I just shamelessly measured all there was to measure and created my own KiCad PCB footprint, along with a schematic component.
Once done, I needed a way to verify it would actually work and fit the LCD, so despite how pointless it is, I created my own breakout board as proof of concept and ordered it from OSH Park.
The Nokia 5110/3310 LCD component and footprint are available on GitHub:
Texas Instruments’ Tiva C LaunchPad showcases TI’s ARM Cortex-M4F, a 32-bit, 80Mhz microcontroller based on the TM4C123GH6PM. The Tiva series of LaunchPads serve as TI’s equivalent of the Arduino Uno, and hovers at about the same price point, except with more processing power and a sane geometry for the GPIO pins. The Tiva’s processor runs five times…
Alex Albino, of the Femtoduino Store, is one of the original sellers on Tindie, with his store officially listed as opening on November 26, 2012. During this time, he’s sold well over 300 of his custom boards, and I was glad to catch up to him to ask a few questions.
Albino, who works as a software and web developer, first got into electronics after his NES was fried in a thunderstorm in junior high, and he got to take it apart. Eventually his interests led him to the Arduino and Fabio Varesano’s work, and multiple hardware platforms over the years.
Albino’s store started with him asking Fabio Varesano if he could sell Femtoduino boards, which have the same outputs as an Arduino Uno in the size of one’s thumb. Since Varesano wasn’t interested in selling them himself, he generously gave Albino permission to run with this design. Albino then went to work assembling and selling these boards, and even made sure to give a portion of the money he made—though he didn’t have to—back to Varesano to promote his open source work.
Of course, these tiny Arduino clones are still for sale, but Albino sells several other items, including the FemtoBeacon wireless IMU (inertial measurement unit) sensor. He even notes his store theme as providing the smallest open source IMU sensors in the world. You can see one in the image above next to a U.S. dime—quite small indeed. He hopes to grow the Femtobeacon business into a full-time job in the future.
Naturally, Albino has bought from other Tindarians in the past, which he says is always fun. He also notes that, “If you sell anything on Tindie, make sure to package carefully, take decent photos, and include videos of stuff in action!” As such, here’s a video of the tiny Femtoduino in action:
Main goal of this project has been creating pretty designed 555 based piano in small form-factor. Many 555 piano are using 9V battery for supply. I use CMOS timer and for timer need only 3V supply.
PCB art is getting better and better every year. This year, though, is knocking it out of the park. In March, Andrew Sowa turned me into money.
More recently, Trammell Hudson has explored the layers of OSH Park soldermask and silk to create a masterpiece.
Now, we’re moving up to full-blown art. Blake Ramsdell worked with OSH Park to create a full panel of art in gold, fiberglass, soldermask, and silkscreen. It’s 22×16 inches, and it’s fantastic.
This article shows how you can use a simple, ultra low current pushbutton, an LED and a few I/O lines to implement pushbutton power switch for an Arduino.
Simply press the pushbutton for a few seconds and the Arduino will power on and run code. Then, push and hold the pushbutton until the LED illuminates and then release the button to switch power off.
Every Friday, we gather ’round the hot air gun over on Hackaday.io, invite some cool people over, and get them to talk about what they do. This is the Hack Chat. It’s become a tradition, and already we’ve had a ton of awesome people walk through our doors.
This week, we’re inviting [Drew Fustini] and [Dan Sheadel] to talk about what OSH Park does, how they became the first place that comes to mind when you need a PCB. They’ll explain why the boards are purple, environmental regulations for PCB manufacturing in the US, shared projects and tips and tricks for creating the perfect board.
OSH Park 