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Out of Stock? We've received a lot of emails asking about out of stock items, and sad to say, but CI is downsizing to a much smaller product offering. All of our guides, schematics and blog entries will stay available forever. Our new project is VMeter--a USB MIDI Controller Touch Strip & Display. |
How to Desolder Through-Hole Joints
May 7, 2013 1:17:21 AM EDT
This video demonstrates the use of solder wick (braid), a solder sucker (desoldering pump), and desoldering gun. It explains why some joints are hard to desolder: large ground planes or components, small holes, low quality pcbs. Finally, some alternative methods are shown, including cutting the leads, pulling one lead out at a time for resistors and other two-legged parts, and heating all the pins at once, using an iron, hot air or ChipQuik.
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Reddit.com2013 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition
April 14, 2013 9:56:56 AM EDT
The 2013 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition featured an array of new instruments that combine electronics, computers and sensors, often building on a base of a traditional acoustic instrument. The $10,000 competition had some prestigious judges this year, including Laurie Anderson, David Wessel, and electronic musician and sound designer Richard Devine.
Onyx Ashanti and his Beatjazz Exo-voice Prosthesis instrument
Some pictures and video of the finalist are in the full blog entry. Read More
Onyx Ashanti and his Beatjazz Exo-voice Prosthesis instrument
Some pictures and video of the finalist are in the full blog entry. Read More
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Posted in Audio / Music
By Scott Driscoll
Make any USB MIDI Device Wireless with Raspberry Pi
March 28, 2013 7:19:19 PM EDT
astlab has made a simple device that turns any USB MIDI device into a wireless (WiFi) device that also speaks OSC. They used a USB WiFi dongle to do the transmission. Their target device is a VMeter.
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Posted in Audio / Music
By Scott Driscoll
Massive Space Coming to Atlanta for Inventors, Makers, Small Companies
March 4, 2013 8:59:01 AM EST
My Inventor Club is moving from a typical hacker-space sized building to a massive new location. The club will offer many of benefits of a hackerspace such as a full machine shop, laser cutters, 3D printers, space to build, etc., but also has enough room to be much more for the Atlanta community. They're planning on renting space to small hardware-based startups, serving as a co-location workspace, and maybe even holding conferences (mini makerfaires?).
The wooden floor picture looks large enough to comfortably hold 100 makers all working with plenty of elbow room to spare, and they've got three floors that size, plus conference rooms. And even more mind-boggling, the 2nd picture shows another "factory" building big enough to hold a cruise ship or small factory. They're planning on having several car bays for auto work, amongst many other industrial machines. The roof is tall enough to work on some huge art installations (think burning man), and even has a few overhead cranes if anyone needs to move steel beams.
They should be moved in around May. Cost to join is currently $100 per month.
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The wooden floor picture looks large enough to comfortably hold 100 makers all working with plenty of elbow room to spare, and they've got three floors that size, plus conference rooms. And even more mind-boggling, the 2nd picture shows another "factory" building big enough to hold a cruise ship or small factory. They're planning on having several car bays for auto work, amongst many other industrial machines. The roof is tall enough to work on some huge art installations (think burning man), and even has a few overhead cranes if anyone needs to move steel beams.
They should be moved in around May. Cost to join is currently $100 per month.
Read MoreHow Microsoft's Kinect Depth Sensor Works
February 16, 2013 5:42:58 PM EST
Many people thought the Kinect's depth sensor worked using time of flight, but it's actually much simpler. A cheap infrared camera and projector work together to triangulate distances. Read More
New kit: SMD Soldering Practice Kit
December 17, 2012 6:25:53 AM EST
We've got a new kit perfect for people looking to learn how to solder SMD parts. The SMD Soldering Practice Kit comes with a range of common parts from big to small, so you can ease your way down to the tinnier components. It also includes 3 pages of full color instructions and illustrations of ideal techniques and finished joints. Read More
New Video: How to Remove SMD Resistors & Capacitors Using a Regular Soldering Iron
December 17, 2012 6:18:30 AM EST
Josh creates waterproof LED staircase with 16X PWM LED Fader
August 31, 2012 7:46:39 AM EDT
Josh Nijenhuis shared a video of the really cool lighted stairs he made using our 16x PWM LED fader board. http://store.curiousinventor.com/16x-pwm-led-fader.html He made custom machined and anodized 6061 Aluminum LED light holders that are waterproof. The lights will eventually be installed on a real staircase outdoors.
