These magical creatures crop up out of nowhere and fry your electronics or annoy your ear holes. Understanding them will doubtless save you money and hassle. The ground loop in a nutshell is what happens when two separate devices (A and B) are connected to ground separately, and then also connected to each other through…
Uri Shaked designed this heart-shaped flashlight PCB for his girlfriend’s birthday:
The design files are available on GitHub:
We are always surprised how much useful hacking gear is in the typical craft store. You just have to think outside the box. Need a hot air gun? Think embossing tool. A soldering iron? Check the stained glass section. Magnification gear? Sewing department. We’ve figured out that people who deal with beads use lots of fine…
via [Dave’s] Not Just a Member of the Air Club for Tweezers — Hackaday
On Saturday the Hackaday community turned out in force to try something new. The first Hackaday Unconference was held in three places at the same time, and I was in Chicago and was amazed at the turnout and variety of presentations. The image above sums up the concept quite well, everyone shows up ready to…
via The Think Tank at the Chicago Unconference — Hackaday
Brian Benchoff of Hackaday writes about a surprise PCB he received at the Hackady Unconference in Chicago last weekend:
For the last few years, Hackaday has really been stepping up our game with marketing materials. Our t-shirts and swag are second to none, and last year we introduced the ‘Benchoff Buck’ [..]
Andrew Sowa created the Benchoff Nickel. It’s a visage of yours truly emblazoned on a PCB, rendered in FR4, silkscreen, gold, and OSHPark’s royal purple.
The Benchoff Nickel was created in KiCad using the Bitmap2Component functionality. Planning this required a little bit of work; there are only five colors you can get on an OSH Park PCB, from white to gold to beige to purple (soldermask on top of copper) to black (soldermask with no copper). Luckily, the best picture we have of me renders very well in five colors.
Surface mount PCBs (Part 1) If you look at a circuit board today, you’ll see a beautiful array of surface mount chips and components, including very fine 0.5mm or even 0.4mm leaded devices and BGAs. Some of these ‘exotic’ devices can contain really advanced technology such as high speed ARM microprocessors, flash and high capacity […]
via Working with Surface Mount Components and BGAs — Intelligent Toasters
Teensy creator Paul Stoffregen designed this board to momentarily disconnect a USB device:
This simple board plugs inline with a USB cable. It always passes the 5V power and normally passes the USB data signals. But when you press the button, the USB data signals are momentarily disconnected.
For the last few months I’ve been developing a USB Host Library for powerful but complex EHCI USB port in Teensy 3.6 [..] Reaching over to physically unplug the USB cable gets old quickly! Really, really old, both hands off my keyboard… right when trying to focus [..] I made this handy little board with a proper USB 2.0 high speed mux chip. The control signal is just 3.3V logic, so I might even wire it up to something to automate the process.
There comes a time in every electronic designer’s life when, whether they know it or not, they need an analog filter in their design. If you’re coming from a digital background, where everything is nice and numeric, the harsh reality of continuous voltages can be a bit of a shock. But if you’re taking input…
Joe Crop is a creating a real life version of this famous sci-fi device:
In the true spirit of Star Trek, this communicator badge is completely autonomous, while fitting in the form factor of an original badge
Star Trek was known for dreaming up technology that was deemed nearly impossible given the limitations of the technology for the day. Having a small badge that could send audio across vast distances seemed out of the realm of possibility during the late 1980’s. This project’s aim is to use modern technology to provide nearly all the features of visionary tech, namely:
– Tap to connect and communicate instantly
– Long range (from orbit to planet surface)
– Small form factor (of an original TNG badge)
– Fully autonomous (no cell phone or base station needed)
– No external power source (i.e. battery powered)
joecrop has shared the board on OSH Park:
moosepr designed this small and simple GameBoy-style device using the Raspberry Pi Zero:
GameBoy Zero, but smaller!I’m not overly fond of ‘rats nest’ wires, and I have a bit of an obsession with making things as small as possible, so this is what I came up with.
Tis just an ILI9341 screen, a Pi Zero, 2 navi switches (5 way), and a battery (with charge/protect circuit)
Here the board is in action:
OSH Park 