Bus Pirate repair

Sal_The_Tiller posted a Flickr photoset of his Bus Pirate repair. Delicate surface mount surgery to replace a broken PIC chip:

…I’ve got a permanent workspace and some projects that could use a Bus Pirate, but I’m too cheap to buy a new one. Therefore I decided to replace the PIC24 chip by hand. Using a couple of rosin core solder blobs as a kind of makeshift flux, I heated the chip with my rework station and pulled it off with some tweezers. Tomorrow, the new PIC comes in the mail from mouser, so if all goes well I’ll have it fixed then.

Via the forum.

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

Free PCB Sunday: Bus Blaster v1

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.

Bus Blaster 2 is now in testing. We found a cache of V1 PCBs that we need to clear out. Read about the design on the wiki, ask for a PCB in the comments.
Continue reading “Free PCB Sunday: Bus Blaster v1”

Interfacing Arduino and Python: Guide to Semi-advanced Serial Programming

Chandler has posted this tutorial on Interfacing Arduino and Python as it relates to serial programming. For this tutorial, you will need (or at least it is helpful) to have a knowledge of the Python programming language. You will also need an Arduino, and other components depending on how many of the four projects you want to try.

Via Make.

Voltage regulator chip roundup


McZ and rsdio tipped us to a bunch of new and wonderful voltage regulator chips. Tiny regulators, high current regulators, and high voltage regulators.

  • TPS84620: 4.5V to 14.5V input, 6A switching regulator needs only three external parts
  • MAX15040: 2.4V to 3.6V input, 4A switching regulator is the smallest yet
  • MAX15050/MAX15051: 2.9V to 5.5V input, 4A switching regulator
  • TPS7A4001 100V input, 50mA very high voltage linear regulator

Details follow below the fold. Continue reading “Voltage regulator chip roundup”

Open Data Protocol (OData)

The Open Data Protocol (OData) is a Web protocol for querying and updating data that provides a way to unlock your data and free it from silos that exist in applications today. OData does this by applying and building upon Web technologies such as HTTP, Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) and JSON to provide access to information from a variety of applications, services, and stores. The protocol emerged from experiences implementing AtomPub clients and servers in a variety of products over the past several years. OData is being used to expose and access information from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, relational databases, file systems, content management systems and traditional Web sites.

Note however, that OData is a Microsoft project. They state:

The name Open Data Protocol was chosen to make it clear that the protocol is intended to align with the Open Data movement and that we are fully committed to ensuring that the protocol remains as open as possible.

Here’s a list of articles and videos with more details on this project. You may be hearing some debate in the open source community about OData in the future, including a talk at the Open Source Bridge conference in Portland, OR this summer. These materials will give you some background on the topic.

Fedora Electronics Lab Linux distro

Kelvin writes to inform us of a Fedora Linux distribution particularly keyed toward electronics experimenters and developers. The Fedora Electronics Lab includes design tools for ASIC Analog Circuit Design and Simulation, ASIC Layout, DRC and LVS, Digital Simulation and Verification, RTL and logic synthesis design flows, Circuit and PCB Layout, Micro Controller (µC) Programming and Embedded Systems Development, CAD Tools, and Project Management, Peer Review and budget tracking.

This Linux distro is a Fedora Spin, which is an alternate version of Fedora tailored for various types of users via hand-picked application sets and other customizations.

Download your copy of the 1.5 GB LiveDVD now.

Thanks Kelvin! Via the contact form.

MAX3421E USB peripheral/host controller with SPI interface

MichaelZ writes:

While poking around SparkFun’s website I found USB Host Shield which is only marginally interesting unless you are an Arduino fan. But the USB host controller chip is interesting. The MAX3421E is a USB Peripheral/Host Controller with SPI Interface. This is an alternate to the FTDI VNC USB host controllers. It has only one USB port vs the FTDI two but for some applications it maybe the way to go. For example it could be used with a CPLD or FPGA as a USB Host. A SPI master is easy to implement in a CPLD/FPGA (similar to the dual ‘595’s example). In VHDL a simple state machine could do all of the register control.

Via the forum.

High temperature floating point digital signal controller

McZ writes: I have used the SM320F28335-HT microcontroller in several projects including military applications. With the floating point it is blinding fast. The standard temperature comes in a QFP and the high temp version comes in a Ceramic Pin Grid Array which is more friendly than the BGA’s. The TI compiler/IDE is cheap by high end standards and they have a vast open source library. Price for the high temperature version is $325.00 USD !!!!! Standard temperature version <$20.00 USD.

More:

The SM320F28335-HT is a highly integrated, high-performance solution for demanding control applications capable of operating up to 210°C.

Features:

• High-Performance Static CMOS Technology
-Up to 150 MHz for TC = –55°C to 125°C
and Up to 100 MHZ for TC = 210°C
-1.9-V Core, 3.3-V I/O Design
• High-Performance 32-Bit CPU
-IEEE-754 Single-Precision Floating-Point Unit (FPU) )
-16 × 16 and 32 × 32 MAC Operations
-16 × 16 Dual MAC
-Harvard Bus Architecture
-Fast Interrupt Response and Processing
-Unified Memory Programming Model
-Code-Efficient (in C/C++ and Assembly)
• Six Channel DMA Controller (for ADC, McBSP, ePWM, XINTF, and SARAM)
• 16-bit or 32-bit External Interface (XINTF)
-Over 2M x 16 Address Reach
• On-Chip Memory
-256K × 16 Flash, 34K × 16 SARAM
-1K × 16 OTP ROM
• Boot ROM (8K × 16)
-With Software Boot Modes (via SCI, SPI, CAN, I2C, McBSP, XINTF, and Parallel I/O)
-Standard Math Tables

Thanks McZ!

