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

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

Continue reading “Free PCB coupon via Facebook to 2 random commenters”

STM32 F4 series of high-performance MCUs with DSP and FPU instructions


Matty informs us of a new STM32 dev board he learned about:

There’s a new STM32: the F4 series.

They can go up to 168 MHz, and have a bunch of new integrated peripherals, like 54 Mbps camera interface and DSP+FPU.

There’s also the STM32F4DISCOVERY board on sale for $20, with an STM32F407 (Cortex-M4F), 3-axis accelerometer, audio sensor and class-D amplifier. On top of that, it includes an ST-LINK/2 debugger.

Heck of a deal. Definitely on my next Digi-Key order, once it gets stocked.

Digi-Key is accepting preorders for the module at $20.73. The three page data brief can be found here. There is also a 97 page PDF explaining the features of the STM32 F4 family available for download.

Dangerous Prototypes t-shirts now available

Get your dangerous on with a Dangerous Prototypes t-shirt. T-shirts are black with a white Dangerous Prototypes logo on the front.  Sizes available are small, medium, large and extra large.

This is a test batch, we have no idea how this will work out. They’re available at cost ($7) from Seeed.

A special thanks to Fan at Seeed for putting together a t-shirt test batch.

7400 competition entry: Lazarus-64

Here’s an entry in the Open 7400 Logic competition: Lazarus-64

I like the idea of a 74x logic competition! Here is my entry, a retro computer that generates all video using ONLY 74hc logic parts…

The latest version even has a 4 voice sound system, including a white noise channel made using a linear shift register.

Currently, the 74HC chip count is well over 100 and I am still reworking the design.

 

Week in (p)review: September 23, 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:

  • A big giveaway next Tuesday
  • 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?

Understanding Verilog warnings

Big Mess o’ Wires has a review of Verilog warnings:

Those of you who’ve followed the blog for a while know about my many frustrations with Verilog. Because it feels sort of a like a procedural programming language, but very definitely isn’t one, I keep expecting to be far more competent at Verilog design than I actually am. While working on Plus Too, the Xilinx synthesis tool reported many, many warnings that I didn’t understand. The warning list grew to at least 100, and was so long that I just stopped reading it. That was dangerous, as most of the warnings were likely problems that needed to be addressed.

Microsoft Robotics @Home contest


Microsoft is sponsoring a robotics design contest known as Robotics @Home. They write:

Here’s your chance to show us what you’ve got. Describe that cool idea to us in a PPT, PDF or Word Doc and submit it. If your concept is picked, you could be one of 10 finalists to receive a real robot that you can use to bring your concept to life. If you are chosen as one of the finalists, your second challenge will be to submit a video of your robot in action. A grand prize winner will be selected and awarded up to $10,000!

You can read the contest rules and details at the contest website.

This contest involves using the Microsoft® Robotics Developer Studio 4 Beta software which is a freely available .NET-based programming environment for building robotics applications by both professional and non-professional developers as well as hobbyists. This latest release has support for the Kinect sensor and a defined Reference Platform. Open source? No, but free and if you’re into robotics you may want give it a look.

Universal soldering iron driver update

arhi added PID control to the DIY soldering station. This graph shows that the temperature stays solid even on a wet sponge and in a glass of water:

As you can see 280sec into the test I pushed the soldering iron on the dump sponge and held it there until 320sec then I let it “rest” up a bit and then I pushed the tip into the glass of water for 20-30sec .. As you can see the output pwm gave it bit more juice and the temperature didn’t miss targeted 250C by nothing serious. PWM output is only 0-15 levels so not a very high resolution but seems more then capable to keep this baby spot on (0.1C is the play during stable time, when you solder it moves ~0.3C +- that’s not noticeable on this graph, and strong cooling like sponge/water get it to skip 5-6C but nothing significant). The data on graph is sampled in every ~100-110ms while PID routine is called only once per second.

