Anool is doing live streams every Saturday on KiCad and this week Bradan Lane joined to show how to use Inkscape to create PCB artwork:
Uncategorized
MappyDot Distance Measurement Badge
SensorDots created this standalone wearable badge that will show people how far away they are so they don’t accidentally run into you:
MappyDot Distance Measurement Badge
This project will show you how to create a standalone application with the MappyDot Plus working as an I2C master with an I2C 7 segment display. This example can also be adapted for use with a wide range of different client I2C devices for standalone applications.
Once you have assembled the 7 segment display, you can now hook everything up as per the schematics below. Provided your battery supply outputs a voltage between 2.8 and 5 volts, you don’t need to use a voltage regulator to supply this project. Using 4xAA 1.2v rechargable NiMH batteries is perfect for this setup. If using 1.5V alkaline batteries, you should consider using a voltage regulator (or a diode with a large voltage drop) or opt for only 3xAA alkaline batteries.
Join two KiCad livestreams TODAY
At 9:00 AM US PDT today, April 1st, KiCad leader developer Seth Hillbrand will be hosting a KiCad Community meetup video conference on Jisti Meet:
Last week’s meetup was nice to see and talk with other KiCad users. Let’s do it again this week.
This week, I’m happy to answer questions and I’ll be working through designing a KiCad version of the Medtronic OpenVentilator project (http://www.medtronic.com/openventilator 5). You may have heard that Medtronic (a multi-billion $ company) bought the company that cancelled the original gov’t contract 2 for low-cost ventilators in 2015 and then this week released a “kind of” open source version 3 of their current (not low-cost) ventilator.
In reality, they released scans of the schematics and some word documents for bring-up procedures. I’m going to see if we can turn the scans into a set of useful KiCad schematics + board files. This still doesn’t get to what’s needed to actually recreate more of these ventilators but it is a needed first step.
If you are curious about recreating designs from incomplete schematics, reverse engineering in KiCad or just want to hang out and chat, please stop by.
Then at 12:00 PM US PDT, Piotr Esden will livestream KiCad board layout:
Electronics Let’s Play – iCEBreaker-bitsy update/design work Ep. 3
Use FreeCAD StepUp to verify KiCad footprints
Thanks to Hemal Chevli and Anool Mahidharia for showing how to make a 2D projection from a STEP model using the KiCad StepUp workbench in FreeCAD and then verify it against the footprint in KiCad!
Here is the record live stream:
Jump to around 48:00 to see this technique demonstrated:
Ricmohte: Ricoh digital camera using ESP32
The Ricoh GR II has a remote interface. But like most modern cameras the interface is terrible. It’s a WiFi Access Point that uses a web app. And because most modern phones are terrible, this means you have to juggle between WiFi that doesn’t provide an internet connection and a web app that kinda requires it. The Ricmohte uses the ESP32s WiFi to connect to the camera and issue commands.
There is a Ricmohte demo on YouTube:
Charliewatch by Trammell Hudson
The Charliewatch by Trammell Hudson (@qrs) is in the new Hackspace Magazine:
HackSpace magazine — Issue 29
Introducing The Hackaday Calendar Of Virtual Events
For many of us, the social distancing procedures being used to help control the spread of COVID-19 have been a challenge. We can’t go to our hackerspaces, major events have been postponed or canceled entirely, and even getting parts has become difficult due to the immense pressure currently being placed on retailers and delivery services.…
via Introducing The Hackaday Calendar Of Virtual Events — Hackaday
Embedded.fm podcast with Adam Wolf
Great new episode of the Embedded.fm podcast:
Embedded.fm 324: I’ll Let You Name Your Baby
Adam Wolf (@adamwwolf) of Wayne and Layne (www.wayneandlayne.com) spoke with us about making kits, museum exhibit engineering, working on KiCad, and extraterrestrial art philosophy.
Adam has a personal blog on www.feelslikeburning.com/blog/ as well as a website adamwolf.org. Adam co-wrote Make: Lego and Arduino Projects
If you want to know how to contribute to KiCad libraries, check out their instruction page: kicad-pcb.org/libraries/contribute/
We also mentioned:
Evil Mad Scientist’s Guide to Improving Open Source Hardware Visual Diffs
KiCad Automation Tools: tools to autogenerate KiCad artifacts when committing to git
Kivy: open source Python library for making displays
Cedux: application framework
OKGo Upside Down and Inside Out video and Art in Space project
Hackaday: classes, events, and how you can help
From the Hackaday newsletter:
Hello!
It’s a time of great stress and uncertainty. We are grateful for all of you who have contributed to the global effort so far. Let’s stick together so we stay healthy and hang out in the real life on the other side of all of this.With that in mind, we’ve started a calendar of events and classes. If you’d like to teach a class, host a show and tell, or help to organize our climate change summit, respond directly to this email and we’ll help you get set up.
Upcoming: Show and tell, dance party, DIY Strandbeest Q&A, Quantum computing classes. If you have something set up on your own channel you’d like us to add, let us know!
Many of you want to help: with 3D printers at home and manufacturing expertise, this community is in a position to help out those on the front lines.
There are so many Covid-related projects around the web it’s difficult to know where best to put your efforts. We’ve started a doc (right now, today!) that aims to list all the slack channels, Discords, Hackaday.io projects in the world to help you connect.
So many of the really important jobs are the ones that can’t be done remotely, we salute you medical staff, sanitation workers, delivery folks, and all the many others keeping our world running.
With love, ~Hackaday
State of Open Source Hardware Certification
OSHdata published 2020 report about the State of Open Source Hardware and we [Olimex] are extremely proud to be #1 OSHW contributor at OSHWA certification directory. There is another company from Plovdiv which is #7 – ANAVI Technology, congratulations Leon! You seems to be two positions ahead of Google LLC 🙂
OSH Park 