The BioAmp EXG Pill is now certified Open Source Hardware:
BioPotential amplification on your finger tip!
BioAmp EXG Pill is a small (2.54 X 1.00 cm) and elegant Analog Front End (AFE) board for BioPotential signal acquisition that you can use with any 5v Micro Controller Unit (MCU) with an ADC. It is capable of recording publication-quality BioPotential signals like ECG, EMG, EOG, and EEG without the inclusion of any dedicated Hardware/Software filter.
OpenSCAD is a fantastic free tool for 3D modeling, but it’s far less intuitive to use for non-programmers than mouse-driven programs such as Tinkercad. Powerful as it may be, the learning curve is pretty steep. OpenSCAD’s own clickable cheat sheet and manual comes in handy all the time, but those are really more of a reference than anything else. Never fear, because [Jochen Kerdels] had quite the productive lockdown and wrote a free comprehensive guide to mastering OpenSCAD.
[Jochen]’s book opens with a nice introduction to OpenSCAD and it’s user environment and quickly moves into 10 useful projects of increasing complexity that start with simple stuff like wall anchors and shelf brackets and ends with recursive trees.
There are plenty of printing tips along the way to help realize these projects with minimum frustration, and the book wraps up by covering extra functions not expressly used in the projects.
Read more “Guide To Mastering OpenSCAD Costs Roughly The Same As OpenSCAD”…
This new device on Crowd Supply can wirelessly connect your Peloton bike to third-party apps, fitness watches, and more:
Free Your Cycling Power & Cadence Data!
The Data Fitness Connector (DFC) data broadcaster is a Bluetooth device that allows Peloton bikes to communicate with fitness watches, head units, and apps—a feature that’s not available on stock Peloton bikes. It reads power and cadence data in realtime, through a cable connected to your bike, and broadcasts them to nearby devices, including those built around non-Peloton platforms like Zwift and Garmin. This allows you to enjoy the built-in functionality of your bike while simultaneously utilizing features and services that depend on third-party platforms.
Who Wants to Ride a Bike in Walled Garden?
Interested in the fitness data you produce? Want more control over who else has access to those data? Prefer not to be locked into a particular platform? If you have a Peloton bike, then DFC is for you.
We like to pretend that our circuit elements are perfect because, honestly, it makes life easier and it often doesn’t matter much in practice. For a normal design, the fact that a foot of wire has a tiny bit of resistance or that our capacitor value might be off by 10% doesn’t make much difference. One place that we really bury our heads in the sand, though, is when we use bipolar transistors as switches. A perfect switch would have 0 volts across it when it is actuated. A real switch won’t quite get there, but it will be doggone close. But a bipolar transistor in saturation won’t be really all the way on. [The Offset Volt] looks at how a bipolar transistor switches and why the voltage across it at saturation is a few tenths of a volt. You can see the video below.
Read more The Imperfect Bipolar Transistor — Hackaday
We excited to see this Raspberry Pi Zero RF Video Modulator on Crowd Supply:
Dust Off That Old TV
PiMod Zero brings old tech back to life by allowing a Raspberry Pi Zero to display color or B&W video – and play audio – on vintage televisions. It provides a super-compact way to watch old movies, play retro games, present digital art, or navigate your operating system using any television that receives standard NTSC broadcasts on VHF channels 2 and 3 (55.25 MHz and 61.25 MHz).
In the past, you would have needed a cumbersome RF modulator box to adapt the HDMI signal from a Pi Zero. Now, with this convenient HAT snapped on top of your Pi Zero, no additional dongles are required. In fact, once the Pi is powered up, the only other cable you need is a piece of coax to connect PiMod Zero to your TV.
Configuring the Raspberry Pi to output composite video and stereo audio to PiMod Zero is extremely simple. Handy scripts and thorough documentation will be available in our GitHub repo.
Get ’em while they’re hot: a new session of HackadayU just opened with classes from three fantastic instructors and seats are filling up fast.
Introduction to Antenna Basics — Instructor Karen Rucker teaches the fundamentals of antenna design as if it were your first year on-the-job. She’ll cover the common types of antenna designs and the fundamentals of radio frequency engineering that go into them. Begins Thursday, May 6th.
Raspberry Pi Pico and RP2040 – The Deep Dive — Instructor Uri Shaked guides the class through the internals of the RP2040 microcontroller, covering system architecture, hardware peripherals, and dipping into some ARM assembly language examples. Begins Wednesday, May 5th.
Designing with Complex Geometry — Instructor James McBennett helps you up your 3D modelling game with a course on using complex geometries in Grasshopper3D (part of Rhino3D). Dive into Non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) and go from simple shapes to incredibly complex objects with a bit of code. Begins Tuesday, May 4th.
Each course includes five weekly classes beginning in May. Being part of the live class via Zoom offers interactivity with the instructor and other attendees. All tickets are “pay-as-you-wish” with a $20 suggested donation; all proceeds go to socially conscious charities.
For the benefit of all, each class will be edited and published on Hackaday’s YouTube channel once this session has wrapped up. Check out our playlists for past HackadayU courses, or watch them all in one giant playlist.
You might also consider becoming an Engineering Liaison for HackadayU. These volunteers help keep the class humming along for the best experience for students and instructors alike. Liaison applications are now open.
Read more New HackadayU Classes
From Evil Genius Labs on Tindie:
Fibonacci128 – 86mm disc with 128 WS2812B RGB LEDs
Fibonacci128 is a beautiful 86mm circular disc with 128 WS2812B-Mini 3535 RGB LEDs surface mounted in a Fibonacci layout.
I have created several LED art pieces in Fibonacci patterns. They are all very labor intensive to create, and so are fairly expensive and limited in quantity. I wanted to come up with a Fibonacci layout that was at least slightly easier to create, and therefore more affordable.
I have RGB LEDs in just about every form they come: strips, strings, rings, discs, etc. The LEDs on most discs are arranged in very regular rings. Fibonacci64 is different. The LEDs are arranged in a Fibonacci distribution. The makes the layout very organic and seemingly messy. But with the proper animation, spiral patterns emerge with spectacular results.
Each of the 128 WS2812B-Mini 3535 RGB LEDs has its own decoupling capacitor built in to reduce noise. The top and bottom of the PCB are large 5V and GND planes, to allow for the large amount of current required by the 128 LEDs. Two separate three-pin headers are provided. One for 5V, Data In, and GND, and the other for 5V, Data Out, and GND. The Data Out pin can be used to connect to even more LEDs.
OSHWA announced during the Open Hardware Summit on Friday that:
Certified open source hardware is now in 47 countries! And every continent except for Antarctica.
C’mon Antarctica!
Have open hardware to certify (it’s free)?
Originally tweeted by oshwa (@oshwassociation) on April 9, 2021.
OSH Park 