CuriousInventor.com Logo

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

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.

Features:

• 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)

Read More

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

 

Here's a quick demo of our new FM Radio Shield, featuring its ability to read the RDS text data off the radio stream and display it in the Arduino Serial Monitor. 

The FM Shield also:

• digitally control station, volume
• read station strength to find good stations, or empty bands
• head phone amplifier, uses headphone wire as antenna

The FM Radio Shield is available for purchase.

Read More

On Saturday April 24th Travis Thatcher will be conducting a workshop on simple DIY electronics for music and the construction of a Voice of Saturn Synth. See more info after the jump.

Read More

We're happy to release a new FM Radio Arduino Shield that lets you listen to and control FM Radio.  With its abilit to read RDS info, the station / artist / song names can be displayed, and with a bit of code, you could have it automatically change channels when commercials play.

You can also digitally change the station, volume, and read the signal strength to find the strongest or weakest stations.  Finding weak stations could help you find a good transmission gap for your FM transmitter.

If there's a station broadcasting traffic info via RDS, that would also be available. 

 

Read More

We've got a new look, what do you think?  We'll be transitioning parts of our old over to the new one gradually, so please let us know about any bugs!

Read More

Thanks for all the links to our videos, we just passed 1M views on our youtube channel, along with 1002 subscribers. Let us know if you'd like any videos on specific topics. Read More

In the next few weeks we'll be releasing the Frac-rack (blacet) format VoS Voltage Controlled Filter model. It is the same as our current filter module, but without the joystick section. Should be available by late November. Read More

We put together some of our favorite tools into kits that make up the essential tools for getting started, or contain everything needed to setup shop in a new workplace or research lab. Read More

We now have two dual-voltage power supply kits that are perfect for audio and op-amp circuits that require positive and negative voltage. There's a bread board plug-in version and a case mountable version that comes with screws holes, standoffs and a panel mount power jack (designed for the vos synth line). Both + and - voltages are independently and finely adjustable. Read More

Highschool teams from around the world converged in Atlanta at the Georgia Dome for the FIRST world championships this weekend. Teams had to grab "moon rocks" and toss them into trailers being towed by competitors. Some of the most effective teams could dump 20 volley-ball sized "rocks" into the 6ft tall trailers in seconds. FIRST runs robotics competitions for kids in high school and younger (Lego league). It's a great opportunity to mentor for people involved in engineering companies. One challenge of the competition was finding the "moon rocks", which Walmart stopped selling after the building season was well under way. Read More

Travis and I will be demoing some toys at the next Atlanta Dorkbot, which will be held at WonderRoot (directions). Travis is bringing the Voice of Saturn line and I'll have some stribes and an arduinome. Also, Beth Milliken will talk about Freeside, a new Atlanta based non-profit Hackerspace - encouraging collaboration and innovation across hardware and software disciplines. Read More

A couple teams from the IEEE Southeast Con Hardware Competition explain how their bots work. The goal is to sort three different types of Coke containers and stay within an electric dog fence boundary. Read More

Designed in cooperation with uCHobby, these bread board adapters make it easy to plug in audio plugs, multimeter probes, bare stranded wires that are too big for the bread board holes, MIDI I/O. Also released is a dual power supply that should help out in op-amp audio projects, and a proto area you can solder common circuits onto so they can be quickly plugged into new projects. All the boards are designed to take up as little work-space as possible, and either stand up or hang off the edge. Read More