Tindie

We’ve all been there, our code is executing brilliantly and our brave robot is navigating through its tasks perfectly, when all of a sudden a sensor falls off and our pride and joy lurches towards the nearest hazard! In these moments being able to quickly take manual control of our robot is a useful function, easily added using the Robot Manual Override.

Designed for wheeled/tracked rovers this board is essentially a multiplexer which sits between your steering and throttle channels, the MCU and the RC receiver. You can reconfigure the system, but in its simplest mode you can use channel 3 on the RC transmitter to switch between RC mode and autonomous mode on your robot.

Some simple through hole soldering is required to add the colour coded pin headers and you can also optionally add extra headers to break out the ISP pins. Breaking out the ISP pins means you can re-flash the onboard ATtiny to adapt it to your specific requirements. The firmware is available in a repository linked in the project documentation. Standard ISP programmers and AVR toolchains can be used if you want to hack the firmware on the board.

Knowing that manual control is just a switch flip away is a nice reassurance particularly for those taking part in robotics competitions but that said, we hope this is a product you install but don’t need to use too frequently!

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If you’re into gaming and electronic music you’ll know about the glorious SID Chip which was included in the Commodore 64 – one of the most heralded electronic components of all time! The 8580 SID Sound Chip Adapter is a new product which allows you to add the later 8580 version of the SID chip to any device designed for the 6581, including the C64 itself!

The 8580 SID Sound Chip Adapter is designed by Quazar, a long time hardware designer and game/software coder – so you can be sure this has been crafted with care. The adapter caters for the voltage change from 12V to 9V as well as housing the correct filter capacitors the 8580 requires over the 6581. It was originally designed for SAM Coupe Computer and has been utilised more recently in the RC2014 Homebrew DIY Z80 which is also available on Tindie!

It’s design means it’ll slot directly into the original 6581 socket, once the original chip has been desoldered – careful with that bit! The adapter is sold as a fully built and tested unit, which will require a 8580 SID chip to get started, before blissful bleeps and bloops inevitably surround you.

It’s sold by Quazar who are based in Scotland – as huge gaming and audio nerds, we’re excited to see what else they create!

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Sometimes adding servos to a microcontroller project can be tricky, taking up lots of pins and often needing additional driver hardware. These Smart Servo boards allow common servos to be modified to enable them to be controlled via an I2C port.

Designed to be retro fitted into servo housings these boards replace the regular pulse width modulated control boards and make the servo addressable by I2C. If you are using servos in a project, utilising I2C is likely to reduce pin usage and wiring and also reduce the overhead on your controller. Using the smart servo boards, multiple servos can be addressed uniquely on a single I2C port resulting in an efficient and accurate control system for your project. Whilst requiring slightly different code approaches, these boards are suitable for both single turn and continuous rotation servo applications.

As a common standard protocol, I2C can be found on most microcontrollers including Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Micro:Bit, Trinkets, ESP32, STM32 and many more. There are some great code examples for Arduino and Raspberry Pi in the provided GitHub repository. Full instructions on how to fit these board to servos are provided in well written and clear manual from Statorworks.

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Experimental lo-fi sounds have never been so popular – adding delicate overtones, rich harmonics, and rough edges to synths, vocals, guitars, drums, and basses! The Phonic Taxidermist is a perfect example of such sonic imperfection, bringing raw grit and character to any inputted signal. No wonder its former self was used by the likes of Autechre, Fluke, Underworld, and numerous Warp Records artists.

The Phonic Taxidermist is a signal processor based on the Maplin (British answer to Radio Shack) Voice Vandal, a classic DIY kit from the 1990s which has become very rare. It combines a 10-Bit digital delay and an audio chopper which divide over four frequency bands for some serious audio grunge. It’ll mangle any incoming audio in a similar way to a ring modulator or the sound of cross modulation – but with it’s own unique style of infested audio decay!

It’s available in PCB form as a full DIY build either as a eurorack module or standalone unit – requiring components, chips and an enclosure to complete.

The Phonic Taxidermist is sold by CircuitBenders who are based on the south coast of England. Check out their store for more super audio relics and take a look at the video below to hear it in action:

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Small home use or home-brew CNC milling machines often lack some features of their larger industrial counterparts. It’s certainly difficult to find chip clearing air blowers and coolant solutions that would fit smaller machines. If you can’t buy it, build it, and that’s what’s happened here. The Nixie-Myst is a “scale appropriate” lubricating device for small CNC machines.

The Nixie-Myst, when installed, will run from a small compressor and supplies both airflow and a misting of light oil directed at the spindle. The airflow helps move small chips in a consistent direction away from the cutting tool which clears the cutting path and promotes a better cut. The oil misting acts both as a coolant for the tooling and as a cutting fluid, again this promotes a good surface finish on cuts but also lengthens the life of tooling by reducing wear.

