Arduino Sensor Kit

Arduino and Seeed have released the Arduino Sensor Kit for $23 (USD).  The kit includes 10 modules and sensors including light, sound, air pressure, temperature, an accelerometer, buzzer, button, and a small OLED screen.  The Arduino sensor kit base is an Arduino Shield (daughterboard) so you will need an Arduino UNO or compatible board to use it.  If you buy both from Arduino you can get them bundled for a discounted price ($38.70).  The Arduino Sensor Kit can be purchased directly from Arduino or Seeed and Arduino has developed a step-by-step tutorial to go with it and the Arduino UNO. 

Seed has a very similar all-in-one board, the Seeed Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino ($19.90), which includes an Arduino compatible base board.

Electronics Deals Black Friday 2020

Black Friday is a great time to get a new development board or some parts for a DIY electronics project.  Here are a few great online electronics stores where you can find deals.

Adafruit is having two sales, one is for 15% all items in stock with the code ADATHX see more details in the Adafruit Thanksgiving Weekend Sale blog post.  The Adafruit Feather line of development boards is 20% off today only with the same code, see Adafruit Feather Friday Sale for details.

Polulu has a few different Black Friday deals.  There are coupons for individual products, discounts on your entire order and the unique design your own deal sale.  Follow this link to Pololu Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale 2020 for the details.

The design your own deal allows you to propose propose a discount for up to three products.  Last year I was able to get even bigger discounts than I asked for.  I don't recall the original prices but I was pleasantly surprised that they were all approved and discounted further.  Here are my three wishes and the deals I was offered.

Pololu item #3103: A-Star 32U4 Mini LV

You requested: 1 at $12.00 each.

We can do even better!  Up to 3 at $8.88 each.

Pololu item #3110: A-Star Prime Accessory Pack

You requested: 1 at $3.00 each.

We can do even better!  Up to 3 at $2.75 each.

   

Pololu item #3113: A-Star 32U4 Prime SV

You requested: 1 at $15.00 each.

We can do even better!  Up to 3 at $14.00 each.

SparkFun Black Friday Deals are discounts from 15 to 60 percent off select products.  There are not as many deals here but you might get lucky and find something you want.  You can also check out this sneak peak of Cyber Monday Deals.

At the Black Friday Sale on Tindie many development boards are discounted.  Tindie is a unique online store featuring independent sellers of all kinds of development boards and accessories for unique applications.   If you haven't been to this site before it's a great time to look around.

Lattice Development Board Sale and New Crowd Funded Board

Lattice has three boards on sale until December 31, 2018, click on the board links to learn more.
MachXO3-9400 Development Board - MachXO3LF-9400C PLD - includes Arduino and Raspberry Pi connectors -  $39

Embedded Vision Development Kit - FPGA for embedded vision systems - $199

iCE40 UltraPlus Breakout Board - FPGA for mobile and IoT - $49

If you are interested in learning how to program the iCE40 with open source tools and hardware see the recently funded iCEBreaker FPGA project by 1BitSquared.

Open Source Digital Synthesizer Uses Beaglebone Black

Liam Lacey has built an impressive digital synthesizer from an old toy piano and a BeagleBone Black.  The DIY project is entered in the Element14 Open Source Music Tech Challenge.  The project is open hardware and open software with all design files hosted on Github.  To find out more see his blog posts on Element14 or his Vintage Toy Synthesizer Tumblr page.  He also created a number of vintage toy synthesizer YouTube videos.   The video below is an overview of the specifications and features.

Development Board Community Sites

Zedboard.org is a new community site for a Xilinx-ARM development board.  User-supported development boards have become very popular. TI has over a dozen listed at designsomething.org including beagleboard.org which supports beagleboard and beaglebone.  Here are a few more popular sites.

Xilinx

www.zedboard.org - Zync-7000 processor features Dual ARM Cortex-A9 at 667MHz, FPU, GigE, HDMI, stereo CODEC

papilio.cc - Open-source FPGA project with Spartan 3E FPGA.

