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:
Ambilight is a system developed by Philips that attempts to create a more immersive experience by supplementing colors on TV with an ambient glow. While this technology hasn’t taken off in the mainstream, with the advent of cheap microcontrollers and single-board computers, hackers have devised ways to emulate this type of system to add a similar effect to TVs and even computer monitors.
One such method is Ambipi.tv. You can find code for the setup on GitHub, and the hardware that you’ll need is available here. You’ll need to provide your own Raspberry Pi, but the kit includes everything else that you’ll need to get started. Several options are available, so you can customize it to your needs.
Notably, the kit includes a remote and IR receiver for XBMC control. While gamepads and remote keyboards may work well to control Pis, sometimes it’s hard to beat the convenience of an invisible light beam.
While the LAMEBOY may look similar to a handheld emulator, seller Davedarko makes no bones about the fact that it is, in fact, not an emulator. There are no games, and it has no sound. On the other hand, if you’d like to create your own games, log data from sensors, or display and interact with Internet-based information, this just might be the “console” for you.
It features 6 buttons arranged in a D-pad, A/B button setup, along with a Nokia LCD panel for user feedback. It also features an RGB backlight, which could work as an in-game display, or could work well as some sort of notification device. For example, you might set up a red light for when someone tweets at you, or a green light to show when your connected toaster and coffee maker have produced breakfast.
The device comes as a DIY kit shown above, and features a 3D-printed case that can be had in several colors. You’ll need to provide tools, patience, and your own battery for assembly but it’s worth it!
It’s Pi Day! That’s 3.14 for those of you counting. It has become a tradition to geek out about Raspberry Pi each year on this date. Let’s take a look at some of the unique Raspberry Pi hardware that Tindarians have designed.
Untethered Pi Power
Working out portable power for the Pi usually means a portable cellphone battery and a USB cable. It’s easy, but not very tidy. Here’s a hardware add-on that uses an LiFePO4 cell and includes all of charging and tending circuit necessary. Tindie seller Silicongnition designed this hardware and has a few other offerings like the version meant for applications other than Pi.
That’s a Lot of Blinky!
Driving LED strips and multi-color matrices gets a lot easier with a little hardware help. The PiPixel hat takes care of level shifting for the logic, and has both a screw terminal and barrel jack for feeding power to all of those pixels.
Tracking Ships with Your Pi
If you live near a major waterway, this hardware will be a delight to have on hand. The dAISy Hat listens for and decodes Automatic Identification System (AIS) messages carried by all large vessels. From the same seller we’ve seen standalone modules but this one is specifically for Raspberry Pi.
Raspberry Pi boards are incredible computing devices, able to capture—and even process—video or still images with an optional camera module. The V2 camera that replaced the original version in 2016 features an 8-megapixel sensor, and can capture 1080p video at 30 FPS, or 702p at 60 FPS if you’d like to slow things down.
Like the Pi itself, this camera has good specs at a reasonable price, but it doesn’t come with such niceties as a case or a standard cabling. Instead, it uses a small ribbon cable; good if you’d like to stuff everything in your own enclosure, but not so great if you’d like to use it in a remote sensing application.
For this purpose, Petit Studio has come up with an adapter that lets you use an HDMI cable as an extension. It uses short ribbon cables to connect to the ‘Pi and camera, and adapters route the signal through an HDMI cable. The system works with both V1 and V2 cameras, opening up remote use possibilities where the cable might have to endure some light abuse.
If this seems interesting, you’re not alone. As seen here it was actually ranked #3 on Tindie’s list of top-selling products in terms of sales as of August!
The 2018 Hackaday Prize launches today. The Hackaday Prize is asking you to Build Something That Matters. This is the fifth year of the Hackaday Prize, and this time we’re challenging you to Build Hope through your designs and projects — show the world all the good that can come from creative use of technology.
