Watch Blender Plugin Make Animated PCB Traces

December 1, 2021December 1, 2021 fustiniblender, hackadayLeave a comment

Donald Papp writes on Hackaday:

[Staacks]’s Blender plugin to animate growth is behind the sweet animation seen above. It’s an add-on that cleverly makes creating slick growth animations easier when using Blender. It isn’t limited to PCB images either, although they do happen to make an excellent example of the process.
The idea is that one begins with an image texture with a structure showing a bunch of paths (like a maze, or traces on a PCB), and that gets used as an input. The plugin then uses a path finding algorithm to determine how these paths could grow from an origin point, and stores the relevant data in the color channels of an output image. That output is further used within Blender as the parameters with which to generate the actual animation, resulting in the neat self-creating PCB seen above. That PCB isn’t just for show, by the way. It’s the PCB for [Staacks]’s smart doorbell project.

ThunderScope, the Open Source Software-Defined Oscilloscope, Is Coming to Crowd Supply

November 27, 2021November 27, 2021 fustiniLeave a comment

James Lewis writes about the ThunderScope which features to 350 MHz analog bandwidth with 1 G/s sample rate streamed to a PC at 1 Gb/s:

Oscilloscopes can be an electronics engineer’s best friend. These highly versatile tools are helpful, from basic debug to verification tests to compliance checks for standards. Not only are their measurements varied, but so are their form factors. Two common styles are “bench” scopes, which go on a bench, and PC-based oscilloscopes, which, until now, have primarily used USB. An Ontario-based EE graduate student, Aleska Bjelorlic, is launching a Crowd Supply campaign for an open source software-defined oscilloscope. The four-channel ThunderScope has up to 350 megahertz of bandwidth and can stream acquisition data to a PC at one gigasamples per second.

Since we last covered ThunderScope, Bjelorlic and friends have further developed the hardware to a near-final state and have continued extensive work on the software side.
ThunderScope comes in an unassuming box that is just large enough to house 4 BNC connectors, a compensation output, four fully-functional front-end stages, an ADC, and an Artix-7 FPGA to capture the data and transfer it to the PC.

Spaceflight thrilled to launch OreSat0

November 25, 2021 fustinicubesat, oresat, psasLeave a comment

OreSat0 is a fully open source CubeSat satellite system built from scratch by the Portland State Aerospace Society, an interdisciplinary student group at Portland State University. Roughly the size of a tissue box, the tiny satellite includes everything larger satellites have — including solar panels, batteries, a color camera, and an amateur radio system. It’s scheduled to fly onboard our SXRS-6 mission no earlier than January 2022 on SpaceX’s Transporter-3 launch.

Slated to be Oregon’s first satellite, OreSat0 is the first of three satellites being built by the students. It’s mission is to test the modular, expandable, open source, and education-friendly OreSat CubeSat system. With this first flight under their belt, PSAS will build its next, larger satellite for the NASA CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI). This second CubeSat has a global climate science and STEM outreach mission: it will help refine global climate models by measuring the global distribution of high altitude cirrus clouds.

Cast-Away RP2040: ultra-compact feature-rich Pico alternative

November 22, 2021 fustiniLeave a comment

Gareth Halfacree writes on Hackster:

Oak Development Technologies has unveiled another board built around Raspberry Pi’s incredibly popular RP2040 microcontroller: the compact, castellated, surface-mountable Cast-Away RP2040.
“Cast your project fears away with the Cast-Away RP2040, a small and easy to use RP2040 dev board designed to take your project to the beach,” writes Oak’s Seth Kerr of his latest board design. “This board uses the popular Raspberry Pi RP2040, a dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller.”

Perfect purple prototypes from @oshpark with beautiful silk detail. pic.twitter.com/KbX10Eiq2D
— oak dev tech (@oakdevtech) November 20, 2021

Hackaday Remoticon: What’s Happening Right Now

November 19, 2021November 19, 2021 fustinihackaday, RemoticonLeave a comment

Hackaday Remoticon is live now! Watch all of today’s talks on the live stream and interact with everyone by joining Discord.

