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PLEX Controller is used in various DIY Applications

Posted on by Emmanuel Odunlade

Ever wanted a development board which comes complete with a screen like the 16×2 LCD Display? Well, meet PLEX a development board built to satisfy that desire along with extras.

Plex Development Board

Plex is an Arduino compatible development board, which started out as designs for a particular project but became really appreciated by the community and morphed into a full-blown open source development board,  which has been used in several projects where the speed of development, reduced complexity, and elegance are critical. It is based on the Arduino UNO bootloader so it can be easily programmed through the Arduino IDE.

Plex comes with several features including up to 32 selectable analog inputs and digital outputs. This is excluding the pins used for connecting the LCD which is the same dimensions as a 16×2 LCD and is plug and play. Some of the other features of the board include a microSD storage, which when used, decreases the available GPIO pins to 16.

The development board can be powered from a 12V adapter and it is capable of regulating and supplying 5 and 3.3V to connected components. Plex is programmed using the Arduino IDE via an onboard microUSB connector.

Features:

  • 32 Inputs and Outputs: The board has up to 32 selectable analog inputs and digital outputs not including connections to the LCD.
  • Micro SD Storage: By decreasing the inputs and outputs from 32 to 16 will allow the SD storage to be used. This can be used for controlling, data logging or any other function.
  • 5V and 3.3V regulation: Most Arduino devices use either 5V or 3.3V to power them and this board can deliver this power to them. The board can regulate up to 12V down to 5V and 3.3V.
  • LCD Display: This board is the same dimensions as a 16×2 LCD and attaches seamlessly to the back of it.
  • Micro USB interface: The Micro USB can be used to program the Atmega328 microcontroller with the Arduino IDE. It can also be used for debugging and other serial functions
  • Arduino UNO bootloader: By using the Arduino UNO bootloader, the controller can be programme

As proof of its versatility, the plex has found application in several projects including;

A DMX Light Controller

The controller which is based on Plex allows different settings to be implemented for connected light sources. Different modes including color fading, color stepping, solid color, and DMX can be achieved, with its primary use being on stages or. Details on the project can be found here.

HDD 2 in 1 Spinner

This spinner uses parts from HDDs, coating PCBs or other flat things in a somewhat even coat of liquid. The spinner uses brushless motors from HDD to achieve its low torque motion and can be used as a magnetic stirrer when magnets from HDD are attached. More on the project is available here.

CNC Plasma Cutter

Another popular project in which the Plex was used is in the design of a DIY CNC Plasma Cutter, in which the Plex board was used as a Controller for the plasma cutter. More on the project can be found here.

DIY Plasma Cutter Based on Plex Board as Controller

The Plex has featured in several other applications including industrial applications. More details, applications and use cases for the Plex board can be found here.

Mirobot Robot Arm is Live on Kickstarter

Posted on by Emmanuel Odunlade

Meet the Mirobot mini industrial robot arm which is capable of delivering incredible versatility, precision and fit into many functions for a home, school, or professional use.

Mirobot

Inspired by the famous ABB IRB 6700 industrial robot arm which is utilized in advanced factories around the world, Mirobot was created as a small, affordable, and user-friendly mini industrial robotic arm that is accessible to everyone. It was designed for all categories of people including makers, robot enthusiasts, engineers, and students with the goal to learn coding, study robotics and more. With its impressive and fluid movement along it’s 6-degree of freedom, the Mirobot can perform any number of tasks including production line, automated tasks, picking and placing, assembly and more

Steve, the Creator of the Mirobot Project, while sharing thoughts on the project said,

“Our team is a group of industry experts who believe that robotics should be easily accessible to anyone. Our goal was to take the cost, size, and complexity out of industrial robotics and create an easy to use the device for both beginners and advanced users. With Mirobot, robotics is easy and fun for everyone.”

Mirobot is the smallest 6-axis industrial robot arm available today. It has an incredible level of movement and flexibility allowing it to rotate freely, 360° on both horizontal and vertical axes. The robot arm has the high precision of professional industrial robots and 0.2mm repeatability that ensures that every motion is incredibly precise and repeatable with its array of super-smooth stepper motors.

Other advanced features are also built-in including OpenMV and computer vision code that can be used for facial recognition, QR code, and Bar code detection, shape detection, optical flow and a variety of other advanced vision tasks.

In contrast to other robot arms available today, Mirobot has a number of key features that make it simple to operate and no special programming knowledge is necessary. The Mirobot Studio software includes powerful tools for creative work and learning. Through the intuitive control interface, users can begin with basic commands and advance to more complex programming at their own pace. The visualized programming interface provides an intuitive way to program a robot arm using simple drag and drop techniques.

