Are your PCBs being tested as claimed?

May 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Florin ordered some PCBs from Iteadstudio, a pcb prototyping service. As part of their service, they claim that all PCBs are tested before they are delivered. However, many have been bringing this claim into question. [Florin] found a complete lack of any markings indicating actual probes had been used on his boards. Though they claim that 100% of the boards are e-tested, they replied to his inquiry somewhat cryptically.

All of the pcb’s have a stripe on the edge,it does not mean they have all been electrically tested ,it is the same as outline .

People on the Dangerous Prototypes Forum have been finding similar results. The company has commented, on this page, that that they will be responding to this soon (back in February)

Filed Under: news Tagged With:

[Phil Torrone] interviews [Bunnie Huang] about chumby and more

May 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Over at Make, [Phil Torrone] has done an interview with [Bunnie Huang]. [Bunnie] has been a major contributor to the pages of Hackaday as far back as we can remember. He started in 2002 hacking X-boxes and sharing his findings with the world. It is this sharing that makes [Bunnie] stand out. He has always shared all his findings and pushed for open source wherever it would fit. We recently discussed how Chumby, a project to which [Bunnie] contributed is coming to an end. In this interview, he talks about what the future holds for himself and how he plans to spend his time. Most interestingly, he plans on spending a year just building things he’s wanted to see built. Be sure to check out the interview to see what he’s already accomplished.

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Making Laser adjustments with an SNES gamepad

May 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Gaming has infiltrated everything around us. It seems that any time a control interface is needed, the first thought to many current hacker’s minds are the familiar controls from the video games we grew up with. In this example, [eljaywasi] needed a way to control the wavelength of light coming out of a laser. We don’t know exactly how he’s actually changing the wavelength, but we do know he’s using an SNES gamepad as his interface. You can see a red and a blue LED located on the front of the pad, so it may be that two buttons would have sufficed. We don’t care, we like the SNES pad better.

Filed Under: peripherals hacks Tagged With: ,

Tilt sensor toy is simple and mesmerizing

May 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment

[Eiki] found himself in need of a project for his “simple machines” class. Another project had brought him in contact with some relatively cheap MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes.  He had the idea to create a simple tilt sensor based circuit that would light whatever LED was at the bottom.

He’s using an Analog Devices ADXL202E accelerometer chip to sense tilt and an  LM3914 bar-graph driver to light the displays. He’s taking the voltage-proportional-to-accelleration output of the accelerometer, filtering it through a capacitor, then feeding it to the bar-graph driver. It may not be the most technically difficult project, but the result is mesmerizing and elegant.

Filed Under: classic hacks Tagged With:

Replicating the fancy touch sensor that uses anything

May 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment

[Sprite_tm], a name many of you will recognize from these pages, has wasted no time in replicating the latest cool thing in a much simpler fashion. En Garde is a touch sensor that can detect up to 32 different points of contact on… whatever you use as the surface.  He couldn’t sit idly by and let the Disney funded one from yesterday keep the spot light. As you can see in the video, it works pretty well. If he didn’t tell you that his can only detect up to 32 points as opposed to the 200 of the other, you probably wouldn’t even notice the difference.  Of course, [Sprite_tm] also shares how you could easily beef his up to be even more precise. You can also download his source code an schematics from his site and give it a try yourself.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: classic hacks, multitouch hacks Tagged With: , ,

Pinball Stomp: Part 2

May 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This is the 2nd and final part of this project. If you haven’t seen part 1 yet, jump back and check it out.

Now that we have the controller box made and ready to go, we just have to build some simple stomp sensors. As I said before, I doubt this will hold anyones attention longer than a night or two. With that in mind, I wanted to make this as cheaply and simply as possible.

To make these, you need the following:

  • Foam board or thick cardboard
  • aluminum tape
  • wire
  • duct tape

That’s it… no really, that’s it. Check out the video after the break to see how it all went, and what the kids thought of it.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: classic hacks, pcs hacks, peripherals hacks Tagged With:
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