As our own Elliot Williams laid out, many people think that soldering is a key skill for electronics, but we don’t as often think about desoldering. Even if you are perfect in your technique, there’s always the chance you’ll put in a bad part or have a part fail later and it will need replacement. [Robert] has a short video showing his method for removing through-hole components and you can see it below.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen it, of course. In fact, it is very much like using hot air, although it doesn’t require hot air, just extra solder and a regular iron. Of course, if we knew that connector was bad, we’d have been tempted to cut each pin apart and remove them one at a time. Heating a joint and then slamming your hand on the bench can work wonders.
If you’ve sold items on Tindie, you may find it entertaining that something you made or provided has made its way to place X, Y, or Z. Perhaps you’ve even thought it would be fun to have some sort of map to track these geographic statistics. I know I have, but the assumed work involved in generating such a map always made it seem out of the realm of (realistic) possibility.
In reality, it’s not hard at all; you can easily generate a custom Google Map of your sales locations by following the instructions provided by Nick Pisarro, @highenergybeams on Twitter
OSHWA is looking for a Chair to the annual Open Hardware Summit set for April 22, 2022 in NYC @ NYU. This is an excellent opportunity to help shape the first in-person Summit since 2019, as well as to connect with the Open Hardware Community.
The Summit Chair helps to oversee the annual Open Hardware Summit. They work with OSHWA’s Executive Director, the Speaker Chair, and venue staff to produce the Summit. The Summit Chair is also an ex officio member of the OSHWA board for the duration of the position.
The Summit Chair is a paid, part-time position of $10,000. It begins in September of 2021 and concludes in early May of 2022. The Open Hardware Summit Playbook establishes milestones that allow for flexible time commitments in the months leading up to the Summit. The Chair should expect to be on site and work full days on April 20, 21, and 22 of 2022. As we approach the Summit dates, the time commitment of the position will ramp up. OSHWA pays travel expenses related to the Summit.
We’re pretty touched by this acorn! A powerful and versatile capacitive touch sensor by Microchip that provides 7 channels of touch input on a single chip with a large variety of configuration which make it ideal for all kinds of touch projects.
The AT42QT1070 breakout communications over I2C and features two Sparkfun QWIIC/ Adafruit STEMMA QT compatible connectors for a solderless interface to get you up to speed faster.
We’ve helped take the development guesswork out of your hands by providing two easy to use libraries in Python and Adruino! The python Library is available to be downloaded through pip, or through the Adafruit CircuitPython Community bundle.
Why did you make it?
I made this because I thought it would be a fun way to bring a really well featured capacitive touch IC to an easy to use form factor.
What makes it special?
It has two Stemma/Qwiic compatible connectors meaning you can use it with your favorite Adafruit and Sparkfun microcontrollers.
When you’re just learning to sketch, you use graphite. Why? It’s cheap, great at training you to recognize different shades, and most of all, it’s erasable. When you’re learning, you’re going to make mistakes, and un-making them is an important part of the game. Same goes for electronics, of course, so when you’re teaching someone to solder, don’t neglect teaching them to desolder
We could argue all day about the best ways of pressing the molten-metal undo button, but the truth is that it’s horses for courses. I’ve had really good luck with solder braid and maybe a little heat gun to pull up reluctant SOIC surface-mount chips, but nothing beats a solder sucker for clearing out a few through-holes. (I haven’t tried the questionable, but time-tested practice of blasting the joint with compressed air.)
For bulk part removal, all you really have to do is heat the board up, and there’s plenty of ways to do that, ranging from fancy to foolish. Low-temperature alloys help out in really tough cases. And for removing rows of pinheaders, it can help to add more solder along the row until it’s one molten blob, and then tap the PCB and watch the part — and hot liquid metal! — just drop out.
Yes, we’re still in a pandemic and yes, these types of events are still happening over videoconference and not in meat space. But you know what? That means that so many more people have the opportunity to show up and show off their hacks! As long as 1 PM PDT is within your personal uptime, that is. Maybe you can make an exception if not?
The remote Bring-A-Hack held way back in April was packed with awesome people. Now is your chance to join in! You all have awesome projects from the last few months (we’ve seen a lot of them on these very pages), so come show them off to the hacker elite from around the globe. You know the deal: it really doesn’t matter what level your project is on, so don’t worry about that. As long as you’re passionate about it, we’d love to see it and hear all about the problems you had to overcome and yes, even the mistakes you made. You never know what knowledge you might have that can push someone else’s project over the finish line.
The state of open source hardware is strong. In the eleven years since the first Open Hardware Summit we have seen open hardware grow, with new communities creating new hardware for new uses around the world. Hundreds of pieces of open source hardware have been certified as compliant with the Open Hardware Definition from countries on every continent except Antarctica.
A wide range of companies have been built and grown on the foundation of open source hardware. Dozens of Ada Lovelace Fellows have helped to diversify the open hardware community. Nonprofit organizations in academia, conservation, science, medical, and more have helped to broaden the impact of open hardware in innumerable ways.
The results of the community survey makes it clear that people come to open hardware for a range of reasons and use open hardware to address a range of needs. However they start with open hardware, once they start using it they are hooked. Community members study designs, adapt them, and build upon existing designs in order to achieve their goals. Open hardware is used in teaching, the development of commercial products, and everything in between.
What are you waiting for? Click over, check it out, and let us know what you think. While the state of open source hardware is strong in 2021, we think it may get even stronger in the future.
We're excited to announce the State of Open Hardware 2021!
Beginning right now, the 2021 Hackaday Prize challenges you to Reimagine Supportive Tech. Quite frankly, this is all about shortcuts to success. Can we make it easier for people to learn about science and technology? Can we break down some barriers that keep people from taking up DIY as a hobby (or way of life)? What can we do to build on the experience and skill of one another?
For instance, to get into building your own electronics, you need a huge dedicated electronics lab, right? Of course that’s nonsense, but we only know that because we’ve already been elbow-deep into soldering stations and vacuum tweezers. To the outsider, this looks like an unclimbable mountain. What if I told you that you could build electrics at any desk, and make it easy to store everything away in between hacking sessions? That sounds like a job for [M.Hehr’s] portable workbench & mini lab project. Here’s a blueprint that can take a beginner from zero to solder smoke while having fun along the way.
The MCP3564 is a 24-bit sigma-delta ADC with support for up to eight single-ended, or four differential channels. It supports extensive oversampling depths, flexible MUX front-end, circuit burnout detection, adjustable gain, Vref from [0v – 3.6v], and optional internal oscillator.
The board is available with or without high-accuracy external oscillator. If included, the oscillator frequency is fixed at the maximum rate for this part (19.6608 MHz).
OSH Park 