Last year’s Easter Egg Hunt by RC2014 creator semachthemonkey was a massive success, and this year they’ve pulled in friends to make it bigger, better and eggier than before!
The Easter Bunny is busy hiding the parts of a discount code among many RC2014 products on Tindie. If you can find all the parts of the code this Sunday, you can use it to get an 18% discount on RC2014 computers and accessories from semachthemonkey, Ed Brindley, Tynemouth Software or Dtronixs through Monday.
What is RC2014?
RC2014 is a simple 8-bit Z80 based modular computer originally built to run Microsoft BASIC. It is inspired by the home built computers of the late 70s and computer revolution of the early 80s.
RC2014 Modules in full glory.
Anyone with basic soldering skills can build one, so it’s great for beginners and a wonderful introduction for anyone interested in Retro Computing. The build is well documented on RC2014.co.uk and there’s a strong community behind it.
It’s modular, customizable, and Open Source, so folk are constantly developing new modules to extend it. One of the latest releases is the ESP8266 Wifi Module shown below.
So hop to it to get the RC2014 set-up of your dreams at a fantastic price. We hope you have an awesome chocolate filled weekend!
While there were other games that came before it, Pac-Man is the game that cemented the image and feel of arcade games into our collective consciousness. At least that’s the way it seems to me… even if I much prefer Galaga.
If you do prefer Pac-Man, and would like to have it with you at all times in a satisfyingly small form factor. The OLEDiCADE from Pheonix Cnc, Oleduino hits both the video game nostalgia mark and one for custom electronics geeks like me! It can be played with one hand using the tiny joystick, and has a screen that’s only 56x28mm. Even with the small screen, Pac-Man (which scrolls up and down to display the entire maze) looks quite good. The device also features versions of Flappy Bird, Breakout, and even Octopus, giving you something to fiddle with when you need a quick distraction.
You can watch seller Hayri describe and play the game in the video below. He also shows off a 3D-printed case for it, which will be available sometime in the future.
For other tiny gaming options, you might also check out the impressive and versatile TinyPi, or even the Tiny Arcade cabinet—unquestionably the smallest video game that you can also see through. If you care to challenge me on my vintage arcade opinions facts, you can ping me @JeremySCook, or you can find Tindie at—you guessed it—@Tindie.
Despite the warnings of science fiction and modern movies, robotic technology continues to march forward. Since we’ve accepted our inevitable fate as servants of our robotic overlords, we might as well equip them with more sensors so they can navigate easier.
Ultrasonic sensors are a great way to provide robots with spatial awareness to help them navigate past doors and walls. They’re cheap, reliable, and easy to use. While it would be reasonable to assume that three sensors on the front, left, and right would be enough, this leaves a significant number of blind spots.
The corners of a rover like this ware what really matter and adding three sensors to each will facilitate great obstacle avoidance. Adding 12 HC-SR04 sensors is surprisingly inexpensive while providing great accuracy. The trade-off is that they require two pins each: one for the trigger and one for the echo. The Arduino must also handle the timing for all of this. It sounds like we’re getting close to a solution, but those I/O and timing requirements are asking a lot of a basic Arduino. But this new Tindie item has the solution.
His original design supported 8 sensors (we covered that one about a year ago), but it would only control two sensors per corner. The OctosonarX2 improves on his original design with the capacity for 16 sensors. A 16-pin version of the chip was available, so it made sense to offer a higher capacity.
The library handles the timing, and the hardware interrupts provide high accuracy results. Red Hunter also tests each unit using an Arduino test-bed and ships with separate pin headers.
Watching your robotic creation take flight is an incredible feeling, but watching it collide with something or crash can make your stomach turn. One common sensor you may reach for in a case like this is the VL53L0. But it only provides ranging to a distance of 2 meters. For many of us, this is just shy of a range we would be comfortable with.
Thankfully, a new sensor has appeared which doubles the range. The VL53L1 extends the accurate distance detection to 4 meters. It also uses a patented ranging technology that harnesses time-of-flight from a 940 nm laser.
This results in estimation independent of surface reflectivity and high accuracy in a variety of weather and environmental conditions. This breakout board sold by Pesky Products is designed to bring out all the best capabilities of the VL53L1 from ST Microelectronics.
