Soldering Small Components For A Video DA

February 10, 2013 by Eric Evenchick 18 Comments

Video distribution amplifiers are used to amplify a video signal and split it into multiple outputs so multiple displays can be driven. They are also used to correct the gain of an incoming video signal. [Andrew] was having trouble with the video signal from an interferometer, and found the issue was caused by a low output gain. His solution was to build his own video distribution amplifier.

The THS7374 appeared to be the perfect chip for this application. It’s a four channel video amplifier IC, and only requires a few passive components to run. The only problem was the package: a 14 pin TSSOP with 0.65 mm pitch. Not fun to solder by hand, especially if you don’t have a PCB.

[Andrew]’s solution was to build his own breakout out of copper-clad board. He worked under a microscope and cut out a pattern for the part, then soldered 30 AWG wire to the pins to make connections. After cleaning off any copper that could cause a short, the board was working, and the video waveform looked great on an oscilloscope.

After testing, even more gain was needed. [Andrew] ended up cascading two of the amplifiers. This method of prototyping doesn’t look easy, but could be worth it when you need a single board.

Hack A Day On Fact Or Fiction With [Veronical Belmont]

February 10, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

Enjoy a fun episode of “Fact or Fiction” with [Veronica Belmont], with guest [me] from Hackaday. The show “Fact or Fiction” generally takes some popular topic and talks to experts who can shed some light on the topic. They’ve had all kinds of intelligent people on, and also me. If you watch a few episodes you’ll see that she tends to let people talk about the science for a bit, but inevitably veers over into “can we actually make this?”, which tends to elicit an awkward and somewhat humorous response from the person being interviewed, because most of the things they’re talking about are pretty outlandish, like portal guns. I enjoyed the one about life on mars, especially when she asks the gentleman how accurate portrayal of martians in movies are, right after he explained that we’re looking microscopic things.

On a completely unrelated note, it is a very very small world. I ran in to [Veronica] at CES a few years ago and we found that both her and her husband both worked in the same office as [Phil Torrone] when Hackaday was just beginning.

Reflow Oven Courtesy Of Hurricane Sandy

February 10, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 7 Comments

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The Makerbar, Hoboken’s Hackerspace, was in desperate need of a reflow oven. Hurricane Sandy did a number on a whole bunch of household appliances, so when [Kush] saw a neighbor throw out a broken toaster oven, the Makerbar crew sprung into action.

The storm waters shorted the electronics board, fried the existing controls, and basically turned the oven into a metal shell with heating elements. It was the perfect platform for a toaster oven – every part that was going to be thrown out was already destroyed.

[Zach] over at the Makerbar ordered the Sparkfun reflow toaster conversion kit along with a few arcade buttons and set to work. After plugging the heating elements into the mains power to make sure they still worked, [Zach] attached these elements to the relay on board the controller. Three arcade buttons were wired up to the controller, and a whole bunch of code was written.

With the included thermocouple, [Zach], [Kush], and the rest of the Makerbar gang now have a very accurate and reliable reflow oven. There’s also settings for Sculpey clay and shrinky dinks, just in case anyone at Makerbar is feeling a bit creative.

Better PWM On The Raspberry Pi

February 10, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 13 Comments

[Thomas] wanted to play around with a few high-power LEDs and a RaspberryPi. LED controllers usually require some form of PWM to change the brightness of a LED, and unfortunately the Pi only has one PWM pin. [Thomas] could have gotten around this with a custom chip or even an Arduino hanging off the Pi’s USB port. He opted to go with software-based PWM, and did so in a way that is far superior to bit banging a pin.

Conventional wisdom says PWM without a real-time operating system is dumb – right up there with starting a land war in Asia. Turning a pin on and off in a while loop will eat up all the processor power in the Pi, so [Thomas] looked for a better way to do things. He came across the ServoBlaster project by [Richard Hirst] that creates pulses of different lengths by playing with direct memory access; [Richard] created a circular buffer that is read every 10μs. With 2000 values in the buffer, he can control eight different pins with very little impact on CPU usage.