Atmel

www.arduino.cc Ever-popular open-source electronics platform you can build yourself.

Freescale

www.towergeeks.org Modular stackable multi-architecture development kits and peripheral modules.

NXP

mbed.org Rapid prototyping boards and software tools.

LPCXpresso

Analog Devices

Blackfin Koop Open-source software and hardware projects including uClinux and support for the Blackfin STAMP board.

STMicroelectronics

stm32circle.com Projects support a number of STM32 development boards including the EvoPrimer platform.

http://leaflabs.com/devices/maple/ Arduino format, but with an ARM Cortex-M3 processor.

Texas Instruments

designsomething.org Many boards such as beaglebone, beagleboard, msp430, craneboard, pandaboard

Synthesizers

Today's Google Doodle honors Robert Moog with a working Synthesizer.  Here are a few more that you can buy, make, or run as an app.

You can purchase a modern Moog directly from moogmusic.com like the one in this video comparing the Doodle to the real thing.

Moog also has an iPhone App synth, the Animoog, on sale for $0.99 for the next few days.  Unfortunately, my iPhone 3G is too old to run this (I'm stuck at iOS 4.21 which isn't compatible with Animoog).

An open hardware hackable digital synth is available from MeeBlip starting at only $39 for the basic board, up to a complete ready to assemble kit for $149.

Teenage engineering sells a musical experimental board called Oplab ($299) and an all-in-one portable synth with USB connectivity, the OP-1 ($849) shown in this video.

Something a little different is the x0xb0x from LadyAda, you can build one yourself from her manual or buy a complete kit or finished synth from WILLZYX and a few other online sources.

Android ADK Development Boards

Developers using Google's Android Open Accessory Development Kit (ADK) now have more choices of hardware.  Initially the ADK supported the Arduino Mega2560 ($65 assembed from Adafruit) with Oleg Mazurov's USB Host Shield ($25).

Here is the current list from the Android Developers ADK page.

Arduino Mega ADK - available from the Arduino Store and Radio Shack $84.99

DIY Drones PhoneDrone Board for Android $99

mbed has a few solutions...

Microchip - Two boards are available, the PIC32 DM320412 (not yet for sale actually), and the PIC24 DM240415 $79.

Modern Device's Freeduino USB Host Board $79

RT Corp - RT-ADK&RT-ADS $389.03 (31,500 Yen)

Seeed Studio Seeeduino ADK Main Board $79

Sparkfun IOIO for Android (beta support) $49

SparkFun Free Day 2012

In a few weeks SparkFun Electronics will be having free day where random visitors to the website will receive a $100 gift certificate.  The fun starts on January 11th, starting at 9AM Mountain Time.

Sparkfun is a great resource for your electronics needs.  In addition to parts and kits, you can find a tutorials like this one on selecting an accelerometer breakout board, and some interesting competitions like the autonomous vehicle competition.  I found a connection with a local school, teacher Steven Kennedy from Orchard Park High School is profiled in this SparkFun ad.  If you click the previous link you can see the full resolution and you can see from the poster he even has his own youtube channel for student projects.

New BeagleBone Now in Stock

The new BeagleBone TI Am335x ARM  Cortex A8  development board is now in stock at  Special Computing for $79.95, here is a list of  the current BeagleBone distributors to check.  

Adafruit Industries will soon have them too and is selling a custom proto board for $9.95 that fits right on top of the BeagleBone called the proto cape.  For those unfamiliar, a cape is like a daughter board for the main board like a shield for an Arduino.  (My wife wants to know why there are daughterboards and motherboards, but not father or son boards, please leave a comment if you know the answer).

Add USB Host Support To Your MCU Design

The Maxim MAX3421E allows you to add a USB Host port to any microprocessor with an SPI interface.  This IC has recently returned to active production after being listed as not recommended for new designs.  It is offered as an Arduino shield (daughter board) from Circuits@Home and the code library for the USB Host Shield is on github.  You can find many articles on the design and use of the USB shield on the Circuits@Home blog.  The design is open hardware and you can order it from Batch-PCB as well.

