Ask Hackaday: Bringing Your Design To Market

February 9, 2015 by 19 Comments

While many of us have made and documented our open source projects, not many of us have tried to sell our design to the masses. [Scott] developed, marketed, and “bootstrapped” a cool looking MIDI controller. Now, before you get your jumpers in a bunch – the project is completely open source. [Scott] documented the entire process of not only the design, but the trials and tribulations of bringing it to market as well. Calculating costs, FCC testing and the many other challenges of bringing a consumer electronics device to market are all detailed in his blog. Join me while we look at the highs and lows of his interesting and eventually worthwhile journey.

Putting yourself into a game where orders are in the tens of thousands, with hundreds of thousands of dollars changing hands is not easy when you’re just a guy with an idea and a soldering iron. [Scott] was up for the challenge, however. He quickly realized that much of the margin is spent on advertising and to cover risk. On his last order, some of the paint was chipping off. He had to fix the paint and repackage everything – all at his cost.

He also talks about the learning process of product design along the way. His original idea was to make a volume controller, but couldn’t sell a single one. He was forced to redesign the software into the MIDI controller as it exists today. He tried to launch a Kickstarter, but was rejected. This turned out to be a good thing, however, because he would have wound up kickstarting a product that didn’t work.

For advertising, he relied on Google and made some extremely detailed tutorials for his product. Many of them can be used for other MIDI controllers, and often come up in Google searches. Smart. Very smart.

Be sure to check out the video below, where [Scott] gets into some capacitive touch design theory, and talks about how not to cut your final product in half while on the CNC.

Have any of you ever tried to mass produce and sell one of your designs? Let us know in the comments!

Continue reading “Ask Hackaday: Bringing Your Design To Market” →

Altoids Tin Network Analyzer

February 9, 2015 by 16 Comments

Network Analyzers are frequently used for measuring filters, making them extremely valuable for building radios and general mucking about with RF. They are, however, extremely expensive. You can, however, build one in an Altoids tin with an Arduino Nano, a small screen, and an AD9850 frequency synthesis module picked up on eBay.

The basic idea behind a network analyzer is to feed a frequency into a device, and measure the amplitude coming out of the device, and plot this relationship over a frequency. [Bill Meara] has been a human network analyzer before, changing frequencies and plotting the output of devices under test by hand. [DuWayne] (KV4QB) build a device to automate the entire process.

The block diagram is easy enough – an AD9850 sends a signal to the device, and this is measured by the Arduino with a small amplifier. The signal is measured again when it comes back from the device under test, and all this is plotted on a small display. Simple, and [DuWayne] is getting some very good readings with a lowpass filter and crystal filter made on a small solderless breadboard.

White Oyster Mushroom

Automated Mushroom Cultivation

February 8, 2015 by 22 Comments

Lots of people have developed their own systems for automating the growth of plants. Keeping the environment under tight control leads to better yield, and computers are better than humans at remembering to water the plants regularly. [Kyle] is into growing mushrooms (the legal, edible type) and automating things. This led to his system for automated mushroom cultivation.

We’ve seen an automated system for growing fungi before, but [Kyle]’s project is a bit bigger. He’s built a sealed room for growing mushrooms. The room is sealed with a plastic sheet, using magnetic strips to create a doorway. Within the room, a heater, humidifier, and circulation fan control the environment. Temperature, humidity, and dew point in the chamber are constantly monitored and adjusted as necessary.

The entire system is controlled with a Raspberry Pi and custom software, which is available on Github. GNUPlot is used to generate graphs, which are accessible through a web server. The web interface also allows the parameters of the chamber to be tweaked remotely. Based on the settings, the Raspberry Pi controls a set of relays to keep the chamber in an ideal state.

Hack Allows ESP-01 To Go To Deep Sleep

February 8, 2015 by 21 Comments

The ESP-01 module based on the ESP8266 is all the rage with IoT folks at the moment – and why not. For about 5 bucks, it can’t be beat on price for the features it offers. The one thing that such radios do a lot is suck power. So, it’s no surprise that ways to cut down on the juice that this device consumes is top priority for many people. [Tim] figured out a simple hardware hack to get the ESP-01 to go to deep sleep, effectively reducing its current draw to 78uA – low enough to allow battery powered deployment.