For [Thomas], though, [Richard]’s project wasn’t enough. It was originally written for servos and is only able to drive PWM pins up to about 12%. A quick rewrite of [Richard]’s code allowed [Thomas] to control eight pins with PWM varying from 0% to 100% – and be able to do other things with his Pi in the process.

[Thomas] now has a 40 Watt RGB LED powered by a Raspberry Pi burned into his retina, and the satisfaction of a really clever way of giving the Pi more PWM pins.

Building A Better NES

February 9, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 41 Comments

NES

The first model of the NES wasn’t all that great; just ask any one of the millions of six-year-olds who independently discovered blowing on a cartridge made it work. The second NES hardware revision, the top loader, was better but only had RF video output. These are the only two pieces of hardware that can play every single NES game, and even with years of hacking NES-on-a-chip devices, there’s still much to be desired.

[low_budget] over on the AtariAge forum decided he’d had enough of these hardware compromises and decided to build the first new NES hardware revision in 20 years. It’s got all the best features from both of its predecessors and a few new features not seen on any existing NES. There’s support for composite and RGB video generators, new and better amplifiers for the audio, no lockout chip, and a top loading cartridge slot to prevent bent pins on the 72 pin connector.

While [low_budget]’s prototype works, it only does so by salvaging the CPU and PPU from a working NES. There’s still much work to be done on the prototype, but even if we’ll have to destroy our beloved NES, we’d love to get our hands on one of these improved consoles.

Pinoccio Web Rover

February 9, 2013 by Jeremy Cook 7 Comments

Before assuming that the title should be “web crawler,” just shush your shussins’ and check out the video after the break. The Pinoccio, as previously noted, is a board in development as a sort of web-enabled by default Arduino. This makes it perfect for a project like this one where a little rover is controlled from 10,000 Kilometers away, or around 6000 Miles for those of us that dwell in the US.

This setup uses a cell-phone accelerometer in Brazil to allow control of this robot in Nevada. Although close, the control isn’t quite real time, so that has to be accounted for. Something like this could be easily used for a telepresence ‘bot.

If you want to build your own, the assembly time is estimated at 1 hour. Instructions, as well as source code can be found on their page after the video. Although the Pinoccio board won’t be available until at least this summer, maybe this will give someone inspiration to try something similar in the mean time! Continue reading “Pinoccio Web Rover” →

Adventures In 3d Printing: Our First Week With The LulzBot AO-100

February 9, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 57 Comments

Recently, we acquired a LulzBot AO-100. It was given to us, free of charge. After having it for about a week, I’ve figured out enough that I feel I can finally share my thoughts, impressions, and experiences. I will be completely honest about the machine. It was given to us, which is insanely awesome, but hey, I have to share the real information with the readers.

When we first started looking for a printer, we decided we didn’t want to build one from scratch. While that might seem initially to be the opposite of Hack a Day, there is a reason. I simply can’t build every tool I use from scratch. I have projects in mind that could benefit from a 3d printer, and I want to work on those. This meant that I was looking for a pre-assembled unit. Many people asked for an article on getting a reprap going, so we started to consider reprap based kits as well.

When LulzBot contacted us, I was initially skeptical. I mean, the name is lulzBot. Is this an internet troll? Is this somehow connected to Lulzsec, the hacking group? Did they seriously name their printer LulzBot? Well, as it turns out, they are legitimate. Not only that, we’ve seen them before, they are also AlephObjects, who sent in the video of the wall o’ printers working. Why did they name it LulzBot? The answer was basically, for the lulz. It is worth noting that [Jeff] has been a strong proponent for free software for a long time and that Lulzbot is built from the ground up to be completely open and shareable. You can go to the website right now and download the list of parts as well as all source code and configurations.

As you read further, please remember that the model they sent me was not their newest. They don’t even sell this model any more. Technically speaking, it is roughly 2 generations behind.

Continue reading “Adventures In 3d Printing: Our First Week With The LulzBot AO-100” →