Frank Zhao, an electrical engineering student at the University of Waterloo just made this cool Toaster Oven Hacked into a Reflow Soldering Oven project. If you are working on a project that has SMD components in it you will need to select a way to reflow the solder paste, there are lots of DIY methods out there and one popular method includes modifying a toaster oven into a reflow oven.
Thanks to Farnell and Element 14 for sponsoring the contest this week. They will be providing a XL STAR BOARD to the winner. This board contains a accelerometer, Freescale MC9S08MM128, lots of breakout pins and a ton of status LEDs on the PCB. There is a video below so you can see it in action. “The XL STAR BOARD describes the process of developing code for Freescale’s XL_STAR, a low
Martin Landwehrmann from Germany sent in a ton of great build pictures of this BIG DIY LED Matrix and an English description on what André Zibell, Tobias Mc Fadden and Martin have been working on. By the pictures you can see that this creation wasn’t a simple task to put together but the results are great! Link More Video Links: Video 1 Video 2 Video 3 Video 4 Video 5
Thanks to Pabloxid for sending in his dancing robot (translated into English). His movements reminds me a bit of Keepon. “Its output devices are: the 2 DC motors at the base, the 3 servos that move the “head”, clusters of LEDs in the “eyes” and an audio system that plays both the internally generated beeps like sounds stored in a small flash drive, using a car MP3 player. His only
If you have a LEGO Mindstorms NXT system you now have a new way for it to communicate. Using the Dexter Industries Wifi Sensor you can now connect the system to your WiFi network for a new range of project ideas. Dexter Industries has spent the entire week cooking up interesting ideas and documenting them on their site for all to enjoy. “The sensor can be used to communicate via
Laser Soldering is an interesting concept, instead of heat from an iron or hot air heat a laser with a specific pattern is used to heat the lead, pad and solder to create a perfect solder connection. I can imagine the next generation of soldering system where the pick and place machine will both place the part on the PCB but it will also immediately fuse it in place permanently.
Matthew Leone from LeoneLabs has just completed his Laser Ball project, it was built inside a tennis ball and uses an Arduino Teensy to power and control 14 red lasers. The ball modes can be changed using a simple mini remote control. The project looks great and apparently took only 5 hours to complete, I am thinking that documenting the project must have taken just as long as the build
