The Analog Swiss Army Knife

June 19, 2014 by 33 Comments

11300

While FPGAs get all the credit for being the hip new thing, they are inherently digital devices. Without a proper ADC and DAC, you won’t be delving into the analog domain with your programmable logic. Maxim has just put out a chip that does just that: an analog swiss army knife with 20 pins that are configurable as analog to digital converter, digital to analog converters, GPIO, or any mix of the above.

The MAX11300 includes twenty IO ports, each capable of becoming an ADC, DAC, or GPIO, with pairs of ports capable of being configured as a logic level translator or an analog switch. The ADCs and DACs are 12-bit, with input and output ranges from -10V to +10V.

As a nice little bonus, the chip is controlled over SPI, making this an interesting device for a small “do anything analog” tool we’re sure will hit Tindie or Seeed Studio before the year is out. Luckily for whoever would create such a device, Maxim has a nice GUI for configuring each of the 20 pins on their chip, Of course Maxim already offers an evaluation kit for the MAX11300. It’s $100 USD and is Windows only.

The MAX11300 is available in either 40-pin TQFN or 48-pin TQFP packages (with the larger, easier to solder TQFP shipping later) for about $5.80 USD in quantity 1000, or $11.37 in quantity one.Video below showing off the MAX11300 reading and writing analog values to a few pins, and a good look at the configuration software.

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Astronaut Or Not! Your Vote Matters.

June 19, 2014 by 18 Comments

You know that little contest we’re running? The one that sends a grand prize winner into SPACE!

We’re happy to announce that community voting for The Hackaday Prize starts today. It’s an interface that we’ve been calling Astronaut or Not! We have hundreds of prizes to give away and this is your chance to decide who some of them go to.

Best Project Concept

This week we’re voting on the best project concept. Don’t vote on projects based on how much work they have done or how many pictures there are, pick the ones that have the potential to be the the best project. We’ll be sending shirts to the top 10 projects voted on over the next few days.

We don’t want this to be purely a popularity contest, so we’re shaking things up a bit. Instead of voting for a particular project we’re pairing the entries in random head-to-head match-ups, with Hackaday readers deciding the ultimate ranking. Check out the contenders, learn a bit about each project, then choose the one you think is more worthy of The Hackaday Prize.

Submit your entry now to be included!

Astronaut or Not isn’t going to decide the top prizes, all entries will still be reviewed by our various judging panels. We are planning to give away different prizes with each round of voting. So make sure you post your entry right away to get in on these giveaways!

This Useless Machine Now Plays With Fire

June 19, 2014 by 24 Comments

The Useless Machine, Candle Edition

Useless machines are a lot of fun, if not just a little overdone. Looking for a new twist, [bd594] decided to try making one that integrates a candle — it works quite well!

While not quite as impressive as some of [bd594’s] previous projects, like his rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody on old school computer equipment, we like how he used regular DC motors in this design, instead of servos (the easy way).

A PICAXE14M2 microcontroller controls the H-Bridge responsible for the geared DC motors (taken from a Mac floppy drive), and a light sensor checks for the flame. He’s also made use of some NPN transistors to invert some logic levels to show you if you’re running low on I/O pins, its always possible to incorporate some other discrete components like a transistor to achieve your design.

Among others, some great alternative spins on the “useless machine” include the moody useless machine, an even more useless machine (featuring 8 switches!), a pull-string version, and even a rather ridiculous elevator button pressing useless machine!

Stick around to see this one put out the candle (Caution: Very exciting).

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Knitted Circuit Board Lends Flexibility To E-Textiles

June 19, 2014 by 5 Comments

What could be better than sewing a circuit into wearable fabric? How about rolling your own circuit-ready knits? Chicago-based artist and assistant professor [Jesse] has done just that by perfecting a method for knitting solderable circuit boards.

