Motivation As you may have seen in earlier articles, I produce my own PCBs at home with the toner transfer method. After some experimentation the PCB quality is quite satisfactory, but drilling the holes for even a moderate number of through-hole components is very tiresome. When you design your PCBs with a proper CAD software […]
(semi) automated drill press table for PCB manufacture Continue Reading
A while ago I needed some small value resistors as current shunts and I started wondering about the feasibility of using traces as resistors. There are many theoretical reasons as to why copper traces make bad shunt resistors, but I found surprisingly little practical data. So with my next OSH Park order, I threw in
Using Traces As Resistors Continue Reading
A synchronous PWM controller for negative-to-negative or negative-to-positive DC/DC conversion, the LT8709 from Linear Technology is easily configured for buck, boost, buck-boost, and inverting topologies to accommodate a wide range of power-supply designs. The device’s synchronous operation means that the output diode is replaced with a high-efficiency P-channel MOSFET, increasing efficiency and allowing for higher
Buck/boost/inverting controller delivers up to 20 A Continue Reading
There is a new addition to the popular WS2812 family of RGB LEDs with integrated controller: A 8mm through hole version. Right now they seem to be in pilot production stage. The only place that has them is Soldering Sunday where they are called PixelBits. My understanding is that they will also be available at
New member of the WS2812 family Continue Reading
KORG INC and Noritake Co., Limited are proud to announce the successful development of the ground breaking technology, Nutube, a new miniaturized and high performance tube. In cooperation with Noritake Itron Corporation, KORG INC. has developed the Nutube to offer incredible reliability and efficiency while still generating the same rich harmonics which vacuum tubes are
KORG INC and Noritake Co., Limited Release Innovative Vacuum Tube: the Nutube Continue Reading
When at home, I do not carry my phone with me everywhere… so sometimes phone rings or an SMS comes in and I do not hear that. With the volume of music played by the teenagers at home, that is not a surprise 🙂 so I decided to build a small accessory that will show
Bluetooth mobile phone accessory for Missed calls and SMS Continue Reading
TMPM470FDFG and TMPM475FDFG enable dual control of two brushless DC motors Toshiba Electronics Europe has announced two new products to join their range of ARM® Cortex®-M4F based TX04 series microcontrollers. Both the TMPM470FDFG and TMPM475FDFG are capable of operating two brushless DC motors simultaneously. The new microcontrollers aim to satisfy ever-increasing demand for more energy
Background I read about the ESP8266 first in March this year and I didn’t know what to do with. And now I’m really fascinated how easy the connection of an Arduino to the Internet can be. Like others I set up a weather station on a breadboard first and sent data to thingspeak.com. This ends
ESP8266 Weather Station with Arduino – #1 Hardware Continue Reading
From project to project the number of hex files on our PC was increasing. Many people send us their virgin ATMegas to get them flashed. And last not least distributing PCB’s and pre-flahed chips via agile-hardware forced us to burn many, many AVRs. In principle this is a work an ape should do but reality
Stand Alone AVR Programmer Continue Reading
Various versions of the Arduino will reset the board by toggling the serial DTR line, a feature called auto-reset. Since it relies on the DTR line, it won’t work with TTL serial adapters that don’t break out the DTR line. After writing my half-duplex serial UART, I thought of using the TTL serial break signal
Zero-wire serial auto-reset for Arduino Continue Reading
