Tindie

With more and more hackers getting into FPGAs and CPLDs, the need for good quality third-party development boards has been steadily growing. This DIP-sized Artix-7 development board from MicroNova is absurdly powerful for the size. The Mercury 2 features a Xilinx XC7A35T with 33,280 logic cells; a 10-bit ADC; a 10-bit DAC; a full-speed USB; an ethernet PHY; 4 Mb SRAM & 32 Mb FLASH… the list goes on and on.

The board is densely packed, and beautifully laid out. I really admire tightly packed, complex boards like this. The designers’ PCB layout skills are on full display — this board would not have been an easy one to lay out! To have all the features that this board has, and to still be under $150 USD is simply awesome. If you are considering getting into FPGA development, the up-front cost can sometimes be prohibitive; but this board doesn’t require an external programmer, and it has plenty of future expansion options as your expertise grows.

MicroNova also sell a baseboard specifically tailored to the Mercury 2 which adds 7-segment displays, buttons & switches, audio in/out, PS/2 and RS-232 ports as well as a few sensors to use with the ADC. This was originally designed for the first Mercury FPGA board, but is fully compatible with the new Mercury 2!

The included documentation for this board is truly excellent. I find that good documentation can make all the difference when working with a new development platform. They even have a Getting Started Guide that walks you through the process of creating a new project in Xilinx Vivado (a famously complex piece of software), as well as example code, and info about all the different parts on the board itself. This shows a level of commitment that reflects well on the designers!

If you’ve been thinking about getting into FPGA development, this might be a great option. Oh, and it’s made & assembled in the USA!

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Procedural generation is a method for generating data automatically from an algorithm. It’s typically used in video games that have infinitely long levels. They will generate the same data if they begin with the same values, but by changing the starting values you will get a totally different set of data. They are similar to pseudo-random number generators but are specifically designed to output structured data.

So when I saw that someone had created procedurally generated circuit boards, I immediately thought “That is AWESOME!”. Every circuit board would be unique, each an individual work of art. The PicoPlanet is a SAMD21 dev board with procedurally generated artwork, including three capacitive touch buttons shaped like planets! The procedural generation also creates swirls around the planets, as well as random little planets and stars on various layers of the board. They are very, very cool little boards, and absolutely gorgeous with the gold on blue colour theme!

They also have an RGB LED and are compatible with Arduino and CircuitPython. Each design will only have 10 boards made, so these are a very limited run and exclusive! They are actually a standard M.2 size and length, with mounting holes in the correct place, so they can be easily mounted to anything that has an M.2 slot or mounting holes. I also give huge kudos to bleeptrack, the designer, for using USB-C! I am really glad to see more and more boards using USB-C. There’s nothing to dislike about this board! Get one before they are gone!

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If you are looking for a challenging soldering project, then the FemFemFemto necklace/keychain kit might be a good choice! It uses the BGA package version of the 555, 3 0402 resistors, 2 0402 LEDs. and a huge (by comparison) 1206 tantalum capacitor.

If you’ve never done solder paste/hot air soldering before, then this might be a bit tricky. Thankfully, the components involved are very inexpensive, so if you wreck something, ordering replacements is not a big deal. As the sellers suggests, use some Kapton (polyamide) tape to hold the board down and to cover the parts you don’t want solder on.

Use good-quality, fresh solder paste, with liquid flux if needed. As long as you get a decent glob of solder on each pad, the miracle of hot-air reflow will take over and all the pads will get reflowed, with the solder resist helping “pull” all the solder together. You’ll suddenly see all the parts “snap” into place once the solder melts. If you get any shorts under the BGA, this can sometimes be solved by adding more liquid flux, reflowing, and gently tapping/pushing the BGA. A very steady hand is needed for this. However, unlike most BGA packages, this one has all the solder balls at the edge of the chip, which will actually make it a lot easier to solder by hand, and decreases the likelihood of shorts. Remember that BGA packages already have solder balls on them — you don’t need to apply solder paste to the BGA footprint. Just put lots of liquid flux and heat it with your hot air gun.

Once you are done, you have (probably) the smallest 555 LED flasher kit ready to put on a necklace or keychain! It’s battery powered, and the SR521 batteries themselves are quite tiny. They will fit on the back in the much easier to solder surface-mount battery holder. I would recommend soldering these on using a normal soldering iron after you’ve completed the front side.

