WayneAndLayne is doing a series of short Kicad tutorials. This next tutorial in the series will show you how to use autorouter: Routing, the process of connecting all the pads of a printed circuit board (PCB) layout, can be a time-consuming … Read more
Part One – Resistive bridge basics: Bridge circuits are a time-honored way to make accurate measurement of resistance and other analog values. This article covers the basics of bridge circuits and shows how to use them to make accurate measurements … Read more
Here’s a short Kicad tutorial by Wayne and Layne: PCB edges An important part of designing a PCB is to clearly indicate the outline of the board, so the board house will know how to cut your boards apart. Most … Read more
This video discusses electrical overstress of analog integrated circuits.
Make Magazine has a tutorial on the OpenERP enterprise resource planing tool. It’s a project manager for tracking a project from an idea to fulfillment. The tutorial runs through one project example and explains how to setup all the steps … Read more
Here’s an interesting method for designing PCBs that you’d like to mount on heatsinks. This tutorial explains how to make your PCB using thermal tape as the copper substrate. A thin piece of copper is mounted onto thermal tape, then … Read more
Bob picked up a huge LED matrix sign on eBay that has power supply problems. After fixing the power supply, he decided to replace the controler boards with an Arduino. Via Hacked Gadgets.
Thanks to amazing Linux server admin Alex, this site is extremely well backed up. Every hour we make a complete copy of the local harddrive, and then incrementally sync any new data to an offsite storage location. If all this … Read more
Embedded-Lab is doing a series of tutorials for the Netduino, the open source Arduino shield compatible platform using the .Net Micro Framework. The first tutorial in the series is a how to on implementing basic input and output. We will … Read more
Make DIY silkscreens using vinyl stickers, similar to making PCBs with toner transfer methods: Below I am going to detail the process of making the silkscreen, which is the side of the printed circuit board where we solder the electrical … Read more
Want your doorbell to play prerecorded messages or tunes? This hack at instructables replaces the original speaker in a wireless doorbell with a 9 volt recording module. Most doorbells just make a simple generic tone. But I thought that it would be … Read more
Connecting your Arduino to the internet is cool, but it’s even cooler to connect over WiFi. Luca explains how to connect your Arduino Ethernet shield to a cheap WiFi router to give it WiFi access. Sometimes however it could be … Read more
If you really wanna jam as many components in the tightest space possible, dual side placement is the way to go. Luca made a tutorial for Eagle which describes how to place components on the bottom side of the board.
Electronics Lab brings us a tutorial on how to build sockets for IN-14 Nixies. The idea is simple. Use the spacer that comes with the Nixie, and insert female pinheaders into it. All that’s left is to shorten the leads … Read more
Bus Pirate v4 has an on-board 24xx64 8Kbyte data storage chip called an EEPROM (IC3). It can be used to store various settings and preferences, but cooler, the EEPROM’s I2C interface can be accessed from within the Bus Pirate’s I2C … Read more
Here’s TI’s quick start-up guide to their new Stellaris LaunchPad, which is a Cortex M4 based digital signal processor development board. Via Embedded Lab.
Sometimes prototyping your boards needs to be done quickly. Etching boards at home is the quickest way to knock up simple designs. There’s tons of ways to do it, one of the most popular is the toner transfer method. A … Read more
This tutorial shows how to easily, and relatively cheaply, build a nicely organized SMD resistor, and capacitor collection. George likes using connectable tiny storage boxes, and filling them with resistor/capacitor kits from eBay. This is complemented by printing out labels … Read more
Yesterday we presented the Smoke Tester, a board designed to safely power prototypes for the first time and test for shorts. One feature of this design is the current measurement via the INA138 high side current monitoring IC. Below is … Read more
Adafruit shows how to accurately design footprints in Eagle. The process imports the mechanical drawing into Eagle, and the footprint is traced over this template. It’s best used for mechanical parts – connectors, buttons, jacks, etc – that have complicated … Read more
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