Here is a stab at the Arduino compatible Sanguino board (albeit simplified). It’s pretty standard except we’ve removed the reset circuitry and alot of the pins. We still have 4 controllable pins, one for the LED and three spare for something fun in future. Once again the plastic was printed before dropping in pre-tinned components and finally printing the metal tracks. I have previously done some tests which show we need to have a radius on each corners of printed tracks, ideally at least 1.5mm, but for compactness I squared these off resulting in poorer quality but nevertheless its quite a big step forward from where we were a few years ago. Four extra tracks are required on a second layer to get the circuit fully working; I’ve done this manually for the time being. In addition I had to manually solder in 2/3 pins as the track had not connected properly, however I think I can correct this by extending sections of track beyond their required endpoints and utilising the bigger radii at corners that I’ve already mentioned. It’s still a little blobby, but nevertheless here it is working running a simple blink program, although we can still reflash the chip to do something else with the spare pins.
Really impressive work. It will be interesting to see how fine of tracks can be printed as the process gets fine-tuned. Maybe someday we will all be able to make multi-layered 3D printed circuit boards at home.
Less than an hour ago, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft was captured by the ISS robotic arm, in preparation for a first-of-its-kind docking maneuver. Upon completion, Dragon will be the first private spacecraft to dock at the ISS.
“Looks like we caught a Dragon by the tail !” said a gleeful Astronuat Don Pettit who plucked the Dragon from space with the robotic arm as it was in free drift about 10 meters from the station.
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The Dragon cargo capsule is a commercial spacecraft designed and developed by SpaceX and was launched atop a Falcon 9 booster from Cape Canaveral, Florida on a historic test flight on May 22 to become the first private vehicle ever to rendezvous and dock at the million pound orbiting space complex.
Following a successful series of close approach rendezvous tests on Thursday, May 24, when it flew to the ISS from behind and below during fly-under maneuvers to within 2.4 km (1.6 mi), the commercial cargo carrier was cleared for final rendezvous, grappling and docking today.
I was looking at some pictures of the Makerbot the other day and thought it was cool how they used Ethernet cable for connecting some of the boards together. I was also trying to find something useful to do with these LCD’s I had lying around. Then I came up with the idea of driving the LCD over Ethernet cable.
First, I knew that the ST7565 LCD that I was using is a serial LCD, which means I only need 4 or 5 digital pins to drive the LCD. There are 9 total pins total on the LCD including the backlight. Since there is a backlight GND (LED cathode) and a GND to run the display, I really only 8 connections. This is the number of connections in an Ethernet cable.
This ST7565 graphical display looks great, costs less! The dark gray pixels are visible in daylight, and there’s also a full RGB LED backlight, which you can control with PWM to make any color you can imagine.
Four mounting holes and a blank 11 pin 2mm-pitch labeled breakout on the side – we just soldered some wire to each hole as shown in the photos, its very easy. (The LCDs have no wires soldered in when we ship them)
Note that this board is NOT the same as the newly-released Leonardo board, which uses one chip for both the USB and Arduino firmware. The Leonardo looks similar, but in many cases pin functions are moved around.
The Arduino development team’s release of the new Arduino 1.0.1 IDE includes the big ticket items of Arduino Leonardo board support and translation into 32 languages. However, a number of other features and bug fixes are included in this release. The following are some highlights from the 1.0.1 release notes.
Faster Compiles
The IDE now reuses compiled object files, when possible, to decrease compilation time. This includes the files which are pulled in through includes and by the IDE, so it can lead to some dramatic improvements (using the blink sketch, I saw re-compile time drop by about half). No special actions are required to see this speed improvement.
Faster Code Uploads
The Preferences dialog now includes the option to disable verification on upload in order to decrease upload times. On my sample sketch, this trimmed upload time by roughly a third. You can edit the Preferences dialog by selecting the Arduino menu, then clicking the Preferences… menu item. Uncheck the Verify code after upload checkbox and click OK to see the speed increase.
The Return of Wire.write(0)
The Wire library now contains overloaded methods to support calling Wire.write(0) without needing to typecast the parameter. This addresses a breaking change which was introduced in the 1.0 release.
Find / Replace Enhancements
The Find / Replace system has added the ability to find previous when searching. This can be accessed through the Find dialog, menu items, or keyboard shortcuts. The dialog has gone through some visual cleanup and now sports a checkbox option to wrap the search when it reaches the end of the document. The Find dialog can be reached by selecting the Edit menu and clicking the Find… menu item.
Improved Accessibility for Serial Monitor and Log Panel
Changing the editor font size in the preferences dialog also changes the font size in the serial monitor and message console. You can edit the Preferences dialog by selecting the Arduino menu, then clicking the Preferences… menu item. Change the text value for the Editor font size text box, click OK, and restart the IDE to see the font change.
Intelligent Text Selection
The IDE has gained some additional smarts when selecting text. To see this in action, double click on a word and start dragging the mouse. The selection will grow and shrink on word boundaries. Triple click before dragging and the selection grows and shrinks on line boundaries.
