Use That One Port For High-Speed FPGA Data Export

June 1, 2024 by Arya Voronova 10 Comments

There’s a good few options for exporting data out of FPGAs, like Ethernet, USB2, or USB3. Many FPGAs have a HDMI (or rather, sparkling DVI) port as well, and [Steve Markgraf] brings us the hsdaoh project — High-Speed Data Acquisition Over HDMI, using USB3 capture cards based on the Macrosilicon MS2130 chipset to get the data from the FPGA right to your PC.

Current FPGA-side implementation is designed for Sipeed Tang chips and the GOWIN toolchain, but it should be portable to an open-source toolchain in the future. Make sure you’re using a USB3 capture card with a MS2130 chipset, load the test code into your FPGA, run the userspace capture side, and you’re ready to add this interface to your FPGA project! It’s well worth it, too – during testing, [Steve] has got data transfer speeds up to 180 MB/s, without the USB3 complexity.

As a test, [Steve] shows us an RX-only SDR project using this interface, with respectable amounts of bandwidth. The presentation goes a fair bit into the low-level details of the protocol, from HDMI fundamentals, to manipulating the MS2130 registers in a way that disables all video conversion; do watch the recording, or at least skim the slides! Oh, and if you don’t own a capture card yet, you really should, as it makes for a wonderful Raspberry Pi hacking companion in times of need.

Quick & Capable WiFi For Your Nice-Power Supply

May 31, 2024 by Arya Voronova 15 Comments

Rejoice, those of us who have purchased a Nice-Power lab PSU from an Eastern source. Yes, the name might sound like a re-brand of a generic product, maybe you will even see this exact PSU on a shelf at a physical store near you, under a more local brand name and with a fair markup. Nevermind the circumstances, the most important part is that [Georgi Dobrishinov] found a way to add an ESP8266 to the PSU by tapping its internal UART control interface, and wrote a web UI for all your Internet-of-Lab-PSUs needs, called the PowerLinkESP project.

All you need is a Wemos D1 development board, or any other ESP8266 board that has UART pins exposed and handles 5 V input. [Georgi] brings everything else, from pictures showing you where to plug it in and where to tap 5 V, to extensive instructions on how to compile and upload the code, using just the Arduino IDE. Oh, and he tops it off with STLs for a 3D printed case, lest your Wemos D1 board flop around inside.

With [Georgi]’s software, you can monitor your PSU with interactive charts for all readings, export charts in both PNG and CSV, and access a good few features. Your ESP8266’s network uplink is also highly configurable, from an STA mode for a static lab config, to an AP mode for any on-the-go monitoring from your phone, and it even switches between them automatically! The firmware makes your PSU all that more practical, to the point that if you’re about to build an interface for your PSU, you should pay attention to [Georgi]’s work.

Lab PSUs with WiFi integration are worth looking into, just check out our review of this one; smart features are so nice to have, we hackers straight up rewrite PSU firmware to get there if we have to. Oh, and if you ever feel like standardizing your work so that it can interface to a whole world of measurement equipment, look no further than SCPI, something that’s easier to add to your project than you might expect, even with as little as Python and a Pi.

Schematic of the Pi Pico wireup, showing the various outputs that the firmware will generate on the GPIOs

A Scope Test Tool You Can Build With Just A Pico

May 31, 2024 by Arya Voronova 24 Comments

Ever wanted to see how well your oscilloscope adheres to its stated capabilities? What if you buy a new scope and need a quick way to test it lest one of its channels its broken, like [Paul Wasserman] had happen to him? Now you only need a Pi Pico and a few extra components to make a scope test board with a large variety of signals it can output, thanks to [Paul]’s Sig Gen Pi Pico firmware.

Despite the name it’s not a signal generator as we know it, as it’s not flexible in the signals it generates. Instead, it creates a dozen signals at more or less the same time — from square waves of various frequencies and duty cycles, to a PWM-driven DAC driving eight different waveforms, to Manchester-encoded data I2C/SPI/UART transfers for all your protocol decoder testing.

Everything is open source under the BSD 3-Clause license, and there’s even two PDFs with documentation and a user manual, not to mention the waveform screenshots for your own reference.

It’s seriously impressive how many features [Paul] has fit into a single firmware. Thanks to his work, whenever you have some test equipment in need of being tested, just grab your Pico and a few passive components.

A person holds a glass jar in their left hand and a spark plug in their right atop a white cylindrical canister. The jar and canister are sitting on top of a green cutting mat.

