Make your own soldering flux.
cgantt — Sun, 05/13/2012 - 23:17
The use of flux when soldering electronics is one of the fundamental skills that everyone who thinks of picking up a hot soldering iron should have. A lot of times, those new to soldering think that the application of flux is not a necessary component of the soldering process. Judging by the emails I get, this is mainly because of two reasons. They watched a youtube video of an inexperienced kid solder two wires together using $5 pencil iron and plumbing solder then state that flux core solder is all that is needed. The other reason I hear most often is that flux is too expensive for the average hobbyist. We paid $15 for the 2 flux pens we purchased last and $25 for the jar of liquid flux we purchased before that. Today we are going to show you how to create your own flux and create a large quanitity for much less than you would spend by purchasing it premade.
Review: Digilent Pmod OLED Display Part 1 - Overview
cgantt — Wed, 04/25/2012 - 23:13
Digilent has become a common name in the DIY / Maker commuity in the last year with the introduction of their PIC32 based Arduino compatible development boards dubbed chipKIT. Recently they updated their CEREBOT line of development boards to be fully compatible with chipKIT and MPIDE. The CEREBOT cK design incorporates numerous 12 pin headers spaced evenly around the exterrior of the PCB. These headers are specfically designed to accept Digilents break out modules named Peripheral Modules or Pmod for short. Today we begin a series of reviews based around the Digilent Pmod line, so sit back, relax and get your geek on as we show you the ins and outs of the Digilent Pmod OLED.
Introducing the iModela from Roland!
cgantt — Fri, 04/13/2012 - 15:16
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Roland Release the iModela
Roland has been chruning out Quality CNC milling machines for years now and they have just released their first hobbiest level desktop 3 axis cnc milling machine. The wedge shaped mill known as the iModela hopes to compete with other consumer level rapid prototyping machines such as the offerings from Makerbot, Bits from Bytes, and other commerically avaliable rapid prototyping machines. We received our unit yesterday and will have a complete series of post including videos over the course of the next few weeks. Until then, check out the official press relase below. |
Digilent Releases Chipkit Compatible Cerebot Development Boards.
cgantt — Mon, 02/20/2012 - 13:56
Microchip and Digilent® Unveil PIC32-based Cerebot™ Development Boards With chipKIT™ Prototyping Capabilities
Ever thought of hacking your breadboard? Protostack has!
cgantt — Sun, 09/18/2011 - 18:59
Breadboard hacks from Protostack.com
As memebers of the new DIY generation we love hacking things. There is just something rewarding about taking a cheap product and making it work just as good or better than its expensive counterpart. Most of the time these hacks involve the projects we are building, but sometimes they involve the tools we use. Protostack has just released a list of several hacks that will make using your breadboard much more user friendly... More after the jump.
Microchip puts their money where their mouth is! Offers $2000 for OpenSource TCP/IP and USB Stacks for chipKIT...
cgantt — Thu, 09/15/2011 - 16:48
Microchip Offers Reward for Opensource TCP/IP and USB
Unless you have been living under a rock for the last month, you undoubtedly have read about Dangerous prototypes stab at Microchip for not releasing the source code for the TCP/IP Stack and USB stacks used on the chipKIT Arduino Compatible boards. That single posting snowballed into a huge debate in the community on whether or not it really mattered if the stacks were open or not since Microchip lets anyone freely download them. Gene Apperson of Digilent was the first to respond with a posting on Hack A Day saying that it has been his intention from the beginning for the entire tool chain to be completely open and that Digilent’s decision to use the closed source stacks was simply based on the need to get something working quickly for the launch of the chipKIT Networking shield… More after the jump.
Element14 and Freescale's XL-STAR- S08 Development Board.
cgantt — Mon, 08/29/2011 - 10:54
A few weeks ago we announced on our Facebook Fan Page that we were teaming up with Newark.com to review some of the new products that they carry. After browsing their new products section we noticed a development board branded with Newark's Element14 brand. For those of you who have been living under a rock lately, Element14 is Newark / Farnel's community for DIY electronics enthusiast as well as professional electronic engineers. Naturally after seeing this board we had to check it out first, so we requested the Element14 STAR-XL-S08 Development Board as our first review item.
Digilent Releases long awaited chipKIT Networking Shield and General I/O shield.
cgantt — Mon, 08/22/2011 - 13:11
A few months ago we covered Microchip and Digilent's first entry into the Arduino community: The chipKIT line of Arduino compatible PIC32 MCU boards. News spread fast and it seems like anyone who is serious about Arduino dev has picked up at least one of the chipKIT boards. Shortly after the launch of the UNO32 and Max32 board, Digilent announced the existance of 2 shields slated for release in June: The chipKIT Networking shield and chipKIT General I/O shield. June quickly passed and July came and went with no word on the release date for either shield. Well today Microchip and Digilent have officially released both the Networking shield and the General I/O shield. We received our evaluation samples about 3 weeks ago and are planning full writeups on both shields in the next few days. In the mean time we have some exciting photos as well as the full press release after the jump.
Tutorial: Burning the Sanguino Bootloader to the ATmega 644P Using an Arduino as ISP.
cgantt — Tue, 08/16/2011 - 14:04
So you just finished soldering up your Sanguinololu 1.3A board and are ready to test it to see if everything is working properly, but before you can upload any firm ware to the board you need to burn a Bootloader to the ATmega 644P. In this tutorial I will cover using an Arduino or Arduino clone as your ISP programmer. … Class starts after the jump.
Microchip and Stratford Digital's latest PIC 24 educational development system.
cgantt — Sat, 08/13/2011 - 21:29
Its no secret that I have recently became a fan of Microchip and the PIC Microcontroller. I attribute this to my want need to expand my uC coding knowledge past what Arduino has to offer. The release of Digilent's PIC32 based chipKIT boards is what sparked this new need for more knowledge. When Microchip heard that I was trying to learn how to code for PIC's they offered up their latest PIC deveopment platform aimed at education. This new PIC 24 based module and MX Educational target board are the product of the relationship between Microchip and Stratford Digital. Ours arrived a few weeks ago and I quickly realized that I have a lot to learn and as that process unfolds, I will post some tutorials and code examples... After the jump you will find the full press release from Microchip as well as info, photos and specs on both the MX PIC24 Module and MX Educational Target Board.
