Josh creates waterproof LED staircase with 16X PWM LED Fader
Josh Nijenhuis shared a video of the really cool lighted stairs he made using our 16x PWM LED fader board. https://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.
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Surface Mount Soldering 101 Workshop at Atlanta Mini Maker Faire
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
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)
The following advanced techniques will also be demoed
- Solder paste, inexpensive stencils and toaster ovens
- Drag soldering for fine pitch and lots of pins
- Removing SMT chips with hot air and ChipQuik
The cost will be $5 if you’d like parts to solder on, or free if you just want to watch and learn. Please register here (or below) so we can bring enough supplies and schedule multiple sessions if needed.
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.
SMD Assembly Demo using Home-Made Vacuum, Stencil, Toaster Oven
We talk about solder paste, cheap kapton stencils, how to make a home-made vacuum pick-up tool, and toaster oven reflow temperature profiles.
SMS to Cheap Scrolling LED via Arduino, USB Host Shield, and Android
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.
16X PWM LED FADER(tm) now completely open source
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.
VMeter: USB MIDI Controller Touch Strip & Display
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.
New Product: 16X PWM Led Fader
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)
Euro Rack VoS Filter Now Available
The Voice of Saturn (VOS) VC Filter is now available in Euro-Rack format exclusively from a n a l o g u e h a v e n.
The VoS Voltage Controlled Filter is based around a CEM3372 filter IC (4-pole resonant low-pass filter)–the same chips found in the filters of such analog classics as the Sequential Circuits Prophet 600, Prophet T8 and Oberheim Xpander. One very cool feature of the CEM series filter chips is that as the resonance is turned up, the volume level does not drop as dramatically (as it does in other analaogs, including the famous Moog Ladder Filter).
Scanalogic 2 Logic Analyzer Review
The Scanalog 2 is a great inexpensive tool for hobbyists looking to debug digital issues, especially if they can’t afford an oscilloscope. Debug SPI, I2C, Serial UART, 1-Wire, Maple Bus (more to come with software updates). You can even inspect that PWM or RC servo signal to make sure your arduino is outputting what you think it should.
Features:
- 20Msps on 4 channels
- 1.8V – 5V level detection
- 256k samples of storage on each line
- Playback on all 4 lines, or just 2 while reading from other 2
Wishlist:
- Better Triggering
- More flexible output–static pwm to control RC servos, for instance, or just for a clock generator.