Many PIC microcontrollers have built in touch pad capability. The PIC 16F1937 for example has 16 inputs for the capacitance module. These allow for a simple and inexpensive way to add buttons to your project without adding physical switches. Nice thing about these switches is that they will not fail after a certain number of uses like a physical switch will. Our friend Giorgos Lazaridis from PCB Heaven has designed
Ben Heck has a pretty cool job hacking things together on his Ben Heck Show which is sponsored by Element 14. I just heard is that a full second year of episodes has been green lighted so stay tuned for a bunch of new episodes! I hope that Ben is enjoying the builds as much as it looks, I hope that time line pressure doesn’t burn him out… In this
With electronic parts getting less and less hobby friendly there will come a time when you can’t get a part in a through hole DIP format. Our friend Dave from the EEVBlog has a new 3 axis accelerometer that he is playing with. The issue is that it is a LGA surface mount chip these chips only have pads on the underside which makes it a pain to work with
Mario Mauerer and Lukas Schrittwieser sent in the project that has been created in the student lab over the past 1.5 years. It is a huge interactive LED disco floor which consists of 640 RGB LEDs. “The cool thing is that each tile can detect if somebody is standing on it or not! This information is process10 square meter ed by a Java program that allows us to write various
PaweÅ‚ from Poland made a great portable AVR programmer. This thing is totally custom, you can see the prototype above and then see the tiny completed version in the pictures below. This is such a nice looking design that you might just need to have your very own. Nice thing is that Pawel has provided everything you need to make your own! “Function description: Write – writes data from file
When placing parts into a laser machine the first step is normally to set the height of the work so that the laser dot can focus on the exact spot that the cutting laser will hit. The dot lasers are mounted off to the side at an angle, it would be ideal if the aiming laser could be mounted directly above the work but of course this is where the
Hacked Gadgets was at the recent All Energy Conference in Aberdeen Scotland. There was lots of wind generation companies demonstrating their systems and components but I thought that Windspot is going after an interesting market. Their wind generators have automatic pitch compensation which makes them very quiet so they can be used in residential applications and they are also DIY friendly since as you can see everything you need is
