CMiYC Labs, Inc.

The iconic picture of a homemade case for the Apple I, the computer that changed the world, is a great image for Upverter’s post about… changing the world.

While most of today’s attention grabbing innovation comes from clever software apps, most forget that the hardware the apps run on require significant investments in engineering time.  Making the next “multi core processor” is not a simple copy and paste function.  Nor are there any “Getting started with complex digital design books” you can breeze through in a weekend.

Software is always a very cool trick.  However, it is useless without the physical hardware to run it!  Read more at:   Why You Suck At Changing The World; Try Hardware – Upverter.

Researchers at the Polytechnic School of Montreal have figured out a way to turn a battery into a flexible material.  Each strand of the “battery” is 0.6V.  While exciting, it has one major drawback before commercialization:  it isn’t waterproof yet.

How to: Weave a flexible battery into fabric material – Electronic Products.

Tools like National’s WebBENCH have allowed engineers to design power supplies without downloading any software for quite some time. Recently I got an account at Upverter.com. This web application is focused schematic capture with social sharing.

Just announced this week, Digi-Key is looking to enter this area with their new web based tool to share schematics, Scheme-It(sm).

I haven’t had a chance to put it through its paces yet, but I look forward to comparing to Upverter and Eagle version 6 soon.

Putting music signal into the Analog Input of an Arduino can be pretty boring. That is, unless you use a totally awesome chip like the MSGEQ7. This  simple Spectrum Analyzer driven with an Arduino only takes a handful of parts.  I used these incredibly awesome protoboards from Adafruit for the first time.   The protoboard alone gives a fit and finish even before it starts!

Perma-Proto (Image at Adafruit.com)

Can’t decide which Arduino Board is for you? Have a board you want others to know about? This Google Docs Spreadsheet compares some of the key attributes of various Arduino boards. Whether you are trying to decide which one to buy or just want to know the differences, this chart can help.

Open Source Hardware (OSH) means not only releasing devices, but all of the documentation associated with them. For some projects, this may include the actual CAD files used to produce the device. For example, the Arduino team produces not only schematics but the Eagle PCB CAD files for each of their boards. The great thing about such disclosure is that one can easily tweak the existing design for their own purposes. The downside is that nearly anyone can submit the exact same files to their own production house and have immediate clones.

Even when some people choose to do this, as have some eBay (and now Amazon) sellers, differences crop up from “real” boards and the clones (aka “fakes”). Click on the above photo for a Flickr-based “spot the differences” game!

This is a 4-minute video version of the Arduino Pull-Up Tutorial:

When hooking up switches or buttons to an Arduino I/O pin, sometimes the results might appear completely random. Sometimes it will appear as though there is a delay from when the button is pressed until the state of the pin actually changes. Other times the pin’s value will seem to randomly fluctuate from HIGH to LOW. Even more maddening might be as your finger gets closer to the switch, the pin’s state changes!

The fix to these problems is simple: use pull-up resistors. Here’s how they can fix this problem and how you can use them with an Arduino board.

Detailed explanation…
[Read the rest of this entry...]

What is more American than an Apple Pie?  Why, a Pie designed in California, made in China.  This is one pie I’d like to jailbreak.  Is applying too much heat to this pie considered an upgrade?  Okay, that’s all the lame puns I have for this laser cut pie.

Evil Mad Scientist Labratories provides a tutorial on how to bake a Mac Mini Style Apple pie, complete with Laser Cutting Instructions.  Yeah that’s right, a laser cut pie.

Now that’s an Apple Pie! – Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

The control board is up and running, with some re-work. Shown next to the working LEDs is my original inspiration.  Last Christmas my brother gave me the ThinkGeek Binary watch.  Since then I’ve been fascinated with binary clocks.  Finally I had an idea that can help with other projects. [Read the rest of this entry...]