A brief intro to the main ideas behind How Bitcoin Works, including how money is transferred, who keeps track of it, and how the whole thing is secured.
RPi Spectrum Analyzer Display with LED Strip
A python-based real-time spectrum analyzer. Plays MP3s and does FFTs in real time using code from the LightShow Pi project and Numpy.
Full code and instructions at instructables.
Augmented Reality Circuit Building Guide
An iPad app that provides augmented reality steps for building a circuit on a bread board. Graphics are overlayed on the actual breadboard to show you exactly where to put parts, and provide extra information, like values, tolerances, and voltages.
Massive Space Coming to Atlanta for Inventors, Makers, Small Companies
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.
How Microsoft’s Kinect Depth Sensor Works
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.
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.
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.
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)
Radio Shield Skips Commercials using RDS data
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.