Capacitive discharge cutting provides more control than linear transformer versions. A very large capacitor is charged to a precise voltage and then discharged through the material to produce a controlled cut. The same device can also be used for spot and tab welding. A video of copper roof flashing being cut is embedded below. An example of a linear transformer can be found in our our How-to: build your own spot welder.
This antenna tuner is controlled remotely using geared motors and legos. The tuner needed to be closer to the antenna for performance reasons. This created a problem; most of the radio gear is inside while the tuner is outside. The gear motors and Legos combine to form a closed loop servo, operating two air core caps and an inductor switch. A control box placed near the radio is hard wired to the modded tuner outside. We would like to see something like this under gesture control using the Wii MotionPlus + Arduino.
SparkFun has started to release some of their kits as open-source hardware. Projects such as ClockIt, a simple alarm clock, have their schematics, board designs, and source code released under the CC-by-sa license. Although most of their widgets and projects already had example code and schematics available, they are now using an open-source license. They are joining adafruit and EMSL and others in pushing OSH, but it is interesting to see an established company turn to this. Normally, startups do this to encourage early adoption.
[via adafruit]
Update, Saturday July 4th, 2009: All preorders are closed.
A probe cable makes it easy to connect the Bus Pirate to a circuit and get hacking. Good test clips make quick connections on cramped PCBs without causing short circuits. We made two cables for the Bus Pirate v2, keep reading for an overview of our designs and list of part suppliers.
Friday, July 3, 2009 is the last day to pre-order a Bus Pirate. There’s only two days left to get your own Bus Pirate, fully assembled and shipped worldwide, for only $30.
The Great Internet Migratory Box of Electronics Junk, or T.G.I.M.B.O.E.J. has turned one. In the last year, they’ve learned a lot of things. They learned that lots of people are willing to contribute. Hundreds have signed up on the site to participate. Theyve also learned that laziness is the key road block on this project. The boxes that have stalled generally sitcollecting dust, simply because someone hasn’t bothered to ship it off. If you’re curious what kinds of stuff ends up in one of these, check our initial post. There aren’t any guarantees though, it all depends on what people toss in.
[Kyle McDonald] sent in his latest project, a software keylogger that twitters what you type. He wrote it using C++ and OpenFrameworks. It logs each keystroke, then it posts to twitter 140 characters at a time. To protect himself, he set up a whitelist of private strings like passwords and credit card numbers that would be stripped before posting. If the twypewriter followed him, his keystrokes could be recreated.
[thanks Kyle]
Most of the parts we use operate at 3.3volts, but we still run into a lot of old 5volt stuff, and an occasional 2.5volt or 1.8volt part. This post explains how to use the Bus Pirate’s open collector pin mode to interface with parts at different voltages.
We’ve got more details and some example scenarios below the break. Yup, this is another Bus Pirate post. It’ll all be over soon though, because there’s a few days left to get your own Bus Pirate for $30, fully assembled and shipped worldwide.
Continue reading “Mixed Voltage Interfacing With The Bus Pirate”
