The Pi Pico replacement board in question, assembled, held diagonally in some type of holder

ProPico For Your Pro Pico Needs

January 3, 2024 by Arya Voronova 6 Comments

Ever feel like the Pi Pico board could be doing way more given its footprint? Does it bother you that the RP2040’s ADC quality is even further decreased because of the noisy onboard switching regulator? Miffed about decisions like the MicroUSB socket, the 2MB flash, or lack of the reset button? [Dmytro] brings us an open-source Pi Pico design, sporting the same RP2040 and a fully compatible footprint, but adding a number of improvements to its surroundings.

There’s a good few additions, all of them hacker-friendly – [Dmytro] adds comfortably-spaced reset and boot buttons, a USB-C socket, a dedicated low-noise voltage reference for the ADC, one more LED, and an I2C EEPROM footprint socket that is compatible with FRAM chips. Everything worth preserving is preserved – the pinout stays the same, including the SWD connector, which now sports an extra RESET pin. The bottom side USB testpoints remain, with only the four testpoints changed for more useful signals. Last but not least, the switching regulator is replaced by the venerable 1117 – you lose the ability to power your Pico from two AAs, and the capacitor series resistor requirement isn’t great, but you can easily put one of the drop-in 1117 replacement regulators on there.

What’s great is that the design is fully open-source, with KiCad files available. Want to design your own Pi Pico footprint board, improve upon this one even further, or maybe make a more tailored one? Treat yourself to the GitHub repository! There’s also a pinout diagram and a KiCanvas schematic for all your tinkering needs. We’ve covered drop-in replacements for classic drawer-inhabiting parts like the Pi Zero, for the 7805 (twice!), the 6502 CPU, and even for the DE9 serial port connector. No matter the purpose, they’re always a joy to see.

The controller after the rebuild, looking just like the stock controller but with an external antenna attached

An Extensive Walkthrough On Building Your Own KSP Controller

January 3, 2024 by Arya Voronova 10 Comments

Having a game-tailored controller is a level-up in more ways than one, letting you perform in-game actions quickly and intuitively, instead of trying to map your actions to a clunky combination of keyboard and mouse movements. [abzman] took the Pelco KBD300A, a DVR-intended camera controller panel with a joystick, reverse-engineered it, and then rebuilt it into a Kerbal Space Program controller. What’s more, he documented every detail along the way!

The write-up is so extensive, it’s four separate posts — all of them worth reading without a doubt. In the first post, he describes the original hardware, the process of reverse-engineering it, and a few tips for your own RE journeys. Next, he covers about making his own board, showing all the small decisions he’s had to make, with plenty of KiCad screenshots. If you are on the lookout for designing such a board, there’s plenty to learn!

The original hardware didn’t go down without a fight — the third post talks about taming the seven-segment displays, the onboard joystick, and fighting with the key matrix wired in exactly the way you wouldn’t want. In the end, he shows us how you could tie a controller easily into Kerbal Space Program.

One more piece of hardware liberated, one more win for the hacker world. Whether it’s a Macintosh SE, a classic ThinkPad, or even a generic rotary tool, these upgrades are always a joy to see. If you wanted to learn to do such an upgrade yourself, here’s us showing how you can pull this off with a classic Sony Vaio!

Jana showing the board in action, with a magnetic probe attached to it

Add The Analog Toolkit To Your…Toolkit

January 3, 2024 by Arya Voronova 17 Comments

Analog acquisition tools are super helpful whenever you want to run an experiment, test out a theory, or improve upon your code, and you won’t realize how much you always needed one up until you’re facing a situation where it’s the only tool for the task. Well, here’s a design you might just want to add to your next PCB order — the STM32G4 Analog Toolkit from [Jana Marie].

The recommended STM32G431 is a wonderful tool for the task in particular. For a start, this board exposes nine 16-bit ADC inputs, with six of them capable of differential mode and three of them having the PGA (Programmable Gain Amplifier) feature. There’s also two 12-bit DAC pins, two timer outputs, three GPIOs, and UART with I2C for the dessert. As a bonus, it can work as a PD trigger, giving you higher-than-5V voltages out of USB-C for any experiments of yours.

The board requires only a few components, most of them easily solderable, with the STM32 in the TQFP32 package. The BOM is optimized, the GPIOs are used up to the max, with two spare GPIOs driving an RGB LED using a witty control scheme. There’s even a place to clip an alligator clip, in case that’s what your probing hardware wants! All in all, this is a carefully crafted design certainly worth having on hand.

Make sure to get a few of these made before you find yourself desperately needing one! That said, there’s always a backup option, the venerable ATtiny85.

render of a sample board produced with help of this plugin. it's pretty, has nice lighting and all!

From KiCad To Blender For A Stunning Render

January 3, 2024 by Arya Voronova 34 Comments

We love Blender. It brings you 3D modeling, but not in a CAD way — instead, people commonly use it to create animations, movies, games, and even things like VR models. In short, Blender is about all things art and visual expression. Now, what if you want a breathtaking render of your KiCad board? Look no further than the pcb2blender tool from [Bobbe 30350n].