Mirobot is the most affordable industrial-quality robotic arm with intuitive tools that makes it perfect for beginners as well as more advanced enthusiasts. It finally brings the high precision and versatility of industrial robots to the home consumer and is one of the most versatile robotic arms available today.

Mirobot is being launched via Kickstarter at $355 with special deals and pricing available to reward early adopters.

C-Duino: A DIY USB C Pro Micro Arduino

Posted on by mixos

C-Duino is an ATMEGA32U4 based micro controller that has the same pin-out at the Leonardo pro micro and a USB-C Port for power and data. by Stefan S

There’s no real speed benefit for the C-Duino as it only communicates through D+ and D- pins, identical to the pro micro, but I don’t like having a cable for every single device on my desk. I designed the PCB on EasyEda, ordered it on JLCPCB, and the components on LCSC. I have not yet tested it on more advanced cables with built in controller boards such as Thunderbolt 3 but basic USB-C to USB-A cables work fine. The GitHub repository with all of the pictures and PCB files is linked below and I hope more people can make this project in order to perfect it in the future. If you have specific questions, feel free to message me and ask. Detailed instructions on construction are coming in the future but for those more advanced, all of the necessary information can be found on the GitHub.

C-Duino: A DIY USB C Pro Micro Arduino – [Link]

New Convection Reflow Oven for Soldering with 6 Heating Zones

Posted on by mixos

Neoden USA, a distributor of Neoden products in the US, is pleased to announce the launch of their new desktop reflow oven, Neoden IN6. The reflow oven is equipped with 6 heating zones, 3 of them are located at the top and the other 3 are located at the bottom. The multiple zones will provide a superior soldering performance.

Neoden IN6 comes with a full hot-air convection system that will circulate the hot air inside the heating area using multiple offload zone cooling fans. Because the air doesn’t just stay at the top of the oven, each electronic component will be soldered evenly.

The IN6 has about 49 KGs and small dimensions (1020507350mm), that makes it an innovative and compact reflow oven.

This model was developed in-house by Neoden’s staff. About 115 members worked side by side in multiple areas such as hardware assembly, cutting and testing. Each individual part was tested separately until it reached the expected output.

The IN6 provides uniform temperature profiling across the entire printed circuit board for enhanced SMT process control. With temperatures up to 300ºC/572ºF, the IN6 reflow oven is capable of lead-free soldering.

The IN6 can store up to 16 programmable profiles that can be stored inside of the machine, and can be converted from Celsius to Farenheit without any hassle.

Neoden IN6 is using the latest technology of dynamic warming-up control system that provides stable temperatures. It comes with a built-in soldering smoke filtering system, which do not require any other smoke tube anymore.

Main Features:

  • Full hot-air convection
  • Built-in solder smoke filtering system
  • 115V/15A Power
  • Variable speed conveyor
  • 16 programmable profiles
  • No venting required
  • Color touch screen
  • Graphic display
  • Dynamic warmup control
  • Uniformly-heated aluminum alloy chamber
  • 6 heating zones (3 top, 3 bottom)
  • Stainless-steel spring wire conveyor belt
  • Conveyor speeds from 15 to 60cm/min
  • 300ºC/572ºF capability for lead-free soldering
  • 30mm/1.2 inch maximum assembly clearance
  • 260mm/10 inch soldering width
  • Dimensions 1020 x 507 x 350 mm (L x W x H)
  • 680mm/26.8 inch process chamber length
  • Offload zone cooling fans
  • Heat Up time: approximately 15 minutes

For more information you can contact NeodenUSA

Inspectar Uses Augmented Reality to Help You Inspect Your PCBs

Posted on by Emmanuel Odunlade

While making PCBs is now more affordable and easier than ever with several free open source tools for the design and several online manufacturers with fast turn around and doorstep delivery, one of its main challenges still remains board validations, and testing. As simple as this task may seem, it becomes quite laborious for complex PCBs. To solve this problem, a new software called Inspectar is adopting augmented reality to provide board designers with an easy way to view and interact with their board for validation and tests in a quick, easy and efficient way.

Inspectar which is currently in private beta, uses augmented reality to lay a similitude of your board’s design over a real-time image of the actual physical board. The overlayed similitude is obtained from your PCB’s original Gerber files, so you can toggle which layers are visible at any given time with an additional exploded view feature that allows you view multiple/all layers at once. As you move the board, the overlayed similitude layer automatically moves and changes orientation and view in line with the physical PCB, giving you the ability to inspect the design at any angle.

For example, by simply turning on a trace layer, users can see if a pin is properly connected to a component or if you made a mistake during the design phase — or the manufacturer made a mistake during fabrication. When used to full potentials, inspectar is able to show you as much as the function of a pin without you pulling a datasheet.