This sensor includes the option to define multiple detection zones, which improve the obstacle detection. This feature alone makes it a useful sensor to have on both rolling and flying robot designs. And it’s quite small at 18 x 8 mm which makes it easy to integrate into any of your robotic projects. Check out the video below to see how this sensor can be used in other applications.
Arcade machines and emulators are a match made in heaven. Your typical arcade cabinet bulky and hard to move particle board monstrosity, but not this one. Thanos designed a compact and modern bartop arcade with a great look and a nice big screen.
The machine is based on Raspberry Pi 3 and features at a vibrant 10.1-inch screen with classic arcade controls. The Zero delay controller electronics also breathes new life into these retro titles with superb responsiveness.
The sleek enclosure is 3D printed with thick walls and a back power entry for computer-style plugs. The power supplies for the LCD and raspberry are both inside the cabinet. A large speaker on the side uses HiFi I2S DAC from the raspberry with adjustable volume.
The cover of the cabinet is magnetic for quick accessibility. Extra mounting holes are provided if you prefer to permanently close it. Additional games can be added using an external USB. The internal SD card is 32GB, but USB sticks up to 128GB are supported as well.
A USB hub is located inside of the cabinet to easily add and modify the game selection stored on thumb drives. The emulation software is RetroPie, which plays games from NES, SNES, Atari, PlayStation, Sega Genesis, GameBoy, and plenty others.
With a classic arcade stick and button layout, combined with a gorgeous HDMI display, this miniature arcade cabinet is a retro gamer’s paradise. Check out the video below for a closer look:
If you experiment with electronics whatsoever, a multimeter is pretty much the minimum you’ll need instrument-wise. This, however, only tells you some of the story. Sure, you’re reading 5 volts, but how steady is that reading? To really tell what’s going on, you’ll need an oscilloscope.
Fortunately, with advances in microelectronics, basic oscilloscopes no longer have to be large instruments that cost in the high hundreds or thousands of dollars, but can now be made small enough to slip into your pocket for around $100. While they may not replace professional equipment, for quick reference they can be quite useful.
If you’d rather spend even less money—but more time—then there are DIY kits that cost even less. One example is the DSO Shell Oscilloscope kit, listed for around $35. The device features a 12-bit sampling resolution, and a maximum bandwidth of 200KHz. It also has a rotary encoder for adjustments, and as the name implies, a nice housing to protect the instrument’s insides.
If you’ve never had an oscilloscope, the big question is whether a cheap unit like this is worth it, or should you pay a lot more for something more capable? If that sounds like you, then this review on Hackaday would be a great resource. On a related note, this article from Adafruit goes over why the frequency of a scope matters, which can be a major limitation in cheaper options like this.
One of the most significant hurdles that custom hardware creators face is the prototyping stage. Prototypes are complicated, they’re messy, and they can be costly. Hexabits takes a unique approach to change that. It combines modularity and a touch of biomimicry.
As the name suggests, Hexabits are six-sided modules. They can be soldered together along the PCB edge to create larger assemblies that feel like a single board without the kind of time and effort associated with spinning your own boards during the prototyping process. Since PCBs are inherently horizontal in their design, Hexabits modules mimic this while still allowing for complex three-dimensional assemblies.
Five alpha modules are currently available on the Hexabits Tindie store, with plenty more options on the way. The coin cell and buck converter modules provide two different power options. The other three modules each includes their own low-power microcontroller. This allows creators to use the board on its own without any external hardware or connect them for module-to-module communications. Hexabits have a built-in Command Line Interface (CLI) that negates the need to write even a single line of code before getting started.
The modular design lends itself to massive scalability. The wired-mesh concept and inter-module communication mean that you have no limit on how many modules you want to link together. Arrays of 30+ modules are a possibility with the biological-inspired form factor and the Bitz Operating System (BOS). Even large arrays like these can still retain an organized and sleek design, thanks to the streamlined nature of the modules.