For commercial projects, the MAX3421E is supported by USB Stacks from HCC-Embedded and Micro Digital.  HCC-Embedded also has an SD card module to add a USB Host to any board with an SPI capable SD card socket.  The schematics and layout are a free download from the website.

The MAX3421EVKIT-1 from Maxim can also be used for developing a USB stack for individual devices.  It can be ordered directly from Maxim ($57) or from Digikey ($62).  You can start with the MAX3421E EVKIT-1 Software and User Guide to develop your own driver for targeted devices.  I have been working with the MAX3421E with an ARM processor board and have added support for a mouse, keyboard, and hub to the design.

My New DSP Blog

See a short review of the new features on the Beagleboard-xM on my new blog, Discourse on Embedded Signal Processing.

From the About page:

Discourse on Embedded Signal Processing is a blog about applying signal processing algorithms in embedded systems. The focus will be on implementing signal processing on general purpose DSPs, FPGAs, and microcontrollers. Topics include new processors and architectures, development tools, design flows, design techniques, and new applications.

I don't plan on any changes to EmbeddedCoding.com, I will still cover some DSP topics here as well.  I will post less frequently to Discourse on Embedded Signal Processing, but I plan on having more in-depth articles.

BatchPCB offers low cost for prototypes

BatchPCB is a service of SparkFun Electronics that provides low cost PCBs in small quantities for electronics enthusiasts.  There are some limitations and a slow turn-around with this service, but the idea is to make it cheap by batching your design with other orders. Here is a blog post about alternatives to BatchPCB if you find it too slow or need more than a few prototypes.  Here is a comparison of BatchPCB and a few other PCB Pooling services including MakePCB, and Eurocircuits. If you are new to PCB design, this article from IEEE Spectrum covers an engineer's first PCB design using BatchPCB.

You can sell your design at BatchPCB as well.  For example, you can buy a Breakout Board for the Maxim MAX3421E USB host controller designed by Oleg Mazurov of Circuits@Home.  You can find some open-hardware for sale as well, which seems like it could cause problems. One open-hardware company, AdaFruit Industries, requested one of its designs removed from the BatchPCB marketplace.

Open Circuits Wiki for Electronics Design

At OpenCircuits.com you can find PCB footprints, electronic circuit building blocks, tutorials and general electronics design links.  This is an evolving resource and the members are looking for help from the community to improve the site.  The information on the site is not all related to open source.  For example, you can find PCB footprints for commercial EDA packages and a list of low-cost oscilloscopes.

RepRap Free Desktop 3D Printer

RepRapWiki
RepRap from Adrian Bowyer on Vimeo.

For more 3D printers like this see my post 3D Printers for the Masses.

Pocket Size Digital Storage Oscilloscope

DSO nano - Pocket size digital storage oscilloscope sold for only $89 at the www.seeedstudio.com Seeed Depot.  It uses an ARM Cortex-M3 processor, has a 2.8" color TFT LCD with data acquisition of 1Msps,  12bits, and 4096 point storage.

The brief manual includes a schematic and you can download the firmware from  the open source dsnano project hosted at google code

Optional stand available for only $50!

Open Source Hardware Gets Formal Definition

Open Source Hardware Draft Definition version 0.3 is up for review. You never know how these things can be used in the future so it might be good to review if you have an open hardware project in the works.

I would prefer there wasn't such strict requirements for documentation, technology neutrality, or source code. Generic hardware that could be used for many purposes don't seem to fit the definition for open hardware.  For example, processor modules have a specific interface and are pretty self-explanatory from the schematic and data-sheets.  Also, an open source hardware developer may not have the engineering staff to develop the formal documentation and source code required by the current definition. I think the software development and documentation could be left to separate open-source groups. Open-source projects like eLinux.org have reverse engineered commercial products to run useful software without access to any documentation or even schematics.

