Tindie

It seems every week we see new products aimed at bringing vintage computers back to life, and the XTSSD ISA 8-bit SSD Adapter falls squarely into that category. With vintage PCs from the 1980s approaching 40 years old, we see fewer hard drives that are in good working condition. While there have been other approaches, such as using SD cards or CompactFlash, these have limitations when used as the storage medium for a computer. They don’t have great write endurance, and their random access speeds are quite low compared even to mechanical hard drives.

This well-designed and very clean board takes any mSATA SSDs and adapts them for use with the ISA bus. By converting the mSATA interface to IDE using an off-the-shelf module, the board then has the code and interface circuitry to add IDE devices to the ISA bus. This will make your old computer whisper-quiet, which for some people is a must — but others prefer the sound of a mechanical hard drive whirring away. That’s okay — you can use this board directly with IDE drives too! Note that only one interface or the other can be in use at once, so unfortunately you can’t have both an mSATA SSD and an IDE drive with a single board.

If you’ve been looking for a solution to upgrade your old machines, take a good look at the XTSSD! Not only is it faster, but better write endurance on SSDs mean a long and reliable life inside your vintage computer, keeping it running for another generation!

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PIC microcontrollers have been around for a long time — longer than the AVR cores that power most Arduino boards. Despite their immense popularity, PIC dev boards are often completely unique, making them incompatible with add-ons designed for other dev boards. This fusion of the PIC18F footprint and the Arduino layout leads to a great platform for developing USB-based PIC applications!

The layout follows the ubiquitous UNO layout but has an extra optional header that can be added to access all the pins on the bigger 40-pin DIP package. Sockets allow for either the smaller 20 and 28-pin or larger 40-pin DIP versions of the PIC18F series. There are a lot of different chips in the 18F series, but they generally maintain pinout compatibility with each other, allowing you to move up and down in terms of Flash size, RAM, clock speed, and peripherals as needed.

We love that the board uses USB-C — we can’t wait to get rid of all of our Micro-B cables! — and the standard 6-pin PIC ICSP header is also broken out. The ICSP header can plug directly into the PICKIT 2, 3, 4, ICD 3/4, or the new, affordable MPLAB Snap. Throw in the typical things on an Arduino-style board (on-board LED, crystal oscillator, reset button) and a few nice touches like the labelled pin headers, and you’ve got a great PIC development package ready to go!

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Everyone seems to have a handful of Raspberry Pi Picos on their desks these days. The incredibly powerful $5 board has had a considerable impact on the hobbyist market. Because of its rather bare-bones layout, though, it doesn’t have a separate reset button. This means in order to flash the device you have to unplug it, hold down BOOTSEL, and plug it back in. The additional wear and tear on the USB micro-B connector can cause issues over time. Well, the Pico QwiicReset Addon Board is here to help with prototyping your Pico projects in more ways than one!

The headline feature is that it adds a reset button. This makes booting into bootloader mode much easier — just press the reset button at the same time as BOOTSEL and bam, you’re ready to go. This saves the aforementioned wear and tear and speeds up debugging sessions. But as I’m sure you’ve noticed, there’s a Qwiic connector sticking out of the side of the addon board!

Yes, it also quickly and easily adds a Qwiic connector to enable interfacing with the huge ecosystem of Qwiic/Stemma breakout boards available. This is a nice feature to have, as it enables you to quickly write and test code for interfacing to a particular sensor or peripheral without having to spin up a custom board or use a breadboard.

If you’re a Pico fan, make sure to pick up a few of these from the product page — at $1.65 each you can outfit all your Picos! Just note that the Pico WH is incompatible as the debug header interferes with the board.

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Macropads are becoming very popular, and for good reason. Anyone who works with software that uses a lot of key combinations quickly learns the value of having common, repetitive tasks mapped to a single key. However, when changing between different applications or profiles on a macropad, it can be hard to remember how you have mapped things. A great solution is to print out keycap stickers, but an even more awesome solution is to put a full-colour LCD behind every key! That’s exactly what the creator of the Open Deck has done.

