The SoM on an evaluation board, with two LEDs shining, one USB-C cable connected for power and another plugged into the OTG port

New Part Day: X1501 Makes For A Tiny And Open Linux SoM

June 5, 2022 by Arya Voronova 26 Comments

Ever wanted to run Linux in an exceptionally small footprint? Then [Reimu NotMoe] from [SudoMaker] has something for you! She’s found an unbelievably small Linux-able chip in BGA, and designed a self-contained tiny SoM (System on Module) breakout with power management and castellated pads. This breakout contains everything you need to have Linux in a 16x16x2mm footprint. For the reference, a 16mm square is the size of the CPU on a Raspberry Pi.

This board isn’t just tiny, it’s also well-thought-out, helping you put the BGA-packaged Ingenic X1501 anywhere with minimal effort. With castellated pads, it’s easy to hand-solder this SoM for development and reflow for production. An onboard switching regulator works from 6V down to as low as 3V, making this a viable battery-powered Linux option. It can even give you up to 3.3V/1A for all your external devices.

The coolest part yet – the X1501 is surprisingly friendly and NDA-free. The datasheets are up for grabs, there are no “CONFIDENTIAL” watermarks – you get a proper 730-page PDF. Thanks to this openness, the X1501 can run mainline Linux with minimal changes, with most of the peripherals already supported. Plus, there’s Efuse-based Secure Boot if your software needs to be protected from cloning.

More after the break…

Continue reading “New Part Day: X1501 Makes For A Tiny And Open Linux SoM” →

Gaze Inside These Nanopower Op-Amps

June 4, 2022 by Donald Papp 2 Comments

[Robo] over at Tiny Transistor Labs has a fascinating look at what’s inside these modern, ultra low-power devices that consume absolutely minuscule amounts of current. Crank up the magnification, and go take a look at the dies on these two similar (but internally very different) devices.

Texas Instruments LPV801, under the hood.

The first unit is the Texas Instruments LPV801, a single-channel op-amp that might not be very fast, but makes up for it by consuming only a few hundred nanoamps. Inside, [Robo] points out all the elements of the design, explaining how a part like this would be laser-trimmed to ensure it performs within specifications.

The second part is the Texas Instruments LPV821 which uses a wee bit more power, but makes up for it with a few extra features like zero-drift and EMI hardening. Peeking inside this device reveals the different manufacturing process this part used, and [Robo] points out things like the apparent lack of fuses for precise trimming of the part during the manufacturing process.

Seeing these structures up close isn’t an everyday thing for most of us, so take the opportunity to check out [Robo]’s photos. Tiny Transistor Labs definitely takes the “tiny” part of their name seriously, as we’ve seen with their 555 timer, recreated with discrete transistors, all crammed into a package that’s even the same basic size as the original.

3D Printed Flexure Shows Precision In Action

June 3, 2022 by Donald Papp 18 Comments

Here’s an older but fantastic video that is as edifying as it is short. [Topias Korpi] demonstrates a 3D printed flexure with a dial indicator on one end, and an M3 screw on the other. As the screw is turned, the dial indicator moves steadily with roughly a 15:1 reduction between the movement of the screw and the indicator. Stable deflections of 0.01 mm are easily dialed in, and it’s neat seeing it work while the flexure itself shows no perceptible movement. A demonstration is embedded below the page break and is less than a minute long, so give it a watch and maybe get some ideas.

Flexures are fantastic designs capable of a wide variety of physical functions, and just as [Topias]’s demonstration shows, they can be a natural complement to 3D printing. In fact, flexures are an important part of the design and function of JWST’s mirror actuators, which are responsible for making astonishingly small adjustments to each of the space telescope’s 18 mirror sections.

Continue reading “3D Printed Flexure Shows Precision In Action” →

The Thin-Film Flexible 6502

May 21, 2022 by Jenny List 13 Comments

While our attention is mostly directed towards ever smaller-integrated silicon circuits providing faster and faster computing, there’s another area of integrated electronics that operates at a much lower speed which we should be following. Thin-film flexible circuitry will provide novel ways to place electronics where a bulky or expensive circuit board with traditional components might be too expensive or inappropriate, and Wikichip is here to remind us of a Leuven university team who’ve created what is claimed to be the fastest thin-film flexible microprocessor yet. Some of you might find it familiar, it’s our old friend the 6502.

