POV Fidget Spinner

From MakersBox on Instructables:

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Programmable POV Fidget Spinner

Fidget spinners are fun, and you can find one at about any check-out counter for just a few bucks these days, but what if you could build your own? And it had LEDs? And you could program it to say or show whatever you wanted? If that sounds geeky cool, THIS IS THE PROJECT FOR YOU.

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I’ve always been interested in using blinking LEDs to get kids interested in programming. The most simple project with an Arduino microcontroller is to blink an LED on and off. Then you get them to see how fast an LED can blink before it looks like it is on continuously (about 12 millisecond intervals). Then you shake the LED back and forth and you can see it blink again! This phenomena is call “persistence of vision” (POV) and is how this project works. It can lead to discussions of both how the eye works and how incredibly fast computers are.

This project uses a programmable 8-bit microcontroller, eight LEDs, and a coin cell. It spins using a standard skateboard bearing, and uses a Hall-effect sensor and a magnet to determine rotation. It is made using beginner-friendly through-hole parts and can be programmed using the Arduino programming environment.

MakersBox has shared the board on OSH Park:

Geek Spinner 0.1

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POV Fidget Spinner

AlienWhoop V2 Flight Controller

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AlienWhoop flight controller for Tiny Whoop, Blade Inductrix, Eachine, BetaFPV, and other micro brushed quadcopter frames. Fully complete and hand assembled in the USA. Best in class flight controller running BetaFlight 3.2 release candidate (upgradable)–no surface mount soldering required.

AlienWhoop V2 Flight Controller

4CHord MIDI

From Sven Gregori on Hackaday.io:

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the USB MIDI keyboard dedicated to play all the four chord songs, from Adele via Green Day and Red Hot Chilli Peppers to U2 and Weezer. Thanks to MIDI, you can be any instrument – and all of them at once. Yay!
 Built around an AVR ATmega328 and Objective Development’s V-USB library, 4chord MIDI acts as a regular USB MIDI instrument. It supports playback in every key and five different playback modes:
  • simple triad chord (root, third, fifth)
  • triad chord + third + fifth + third as quarter notes
  • triad chord + third + fifth + octave as quarter notes
  • root note + third + fifth + third as quarter notes
  • root note + third + fifth + octave as quarter notes

The playback tempo can be set between 60 and 240 bpm.

Here is the board in action:

The design files and source code are available on GitHub:

sgreg/4chord-midi

4CHord MIDI

SSD1306 1.3″ OLED SPI breakout board

Rene van der Meer designed this breakout board for a bare OLED display:

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SSD1306 1.3″ OLED SPI breakout board

I’ve been playing with cheap OLED display breakouts for years, incorporating complete boards into my projects – an easy, but bulky solution. Now that I’ve had some practice designing circuits and PCBs, it’s time for my next challenge: soldering the display FPCs directly to my own boards.

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I designed this board to try out a minimal circuit before integrating it into any larger projects, and to figure out the best way to solder flexible circuits to my boards. Since all of my new microcontroller-powered board designs only require 3.3 V, I haven’t added any 5 V tolerant level shifting. What’s left is a bare minimum circuit to drive a Solomon Systech SSD1306 using SPI at 3.3 V.

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golemparts has shared the board on OSH Park:

SSD1306 SPI Breakout v1.0 A

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SSD1306 1.3″ OLED SPI breakout board

1Bitsy 1UP handheld game console

We’re excited about this new project from Piotr Esden-Tempski of 1BitSquared on Hackaday.io:
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1Bitsy 1UP

1Bitsy 1UP is a retro inspired handheld game console, the design is based on the 1Bitsy STM32F415RGT6 ARM Cortex-M4F 168MHz 192kb RAM and 1MB Flash micro controller. 2.8″ TFT with capacitive touch, SDCard Reader and a few other components.

The display used is a TFT LCD with I2C CapTouch and ILI9341 driver. (should be compatible with the display sold by Adafruit on their breakouts as well as the buydisplay.com 2.8″ tft with CapTouch sensor)

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The most basic design consists of:

  • 1Bitsy STM32F415RGT6 (168MHz, 192kb RAM, 1MB Flash)
  • 240×320 2.8″ TFT with capacitive touch and PWM backlight control
  • D-Pad, ABXY, Start, Select buttons
  • DAC audio out to headphones. (speakers optional)
  • SDCard connected over SDIO interface

The hardware design files and firmware source code are available on GitHub:

github1bitsy/1bitsy-1up

1Bitsy 1UP handheld game console

Dooba.io open source MP3 player

MP3 player design from Dooba.io:

Shiva: MP3 player for the masses

Based on the ioNode, Aecho and Nomad modules, the Shiva allows browsing & playing MP3 files stored on any FAT-formatted MicroSD card with audio quality up to 128Kbps.

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The actual Shiva board itself is quite simple, featuring an MCP23008 from Microchip for reading the 7 buttons, a DM3D-SF MicroSD card socket from Hirose and a 128×64 OLED display from Adafruit.

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To keep everything neatly together I needed an enclosure. Being lucky enough to own a half-decent 3D printer I decided to keep things minimal but functional. Who needs glue and screws when you can go for a press-fit case?

IMG_0346The code for the Shiva MP3 player is available in the Dooba Firmware SDK under /src/shiva.  Schematic and board are available in the Dooba Hardware collection.

Dooba.io open source MP3 player

ATXMega32E5 adapted for a breadboard

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ATXMega32E5 breakout board

The ATXMega32E5 is the next step up for those experienced with the AVR series of microcontrollers from Microchip (formerly Atmel). They use the same compilers and libraries as the rest of the AVR 8- and 16-bit families, but they can run at 32 MHz and have an amazingly powerful set of internal peripherals that can take your projects to the next level and beyond.

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For prototyping, however, the disadvantage is that the XMega chips are not available as through-hole parts. That’s where this breakout board comes into play.

nsayer has shared the board on OSH Park:

ATXMega_E5 breakout v1.0

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Order from OSH Park

ATXMega32E5 adapted for a breadboard

Programming Surface Mounted Chips

Ken Olsen writes in a Surface Mount Challenge project log on Hackaday.io:

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Programming Surface Mounted Chips

A majority of my projects to date have used DIP package Attiny85, 84, and Atmega328. These are usually programmed beforehand using a ISP shield on an Arduino, or afterwards using the ISP header. My first PCB design, was in fact, a shield which could be used to program the variety of AVR chips I was using. Breadboarding up an Arduino-as-ISP circuit time every time I needed one was error-prone and frustrating.

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It occurred to me that since not all projects have ISP headers, there should be some way to program the chips prior to installation. With a little googling, I found SOIC to DIP adapters which can be used to mate up with a DIP ZIF fixture. A SOIC 20 allows me to program the AVR 8-pin, 14-pin, and 20-pin packages!

Programming Surface Mounted Chips