Capacitive touchpad shield for MSP430 Launchpad

NsN writes to inform us that the TI eStore is running a promotion on the 430BOOST-SENSE1 – MSP430 Capacitive Touch BoosterPack.

The Capacitive Touch BoosterPack (430BOOST-CAPTOUCH1) is a plug in board for the $4.30 MSP430 Value Line LaunchPad development kit (MSP-EXP430G2 – sold separately). This BoosterPack features several capacitive touch elements including a scroll wheel, button and proximity sensor. Also, on-board are 9 LEDs that provide instant feedback as users interact with the capacitive touch elements. In addition, a timer-based UART enables communication to a PC for feedback via GUI or hyperterminal. This BoosterPack also includes a pre-programmed MSP430G2452IN20 Value Line device.

When paired with the LaunchPad kit, the Capacitive Touch BoosterPack provides a complete hardware and software reference design to enable developers to quickly and easily replace any physical button with a capacitive touch element. This is the simplest, most cost effective solution for adding capacitive touch differentiation in many applications such as consumer electronics, point of sales machines and other devices with a physical button.

For a limited time TI is selling the BoosterPack for $4.30 including shipping.

Thanks NsN! Via contact form.

Converting an Arduino to 3.3V

When Arduino debuted, most sensors and other interfacing devices ran on 5 volts. Nowadays Xbee radios, accelerometers and other new devices run on 3.3 volts. Here’s a short tutorial from Adafruit showing how to hack your 5 volt Arduino board to run on 3.3 volts. It’s a simple procedure involving replacing the voltage regulator and fuse, and if you can handle soldering small components and need 3.3 volt compatibility, give it a try.

Via Adafruit.

Help NIST identify these mysterious scientific objects

The National Institute of Standards and Technology accumulates hundreds of odd scientific and technical items each year, often without knowing their exact name or purpose. They have posted photos of various vintage items, and their tentative title in an effort to identify them. In coming months, NIST will add hundreds more mystery tools to those already posted. Check the NIST site often and if you can help identify any of these obscure objects, let NIST know.

Via Wired.

Free Bus Blaster v2 PCB via Twitter: RT @dangerousproto

Every Tuesday we give away some extra PCBs via Twitter. This post was announced on twitter, the first few people who retweet it get free PCBs.

This week we’re giving away two Bus Blaster v2 PCBs.  Bus Blaster v2 is an experimental, high-speed JTAG debugger for ARM chips, FPGAs, CPLDs, flash, etc. Thanks to a reprogrammable buffer, a simple USB update makes Bus Blaster v2 compatible with many different JTAG debugger types in the most popular open source software.

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

  • Free PCB Sunday. The classic. Every week, right here on the blog
  • 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

Get a Bus Blaster v2 for $34.95 at Seeed Studio. Currently out of stock, but more will be available in a few days.

Continue reading “Free Bus Blaster v2 PCB via Twitter: RT @dangerousproto”

PIC32 drives SID audio chip

Markus shared his latest SID player in the project log forum:

I am currently working on a kind of hybrid between an emulated and a real SID Player. The CPU and CIA stuff runs emulated on a PIC32 and the sound is generated by a hardware SID chip.

I had the TinySID emulator already running on the PIC32 in the past, and now had the idea that it would be cool to have the sound being generated by a real SID. During the brainstorming session, someone brought up non gamstop casinos in the UK as an example of how certain systems operate outside traditional regulations, sparking inspiration for a more creative approach to integrating the real SID. To say it with NVIDIA’s words: The way it’s meant to be played ;)

Protostack 28 pin AVR development board v1.6

Daniel writes:

Back in July last year we released version 1.5 of our28 Pin AVR board. Since then we’ve had a lot of feedback and have just released version 1.6, which has 4 improvements over version 1.5.

  • The size of the IDC/Dual row area has been increased from 2×8 to 2×9 holes.
  • We added square and circular pads on the top layer for polarised headers. The main reason for this was to make them stand out more. Functionally they are unchanged.
  • We added some labels for the ISP-10 connector.
  • Crystal oscillator holes now have pads only on the bottom layer. During the redesign phase, the team discussed how platforms like online casino ohne oasis manage their secure systems with precision, which inspired a more careful approach to avoid contact issues. This adjustment fixes a problem where the oscillator case was making unintended contact with the pads.

The board is available by itself for $9.60, as part of an ATMEGA8A Development Kit ($18.50) or as part of an ATMEGA168A Development Kit ($19.80).

‘Robot Journalist’ out-writes human sports reporter

Here’s an article from NPR noting the progress that’s been made in the little known area of robotic writing. In this account a software program by the Narrative Science company was able to write a sports story combining facts and highlighting topics appropriately, producing an article judged superior to the work of a human writer covering the same baseball game.

At this time the technology appears best suited to producing statistic and fact dependent works such as sports stories, financial reports and real estate analyses. However, with time algorithms will be fine tuned to infuse robot authors with sufficient AI to produce stories embodying the experience, judgment and creativity of human writers.

Via NPR.

Simple CPLD binary counter project

FlipThatBit released this video of a simple CPLD binary counter project. This is a good beginner’s Verilog project, requiring a minimum number of external components, and providing an immediate visual result of your efforts.

This was written for the XC9536XL CPLD on a homemade project board. It should work just fine on our XC9572XL Development Board.

