NBitWonder documented a RepRap Mendel 3D printer build:
While the DIY websites have been abuzz about the Ultimaker 3D printer, I’ve been hard at work constructing a RepRap Mendel. I’ve been doing my best to document the complete build process as well.
Via the contact form.
GRAYnomad (Rob Gray) describes the QUUB as follows:
QUUB is a Small Form Factor processor and co-processor design like this ATMega1284-AU based core processor board (above). The basic system topology is that of a “core” processor and up to 16 addressable daughter boards known as “stackables”. Stackables can be smart (with co-processors) or dumb (just hardware IO).
All boards share a 48-pin bus which is split into two 24-pin stackable headers. Boards can be in any location, for example the core processor does not have to be at the bottom, normally it would be but there may be applications that require a different order, such as a small robot where the bottom board has the motors, gearboxes and driving electronics.
The name QUUB comes from the fact that up to four boards can be stacked and still fit inside a 2x2x2″ length of aluminum extrusion.
Read Electronic Design’s complete interview with Rob Gray who is working with QUUB development.
The QUUB is an open source project and can be based on your choice from a number of core processors including ATmega1284p, ATmega328, PIC 18F2520 or Picaxe 20×2. You can check out Rob’s documentation files here.
This project seems interesting, but we’d like to see more information on the firmware, source code and any related IDE or programming software.
We need something awsome to put on the back of our t-shirts. Post your suggestion below. If we pick it, you get a free PCB coupon and t-shirt.
Tomorrow we’ll give away a Jaluino Bee v2.0 board. If you’d like it just leave a comment on yesterday’s post with a project idea.
The crew at Adafruit remind us of a handy serial port monitoring tool for Windows known as PortMon. PortMon is an old school Microsoft utility used for monitoring all serial and parallel activity on a system.
While USB rules the day for most PC-peripheral communications, PortMon can help when reverse engineering serial devices by sniffing the serial comms with the PC. This is what Adafruit noted, allowing the development of code to use a serial JPEG camera with Arduino.
Via Adafruit.
A box of PCBs just arrived from Seeed Studio’s Fusion PCB service. This batch includes:
XT-IDE Adapter, Bus Pirate Demo board v4.0, IR Toy Shield v2.0, BPv3b breakout v3.2 and Android Accessory Development kit are available now in the free PCB drawer.
Pong on an oscilloscope. Check out Kevin’s epic original project over at Hack a Day:
Want to play Pong on your Oscilloscope? I always have! …The code is a nice mixture of ArduincoreGCCish (I am sorry, still learning), and includes the following demos:
- Simple low resolution dot drawing
- A font example
- A very quickly and badly written demo of pong
Chris writes in with an easier way to control an Arduino robot from an Android phone or tablet:
Hey guys, I have been putting together a little robot controller app… I tried the Andriod/Arduino stuff and the CellBots stuff etc and quickly found how much it sucked to have to use someone else’s software on both the phone AND the robot brain. I wanted a sorta “universal” controller that could work with any microcontroller out there and this is what I came up with.
Nice and simple, while still giving you quite a bit of usability and because everything is just a 2-byte, letter/number combination, any microcontroller with a serial port can talk talk to it. Woo Hoo.
Via the contact form.
fco made this cool graphic for the Bus Pirate. It’s a skull, and the teeth list the different Bus Pirate modes.
Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.
Every Tuesday we give away some extra PCBs via Twitter. This post was announced on twitter. The #2 and #11 person to retweet it get free PCBs. Thanks for the heads-up on auto-retweeters JT!
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:
Continue reading “Free PCB coupon to RT #2 & #11 @dangerousproto”
This heading may be overly broad, but we found an abundance of impressive things that didn’t seem to fit in the other categories.
These students at Melvindale High School (and their advisor, Randy Thomas) won third place in a robotics competition with this ROV they constructed. They plan to continue improving it. They told a story of how the ROV was used by local police, and discovered a corpse in a local body of water. It was great to see these young fellows so engaged and knowledgeable about the system.
