BatchPCB Pays You

March 1, 2010 by Devlin Thyne 80 Comments

SparkFun’s BatchPCB has been a well-known service to get your PCBs fabbed, and now it is sporting a new feature. It has just come out of its downtime chrysalis with the ability to pay you for making your designs. If you have designed a PCB and want people to pay you to use it, BatchPCB will now do that for you. [Patrick] says “We want engineers to benefit from the low-cost production for prototypes and have the ability to sell their work, conveniently.” There are a few caveats. First of all, each seller must be a resident of the United States and send BatchPCB a W-9. Secondly, PCBs are only warranted against manufacturing defects, so buyers should make sure the PCB they are buying is a working design. Finally, the sellers must only be selling designs of their own or with proper permission. We are big fans of free, open-source designs, but we can see how this would help an engineer recover some of their costs to develop a board and might lead to some interesting brokering of designs. What do you think of this new service?

The UltimateSIMON

January 30, 2010 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

[Simon Inns] designed a circuit board to retrofit an original Simon electronic game. This hack is immediately a win because he made sure that his design required no modification of the original case. The new PCB has many improvements. It moves the device from using 2 D-cells over to a 9 volt battery, the incandescent bulbs were out swapped out for three LEDs per button, and the use of tactile switches makes the buttons a lot more responsive (but does require a bit of modification to the colored button covers). Under the hood there’s a PIC18F2550 controlling a serial LED chip and handling input monitoring and sound generation. The video after the break is safe to watch at work, there’s no swearing involved this time. Continue reading “The UltimateSIMON” →

CES: Guts Guts Guts

January 11, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

We knew going into CES that we had to find some pictures of guts. It didn’t matter what it was, if there were guts showing, we snapped a picture. We were a little let down that the guts we found were basically consumer goods like cameras, TVs, and tons of amplifiers. The amplifier guts were so prolific, we actually just stopped taking pictures. We were hoping for some insides of tablets and such. There may not be anything new here for you, but if you are like us, you just can’t help but look. Join us after the break for a gallery.

Continue reading “CES: Guts Guts Guts” →

New Year’s Party Favor?

December 28, 2009 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

[Infernoz] built a POV display to help ring in the new year. There is a low component count; an ATtiny26, DIP switch, power switch, CR2032 battery and holder, pin header, 8 LEDs, and a pull-up resistor. The board is single sided without any jumpers that we can see. He’s moving the display by swinging it on a rope but the PCB is the perfect shape to attach to a fan. We love these blinky displays and if you’ve got some parts this makes a great party favor for New Year’s Eve. Check out the video after the break.

Continue reading “New Year’s Party Favor?” →

Hackaday Links: Sunday, November 29

November 29, 2009 by Mike Szczys 47 Comments

Sometimes we wonder if we’re making good choices with PCB layout when using EagleCAD. Watch how the pros do it with a video of an hour-long Adafruit PCB layout session compressed into seven minutes.

[Elijah] documented his RepStrap build. This is a chicken-or-egg project in that RepStrap machines are built without the assistance of an already existing RepRap.

Here’s an ASUS concept from CeBIT this year for a laptop that has two touch screens and no physical keyboard. Isn’t this just the DS project we saw this week but in a nice case?

[James] conjured up a physical realization of the Spinning Wheel of Death for an art exhibit. We can’t stop smiling when looking at this artful hack.

I’m sure nobody will raise an eyebrow when you pop out that roll of duct-tape and affix your phone to the airplane window. That’s what [floe] did to make this airline flight time-lapse video with an Android phone. Aren’t you supposed to turn off all electronics for takeoff?

PCB Light Box In A Scanner Shell

November 10, 2009 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

scanner-exposure-box

[Kizo] repurposed a flatbed scanner to use as an exposure box for making printed circuit boards. Exposure time is controlled by an AVR ATtiny2313 microcontroller. The device is connected to a separate display board to control four 7-segment displays using one shift register for each. Time is set in ten second increments and once started, switches on the lights with a relay. Once the right exposure time has been reached, the lights are switched off and a piezo speaker is buzzed. There’s no mention of they type of bulbs he’s using but they look like compact fluorescent with tin foil beneath as a reflector.

If these are just CFL bulbs, how will the performance compare to a light box based around a UV light source?

[Thanks Jake]

DIY Circuit Etching Video Tutorial

November 9, 2009 by Phil Burgess 33 Comments

toner-paper

Circuit-bending blog GetLoFi has posted the best tutorial yet on home-made printed circuit boards using the toner transfer method.

We’ve covered homebrew PCB fabrication techniques about a billion times before. What sets this tutorial apart is that it collects many bits of knowledge otherwise scattered all about the web, and then depicts the entire process on video, from initial printing to cut PCB…because reading about it versus seeing it done are two different things entirely. They give a number of immensely useful tips throughout: choice of materials and where to get them, tools and techniques, and dispelling several myths about these methods (for example, they’re adamant about not using acetone to clean toner from the PCB). Well worth the 30 minutes to watch. If that’s too much and you’ve been stuck on just one part of the process, the tutorial is in three segments.

Trimming finished boards on a paper cutter? Who would’ve guessed?

[via Make]