While this isn’t a new idea, the existing solutions are almost entirely proprietary and quite expensive. They have locked firmware and only support the platforms and use cases they think will sell the most pads. But the Open Deck is fully open source, allowing you to repurpose it, reprogram it, or integrate it into any project you want. This also means that as long as you have the hardware, you’ll always be able to use it — open source software doesn’t vanish when a product is discontinued.

Under the hood, the Open Deck is using an ESP8266 running an Arduino core, meaning it’s very easy to tweak and add features if you want. The computer-side software is written in Python, and while the current version has some features that are only available on Windows, it does work with Mac and Linux too.

If this project piques your interest, make sure to check out the project page and check out the demo video below!

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We covered the original Fibonacci Earrings by California STEAM on the blog, but since then they’ve been tweaked and improved, and are now supercapacitor-based! The all-new Rechargeable Supercapacitor Fibonacci Earrings are available in turquoise or pink, and just like the original are dazzling and a surefire way to make an entrance at any conference or hacker get-together!

Almost all wearables with LEDs use coin cell batteries. While these are a neat bit of technology, they don’t really have enough oomph to keep power-hungry circuitry like these LED arrays running for long evenings. Plus, coin cells have a negative environmental impact, and the cost of running earrings like these would quickly get them relegated to the back of the jewelry box. With these issues in mind, California STEAM decided to test some alternative means of energy storage and came across hybrid supercapacitors which fit the bill perfectly.

Hybrid supercapacitors have the same benefits as traditional supercaps — fast charge cycles, low output impedance, and a huge number of charge/discharge cycles, while also offering increased energy density and a higher working voltage. The caps on these earrings can keep them running for 20 hours, and then be fully recharged in only three minutes from a decent USB power supply! Add in low self-discharge, and it’s easy to keep these earrings ready to go for a night on the town.

Another change was to 0603 LEDs, which allowed more colours like the turquoise and pink we see here. The older design used 0402 LEDs which were limited to more basic colours. If you want to see them in action, check out the video below, and be sure to check out the product page!

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If you live anywhere near the ocean, or if you regularly travel there to sail or fish, knowing how high or low the tide is can be extremely important. For Nova Scotians that live near the Bay of Fundy, for example, the difference between high and low tide can be as much as 16 meters (53ft) and can cover and uncover over 280km (174 miles) of the bay! So having tidal information for many people is an essential part of life. This gorgeous, laser-cut wood Tide Clock shows where the tide is currently at, as well as which direction it is currently trending (rising or falling).

The mechanism has a steampunk look to it while still remaining classic and timeless. This would make a perfect gift for the sailors, fishers, or surfers in your family or friend groups! The mechanism is based on an actual clock module but uses a clever design to turn the clock movement into tidal information. Upon receipt, you simply need to set the clock to the correct phase and height of the tide and then it will keep track of the tide for you.

The seller, Subsystems, also has other neat clocks like this Mars clock. Be sure to take a look at all the other cool items they carry!

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Deftaudio is at it again! We recently covered their fidget spinner Eurorack module, and now they’ve turned the concept on its head! A powerful stepper motor inside this module has a shaft coupler attached to it, so you can get creative and use it to turn knobs automatically on any other module in your rack. Or you could use it as a display piece, and have it spin an LED board in response to the music you’re making.

The MotorPot can be controlled via MIDI through the standard Eurorack TRS-A/B cables or via USB as a MIDI class device. It’s also possible to rotate it with a control and gate voltage like traditional analog synthesizers typically use.

Using a rotating disc and shaft, the MotorPot controls a slide pot on the rack above

The example shown above is very over-the-top and we think it’s great! Controlling a linear potentiometer with a reciprocating drive is just ridiculous enough to be awesome. The particular stepper motor used has some power behind it, and Deftaudio recommends giving it a separate 2A supply if it’s going to be used in a way that draws a lot of power. Most Eurorack power supplies are not quite beefy enough to handle the load that this module creates, so double-check what your rack has before installation.