Between now and October 8, there will be five challenge rounds that focus on Open Hardware Design, Robotics Modules, Power Harvesting, Human-Computer Interface, and Musical Instruments. There is over $200,000 in cash prizes with 20 finalists from each of these rounds winning $1,000 and a chance at the top prizes, including the Grand Prize of $50,000. Individuals or teams can enter by building a prototype and documenting progress on Hackaday.io. You can find all the details on the official Prize page.
Tindie Project to Product Program
Tindie is excited to be participating in this year’s Hackaday Prize by offering an add-on challenge. Finalists will be invited to enter ‘Project to Product’. We’ll give two selected projects a budget of $5,000 to fund the run and cover the warehousing and logistics costs to become Tindie sellers and get these projects into the hands of makers around the world. We’ll also provide additional support like mentorship to advise on the Design for Manufacturing process, help sourcing parts, and sorting out a production run. The Tindie team will also assist with listing and promoting your item on Tindie. More details will be released in the coming weeks.
As smartphones and other smart devices have advanced, some might say that companies have chosen small size over battery life. While size reduction is good (none of us really want to lug around bag phones, as interesting as they were 25 years ago), many would gladly give up a tiny bit of pocket space for a few more hours of talk time texting and surfing the web.
If this sounds like you, the Tactical Cell wearable battery presents an interesting solution. It consists of a 3D-printed battery holder with a clip, and has a replaceable USB battery pack with a capacity of 2600mAh. The most obvious use for this power pack is to maintain a charge on your phone while in your pocket, but it was originally designed with the Google Glass in mind.
These external battery banks find a surprising number of uses once you have one in hand. But that’s part of the problem too. Being able to clip it onto a belt or a bag gets it out of your hand and sidesteps the problem of having both a phone and backup battery in your pocket while recharging.
Beyond causal use, it’s handy for charging or keeping a flashlight running in an emergency situation. If you do find yourself without power, you might also consult the Tindie Guide to Emergency Lighting for a few creative power solutions.
With the advent of inexpensive computing power, car diagnostic computers that were once the purview of professional automotive shops can now be had for $50 or less. Some of these diagnostic devices are even “headless,” transferring information to your smartphone via Bluetooth.
It’s really a marvel of standardization that the ODB-II type of interface has stayed constant on vehicles made in the US since 1996. It provides access to the CAN bus, allowing consumers and shops alike to tell what’s going on with multiple car models with just one interface. This port doesn’t just tell you if something is going wrong, it can also output stats such as engine speed and throttle position.
It should come as no surprise that car hackers and established businesses alike have been producing hardware for the ODB-II interface for some time now. But how does a hardware developer test a new OBD2 gadget during development? You’d rather not get into your car with every change and start revving the engine. The solution is to use an ODB-II simulator!
As a solution to this problem, Tindarian Kevinliang has come up with an OBD-II simulator that produces signals that would normally come from your car’s computer. It features a software interface that allows you to modify system settings, as well as six physical knobs to conveniently modify parameters. The interface for the simulator is shown off in the video below.
Here’s an interesting concept: a hackerspace passport. While a passport’s most basic purpose is to identify yourself while moving from country to country, it also provides a great record of where you’ve been in the form of a stamp unique to the country you’re visiting.
This passport, while it won’t provide you access to other countries, can provide a great record of hackerspaces that you’ve visited. The first 2600 of these were released at the Chaos Communication camp in 2011, and hackerspaces and hacker cons around the world have made their own stamps that can be used with it. If a particular space/event doesn’t have one, you could always have a member sign and date it, or perhaps note the most interesting thing you saw there.
The book itself is emblazoned with the Spanish words: “PASAPORTE HACKERSPACE,” and the inside does indeed look like what you would use to cross borders. While electronics provide a great record of where you’ve been, having a physical memento is much cooler!
On the other hand, if you’re dissatisfied with your own country’s passports, you could just establish your own domain on an abandoned defensive platform. It’s an entertaining idea, but it does look like a lot of work. Perhaps with the proper resources you could establish a stateless hackerspace without the “pesky” rules that keep society functioning in an orderly fashion.
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