All talk and schedule information is available on the conference webpage, but here are the things you don’t want to miss (all times are Pacific time zone):

11:10 am | Keynote: Elicia White
5:15 pm | Hacker Trivia: https://youtu.be/uRpUdQi31tg
6:15pm | Bring-a-Hack: Remoticon ticket holders will receive an email on how to join, we’ll also share that info in the Discord

The Hackaday Remoticon 2 Badge: An Exercise In Your Own Ingenuity

November 17, 2021 fustiniLeave a comment

Jenny List writes on Hackaday:

The twin challenges of the pandemic and now the semiconductor shortage have been particularly hard on the designers of event badges, as events have been cancelled and uncertain supply issues render their task impossible. When an event goes virtual, how do you even start to produce a badge for it? Make the badge and rely on enough stalwarts buying one? Or maybe produce a badge that’s a fancy take on a prototyping board?
For Hackaday Remoticon 2021, [Thomas Flummer] has produced a novel take on the second option by distributing a badge as a set of KiCAD files that can either be ordered from a PCB fab as a prototyping board or used as the canvas for a PCB to use whatever components are to hand. To demonstrate this, he’s produced an example badge that’s a MicroMod carrier.
So if you’d like to chase the full Remoticon experience with a badge there should still be enough time to order a set of boards, but to design your own electronics you’ll need to get a move on. What you might build upon it is up to you, but if you have an ESP32 module lying around you might wish to consider cloning the SHA2017 badge or its successors with the badge.team platform.

Nerdy Anniversary Card

November 14, 2021November 14, 2021 fustiniLeave a comment

MakeItHackin has created an electronic nerdy anniversary card that plays music and features a Love-O-Meter!

This is an electronic Nerdy Anniversary Card which features:

Customizable screens for the special person.
“Minuet in G” song is played through the piezo buzzer.
“Love-O-Meter” detects love. “Secret” mode can be unlocked for extra surprises (requires reprogramming with AVR programmer).
On the back, you can write the special person’s name, anniversary number, and date.
MakeItHackin sticker is included as well as the CR2032 Battery.

“Ouija” ESP8266 Programmer Giveaway

November 8, 2021November 8, 2021 fustiniLeave a comment

“Ouija” ESP8266 Programmer Giveaway!

Got a Halloween project that you think is prize-worthy? Submit any project published in October 2021 with a spooky theme, and you could win a free Ouija-esque planchette PCB that you can use to program an ESP8266-01 module with Arduino code! Plus, you can attach the bare board to an earring hook, keychain, or lanyard for personal tech flair.

Thanks to our awesome friends at OSH Park, 3 winners will each receive a code to order a three-pack of boards in the “After Dark” colorway (which gives the PCB its seasonal black-and-gold aesthetic). Yep, that means one to keep and two to give away – or two to wear and one to use! It’s up to you.

AIS-ILIS1 Ionic Liquid Ion Source Electrospray Thruster

November 6, 2021 fustiniLeave a comment

The AIS-ILIS1 Ionic Liquid Ion Source Electrospray Thruster represents the first generation of micro-ion propulsion development at AIS. The ILIS1 offers unprecedented access to advanced ionic liquid electrospray thruster technology for nanosatellites, bringing this state-of-the-art, high-performance technology to a level that is affordable for any nanosatellite team. The ILIS1 is also the first ever PocketQube-compatible ion thruster to be successfully designed, built, and fired in the field yet.

The ILIS1 takes a new approach towards ionic electrospray by utilizing low-cost CNC manufacturing of the emitters as opposed to conventional micromachining technology. Coupled with high-performance 3D printed parts and readily available components, the ILIS1 achieves unparalleled accessibility and cost reduction. Using highly stable, safe, and well characterized EMI-BF4 fuel, with passive capillary feeding, the ILIS1 elimiates the need for any high pressure fuel feed or complex valving requirements.

Ionic electrospray technology is one of the most promising technologies for low power, higher thrust and ISP performance for nanosatellites. The first round of testing has been completed for the AIS-ILIS1, which has paved the road for the next generation AIS-ILIS2 development.

Read more…

Applied Ion Systems Patreon is now officially LIVE! Are you a space enthusiast who would like to contribute directly to development of advanced EP from the only official open source electric propulsion program out there? Let's pioneer the field together! https://t.co/Nh9mqkSA4M
— Applied Ion Systems (@Applied_Ion) January 24, 2020

OpenTapeout conference this weekend

November 4, 2021 fustiniLeave a comment

Interested in the forefront of open source silicon design?

The OpenTapeout conference is happening this weekend, November 6th and 7th:

In the last few years Application-Specific-Integrated-Circuits (ASICs) have become one of the most interesting fields to work in for Physicists, Computer-Scientists, Electrical- and Nano-Engineers. It was only a question of time before toolchains for the design of ASICs were democratized.
This event is for anyone interested in learning and sharing how to design ASICs with open source tools.

Time to start a revolution. With the spread of open-source-tools, we want to democratize ASICs for all. To stay updated, follow us and check out our website https://t.co/Oh4j98reBQ
— OpenTapeout (@OTapeout) July 9, 2021