Tuesday, January 30, 2007, 04:12 PM - Electronics
Instructables shows a nice method for desoldering surface-mount devices . The idea is to bend a piece of copper wire all around the SMD so that it touches all the pads. Heating the wire with an iron distributed the heat to all the pads.Watch the video.
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Thursday, January 25, 2007, 01:46 AM - Electronics
SyscompDesign is selling a USB digital storage oscilloscope for $190, which comes with open protocol specs and open source software on Linux and Windoze. It has 2 channels and can go up to 20 million samples per second.Finally, someone has realized that hardware hackers are also likely to be Linux/open source freaks. It took a while.
;)
Tuesday, January 16, 2007, 12:07 AM - Electronics
Several people (my dad and I among others) have been experimenting with engine sound generators for electric R/C airplanes. Those generators make the plane produce the sound of the real plane. With all the chatter about this topic, there is a need for a compact, lightweight, but powerful loudspeaker that can be mounted in an airplane. It needs to be powerful enough to be heard from the ground. The necessary power seems to be around 40 Watts. Some of us have so far been using cheap 10cm speakers, such as the Visaton R10S-4 (4 Ohms, 20 Watts, 10cm diameter, 150 grams).
Interestingly, Blaupunkt seems to have a range of powerful and lightweight speakers, such as the THx 402: 10cm diameter, 40W continuous (120W peak), 4 Ohms. The magnet weight is 30 grams (not sure about the total weight).
The only problem is that it retails for $55 to $90 (compared to about $10 for the Visaton).
;)
Tuesday, January 9, 2007, 12:41 AM - Electronics
High-power LEDs have been available for some time, but most web stores have huge markups on the price. Lumiled Future Electronics sells them for (relatively) cheap. For example, their 3 Watt Luxeon III Stars are $3.50 to $4.50 depending on color.Instructables has a tutorial on an RGB light controller that uses them.
;)
Wednesday, December 27, 2006, 12:45 AM - Electronics
French author Francis Thobois has published numerous articles on how to build your own R/C set since the early 60's. His web sites has instructions for building receivers, transmitters, and various R/C-related circuits. Some of his pages have been translated into English.Monday, November 27, 2006, 05:11 PM - Electronics
an entry on the Make: blog by someone who fixed his own large screen TV points to a number of forums and spare part retailers for consumer electronics: partstore, electronix, fixya forum.Friday, November 24, 2006, 11:10 PM - Electronics
Tuxgraphics.org distributes Atmel microcontroler kits with Linux software tools.Friday, November 24, 2006, 02:49 PM - Electronics
My old buddy and Techno Toy Enthusiast Steve Crandall pointed me to this nice and cheap waterproof "action" camera from Oregon Scientific. For 130 bucks, it can record VGA-resolution video on a 2GB SD card. The camera is designed to be mounted on a helmet, but it could very well be mounted in a miniature flying contraption.;)
Wednesday, November 15, 2006, 12:02 AM - Electronics
Sparkfun has a 5 degree of freedom Inertial Measurement Unit for a little over $110. It does Roll, Pitch, X, Y, and Z, not Yaw. Should be easy to build a UAV auto-pilot with one of these.Perhaps one could add an altimeter based on this barometric pressure sensor, with a claimed 9cm resolution. One could also include a GPS using one of those modules.
Sparkfun has tons of cool sensors, electronic components, microcontrolers, and development kits for robotics and such.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006, 11:42 PM - Electronics
Fun with Lasers is a nice page about how to get the high-power laser diode from a DVD burner. The power is roughly 200mW. Since a DVD burner is roughly $35, that's a whole lot cheaper than the $200/150mW Pulsar laser from Wicked Lasers.A 200mW laser can burn through plastic. I wonder if this could be used to build a cheap CNC Laser machine to cut Depron.....
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