KiCAD has a rightfully earned image problem regarding beginners. The shiny new version 5 has improved things (and we’re very excited for v6!) but the tool is a bit obtuse even when coming from a electronics design background, so we’re always excited to see new learning material. [Mike Watts] is the latest to join the […]
When [Andy Brown] recently tripped over ST’s new G0 series of MCUs, he figured after some research that the best way to learn everything there’s to know about the STM32G0xx by making his own development board based around the STM32G081. The result is a Nucleo-style board, breaking out all pins to convenient 2.54 mm headers, […]
If you’re building a cubesat, great, just grab a microcontroller off the shelf, you probably don’t need to worry about radiation hardening. If you’re building an experiment for the ISS, just use any old microcontroller. Deep space? That’s a little harder, and you might need to look into radiation tolerant and radiation hardened microcontrollers. Microchip […]
Source control is often the first step when starting a new project (or it should be, we’d hope!). Breaking changes down into smaller chunks and managing the changes between them makes it easier to share work between developers and to catch and revert mistakes after they happen. As project complexity increases it’s often desirable to […]
If you code or write a lot, you live or die with your keyboard. The Venabili web site calls Venabili “the delightful keyboard” which begs the question: what makes a keyboard delightful. The site continues: “Venabili is a 40% mechanical, programmable, ergonomic and hackable computer keyboard. Being a fully programmable keyboard, it gives you the ability […]
[Tim Schumacher] got a Crazepony Mini quadcopter and has been reprogramming it “bare metal” — that is to say he’s programming the STM32 without using an operating system or do-it-all environment. His post on the subject is a good reference for working with the STM32 and the quadcopter, too. If you haven’t seen the quadcopter, […]
There are a lot of BeagleBones, from Blue, to White, Green, Black, and we think there’s a purple one in there for some reason. The diversity of BeagleBones is due to the openness of the design, and are the biggest advantage over the ‘bone’s main competitor, the Raspberry Pi. Now, there’s a new BeagleBone, and […]
We missed [iliasam’s] laser text projector when it first appeared, perhaps because the original article was in Russian. However, he recently reposted in English and it really caught our eye. You can see a short video of it in operation, below. The projector uses raster scanning where the beam goes over each spot in a […]
It’s that time of year again, with the holidays fast approaching friends and family will be hounding you about what trinkets and shiny baubles they can pretend to surprise you with. Unfortunately there’s no person harder to shop for than the maker or hacker: if we want it, we’ve probably already built the thing. Or […]