[Bunnie] Peeks Inside ICs With IR

March 9, 2023 by Al Williams 20 Comments

If you want to see inside an integrated circuit (IC), you generally have to take the die out of the package, which can be technically challenging and often destroys the device. Looking to improve the situation, [Bunnie] has been working on Infra-Red, In Situ (IRIS) inspection of silicon devices. The technique relies on the fact that newer packages expose the backside of the silicon die and that silicon is invisible to IR light. The IR reflects off the bottom metalization layer and you can get a pretty good idea of what’s going on inside the chip, under the right circumstances.

As you might expect, the resolution isn’t what you’d get from, say, a scanning electron microscope or other techniques. However, using IR is reasonably cheap and doesn’t require removal from the PCB. That means you can image exactly the part that is in the device, without removing it. Of course, you need an IR-sensitive camera, which is about any camera these days if you remove the IR filter from it. You also need an IR source which isn’t very hard to do these days, either.

Do you need the capability to peer inside your ICs? You might not. But if you do and you can live with the limitations of this method, it would be a very inexpensive way to get a glimpse behind the curtain.

If you want to try the old-fashioned way, we can help. Just don’t expect to be as good as [Ken] at doing it right away.

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Stepper Killer Killer Killed, Repair Attempted

March 8, 2023 by Chris Lott 12 Comments

The low-cost servo motor in [Clough42]’s lathe’s electronic leadscrew bit the dust recently, and he did a great job documenting his repair attempts ( see video below the break ). When starting the project a few years ago, he studied a variety of candidate motors, including a ClearPath servo motor from Teknic’s “Stepper Killer” family. While that motor was well suited, [Clough42] picked a significantly lower-cost servo motor from China which he dubbed the “Stepper Killer Killer”.

He does a very thorough post-mortem of the motor’s integrated servo controller, checking the circuits and connections on the interface PCB first. Not finding any obvious problem, he proceeds to the main PCB which contains the microcontroller, motor driver transistors, and power supplies. There is no visible damage, but a check of the logic power supply shows 1.65V where 3.3V is expected. Looking at the board with a smart-phone mounted IR camera, he quickly finds the bad news — the microcontroller has shorted out.

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Hacking A €15 8051-Based Portable Soldering Iron With Custom Firmware

March 7, 2023 by Maya Posch 16 Comments

With soldering irons being so incredibly useful, and coming on the heels of the success of a range of portable, all-in-one soldering irons from the likes of Waveshare and Pine64, it’s little wonder that you can get such devices for as little as 10 – 15 Euro from websites like AliExpress. Making for both a great impulse buy and reverse-engineering target, [Aaron Christophel] got his mittens on one and set to work on figuring out its secrets.

The results are covered in a brief video, as well as a Twitter thread, where this T12 soldering iron’s guts are splayed around and reprogrammed in all their glory. Despite the MCU on the PCB having had its markings removed, some prodding and poking around revealed it to be an STC8H3K62S2, an 8051-based MCU running at a blistering 11 MHz. As a supported PlaformIO target, reprogramming the MCU wasn’t too complicated after wiring up a USB-TTL serial adapter.

Completing this initial foray into these cheap T12 soldering irons is the GitHub repository, which contains the pin-outs, wiring diagrams and further information. Although [Aaron] indicates that he’ll likely not pursuing further development, the mixed responses by people to the overall quality of the firmware on the as-purchased T12 may inspire others to give it a shake.

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A Pi Pico plugged into a breadboard, with jumpre wires going away from its pins to an SPI flashing clip, that's in turn clipped onto an SPI flash chip on a BeagleBone board

Programming SPI Flash Chips? Use Your Pico!

March 6, 2023 by Arya Voronova 10 Comments

At this point, a Pi Pico is equivalent to a bag full of programmers and debugging accessories. For instance, when you want to program an SPI flash chip, do you use one of those wonky CH341 dongles, or perhaps, even a full-on Raspberry Pi with a Linux OS? If so, it might be time to set those two aside – any RP2040 board can do this now. This is thanks to work of [stacksmashing] who implemented serprog protocol for the RP2040, letting us use a Pi Pico with stock flashrom for all our SPI flash chip needs.

After flashing the code to your RP2040 board, all you need to do is to wire your flash chip to the right pins, and then use the serprog programmer type in your flashrom commandline – instructions are available on GitHub along with the code, as you’d expect. Don’t feel like installing flashrom, or perhaps you happen to run Windows and need a flasher in a pinch? [stacksmashing] has a WebSerial-based SPI flasher tool for you, too, and shows it off with a fancy all-the-pinouts board of his own making.

This kind of tool is indispensable – you don’t need to mod one of these CH341 programmers to fix the bonkers 5 V default IO, or keep an entire Linux computer handy when you likely already have one at your fingertips. All in all, yay for one more RP2040 trick up our sleeve – this SPI flashing helper joins an assortment of applets for SWD, JTAG, UART, I2C and CAN, and in a pinch, your Pi Pico will also work as a digital and analog logic analyzer or an FPGA playground.

