Free PCB coupon via Facebook to 2 random commenters


Every Friday we give away some extra PCBs via Facebook. This post was announced on Facebook, and on Monday we’ll send coupon codes to two random commenters. More PCBs via Twitter on Tuesday and the blog every Sunday.

Don’t forget there’s free PCBs three times a every week:

  • Free PCB Sunday. The classic. Every week, get free PCBs right here on the blog comments
  • Tweet-a-PCB Tuesday. Follow us and get boards in 144 characters or less
  • Facebook PCB Friday. Free PCBs while you wait for the weekend

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Week in (p)review: October 07, 2011

Facebook free PCB Friday is on the way. Don’t forget to share your current project in the comments or the forum.

Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week:

Coming this week:

  • App notes on the weekend
  • Free PCB Sunday
  • Free PCBs via Twitter on Tuesday
  • Partlist Wednesday
  • Free PCBs via Facebook on Friday
  • Weekly roundup and preview every Friday

What are you hacking this week?

Bus Blaster v2 back in stock

Bus Blaster v2 JTAG debugger is back in stock at Seeed Studio.The cool thing about the Bus Blaster is that it uses a programmable logic chip as a buffer. It can imitate different types of programming hardware with a simple USB update.

This batch is a new revision (v2.5). It includes a button and LED connected to the CPLD breakout pins. The local power selection header (JP4) was also moved to the edge of the PCB.

You can get a Bus Blaster v2 for $34.95.

Bus Pirate: JTAG XSVF player successfully programs Amani64 CPLD

Cliff bought an Amani64 CPLD shield for the Arduino, he had no way to program it except:

I did have a Bus Pirate on hand, the ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of digital hobbyists.

He successfully uploaded the LED blinking firmware onto the Amani64 with the Bus Pirate JTAG XSVF player. Now he is free to develop his CPLD skills.

Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.

Updates on the PiratePICloader

robots has some new updates on the PiratePICloader project:

I have just committed HUGE changes to the piratepicloader. (HUGE = svn diff was about 2000 lines) Changes are:

  • new data loader (fixed bug in hex file generator)
  • new memory storage (memory.[hc]), by using simple link-list, and memory cells of size of flash page
  • redesigned pic/family/protocol tables to be effective and easier to maintain
  • redesigned iface interface to be less generic, and to create less compile time warnings :-)
  • created common functions for flash reading and writing (these should be used instead of those “protocol” specific hacked ones :-) )
  • created function to preserve fuses, between full memory erase – this is going to need some option on command line.

Via the forum.

MCP2200 breakout board free PCB built

After receiving a free MCP2200 breakout board from the Free PCB drawer, Tanukifu built and blogged about it. He writes about the design, pcb layout and build quality. Also included are his experiences using the board with Windows, Linux and OSX.

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.

7400 competition entry: Money counter

Here’s an entry in the Open 7400 Logic competition: Money counter

It’s a money counter based on pure 7400 logic and a bunch of 555. It can count 5 different types of coins. And it will show the current amount in the 7 segment displays.

There are 3 files, two IEE papers (one for spanish and one for english) and a ppt presentation (sorry for the lack of the english version of this one).
The documents are here

More Vinculum II woes

Peter adds his input on our FTDI VNC2 Vinculum II toolchain issues post. He is having issues with the speed of the 1.4.2 toolchain, as well as issues with the debugger and compiler. His was most annoyed with being unable to get a keypad to work over the USB host mode, when a full PC keyboard worked.

It appears there is no support for this product from FTDI.

Toolchain 1.4.2 is SLOW, the debugger still does allow examination of data on several occasion, either when the data is complex or even if simple after a few steps in and out of functions. You still need to turn optimization off, my code is close to filling up the chip (on a Z80, or ’51 with known machine code – I have not tried, but sure – it would fit in 16K). Use of ROM data where it cannot be used gets compiled without error or warning but without CPU description it is hard to find out what is going on.