Get basic hardware info using FCC ID number

When reverse engineering RF related hardware, you may notice an FCC ID number on a placard near the device’s model and serial numbers. The first three letters of the ID represents the “Grantee Code”, and the remaining letters and numbers are the “Product Code”. By entering these two values in the FCC ID Search Form you can usually find some useful information about the product in question.

For more details, check out this brief tutorial from microBuilder.

Via Adafruit.

opendlp: data loss prevention suite

OpenDLP is a free and open source, agent-based, centrally-managed, massively distributable data loss prevention tool released under the GPL. Given appropriate Windows domain credentials, OpenDLP can simultaneously identify sensitive data at rest on hundreds or thousands of Microsoft Windows systems from a centralized web application. OpenDLP has two components: a web application and an agent.

If you intend to test or deploy this app, be sure to review the readme file first for important config information.

Week in (p)review: March 25, 2011

Don’t forget to share your current project in the comments or the forum. This week our favorite project gets a free QFP protoboard.

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

Next week will be busy:

  • Finish documentation for several projects on the wiki
  • The next projects to arrive will be the CPLD development boards and the Bus Blaster v2
  • SVN cleanup and organization
  • We’ll publish some more stalled projects
  • End of year and estimated Q1 tax time

What are you hacking this week?

Quirks of PCB manufacturing at ITead

Itead posts a reaction to EEVblog’s list of PCB manufacturing quirks:

Now we remake the boards again with the same gerber file. Today the boards return, we can not wait to start checking the board, and the result make us very disappointed – the factory seems change the gerber again and the boards still not connect with that cooper where Dave use to building the GND connection.

Read the whole thing for more great PCB manufacturing tips, also useful for Seeed’s Fusion PCB service.

Thanks Sjaak! Via the comments.

Easy toner transfer PCBs with hacked laminator

When you make PCBs with the toner transfer method, you have to spend around 10 minutes per board sweating over a hot clothes iron while the toner melts to the PCB.

Ahmad Tabbouch though a laminator might be an easier solution, but the default temperature is too low.  This tutorial shows how to hack a cheap laminator to run hot enough for toner transfer.

Thanks MickM! Via the forum.

Update from TI on earthquake damage to factories in Japan

rsdio writes: Everyone on the web – and even on the street! – is talking about Japan’s multiple disasters. Here is some news from the technical front:

After a preliminary assessment, Texas Instruments … today said its manufacturing site in Miho, Japan, about 40 miles northeast of Tokyo, suffered substantial damage during last Friday’s 8.9 magnitude earthquake.

…

TI is moving quickly to shift production to other fabs and so far has identified alternate manufacturing sites for about 60 percent of Miho’s wafer production. Work is underway to increase this percentage by moving the production of additional products.

Specific damage at Miho includes the following:

* The infrastructure systems that deliver chemicals, gases, water and air were damaged, and repairs should be complete in about three weeks.
* Impact to the manufacturing equipment is unclear until continuous power is available from the electric utility.
* Work-in-process was damaged, and the current assumption is that about 40 percent of it can be recovered to support customers.
* The Miho building itself suffered little damage and remains structurally sound.

Via the forum

Bus Pirate breakout v0.1

Schazamp debuted a Bus Pirate breakout board, files available at github:

My new Bus Pirate is great, but it’s kind of a pain to use the 10-pin cable and test clips to hook onto small components, and trying to find room for the Vpu pin alongside Vcc drove me to innovate.  So I made this breakout board, which connects to the Bus Pirate with a 5×2 to 5×2 cable.

Via the forum.

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

Citizen Science Quarterly Vol 2 call for articles

Citizen Science Quarterly is a new magazine for the scientist in all of us, dedicated to the belief that anyone can and should be able to do Science. With their first issue at the printers and also available for digital purchase, they are now seeking articles for Volume 2.

Jacob from CSQ says:

The theme for our second issue is “New Frontiers”. And will focus on people, fields and research that are both creating and exploring just across that line of what is commonly thought to be possible. Where that theme takes us is as of yet unknown and primarily up to our community of writers and readers(thats you).

If you’d like to contribute, simply fill out the writers form and attach your article. If you want to contribute but dont have anything specific in mind use the same form and be specific about your interests and I’ll help you develop an article.

Be sure to mark May 5th on your calendars as the turn in deadline.

You can read more about the CSQ project at their Kickstarter home page.

TOOLS: Flatbed scanner for PCBs, sketches, bookkeeping

Our favorite tools have a new home on the wiki. Each week we’ll muse about one of them. Have your own tool review? We’ll post that too!

A cheap flatbed scanner is super useful in the shop. We use it to post design sketches, scan PCBs, and archive receipts.

You might remember that Free PCB Sunday used to look like the image on the left. This photo was taken in a light tent, but we could never get PCB shots without reflections of lights or the camera lens. This is probably the best of a dozen shots.

On the right is a scan of the same board. Clean, square, done in one take. This image is ready for a post, or open it in your favorite graphics program and draw notes for the next revision.

The only problem we’re run into is that the level of detail is high and the resulting JPGs can be huge. A despeckle filter helps a little.

This particular scanner is a Canon LiDE-100 that cost about $50. We chose it because it was the cheapest scanner within biking distance. It’s powered over USB, so there’s no adapter to worry about. It works fine, but any cheap scanner would do.

There’s more tools too.