3D Printers for the Masses

Fab@Home aims to change the way we live by allowing anyone to produce custom 3D objects with a 3D printer developed at Cornell University.  Shown below is Model 2 being developed in the Cornell Computational Synthesis Lab.

You can build your own personal fabricator by following the instructions on the Fab@Home wiki or buy one at the NextFab Store.  The video below shows one in action creating a gear.

 

Here's another video showing how it can mill foam and wood.

Update: MakerBot is another 3D printer that you can make yourself for less than $1000 (Update: latest model fully assembled is almost $2000).  It creates ABS plastic models using a heated extrusion process.  You can buy a kit and spools of various colors of plastic material to create with at the MakerBot Store.

Camera 2.0 Open-Source Digital Camera Project

As part of the Camera 2.0 project, researchers at Stanford have developed the Frankencamera shown here, "an open-source camera platform that runs Linux, is fully programmable (including its digital signal processor) and connected to the Internet, and accommodates SLR lenses and SLR-quality sensors. Our current prototype...is constructed from off-the-shelf parts, in some cases borrowed from dead cameras. It's also ugly - hence the name."

This open-source project is being developed to help researcher gain more control of camera processing. Another open-source camera project, the Canon Hack Development Kit, allows some control through a series of enhancements, but according to the Frankencamera FAQ: "you can't use them to reprogram the camera's pre-capture sequence (metering and focusing) or to replace its post-processing algorithms (demosaicing, denoising, sharpening, white balancing, tone mapping, etc). The Frankencamera fills this gap"

The brains of the Frankencamera include a TI OMAP3 processor, an Aptina MT9P031 image sensor and an Elphel 10338 sensor board.

If the popularity of the CHDK is any indication, the Frankencamera is sure to have a cult following.

Fritzing

Fritzing is an unique project that allows hobbyists to design and produce electronic prototypes. Started as a University research project, it continues with the support of users with the purchase of the Fritzing starter kit. Included in the kit is an Arduino Deumilonove 328 microcontroller board. You can also download the design application without purchasing a kit.

Texas Instrument's OMAP and Inexpensive BeagleBoard Excel with Embedded Linux

Attending the TI Tech Days Toronto 2009, I was impressed with the capabilities of the BeagleBoard, an OMAP3530 single board computer that sells for only $149. It was on display serving video to a tiny DLP projector that is also available as a development kit from TI.

The BeagleBoard is a reference platform as well, with all schematics, gerbers and even design files available online. This allows third-parties like TinCanTools to develop a peripheral add-on board an an adaptor for their USB-JTAG board to support the BeagleBoard.

The OMAP is a great platform for Embedded Linux development. The OpenEmbedded project, the Angstrom distribution, and Android all have been ported to the OMAP, and there is a great community of BeagleBoard Linux users and a wealth of information online at BeagleBoard.org. In addition to the BeagleBoard, there are OMAP development boards from gumstix and Logic. Each of these boards also have embedded Linux distributions and online resources for developers.

At the Conference, the room was full for the OMAP embedded Linux presentation by Nuvation, and it could have lasted much longer if time permitted. Developers had many questions on each slide and the presenter had to rush to finish. You can tell that there are a lot of products in development with the technology or at least considering OMAP and Embedded Linux as a solution.

There were a number of development companies at the conference (including Aaron Clarke Consulting) offering support for OMAP development. bSQUARE was giving away copies of Microsoft's Windows Embedded CE Evaluation Kit that also runs on the BeagleBoard. They support both WinCE and Embedded Linux development. They are headquartered in Bellevue, Washington with offices around the world including one near me in Rochester, NY. bSQUARE, who aquired Vibren Technologies in 2005, also offers an embedded flash for Linux and porting services for Adobe Flash Lite.

You can see the BeagleBoard in action either at one of the remaining TI Tech Days or at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston. TI will have a number of workshops featuring the BeagleBoard including Android development.