The fatal blow for me is that a peace of USB host code works with one device (full keyboard) and not with an other similar one (keypad). and I now would need a USB analyzer to figure out what is going on and frankly, even then not sure I could fix it.

Summary: USB made easy if it works, USB made impossible if it does not.

I got carried away with the nice little module size. I still do not know what other chip/module to use that is small, USB host *1, slave *1, >4K RAM, but could do with a LOT more and some way of persistent store (that was not supported by the FTDI, had to use external). Any ideas?

Via the comments.

Hackerspaces – the beginning (the book)

Bre and Astera over at Hackerspace blog have assembled a detailed history of the hackerspace movement. Covering from their inception in 2008 to date, what they initially believed would be a 25 page booklet has turned into a 182 MB zip file containing a comprehensive, richly illustrated, community generated account of every aspect of hackerspace culture from around the world.

This is a truly inspiring open source literary project and a must read for anyone who is part of a hackerspace, wants to start a hackerspace, or just wants to learn what this movement is all about.

Key less entry system using Ping))) and the Arduino

Mouser built a key-less entry system using Ping))) and the Arduino.

The Ping))) ultrasonic sensor is used to gauge user’s hand positions. By moving the hand at different positions, a code is entered that opens the door. He used the moving average filter to keep the system from taking measurements while the hand was in motion. Source code, schematic diagram, as well as some math explanations are available. Check out the video of his design below.

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7400 competition entry: Discrete logic POV clock

Matt’s entry in the Open 7400 Logic competition: Discrete logic POV clock.

This persistence-of-vision clock was built entirely out of discrete logic chips. The design consists of three boards, a LED array and a drive motor. The digit board keeps the time while the display board controls the LEDs.

The digit board

Every second, a pulse increments the value stored in a counter.  When it overflows, the next counter is incremented.  Each counter represents a digit in the time.  A decoder selects one digit at a time and puts that digit’s value on the output bus.

The display board

A pulse from an external source wakes up the display board.  It selects the leftmost digit from the digit board, formats it for a 7-segment-display, and chops up the result into a 5 x 5 pixel matrix. It lights up LEDs for each column in sequence then selects the next digit to the right.

Via the contact form

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DraftSight free 2D CAD product


N S K Chaitanya wrote in about an open source CAD program:

I just came across a software called DraftSight. It is an open source alternative to autocad. It is by Dassault Systemes and even runs on Linux. Finally Linux has DWG support…

According to Dassault Systemes, DraftSight is a “no-cost, easy-to-use 2D CAD product that is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Users can create, edit and view DWG files with DraftSight. DraftSight is available for all users, including CAD professionals, students and educators.”

The final version for Windows, and betas for Mac and Linux can be downloaded here. The 186 page User Manual PDF can be found here.

Procyon Cortex M3 development board now available

Procyon, the biggest of teho Lab’s Cortex M3 development boards, is now available for $72. Brian has been posting development updates in the forum, it’s great to see this board in production:

It has a massive 16 MB SDRAM, the ability to host USB devices (or be a USB device), Ethernet to get connected over a network, and a microSD card slot for storing data non-volatility. You can execute code out of the SDRAM if you wish (though it is much slower that way). It is a great board for anything short of an OS. There is no MMU on Cortex M3 parts so a true Linux port is not possible (as far as we know), but uClinux could be ported if someone wants to try that or another RTOS such as FreeRTOS.

Via the forum.

Improving open source hardware: Visual diffs

Sebastian send us a link to an article that explains how visual diffs can improve open source hardware.

Doing change logs and version control with source code is easy to implement, since it comes down to comparing two text files. While trying to find differences between two revisions of the same hardware is a bit more difficult. The latter comes down to comparing image data.

The article goes to show how, with the use of simple software like ImageMagick or DiffPDF, managing and finding changes to different revisions of the same design can be made easy. It explains how these methods can be applied to both schematic and PCB gerber files. An interesting point is that GitHub now automatically supports visual diffs for image files included in commits.

Via the contact form.