The module is available both as a DIY kit and as a fully assembled unit, ready to go. If building the DIY option, make sure to get a Teensy 4.0, either from Deftaudio pre-programmed or from another vendor and then program it yourself. Give your rack some personality with this quirky motorized module!

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Over the last few years, we’ve seen online marketplaces carrying large video panels that all use a similar protocol, commonly called HUB12. These panels are reminiscent of the style used to build giant outdoor displays, and they come in a variety of colours and LED pitch (from very fine to quite large). These panels are capable of displaying content at 60 frames a second, making them very useful for video displays, but they can also be used to display static images or used in other unconventional ways. However, driving these panels can be somewhat challenging — something the Raspberry Pi HUB12 Hat aims to improve!

This hat contains three separate connectors using the de facto standard pinout of these modules. Because this Hat supports HUB12, it’s specifically designed for monochrome panels (the HUB75 protocol is used on the RGB panels). With large screw terminals to supply current to the panels, the power supply circuitry is totally separate from the Pi itself. It also includes a built-in fan to help cool both the Hat and the Pi, helping stabilize the system when driving panels for long periods of time.

It can easily drive 3 panels, and likely with some tweaks to the Hat, they could potentially be stackable, allowing more panels to be controlled. Hopefully, we will see some more documentation and example code, though to get started Adafruit has a library for driving the RGB displays from a Pi that could be used to get started.

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If you’re a STEAM educator or just someone who is interested in miniature satellites, then you’ve got to check out the EDUCAN-Mini satellite kit! It comes with all the necessary parts (except the lithium battery) to build a replica CanSat miniature satellite, gather data, and send it to a “base station” over wifi.

While it’s not space-rated, the kit goes over all the parts necessary for building real satellites and shows students what designing amateur space equipment is like. It contains a full power subsystem, a central computer, a payload, and a 3D-printed enclosure. This kit is based on an Arduino and so is fully compatible with the Arduino IDE and libraries, making it easy to add additional sensors or actuators.

Common modifications students can do include adding solar panels to charge the battery; adding a payload release mechanism using servo motors; calculating the orientation of the satellite based on both sensor input and camera input; rotating the solar panels to face the correct direction; and build a “launch vehicle” that can house the satellite and communicate with it until the satellite is released.

This kit is aimed at teenagers, but educators can apply the same curriculum and scale it for younger or older students as they see fit. Get your students into space technology with this neat little kit!

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MSX computers were a standardized series of home computers released in Asian markets through the 1980s and 1990s. They were particularly popular in Japan, where many classic video games were released for the systems. Because the systems were all based on a common standard, you could buy a machine from Mitsubishi, Sharp, Canon, Yamaha, and many more. Eventually, the systems found small success outside of East Asia, with versions being localized for the Middle East and South America. Systems are difficult to find in working condition these days, but this single-chip MSX clone computer supports the MSX2 standard and has all sorts of modern bells and whistles!

Based on an Altera EP1C12 FPGA, this system emulates an MSX2 class machine with some excellent additions, such as a PS/2 keyboard port and a USB port for future network-based expansions. It also has the standard joystick interface and 2 expansion ports available out of the box. It supports both composite video out and RGB out via a VGA connector. It even comes with 2 different controllers, and includes a supported Wi-Fi dongle!

If you’ve ever wanted to play around with the vast library of games and software released for MSX computers, the uMSX Pro is a great option. You won’t have to deal with the headaches of older machines in various states of disrepair, and you can easily add games and software to the included SD card. It comes with the acrylic case shown to help protect the system and make it easy to add to your console shelf! And, as a bonus, the schematics and source code are freely available on GitHub if you want to tweak the system or add new features. A must-have for any MSX enthusiast!

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