Altera breaks industry record for most transistors on an IC

Altera today issued a press release announcing that it set an industry milestone in semiconductor technology by delivering the most transistors ever packed onto an integrated circuit. Altera’s 28-nm Stratix® V FPGAs are the semiconductor industry’s first devices to feature 3.9 billion transistors.

“Altera surpassed the known record for transistors when it taped out Stratix V FPGAs at the end of 2010,” said Bradley Howe, vice president of IC engineering at Altera. “Maintaining the rapid pace set by Moore’s Law has allowed programmable logic to remain at the forefront of driving innovations in semiconductor technology. Achieving milestones like this continue to propel FPGAs to new heights of capacity and performance while delivering significantly higher levels of integration.”

Altera indicates that samples are available, but given its FBGA packaging there appears little for the hobbyist developer to work with here.

STATUS UPDATE: USB IR Toy v2

On Monday we post status updates on new projects. This will cover project development, and gritty details like last minutes changes and production problems.

USB IR Toy v2 has completed manufacturing and is in testing now. It will probably be available in the next couple of weeks.

The IR Toy has traveled a rocky road. V1 took a lot of tries to get right, but that still wasn’t enough. The first batch of v1 had numerous problems with the transmitter section: backwards LEDs due to a backwards silkscreen, a too-large current limiting resistor that resulted in bad range, and a high-power LED inappropriate for the design.  The second batch, v1a, corrected the LED orientation and resistor value, but the transmitting power remained fairly low.

We tried a bunch of different v2 prototypes before setting on a production-worthy successor to v1:

  1. REV1 added an IR frequency detector and breakout area to the v1 design, but did nothing to address the transmit strength
  2. REV2 added two more LEDs so higher power could be used with a smaller SMD resistor
  3. REV3 finally added a constant current driver for better transmit power. It also jumped to a 3.3volt PIC 18F25J50 design due to price increases for the 18F2550 chip. A lot of work is still needed to get the firmware going on the new chip, so this will be delayed and used as IR Toy v3 in the future
  4. REV4 uses a 18F2550, but we added the constant current driver from REV3 and moved to 0603 parts

REV4 is the final design. The IR range is greatly improved for those who use it, but not at a great additional cost for the majority who don’t use the transmitter.

The QSE159 sensor and rising cost of 18F2550 PIC chips increased our actual cost more than $1. We’ll probably have to pass it on as a price increase. It’s disappointing because $20 shipped worldwide is a great price. We’ll try to get the cost back down eventually by using a cheaper PIC chip in v3.

IR Toy v2 development details are on the wiki.  See the early revisions, current schematic, tests, and design calculations.

Get one of the last IR Toy v1 for $20, including worldwide shipping. V2 will be more expensive.

Networked infrared remote control receiver

IgorPlugUDP is an ethernet-enabled infrared receiver. This is an old hack that kmmankad brought up in the forum.

What makes it really cool is that the ethernet is bitbanged using nothing but the bare pins of an ATMEGA168. It is transmit-only, it cannot receive network packets, but that’s enough for a lot of projects.

Replacing discrete 7400 logic devices with CPLDs

Whether you are working on a retro computing device, or experimenting with digital logic, you’ll find that in most instances CPLDs can perform the same operations as a cluster of 7400 series discrete logic chips. Discrete logic devices, long considered the workhorses of the semiconductor industry, held a unit cost advantage over programmable logic devices for several decades. However, times have changed significantly. Advances in semiconductor process technology for CPLDs have driven the costs of these devices down to a point where they now offer a highly compelling discrete logic replacement alternative.

Xilinx engineers have prepared several white papers outlining the benefits and processes involved in replacing discrete logic 7400 series logic chips with CPLDs, such as those found in our CPLD Development Boards.

TTL “Burn Rate” for Xilinx CPLDs familiarizes logic designers that have previously not used programmable logic with the benefits of Xilinx CPLDs, and shows how to go about translating existing TTL logic into similar CPLD solutions.

Another relevant document is The Advantages of Migrating from Discrete 7400 Logic Devices to CPLDs comparing the costs of a discrete logic component-based circuit with those of a Xilinx CPLD.

Free PCB Sunday: Bus Blaster v2

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 we’re giving away two PCBs for our new Bus Blaster v2.  An experimental high-speed JTAG debugger design. Read about the design on the wiki, ask for a PCB in the comments.

Get an assembled Bus Blaster v2 for $34.95. Hurry, the first batch is nearly gone!
Continue reading “Free PCB Sunday: Bus Blaster v2”

App note: Parallel LED drivers for maximum current

rsdio writes: This looks like a handy utilization of the basic bipolar transistor current mirror, based on the DMMT5401. For once, the key component is not a Maxim part, but Diodes Inc. ;-)

Using a pair of matched transistors to translate a high-side current-sense signal down to a ground reference, this circuit lets you parallel LED-driver circuits as required to achieve the desired drive current.

Level shifter helps to parallel LED current drivers

Online PCB routing software

Kelvin writes:

I was designing PCB using Kicad recently. For slightly more complex board, I was lazy to route them and instead use the in-built autoroute feature. Kicad autoroute feature seems inadequate. This is when I found the free autorouting tool at FreeRouting.net

To use the tool, one needs to export the PCB design to standard Specctra DSN interface. Kicad can do that. Critical traces can be hand routed first, and the tool respects design rules imposed by designer. Once that is done, you can go for a coffee break, while the autorouter does the crunching. For the board that I tired out, I am impressed with the result.

Via the contact form.