Hackaday Links: July 25, 2012

Ever wonder what CPU dev boards look like?

In the realm of highly confidential hardware, it doesn’t get much more secret than upcoming CPUs coming out of Intel. Somehow, a few CPU dev boards wound up on eBay, and [Leon] was cool enough to save all the pictures (Polish, Google translation, or translate in the sidebar). There are a few ongoing auctions right now, but we’d settle for this LGA 1156 breakout board. So cool.

No, we’re not linking directly to the free stuff

TI is giving away a brushless motor controller powered by a Stellaris ARM processor. [Chris] says he’s ordering one to figure out how to make a Stellaris dev board out of the giveaway. This controller is designed for e-bikes, so at the very least we see a few ginormous UAVs in someone’s future.

More rocket stuff!

One of [Bill]’s older hacks was taking a CVS disposable digital camera (remember that?) and stuffing it into the nose code of an Estes D-powered rocket. There’s a ton of videos of the flights [Bill] put up on YouTube.

On another note, [CyberPunk] built a half-scale model of a swing-wing rocket launched glider (pics: 1, 2, 3, 4). He’s currently building the full-size version capable of carrying RC and video gear and wants some feedback.

So, CAD on a tablet?

[spuder] caught wind of a tablet-based engineering notebook a few people are working on. They’re looking for some feedback on their demo video. We think it’s cool – especially the ability to share stuff between devices – but CAD on a tablet makes us extremely skeptical. Tell them what you think; we’d love to see this make it to our phone.

Now if they only made one for editing WordPress posts….

Test-driven development just got cooler. Here’s a Tamagotchi for Eclipse that you ‘feed’ by going from red to green and refactoring your code. Be careful, because having the same code test as red twice will kill your little code ninja.

And now I’ll rant about you.

A few days ago, I posted [Becky Stern]’s light-up handlebars project, and one comment surprised me. Who says guys can’t sew? It’s time to confront the gender roles that show up whenever sewing is used in a project. I’m doing a tutorial on how to sew a parachute, but I need your help. It’ll be a two-parter: one on how to actually use a sewing machine, and another for how to make a ‘chute. Is there anything else you’d like to see?

45 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: July 25, 2012

  1. The intel pictures are not of dev boards, the links point to test boards, old ones at that. Some are for wafer probe, others for packaged parts, but these were used in whatever production tester they used at the time, not as development breakout boards.

  2. My mother was a very avid home dressmaker and I think I learned to sew and weave before most anything else, and I strongly suspect that it opened the door to DIY, electronics, speaker cabs, musical instruments, programming, and just about anything.

    The primary message is that you can make your own stuff if you gain the skills, and one skill worth having in your bag is a bit of needlecraft and textiles. I was thrown some electronically sqwarking fluffy bird toys that had stopped, and some unpicking and re-sewing was part of gaining access to some simple fixes (in all of them the fragile wire to the floating switch contact had broken – simple).

    1. I received my sample kit today. Unfortunately the processor is a BGA which makes it just about useless. It may be that it only omes in this form factor, but I don’t see many tinkerers or professional devs for that matter having the resources to do one-off BGA work.

  3. I’m a man (at least i was the last time i checked!) and I can use a sewing machine, overlocker etc etc. Its a must have skill for any serious hardware hacker, sooner or later you are gunna want to join 2 flexible mediums together with thread!

    As for learning to use a sewing machine, get one and give it a go, mind your fingers though!

  4. I’m sorry to say that I think you will be sadly disappointed by the free motor driver. This is a sample kit…keyword being sample. If you order this you will get one of each of the following:

    LM5101B – 100V MOSFET Driver
    LM3S8971 – Stellaris® Integrated Motor Control/Driver
    AMC1200 – Isolation Amplifier

    These are discrete ICs not finished boards…

    1. That’s a shame. I saw “sensorless” and had visions of hooking the kit up to an old vehicle alternator and having some fun with it. Ah well.

      So what gives with the limit of one kit per customer? IIRC, TI’s standard terms are a maximum of 3 pieces of each part (which you can get around by specifying different temp. grades/packages).

  5. sewing and indeed knitting and manly. if you can’t knit and sew how would a sailor repair nets and or sails? no women on board. If you want to call a 17thC seaman effeminate, but beware of the knock down punch and/or use of a cutlass. Also, more currently, the SAS survival kit contains needle and thread and it’s not just for sewing limbs back on. Again, if you want to call Bear Grills and his friends women, you go right ahead, I’ll hold your coat while they teach you a lesson.

    I’d go as far as to say, if you can’t knit and sew you have no right calling yourself a man.

  6. “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
    ― Robert A. Heinlein

    1. Specialization is for insects… and very rich men.

      Learn to farm humans (as if you were an ant farming aphids) and you pretty much don’t need any other skills. In fact, Hacking humans is such a rewarding and useful skill that some families have cultured it in their young for generations.

