I have a “helping hand” in my office with two flexible arms and alligator clamps, and a magnifier that I use sometimes to solder or unsolder components more easily. The metallic arm are not always easy to put in the right position, and the base is not always heavy enough, but it does the job most of the time. But I’ve just come across with a helping hand station with 6 flexible gooseneck arms that may allow for more positions and easier setup, as well as hold a USB powered fan to such out fumes or blow them away, and/or a lamp. HT-01 soldering station features: Aluminum alloy base – 140 x 100 x 12mm (purple or black) 6x universal joint pipe of 300mm length with alligator clip 1 5V USB output regulator plate with two USB ports up to 5V/3A to connect fans 1x 5V USB Fan 1x Soldering […]
MASS GmbH has launched RPI 07, a touch panel PC with a 7″ 800×480 display powered by a Raspberry Pi 3 board, and designed for industrial applications thanks to a 12V to 24V variable power input, aluminum housing, DIO with optocouplers, an optional CAN Bus and more. MASS RPI-07 specifications: SoC – Broadcom BCM2837 quad core ARM Cortex A53 processor @ up to 1.2 GHz with VideoCore IV GPU System Memory – 1GB LPDDR2 Storage – 16GB micro SD SDHC Class 10 Display – 7″ WVGA 800×480 touchscreen display with 250cd/m² brightness, 500:1 contrast, 10-point touch Connectivity – 1x 10/100Mbps Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2 LE USB – 4x USB 2.0 Optional Interfaces – Real-time clock (RTC), DIO with optocouplers, I²C, CAN, RS232 Power supply – 12 to 24V DC (15W max) via 2-pin terminal with on/off switch Dimensions – 200 x 118 x 48mm (powder coated metal […]
Karl here. Going to review the Tevo Tarantula 3D printer a little differently this time. With this build process, I need to space over several days due to time and working on many projects at once. I am logging each session with dates and times. I rarely have big blocks of time to work on my projects with working a full time job, and 2 children. I think this is indicative of a lot of people so wanted to give it a try. If you like this format let me know. If you are new to 3D printing, I would suggest reading the 3D Printer Basics section from Raiscube R2 review. Tevo Tarantula Specs Bed Size – 200x280x200 Extruder – all metal dual color Bed Leveling – Auto Extruder Style – Bowden Materials – Metal Frame with some Acrylic parts Heated Bed – Yes Filament – 1.75 Filament Included – […]
Karl here with the final article on Raiscube R2 3D printer for now. Going to talk about the challenges of this upgrade, and how to do it yourself. This has been one of the most frustrating projects that I have worked on. I set 3 goals for this upgrade: Simple as possible Least amount of modification to the printer ability to revert back I don’t feel like I met my goals but I feel like I made it 90%. Trying to meet the simple as possible with least amount of modifications is what caused me so much grief. What is needed E3D Hotend for $9.56 on GearBest Kapton Tape for $1.87 Thermal paste Rotary cutting tool (maybe hacksaw good luck with that) Shrink tube or electrical tape Wire 3 printed parts on Thingiverse Zip Ties & Velcro E3D Installation Steps Print 3 parts from Thingiverse above with 50% infill and .2 […]
Usually, if I buy a high power electric appliance, I like to double check it power consumption either with a Kill-a-watt when possible, and when not, e.g. cable directly hooked to the device or current intensity is too high, I use a digital electric clamp meter. Both methods are quite convenient as you don’t need to cut any wire to measure the current and determine the power consumption, but they don’t allow for data gathering since they don’t connect to the network. Earlier this week, I’ve come across a projects using ESP8266 for a mains energy monitor for a solar panel setup, and measuring mains current, electric meter, and gas meter. They use a photosensor to measure power consumption on their electric meter, which works, but may be problematic if the meter is on the street, and iSnail current sensor, using hall effect just like clamp meter, but instead of […]
Throughout all articles in this blog, I use a lot of technical terms and acronyms that you may not be familiar with. This glossary will include technical terms used in Android and Linux devices, development boards, and embedded platforms. If one or more relevant terms or acronyms is/are missing, please let me know in the comment section or via the contact form. 0-9 – A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z 0-9 1-Wire – A single-wire (plus ground) communications protocol used for memory products, interface solutions, and by SW tools. 10GbE – 10-Gigabit Ethernet 10Base2 – So-called Thin Ethernet, using RG-58 coax cables and BNC connectors […]
Since Rikomagic MK802 and Zero Device Z802 mini PCs have gone viral and started the Android mini PC craze, this type of device has been popping a bit everywhere… The latest interesting device I found is Oval Elephant Mini PC based on AllWinner A10 processor with 1 GB RAM and selling for 71.49 USD. They have appears to have a whooping 11 in stocks now to be shipped on the 3rd of July, but they are also taking pre-orders and if there is enough demand (over 1,000 pieces), the price would go down to 68 USD. The device pictured above is just a prototype, and they have decided to replace the HDMI mini male output by a proper HDMI output (probably male). As I said before I prefer this form factor, especially since you can just connect mini BlueTooth dongles (no sure that one works with Android / Linux though) to […]
If you are looking for a (relatively) low cost NFC development kit, you may interested in Adafruit mbed and NFC/RFID Starter Pack that sells for 134.99 USD. The kit contains the following items: mbed LPC1768 (Cortex M3) development board with mini-B USB cable and reference cards NFC/RFID breakout board based on PN532 NFC transceiver MiFare RFID card with 1K programmable EEPROM Full-sized breadboard 40 x 3″ (75mm) long male/male jumper wires Standard blue & white 16×2 character LCD + contrast potentiometer + header Diffused 5mm RGB LED + 3 x 560 ohm resistors Analog temperature sensor (TMP36) Piezo buzzer 2 x 10K trim potentiometer 5 x Tactile Pushbuttons On the software side, you can use AppNearMe µNFC stack written in C++ that allows you to use a user interface on NFC-enabled smartphone, removing the need for knobs, buttons, screens on your embedded device. During the initial pairing, the NFC board can […]
