Chuck wrote to us with a short tutorial on a simpler way to make footprints in Cadsoft Eagle. See our tutorial here. Hello, my name is Chuck and I’ve been following your site for several months now. I was reading through the Eagle “How to make parts” tutorial and noticed you guys are making the […]
Tag Archives: tutorial
Tutorial on modifying servos for continuous operation
How to modify standard servos for continuous operation. This hack involves opening up the servo, removing the limit mechanics, and modifying the feedback pot. In his second tutorial Andrey shows how to add a rotatory encoder to the servo, for position feedback. It will stand still with control pulse of around 1,5ms (mine likes 1515us; […]
Aligning sides on DIY two-sided circuit boards
How to get good alignment results when etching two sided boards at home. This method uses marks placed outside of the PCB design to help with aliment. Via Gadget Factory.
Designing multilayer PCBs in Cadsoft Eagle
Rik shows how to design PCBs with more than two layers in Cadsoft Eagle. The tutorial covers the basics, as well as some advanced subjects like BGA escape routing. Keep in mind you’ll need a standard or pro version of Eagle, as the free version doesn’t support designs with more then 2 layers. Via the […]
MegunoLink tools talk to serial port devices
MegunoLink is a utility to create a communication link between PCs and serial port devices such as the Arduino. … useful tools that interact with an Arduino-style board (or other MCU with serial data). The software is called MegunoLink, from BlueLeafSoftware in New Zealand. Megunolink has many useful features, and we’ll run through them briefly […]
Workshop Update for June 19th, 2012
Today was mostly documentation day. We wrote another Eagle tutorial, this time on how to make plated holes for your PCBs. We will run it tomorrow, as our regular “HOW TO” post. We also continued with some renders of a soon to be released product. We spent lots of time editing the render in Photoshop, […]
HOW TO: Bus Pirate as dev-board, read a voltage and view in terminal
The Bus Pirate uses the PIC24FJ64GA002 microcontroller, and can be used as a development board. In this tutorial we’ll read an analog voltage with an analog to digital converter, and then send it to the PC terminal via the UART. This is a culmination of the previous 3 tutorials ( blink the MODE LED, ADC […]
Copy parts between libraries in Eagle
A short but helpful tutorial on how to copy parts between libraries in Cadsoft Eagle. You can also check out some of our Eagle tutorials.
Panelizing multiple PCB on a single cheap PCB service
Schazamp made an instructable on how to get multiple PCB onto a single cheap PCB service, like Seeed’s Fusion, or ITead’s Open PCB. The process involves merging the gerber files with GerbMerge. just wrote up an instructable about how you can easily panelize PCBs for SeeedStudio’s Fusion PCB service. I thought it might be of […]
HOW-TO: Create parts with separate power pins
Ever wonder how some designs group all the power supply pins in one corner of the schematic? They look organized, and it’s easier to understand how the circuit works because pins are grouped by function. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to make an Eagle part with separate power pins. This can be extended […]
Automatically generate Eagle footprints for Microchip parts
Macdweller wrote a step by step tutorial on making Cadsoft Eagle footprints for any Microchip device, like PIC microcontrollers, using the Ultra Librarian app to generate footprints automatically. Via the forum.
HOW-TO: Advanced circuit board rendering with SketchUp and Kerkythea
See the latest version of this tutorial on the wiki. Overview Kerkythea is an open source rendering application that makes life-like images. A community developed plugin can import Google SketchUp 3D models into Kerkythea, so we can use it to render boards make with EagleUp. Since Kerkythea is open source there are no restrictions […]
Using SketchUp and Kerkythea to make lifelike project renderings
MrLaw used our 3D modeling and rendering tutorials to render an image of his project. The image to the left was done using the Kerkythea plugin for SketchUp, and the image on the right is the real board. Kerkythea is more complicated then the Maxwell Studio plugin, but provides overall better results. Would like to […]
HOW-TO: Use the Bus Pirate v3 as a PIC development board
The Bus Pirate is a handy debugging tool, but it’s also a 16 bit PIC 24FJ64GA002 development board. You don’t need a programmer to play, just upload the firmware over USB using the Bus Pirate’s nearly-impossible-to-brick bootloader. It’s easy to go back to the original Bus Pirate firmware at any time. This demo is step […]
Basics of liquid lenses video
Learn about the basics of liquid lenses in this video. Ben explains how you can use a high-voltage power supply and some Teflon tape to alter the focal point of a liquid lens. Liquid lenses are basically a drop of water whose shape can be altered through the use of a strong electrical field. A […]
Boot your PC with the Arduino using the Wake on Lan command
Luca explains how to boot your PC with a Wake on Lan command sent from an Arduino. Setup the WOL feature on your PC, then use the sendWOL() command to send a magic packet via and ENC28J60 ethernet chip: The wake command is issued sending on the network a specific packet, called Magic Packet. This […]
A basic introduction to Phase Locked Loops
Kenneth was curious about Phase Locked Loops so he decided to dive into them. PLLs generate an output signal that is phase-synchronized to an input signal. They are widely used in telecommunication, radio, and computer systems. One place we commonly find PLLs is the frequency multiplier circuit inside microcontrollers. The inevitable next step was to […]
HOW-TO: Get your PCBs manufactured
The latest version of this tutorial is available on the documentation wiki. In the last few years many inexpensive PCB services have popped up. It used to be that buying PCBs in hobby quantities was expensive and filled with gotchas. Now, places like Seeed Studio can send your PCBs to the inexpensive prototyping factory in […]
Using a ACS712 hall-effect current sensor
Raj made a two part tutorial on how to interface a PIC microcontroller with the ACS712 hall-effect current sensor. The first part covers hall-effect theory and basic operation of the ACS712. The second part covers the actual PIC interface, which is simply reading the output voltage of the sensor. Sensing and controlling current flow is […]
Getting an ATmega to light up some LEDs
Pete made an in depth tutorial on how to get started with ATmega microcontrollers. He covers how to read the datasheets and use them to write your firmware. Also covered are the initial stages of creating and programing a simple “blink LED” program in AVRstudio 5.1. In this Part 1 post, I’ll show how to […]