      Mind you, I appreciated Heinlein at the time, but by the 1970’s, his best days were past and almost everything he wrote was soft-core porn.

    2. I can agree with Heinlein except for the dieing part. Dieing should be put off as long practical. Why worry about being gallant about it? You’re going to be dead after that task is done why care if they say “he was an asshole,but he did die gallantly though” or not?

  7. There are some really terrible UI for sewing machines. Dials have multiple settings with the same label, labels are numerical with no description of function, the pictograms are not that great. There are quite a few combinations of settings that will just wad up or snap the thread with no clear indication of what needs to be changed. My girlfriend got tired of me stomping around yelling “Should I use setting 1 or setting 1 on dial 2?” and got me a digital machine for my birthday.

    I would love to see some smart sewing machine company open up their digital machines to be open source or at least have a public API for the stitches.

    I put the nice servo in the same box as one of the gifted sewing machines at the local hacker space, it has yet to mate. I’m hoping that an XY table to make embroidery happens too.

    And I know they make barbie pink machines with flowers on them so I wouldn’t mind a tonka safety yellow or black with chrome and flames painted on the side.

    1. Its an old i7 9xx and a slow one at that so this isn’t particularly special. People were speculating that Intel would release the 6 core Gulftowns as i9 but they just put them at the top of the i7 range.

      Engineering Sample chips don’t always mean good things either. Years ago that meant unlocked multipliers but thats no longer true.

  8. Back when I was in junior high school (in the early 80s) they actually taught useful skills like sewing and how to run a lathe. I have done plenty of sewing over the past 30 years, but only recently started using a metal lathe again. Turns out that by the 10th grade I had learned just about everything needed to make rockets entirely from scratch. I did not realize this until just a few years ago.

    1. In the late 90s, I was lucky enough to go to a school that was built up in the 70s. I learned to cook, sew, woodwork, paint, stain, sand, weld, spot-weld, cast metal, and rebuilt a single-cylinder engine.
      By the end of grade 9, I had built my own motor scooter. It went 27MPH on 6 inch rims ;)

      I’m working through college in electronics now, and I currently sit on a seat cover I sewed last month.

      Teaching these skills to students is far more important than teaching them to fake it through a standardized test.

  9. Having a sewing machine and some yards of duck cloth around is really handy for making your own soft cases for projects. I made some sleeves for my portable test equipment (logic probe, multimeter, etc).

    Also it came in handy when I had to alter my suit pants 4 hours before a wedding.

  10. Okay, the TI chips need a single or 3-phase input?
    So, where is that on an e-Bike? Would these e-Bikes have a boom to attach to overhead trolley wires?

    And, Yes, I own and operate a sewing machine.

  11. I never said men can’t sew, I said most men don’t have a sewing machine, I think that’s statistically correct.

    Also this http://hackaday.com/2012/07/21/diy-globars-for-nighttime-bike-visibility/#comment-712974

    I deliberately chose my words (sans the spelling mistake of saying ‘sowing’ instead of ‘sewing’)

    Nevertheless I’m not mad at Had for bringing it up and trying to break through such gender-role stuff.

    And last but not least: most if us also don’t have lasercutters :/
    (I also see those used a lot all over the web as a required item for projects).

  12. Oh and on sewing; on discovery channel and such they sometimes have those shows where they restore or pimp up cars and it’s always a guy who sews the leather seats and interior roofing and such, and I’m always duly impressed by their amazing skill.

  13. Frostline kits for making outdoor gear (at very reasonable prices)is a sorely missed business! You got precut fabric, clear instructions, even the thread. They openly said that men do better sewing the kits than women. You see, the men know that they don’t know and read the instructions. The women think that they already know and blaze ahead, unencumbered by any instruction stuff. Funny, eh?

    I’ve sewn their tents, sleeping bags, jackets, gators, even a dog backpack. Legs and sleeves were cut long, and you got fitting instructions included. I’m very tall and love having legs and sleeves that fit me! Like I said, sorely missed.

  14. Men already have access to internet pornography, if they learn to cook and sew what will we need women for!? Nah, I’m kidding, its a good skill, all boys should learn to sew and all girls should learn to solder.

  15. Lot of guys can sew, some even know how to knit :). It is not a problem to hold 2 pieces of cloth together and running them through a sewing machine. The problem lies in cutting the cloth correctly and holding it together correctly so the result looks good and is not twisted.

  16. I made my own sleeping bag and tent from kits sold at rayjardine.com . The only way to get ultra-ultra-lightweight is sewing yourself so I bought a machine for 15 Euros and fixed it myself. Still had to proof I’m manly enough to repair stuff ;)

  17. anyone receive the ti combomotor — i ordered one 7/25 i would get status updates from time to time — at one time it was canceled — just got an email sunday morning at 7 am and said it was shipping on the 7th of nov — any one receiver theirs yet

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