Yesterday’s Drill Press Packed With Tomorrow’s Upgrades

March 5, 2023 by Sonya Vasquez 10 Comments

Those who hibernate in their workshops have a habit of re-imagining their relationship to tools. And [Marius Hornberger] is no exception, but the nine upgrades he’s added to his grandfather’s old drill press puts this machine on a whole other level.

In proper storytime fashion, [Marius] steps us through each upgrade, the rationale, and the time and effort that went into crafting the solution. Some of these upgrades, like a digital readout (DRO), add modern features to an old-school device. Others, like an oil mist cooling system and a compressed air chip blower, borrow from other machines with similar setups. Some, like the chip guard, are nice personal touches. And a few, like the motorized table with automatic clamp, transform the entire operator experience. On the whole, these upgrades follow a gentle theme of personalizing the machine to [Marius’] tastes, giving him a delightful, more personal operator experience that’s tuned through his everyday use. Amid the sheer volume of tweaks though, we’re convinced that you’ll find something that tickles your tinkering fancy.

It’s worth mentioning that the pneumatic table clamp alone (at 4:28) makes the entire video worth the watch. If you’ve ever had the mishap of pinching your finger or struggling to hold the table steady while clamping it in place, this little upgrade takes all of that away, replacing the swivel handle with a homebrew pneumatic cylinder made in the shop. With a single button press, a swoosh of compressed air either clamps or releases the table. Best of all, the setup still sports a hand clamp if [Marius] is operating without a compressed air source.

It’s also worth mentioning that a couple of [Marius’] upgrades completely skip the CAD step altogether. Instead, [Marius] creates templates directly off the drill press with tracing paper and then immediately transfers them onto stock materials. It’s a nice reminder that not every small project needs to start with a 3D model.

If all these upgrades are getting you ready to modify your machine, look no further than the video description where he’s courteously posted inks to key components behind these upgrades.

The story of many-a-workshop often involves reinventing your machine tools. If you’re looking for more tales of tool upgrades, have a look at resurrecting a machine from literal ashes or a machine that improves itself.

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A closeup of the faulty section of the dial - you can spot the plastic rivets that broke off

The Tale Of Two Broken Flukes

March 1, 2023 by Arya Voronova 11 Comments

Some repairs happen as if by pure luck, and [Sebastian] shows us one such repair on Hackaday.io. He found two Fluke 175 meters being sold on eBay, with one having a mere beeper issue, and another having a “strange error”. Now, theoretically, swapping beepers around would give you one working meter and a kit of spare parts – but this is Fluke we’re talking about, and [Sebastian] wasn’t satisfied leaving it there.

First, he deduced that the beeper issue could be fixed by repositioning the piezo disk – and indeed, that brought the meter number one to working order. This left the mysterious error – the meter would only power up in certain rotations of the dial, and would misbehave, at that. Disassembly cleared things up – the dial mechanics failed, in that a half of the metal contacts came detached after all the plastic rivets holding the metal piece in place mysteriously vanished. The mechanics were indeed a bit intricate, and our hacker hoped to buy a replacement, but seeing the replacement switch prices in three-digit range, out came the epoxy tube.

An epoxy fix left overnight netted him two perfectly working Fluke meters, and while we don’t know what the listing price was for these, such a story might make you feel like taking your chances with a broken Fluke, too. The tale does end with a word of caution from [Sebastian], though – apparently, cleaning the meters took longer than the repairs themselves. Nevertheless, this kind of repair is a hobbyist’s dream – sometimes, you have to design a whole new case for your meter if as much as a wire breaks, or painstakingly replace a COB with a TQFP chip.

The completed oscilloscope in parts, with the screen in the front connected with prototyping wires, protoboarded buttons on the right, and the BlackPill board somewhere behind

DIY STM32 Scope Is Simple, Cheap, And Featureful

February 27, 2023 by Arya Voronova 27 Comments

Would you like to have a small digital oscilloscope? Do you have a spare BlackPill (STM32F401) board and a TFT display laying around? [tvvlad1234] presents us with a simple and educational digital storage oscilloscope design that barely needs any components for you to build one, and it’s packed with features just like you would expect from a self-respecting open-source project. Not just that — it can even stream data to your computer, in a format compatible with the TekScope software!

It’s hard to overshadow just how easy this scope is to build, use, and hack on. You really don’t need much in the way of parts, a protoboard will do, though you can also etch or order your own PCBs. The front-end is super straightforward to find components for and assemble, a few opamps and resistors is all you need. So after jumper-wiring the LCD and three push buttons to your BlackPill, you’re golden.

Of course, the simple frontend results in the input range being from -3.3 V to 3.3 V, but as you could guess, this is exactly the kind of project where you could tweak the resistors and even upgrade it later on. Are you a bit lost in how oscilloscopes work? [tvvlad1234] has an explainer for you, too!

This build could easily take up a honorary “temporary turned permanent” place on your bench, thanks to its McGyver-esque qualities. It’s also, quite possibly, a better scope than the red “soldering kit” ones we’ve seen online. All in all, it’s a strong contender in the “simple and powerful DIY scope” arena, before this, we’ve seen one built with an Arduino Nano, and one with a Pi Pico.