A box of PCBs just arrived with the new CPLD breakout board designs. The top board is for the XC9500XL family (XC9572XL), the other boards is for a CoolRunner-II (XC2C64A). Check out the quick start guides for these parts.
Both boards have all the pins broken out to header, and jumpers for IO voltage selection. We’re working on a bunch of introductory tutorials for these boards, so we included a button and a few LEDs for quick demos.
Inspired by the business card web server designed by our own Ian, Arthurb created a development system based around the pic 24f and enc28j60. With multiple daughter cards, for touch sense, serial lcd, temperature sensor, keyboard and monitor. this seems to be a versatile system for development.
Via Hack a Day
Get an assembled Web platformV1.1 from Seeedstudio for $40.
vladutz2000 has published plans for an overclocked Atmega32 based 8-bit game system. Dubbed the Penguin, this project runs the chip at 27 MHz instead of the usual 16 MHz and uses a 128×64 monochrome KS0108 based display along with a speaker and handful of resistors and pushbuttons. The schematic couldn’t be simpler and it, along with the source code written in Mikroelektronika MikroC pro for AVR v1.45, sprite and modeling tools are available on Sourceforge. (Unfortunately the music creation tool is not yet available due to vladutz2000 hard drive crash.)
Projects like the Penguin are part of a growing scene of homebrew consoles built on cheap microcontrollers. What makes these builds appealing is the constraint: a 128×64 monochrome screen and a few kilobytes of RAM force developers to think carefully about every sprite and every sound effect. The results tend to be simple arcade-style games, puzzle titles, and the occasional side-scroller.
Some builders in the AVR community have gone further, writing clones of classic card and slot games that run entirely on the chip with no network connection. A few of those projects drew direct inspiration from sweepstakes casinos and retro arcade cabinets, recreating simplified versions of familiar game loops within the tight memory budget. The appeal is less about the genre and more about the technical challenge of fitting recognizable mechanics into a system this minimal.
vladutz2000’s sprite and modeling tools should make it easier for others to develop their own titles for the Penguin. Having those resources on Sourceforge means anyone with a programmer and a handful of components can flash the chip and start iterating. Once the music tool is recovered from the crashed drive, the platform will have a reasonably complete creative pipeline for a system that costs under ten dollars in parts.
Via Instructables.
Frontier Nerds have been experimenting with brain wave tech as part of their Mental Block project.
In this well documented project they take the headset from Mattel’s Mind Flex game and hack it to communicate with an Arduino board to measure brain waves and display their levels graphically on a PC via Processing. They chose the Mind Flex device because the board gives access to the FFT of the waves and the relatively low hardware cost.
In addition to the hardware, you need the Arduino Brain Library, Processing Brain Visualizer and the controlP5 Processing GUI Library (required for the visualizer). These libraries, full source code and schematic are provided.
rsdio tipped us to an app note on interface circuits:
hmm… breakout board candidate?
This circuit provides a direct I²C interface to your PC’s USB port. A USB to 1-Wire® dongle supplies the PC with a 1-Wire master, which controls a 1-Wire I/O extender. This I/O extender has two bidirectional open drain ports, which the PC can write to and read from. By generating the right logic signals on these two ports, the PC can emulate an I²C master.
Thanks rsdio!
Return-to-zero is a new comic strip for engineers:
We bring to light the “Engineers World” with lab humor, exploding circuits, and of course making a sport out of solving the trickiest of engineering problems.
We’re also big fans of xkcd, another long-running tech geek and engineering comic.
Thanks Elaina! Via the contact form.
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Systems (SCADA) present a means of networking industrial infrastructure monitoring and control systems.
From a central reading location a SCADA system can track a number of remote sites equipped with Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) or Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). The RTUs can measure an array of conditions and a wider variety of parameters, including temperature, current, voltage flow, and tank levels. Real-time measurements are obtained from the RTU’s via the different sensors they have inside. The data acquired is then sent back via the communication link. Some of the larger systems can monitor 10-20,000 remote sites, with each site handling as many as 2000 input/output (I/O) points. These units in turn report back to the Central Processing Unit (CPU) that carries out the control functions and needed analysis.
Here’s a document from the National Communications System explaining SCADA and its role in emergency preparedness and national security. The tables on pages 43 to 45 look interesting.
Sawomedia is the winner of the Seeedstudio Rainbow Carnival 2010 design contest. The winning entry was a RGB coffeetable using a handsoldered 64 Superflux Pixelmatrix and the Rainbowduino LED driver platform. It uses a 9V PSU, but can also use battery power. The supporting structure is made mainly from recycled materials.
Seeedstudio is also a source for the Open Bench Logic Sniffer for $50, with free worldwide shipping.
Via PCWorld.
echOs built a CW(Morse code) transmitter using a TI launchpad with a minimal amount of components. Only capable of low power transmitting, this would be use full for finding that lost high altitude payload, or fox hunting.
Via: Hack a Day
M0KHZ wrote a C# Windows GUI to interface the web platform server over a network.
Having great fun (and learning) from the Web Server platform – here on my bench for the last 4 days :), my thoughts are now turning towards a Windows GUI interface to toggle LED2, plus anything else I hang off the header.
