Michael O’Brien created this project to monitor automotive performance:

Hackaday.io: D-DAQ

D-DAQ Mainboard Proto 4

Michael wrote about his experiments with plated slots in his hackaday.io project log:

OSH Park Manufacturing

NOTE: Internal Cutouts and Slots

We officially support non-plated slots and cutouts that are at least 100 mil wide (0.1inches / 2.54mm).

Whenever possible in your designs, we advise replacing small or plated slots with a large via. Typically, setting the hole size equal to the slot length is sufficient to fully replace the feature with minimal design impact.

davedarko wanted an easy way to check a USB cable, so he created this project on hackaday.io:

USB cable tester

Test your mini, micro and A-A cables with this little device!

A little ATtiny45, some LEDs and transistors – battery powered. It scans through the cable with some blinking LEDs, then goes to sleep.

 

The design files and source code are shared on GitHub:

davedarko/USB-Cable-Tester

 

And the board is a shared project on OSH Park:

USB cable tester

Reinier van der Lee created the Vinduino project (Vineyard + Arduino) to better manage the irrigation of his Southern California vineyard:

Vinduino, a wine grower’s water saving project

Monitoring soil moisture at different depths to determine when to irrigate, and – more importantly – how much water is needed. Save 25%!

Reineir explains further on his project page:

If you want to learn about saving water, talk to a farmer. California farmers, including myself, voluntarily aim to reduce agricultural water consumption by 25%. This reduction is more than the annual urban water use, much more effective than any residential water reduction can achieve.

The project includes:

• DIY calibrated gypsum soil moisture sensors
• Hand held sensor reader for soil moisture, salinity & water pressure
• Solar powered remote sensor platform:
  • 3 electrically separated inputs for soil moisture sensors
  • Wifi (ESP8266) or Appcon RF module for long range connectivity (miles)
  • Irrigation valve control, optional pressure sensor for valve operation feedback
  • DHT-11 temperature/humidity sensor

Vinduino has produced impressive results:

• In 2015 we saved 25% , or 430,000 gallons, of irrigation water.
• Cost saving on water and labor was $1,925
• Cost to achieve these savings was $635
• Minimum configuration for developing countries, incl. salinity measurement: $60

 

ReiniervdL has shared two project on OSH Park:

Vinduino-R V0.1: Remote soil moisture measurement 

2 layer board of 3.69×3.15 inches (93.65×80.01 mm).
Shared on June 7th, 2015 21:33.

 

2 layer board of 2.39×2.00 inches (60.66×50.80 mm).
Shared on June 7th, 2015 21:33.

This UV monitor on hackaday.io was designed to help prevent UV-caused skin damage:

Sunburn Monitor

 This is a UV monitor based around the SI1132 light sensor and an ATMEGA168. It uses a sound-based interface, where beeps signal settings for skin type and use of sunscreen, if any. This is to save the power and cost of a display, and also in recognition that the device will be used outdoors in bright sunlight, where only reflective displays would be usable.

SI1132 was chosen as it produces a ‘calibrated’ UV index and takes up very little space. ATMEGA168 was chosen as a cheap uC with hardware I2C support which is supported by the Arduino environment (to allow a broad range of users to easily modify the code as they see fit).

The design files and source code are hosted on GitHub:

quarterturn/Sunburn-Monitor

matrixwide shared the board design on OSH Park:

Sunburn Monitor V 0.2

OSH Park is proud to be a sponsor of the MIT Rocket Team:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s student-run rocketry club

Their latest rocket is designed to ascend 10,000 ft and deploy a parachute for the descent:

Project Therion

Project Therion is named after the many-headed dragon of biblical lore. Our rocket is designed to ascend 10,000 ft, where it will deploy a small pilot parachute. The rocket will descend under the pilot to 5,000 ft. At 5,000 ft, a 67 foot parafoil will unfurl from within the rocket. A flight computer will guide the descending vehicle back toward a designated landing site.

Avionics is developing a Linux-based Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC) computer to help the parafoil find its way home. The instruments were designed as a Beagle Bone cape, which is currently being manufactured. The avionics instrumentation includes GPS, barometric altimeter, nine degree of freedom sensor, and a pitot tube.

The board design for the Avionics cape is shared on OSH Park:

MIT Rocket Team: BeagleBone Avionics Cape

by jswiezy.

Avionics All-In-One Board

davedarko created this Adafruit Trinket Pro shield for the adorable HP QDSP-6064 bubble display

trinket pro bubble display shield

for building clocks and bring them anywhere you want, even integrated a temperature sensor, if you’re into that kind of stuff

The design files and source code are hosted on GitHub:

davedarko/TrinketProShield_display

Shield for trinket pro to feature a bubble display and lm75

I created this project, inspired by the events in Texas, where a 9th grade kid called Ahmed got arrested for bringing a clock as a hardware project to school.

It is a shield for an adafruit trinket pro, based on an atmega238p with vusb.

An additional temperature sensor in the form of the LM75 can be added to this bubble display shield. The atmega32p is capable of driving up to 40mA per pin, so with the display needing 5mA per element of a digit, it should be fine, since it will be a pulsed signal and there are 8 elements max.

The display is a famous pocket calculator LED bubble display called the HP QDSP-6064.

 

davedarko has shared the board on OSH Park:

ProTrinket Bubble Display shield

Paul Stoffregen of PJRC created this big 7-segment countdown timer for DorkBot PDX meetings:

Big 7-Segment Countdown Timer

 

PaulStoffregen has shared his board design on OSH Park:

Shared Project: big7seg

Big 7-Segment driver. A ‘595 shift register lets you chain any number of these to build a large display.

Perfect for keeping Open Mic talks at hackerspaces on time!

 

 

Julien Vanier created this OBD-II CAN adapter for the Particle Photon or Electron boards:

CANdlestick

I wanted to make a compact internet-connected analyzer for my car’s OBD-II diagnostic port.

The WiFi-capable Particle Photon or better yet the cellular Particle Electron are great options for that.

Luckily the pins for a Photon fits right in between the 2 rows of pins of a straight OBD-II connector so it’s possible to make a very compact OBD-II adapter with a Photon.

Julien has shared the board on OSH Park:

CANdlestick R1.1

 

 

Henner has shared the his board designs on OSH Park:

Passive-RPi-3xHub75-Adapter

 

Active-RPi-3xHub75-Adapter

 

Passive-RPi1-Hub75-Adapter

Nick Sayer has created his own USB to serial converter:

FTDI-be-gone

There are countless devices to add a traditional DB9M serial port via USB. The general problem is that when you just buy a cheap one, you don’t have any idea what’s inside. With the reminder of the recent FTDI shenanigans, it’s become more important to use modem “class” chips that use generic OS drivers rather than proprietary driver devices. Cypress Semi’s CY7C65213 is one such device. Because it uses drivers supplied by the OS, there’s no opportunity for them to attempt to weaponize a proprietary driver.

Nick has also shared the board on OSH Park:

FTDI-be-gone v0.4