Microcontroller Lectures By Bruce Land

December 21, 2015 by Brandon Dunson 18 Comments

[Bruce Land] is no stranger to Hackaday as you can see from his Hackaday.io profile, if you aren’t familiar with his work [Bruce Land] is a Senior Lecturer at Cornell University. One of the courses he teaches: Digital Systems Design Using Microcontrollers (ECE4760) was recorded in 2012 and again in 2015 and the videos are available on YouTube.

AVR to PIC32

[Bruce Land]s previous set of ECE4760 lectures (2012) used an Atmel ATmega1284 AVR Microcontroller for the laboratory portion of the course. This means the lectures are also based on the AVR and if you haven’t watched them through a few times you should do. The recently updated set of lectures is based on the Microchip PIC32, more specifically the Microstick II.

Open Curriculum

You can follow the ECE4760 rabbit hole as far as you want with all the available content provided by [Bruce Land] on his ECE4760 course webpage. You can watch the ECE4760 lectures on YouTube, try your hand at the homework assignments, and work through the labs at your own pace.

New Lectures = New Shirts

One area that [Bruce Land] is unmatched and arguably uncontested is his shirt collection, we are continuously impressed with these original works and wish they were available for purchase (wink/hint c’mon [Bruce] throw us a bone!). If you don’t know why the rest of us aren’t able to obtain the wonderful shirts [Bruce Land] wears you clearly aren’t subscribed to [Bruce Land]s YouTube channel, you should rectify that wrong and log some ECE4760 lecture hours starting with the video after the break.

Immersive Theatre Via IBeacons With Dustin Freeman

December 18, 2015 by Brandon Dunson 2 Comments

Combining backgrounds in math and theater, [Dustin Freeman] works on immersive, interactive theatrical experiences. During the day [Dustin] is a Spatial Interaction Engineer at Occipital, who makes the Structure Sensor. In his spare time [Dustin] works on digital theatre projects that bring the theatre goer far past the traditional row of seats.

The concept of immersive theatre is similar to ‘escape the room’ challenges and choose your own adventure experiences, in that the participants control the outcome of the experience by making decisions from the information supplied to them. [Dustin] explains in his talk that the feeling of trying to beat the clock that exists in escape the room challenges is not helpful in Floodlight’s The Painting. Floodlight is a theatre production company and The Painting is the immersive theatre experience put together by [Joshua Marx], professor of acting at San Jose State and [Dustin Freeman] who presented this 2015 Hackaday SuperConference talk.

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A Pragmatic Guide To Motors With Jonathan Beri

December 17, 2015 by Brandon Dunson 8 Comments

[Jonathan Beri] is a Maker of all sorts, with an affinity for robots, APIs, and Open Source. By day he works on making Android & iOS SDKs easier to use and by night he can found begging a PID controller to “just work already.” Recently he contributed to, “Make: JavaScript Robotics,” printed by Maker Media (2015).

[Jonathan] covers a lot of ground during his motors talk at the 2015 Hackaday SuperConference. He discusses brushed DC, stepper, servo, and brushless motors. Although just scraping the surface of each type of motor [Jonathan] touches the important details you can use to determine which type of motor is best for your project. The slide show he has put together has quite a bit of information and tips for beginners that might go overlooked when choosing a motor. For instance a list of 30 attributes that should be considered when selecting a motor. Included in that list are the 7 attributes [Jonathan] places priority on when he chooses a motor for one of his projects. We’ll delve deeper into that after the break.

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Piezoelectric Transformers Are A Thing, Have You Used One?

December 12, 2015 by Brandon Dunson 41 Comments

Cheap piezo buzzers are everywhere. They’re so cheap that they can be used in novelty birthday cards. Applying an alternating voltage across a piezo crystal makes it expand and contract, and fixing this crystal to a metal disk gives the piezo speaker its characteristic tinny sound that is anything but pleasant.

The piezoelectric effect works the other way too, and piezo elements are very useful as vibration sensors. Simply put one of your voltmeter leads on each of the piezo element’s wires and touch the element with your hand or knock it against your bench. You should see a voltage spike on your voltmeter which will change in magnitude with the amount of force you use when touching the element.

This ability to change shape when a voltage is applied and to create a voltage when they’re deformed is the basis of the piezoelectric transformer (PZT). While searching for a high voltage/low current transformer, Hackaday reader [Josh] was surprised to find a piezoelectric solution. He didn’t say whether he decided to use a PZT in his project but he did link us to a decent PDF on the subject.

In a PZT, two piezo elements sit next to each other. The primary is made up of multiple thin layers that expand horizontally and press on a single secondary piezo element. The more and the thinner the primary layers, the more force is exerted on the secondary, and the more voltage it develops. There are a few equations involved which you can check out in the PDF linked above that go over this concept in painful detail if you’re into that sort of thing.

If you have never played with piezo element you should add one to your next parts order. They are cheap and easy to experiment with. We have seen piezo elements used in DIY speakers, sonar projects, and even as the sensor for an atomic force microscope, but we have yet to see a piezoelectric transformer in a hack. Surely someone has used one in a project they worked on, leave us a link in the comments if you’re the person we’re talking about.

