Teardown returns to Portland in June 2023

March 31, 2023March 31, 2023 fustiniconferences, crowd supply, hardware hacking, teardownLeave a comment

The OSH Park team had a great time at Teardown in 2018 and 2019. This conference for hacking, discovering, and sharing hardware finally returns this June!

Teardown is about the practice of hardware: prototyping, manufacturing, testing, disassembling, and circumventing, all while having fun. Leave the marketing glitz and talk of venture capital at the door and come prepared to learn and teach. See the full schedule of the previous Teardown held in 2019 or watch the recap video

Just the Facts
Who?	Anyone interested in hardware: engineers, designers, artists, students, teachers…
What?	A three-day line up of talks, workshops, demos, installations, and puzzles
When?	Friday – Sunday, June 23 – 25, 2023
Where?	Beautiful Portland, Oregon on the campus of Portland State University
Why?	Shipping great hardware to you is rewarding, but we miss seeing you in person
How?	With lots of help from our friends, including our partner, CETI

Head over to Crowd Supply to find out more…

The Pocket Integrator, explained

November 26, 2022November 26, 2022 fustiniAudio, crowd supply, MIDI, music, synthLeave a comment

The Pocket Integrator is add-on board for Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operators that lets you play your drum machine like a drum:

Synchronizing your electronic instruments with live music can be hard. Pocket Integrator makes it easy! It’s an add-on board for Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series of hand-held drum machines, that lets you play them like a drum.

Just tap or shake to set the tempo and downbeat of your drum pattern. Keep tapping as long as you like. When you stop, it’ll hold the beat wherever you set it. It’s as easy as clapping your hands!

In the latest Crowd Supply campaign update, Mykle Hansen shares this video which demonstrates who the device works:

Pocket Integrator

July 4, 2022July 4, 2022 fustinicrowd supplyLeave a comment

Mykle Hansen designed this open hardware add-on board that lets you play your Pocket Operator drum machine like a maraca:

Pocket Integrator is a magical, musical add-on board for Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator drum machines. Using a MEMS accelerometer, it lets you play drum patterns and synthesizers by tapping and shaking, just like a handheld percussion instrument. Play your Pocket Operator like a drum!

Tap to set the tempo and downbeat. Keep tapping as long as you like. When you stop, it’ll hold the beat wherever you set it. It’s as easy as clapping your hands! (In fact, it’s like using your hands to clap another pair of hands that magically keep clapping after you stop clapping your hands.)

Read more on Crowd Supply

Learn about open hardware best practices and open science

October 15, 2021October 15, 2021 fustinicrowd supply, oshwaLeave a comment

Tomorrow, Friday, October 15th, Alicia Gibb and Javier Serrano from OSHWA will join Helen Leigh on the CrowdSupply Teardown live stream:

Crowd Supply’s Helen Leigh chats with Alicia Gibb, hardware hacker and open source hardware advocate, and Javier Serrano, who leads a team of electronics designers and Linux kernel developers at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics.
Join them as they discuss open hardware best practices, open source hardware movements around the world and the importance of open hardware for open science.

Tomorrow at noon Pacific/9pm CEST we are hosting a Teardown session livestream with Alicia Gibb & Javier Serrano.

We will talk about open hardware best practices, what open hardware looks like @CERN + why open hardware is vital for open science. Join us!https://t.co/g73Hf1Cxv0
— Crowd Supply (@crowd_supply) October 14, 2021

Hello FPGA Summer Giveaway

August 16, 2021August 16, 2021 fustinicrowd supply, FPGALeave a comment

From our friends at Crowd Supply:

Curious about FPGAs but not sure where to start? We’ve got you covered! We’re teaming up with Crowd Supply, OSH Park, and Mouser to give away 30 Hello FPGA kits this summer and cover prototyping costs for up to five new shield designs.

Design a new Arduino shield for your Hello FPGA kit:

We will select up to five designs of a new Arduino shield for use with a Hello FPGA kit. Limit one proposal per person. Submit proposals with links to documentation via our contact form no later than Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 11:59 PM PDT. Winners will be announced on Friday, September 17, 2021. Winners will receive FREE PCB fabrication from OSH Park and parts from Mouser Electronics for prototypes of their design. Winners commit to submitting a video demonstrating a prototype of their proposed shield design in action no later than Tuesday, November 30, 2021. Selection of winners is at our discretion and will be based on the plausability of the proposed shield, completeness of the design, and the extent to which the new shield showcases the features of the Hello FPGA kit.

BioAmp EXG Pill

May 20, 2021May 20, 2021 fustinicrowd supply, CrowdfundingLeave a comment

The BioAmp EXG Pill is coming soon to Crowd Supply:

Professional-grade analog front-end amplification for ECG, EMG, EOG, and EEG biosensing on one tiny board

BioAmp EXG Pill is a small, powerful Analog Front End (AFE) biopotential signal acquisition board that can be paired with any 5 V Micro Controller Unit (MCU) with an ADC. It is capable of recording publication-quality biopotential signals like ECG, EMG, EOG, and EEG, without the inclusion of any dedicated hardware or software filters. It’s small size allows easy integration into mobile and space-constrained projects, and it’s powerful noise rejection makes it usable even when the device is close to the AC mains supply. Any 1.5 mm diameter wire can be used as a strain-relieving electrode cable, making BioAmp EXG Pill very cost-effective in comparison to other options.