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen KiCad meet Blender. However, compared to the KiCad to Blender paths that people used previously, pcb2blender makes the import process as straightforward and as quick as humanly possible. Install a plugin for both tools, and simply transfer a .pcb3d file out of the KiCad plugin into the Blender plugin. Want to make the surfaces of your design look like they’re meant to look in real life? Use the free2ki plugin to apply materials to your 3D models. In fact, you should check out [30350n]’s Blender plugin collection and overall portfolio, it’s impressive.

There’s no shortage of Blender hacks – just this year we’ve covered a hacker straight up simulating an entire camera inside Blender for the purpose of making renders, and someone else showing how to use Stable Diffusion to texture 3D scenes at lightning speed. We even recently published a comprehensive tutorial on how to animate your robot in Blender ourselves! Want to give it a shot? Check out this quick and simple Red Bull can model design tutorial.

Thanks to [Aki] for sharing this with us!

The scope, with new knobs and stickers on it, front panel renovated

Explosion-Scarred Scope Gets Plastic Surgery Hackerspace Style

January 2, 2024 by Arya Voronova 9 Comments

Some equipment comes with a backstory so impressive, you can’t help but treat it with reverence. For instance, this Hantek scope’s front panel and knobs have melted when a battery pack went up in flames right next to it. Then, it got donated to the CADR hackerspace, who have in turn given us a scope front panel refurbishing master class (translated, original), demonstrating just how well a typical hackerspace is prepared for performing plastic surgery like this.

All of the tools they used are commonplace hackerspace stuff, and if you ever wanted to learn about a workflow for repairs like these, their wiki post is a model example, described from start to end. They show how they could use a lasercutter to iterate through figuring out mechanical dimensions of the labels, cutting the silhouette out of cardboard as they tweaked the offsets. Then, they designed and printed out the new front panel stickers, putting them through a generic laminator to make them last. An FDM printer helped with encoder and button knob test fits, with the final version knobs made using a resin printer.

Everything is open-source – FreeCAD knob designs, SVG stickers, and their CorelDraw sources are linked in the post. With the open-source nature, there’s plenty of room to improvement – for instance, you can easily put these SVGs through KiCad and then adorn your scope with panels made out of PCBs! With this visual overhaul, the Hantek DSO5102P in question has gained a whole lot more character. It’s a comprehensive build, and it’s just one of the many ways you can compensate for a damaged or missing shell – check out our comprehensive DIY shell guide to learn more, and when you get to designing the front panel, we’ve highlighted a few lessons on that too.

Displays We Love Hacking: SPI And I2C

December 21, 2023 by Arya Voronova 18 Comments

I’ve talked about HD44780 displays before – they’ve been a mainstay of microcontroller projects for literal decades. In the modern hobbyist world, there’s an elephant in the room – the sheer variety of I2C and SPI displays you can buy. They’re all so different, some are LCD and some are OLED, some have a touchscreen layer and some don’t, some come on breakouts and some are a bare panel. No matter which one you pick, there are things you deserve to know.

These displays are exceptionally microcontroller-friendly, they require hardly any GPIOs, or none extra if you already use I2C. They’re also unbelievably cheap, and so tiny that you can comfortably add one even if you’re hurting for space. Sure, they require more RAM and a more sophisticated software library than HD44780, but with modern microcontrollers, this is no problem at all. As a result, you will see them in almost every project under the sun.

What do you need for those? What are the requirements to operate one? What kind of tricks can you use with them? Let’s go through the main aspects.

Continue reading “Displays We Love Hacking: SPI And I2C” →

Hacker Tactic: Internal ESD Diode Probing

December 14, 2023 by Arya Voronova 15 Comments

Humans are walking high voltage generators, due to all the friction with our surroundings, wide variety of synthetic clothes, and the overall ever-present static charges. Our electronics are sensitive to electrostatic discharge (ESD), and often they’re sensitive in a way most infuriating – causing spurious errors and lockups. Is there a wacky error in your design that will repeat in the next batch, or did you just accidentally zap a GPIO? You wouldn’t know until you meticulously check the design, or maybe it’s possible for you to grab another board.

Thankfully, in modern-day Western climates and with modern tech, you are not likely to encounter ESD-caused problems, but they were way more prominent back in the day. For instance, older hackers will have stories of how FETs were more sensitive, and touching the gate pin mindlessly could kill the FET you’re working with. Now, we’ve fixed this problem, in large part because we have added ESD-protective diodes inside the active components most affected.

These diodes don’t just help against ESD – they’re a general safety measure for protecting IC and transistor pins, and they also might help avoid damaging IC pins if you mix. They also might lead to funny and unexpected results, like parts of your circuit powering when you don’t expect them to! However, there’s an awesome thing that not that many hackers know — they let you debug and repair your circuits in a way you might not have imagined.

Continue reading “Hacker Tactic: Internal ESD Diode Probing” →