Manga Guide To SMD

June 2, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 22 Comments

For those that have always felt a bit treppidatious when approaching SMD, you can relax. Here’s a simple guide to walk you through your first shaky steps into surface mount devices. Distributed freely under the creative common license, the Manga Guide to SMD is an 18 page comic that has a goal of making SMD producers out of all of us. There’s a good visual explanation of what SMT is and why we use it, as well as a thorough walk through of how to solder the tiny devices with your soldering iron. They don’t go into dealing with a small reflow oven in this issue.

If this fits well with your learning style, you might also be interested in the Manga Guide to Electricity.

Making A Miniature X-Ray Tube From Scratch

May 17, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 39 Comments

We know that most of you will have no reason to ever make a miniature X-ray tube. However, we also know that many of you will find this video mesmerizing like we did. [Glasslinger] does a fantastic job of explaining the entire process of creating the mini x-ray tube from, procuring the uranium glass and tungsten stem, creating the filament from scratch, all the glass work, and the testing.

Admittedly, most of us here at hackaday won’t go any further than admiring the craftsmanship, though we’re curious to see what [Adam Munich] has to say when he sees this story.

If you enjoyed the tube construction in the video, be sure to check out [Glasslinger’s] other videos. He makes all kinds of tubes in his shop and usually shares so much information along the process that each one has useful information beyond that particular project. Another crazy part is that he has made most of his own tools, including his glass lathe.

We really shouldn’t have to point out that X-Rays are dangerous. Don’t mess with them unless you have researched how to do it safely.

Getting Started With OpenCV

May 13, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 15 Comments

[Eric Gregori] sent in an article he wrote for EETimes to introduce the concepts behind computer vision to the masses. As a nice little bonus, [Eric] included a VMware image containing Ubuntu and all the packages and examples necessary to write your own OpenCV apps.

There’s a ton of awesome stuff you can do with computer vision – from automated sentries to keep squirrels away, a kitchen that will tell you when to do the dishes, and automating blindness by mounting a laser on a face tracker, there’s a lot of unexplored territory in the area of computer vision.

Included in [Eric]’s VM image are a motion and line detection example app, an ‘optical flow’ example, and a face detection example. There’s enough here to make a few very interesting projects, so hopefully, [Eric]’s VM image and examples will get your next CV project up and running quickly.

Your Guide To Building A Homebrew 6502 Computer

May 10, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 22 Comments

If you’ve ever thought about getting down to bare metal and building a homebrew computer from scratch [Garth Wilson] put up a great primer to the 6502, the same CPU found in Apple ][ computers, BBC Micros, Vic-20s, and the venerable Commodore 64 (a 6510 in the C64, but it’s close enough).

In his guide to building a 6502 computer, [Garth] goes over all the basics – what you want the computer to do, how to decode addresses, and other important technical requirements for getting a homebrew project running.

If that’s not enough, [Garth] directs his readers to the fabulous 6502.org forums where just about every topic is discussed. The guys on the forum have a standardized I2C pinout for the 6502, allowing noobs to easily connect pre-designed keyboards, displays, and storage devices to their projects. There are a ton of tutorials on the 6502.org site, more than enough to get a homebrew project off the ground.

If you’d like to see what you can do with a homebrew 6502, check out the homebrew projects page featuring a 6502 Nixie clock and CLPD-based 65816 single board computer. There’s a treasure trove of information here, just waiting to be pulled from the vine.

Pinball Stomp: Part1

April 27, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

Despite my atrociously short attention span, I’ve always loved pinball. Maybe it is something about all the flashing lights and clunking solenoids. Maybe it is just the simple physics at the center of it all. I’m not really sure. My kids, however, don’t share my enthusiasm. I suspect part of it is that they never wandered through a fog filled arcade in the middle of the night, hopped up on Reese’s Pieces with a shrinking pile of quarters in their pocket. The other part might be the fact that they have gotten used to the Nintendo Wii and the Xbox Kinect (we just got one last week).

Watching them jump up and down playing an extremely simple and repetitive game with the Kinect gave me an idea. I envisioned pinball projected on the side of my house, the kids jumping up and down in front of it to move the paddles. Keep reading to see how I plan to build it and what I’ve done so far. There’s a full video, but also text of the entire thing.
Continue reading “Pinball Stomp: Part1” →

How To Properly Fly With Electronics

April 19, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 14 Comments

Some electronics professionals have to fly relatively frequently. One such person, [Steve Hoefer] shares with us how to properly fly with your exposed wires and bits without getting nabbed by the TSA for suspicion of being a terrorist. The article is fairly in depth with tips on how to handle most situations including being pulled aside and put in a tiny room for questioning. Most of it boils down to the fact that you can’t expect the TSA agents to be experts in everything. They see stuff that is slightly out of the norm, they have to follow up. We’re not talking about pat-downs and body scanners here, we’re talking about circuit boards, duct tape, and battery packs.

One story [Steve] shares is especially humorous. He noted that the servos had been disconnected from one of his robots. He wonders, why disconnect them? If they were suspected of being an explosive, they shouldn’t have messed with them. If they weren’t… why did they un-plug them?

Want A Two Person Self Destruct Button, But Tired Of Pesky Microcontrollers?

April 8, 2012 by Jesse Congdon 18 Comments

We all know that our precious cruisers/warships/assets can not fall into the wrong hands, and what better way to assure that information security than incorporating a self destruct button into the design? While the general premise is simple enough the only real way to make sure some crazy space-virus can’t infect your captain and force him to destroy your ship is to add a two button security system! Wait, what if it’s a computer virus?! Well [Andrea] has it covered with this two hand hand control switch. We guess you could also just use the scheme to flip on a dangerous piece of equipment, since it forces the operator to remove both hands from the machine to operate the buttons, but where is the drama in that?

The buttons are timed using a combination of voltage dividers and caps to activate transistors, one to activate the 555 timer and another to disable the button input after a half second or so. Since it’s all resistor capacitor timing your circuit may require just a bit of tuning (or precision components) to get everything right. There is a bit of an issue with using two people to trigger the output, as the second button actually operates the output relay directly. If the second button is held it will only remain active until the timer’s output is triggered, but if your second in command gets cold feet and releases the button before the core goes thermo, well, you’ll have an embarrassing jog to the escape pods.

Check the video after the jump to see [Andrea] fiddling around with the switch.

Continue reading “Want A Two Person Self Destruct Button, But Tired Of Pesky Microcontrollers?” →