LoRaWAN And Raspberry Pi Compute Module For A Remote Display

February 8, 2017 by Jenny List 5 Comments

We see a lot of Raspberry Pi projects on these pages featuring all variants of the little board from Cambridge, but with one notable exception. Surprisingly few of them have featured its industrial embedded cousin, the Raspberry Pi Compute Module. The Pi-on-a-SODIMM form factor is a neat idea, but we are guessing that the high price of the development board relative to that of a Model B or a Pi Zero has pushed most people in our community towards the latter choice.

[Andrew Back] has put up a straightforward demonstration project on the RS DesignSpark site that provides an introduction to the Compute Module 3, using it to run a remotely operated display. In addition it uses an RN2483 LoRaWan radio module and The Things Network for communication, which makes it worth a look even if the Compute Module wasn’t of interest. Continue reading “LoRaWAN And Raspberry Pi Compute Module For A Remote Display” →

Free Routing For GEDA

February 8, 2017 by Al Williams 18 Comments

If you lay out PC boards using software, it is a good bet you have an opinion about autorouters. Some people won’t use a package that can’t automatically route traces. Others won’t accept a machine layout when they can do their own by hand. You can, of course, combine the two, and many designers do.

The open source gEDA PCB package (and pcb-md) have an autorouter, but it is pretty simplistic. [VK5HSE] shows how you can use a few tools to interface with the Java Freerouting application, to get a better result. For example, the original router made square corners, while the Freerouting application will create angles and arcs, if configured properly.

Continue reading “Free Routing For GEDA” →

Laser Scanning Microscope

February 8, 2017 by Pedro Umbelino 14 Comments

Remember that feeling when you first looked down on a microscope? Now you can re-live it but in slightly different way. [Venkes] came up with a way to make a Laser Scanning Microscope (LSM) with mostly off the shelf components that you probably have sitting around, collecting dust in your garage. He did it using some modified DVD pick-ups, an Arduino Uno, a laser and a LDR.

To be honest, there’s some more stuff involved in the making of the LSM but [Venkes] did a detailed Instructable explaining how everything fits together. You will need a fair dose of patience, it’s not very easy to get the focus right and it’s quite slow, an image takes about half an hour to complete, but it can do 1300x amplification at 65k pixels (256×256). From reading the instructions it seems that you will need a steady hand to assemble it together, some steps look kind of tricky. On the software side, the LSM uses Arduino and Processing. The Arduino part is responsible for the steering of the lens and taking the LDR readings. This information is then sent to Processing which takes care of interpreting the data and translate it to an image.

The build difficulty level should be between the DIY Smartphone Microscope and the Laser Sequencer Super Microscope. In the end, if everything goes right, you will end up with some cool images:

Continue reading “Laser Scanning Microscope” →

Adding IceZero To The Raspberry Pi

February 8, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 24 Comments

[Kevinhub] noticed there were quite a few FPGA hats for the Raspberry Pi. Instead going out and buying one of these boards like a filthy commoner, he decided to spin up his own FPGA Pi accessory. This IceZero FPGA board combines the best features from other FPiGA boards, and does it in a form factor that fits right on top of the minuscule Pi Zero.

If you think slapping a Lattice FPGA onto a Pi has been done before, you’re right. Here’s a hat for the Pi using an iCE5LP4K-SG48, an FPGA with 3520 LUTs. The CAT Board from Xess has a slightly bigger FPGA with 7680 logic cells, and the FleaOhm has a monster FPGA on board that costs about $70 USD.

[Kevin]’s IceZero is at the lower end of these Raspberry Pi FPGA hats, using a Lattice ICE40HX4K. That’s only 3520 logic cells, but it only costs about $7 USD in quantity one. The board design is a standard two layer board that shouldn’t be too terrible for hand soldering. The boards are shared on OSH Park, should you want to test this little guy out.

This Pi Hat is specifically designed to be used with Project IceStorm, the Open toolchain for Lattice’s iCE40 FPGAs. That means there’s already a few projects out in the wild that can be easily ported to this platform, and already [Kevin] has a logic SUMP example going on his board.

Sci-Fi Contest: Both Wars And Trek Represented

February 8, 2017 by Adam Fabio 7 Comments

Hackaday’s Sci-Fi Contest is in its third week. We’ve passed warp speed and were heading toward ludicrous speed. There is still almost a month to enter before March 6, when the deadline hits and everything goes to plaid. With 22 submissions all vying for 4 great prizes, there is still plenty of room for new challengers!

This contest is all about projects inspired by science fiction. There is a great mix of projects so far.

BB-8 Using Roll-On Deoderant

Star Wars is well represented with [Tech Flare’s] DIY Phone Controlled BB-8 Droid. [Tech Flare] is improving upon an existing BB-8 build. This is a low-cost build, so many of the parts are sourced from everyday items.

