Raybeacon 1.4 is out

May 18, 2020 fustiniAfter Dark, AfterDark, Bluetooth, nordic, wirelessLeave a comment

The rayBeacon by Mike M. Volokhov is a Nordic nRF52 on-the-go development kit:

The Raybeacon is full-featured nRF52 based wearable, ultra-low power, multiprotocol development board designed for variety of embedded applications. Due to modular design, the device can be used to build your own production-ready appliance with minimal hardware modifications.

Key features include:

Coin sized – the board is only 25 mm in diameter

Works from a single CR2032 / CR2025 3V button cell

Nordic nRF52 high-end multiprotocol SoC supporting Bluetooth 5.x, Bluetooth mesh, Thread and Zigbee; of your choice:

nRF52833: Cortex-M4F 64MHz, 512KB flash, 128KB RAM, Bluetooth® 5.1 Direction Finding, 105°C temperature qualification

nRF52840: Cortex-M4F 64MHz, 1MB flash, 256KB RAM, Bluetooth® 5.0, ARM TrustZone® CryptoCell cryptographic unit

Automotive grade BOM components – ready for harsh environment

2 x tactile buttons IP67

1 x RGB LED

1 x infrared LED (850 nm) 0402 size

Socket for NFC flex antenna, compatible with Nordic FPC antenna and Liard 0600-00061. Can be configured as extra 2xGPIO.

Programmable through SWD port (removable Tag-Connect socket, on-board solder pads)

1.27mm pitch 2×4 receptacle to connect custom extension boards:

6 x GPIO ports

1 x 12-bit ADC input

pass-through VDD and GND pins

2.54mm pitch 1×8 pin header for fast breadboard prototyping; can be reused as 1.27 to 2.54 adapter

USB interface (on-board solder pads)

Minimal fabrication cost due to simple, two-layers only design

For detailed description, including information on custom boards and source files, please refer to the project repository on Bitbucket. Also, feel free to share your thoughts, or submit a request for a new slice or report an issue!

The #Raybeacon 1.4 is out. Offers round two-layers PCB design for @NordicTweets aQFN73 #nRF52833 and #nRF52840 with USB, NFC, 2 buttons, RGB and IR; works from CR2032. Looks nice #afterdark, now shared at @oshpark https://t.co/AiqLeYM8n0. #KiCad files at https://t.co/Kq7yg6fA7d pic.twitter.com/S4XtSkEiq5

— Mike M. Volokhov (@mishkathebear) May 2, 2020

Flux Capacitor badge add-on

May 15, 2020May 15, 2020 fustiniAfter Dark, AfterDark, badgelife, saoLeave a comment

We really like this “Back to the Future”-themed Flux Capacitor badge add-on (SAO) by Squaro Engineering made with our “After Dark” service (which features clear soldermask on black fiberglass substrate).

Checkout the GitHub repo for more: sqfmi/BTTF-BADGE

The board is also available an OSH Park shared project

Flux Capacitor SAO on @oshpark's beautiful After Dark PCBs! No code required; uses a Schmitt trigger oscillator + decade counter pic.twitter.com/AISdK33OX6

— SQFMI (@sqfmi) May 10, 2020

Ricmohte: Ricoh digital camera using ESP32

March 30, 2020March 30, 2020 fustiniAfterDark, hackadayLeave a comment

Morgan created this remote for a Ricoh digital camera using an ESP32s:

Ricmohte

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:

Hackaday Supercon badge boots Linux using SDRAM cartridge

December 20, 2019January 7, 2020 fustiniAfterDark, ECP5, FPGA, hackaday, linux, superconLeave a comment

https://twitter.com/QwertyEmbedded/status/1207844139636670464

Jacob Creedon designed an a cartridge board that adds 32MB of SDRAM to the Hackaday Supercon badge. Michael Welling just assembled a version of the PCB made with the OSH Park “After Dark” black FR-4 service:

Soldered a SDRAM cart for the Hackaday Supercon badge.

Thanks to @pdp7 and @jacobcreedon for the parts. pic.twitter.com/Gz7PppbPCm

— Michael Welling @[email protected] (@QwertyEmbedded) December 20, 2019

The addition of SDRAM provides enough memory to boot Linux on a RISC-V soft-core in the ECP5 FPGA on the badge. Here’s a screenshot of Linux running:

@pdp7 @jacobcreedon And we are back in business…. https://t.co/uLEhUHvEuw—
Michael Welling (@QwertyEmbedded) December 20, 2019

Read more about “Team Linux on Badge” in this Hackaday post:

A Fantastic Frontier Of FPGA Flexibility Found In The 2019 Supercon Badge

And finally, receiving the biggest applause was Linux-on-Badge: this team used all the badge hacking tricks in the book. The hardware component was a 32 MiB SDRAM cartridge by [Jacob Creedon]. The default badge SOC FPGA bitstream was entirely replaced in order to support a minimalist Linux. Much of the development was done on [Michael Welling]’s computer, guided by the precedence of a LiteX project putting Linux on the Radiona ULX3S. This is a true success story of Supercon collaboration as the team (including [Drew Fustini], [Tim Ansell], [Sean Cross], and many others) came together and worked late into nights, drawing from the massive body of collective expertise of the community.

Watch the demo during the Badge Hacking ceremony (jump to 17m 35s):

Resources:

support for the Hackaday badge has now been merged into Linux-on-LiteX
KiCad design files are available on GitHub: jcreedon/dram-cart
Shared DigiKey cart of the parts
Shared project on OSH Park: Hackaday Supercon badge SDRAM cartridge

ad-sdram — Note: click the “After Dark” checkbox if you want clear solder mask on black substrate

UPDATE:

Demo of Linux-on-LiteX booting on the badge:

I'm excited to boot Linux on the @Hackaday #Supercon FPGA badge, now with upstream support in Linux-on-LiteX: https://t.co/s31jmGJZro

Big thanks to @enjoy_digital, Michael Welling (@QwertyEmbedded), @jacobcreedon, @mithro, @GregDavill, @xobs, and @fpga_dave! pic.twitter.com/EV4G5GnKDa

— @[email protected] (@pdp7) January 7, 2020

Wondering what LiteX is?

LiteX is a FPGA design/SoC builder that can be used to build cores, create SoCs and full FPGA designs

Introducing our “After Dark” black FR-4 service

October 10, 2019December 20, 2019 fustiniAfterDark, hackaday.io, PCB ArtLeave a comment

Our new 2 layer “After Dark” service features black FR-4 substrate with clear soldermask to show off all those beautiful copper traces.

Our “After Dark” service is the same cost as our 2 layer purple PCBs: $5 per square inch, which includes three copies of your design. For example, a 2 square inch board would cost $10 and you’d get three copies of your board. You can order as many copies as you want, as long as they’re in multiples of three.

Aaron (@TwinkleTwinkie) wrote a nice post on Hackaday.io about making:

PCB Art with OSHPark After Dark

Here are some examples of “After Dark” from Twitter:

https://twitter.com/siddacious/status/1180656479566589954

https://twitter.com/mrtwinkletwink/status/1180254542421774337

http://twitter.com/mrtwinkletwink/status/1177259216442134529

This board shows this off pretty well. It's mostly the sheen/texture, rather than color. The masked substrate is shiny, and the cleared substrate is matte. pic.twitter.com/CnAe4T0wCi

— Dan Sheadel (@tekdemo) September 26, 2019