Every Friday we give away some extra PCBs via Facebook. The #1 and #10 people who comment on this post at Facebook get a free PCB. More PCBs via Twitter on Tuesday and the blog every Sunday.
This week we’re giving away two PCB codes. Pick your own PCB from the free PCB drawer.
Don’t forget there’s free PCBs three times a every week:
You can get IR Toy v2 for $22.05, including world wide shipping.
Continue reading “Free PCB coupon via Facebook comments #1 and #10”
Chris from Pyroelectro wrote previously about his work developing robotic eyebrows. Now he’s experimenting with adding a new dimension to this robotic face, an animatronic mouth.
Here’s another article I thought you guys would enjoy…..this article shows you two simple methods for building a believable robotic mouth. One articulated using a Servo and moveable, the other a 16×2 LCD flashing design. Both animatronic mouth designs create a believable illusion for amateur animatronics and can be built on a modest DIY budget.
Via the contact form.
Microchip has released an application note outlining usage of their serial RTCC devices.
Many embedded systems require some form of accurate
timekeeping. There are a growing number of applications
that require an external Real-Time Clock/
Calendar (RTCC) and higher integration of external
peripheral components into the RTCC. In order to
achieve a highly robust and repeatable system, the
designer must consider the rest of the system components
including pull-up resistor values and the crystal
selection. There are a number of situations that can
result in less than optimal operation, many of which are
easy mistakes that are avoidable with some initial
knowledge. The most important of these are discussed
in this application note.This application note provides assistance and
guidance in using the Microchip RTCC family of
devices. This application note covers the I2C™
(MCP794XX) family of devices.
The MCP794XX family datasheet can be found here.
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:
What are you hacking this week?
Grab IR Toy firmware v20 test #6 from the forum.
Yesterday we released a test firmware for the USB IR Toy that uses the new open source USB stack written by JTR and Honken. It had a few serious bugs in the SUMP-compatible logic analyzer mode. JTR made some updates and now it works great.
The updated logic analyzer mode still shows what remote control signals look like on the Logic Sniffer client, but there’s a bunch of new features too:
Be sure to copy ols.profile-irtoy.cfg to the /plugins/ directory of the client to take advantage of these new features. After the update the demodulated signal will be on channels 2 and 4, the raw signal (v2 only) will be on channel 1.
You can get IR Toy v2 for $22.05, including world wide shipping.
Logic Sniffer 16-bit input buffer is back in stock at Seeed Studio.
The Open Logic Sniffer buffer wing in stock and shipping now for $15.
Joe Desbonnet tipped us to a series of articles about the design of the ARISSat-1 amateur satellite recently ‘launched’ (actually just flung out the door) from the ISS:
Many of you are curious about what’s inside ARISSat-1. In the next two to three blog posts, I’ll introduce you to each of the subsystems. Following that, I’ll relate some of the challenges we faced in the development of these. After examining the design challenges and how we overcame them
Via the contact form.
RetroBSD is a UNIX port that runs on the PIC32 microcontroller:
The system is targeted to a market of small embedded systems. Main features include:
- Small resource requirements: RetroBSD requires only 128 kbytes of RAM to be up and running user applications.
- Memory protection: Using hardware mechanisms, kernel memory is fully protected from the user application.
- Open functionality: Usually, a user application is fixed in Flash memory, but in the case of RetroBSD, any number of applications could be placed into the SD card, and run as required.
- Real multitasking: Standard POSIX API is implemented (fork, exec, wait4 etc).
- Development system on-board: It is possible to have a C compiler in the system, and to recompile the user application (or the whole operating system) when needed.
hak8or posted pictures of a power supply build using a 1U rack chassis:
I saw a post about using magnetic fields on the human brain to get certain reactions, and the first thing that popped to my head was trying it out myself.
…I finally came to the conclusion that I should make a proper voltage source. So I took one my old finds, a video scale thing. It has a large amount of FPGA’s…, so I took out the boards and started working on the power supply.
APCO Project 25 is a digital modulation protocol used by a growing number of public safety radio systems and to a limited extent by Amateur Radio Operators. APCO P25 radio transmissions are capable of being monitored by scanning receivers from Radio Shack, GRE and Uniden. That is, unless the agency monitored decides to encrypt their P25 comms.
As we all know, the IM-ME is an eminently hackable wireless toy capable of operating on certain frequency ranges between 281 and 962 MHz. Various hacks and mods have been published for this device. Now Travis Goodspeed and a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have come up with a truly Dangerous Prototype involving the IM-ME: an APCO P25 radio jammer.
In the above video from the recent Usenix Security Symposium held in San Francisco, CA, they demonstrate how they pulled off this hack and why its possible. You can download the PDF of the paper from this talk from the Usenix site. Must reading!
(We note that the CC1110 radio chip in the IM-ME is similar to that found in the ez430-Chronos watch from TI.)
Via Hack A Day.
Touchstone Semi announced the TS1001 Op Amp design competition winner:
Eric John Holland, a senior electronics design engineer at Avery Weigh-Tronix, was awarded the top prize of $1,000
for his design of a working, low-power 555 timer using Touchstone‟s TS1001 op amp. The TS1001 is the industry‟s first 0.8V, 0.6µA op amp cutting power requirements at least in half compared to any other op amp.