A new one for us is the 11 roll-on deodorant balls that are used as internal bearings. We’re not sure how well this robot will work, but it sure will be the best smelling BB-8 out there and you have to admit that is a creative use of easily source materials!

An Arduino is the brains of this Robot. As the title suggests, control comes from a smartphone. There is some creative work happening to fabricate the ball that makes up the body of the bot so be sure to jump in and check out that writeup.

LCARS In Real Life? Yes, Please!

Any Star Trek fan knows what the LCARS interface is [Elkentaro] is bringing LCARS life with LCARS NASA ISS Live Stream Viewer. [Elkentaro] is using a Raspberry Pi to display the International Space Station High Definition Eart-Viewing System (ISS HDEV) experiment.

The ISS is constantly streaming live views of the earth from one of 4 cameras. The Pi takes the stream and adds an LCARS image overlay. Everything is displayed on a 7″ TFT LCD. The same view Wesley Crusher would have seen at the helm of the NCC-1701D.

The overlay really brings the content to life and it has us thinking. If you have a refrigerator with one of those questionably-useful built-in montiors, it needs LCARS. Show us what you got!

Use the Schwartz

So what is missing from this contest? You of course! There is plenty of time left to create a great Sci-Fi inspired project. The deadline is Monday, March 6, 2017, 09:00 pm PST (+8 UTC). We dropped some Spaceballs references at the top of this article but haven’t actually seen an entry for that theme. Who’s going to build a voice-changing Dark Helmet?

[Phaser shown in the main image is the Original Series Phaser which Think Geek used to carry]

Taking The Leap Off Board: An Introduction To I2C Over Long Wires

February 8, 2017 by Sonya Vasquez 99 Comments

If you’re reading these pages, odds are good that you’ve worked with I²C devices before. You might even be the proud owner of a couple dozen sensors pre-loaded on breakout boards, ready for breadboarding with their pins exposed. With vendors like Sparkfun and Adafruit popping I²C devices onto cute breakout boards, it’s tempting to finish off a project with the same hookup wires we started it with.

Image result for i2c sensor array — prototyping starts here, but we’re in danger when projects finish with this sort of wiring

It’s also easy to start thinking we could even make those wires longer — long enough to wire down my forearm, my robot chassis, or some other container for remote sensing. (Guilty!) In fact, with all the build logs publishing marvelous sensor “Christmas-trees” sprawling out of a breadboard, it’s easy to forget that I²C signals were never meant to run down any length of cable to begin with!

As I learned quickly at my first job, for industry-grade (and pretty much any other rugged) projects out there, running unprotected SPI or I²C signals down any form of lengthy cable introduces the chance for all sorts of glitches along the way.

I thought I’d take this week to break down that misconception of running I²C over cables, and then give a couple examples on “how to do it right.”

Heads-up: if you’re just diving into I²C, let our very own [Elliot] take you on a crash course. Continue reading “Taking The Leap Off Board: An Introduction To I2C Over Long Wires” →

Friday Hack Chat: Making And Breaking Hardware With Bunnie

February 8, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 5 Comments

This Friday, February 10th, at 9am PST, Hackaday.io will be graced with one of the greatest hardware creators in recent memory. [Bunnie Huang] will be talking about making and breaking hardware in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat.

[Bunnie] is a nearly peerless hardware hacker. He literally wrote the book on hacking the XBox, developed the Chumby, and developed the Novena, an open source Laptop. He’s torn down the Form 2 3D printer, explored the iPhone’s hackability with [Edward Snowden], wrote the book you want to have on your carryon when flying into Hong Kong, and recently released The Hardware Hacker, a retelling of his adventures in hardware hacking. He’s now working on the Love to Code platform.

[Bunnie] is a bridge across worlds. There is no one else so deeply embedded in the world of electronics manufacturing that is also willing to tell the world about what he’s found. If you want to learn about electronics, the Bunnie Studios blog is a mandatory read.

For this week’s Hack Chat, [Bunnie] will be taking questions from the Hackaday.io community. If you’ve ever wanted to know what it takes to build a few thousand things, this is the guy to ask.

Having trouble figuring out when 09:00 PST is in your local time zone? Here’s a countdown timer!

Here’s How To Take Part:

Buttons to join the project and enter the Hack Chat

Our Hack Chats are live community events on Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. Log into Hackaday.io, visit that page, and look for the ‘Join this Project’ Button. Once you’re part of the project, the button will change to ‘Team Messaging’, which takes you directly to the Hack Chat.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Upcoming Hack Chats

These Hack Chats are a weekly thing, and we have a few more on the books. Next week, we’ll be covering RF design with [Jenny List], and later going over mechanical manufacturing with Fictiv. You can check out all the upcoming Hack Chats on this project.