Enabling / Disabling Internal Pull-Up Resistors
The implementation of pinMode has changed in this release in regards to how the internal pull-up resistors are handled. Setting pinMode to INPUT now has the side effect of disabling the pull-up resistor. The new constant, INPUT_PULLUP, can be passed to pinMode to enable the pull-up resistor when setting the pin as an input.
I’ve got a Bluetooth stereo adapter I’m powering with the Aux port in my car. When I go from Aux standby to the engine running, the power cuts for a moment and I have to reconnect. Can I add a capacitor, or some sort of battery backup that will keep the device on for the 2-3 seconds the port switches off?
Part 2: The same bluetooth adapter makes audible noise on the stereo not connected to it’s audio output. For instance, a blinking light shows the device isn’t connected, and while it’s blinking, you can hear ground hum coming on and off (matching the light). As well, when the adapter is connecting to another device, you can hear muffled, modulated sounds (reminds me a bit of an old modem) – these are separate from the audible beep that happens when the bluetooth connection completes.
What are these noises? Can they be isolated from the audio output?
This actually isn’t too hard of a task. Right now the power going to your 12V AUX port in your car is connected to the ignition circuit. Power is cut to this circuit when you start the engine because of the large power demands your starter puts on your car’s 12V battery. There are 12V circuits in your car that never cut off during this period, like power to your ECU. If you look at the wiring diagram for your car’s ignition, you can isolate which lines are controlled by the different positions of your ignition switch. I would recommend that you connect to a circuit that stays on during all key positions except for OFF. This way you don’t run your battery down while you are not in your car.
In order to make this modification, you are typically going to need to remove the your center console bezel to expose the lines running to your outlet. Before you try and tackle any electrical modification to your car DISCONNECT THE BATTERY! BOTH + and – just to be one the safe side. At the outlet there will most likely be three lines: one for 12V, one for GND, and one for the light. You will want to cut the 12V and heat shrink the end on the hot side to prevent it from shorting. You will then need to run a simillary sized gauge wire from the outlet to the determined electrical line and solder splice the connection. You can use mechanical splices like wire nuts, wire taps or crimps, but they will eventually fail from vibration. Make sure you use heat shrink or electrical tape to prevent shortage. Finally, reconnect your battery and check the power to the outlet with a multimeter prior to plugging in your bluetooth unit.
Regarding your audio noise problem, it happens to be very common. You have an AC generator (or alternator) connected to your engine that is used to recharge and assist your battery. If the alternator is not properly electrically isolated or your radio is not well grounded, the radio will pick up these electrical emissions resulting in an annoying hum or buzz. Crutchfield has put together a pretty good guide for determining the source of your noise. You will most likely need a ground loop isolator, which you can pick up at most automotive stores for cheap.
Good luck with your project and I hope you can kill that annoying noise!
Don’t forget, everyone is invited to ask a question!
“Ask an Educator” questions are answered by Adam Kemp, a high school teacher who has been teaching courses in Energy Systems, Systems Engineering, Robotics and Prototyping since 2005.
We’re trying to get to 10,000 votes for our LEGO experiment. We’re getting pretty close to cracking 1,000 today – please vote and help make the first ever hardware hacker LEGO set!
The predominant pattern I’ve seen is that the most common choices people have to make are the ones that are also most fraught with peril. For example, one of the most common decisions is to co-found with someone you have a prior social relationship with — friends or family – and not a prior professional relationship. But that type of team is the least stable. It’s the most likely to end up in disaster.
A second example: 73 percent of founding teams I’ve studied divide the equity within a month of founding. That is when the uncertainty is highest. The majority of those teams are also setting that split in stone. That’s the predominant model they use – split early and split in a way that’s static – but that means teams can’t adjust and are setting themselves up to get burned down the road. What are the chances that you are all going to be contributing to the venture on an equal basis? It’s a recipe for team tensions to increase.
And a third example, which was actually the biggest surprise for me: In my data, by the time start-ups raise the third round of financing, 52 percent of founder C.E.O.’s have been replaced. In three-quarters of these situations, the board fired the founder. In the remaining cases – by far the minority – the founder raised his hand and said, “There’s got to be someone better than me to lead us to the next stage.” And I found that the most successful of founders, the ones who led their start-ups to completing key milestones the quickest, were actually the first ones to get fired.
It’s using two of your lovely TFT min screens and sits now in one of London largest ad agencies… Young Leo Burnett, ca.1910, but who si watching? And why in London? You decide… Built using 2 Arduino Unos, 2 Adafruit 1.8″TFTs and 2 Infrared sensors. Quick, cheap and creepy.
The AT-550 was an incredible watch for its time, or even for today. It had a capacitive touch screen, and that was used to operate the built-in calculator. How it did so trumps even the fact that a watch released in 1984 had a touch screen, much less at a price of under $100. To enter numbers and the numerical operators, one just “wrote” them with a finger, by tracing the appropriate shape on the watches crystal.
Printable catalog (PDF)
Built using 2 Arduino Unos, 
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