The Death Of Surplus

December 7, 2015 by Brandon Dunson 148 Comments

I thought the surplus electronics market in Dallas was a byproduct of local manufacturing, after all we have some heavy hitters in our back yard: Texas Instruments, Maxim (Dallas Semiconductor), ST Micro (at one time), Diodes Incorporated. If we widen our radius to include Austin (3 hours down the road) we can make a much more impressive list by including: National Instruments, Freescale Semiconductor, better yet I’ll just insert the graphic I’m pulling data from right here:

texas_companies_map — Texas Electronics Map Source: Texas.gov

Granted, not all of these are companies that manufacture silicon, or even have manufacturing facilities here in Texas. That doesn’t necessarily matter for surplus to exist. Back to my point of where surplus originated. While I wasn’t completely wrong (these companies certainly have helped contribute to the surplus electronics market) the beginnings of surplus storefronts date back to World War II. Did anyone see that coming? Neither did I. However it does make sense, the US government would have had a large stock of “stuff” to get rid of at the end of the war.

Enter the sale of government surplus all over the nation, usually near air force bases. So this is how the more generalized concept of a surplus shop came to be in existence; mix in the domestic manufacturing of electronics in the 1970’s and we have electronics surplus shops aplenty.

My First Hand Experience

I didn’t really appreciate how valuable my local electronics shop was until watching Beers in Bunnie’s Workshop – Workshop Video #36. If you haven’t seen the video you only need to know that [Ian] of Dangerous Prototypes and [bunnie] of Andrew [bunnie] Huang are standing in [bunnie]s work-space in Singapore drinking beer and talking about the lab that is [bunnie]s life. You with me now? Okay, there is a point in the video where the two discuss the ability to run down the street and buy a connector as something only available in Singapore or Shenzhen. Let me briefly pause here to clarify that I’m not comparing my local electronics shop to the Shenzhen market or Sim Lim Tower in Singapore, only stating that I too can hold parts in-hand before purchasing them. I’m also not [brandon] of Dangerous Prototypes or Andrew [brandon] Huang, clearly.

I do however have an electronics selection at my disposal that is unmatched until you get to the west coast shops. I went on a bit of an adventure with the owner [Jim Tanner] of my local shop [Tanner Electronics] to take some pictures of the retail floor and a few behind the scenes (warehouse) shots that you can check out after the break.

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Deployable By Design With Bunnie Huang, Nadya Peek, And Joi Ito

December 2, 2015 by Brandon Dunson 10 Comments

We follow [bunnie]’s blog as he posts interesting and usable information quite regularly. [bunnie] posted about a video of a recent talk he did at MIT Media Lab with Nadya Peek and Joi Ito. This was in lieu of his monthly “name that ware” competition, which is worth looking into as well.

The talk is focused on small volume manufacturing and the experiences that the speakers have under their collective belt is large enough that the conversation takes a turn from how to do things in practice, to the theory and technique of manufacturing on a philosophical level.

[bunnie] prefaces the conversation with an explanation of some of the design and manufacturing processes involved when working on the circuit stickers project. He talks about the importance of testing the product and the complex test jig that is required to quality check a simple (in comparison to the test jig) product. [bunnie] shares an overview of the project timeline and where some extended design stages might be found in unexpected places.

The design and manufacturing process is discussed on many levels throughout the talk. Among the points that are insightful, we certainly found ourselves a little jelly of all the time [bunnie] gets to spend in Shenzhen.

If you’re not familiar with [bunnie]’s blog you can check it out at www.bunniestudios.com. Pro Tip: you can spend the better part of your workday browsing topics in the sidebar on the right.

We have covered the MIT Media Lab before, including a trip to Shenzhen that is discussed in the Media Lab talk by [Joi] and [bunnie]. Another interesting interview at SXSW earlier this year by [Sophi Kravitz] who spoke with [Sunanda Sharma] about mediated matter.

Beyond Control: The Basics Of Control Systems

December 2, 2015 by Brandon Dunson 38 Comments

Control systems are exactly what you think they are: systems designed to control something. Perhaps a better way to put it is systems design control the behavior of something. The term “control systems” does an excellent job of being vague and most of us (originally) don’t think too much about it until its brought to our attention or we crash a robotic armature into itself and investigate how that horrifying event was allowed to happened. Usually during this investigation our internal dialog has a loop running that goes something like: “why the hell will the system allow me to manipulate it in a self-destructive way!?!”

What I found was my own ignorance, I hadn’t implemented a proper control system. One could make a case claiming that I hadn’t taken ANY control system into account whatsoever. I jumped in too deep, too fast (sound familiar?) and paid the price of crashing a rotating arm into another part of the system. Luckily, a friend stepped in and repaired the arm for me and metaphorically pointed to a large neon sign on the wall and said “you can’t ignore this”. He walked over to pull the chain dangling beneath the sign, the high voltage energized the gas in the tubes blinding me with the now unavoidably obvious words: Control Systems.

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