Via the forum.

CommodoreFree online magazine


If you are into retrocomputing with the Commodore C64 or clone then you will be interested in reading CommodoreFree. This is a free online magazine which has been published since 2007 and is now in its 53 issue.

You can download all issues beginning with number 4 from the CommodoreFree website in PDF, text, Epub and other formats.

Hackerspaces at Maker Faire (Day 2)

Local (and not-so-local) Hackerspaces had a great presence at Maker
Faire. We picked up a ton of great stamps in our Hackerspace
Diplomatic Passport. We ran into NYC Resistor, who used their robotic
stamp on our passport, as well as Alpha One Labs, Artisans Asylum,
Space Camp, Kansas City’s Hackerspace, and many others. Mitch Altman
and crew gave a great talk on starting your own space, and we made
sure he left with a Dangerous Prototypes stamp in his passport.

More pictures below.

Continue reading “Hackerspaces at Maker Faire (Day 2)”

Booths and Exhibits at Maker Faire (Day 2)

There was still plenty left to see at Day 2 of Maker Faire. Some of
our favorites included the Matrix-style 3D Polaroid flip book, the
Instructables booth, finding the IR Jammer v2 (from our friend Alan at
Hacked Gadgets) in the Maker Shed, and a giant clothing area filled
with plenty of unique, geeky T-shirts.

More pictures below Continue reading “Booths and Exhibits at Maker Faire (Day 2)”

Editorial: Upverter, another closed source vampire exploits open hardware for ventrue capital, PR, and profit

Upverter is an online schematic layout program. Among several features, it allows a group to work on a project collaboratively. They were a big presence at the Open Hardware Summit, and have been marketing themselves as the ideal solution for open hardware collaboration. That sucks, here’s why:

This is a new class of project we’re calling closed source vampires. These outfits jump on the open source/open hardware bandwagon for venture capital, PR, and profit, but they don’t participate equally. They exploit work from the open source community for profit, but keep their special sauce to themselves.

In this case, Upverter is free to use for open hardware, but their source code is totally closed. They want to use the hard work of open source tài xỉu online developers to build buzz for their company, but keep their own stuff closed. This is at best a side step from free-but-not-open Eagle, but with a dash of user exploitation.

If this is a platform for open source, why not make it open source too? We asked the same question of CircuitBee, a free-but-not-open online viewer for PCB and schematic files, and several similar offenders. The responses are usually similar.

“We worked hard on it and don’t want someone to seal our work”

Yeah, all the open source developers you want to use to promote your platform worked pretty hard on their stuff too. If you think reuse of your work is akin to theft, then you don’t understand open source – stop using it to market yourself.

“We need to profit to support our software as service. Servers aren’t free ya know!”

Sure, but open source in no way precludes you from making a profit. Open-source stacks power everything from enterprise DevOps pipelines to best crypto casino platforms to major e-commerce backends. In fact, you might actually get a lot of value back from the community.

“Nobody wants to run a software as service cloud themselves anyways, so there’s no reason to open source it”

Irrelevant. Even if 99% of people never crack open the source, like most OS hardware or software projects, that’s not the point. Everyone still benefits.  The potential to make more and better open source in the future benefits the community you’re trying to exploit.

As always, we couldn’t care less if a company trades in closed source. Most do! We have no problem using free tools until an open alternative is available. But if your PR troll bangs a press release through our contact form touting your wholesome open source goodness, you had better be sure your house is in order.

Getting around at Maker Faire

There was slightly less ground to cover at the New York Maker Faire,
compared to the one in the Bay Area. Nevertheless, your feet can get
tired after a whole day of walking around. We saw plenty of creative
alternatives to hoofing it, including a car covered entirely with Big
Mouth Billy Bass signing fish (aka, the Sashimi Tabernacle Choir), and
the TIV from Storm Chasers.

More pictures below.

Continue reading “Getting around at Maker Faire”