Wireless Bootloading

January 28, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 3 Comments

[vimeo= 2976417]

Tired of having to physically connect to your microprocessor to upload new code? Just do it over a wireless connection. [Nathan] takes us through the process of setting up a wireless bootloader for the ATmega168. He is using the XBee base and remote modules for the wireless communication. While people have been doing wireless bootloading with the Arduino already, [Nathan] found that it was common for them to have timeout issues. His remedy was to make his own custom one that is much faster. He’s asking for help though. At this point it is tested and working, but he needs someone with more programming knowledge to help him make it “drop-in” compatible with the Arduino IDE.

Don’t forget to submit projects to our tip line.

5 Cent Tilt Sensor

January 28, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 27 Comments

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This is a 5 cent tilt sensor. We know it cost more than 5 cents, but it is in fact a tilt sensor that utilizes a 5 cent coin. We’ve all done quick hacks to make quick sensors for various projects. We’ve seen tons of them, from stealing springs out of pens and shoving a resistor through them for flexible contact switches, to tin foil touch sensors. This one is new to us though. The design is fairly simple, you insert 4 bits of wire to serve as contacts and the coin will make contact with only two at a time. It isn’t analog, it isn’t extremely precise, but it is super quick and easy. Thanks for sharing [ix].

Thermosonic Wedge Bonding

January 27, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

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In the past, if we’ve been doing smd soldering, we’ve used pretty basic hot plates. This project takes that idea a bit further. Since [kc6qhp] will be using parts that aren’t conducive to soldering, he has to use wire bonding. After locating a fairly cheap wire bonding machine and microscope, he built the heated stage to fit perfectly with his other tools. You’ll notice that he has machined a lip around the heat plate for small custom C-clamps as well as made it adjustable height. Very nice work [kc6qhp].

Ferric Chloride Etching Chemistry

January 26, 2009 by Eliot 14 Comments

[ladyada] has republished an interesting snippet from the synthDIY mailing list. [David Dixon] discusses the actual chemistry behind ferric chloride based home circuit board etching. He concludes that ferric chloride is essentially a ‘one-shot’ oxidant. It can’t be regenerated and can be difficult to dispose of properly. The use of acidified copper chloride is a much better path and becomes more effective with each use, as long as you keep it aerated and top up the acidity from time to time. This etchant solution is actually the result of initially using hydrogen peroxide as an oxidant along with muriatic acid. You can see us using this solution in our etching how-to and while creating the board for our RGB lock. For more information on using hydrogen peroxide, check out [Adam Seychell]’s guide and this Instructable.

Aside: [ladyada] has added the receiver code to the Wattcher project page.

Wattcher, Twittering Kill A Watt Plans Posted

January 24, 2009 by Eliot 20 Comments

You probably saw [Phillip Torrone] and [Limor Fried]’s twittering Kill A Watt earlier this week. It was an entry in the Core77/Greener Gadgets Design Competition. We saw a little bit about how it was assembled, but now they’ve posted a full guide to assembling the hardware. Each Kill A Watt gets an XBee radio that transmits back to a receiver that logs the power usage. The difficult part when putting this design together was the XBee required 50mA when transmitting. This is well above the Kill A Watt’s internal power supply. They remedied this by adding a 10,000uF supercap to act as a rechargeable battery. The daily twittering is just a side-effect of the project. The Kill A Watts transmit every 2 seconds, so you’ll get a very accurate report of your power usage. This is a great project for renters who can’t permanently modify their power infrastructure. Each Kill A Watt can support quite a few appliances since they’re rated for 15A, ~1800W.

Road Sign Hacking

January 24, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 159 Comments

We’ve all seen these on the side of the road and wondered how we could change the message. It turns out that it is actually pretty easy. There’s a keypad inside for programming that is often still set with a default password of “DOTS”. Even if the password has been changed, you can reset it right there pretty quickly. We shouldn’t even need to warn you that it is illegal to tamper with these, so unless there really are zombies ahead, you probably shouldn’t mess with it.

[via Neatorama]

How-to: Bus Pirate V1, Improved Universal Serial Interface

January 22, 2009 by Ian 65 Comments

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We use the Bus Pirate to interface a new chip without writing code or designing a PCB. Based on your feedback, and our experience using the original Bus Pirate to demonstrate various parts, we updated the design with new features and cheaper components.

There’s also a firmware update for both Bus Pirate hardware versions, with bug fixes, and a PC AT keyboard decoder. Check out the new Hack a Day Bus Pirate page, and browse the Bus Pirate source code in our Google code SVN repository.

We cover the design updates and interface a digital to analog converter below.

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