David from Nut&Bolt has written a short overview of affordable oscilloscopes (sub 400 euro) on his website. Via the contact form.
Yearly Archives: 2012
Free PCB coupon via Facebook to 2 random commenters
Every Friday we give away some extra PCBs via Facebook. This post was announced on Facebook, and on Monday we’ll send coupon codes to two random commenters. More PCBs via Twitter on Tuesday and the blog every Sunday. Don’t forget there’s free PCBs three times a every week: Free PCB Sunday. The classic. Every week, […]
Week in (p)review: February 24, 2012
Here’s a summary of major developments over the last week. Free PCB Friday is coming up soon: HOW-TO VIDEO: Visit Akihabara Electric Town SOIC protoboard in this week’s status update post 3D Model: Bus Blaster v2.0a1 Altera MAX3000A CPLD breakout board, MCP2200 breakout board, USB LCD Backpack PIC18F24J50, USB IR Toy and 23K256 breakout board free PCB built Review […]
USB Infrared Toy free PCB build
EnsuingRequiem built a USB IR Toy v1.1 free PCB. With the USB IR Toy you can use a remote control with your computer, view infrared signals on a logic analyzer, capture and replay remote control buttons. If you build a free PCB we’ll send you another one! Blog about it, post a picture on Flicker, whatever […]
Arduino WiFi RGB Ikea lamp mod
Open Electronics built an Ikea lamp mod using an Arduino with a WiFi shield, and a custom RGB LED driver shield. The mod allows people to to change the color and intensity of the lamp by accessing it’s web page. The system that we propose is based on the Arduino UNO, on which are mounted […]
Using Ti’s Code Composer Studio IDE for free
Carl found out a way you could use TI’s Code Composer Studio IDE for free. Normally it only has a 30day evaluation period after which you have to pay $495 for the license. But by activating the Free limited license you are able to fully use it as long as you have a XDS100 based JTAG […]
DIY Magnetic rotary encoder with AS5043
Sebastian would like to build a high-res 3D printer, and to this end he needs a precise way to ascertain the exact positions of various moving parts. Instead of buying an expensive stepper motors he decided to build a magnetic rotary sensor with which he could calculate the distance traveled. By placing a neodymium magnet […]
Scheme-It: Digi-Key online schematic editor
Digi-Key has an online schematic editor known as Scheme-It. “Scheme-it is an online schematic and diagramming tool that allows anyone to design and share electronic circuit diagrams. The tool includes a comprehensive electronic symbol library and an integrated Digi-Key component catalog that allows for a wide range of circuit designs. Additionally, a built-in bill of […]
GIVEAWAY: 2 VFD tube sets from Akihabara
We’re giving away the two VFD tube sets we bought in Akihabara this weekend! Each bag has 6 VFD tubes and a datasheet. We powered them with a single 5 volt 12 volt supply. Leave a comment on this post with an idea for a VFD tube project, and one of these could be yours. We’ll […]
HOW-TO VIDEO #09: Visit Akihabara Electric Town
Akihabara is a giant neighborhood of electronics stores in Tokyo, Japan. This weekend we explored the markets with Tokyo Hacker Space on the first leg of our Global Geek Tour. The SEG Electronics Market in Shenzhen is definitely bigger, but Akihabara is a lot easier to get to. We can visit Japan with just a […]
FT232BL USB to serial breakout board
Dchcaracter built a breakout board for the common FT232BL USB to UART IC. Most hardware sellers have one in the $10-$15 range. He released his design files in the forum. The board has the following features: Jumper-selected slave scheme voltage: 5V or 3,3V (50mA max) RTS is out (with a wire cut, can be changed […]
Altera MAX3000A CPLD breakout board free PCB built
Pietja built a free Altera MAX3000A CPLD breakout board. These CPLDs come with 64 macro-cells running up to 200 MHz. If you build a free PCB we’ll send you another one! Blog about it, post a picture on Flicker, whatever – we’ll send you a coupon code for the free PCB drawer. Via the forum. […]
8051-compatible MCU samples from Microchip
For those of you who like the 8051 chip, we notice that Microchip has 8051 compatible MCUs available in 40-pin PDIP, part number SST89E516RD-40-C-PIE, available as samples. According to the datasheet: The SST89E516RDx and SST89V516RDx are members of the FlashFlex family of 8-bit microcontroller products designed and manufactured with SST’s patented and proprietary SuperFlash CMOS […]
LC200A LC meter teardown and review
Open source HDD POV clock
Jason designed a persistence of vision hard drive clock. He etched numbers on a copper disk and added 8 LEDs below it. Each LED represents a character on the display and blinks when the corresponding digit passes over it. His project is Arduino-based, and the project files can be downloaded from GitHub. My replacement platter was cut […]
PROTOTYPE PREVIEW: New protoboard under way
Don’t you hate it? A big bag of SMT parts arrive from Mouser, DigiKey or eBay, but your carefully manufactured PCBs are still under way? Or the firmware needs to be done ASAP? Or you got this super cool USB SOIC uC you’d love to try out and you can’t wait? We run into this […]
PROP-6502 Propeller laptop
Dennis Ferron developed this Parallax Propeller Laptop with a 6502 co-processor and 64K of static RAM as his entry to a Parallax Propeller design contest. He observed that hardware prototyping has evolved from building-block hardware (TTL) to programmable hardware (PLA’s and FPGA’s). He believes that the Propeller chip represents the next revolution: 100% software-based virtual […]
Reverse engineering car parking sensors
James decided to reverse engineer car ultrasonic parking sensors. These sensors have integrated electronics that handle all the measurements. They are connected to the car’s internal computer via a low-speed single wire CAN network. James provides pinouts, protocol interface, and some source code to interface with them. Since I know a thing, or two, about […]
BootDrive loads Arduino sketches from an SD card
Kevin wrote an Arduino bootloader that loads sketches from an SD card. BootDrive is open source and available on GitHub. Announcing the formal release of BootDrive for Arduino. If you’ve been reading the blog, you know that I’ve been working with Justin Shaw of Wyolum labs to enable their I2SD (Arduino clone with a micro-sd […]
MCP2200 breakout board free PCB built
Megabug built a free MCP2200 breakout board. MCP2200 are USB-to-UART converter chips by Microchip. In fact they are PIC18F14K50 microcontrollers programmed with the USB-to-UART firmware. We were able to hack one and program an open source USB stack into it. If you build a free PCB we’ll send you another one! Blog about it, post […]