Tindie

As someone who was a huge fan of the Pebble e-paper smartwatches, I have been waiting for a similar product to come along since they were sadly dismantled by FitBit in December of 2016. So I was simply delighted when I saw the Watchy e-paper smartwatch pop up on Tindie! Open hardware, open software (things I wished the Pebble had done) and a beautiful design immediately had me looking more closely at what documentation was available. While things are still in development, it does use an ESP32 and the schematic is available — meaning anyone with experience developing for the ESP32 can dive in right away.

The Watchy features a 200×200 ultra low-power e-paper display, 3-axis accelerometer, vibration motor, Bluetooth LE and Wi-Fi support, plus included STL files for 3D-printable cases — this watch is absolutely loaded! I’m hoping we see the documentation on the Watchy website improve in the near future so that people can get hacking on the Watchy. The built-in USB-to-serial programming port is such a lovely touch, and will make firmware upgrades much easier for end-users.

I really hope we see an ecosystem spring up around this watch. One of the great things about Pebble was the excellent developer tools and API they provided for creating both watchfaces and apps. I used my Pebble so much that the band finally wore out, and since most functionality has been discontinued (though the Rebble project aims to keep them alive) it now sits in a revered spot on my desk. My wrist is bare, and this seems like a great option. It looks like 3D printing cases for it should be fairly simple; again, this makes me hope that community support and an ecosystem of accessories and support forms around it!

Pick one up, and help bring hackable e-paper smartwatches back into style!

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Over on Hackaday, I recently did a course with HackadayU about Embedded Serial Buses. We covered I2C in detail, and one of the things I was looking for were good, readily available I2C sensor breakout boards. Well, Celtic Engineering has just added a bunch of excellent breakout boards to their store, including the above High-Side Current Monitor which uses a Texas Instruments INA138; a chip I’ve worked with before that is easy to use and quite accurate.

An integral part of any power supply is current monitoring, and using a board like the INA138 can make your design more robust and reliable by monitoring for overcurrent conditions; or, switching taps on a transformer to maintain the most ideal efficiency of your switching converter. This small breakout board has a couple extra little features as well — a 15.4 kHz antialiasing filter feeds a 12-bit ADC which enables you to also monitor the voltage of the source, meaning power measurements are easily done.

Besides this current monitor breakout, Celtic has also added a I2C Pressure Sensor Breakout, an I2C 12-Bit DAC Breakout, I2C Humidity Sensor Breakout, and many more! These breakout boards are super useful to have in your parts bin. When an idea strikes, having easy-to-use breakout boards can make prototyping so much faster. These boards use commonly available parts that are likely to be available in mass quantities when you want to take your design to production. Breakout boards that use less common parts (something I’ve run into before) can add an extra hurdle when you realize they aren’t available or are difficult to find in large quantities.

Be sure to check out the Celtic Engineering Tindie Store to see their full offering of breakout boards!

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It’s October, and that means it is Open Hardware Month! The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) takes each October to highlight various things in the OSHW world, and this year the focus is on Label and Certify. The Label section is about how to identify OSHW products and how OSHW manufacturers should label their hardware; the Certify section is all about the OSHW certification process — what’s required, how to apply, and what it means to be OSHW certified!

The OSHWA offers a really neat tool that they call the Facts generator. It helps you generate a nice SVG graphic that shows exactly what licenses apply to your hardware, software, and documentation. The defaults are the CERN Open Hardware License for hardware; the GNU Public License 3.0 or later for software; and Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 for documentation. It’s very easy to modify; for example, I could use this for the way I license my personal projects:

This is a great way to mark your projects as open-source. Simply take the generated code, paste it into a blank text document, and then save it with an .svg extension. You can then use a program like GIMP or Inkscape to export it as PNG for use on websites, or a tool like svg2mod to import it into your KiCAD projects, for example. Clearly stating your choice of licenses is an important step in getting your hardware project certified as OSHW!

The other focus of OHW month this year is Certify: what is required to certify a project as OHW with the OSHWA?

1. The software must be released under a license that is approved by the OSI
2. The hardware design must be released under an open-source hardware license; eg, CERN, Solderpad, TAPR, etc.
3. Documentation must be released under a Creative Commons license
4. All files must be available in the preferred format for making changes — schematics must be available in .sch format, not PDF, for example
5. There cannot be any restriction on commercial usage for any part of the project (the CC license cannot be No-Commerical, for example)
6. You must provide the OSHWA with your contact information and all relevant information about the project, as well as agree to the OSHWA Certification Mark License Agreement

Make sure you fully read and understand the Certification Process section of their website — it gives detailed information and examples of how and why you might want to make your hardware open source! The FAQ is also a great source of information.

This month, we will be highlighting various Tindie products that are OHW Certified! Take a look at the entire list of OSHW Certified Products here!

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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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