One of the alpha modules currently for sale on Tindie is the H09R00 Module. This is a solid state relay that drives AC loads up to 600V and 1.2A. It can be used as a stand-alone AC relay using the CLI, or it can be connected with other modules to form flat or curved PCBs.
For more on this innovative approach to hardware prototyping, check out Asaad Kaadan’s presentation from Hardware Developers Didactic Galactic (HDDG) meetup below and check out the Hackaday.io page for a few demo builds.
If you’ve been following my writing, you may have noticed my general disdain for soldering. I much prefer screw terminals or spring connectors. I must admit though that after “discovering” better tools like a TS-100 soldering iron (featured here on Hackaday) and constructing a good helping hands assembly from coolant hoses (also featured on Hackaday) that I don’t find it nearly as bad. If the room is there, I still prefer screw terminals, but for smaller devices, sometimes this is a necessary, and not really that bad, evil.
Now I’m on the lookout for more creative tool ideas that help improve my electronics bench skills. Here’s an interesting one. Often you need to hold voltmeter or oscilloscope probes on leads while doing something else. You might be tempted to shove them directly into your helping hands’ alligator clips, but for a better solution, consider a pair of these probe holder that work with helping hands. They tighten directly into the type of hands that you’ve probably seen with a magnifying glass in the middle—keeping two leads on the part as needed.
While you may have moved on from that type of fixture, perhaps you could use it as your dedicated probe hands, leaving your more capable helpers free for more strenuous tasks like handling boards and wires.
Picture a lovely spring afternoon where you leave your house with 6 fully charged LiPo batteries, ready to fly your tiny quadcopter through the neighborhood… Or better yet, in an unpopulated open field. After you have your fun, you then get home and plug a battery into the charger, change it and charge, change it and charge, over and over and over. More than likely you will forget about it before all your cells are charged, crippling your next flying opportunity.
If that sounds familiar, then something like this E2650 LiPo Battery Gang Charger would work quite well. It includes six separate charge cables that can simultaneously pump 100 or 500mA into your batteries as needed. You just plug everything in, and it does the work for you, with a trickle charge preconditioning, followed by a 4.2V charging cycle. So even without the 6 at a time ability, this is certainly an upgrade over the straight to USB connector that likely came with your little quadcopter and its battery.
For this seller interview, I got to catch up to Jasper Sikken, who sells his programmable electronic load via his aptly-named Jasper Sikken Store.
Like many Tindarians, Jasper has a bachelors degree in Electronic Engineering, as well as a master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering. Things got interesting after his education, however, when he followed his wife’s work and moved from the Netherlands to the USA, specifically Silicon Valley, for two years.
Jasper moved without immediate employment, which meant he was free to explore the area and design electronics for the first 6 months of their stay. After this time, he started work at an IoT startup called Petasense, which uses tiny sensors to collect vibration data on industrial equipment for predictive maintenance. He now works full-time at a company called SODAQ, which is involved in solar powered data acquisition.
His job at Petasense meant that he needed a way to test power supplies with a dummy load, and found changing out large resistors for tests was cumbersome. While programmable dummy loads are available, they can cost over $500, so he instead found a simple circuit that would do this job, and realized that he could make a programmable Arduino version on the cheap. After revising the design, he wanted to make it available to others.
Sikken currently has no immediate plans to design other devices for his Tindie store, but given his creativity, who knows when inspiration for another niche product will strike?
While he and his wife (along with a daughter that they recently added) are now back in the Netherlands, he notes that most of his customers are from the USA, specifically Los Angeles and San Francisco in California. Sikken also notes that Tindie’s close integration with Hackaday is a really excellent arrangement, as it gives the site exposure to a vast community of like-minded electronic hackers.
While he’s quite happy selling on Tindie, and even purchased a fire engine learn to solder kit for his daughter, he does have one suggestion for sellers:
To avoid damage claims I suggest that sellers add the intended use of the product to the manual or product page and add warning how not to use the product.
An excellent idea that helps to align custom expectations with your product’s features.
It was a pleasure to find out more about Sikken, and if you’d be interested in being featured yourself, ping us on Twitter @Tindie or me personally @JeremySCook. Finally, if you’d like to hear him describe his programmable load, check out Jasper’s demo video below:
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