Linear Technology’s LTC3256 is a high voltage low noise dual output power supply, which takes a single positive input and generates 5V and 3.3V step-down supplies with high efficiency and no inductors. by Julien Happich @ edn-europe.com
The device features a wide 5.5V to 38V input voltage range and includes independently enabled dual outputs: a 5V 100mA supply, and a 250mA 3.3V low-dropout (LDO) regulator, for a total of 350mA available output current.
Dual output step-down charge pump operates without inductors – [Link]
After the acquisition, they redesigned the website and changed the domain name from cadsoftusa.com to cadsoft.io. It seems that Autodesk is going very fast toward sharing with community what they intend to do with Eagle CAD tool after a lot of debates about the future of Eagle CAD.
Now and after about one month of the acquisition, they announced the release of EAGLE beta (7.6.2). “A number of items are “in development” but we’re looking for feedback, so it was better to push these early!” stated by the announcement.
The new features in this beta release include net names on tracks in the PCB editor.
net names on tracks in the PCB editor- Images courtesy of eagle.io
The 7.6.2 beta version introduced a new button. It’s called MAKE button.
MAKE button produces the necessary outputs for fabrication, assembly, test, etc and upload your design files (including schematic, PCB, BOM, etc) to your user profile on Autodesk’s Circuits.io site.
Another new button is called MCAD. This button will upload your design to ECAD.io which is an online Electrical CAD (ECAD) to Mechanical CAD (MCAD) file converter.
Visit eagle.io to see the announcement and to download the new beta version.
The video below demonstrates how MAKE button works.
Every maker and electronics hobbyist knows how hardware is messy. A lot of tools are needed in our labs like voltmeter, oscilloscope, breadboard, wires, power supply, etc.
A startup form India designed a new platform called Evive as an all-in-one solution to build and debug your projects easily.
Arduino At Heart
Evive is powered by Arduino MEGA 2560 R3, that means you can develop your code with Arduino IDE. It also preserve an Arduino UNO pinouts on the main board of Evive for Arduino UNO/MEGA shields.
Evive provides rich power options include 5-30V input, 2600mAH internal battery and a 5V,3.3V and variable output voltage.
The new platform supports “plug and play” for some devices:
Directly plug up to 2 motors, max 1A/channel up to 30V .
Any 4 wire stepper motor, max 1A current rating.
Directly connect 2 relays, up to 30V.
Drive 2 servos adjustable voltage, up to 30V.
Port for 2 motor drivers.
A 1.8″ SPI based TFT is used to interact with Evive platform functionalities or you can use it with your own project.
The TFT is used also for the built-in voltmeter, ammeter and a tiny 2-channel oscilloscope that supports low frequencies (up to 1kHz).
To view all technical features of Evive, visit their website and see the bellow video:
Evive team provides kits for starters, robotic arm , mobile robot and home automation applications. The team claims that Evive is an open-source hardware project, but I couldn’t find the design files of the main board over the Github repository which contains the design files of plastic case, some software examples of Evive applications and some documents.
Thanks to Internet, the problem of time shifting in embedded and connected devices was solved using time synchronization over Internet.
National Institute of Standards and Technology provides a service called Network Time Service (NTS) over the Internet. The project of ESP8266-based clock, published on embedded-lab, is going to demonstrate how to make a benefit from NTS to accomplish time synchronization over the Internet.
This clock retrieves time information from NTS and display it on a 4-digit seven segment LED display, and the connection to NIST time server through your local WiFi network will be by using ESP-01 WiFi module.
The 4-digit seven segment LED display breakout includes MAX7219 IC which is a seven segment driver. Three GPIO pins from ESP8266 module are used, where MAX7219 needs one for serial input,one for clock line and one to drive LOAD pin of MAX7219.
The firmware was developed using Arduino core for ESP8266. The firmware queries the time from NTS with 2-minutes interval that because NIST does not allow queries to any of their servers more frequently than once every 4 seconds, according to the blog post. During the 2-minutes, time display is kept running locally using the delay() routine.