A very cool little trinket to test your reflow skills with! Wear it with hacker pride.

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While many people are still using the old, steady ATmega324 and its derivatives, Atmel (and now Microchip) have not stopped advancing their designs. A couple of years ago, we got the tinyAVR 0/1 series, as well as the megaAVR 0 series. Now they have come out with another new line: the megaAVR DA-series. These are similar to the previous megaAVT 0, but with a higher clock rate, lower power consumption, improved peripherals, and a renewed focus on capacitive touch buttons & sliders. An awesome set of simple dev boards for the AVR DA series has been released by Azzy’s Electronics.

With up to 128k of Flash, and 32k of SRAM, these are much beefier than the old standby ATmega324. They can run up to 24MHz (and, during testing, apparently up to 32MHz without issue) while having up to 55 GPIO, a 12-bit ADC, 10-bit DAC, and a dedicated peripheral touch controller that can support up to 529 segments in mutual capacitance mode! I highly recommend checking out the full datasheet for the AVR128DA – you’ll be impressed with how feature-packed they are.

Azzy’s Electronics have created an Arduino-compatible bootloader core called DxCore which allows easy programming with the Arduino environment. They are also working on getting the official Arduino Optiboot bootloader ported to this new architecture, which should be (fingers crossed) coming soon. Most existing Arduino libraries that work with the megaAVR 0 series should work with the DA series. Azzy’s has created a new NeoPixel library for these boards that has an identical interface to the Adafruit NeoPixel library, but which supports higher speeds.

These development boards are, in my opinion, exactly what development boards should be. They break out all the pins of the microcontroller; they have an on-board voltage regulator; an LED and a button; and the programming header broken out. That’s it! This is important, as dev boards should be inexpensive enough that they can be embedded into projects, or treated as “expendable” and hacked to pieces if needed. I do love playing with the super-high-end development kits, but having an inexpensive alternative like this is super important for actual day-to-day development. Kudos to Azzy’s for making a great, inexpensive and simple-to-use dev board for this exciting new series of chips!

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Serial connections are still very prevalent today, especially in hobby electronics. In most cases, a direct connection between two systems is quite simple, but there are many gotchas that can cause issues and even damage to the connected equipment. Because many laptops and other electronics can have a trickle of current from the AC source (because of the class Y capacitor across the isolating transformer), if the two connected devices have different ground potentials, current can flow through this capacitor (or, in non-isolated power supplies, directly) and can easily cause damage to the connected devices.

I ran into this issue with an FTDI breakout board once — I connected it to a device on a different circuit from my laptop, and suddenly there was a puff of smoke and the ground track on the PCB vapourized. This luckily cleared the fault, but in certain cases, you could end up with substantial damage. Amazingly, after I repaired that trace, the breakout board still worked, but the whole situation could have been avoided. This is the kind of situation where you don’t know you need it until you need it!

If you happen to own an isolation transformer, that’s great — but these are bulky and can be expensive. However, you can pick up this fully isolated USB-to-serial-to-USB device from Geppetto Electronics! The isolation is provided by four Toshiba TLP2270 optical isolation ICs. These are capable of speeds up to 20 Mbaud, as well as differential voltages of up to 5000 Vrms!

Instead of the ubiquitous FTDI FT232 USB to serial chips, Geppetto has instead used the CY7C65213A from Cypress (now Infineon); chosen, in part, because the Cypress chip uses a generic driver and is therefore safe from any “FTDI-gate” type of issue. These have an almost identical feature set to the FTDI chips, but are about $2 less expensive in single quantity. If you wanted isolated USB to TTL serial, you could tap into the signal between the isolators and the Cypress chip quite easily.

A great choice for a low-cost, well-designed board like this! Pick one up and help protect your serial comms from ground potential differences.

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There are lots of ways to display data from the cloud, but this adorable Macintosh-esque display device from Kameleon definitely wins in the looks department! The retro-style case with a bright and clear, easy-to-read display make it an excellent choice for displaying many types of data from the cloud.

The kit comes with the 3D-printed case, as well as a Kameleon Core board (an STM32F411 development board), an ESP8266 module (the ESP-01), a 1.44″ colour TFT display (ST7735), a tiny breadboard, and rainbow jumper wires to connect it all together.

