via Dangerous Prototypes
Kevin has been working on building his own thermostat, that is available on github:
Does the world need another connected thermostat?
When my thermostat went on the blink last winter, I looked at Nest, and Ecobee, and the other me-too thermostats, and I decided I would rather build my own.
More details at baldwisdom.com.
via Dangerous Prototypes
Dr. Scott M. Baker has a nice write-up about building a multi-ROM cartridge for his Atari 5200 using Raspberry Pi:
The Atari 5200 is a vintage gaming system from the early 1980s. At the time I owned a 2600, but I always wanted a 5200. Well, in 2018 I finally decided to find one on eBay and buy it. I learned that the first thing you want to do after attaining a new gaming console is to get your hands on every available game cartridge for it, so I made this multi-ROM cartridge.
A multi-ROM cartridge, or “MultiCart” is a cartridge that contains more than one ROM image. There are multiple ways to go about this from selector switches to pick the cartridge you want, to built-in in game menu systems. I decided to go the route of using a Raspberry Pi for the user interface, making a WEB UI available to pick which cartridge is used.
The goal is not simply to play retro games on modern hardware — there’s any number of emulation solutions for that. The goal is to play retro games on retro hardware, but use a modern system to load the game image into the console.
See the full post at smbaker.com and the GitHub repository here.
Check out the video after the break.
via Dangerous Prototypes
Dilshan Jayakody published a new build:
This is 8 channel CMOS logic probe and pulsar which is useful when designing, testing and faultfinding in digital circuits. This circuit is designed using commonly available CMOS logic ICs which including couple of 4069 hex inverters and 4040 binary counter.
Logic probe of this system is based on 4069 hex inverters and it indicate logic high and low states with 2 LEDs. Logic pulsar of this circuit is capable to generate 12 frequencies and highest frequency it can generate is 420kHz. This pulsar generate square wave with 50% duty cycle and it’s average raise time is 16µS.
See the full post on Dilshan Jayakody’s blog.
via Dangerous Prototypes
Erich Styger has a nice write-up about building a DIY pick & place machine based on OpenPnP:
This article is about a project I have started back in January 2018. As for many of my projects, it took longer than anticipated.But now it is working, and the result is looking very good: a DIY automated pick and place machine to place parts on circuit boards. In the age of cheap PCBs, that machine closes the gap for small series of boards which have to be populated in a time consuming way otherwise.
See the full post on MCU on Eclipse blog.
Check out the video after the break.
via Dangerous Prototypes
Nick over at educ8s.tv shared detailed instructions of how to build this DIY Art Deco style FM Radio project using Arduino:
Let’s see what we are going to build today! As you can see, we are going to build an Art Deco style FM radio receiver. The design of this radio is based on this spectacular 1935 AWA radio. I discovered this old radio while searching online and also in this book about the most beautiful radios ever made. I loved the design of this radio so much that I wanted to have a similar one. So I devoted a month of my time to build my own.
Full details at educ8s.tv.
Check out the video after the break.
via Dangerous Prototypes
DuWayne published a new build:
I have been following a series of podcasts from ‘Chatting with the Designers’ CWTD.ORG that cover building simple Arduino based test equipment. I decided that this would make a nice way to get into development with the ESP32. The CWTD ‘Test Gadget’ is basically an Arduino Nano with a 2 line LCD display, and a breadboard area where small modules can be plugged in to make different types of instruments. My version will use the ESP32 and the TFT display. I am also replacing their rotary encoder with a joystick for the user interface device. I am bringing all the pins from the ESP32 module out to two pairs of female headers, that should allow me to plug in two small modules at the same time.
See the full post on DuWayne’s Place blog.