Hackaday Prize Entry: BeagleLogic

July 19, 2017 by 17 Comments

A few years ago, [Kumar] created the BeagleLogic, a 14-channel, 100 MSPS logic analyzer for the BeagleBone as an entry for the Hackaday Prize. This is a fantastic tool that takes advantage of the PRUs in the BeagleBone to give anyone with a BeagleBone a very capable logic analyzer for not much cash.

This year, [Kumar] is back at it again. He’s improving the BeagleLogic with a BeagleBone on a chip. This is the BeagleLogic Standalone, a 16-channel logic analyzer at 100 MSPS using a single chip.

Like the BeagleLogic from a few years ago, [Kumar] is relying on those fancy PRUs in the BeagleBone that make reading GPIOs and blinking LEDs so easy and fast. Unlike the BeagleLogic shield/cape/whatever, the BeagleLogic Standalone uses the Octavo Systems’ OSD3358 — the BeagleBone on a chip — for the hardware. This incorporates everything in a BeagleBone into a single package, making for a compact unit that still has all the capabilities of the bigger BeagleLogic.

On board this pocket-sized logic analyzer is the OSD3358 itself, the logic analyzer frontend, a gigabit Ethernet port, USB, an SPI Flash, SD card slot and eMMC, and an RTC. An expansion header breaks out a UART, I2C, SPI, two PWM outputs, 6 GPIOs, and a clock to a PRU for experimental synchronous captures.

With a web-based frontend for this Logic Analyzer, this looks like it’ll be a fantastic tool for any hardware hacker, and something that should be reasonably inexpensive.

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The 4-20 MA Current Loop

July 19, 2017 by 114 Comments

The I/O capabilities built into most microcontrollers make it easy to measure the analog world. Say you want to build a data logger for temperature. All you need to do is get some kind of sensor that has a linear voltage output that represents the temperature range you need to monitor — zero to five volts representing 0° to 100°C, perhaps. Hook the sensor up to and analog input, whip up a little code, and you’re done. Easy stuff.

Now put a twist on it: you need to mount the sensor far from the microcontroller. The longer your wires, the bigger the voltage drop will be, until eventually your five-volt swing representing a 100° range is more like a one-volt swing. Plus your long sensor leads will act like a nice antenna to pick up all kinds of noise that’ll make digging a usable voltage signal off the line all the harder.

Luckily, industrial process engineers figured out how to deal with these problems a long time ago by using current loops for sensing and control. The most common standard is the 4-mA-to-20-mA current loop, and here we’ll take a look at how it came to be, how it works, and how you can leverage this basic process control technique for your microcontroller projects.

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Friday Hack Chat: Making Electronics For Education

July 19, 2017 by 5 Comments

For this week’s Hack Chat on Hackaday.io, we’ll be talking with AnnMarie Thomas about making electronics for education. There’s a huge intersection between electronics and education, and whether you’re designing robots for a FIRST team or designing a geometry curriculum around 3D-printed objects, there’s a lot electronics can teach students.

AnnMarie Thomas is an associate professor at the School of Engineering and the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas. She’s the founder of the Playful Learning Lab, and along with her students she’s created Squishy Circuits. AnnMarie is the author of Making Makers: Kids, Tools, and the Future of Innovation. Basically, if you’re looking for someone who knows how to make an educational product, you can’t do any better.

For this week’s Hack Chat, we’ll be talking about how to define how technology and education can intersect. There are ways to define a concept, build and sell an educational product, and how to find a market for a product. If you’ve ever wanted to know what goes into getting students to dive into electronics, this is the Hack Chat you have to sit in on.

Oh, AnnMarie is also a judge for this year’s Hackaday Prize. Neat.

Also on deck for this week’s Hack Chat will be Tindie. Tindie is Supplyframe’s (Hackaday’s parent company) answer to the question, ‘where should I sell my hardware product’. Think of it as ‘Etsy for electronics’, but with less furniture made out of pallet wood, but paradoxically more products that require a California prop 65 warning. Isn’t electronics fun?

