A History Of SparkFun Prototypes

January 13, 2009 by Eliot 3 Comments

sparkfuntoys

If you haven’t checked out SparkFun Electronics’ prototype collection yet, you’re missing out. They unearthed many of their old prototypes and published them to show what kind of mistakes could be made. You’ll see plenty of errors and get hints on what to look for while developing your own hardware. This pairs well with their Design for Manufacture post. Along with the pile of broken board iterations, they also walk through how the company developed. Finally, they specifically cover the individual iterations of the BlueSMiRF.

One of the interesting modules in the gallery that never saw full release was the SparkFun Toys line pictured above. The individual units used the standoffs as the power and data bus. The four posts were arranged so they could only be connected in one orientation: power, ground, TX, and RX. It’s an interesting idea that seems like it might be worth exploring further. SparkFun says that it worked fine, but didn’t feel they had the resources to market it to the intended audience.

Hand Made Triode

January 13, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 29 Comments

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[Claude Paillard] makes his own triodes (google translated) for short wave radios. The site doesn’t have a lot of details itself, but links to entire books on the history of radio tubes and manufacturing of them. [Claude] takes us through the entire process of building a triode in a 17 minute long video. Even if you aren’t into them, this is fascinating. From the looks of it, several of us might only be a pump or two short of being able to cobble one together.

[thanks Dieter]

The Ondestrak

January 12, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 8 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9S9SZswOC0]

If you like the sound of the theramin, you may enjoy the Ondestrak. Based loosely off of the Ondes Martnot, the Ondestrak works by changing the pitch of a continuous note. [Devin_mccutchen] built his using an old gametrak controller. The controller looks pretty cool. We hadn’t seen that one before. Check out a more musical performance after the break.

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Giant Vacuum Tube

January 12, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 20 Comments

gnix

When we saw this giant home vacuum tube, we thought it would go perfectly along side the giant LED lamp . Constructed from spare computer parts, a glass display dome and some EL wire, it is fairly convincing looking. If only he had shaped some characters with the EL wire, we could do a giant nixie tube project.

Illuminato

January 12, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

illuminato

[Matt] sent us this very cool looking project called Illuminato. After brainstorming on how to improve upon the Arduino, and receiving lots of input on his ideas, [Matt] has put together this board that has several nice improvements. It has more I/O, more code space, faster serial communication speeds, built in PWM, and works with existing Arduino shields. Not only does it make these improvements, but it does it with style. The finish is quite nice, the layout is pleasing and it even has two rows of SMD LEDs on the back for some added geek cred. You can see a couple videos of it in action after the break.

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Windows Drivers For PS3 Controllers

January 11, 2009 by Nick Caiello 38 Comments

Recently, a Japanese coder on the DCEmu Forums released Windows drivers for DualShock 3 controllers. While the drivers only support using the controllers over USB and not bluetooth, they do include force feedback and Sixaxis support. Included with the drivers is a configuration tool, and though it appears to be in Japanese there is some explanation of how to use it included in the forum post. We have not tested these personally, but you can try out the drivers for yourself by downloading them from the forum here.

[photo: William Hook]

Putting FD Lenses On A D60

January 11, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 15 Comments

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[Peter] sent in this really slick project where he ads an FD lens mount to a cannon EOS D60. He already had a collection of nice lenses and didn’t want to waste them. After finding some a donor camera for the FD mount, he purchased a cheap D60 to graft it onto. While his first impulse was to simply glue the new mount onto the front of the camera, it was evident that this would hold the lenses too far from the sensor. The camera went under a bit for a while and luckily, no real damage was done to the mirror housing. The final result seems to work very well, there are example galleries available on his site.