Spark Plug Becomes Glass Cutter

May 28, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 15 Comments

Sometimes a hack doesn’t need to be rocket science to be useful. Take for instance [MofigoDIY] using an old spark plug to build a glass cutter.

Sure, going to grab a glass cutter at the hardware store might be easy, but there’s something satisfying about going the DIY route. [MofigoDIY]’s version of this classic hack is a bit more refined than the quick and dirty route of smashing the spark plug alumina and hot gluing it into a tube.

After using a rotary tool to cut off the threads and expose the narrow part of the ceramic, [MofigoDIY] grinds it down to a fine point. This lets the spark plug itself become the handle, so you don’t need any additional parts to make the cutter. Toward the end of the video, a heated wire is used to break a glass jar apart after it was scored which might be of interest even if you already have a glass cutter. Once you’re finished making your glass cutter, make sure you dispose of any chips left over, since ceramic spark plug fragments are considered burglary tools in some areas.

Would you rather just build the glass up additively? How about using a laser cutter to sinter glass or 3D printing fused silica using a polymerized composite precursor?

Continue reading “Spark Plug Becomes Glass Cutter” →

Locate Faults With The Leakseeker-89R

May 24, 2024 by Lewin Day 29 Comments

Have you ever needed to hunt down a short circuit, but you’ve had no idea where it is or how it’s happening? As it turns out, there are tools to help in that regard. Enter the Leakseeker-89R.

The device is able to help hunt down short circuits that measure anywhere from 0 to 300 ohms. The device is typically used with two leads on a given pair of traces, and it has a display made up of red, yellow and green LEDs. As the leads are moved closer or farther from the short circuit, the display changes to indicate if you’re getting hotter or colder. There’s also a third lead that can be used to allow testing under more challenging conditions when there is a large capacitance in-circuit with the traces you’re testing.

Fundamentally, it’s basically a very accurate resistance meter, finely honed for the purpose of hunting down short circuits. We’ve featured similar tools before. They can be of great use for troubleshooting. Meanwhile, if you’re building your own test tools in your home lab, don’t hesitate to let us know! We’re always dying for hot tips on the best DIY lab equipment for saving time, frustration, and money.

Turning An ATX PSU Into A Variable Bench Supply

May 23, 2024 by Lewin Day 90 Comments

Bench power supplies can sometimes be frustratingly expensive and also kind of limited. If you’re enterprising and creative, though, you can create your own bench supply with tons of features, and it doesn’t have to break the bank either. Do what [Maker Y] did—grab an ATX supply and get building!

ATX power supplies work as a great basis for a bench power supply. They have 12 volt, 3.3 volt, and 5 volt rails, and they can supply a ton of current for whatever you might need. [Maker Y] decided to break out these rails on banana plugs for ease of access, and fused them for safety, too. But the build doesn’t stop there. [Maker Y] also added a buck-boost converter to provide a variable voltage output from 1 to 30 volts for added flexibility. As a nice final touch, the rig also features a pair of USB A ports compatible with Quick Charge 3.0, for keeping smart devices charged while working in the lab.

[Caelestis Workshop] also designed a fully enclosed version if you prefer that style. Check it out on Instructables.

No matter which way you go, it’s a pretty simple build, with a bunch of off-the-shelf parts tossed together in a 3D printed housing. Ultimately, though, it’s got more functionality than a lot of cheap off-the-shelf bench supplies. You can build it just about anywhere on Earth where you can get cheap eBay parts via post. Continue reading “Turning An ATX PSU Into A Variable Bench Supply” →

Is This The World’s Smallest Multichannel Voltmeter?

May 22, 2024 by Jenny List 8 Comments

The instrument which probably the greatest number of Hackaday readers own is likely to be the humble digital multimeter. They’re cheap and useful, but they’re single-channel, and difficult to incorporate into a breadboard project. If you’ve ever been vexed by these limitations then [Alun Morris] has just the project for you, in the world’s smallest auto-ranging multichannel voltmeter. It’s a meter on a tiny PCB with a little OLED display, and as its name suggests, it can keep an eye on several voltages for you.

At its heart is an ATtiny1614 microcontroller on a custom PCB, but for us the part we most like lies not in that but in the prototype version made on a piece of protoboard. There’s considerable soldering skill in bending surface mount components to your will on this material, and though these aren’t quite the smallest parts it’s still something that must have required some work under the magnifier.

All of the code and hardware details can be found in the GitHub repository, and for your viewing pleasure there’s a video showing it in action which we’ve placed below.

Continue reading “Is This The World’s Smallest Multichannel Voltmeter?” →