The choice of an archaic 8-bit processor might seem a strange one, but we can see the publicity advantage — after all, you’re reading about it here because of it being a 6502. Plus there’s the advantage of it being a relatively simple and well-understood architecture. It’s no match for the MHz clock speeds of the original with an upper limit of 71.4 kHz, but performance is not the most significant feature of flexible electronics. The production technology isn’t quite ready for the mainstream so we’re unlikely to be featuring flexible Commodore 64s any time soon, but the achievement is the impressive feat of a working thin-film flexible microprocessor.

Meanwhile, if you’re curious about the 6502, we took a look at the life of its designer, [Chuck Peddle].

Put A New Spin On Your 3D Printed Parts

May 19, 2022 by Al Williams 4 Comments

Once you get tired of printing keychains and earbud holders with your 3D printer, you’ll want to design things a bit more sophisticated. How about things that rotate? [3DSage] has a good how-to about how to integrate a simple motor and controller into a few different size boxes. Combined with some 3D printed linkages, these boxes can turn your project — printed or otherwise — into something that spins.

To demonstrate, he created a few cat toys, played with an idea for a magic trick, and refit a selfie light into… something. We have no doubt you can find something to do with these little motor modules. The boxes vary mostly in how big the battery packs are. There are also several interesting side pieces like a 3D holder for rechargeable button cells and their charger.

In addition, he also demonstrates how to use the motor as a (rather poor) generator. Attaching a water wheel wasn’t a success until he used compressed air to run the wheel. You would have thought water would have done the trick.

The video stresses that you should solder connections, but you don’t have to. Honestly, we think if you are building moving stuff with a 3D printer, you should probably just go ahead and learn to solder. It isn’t that hard and there are plenty of reasons to learn.

Of course, you could 3D print the motor itself. Adapting motor modules for different uses isn’t a new idea, of course, but it is always great to see more ways to apply basic components.

Continue reading “Put A New Spin On Your 3D Printed Parts” →

Round LCDs Put To Work In Rack Mount Gauge Cluster

May 13, 2022 by Tom Nardi 25 Comments

Like many of you, we’re intrigued by the possibilities offered by the availability of affordable round LCD panels. But beyond the smartwatches they were designed for, it’s not always easy to come up with an appropriate application for such non-traditional displays. Digital “steam gauges” are one of the first ideas that come to mind, so it’s perhaps no surprise that’s the direction [Tom Dowad] took his project. But rather than just one or two gauges, he decided to go all out and put eight of them in a 1U rack mountable unit.

What do you need eight faux-analog gauges for? Beats us, but that’s not our department. Now [Tom] has a whole row of indicators that can be used to show whatever it is he likes to keep an eye on. The fact that the device is actually controlled via MIDI may provide us a clue that there’s a musical component at play (no pun intended), but then, it wouldn’t be the first time we’d seen MIDI used simply as a convenient and well supported way of synchronizing gadgets. Continue reading “Round LCDs Put To Work In Rack Mount Gauge Cluster” →

Screwed Up: Can Technology Be A Substitute For Regular Maintenance

May 6, 2022 by Jenny List 52 Comments

The bane of life for anyone who possesses a well-used pile of spanners is the humble nut and bolt. Durable and easy to fasten, over our lifetimes we must screw and unscrew them by the million. When they do their job they’re great, but too often they seize up solid, or more alarmingly, gradually undo themselves over time due to vibration or thermal stress. There are a host of products such as locking nuts or thread sealant to deal with this problem, but the Fraunhofer Institute have an idea which might just remove the worry surrounding important fastenings. Their work has resulted in a solar-powered bolt with an embedded sensor that phones home when the connection loosens, allowing an engineer to be dispatched with a spanner to tighten it up.

The sensor itself is a washer which reports the force placed upon it, when this reduces an alert is sent. Communication is via Fraunhofer’s own MIoTy low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) protocol, but we’d imagine that one of the many competitor technologies could also serve.

This is an interesting idea that could no doubt result in targeted maintenance catching faulty fastenings early and averting disaster in the infrastructure projects such as bridges and wind turbines that they mention. We worry slightly though, because these types of structures have lives not in the few years of most tech products but in centuries. Will an IoT bolt head sensor still be phoning home in a few decades time, or will the system rely on old bolts being replaced at regular intervals of a decade? It’s not unknown for disasters to be the result of failures in fastenings a century old, so we sincerely hope that authorities in charge of whatever bridge relies on these won’t be tempted to skimp on their replacements. Perhaps a guy with a spanner every few years might be a more dependable option.