The Kameleon board runs using JerryScript, meaning it is a very beginner-friendly way to program a microcontroller. The Kameleon even has its own web IDE, along with a simple way to upload code using their Kameleon Agent program. Basically, they have created an entire development ecosystem for their board, which is amazing! The documentation is easy to read, with many examples and a full description of the API they have written.

The rest of the kit is also easy to use in combination with the Kameleon board. The ST7735 display has a bunch of example code, as well as an API you can use with JerryScript. The Kameleon API also has graphics routines and there’s also a library for the ESP8266. All the libraries for this kit can be found here. I’m seriously impressed with the documentation and examples, getting up to speed is very easy!

There are a few example projects provided to help you get started. I particularly like the look of the Particulate Monitor with its smiling face. Unfortunately, that particular project is only supported by a Korean API, and the documentation is also in Korean. But the code could be a jumping-off point for you to start from; just find an API relevant to your region that provides similar data.

If you need to display data from the cloud, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better (or more adorable) display! If you just want to play around with the Kameleon Core, it’s also available separately.

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When I first saw this, I immediately thought back to the days when my BlackBerry was with me 24/7. Fond memories of BlackBerry Messenger came pouring over me. I was so glad to see a Canadian company doing so well! But then, well… Android and iOS basically took over completely, and now there are probably hundreds of millions of BlackBerry phones sitting in e-cycle plants and desk drawers worldwide.

However, this super cool FeatherWing uses new old stock BlackBerry parts to create a user interface! The keyboard is from the BlackBerry Q10. BlackBerry keyboards were renowned for their easy typing. Even modern smartphone touchscreen keyboards that have all sorts of optimizations to avoid touching the wrong letter still can’t keep up with a good old physical QWERTY. There are 4 separate buttons above the keyboard, as well as a four-way rocker switch with a button in the center. The whole thing is very reminiscent of the Curve line of BlackBerrys, with the exception of the navigation ball.

This is simply an awesome way to add a great user interface to any project using a Feather MCU board. It is compatible with all of the Feathers released by Adafruit as well as many third-party Feathers, such as the Giant Board and the Orange Crab.

Oh, it also includes an SD card slot, a Stemma QT/Qwicc connector, a NeoPixel, and a keyboard FIFO buffer. Plus, of course, the 320×240 16-bit colour LCD! Interface it with a LoRa Feather and you can make one of those doomsday text communicators. Or use a FONA Feather, and make… a phone! I will definitely be picking up one of these to use with my HUZZAH ESP8266 feather to control my home automation system.

And the best part — it’s certified Open Source Hardware! This means that all the software & hardware files are available in formats which allow editing and reuse — even commercially.

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The Commodore 64 (and its siblings the VIC-20 and Commodore 128) were some of the best-selling home computers of all time. Their appeal has never fully waned, and many C64 collectors still actively create new hardware and software for these beloved machines. The 1541 floppy drive was one of the most popular ways to transfer files between Commodore machines (in North America, at least — the UK tended to use cassette tapes more). However, 1541s that are still around are getting old, requiring maintenance and know-how to keep them running in tip-top shape. Naturally, collectors have come up with solutions to these problems, and the Pi1541 Nano is a particularly attractive design. Because it uses the Pi Zero, it’s very small, and with the OLED interface, it’s very easy to use — assuming you can get your hands on a Pi Zero, that is.

The 1541 used an unusual design. It essentially had another entire computer inside, making the C64 file routines much simpler as it didn’t have to deal with the low-level floppy interface. This had the downside of making the 1541 very expensive, and incompatible with any other machines. However, the upside is the protocol is quite simple, allowing a low-cost, low-power computer like the Pi Zero to emulate it. This makes life much easier for those who still use their C64s a lot, and saves wear and tear on the floppy drive and the floppies themselves. With the (relatively) huge amount of memory on a Pi Zero, you can hold thousands and thousands of 1541 floppy images and swap between them easily with the OLED screen and button interface. Also, there is an option to include the DIN cable needed to connect this to your C64, if you didn’t already have one!

The small size makes me think it would be possible to actually embed one of these inside a C64, if you were willing to cut out a hole for the screen and buttons. I know most collectors wouldn’t be keen on doing so, but it’s something I might give a try! Then you would have an all-in-one C64 system with no external parts. Note that the Pi1541 Nano does not have a pin for the SRQ line, meaning it will not work with a Commodore 128. However, the original Pi1541 will.