While [Tim] was working on understanding the ESP8266 tool chain (NodeMCU firmware > Lua interpreter > ESPlorer IDE), he realized that some essential pins weren’t accessible on the ESP-01 module. [Tim] built a Dev board on perf board that let him access these pins and also added some frills while at it. We’re guessing he (or someone else) will come up with a proper PCB to make things easier. But the real hack is on the ESP-01 module itself. [Tim] needed to hardwire the ‘post-sleep-reset-pin’ on the MCU to the Reset terminal. That, and also pry off the indicator LED’s with a screw driver! That sounds a bit drastic, and we’d recommend pulling out your soldering iron instead. If you’re one of the unlucky one’s to receive the “magic smoke” releasing ESP8266 modules, then you don’t need the LED anyway.

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Hackaday Links: February 8, 2015

February 8, 2015 by 10 Comments

[CNLohr] is famous for his extremely strange projects, including something that does something with Minecraft that even he can’t describe. Over the years, he’s built up a vast collection of projects that have been both incredible fails and successes. Here’s a video tour of all those projects.

For this week’s edition “Kickstarter is going insane”, you only need to look at the title of the campaign: Tesla Coils for North Korea.

Last week, a few slow scan TV signals were received from the International Space Station. Here’s the reddit thread.

The worst thing about using an Arduino in a semi-professional environment is the IDE. Here’s cuwire, a better IDE.

Wanna see something insane? How about an SSH library written in x64 assembly?

Radio Shack is in its death throes, and since you haven’t gone in the last few years, you might as well head out one last time and pick up some items on clearance. Here’s the list of store closings (PDF) and all 1,784 stores slated to be closed plotted on Google Maps.

Photonic Reset Of The Raspberry Pi 2

February 8, 2015 by 102 Comments

For the past month, the Raspberry Pi 2 has only been available to the Raspi Foundation, and for about 2 weeks, select members of the media who have worn the Raspi 2 on a necklace like [Flavor Flav] wears a clock. That’s not many people with real, working hardware and when a product is released, the great unwashed masses will find some really, really weird bugs. The first one to crop up is a light-sensitive reset of the Raspberry Pi 2.

[PeterO] on the Raspberry Pi forums took a few pictures – with flash – of a running Raspberry Pi 2. It took a little bit of deduction to realize that a camera flash will either reset or turn the Raspi 2 off. Yes, this is weird, and experiments are ongoing.

A short video from [Mike Redrobe] confirms the finding and a reddit thread offers an explanation. U16, a small chip located in the power supply part of the Raspi 2, is sensitive to light. Putting enough photons will cause the Pi to shut down or restart.

There’s still some research to be done, however, I can confirm a cheap green laser pointer will reset a Raspberry Pi 2 when the beam is directed at the U16 chip. This is the chip that is responsible, and this is not an EMP issue. This is a photon/light issue with the U16 chip. The solution to this bug is to either keep it in a case, or put a tiny amount of electrical tape over the chip.

Thanks [Arko] for staying up until an ungodly hour and sending this to me.

hologram

Dead Simple Hologram Effect

February 8, 2015 by 32 Comments

We’ve all seen holograms in movies, and occasionally we see various versions of the effect in real life. The idea of having a fully three-dimensional image projected magically into space is appealing, but we haven’t quite mastered it yet. [Steven] hasn’t let that stop him, though. He’s built himself a very simple device to display a sort of hologram.

His display relies on reflections. The core of the unit is a normal flat screen LCD monitor laid on its back. The other component looks like a four-sided pyramid with the top cut off. The pyramid is made from clear plastic transparency sheets, held together with scotch tape. It’s placed on top of the LCD with the narrow end facing down.

[Steven] then used the open source Blender program to design a few 3D animations. Examples include a pterodactyl flying and an approximation of the classic Princess Leia hologram from Star Wars Episode 4. The LCD screen displays the animation from four different angles at once. The images are displayed up and onto the transparency sheet, which then get reflected to your eyes. The result is an image that looks almost as if it’s floating in space if viewed from the proper angle. If you move around the screen you can see the image from all four sides, which helps to sell the effect. Not bad for a few dollars worth of parts. Continue reading “Dead Simple Hologram Effect” →