We saw this couch cruising around the Faire all day, but nobody offered us a lift…
It’s hard to overestimate the awesomeness of seeing metal splash around like water. Seeing Chicago Crucible transform small heaps of busted up iron into awesome art by using fire seemed to be a highlight for many.
The raw materials, from old radiators and such like, busted apart with sledgehammers, measured out with scientific precision.
Arduino Labs is a new open development playground for the Arduino. Open development is when in-progress source code, design files, and documentation are available to anyone. It’s the norm in open source software, where design is almost always public and collaborative.
Open hardware shops usually like to keep new stuff under wraps until it’s “ready” for release. We think this is a mistake. It seems inconsistent with our roots in open source software, and secret projects don’t benefit from community review.
We’re strongly in favor of open hardware development. Thumbs up to projects like Arduino Labs, it’s great to get insight into your hardware design process.
Today we open Arduino Labs, a new website we have been working on for a few weeks that will allow us to post documentation about projects we are working on that are not ready to be “official” yet.
We want to have a more open development process within the Arduino project and this is one of the many steps that are getting us there.
Via Adafruit.
Organizers had planned many areas specifically targeted to kids, and they seemed to be having a great time.
The Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum had a great tent full of interactive exhibits and such for children, old and young. Here’s a musical instrument played by placing the hand within a certain distance range of some proximity sensors mounted in the base of the unit. We convinced the inventor to perform it for us. He works for the museum as an exhibit developer.
OmniCorpDetroit had this high-powered marshmallow cannon on display. I didn’t see whether they had the opportunity to demonstrate it.
Our ace hacker Schazamp hit Maker Faire Detroit this weekend. We’ll be running his reports all day.
The Faire was filled with loads of awesome things, and to cover them all would be impossible, but here you can see some of the things that stood out to us.
We found many 3D printer designs, and having the opportunity to compare them was too good to pass up.
These fellows were representing the Michigan RepRap User Group, and had on display a number of RepRap builds. They weren’t selling anything but the idea, and their enthusiasm really shone through. We enjoyed having a look at what a home-brew 3D printer might look like, without the polish of a commercial unit.
In an effort to assist computer users with disabilities limiting their keyboard dexterity, the crew at Zunkworks developed this wireless Morse code based keyboard interface device. The user keys in the desired characters using the “dot” and “dash” buttons on the left of the board and the Arduino based device converts these Morse code characters to regular keystrokes, sending them to the computer via Bluetooth. Additionally they report this device can communicate with tablets and even smartphones that support the Bluetooth HID profile.
Of course the project is open source with the schematic available on the Zunkworks site and the source code posted on Google code.
Andrea Belloni from SuLuLab writes:
We realized this project for the “Arduino Day” in Rome 14/04/2011. For it we used two JeeNode (Arduino variant with wireless module on-board), one Rainbowduino + RGB LED Matrix and one PC with Processing. The Processing sketch generate the “plasma” animation and sends the images stream to the first JeeNode via serial port. This JeeNode receives the images and sends it to the second JeeNode via wireless link. The second JeeNode receives the images and sends it to the Rainbowduino + RGB LED Matrix via i2c.
More details on the blog’s post (for the English version scroll down).
Via the contact form.
Sebastien Lelong gave us a Jaluino Bee v2.0 board to give away. Leave a comment on this post with a project idea, and it could be yours on Thursday. By Sebastien’s request, this week we’re looking for the funniest project idea.
Jaluino Bee is a 5x5cm board, using SMD components, is powered by PIC18F27J53, provides USB, RTCC, SD-Card and Xbee socket if needed. It costs ~$10. You can find more specs here
I designed a first version, lots of troubles, then a second version which is quite nice and seems to work right out of the box. Eventually, I’d like to be able to provide kits, maybe even board, ready-to-use. Jaluino is an open source, open hardware project.
The next step for me would be to gain attention from “ealry adopters”, who would try to use it and hopefully give feedback.
Grab details and the source code from the Jaluino project page and google group.