Data Fitness Connector (DFC) update on Crowd Supply

May 15, 2021May 15, 2021 fustinicrowd supply, CrowdfundingLeave a comment

New update for the Data Fitness Connector (DFC) on Crowd Supply which wirelessly connects your Peloton bike to third-party apps, fitness watches, and more:

The DFC Build Process by Jason V

At this point we’re about two thirds of of the way through the campaign, and we’re very excited to report that we’ve hit our funding goal! Thank you!
This week’s update is for the curious minds out there who like to see how things are made. We’re taking you behind the scenes for a look at how early prototypes were put together. The final version of DFC will be made by our manufacturing partner here in the US, but we needed to build a few ourselves so we could test them before ramping up production.
In the time-lapse video below, you can see how a prototype DFC circuit board was built, starting with the application of solder paste atop a stencil, followed by the careful placement of all those tiny little components that make it work. After that, the board was placed in a circuit oven (kind of like a fancy toaster oven), which melted the solder paste and secured everything in place.
Building circuits by hand in this way is an odd mix of calming concentration and frequent frustration, so we’re happy to hand this off to a robotic pick-and-place machine for mass production.

Data Fitness Connector on Crowd Supply

April 18, 2021April 18, 2021 fustinicrowd supply, Crowdfunding, fitnessLeave a comment

This new device on Crowd Supply can wirelessly connect your Peloton bike to third-party apps, fitness watches, and more:

Data Fitness Connector (DFC)

Free Your Cycling Power & Cadence Data!
The Data Fitness Connector (DFC) data broadcaster is a Bluetooth device that allows Peloton bikes to communicate with fitness watches, head units, and apps—a feature that’s not available on stock Peloton bikes. It reads power and cadence data in realtime, through a cable connected to your bike, and broadcasts them to nearby devices, including those built around non-Peloton platforms like Zwift and Garmin. This allows you to enjoy the built-in functionality of your bike while simultaneously utilizing features and services that depend on third-party platforms.

Who Wants to Ride a Bike in Walled Garden?
Interested in the fitness data you produce? Want more control over who else has access to those data? Prefer not to be locked into a particular platform? If you have a Peloton bike, then DFC is for you.

PiMod Zero: Raspberry Pi Zero RF Video Modulator

April 16, 2021 fustinicrowd supply, Crowdfunding, raspberry pi, retro computing, retro gaming, wirelessLeave a comment

We excited to see this Raspberry Pi Zero RF Video Modulator on Crowd Supply:

PiMod Zero

Dust Off That Old TV
PiMod Zero brings old tech back to life by allowing a Raspberry Pi Zero to display color or B&W video – and play audio – on vintage televisions. It provides a super-compact way to watch old movies, play retro games, present digital art, or navigate your operating system using any television that receives standard NTSC broadcasts on VHF channels 2 and 3 (55.25 MHz and 61.25 MHz).
In the past, you would have needed a cumbersome RF modulator box to adapt the HDMI signal from a Pi Zero. Now, with this convenient HAT snapped on top of your Pi Zero, no additional dongles are required. In fact, once the Pi is powered up, the only other cable you need is a piece of coax to connect PiMod Zero to your TV.
Configuring the Raspberry Pi to output composite video and stereo audio to PiMod Zero is extremely simple. Handy scripts and thorough documentation will be available in our GitHub repo.

Crowd Supply: connect Peloton bike to third-party apps and fitness watches

March 4, 2021 fustinicrowd supply, Crowdfunding, fitness, wirelessLeave a comment

Coming soon to Crowd Supply:

Data Fitness Connector (DFC)

The Data Fitness Connector (DFC) data broadcaster is a Bluetooth device that allows Peloton bikes to communicate with fitness watches, head units, and apps—a feature that’s not available on stock Peloton bikes. It reads power and cadence data in realtime, through a cable connected to your bike, and broadcasts them to nearby devices, including those built around non-Peloton platforms like Zwift and Garmin. This allows you to enjoy the built-in functionality of your bike while simultaneously utilizing features and services that depend on third-party platforms.

One of our goals for this project is to make it easier for hobbyists to design and build hardware that interacts with fitness machines, which is why we’re offering a Maker Edition of DFC. Sure, if you’re trying to start the next indoor fitness revolution, you probably have your own hardware team. But what if you just want to crank up the music and cue some heroic lighting when you hit your pace? Or progressively inflate a balloon so you know your workout’s over when it pops? DFC lets you bring your quirky idea to life and take it for a ride on the handlebars.
Or you could do something practical! If you must. Add a dedicated display and use it to chart realtime metrics that Peloton doesn’t display. Or log your raw data offline for the last word in platform independence. Or attach an array of sensors and see how your performance is affected air quality, humidity, and other indoor environmental factors.