Dring Labs have manged to miniaturise this system cleverly by crafting a custom CNC’d block which receives some donated internal components from a small modeller’s airbrush which are obviously designed with small accurate liquid/air mix delivery in mind. They have fitted the system to machines as small as the CNC3020 and you can check out the video below to see the Nixie-MIst in action.

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Getting vintage gear to interface with modern setups is getting easier thanks to devices which can transmit impulses originally generated 40 years ago using modern tools! The ARPSync Plexy USB is one example which allows signals to be sent via USB to the Arpeggiator speed input of the Juno series of classic vintage synths and others – keeping them in perfect sync!

The ARPSync Plexy USB replicates the Rim Shot sound which would normally be used to trigger the tempo of the Juno’s Arpeggiator, sending timed impulses from any DAW, such as Ableton Live, Cubase, Fruityloops, or Logic. This versatile box works for the Juno-6, Juno-60, Roland JX-3P, and SH-101 synthesizers, making it a super-useful studio timing tool.

You’re able to set the clock division it receives, giving you the flexibility to play double speed, half speed, and more to vary the rhythmic pattern. It’s powered by USB so doesn’t need batteries, but will need USB and audio cable to get working! There’s a handy USB MIDI Guide available, which outlines how to set up the device for use in Ableton Live.

The ARPSync Plexy UBS is sold by VALPower who are based in France, offering a number of super synth solutions! Check out the demo video below to see it in action:

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Dream catchers are usually handmade hoops woven into a spiderweb-like shape. They include charms or decorations such as feathers and beads. The Dream Catcher Arduino PCB now gives you the option to create a handmade dream catcher with LEDs.

Dream catchers are said to absorb nightmares of those who sleep under them, and the charms added to them provide protection. While dream catchers are widely popular today, they originate from the Ojibwe people.

The Dream Catcher Arduino PCB 1.1 features an onboard Arduino and fourteen Neopixel LEDs. This PCB can be used with the Arduino Sketch environment as well. This offers the perfect base for creating your own dreamcatcher. Just select your type of string, a piece for the outer ring, and create away. Users can create different patterns utilizing the spaces provided on the PCB.

This product was created by The Electronic Engineer and can be purchased fully assembled or partially assembled. It can also be powered via a USB connector.

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Addressable colour changing RGB LED’s are all the rage but what if you want to go big? Want to light up your house? The Pixelflood could be just what you need.

The Pixelflood is a fully assembled and tested driver board designed to drive 20W RGB COB LED’s enabling super bright lighting systems for your house or garden. As these driver boards are WS2811 compatible it means there are no end of examples of how to interface them with common micro controllers and other systems online. Looking around we see that people have successfully interfaced these driver boards with Bluetooth controllers for changing colours on the fly. It could be great fun to connect these to the global cheerlights project meaning that you and others can change colours with a simple tweet!

The driver board will fit into the enclosures of common floodlights, meaning that it’s pretty trivial to make a rugged and watertight floodlight that can live outdoors in all weathers and all seasons. Is 20W not bright enough for you? Don’t worry, the creator RobG has you covered with a range of driver boards from 10W to 100W.

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The GoPro hero 4 standard case is depth rated to around 40 meters and the gitup2 action camera standard case is rated to a depth of around 30 meters but what if you want to go to 1500 meters? Well, this Scout Case may be just what you need.

Milled from a single block of 6061 aerospace grade aluminium and smartly anodised, this case is rated to a water depth of 1500 meters. It’s therefore suitable for deep sea divers and for installation on underwater rovers destined for the deepest deep. Aside from handling extreme depth the scout case is bomb proof and small calibre arms proof making it suitable for a range of hazardous environments.

Fitting a range of cameras from GoPro, gitup, and other action camera makers, the case has multiple internal mount positions allowing room for additional items such as an extra battery, LCD or WiFi packs. Internally it also has multiple mounting points for the camera itself to help accommodate different camera field of views. It also features an external adaptor with a standard 1/4″ camera mount enabling it to work with all your existing camera kit.

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Many of the millions of geocache worldwide are simple affairs, plastic boxes or perhaps a fake stone but this idea for a unique geocache really caught our eye.

Geocaching is a global phenomenon billed as “the worlds largest treasure hunt”. Participants have hidden millions of cunning geocaches and using a free app, others use clues and maps to find boxes of interesting things (known as caches) and log what they have found. It’s a fabulous, healthy hobby that can take people to really interesting places.

This, simple to assemble, through-hole electronics kit creates a geocache that will only reveal itself when light from a torch (flashlight to our American readers) shines on it. The kit uses easy to handle larger components and would make an excellent kit to assemble for a beginner or a first time solderer.

Available in numerous colours this kit has various modes for both testing the cache and also how it acts as a beacon, ranging from flashing regularly to only flashing when a torch light directly hits the sensor. You can see the range of colours and the brightness of the beacon LED’s in the video below

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