design, is covered as well. In the end they give some routing guidelines to follow in designing capacitive touch sensing projects.
One thing to note, that we liked as well, is:
Also, the sensors may be separate from the PCB.
Wires leading off-board may direct the sensors to the
location where they are to be mounted and appropriately
affixed. This can allow for very flexible designs
and permits shapes which are not flat.
Greeeg developed a micro board for the Bus Pirate v3. He has shrunken the PCB down to 4cmX2.6cm.
Instead of using the FT232R chip originally in the Bus Pirate, he has delegated the USB communication to a PIC18F14k50 uC. PCB and schematic files are available, and firmware is currently under development.
Via the forum.
Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.
Here’s an interesting code project in the development stage. Propgcc is an open source GCC port for the Parallax Propeller P8x32a Microcontroller. The project is currently in the Alpha Test Phase, and its developers note that it’s not yet ready for general use. Testing and documentation are still in progress. They report that the compiler passes %99 of GCC test suite. However, GDB is not an Alpha Test feature.
Interested propellerheads are invited to visit the propgcc Google code download page to participate in early testing.
Kmmankad is working on a development board for the PSoC3 chip. The PSoC3 is a mixed signal system on a chip developed by Cypress. Because he found the PSoC3 First Touch Kit too constricting, and the DVK kit to cumbersome and costly, he decided to build his own. It is designed to open source hardware so all the PCB and schematic files will be made available.
Via the forum.
Back in 1995 Charlie discovered a way to drive large led matrices using a small number of pins. His technique makes use of the fact that many microcontrollers have tri-state outputs, and the fact that diodes pass current in only one direction.
This app note by Maxim describes how to implement charlieplexing to drive 8 digit 7 segment display with decimal points using only 9 pins. There are some drawbacks to this approach though, a 450Hz frequency is required to drive the segments. And since the duty cycle is considerably shorter, currents per a single segment have to be higher to achieve the same brightness.
The complexity of this design makes it almost impossible to route the board on a single layer. But all in all when pins are in short supply this is one way to lighten the pin count.
Ftdi’s FT2232H chip is a very useful device, it has two USB channels supporting the High speed USB standard. When the highest bandwidth is needed, the FT245 synchronous FIFO mode provides the best performance delivering up to 40MB/s transfer rates.
This app note by FTDI provides all the necessary information to get this mode started. Connection pinouts, timing diagrams, EEPROM setup, as well as software code examples are provided in this article.
Our FT2232 breakout board is in stock at seeed and available for $27
Madworm made a Logic Sniffer add-on board, it has dip switches to allow users to pull up or down any of the 16 channels. It also has jumpers for selecting different pull up voltages. He is currently working out which resistors would work best for his purpose.
Via the forum.
There is a new Wi Fi module around. It supports UART, I2C, SPI, and Ethernet interfaces. The board has a RT3050 320Mhz CPU with 8MB of flash memory and a 32MB onboard RAM chip. It is built to support Linux based embedded systems via the OpenWRT.
Via the contact form.
This app note by Microchip describes how to implement ultrasonic ranging on their PIC16 family of microcontrollers.
Object ranging is essential in many types of systems. One of the most popular ranging techniques is ultrasonic ranging. Ultrasonic ranging is used in a wide variety of applications including:
• Autofocus cameras
• Motion detection
• Robotics guidance
• Proximity sensing
• Object ranging
This application note describes a method of interfacing PIC16CXXX microcontrollers to the Polaroid 6500 Ranging Module.
Their design uses the Polaroid 6500 ranging module interfaced with the PIC by using a pair of digital output pins and one CCP input pin. One digital pin (INIT) starts the module, while the other (BINH) provides a blanking interval during which the module does not respond to revived signals. The CCP module is setup to time the interval from initializing the module to the time an echo is received. Assembler source code is provided by Microchip.
