It wasn’t that long ago that if you had an optical microscope in your electronics shop, you had a very well-supplied shop indeed. Today, though, a microscope is almost a necessity since parts have shrunk to flyspeck-size. [Maker Mashup] recently picked up an AD409 and posted a video review of the device that you can see below.

The microscope in question has a 10-inch screen so it is a step up from the usual cheap microscope we’ve seen on a lot of benches. Of course, that size comes at a price. The going rate for a new on is about $400.

If the 10 inch screen isn’t enough, you can connect the microscope to an external monitor. That does disable the onboard monitor, though. The microscope offers plenty of space to solder under and has a removable lens and filter so you can add filters or even put on a wide-angle lens.

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BioAmp EXG Pill is an open source biopotential analog front-end (AFE) module from Upside Down Labs. Based on TL074 quad low-noise JFET-input operational amplifier, the EXG Pill works as a single channel biopotential amplifier that can amplify low magnitude electrical signals produced by our body. The EXG in the name is a placeholder. Replace the “X”, and you get EEG, ECG, EMG and EOG. And yes, the EXG Pill can measure all these signals if you configure it appropriately and use the right firmware. BioAmp EXG Pill can be interfaced to any 5V microcontrollers. The analog output from the module can be sampled by internal ADCs of microcontrollers or external ones.

The project is completely open source, allowing you to get a copy of all the source files, and modify and redistribute them as you wish. BioAmp EXG Pill v1.0 will be soon launched at Crowd Supply. If you want to get your hands on one, be quick to subscribe to the project page at Crowd Supply. Once the project is active, you can pre-order the modules.

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Mr. Blinky created this homemade Arduboy using custom PCB, modules and all through hole parts:

DIY Arduboy GT

For the Arduboy contest I took the opportunity to design a custom PCB for a homemade Arduboy that uses only through hole parts and easy to obtain modules. In addition to that I wanted to make it stand out from other Homemade Arduboys by using some other then usual parts.It uses a Teensy 2.0 as core, a 1.54″ OLED display, 2 x RGB LEDs, a 16MB flash chip for games, a Real Time Clock and has support for two kind of buttons. Below an image that shows all the parts used.

From Glen Akins (@bikerglen):

This project is a single RGB LED that is controlled over USB using a command line interface from a serial terminal window. A PIC16F1459 microcontroller implements the USB communications device class (CDC), processes the commands received from the user, and controls a single APA106-F8 8mm round RGB LED.

The USB CDC causes the PIC to appear as a serial port to the host computer. At this point, any terminal emulator software can be opened to access the CLI, and send commands to control the color and brightness of the LED. The APA106 addressable LED protocol is identical to the Neopixel / WS2812b protocol.

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