Here’s How To Take Part:

join-hack-chatOur Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This Hack Chat will take place at noon Pacific time on Friday, July 21st. Confused about where and when ‘noon’ is? Here’s a time and date converter!

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.

Trackpad with Arduino PS/2-to-USB converter

Raspberry Pi Trackpad From Salvaged Trackpad Plus Arduino

July 19, 2017 by 39 Comments

Old laptops are easy to find and many have a trackpad with a PS/2 interface hardwired into the guts of the laptop. [Build It] wanted one of those trackpads for use in the DIY Raspberry Pi laptop he’s working on. But the Raspberry Pi has no PS/2 input, and he read that a PS/2 to USB adapter wouldn’t be reliable enough. His solution? Wire the trackpad to an Arduino and have the Arduino convert the trackpad’s PS/2 to USB.

After removing a few screws, he had the trackpad free of the laptop. Looking up the trackpad’s part number online he found the solder pads for data, clock and five volts. He soldered his own wires to them, as well as to the trackpad’s ground plane, and from there to his Arduino Pro Micro. After installing the Arduino PS/2 mouse and the Mouse and Keyboard libraries he wrote some code (see his Instructables page). The finishing touch was to use generous helpings of hot glue to secure all the wires, as well as the Arduino, to the back to the trackpad. By plugging a USB cable into the Arduino, he now had a trackpad that could plug in anywhere as a USB trackpad. Watch [Build It] put it all together step-by-step in the video below.

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Paul Horowitz And The Search For Extra Terrestrial Intelligence

July 19, 2017 by 91 Comments

I recently had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Harvard Professor Paul Horowitz. It’s a name you likely recognize. He is best known for his iconic book the Art of Electronics which is often referred to not by its name but by the last names of the authors: “Horowitz and Hill”.

Beyond that, what do you know about Paul Horowitz? Paul is an electrical engineer and physicist and Paul has spent much of his storied career learning and practicing electronics for the purpose of finding intelligent extra terrestrial life.

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This Isn’t The R2-D2 Controller You’re Looking For

July 19, 2017 by 7 Comments

Who loves a good R2-D2 robot? Everyone, but especially young Star Wars fans who — frustratingly — have no problem spotting a controller and spoiling the illusion of an R2 unit brought to life. [Bithead942]’s concealed his R2-D2’s remote and re-establishes the illusion of an autonomous droid — no Jedi mind-tricks necessary.

[Bithead942] prefers to accompany his droid in traditional a Rebel Alliance pilot’s suit, so that gives him a bit of extra space under the jumpsuit to help conceal the controller. Dismantling a Frsky Taranis X9D controller, [Bithead942] meditated on how to use it while so concealed. In a stroke of insight, he thought of his unused Wiimote nunchucks, and launched into the build.

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I Am An Iconoscope

July 19, 2017 by 26 Comments

We’d never seen an iconoscope before. And that’s reason enough to watch the quirky Japanese, first-person video of a retired broadcast engineer’s loving restoration. (Embedded below.)

Quick iconoscope primer. It was the first video camera tube, invented in the mid-20s, and used from the mid-30s to mid-40s. It worked by charging up a plate with an array of photo-sensitive capacitors, taking an exposure by allowing the capacitors to discharge according to the light hitting them, and then reading out the values with another electron scanning beam.

The video chronicles [Ozaki Yoshio]’s epic rebuild in what looks like the most amazingly well-equipped basement lab we’ve ever seen. As mentioned above, it’s quirky: the iconoscope tube itself is doing the narrating, and “my father” is [Ozaki-san], and “my brother” is another tube — that [Ozaki] found wrapped up in paper in a hibachi grill! But you don’t even have to speak Japanese to enjoy the frame build and calibration of what is probably the only working iconoscope camera in existence. You’re literally watching an old master at work, and it shows.

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