Click Read More to see more pics. Read More
Surface Mount Soldering 101 Workshop at Atlanta Mini Maker Faire
July 25, 2012 9:10:59 PM EDT
Scott Driscoll will be running a Surface Mount Soldering 101 workshop at the upcoming Atlanta Mini Maker Faire on October 6th.
We'll cover some basic techniques for soldering surface mount chips with REGULAR IRONS!
Things you'll learn
- Flux makes SMT easy
- Flood and wick method
- How to fix bridges
- All using regular shaped irons--no special micro tips required!
- You'll be practicing on a small pcb with 1 SOIC and 4 1206 caps (the biggest and easiest SMT parts)
- Solder paste, inexpensive stencils and toaster ovens
- Drag soldering for fine pitch and lots of pins
- Removing SMT chips with hot air and ChipQuik
Also at the Maker Faire: Freeside (Atlanta's hackerspace) will also be doing a (free!) workshop to make a full fledged robot, and part of it will involve learning through-hole soldering. Read More
SMD Assembly Demo using Home-Made Vacuum, Stencil, Toaster Oven
March 12, 2012 6:32:10 AM EDT
We talk about solder paste, cheap kapton stencils, how to make a home-made vacuum pick-up tool, and toaster oven reflow temperature profiles.
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SMS to Cheap Scrolling LED via Arduino, USB Host Shield, and Android
October 28, 2011 2:13:20 PM EDT
This sms-to-LED tutorial shows how to automate the manual button input on this $13 scrolling LED belt buckle with an arduino, and then how to pass SMS messages through it. A USB Host shield connects an android phone that passes SMS messages on. Full code is on the tutorial page.
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Posted in How-To & Quick Tips
By Scott Driscoll
16X PWM LED FADER(tm) now completely open source
October 7, 2011 2:34:20 AM EDT
Our 16X PWM LED FADER board is now completely open source. The firmware (mplab project in C), schematic and layout in kicad, and BOM are all available. Hopefully this project will be a good starting off point for someone needing high resolution PWM control of mosfets, and lots of them.
The brain is a dsPIC33FJ32GS608, which features 16+ PWM outputs with 1.04ns duty cycle resolution. This is used to provide full 16bit control over 16 channels, with a very fast update rate. With SPI, you can send commands fast enough to smoothly fade all 16 channels, although many fades and chases are built in. A simple command / value protocol accepts control from SPI, 5V UART, or RS232. Read More
The brain is a dsPIC33FJ32GS608, which features 16+ PWM outputs with 1.04ns duty cycle resolution. This is used to provide full 16bit control over 16 channels, with a very fast update rate. With SPI, you can send commands fast enough to smoothly fade all 16 channels, although many fades and chases are built in. A simple command / value protocol accepts control from SPI, 5V UART, or RS232. Read More
VMeter: USB MIDI Controller Touch Strip & Display
July 9, 2011 5:30:21 AM EDT
We're making a new product called VMeter that's a USB MIDI Controller Touch Strip and Display. It's going to be sold through a new site: VMeter.net. In addition to a music controller, it has the potential to be used as a general purpose input touch strip and output meter display. It uses a USB HID interface (like a mouse or keyboard), making it relatively easy to interface with. We'll be publishing both the protocol and computer-side source shortly. You could even use it with an arduino if you get a USB host shield. There are 8 capacitive touch sensors on the inside, and all the raw values are sent out, making it possible to do pressure sensing and even some limited multi-touch sensing.
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Posted in Audio / Music
By Scott Driscoll
New Product: 16X PWM Led Fader
March 29, 2011 11:38:09 PM EDT
We're happy to introduce a new product, the 16X PWM LED Fader. It lets you control up to 16 channels of high resolution pwm voltage for LEDs or Speed controlled DC motors. It also has a bunch of built in command shortcuts for grouping lights, and making chase and fading sequences.
- 16 channels of voltage control--mix DC motors and LEDs
- High resolution 16bit* control enables smooth fading, precise color mixing
- Different voltages can be used on all 16 channels (4 separate banks for simplied wiring)
- Control via RS232 serial, 5V TTL serial or high speed SPI from arduino or other uCs
- Fast update / communication--with SPI, all 16 channels can be smoothly swept
- Easy built-in commands: Group lights, Fade, Chase, Blink , Sunspot
- Up to 25V and 2A per channel (max power dependent on ambient temperature)
ChipQuik Product Sale
March 25, 2011 9:35:10 PM EDT
We're having a 10% off sale on our ChipQuik inventory. Use code savequik in the checkout to get 10% off any Chipquik products, including:
Lead Free Solder Paste
Flux Paste
Original SMD Removal Alloy Read More
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