The AriCalculator is a DIY calculator or a general purpose handheld device.
It is battery powered and runs on a NXP S12G240 microcontroller (16-bit, 240k flash, 11k RAM). The device has 38 input keys and a 128×64 pixel LCD display with a backlight option. Three interfaces connect the calculator to the outside world:
A BDM debug interface, giving direct access to the microcontrollers on-chip memories and debug features.
A USB port, offering a FTDI virtual com port (VCP). This port is under software control and intended to serve as a programming interface.
A general purpose SPI port, intended for hardware extensions.
AriCalculator – A homemade handheld calculator – [Link]
Sunburn Monitor is a UV monitor with sound-based indication. It calculates the max sun exposure before sunburn based on your skin type.
The project was published over hackaday.io by [Quarterturn].
It’s based around SI1132 light sensor from Silicon Labs. SI1132 is a UV index and ambient light sensor with I2C interface and it’s available in 10-lead 2×2 mm QFN package. Sunburn Monitor uses ATMEGA168 MCU where the firmware was developed using Arduino environment.
The design has a protection transistor Q1 (DMP2035U-7) in the input, we covered in a past blog how to protect you circuit from reverse voltage, and Q2 is used to enable/disable the supply voltage of the sensor.
Sunburn Monitor powered by a 3v CR2032 battery with power management relies primarily on either deep sleep via hardware interrupt or watchdog timer interrupt for sleep-wake-sleep monitoring cycles, according to [Quarterturn].
It has been a while from the announcement of the new SoC ESP32 from Espressif.
Recently, Espressif released the ESP-WROOM-32 module which is based on ESP32 SoC, the big brother of the well know ESP8266 WiFi module.
ESP32 is a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth combo chip with dual CPU cores and a very rich set of peripherals, ranging from capacitive touch sensors, Hall sensors, low noise sense amplifiers, SD card interface, Ethernet, high speed SDIO/SPI, UART, I2S and I2C.
The datasheet of ESP-WROOM-32 module contains pin definitions, functional description, electrical characteristics and a schematic.
ESP-WROOM-32 Specifications
ESP32 contains two low-power Xtensa ® 32-bit LX6 microprocessors with 448 KBytes ROM and 520 KBytes on-chip SRAM for data and instruction and supports 4 x 16 MBytes of external QSPI flash and SRAM.
It has various power modes. A 160 ~ 260 mA power consumption for Wi-Fi Tx packet @ 13 dBm ~ 21 dBm.
Power Consumption by Power ModesESP-WROOM-32 Schematic
“New SDK features, tutorials and example applications will be released over the next few months.” according to the datasheet.
Michael Dunn has designed a circuit that is able to double the input voltage and breaks DC path.
I once needed a voltage doubler circuit with no DC leakage path between input and output, and ended up devising this unusual 556- (dual 555 timer) based circuit with a “floating” voltage output.
An optical micro-displacement sensor from Omron Electronic Components Europe is capable of resolving 10 microns – one tenth the diameter of a human hair or the thickness of a coat of paint. by Graham Prophet @ edn-europe.com
The high resolution of the Z4D sensor suits it for paper thickness and multi-feed detection office equipment and ATMs, as well as travel detection in industrial automation systems, consumer electronics and other applications.
The Z4D-C01 locates target objects optically without the need for contact. Location is determined and movement detected by changes in the location of light reflected from the object.
mozzwald.com has designed an iphone battery charger /tester.
I have seen technicians often replace batteries when they may not necessarily need to be or ignore the fact that they could be the cause of the issue at hand. To remedy this I designed a basic iPhone battery charging breakout board system. The system can charge a battery, has the option for expansion to support newer/other batteries and breaks out the battery status pins which can be read from a microcontroller or some other means. It consists of 6 battery connector boards (iPhone 4, 4S, 5, 5S/C, 6, 6+) and a main charging board.
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