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There are untold numbers of Raspberry Pis running 24/7 across the globe. Some of them are collecting data remotely and sending it back to a cloud server; some are media servers; some are DNS servers like the PiHole. Pis are used in ways that most people wouldn’t normally use their computers or laptops — they are often treated more like a server.

Because the Pi’s entire storage is Flash-based, sudden power cuts are not good. Filesystems have been designed to try and prevent corruption, but it still happens. All that work you spent getting it set up just the way you like it suddenly won’t boot at all! This happens in the professional server market too — only they have these magic devices called Uninterruptible Power Supplies that provide power to a device when the mains power goes out.

Now you can bring this often bulky & expensive technology to your little Raspberry Pi! The jUPS is designed to be easy to use, efficient, and reliable. Paired with any 12V sealed lead acid battery (the battery of choice for commercial UPS systems as well) it becomes a power supply that can, depending on your design, run the Pi for hours or even days. Or, you can have it tell the Pi to gracefully shut down until power comes back. Or a combination of the two! It’s easy to customize the voltage trigger levels, so you can tweak it until it’s just the way you like it.

The reason this product caught my eye is I have a Pi which runs 24/7 controlling a few things around my house. We don’t get power cuts often, but when we do it’s always irritating to not have the Pi running. I’ve looked into getting a commercial UPS, but they’re often expensive and not designed to be end-user serviceable, meaning battery replacement will void your warranty. This is a perfect solution for anyone running a Pi (or, for that matter, any small electronic device that runs on 5V!) which needs 24/7 reliability.

It connects to the Pi using either a USB cable, or terminal blocks (if you want to connect to the Pi header). It does conform to the Pi Hat standard, so it will fit perfectly on top of any full-size Raspberry Pi, and comes with mounting hardware. The only downside is that it doesn’t connect to the Pi header directly, and if you mount it on top it would be blocking the header, requiring a ribbon cable. However, you could just as easily mount it below the Pi for the very same reason, so the flexibility is nice. It looks like the included standoffs are long enough to mount it on the bottom of the Pi, but I haven’t tried it yet and so you might need longer standoffs.

It even integrates with Node-RED for monitoring, data logging, and configuration! This is a feature that many commercial UPS’s don’t support. For the cost of this board and a battery, you can have power through any power outage. Oh, it also has an extra USB out, so you can charge your phone, too!

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I’ve been a huge fan of the PIC32 series of microcontrollers since they launched several years ago. They brought together some of the best features of the PIC microcontrollers (pin remapping, great development environment) with the power and speed of the 32-bit MIPS M4K architecture. I’ve used the original PIC32MX series of chips extensively.

Almost 4 years ago, the low-power, low-cost variant of the PIC32MX was announced, called PIC32MM. They use the microMIPS architecture, and have much lower power consumption, as well as lower BOM cost per 1k chips. Of course, some performance is lost, but interestingly they added some peripherals that the low-end PIC32MX chips didn’t have —  a DAC, a Configurable Logic Cell (basically a single macrocell from a CPLD), as well as LIN and I2S support.

This tiny, well-made PIC32MM development board hits a perfect sweet spot for these microcontrollers. It breaks out a lot of pins. It’s breadboard-friendly, unlike most development boards from Microchip. It’s specifically designed to help develop USB applications on the PIC32MM, which is nice. The GitHub has a ton of examples for interfacing to this board with Python over USB. By default, it uses the HID profile for communication, but you can, of course, edit the firmware to use any USB profile you want.

It has some nice protection features, including overvoltage and overcurrent protection on the incoming USB power supply.

Programming is done with a PICKIT or MPLAB Snap, or any compatible programmer. Development can be done in MPLAB X or by using Makefiles that interface with the xc32 compiler.

This is a great little development board to kickstart your USB applications with the PIC32MM series! The board comes with the PIC32MM0256GPM028 but any of the QFN chips in that series will fit on the footprint. I have it on good authority that a “lite” version of this board is in the works, that will be even smaller and break out more GPIO, at a reduced cost. It will forgo the “nice to have” things like OVP and use a PTC instead of an active OCP circuit, but otherwise be quite similar.

It’s a well-designed and very neat board! Kudos to lophtware for an awesome product.

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