Join us tonight at BJ’s from 7:00pm to 12:00am for the unofficial Maker Faire Bay Area tradition:

#BringAHack

If you are going to Maker Faire Bay Area today, then be sure checkout these talks:

Getting Started with KiCad: Open Source Electronic Design Software

Sunday, May 22, 11:00am on the Make: Electronics stage

Designing Circuit Classics

Sunday, May 22, 3:30pm at Center Stage

Also look for hackerspace Noisebridge’s Flaschen Taschen display in the main expo hall near vintage computing area:

Also in the main expo hall nearby vintage computing area is the amazing Dis-integrated Circuits booth with the Monster 6502:

Finally, we were very excited to see this VKS board prototype with the new Octavo OSD33558 System-in-Package (“Beaglebone on a Chip”).  The SiP is a 400-ball BGA containing ARM SoC, DDR RAM, power management and even 140 passives.  It’s large 1.27mm ball pitch allowed Hunyue Yau to make his board using our 4-layer service.

OSH Park is at Maker Faire Bay Area!   Laen, Dan and Drew are scouring the fairgrounds to see awesome projects makers have built with purple PCBs.  Please let us know on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ if you’re here at Maker Faire, too!

We’ll be at these evening events and hope to see you too:

• The 3rd Annual Hackaday MFBA Meetup
  • Sat, May 21, 2016 at 7:00 PM – San Mateo, CA
• #BringAHack dinner at BJ’s
  • Sun, May 22, 7:00pm – San Mateo, CA

We are excited to attend these two talks at Maker Faire:

Getting Started with KiCad: Open Source Electronic Design Software

Sunday, May 22, 11:00am on the Make: Electronics stage

At Wayne and Layne, we use KiCad to make our printed circuit boards. We’ve been helping make KiCad better. There have been a lot of changes in the past year! From outside the project, it can be difficult to see where the project is going, so we will discuss recent and upcoming improvements.

Designing Circuit Classics

Sunday, May 22, 3:30pm at Center Stage

A walk through the process of bringing Forrest Mims’ classic drawn circuit designs to life. This talk will cover both the art of building hardware true to the vision of his books, and the practical aspects of creating a strong aesthetic and bringing graphics into the hardware world.

Here’s some of the awesome makers and projects we’ve spotted so far at Maker Faire:

Rocket Dept has terrific Learn to Solder kits in lovely purple ‘n gold, located in the main expo hall.  They debuted a new kit called Hue which is big adjustable RGB LED:

Source: https://twitter.com/RocketDept

Source: https://twitter.com/RocketDept

Source: https://twitter.com/RocketDept

Source: https://twitter.com/RocketDept

PocketNC is showing off their new FR4 Machine Shield which is made entirely from one of our PCB panels (we can do white for orders of 1,000+ sq inches).  Find them in Redwood Hall (a.k.a. Maker Pro building) next to PancakeBot:

https://twitter.com/pdp7/status/733741561691807744

https://twitter.com/pdp7/status/733741561691807744

https://twitter.com/pdp7/status/733741561691807744

https://twitter.com/pdp7/status/733741561691807744

Nick Sayer of Geppetto Electronics has brought Toast-R-Reflow controller and many other boards to Maker Faire.  He’s next to Rocket Dept. in the Main Expo hall:

Ted Yapo is building a very interesting clock:

The Diode Clock

The EAGLE design files and LTspice simulation file  are shared here on hackaday.io.

Ted created a smaller example to demonstrate diode logic gates really are:

DDL Demo Board and Simple Examples

The board is shared on OSH Park:

DDL demo board

Andrew Sowa designed this notched PCB in Kicad to control a rely board via I2C:

16-Channel I2C Relay expander

A recent project required me to control 48 channels of line voltage.  I knew I needed some relays and more control lines so I went on a search for something affordable.  Numato Labs had a nice 16 channel unit that was within budget and I was able to mock up a working unit by using a MCP23017 from Adafruit.

I wasn’t happy with the mess of wires and wanted something cleaner.  Using Kicad and OSH Park, I made a small form factor surface mount unit.  This reduced my supply wires and allowed me to daisy chain units for easier install.

source: http://andrewsowa.com/blog/2016/5/15/16-channel-i2c-relay-expander-v10

source: http://andrewsowa.com/blog/2016/5/15/16-channel-i2c-relay-expander-v10

source: http://andrewsowa.com/blog/2016/5/15/16-channel-i2c-relay-expander-v10

The design files and source code are available on GitHub:

FRM16_Relay_Module_I2C_Controller

Junes-PhD has shared the board on OSH Park:

FRM16 Relay Module I2C Controller

Exterme Electronics has created a tiny line following brush bot for a Scout group Electronics badge:

Black Line Follower robot – the BLF bug

cheap as possible and easy to build for kids 10-14 as part of a short electronics course

 

We’ll be at Bay Area Maker Faire and we want to have a beer with you on Saturday night. Two years ago we headed off to the Bay Area Maker Faire and thought we’d invite friends and acquaintances to congregate at a bar on Saturday night. Anyone who’s been to the Faire (or been through…

via Meet Up with Hackaday this Saturday in San Mateo — Hackaday

Sometimes a project doesn’t have to be technically amazing to win over our hearts. [Malte]’s ESP8266-based weather station is so cute, and so nicely executed, that it’s easily worth a look. It could totally be a commercial product, and it’s smaller than a matchbox. It combines temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure sensors on one side…

via Tiny Matchbox WiFi Weather Station — Hackaday

A common sight in the days before cheap PCs conquered the world was the dumb terminal. A keyboard and a monitor with a serial port on the back that was usually hooked up to a minicomputer or even a mainframe, these were simple devices. Anything that came into the serial port was rendered on the…

via Chibiterm Is A Tiny Low-Cost VGA Terminal — Hackaday

Teensy-LC (Low Cost) by Paul Stoffregen is a powerful 32 bit microcontroller board, with a rich set of hardware peripherals, at a very affordable price:

Teensy LC – OSH Park Edition $11.29 USD

Teensy-LC delivers an impressive collection of capabilities to make modern electronic projects simpler.  It features an ARM Cortex-M0+ processor at 48 MHz, 62K Flash, 8K RAM, 12 bit analog input & output, hardware Serial, SPI & I2C, USB, and a total of 27 I/O pins:

Teensy-LC maintains the same form-factor as Teensy 3.2, with most pins offering similar peripheral features:

• Real Hardware Serial
• Efficient USB Communication
• Hardware Timers
• Analog Input & Output at 12 Bit Resolution
• 5 Volt Buffer For WS2812/NeoPixel LED Projects

Compared With Teensy 3.2:

Some features of Teensy 3.2 simply aren’t available at this lower price point.

• The I/O pins are not 5V tolerant.
• The maximum speed is only 48 MHz, and the Cortex-M0+ omits M4’s special math instructions.
• CAN bus is not available.
• Teensy-LC has only 4 lightweight DMA channels, rather than 16 fully featured channels.
• Serial1 & Serial2 have only standard buffers, not FIFOs.
• Fewer hardware timers are available.

Every few years, someone on the Internet builds a truly homebrew CPU. Not one built with a 6502, Z80, or a CPU from the 80s, either: one built completely out of 74-series logic chips or discrete transistor. We’re lucky enough to have [Alexander] document his build on Hackaday.io, and even luckier to have him enter it…

via Hackaday Prize Entry: You Can Do Anything With A Bunch Of NANDs — Hackaday