This can be done by hand or with a knitting machine. The basic idea is that 2-3 strands of 34-36AWG bus wire are knitted into mercerized cotton yarn in rows, mimicking a piece of stripboard. Once the knitting is blocked and the component layout chosen, the floating bus wire strands between the rows are cut as you would cut unneeded stripboard traces. When it’s all done, [Jesse] used iron-on backing to protect her skin from scratches and lead transfer.

Her tutorial covers a simple LED circuit with a battery and a sliding switch, though she describes in detail how this can be expanded for more complex circuitry and offers good suggestions for working with different components. She also advocates feeding the bus wire from a spool rack to maintain tension and recommends stretching a piece of nylon stocking over the spool to keep it from unfurling all over the place.

This is the most aesthetically appealing e-textile work we’ve seen since this electro-embroidery piece or this blinky LED necklace, and it’s fascinating to watch the e-textile world unfold. Watch [Jesse]’s short videos after the break where she demonstrates a simple blinky knit as well as a lovely pulsing heart collar.

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Miter Saw Stop Saves Time And Aggravation

June 19, 2014 by 26 Comments

V Wheel Adjustable Miter Saw Stop

Miter saws are great tools for cutting pieces of wood at a variety of angles. If you have ever cut a really long piece on a miter saw there is no doubt you’ve either propped up the extended end on a pile of scrap wood or asked someone to hold the dangling piece so you could get an accurate cut. Doing either is a little hokey and is a general pain in the butt.

[Kram242] started a project that could eliminate these problems and also provides a solution to consistent length cuts of multiple pieces. It’s an adjustable stop that is sure to make miter saw cuts much less annoying.

The rig is extremely simple and consists of a piece of aluminum extrusion, v-wheel carriage and lever-actuated clamp. The movable carriage lets the operator quickly position the stop to ensure the wood is cut at the appropriate location. This stop also makes it easy to cut several pieces of wood to the exact same length.

If we had to make any suggestions for improvements it would be to add supports to the carriage that emulate the saw bed and backstop as well as an adhesive measuring tape guide.

V Wheel Adjustable Miter Saw Stop

Oculus Rift + Head Tracking = The Ultimate Drone Experience

June 18, 2014 by 26 Comments

oculus rift quad

What happens when you strap a stereoscopic camera onto a drone and transmit the video feed directly to your Oculus Rift? A pretty amazing experience, that’s what!

Several students from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology recently finished a term project dubbed Oculus FPV. In it, [Erik Hals], [Jacob Prescott], [Mats Svensson], and [Mads Wilthil] succeeded in combining virtual reality, a head mounted display, and a UAV for a great result.

Drones with cameras are the next big step in search and rescue, remote inspection, and many other use cases in other environments that are typically inaccessible for a human to poke around. What we really like about this project is they also mounted the stereoscopic cameras on a gimbal, allowing for full head movement — this means the pilot can “park” (read “hover”) his drone in remote locations, and then look around, without having to worry about performing complex aerial acrobatics to get the right camera angle.

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Roll With Dicebot, The Tweeting Dice Roller

June 18, 2014 by 5 Comments

dicebot

[David] modernized a 1920’s dice rolling game to bring us DiceBot, a twitter enabled dice rolling robot. DiceBot started with an antique dice tin. The original tin was human controlled. Pushing a button on the side of the tin would spin the bottom, rolling the dice.

It’s a bit hard to push a button from across the world, so [David] added a small motor to spin the tin. He connected the motor to a simple L298 motor driver chip, and wired that up to a Raspberry Pi. The Pi runs a few custom Ruby scripts which get it on the internet and connect to the Twitter API.

Operation is pretty straightforward. A tweet to @IntrideaDiceBot with the hashtag #RollTheDice will cause the Dicebot to spin up the dice. Once things have settled, DiceBot captures an image with its Raspberry Pi camera. The dice values are checked using OpenCV. The results are then tweeted back, and displayed on DiceBot’s results page.

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