Month: August 2016

Sega Genesis Chiptune Synthesizer

fustini, , , 3 Comments

3702671472414684744.jpg

Jarek Lupinski created this board that uses the actual Sega Genesis sound chips to play chiptune files:

Sega Genesis Native Hardware Chiptune Synthesizer

The VGM file format stores instructions for sound chips, and VGM files for many popular games can be found online. An Atmega1284p microcontroller will read these VGM files from an SD card and translate them into signals to send to the onboard YM2612 and SN76489 chips. These chips were used by the original Sega Genesis hardware to make the sound effects and music in Genesis games.

Source: https://hackaday.io/project/13361-sega-genesis-native-hardware-chiptune-synthesizer
Source: https://hackaday.io/project/13361-sega-genesis-native-hardware-chiptune-synthesizer
Sega Genesis Chiptune Synthesizer

RPUadpt Arduino shield

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14226^3_OnCloneOptionalSMPS.jpg

Shield for Remote MCU Node on RPU Bus

RPUadpt is a shield for multi-drop serial communication of MCU boards (Irrigate7, PPUno, PuseDAQ). Serial lines are differential pairs. It has Full Duplex RS422 (RX/TX) and out of band Half Duplex RS485 bus manager that may (TBD) help with serial bootloaders (optiboot and xboot) in a multi-drop system.

epccs has shared the EAGLE board on OSH Park:

14226^3: RPUadpt

14226,Top
Order from OSH Park

RPUadpt Arduino shield

Hackerbot Labs autonomous boat

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Pierce Nichols and the Hackerbot Labs team are building an autonomous boat capable of doing sonar surveys of dive sites:

Hackerboat

An autonomous boat of unusual size

Screenshot from 2016-08-26 18-48-39.pngPierce recently wrote about the latest news from the project:

Hackerboat Progress

Since the last update, we’ve gotten in the water one more time (in late July) and we’ve made some substantial design changes. First off, here’s a video of my talk at Toorcamp that Alex was kind enough to put together
Hackerbot Labs autonomous boat

Teensy E-Paper shield

fustini, , 2 Comments

IMG_20160825_235311

Jarek Lupinski created a Teensy 3.x shield for e-paper displays:

Teensy E-Paper Adapter Board

E-Paper is not a simple display to drive. With manual temperature compensation, onboard power regulation requiring external capacitors, and setting up a step-up circuit, there are many factors to consider when working with this display, with the large benefit of not requiring any power to maintain its image once written.

Screenshot from 2016-08-26 20-30-31.png

I have created the simplest possible circuit necessary to drive the Pervasive Displays E2215CS062 , available from your favorite distributor. Certain parts from the reference design were substituted with US-available equivalents with assistance from the Pervasive Displays engineering team.

source: https://hackaday.io/project/13327-teensy-e-paper-adapter-board
source: https://hackaday.io/project/13327-teensy-e-paper-adapter-board

 

Teensy E-Paper shield

Books You Should Read: The Soul of A New Machine

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We wholeheartedly agree with Hackaday!

If there was one book that describes what it means to be in the trenches of a cutting edge design, that book is The Soul Of a New Machine. Tracy Kidder’s Pulitzer prize-winning book has been an inspiration to thousands over the years. Soul is the story of the creation of the Data General Eclipse…

via Books You Should Read: The Soul of A New Machine — Hackaday

Books You Should Read: The Soul of A New Machine

DIY Vector Network Analyzer

fustini, , , 4 Comments

What to do when a piece of test equipment is too expensive?  Henrik Forstén decided to design and build his own:

Cheap homemade 30 MHz – 6 GHz vector network analyzer

source: http://hforsten.com/cheap-homemade-30-mhz-6-ghz-vector-network-analyzer.html
source: http://hforsten.com/cheap-homemade-30-mhz-6-ghz-vector-network-analyzer.html
source: http://hforsten.com/cheap-homemade-30-mhz-6-ghz-vector-network-analyzer.html

Vector network analyzer (VNA) are used to measure scattering parameters of high frequency circuits

source: http://hforsten.com/cheap-homemade-30-mhz-6-ghz-vector-network-analyzer.html
source: http://hforsten.com/cheap-homemade-30-mhz-6-ghz-vector-network-analyzer.html

Since I can’t afford even a used VNA I decided to make one myself with a budget of 200€, tenth of what they cost used and about 1/100 of what they cost new

source: http://hforsten.com/cheap-homemade-30-mhz-6-ghz-vector-network-analyzer.html
source: http://hforsten.com/cheap-homemade-30-mhz-6-ghz-vector-network-analyzer.html

The design files and source code are available on GitHub:

githubTtl/vna

 

 

DIY Vector Network Analyzer

PDX Maker Week open house

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We’re very excited for the PDX Maker Week on September 10th to 17th in Portland!

pdxmkwk.png

Please join us at our OSH Park headquarters for an open house on:

Friday, September 16th

6pm-12am

OSH Park

311 B Ave, Suite B

Lake Oswego, OR 97034

Map:

Source: https://goo.gl/maps/LvJURhNo49G2
Source: https://goo.gl/maps/LvJURhNo49G2
Source: https://goo.gl/maps/LvJURhNo49G2

Uber:

From Downtown Portland:

uber-ride

From Portland International Airport (PDX):

uber-pdx

Public Transit:

From Downtown Portland:

pdx-bus

From Portland International Airport (PDX):

Screenshot from 2016-08-18 20-26-51

PDX Maker Week open house

Capacitive touch with Teensy

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The Teensy 3 and Teensy LC have several pins that can be used as capacitive touch inputs.  I designed this board in KiCad to experiment with cap touch buttons:

Teensy LC cap touch demo

teensy-touch-combo

Order from OSH Park

I used the CAPSENSE_CIRCLE component and footprint from the Wickerlib KiCad library to create the cap touch buttons:capsense-combo

source: https://github.com/pdp7/teensy-touch/tree/master/hardware
source: https://github.com/pdp7/teensy-touch/tree/master/hardware
source: https://github.com/pdp7/teensy-touch/tree/master/hardware

Bill of Materials:

GitHub

 

Capacitive touch with Teensy

SHARP Memory LCD and Teensy

fustini, , , , , 3 Comments

I created this board in KiCad to try out a SHARP memory display with the Teensy LC:

Screenshot at 2016-08-24 01-21-03

Bill of Materials:

Design Files:

Source: https://plus.google.com/photos/+DrewFustini/albums/6319926590582577217
Source: https://plus.google.com/photos/+DrewFustini/albums/6319926590582577217
Source: https://plus.google.com/photos/+DrewFustini/albums/6319926590582577217
Source: https://plus.google.com/photos/+DrewFustini/albums/6319926590582577217
Source: https://plus.google.com/photos/+DrewFustini/albums/6319926590582577217
Source: https://plus.google.com/photos/+DrewFustini/albums/6319926590582577217
Source: https://plus.google.com/photos/+DrewFustini/albums/6319926590582577217

Shared Project:

SHARP memory display and Teensy LC

85f58bd4f89e130b8273481f97f92d28

Order from OSH Park

 

SHARP Memory LCD and Teensy