Via the forum.
Get an assembled web platform for $40, including worldwide shipping. Also available at Australian Robotics. Web platform v1.1 is in stock and shipping now.
Makerdino shared his 555 Based Fuel Injector Tester in the project log forum:
I’ve posted this one elsewhere but it’s a work in progress so I figured I’d share it here. I spent about four hours today reworking the schematic and the next step is to make a PCB, solder up the components to it and get it in a new larger enclosure. I’ll probably do another video of the PCB build because I’ll be using the Laser printer technique with a twist of my own involved.
Since I use two 555 timers in this, I plan on entering it in the 555 contest.
I have a video on Youtube which explains a lot of what his project is about.
Via the forum.
BrianH has posted a useful Instructables project that tests the capacity of rechargeable NiMh and NiCd batteries. The circuit is based on an Atmega168, and functions by draining the AA batteries (from 1 to 3 batteries) then computes and reports the capacity in mAh. It uses a Nokia 5510 graphic LCD to report battery condition and three MOSFETs used to switch the resistive load on and off during testing.
Versions of the project using the Arduino board or a standalone Atmega168 or 328 are provided with schematics and commented source code.
Via Hack a Day.
Want to take a stick, some wire, a can and some wax and make a $10 electric guitar? O’Reilly has a free webcast tomorrow, February 11, 2011 @ 10 AM PT, presented by David Erik Nelson that will take you from a pile of scrap wood and hardware to a working one-string electric guitar, all for well under $10. Along the way he’ll talk about magnetic pickups, induction, musical scales, fabrication improvisation, and the history of blues.
The $10 Electric Guitar is Project 13 from Nelson’s book, “Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred: Seriously Geeky Stuff to Make with Your Kids.”
rsdio presents: 1-Wire network via an SPI-compatible display controller.
To produce the 3-wire SPI™ interface required by a MAX7221 display controller (active-low CS, DIN, and CLK), this 1-Wire network serially addresses three 1-Wire switches (DS2413). The first switch creates Chip Select directly (active-low CS), the second creates the serial-data line directly (DIN), and the third switch—with the help of three exclusive-OR gates—creates the serial clock (CLK).
Christoph sent pictures of his simple recycled Bus Pirate case made from a matchbox.
Get your own handy Bus Pirate for $30, including world-wide shipping. Also available from our friendly distributors.
This project by elm chan produces sound using an ATtiny861. A MicroSD card is used as storage media and also SD and MMC can be used with proper socket conversion. It is controlled in SPI mode via USI. The audio signal is output in PWM and it can drive loudspeakers directly. Supported sound file format is RIFF/WAVE in LPCM, 8/16bit, mono/stereo and 8kHz-48kHz. Any other sound files, such as ADPCM, MP3 and AAC, must be converted into the PCM. The control command is input as binary code by eight contacts (SW1-SW8) and the corresponding sound file will be played. Four operational modes and LED status/error indicator are included.
Schematic and source code (gcc project and hex files) are provided.
Via CircuitLake.
Q, Atlas and Cutaway gave a presentation at the Shmoocon 2011 conference held recently in Washington, DC, concerning interception techniques for Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) radio signals. They demonstrate the use of low-cost, easily obtained hardware/software to conduct predictive channel hopping analysis coupled with crude spectrum analysis and ultimately identify any given hopping pattern in the 902-928MHz spectrum. Their tools purport to identify the hopping pattern of a given FHSS cell within 24-48 hours given sufficient traffic. Upon conclusion this project will demonstrate that 900MHz-based FHSS attacks exist and will eventually affect the confidentiality and integrity of data transferred in the clear across what many organizations consider a “secure-as-is” solution.
The FHSS patent they reference can be found here.
nbitwonder has some open source documentation templates for electronics experimenters:
We created a set of open source documentation templates in LaTeX (the typesetting language, not the material). With them, makers and hobbyists can develop better documentation for their projects by focusing on the content of their documentation and not the formatting.
Grab the latest version from git.
Thanks George! Via the contact form.
OpenPicus is working on open source wireless hardware and a free application development platform. The current WIFI hardware has a PIC 24FJ256GA106 microcontroller, and an MRF24WB0MA module provides the wireless.
An Arduino-like IDE has libraries and frameworks to simplify wireless development. If you have the grit to develop a wireless app without a proper debugging tool, then the firmware can be updated over USB via a bootloader in the PIC.
They sent a press release through the contact form. We asked for a sample, and got one. After we test it we’ll give it away in the comments.
Uhclem has posted a wireless Arduino message board project on Instructables. The heart of the project is the Arduino with the Atmega328 interfaced with a Sparkfun Series I Xbee module, serial EEPROM and LDR. The display is an a LCD-compatible Noritake CU2009ECPB-W1J VFD character display compatible with the LiquidCrystal library.
The purpose of this project was as a substitute for a list of chores contained on sticky notes. Messages are relayed to the board from a Linux or PC terminal program via a USB Xbee carrier. Schematic and Arduino code are provided. (The sketch takes up much of the Arduino’s onboard flash, and there is a provision for message storage on the optional EEPROM.)
Via Hacking War.
