Lady Ada’s Bento Box – Portable Pack & Hack Box [Breadboard + Tin]. Portage for your Projects! Lady Ada’s Bento Box is a crush-proof, drop-proof & water-proof prototyping kit that combines the ultra-rugged Otterbox 3000 with a storage tin and half-size (400-point) breadboard. In the middle is a spot for attaching an Arduino UNO (or any other PCB that has the same shape and mounting holes). There’s plenty of clearance for wires (even ones with plastic bits on the end such as our premium jumper wires or wire bundles) and parts on the breadboard, and the box is so sturdy you never have to worry about any delicate parts inside getting damaged. Toss it in your backpack, suitcase, duffel bag and you can be sure to work on it when you get to school, work or home.
NEW PRODUCT – Lady Ada’s Bento Box – Portable Pack & Hack Box [Breadboard + Tin]. Portage for your Projects! Lady Ada’s Bento Box is a crush-proof, drop-proof & water-proof prototyping kit that combines the ultra-rugged Otterbox 3000 with a storage tin and half-size (400-point) breadboard. In the middle is a spot for attaching an Arduino UNO (or any other PCB that has the same shape and mounting holes). There’s plenty of clearance for wires (even ones with plastic bits on the end such as our premium jumper wires or wire bundles) and parts on the breadboard, and the box is so sturdy you never have to worry about any delicate parts inside getting damaged. Toss it in your backpack, suitcase, duffel bag and you can be sure to work on it when you get to school, work or home.
NEW PRODUCT – Premium Male/Male Jumper Wires – 40 x 3 (75mm). Handy for making wire harnesses or jumpering between headers on PCB’s. These premium jumper wires are 3″ (75mm) long and come in a ‘strip’ of 40 (4 pieces of each of ten rainbow colors). They have 0.1″ male header contacts on either end and fit cleanly next to each other on standard-pitch 0.1″ (2.54mm) header. The best part is they come in a 40-pin ribbon cable. You can always pull the ribbon wires off to make individual jumpers, or keep them together to make neatly organized wire harnesses.
NEW PRODUCT – Premium Male/Male Jumper Wires – 40 x 6 (150mm). Handy for making wire harnesses or jumpering between headers on PCB’s. These premium jumper wires are 6″ (150mm) long and come in a ‘strip’ of 40 (4 pieces of each of ten rainbow colors). They have 0.1″ male header contacts on either end and fit cleanly next to each other on standard-pitch 0.1″ (2.54mm) header. The best part is they come in a 40-pin ribbon cable. You can always pull the ribbon wires off to make individual jumpers, or keep them together to make neatly organized wire harnesses.
NEW PRODUCT – Premium Male/Male Jumper Wires – 40 x 12 (300mm). Handy for making wire harnesses or jumpering between headers on PCB’s. These premium jumper wires are 12″ (300mm) long and come in a ‘strip’ of 40 (4 pieces of each of ten rainbow colors). They have 0.1″ male header contacts on either end and fit cleanly next to each other on standard-pitch 0.1″ (2.54mm) header. The best part is they come in a 40-pin ribbon cable. You can always pull the ribbon wires off to make individual jumpers, or keep them together to make neatly organized wire harnesses.
I spent Tuesday afternoon strolling the expo floor at the Embedded Systems Conference (now one of several concurrent events under the “DESIGN West” banner). It’s a big industry show for component electronics and test equipment…mostly out of my league, to be honest…but nonetheless interesting to drop in and see what’s new and where things may be headed.
In one corner of the Texas Instruments booth, the BeagleBone and a number of add-ons were being showcased. A certain acrylic enclosure caught my eye.
Conductive inks have a myriad of different interesting applications. As a quick, additive construction method for electronic circuits, they are especially intriguing. Unfortunately, for a long time they have been just out of reach of the hobby market. They are too expensive to buy in decent quantities, too complicated to make, too resistive to be practical, or require high annealing temperatures (which would ruin many of the materials you’d want to put traces on).
Now, though, thanks to some brilliant minds at the UIUC Materials Research Laboratory, you can make your own decent conductive ink!
This ink seems to address many of the problems that other inks have. It’s particle free (won’t clog print heads!), is easy to make, and anneals to the conductivity of bulk silver at only 90 degrees Centigrade (194 degrees Fahrenheit).
After I stumbled upon this paper last month, I decided that I absolutely had to make some.
I am not a chemist, nor have I done any chemistry since high school, so I ended up having to buy both the glassware as well as the chemicals. Even after buying everything that I needed (and some stuff that I probably didn’t), I only spent around $150.
Conductive Silver Ink Pen – Standard Tip. Experiment with paper electronics with this silver conductive ink pen that will let you draw traces! We like the make of this pen, it has a nice liquid silver ink that flows easily, and it works great. In just 3 minutes from opening the packaging, we made the image above, a coin cell holder with an LED.
There are two ‘tips’ available – standard and micro. The microtip allows for finer control but is a little harder to use (because it doesn’t deposit as much silver at once). See the image above with a demonstration of the kind of traces you can draw with each of the lines.
I was given a Yashica Mat-124G camera and you cannot get batteries for the light meter, so I decided to make one. I already had the analog meter and the small box, so the two were a natural fit. I also used Adobe Illustrator to make a new paper template and scale for the meter. This needs some work and I realize this is not actual lux levels. The trick here is to come up with a scale useful to the camera I will be using it with.
Customers have asked us to carry basic perf-board, but we never liked the look of most basic perf: its always crummy quality, with pads that flake off and no labeling. Then we thought about how people actually prototype – usually starting with a solderless breadboard and then transferring the parts to a more permanent PCB. That’s when we realized what people would really like is a proto board that makes it easy!
This proto-board is the PCB you always wish you had, but never realized it! We took the basic layout of a half-sized breadboard, extended it to the size of a mint tin and turned that into a beautiful PCB. The top side has a white silkscreen, and the same markings you’re familiar with, to make transferring components easy. The bottom has 30 rows of 5-hole pad design that matches a classic breadboard, with 4 power bus lines on the sides, and no mask so you can easily cut traces when necessary. There are another 80 holes for general wiring on the edges. We used 1.2mm diameter drill holes so even parts with big leads will fit. All holes are thru-plated for strength – these wont peel off with rework. The finish is a gold plate – you won’t get oxidation like with bare copper perf! There are also four big mounting holes so you can attach the PCB to the tin. A perfect match for a Altoids-sized mint tin.
Comes one per package. Once you use a Perma-Proto board, you’ll never go back!
Tutorial at (http://www.cmiyc.com/projects/msgeq7-simple-spectrum-analyzer/). Simple spectrum analyzer using the MSGEQ7 IC. The 5 LEDs represent different parts of the audio spectrum. The brightness of each LED indicates the strength of that piece of the spectrum. Music provided by GarageBand ’11.
In making our LED disco ball for the new year, it will be necessary to transition from the flat planes of Adalight and Adavision into the three-dimensional world. This has been a humbling experience in the KISS principle: “keep it simple, stupid!” The first tries did not end well…
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