You can get your own TS1001 demo board too:
Engineers can register for their free demo boards… The free demo boards will be available until Sept. 30. A valid corporate email address is required.
We ran two reviews of the TS1001 here and here.
Check out a video of the winning entry after the break. Continue reading “Winner of TS1001 op-amp design competion”
Here’s some more info on the new PIC microcontrollers with configurable logic cells. felix52 tipped us to a Configurable Logic Cell Tool from Microchip:
The intention of this User’s Guide is to assist the reader in becoming acquainted with the Configurable Logic Cell (CLC) Configuration Tool. It will explain how to setup the
tool and configure it with an applicable example of creating a Manchester encoder. This document will help the reader become familiar with the purpose and functionality of the CLC module and be able to use the CLC Configuration Tool with ease.
Via the comments.
Microchip Technology Inc., a leading provider of microcontroller, analog and Flash-IP solutions, has announced the release of the mTouch™ AR1100 Analog Resistive USB Touch-Screen Controller.
Building upon the AR1000 Analog Resistive Touch-Screen Controller series, the AR1100 controller is a high-performance, USB plug-and-play device that offers advanced calibration capabilities as a USB mouse or single-input digitizer. The new controller is available as a turnkey chip or board product, supporting all 4-/5-/8-wire touch screens, with free drivers for most major operating systems. The AR1100 is an ideal solution for customers who want a drop-in touch controller to universally support their entire standard resistive-touch portfolio.
Its available in 20-pin SOIC, SSOP and QFN packages today. The mTouch AR1100 Development Kit (part # DV102012, $89.99) includes an AR1100 production-ready PCB, with a USB cable and a 5-wire analog-resistive touch screen, enabling designers to quickly connect and test this advanced touch-screen controller.
Microchip says that chip samples are available.
Drone writes:
While I was (unsuccessfully) trying to order my $25 discounted TI Chronos watch today, in the TI eStore I noticed they have two new (to me anyway) watches that are just about to be released. These are called Meta Watches – see here:
There are two models I found on the TI eStore site. Both models are shipping August 22nd 2011 (next Monday from post-date). Both watches can not ship to Asia and Japan (because of the bluetooth frequency?). The cost before shipping for either Meta Watch is $199 USD each (Ouch!). see the details below which were scraped from the TI eStore.
Via the contact form. Take a watch to omega watch service for any repair needed.
The USB IR Toy is the first project to be ported to the open source USB stack. In the past we relied on Microchip’s non-distributable USB stack and it made development a pain. With the new stack we can give you all the files, and compiling should be easy as clicking a button.
You can grab the third test release in the forum, and load it into an IR Toy v1 or v2 using the normal instructions.
This is only a test release, and there are many known bugs. So far, these features work reasonably well:
Known issues. We know these things just don’t work yet. With the new stack they’ll get better fast though:
The biggest show-stopper is the SUMP logic analyzer problem. It works fine in a terminal, but with the actual client there are problems:
We need lots of help testing this release in the real world. Especially multi-platform tests of the buggy SUMP mode with the OLS client.
As always, all code contributions and debugging help are appreciated with fame and free PCB coupons.
Sandbox Electronics sells a Bus Pirate knock-off in their webshop and on eBay. It’s a complete package and super cheap. The Bus Pirate is open source, and it’s totally fine that they sell one. We think they do a valuable service by promoting the Bus Pirate on eBay and other outlets we don’t bother with.
We asked Sandbox for a designer credit on their sales page because they link our forum for support. They unexpectedly offered a royalty for previous sales. Thanks for supporting our work!
What better use of the royalty than to plow it back into Bus Pirate development. We’re now sponsoring JTR’s work on the open source USB stack. This software will be used in the Bus Pirate v4, and many other USB projects. The Bus Pirate v4 bootloader was the first tangible release, and watch for an IR Toy test firmware later today.
Thank you to Sandbox Electronics, and also SparkFun, for supporting the Bus Pirate when they don’t have to.
Freddie built a free Bus Pirate v3.5 PCB.
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.
Via the contact form.
The University of Cape Town in South Africa is developing an open source SDR project known as RHINO, which stands for Reconfigurable Hardware Interface for computiNg and radiO.
Reconfigurable Computing is an attractive computational technology, allowing an almost limitless set of possible solutions to any particular problem. It does this by providing an effective compromise between the performance of hardware and the flexibility of software.
Software Defined Radio is a discipline that has benefited greatly from this technology, allowing for complex, high speed digital signal processing algorithms to be implemented in cost effective field programmable gate array technology.
The Rhino Project is an Open Source effort at the University of Cape Town in South Africa to provide a hardware platform and software toolchain for SDR which is both easy to use, easy to learn and affordable to a broad audience. It is hoped that this effort will consolidate and enhance the teaching and research resources available for SDR.
Their hardware design is based on a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA teamed up with an ARM Processor running BORPH Linux. You can view the hardware schematic and project detail PDF on the RHINO project info page.