Asides being able to inspect boards designed by you, Inspectar is also very useful for working with open source boards designed by others and also good for viewing boards in a collaborative scenarios. Inspectar also currently supports Gerber files with extended comments generated from KiCAD or IPC2581B files exported from EDA tools like; Altium Designer, Zuken’s CADSTAR, Mentor PADS, OrCAD, Allegro PCB designer, and Pulsonix. The software also supports Eagle but the project will need to be imported into KiCAD first and export the gerbers from there.

While Inspectar comes with different packages, the basic package (Individual) requires only a smartphone or tablet to experience the superb features of Inspectar. Bigger Packages like the Business and Enterprise packages are compatible with an external camera, and on premise compute (Enterprise). The subscription price is not yet clear, it is generally clear that the enterprise will be the most expensive. As mentioned earlier, the project is currently in private beta and if interested, you can request access and learn more about the project on their website.

Whiskey Lake-UE module supports four USB 3.1 Gen2 ports

Posted on by mixos

ADLINK Technology, a leading global provider of embedded building blocks and application-ready intelligent platforms, introduces its latest COM Express Compact Size Type 6 module, the cExpress-WL, featuring the new 8th Generation Intel® Core™ processor (formerly “Whiskey Lake-U”). For the first time, ultra-low-power Intel® Core™ i7 and i5 processors will support 4 cores compared to the previous generation 2-core processors, bringing an almost 40% gain in performance while not significantly increasing the price level of the module.

A new critical feature is support for USB 3.1 Gen 2 that for the first time allows for a maximum transfer speed of 10 Gbit/s, making the cExpress-WL ideally suited for transferring uncompressed UHD video streams from multiple USB cameras. The combination of USB 3.1 Gen 2 paired with a high performance Intel® UHD Graphics, a scalable choice of processor and Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ Toolkit makes this module a highly flexible building block for emerging AI, machine vision and surveillance applications. More traditional applications that can benefit from the low power consumption and high performance of the cExpress-WL are medical ultrasound, test and measurement, factory automation, and industrial HMI.

The cExpress-WL features quad- and dual-core 8th Gen Intel® Core™ processors in a 15W TDP envelope and up to 64GB dual channel non-ECC DDR4 memory, providing uncompromised performance in a compact form factor. The Intel® Gen 9 LP Graphics Core supports up to 3 independent displays with a combination of DisplayPort/HDMI/LVDS, eDP or VGA outputs to support both new and legacy applications. The module is also equipped with up to 8 PCIe lanes for system expansion.

Key Features

  • 8th Gen quad/dual-core Intel® Core™ Processors
  • Up to 64GB Dual Channel non-ECC DDR4 at 2133/2400MHz
  • Two DDI channels, one LVDS (opt. 4 lanes eDP), one opt. VGA, supports up to 3 independent displays
  • Up to eight PCIe lanes, GbE
  • Up to three SATA 6 Gb/s, four USB 3.1 Gen2 and four USB 2.0
  • Supports Smart Embedded Management Agent (SEMA) functions
  • Extreme Rugged operating temperature: -40°C to +85°C (optional)

Available wide range voltage input (5V to 20V) covers most standard applications, including outdoor scenarios such as battery or solar powered setups, and simplifies carrier board power design requirements. Wide range voltage design contributes to simplified carrier power and also gives more tolerance for the power input from carrier and de-complexity of the power circuit design in carrier.

ADLINK supports Embedded Linux through the industry standard Yocto Project® (https://github.com/ADLINK/meta-adlink-x86-64bit), Ubuntu LTS (64-bit), CentOS (64-bit) and Windows® 10 (64-bit).

The module comes standard with AMI Aptio V UEFI BIOS or can instead be equipped with an Intel® Slim Bootloader. Slim Bootloader is an open-source boot firmware, built from the ground up to be small, secure and optimized to run on Intel x86 architecture, and is specially designed to be small, fast and secure while also being extensible and extremely configurable for OEMs and system integrators.

Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO Toolkit lets users quickly develop applications and solutions that emulate human vision to make computer vision apps faster. It is based on convolution neural networks (CNN) and includes the popular computer vision libraries OpenCV and OpenVX. The adoption of the Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO Toolkit on the cExpress-WL allows users to fully leverage the integrated GPU’s capabilities and maximize the CPUs performance-per-watt capabilities for computer vision applications.

No pricing or availability information was provided for the cExpress-WL. More information may be found in Adlink’s cExpress-WL announcement and product page.

For more information, please visit the ADLINK website at:
https://www.adlinktech.com/Products/Computer_on_Modules/COMExpressType6Compact/cExpress-WL?lang=en

TPS62827 – 2.4V-5.5V input, 4A step-down converter with 1% Accuracy

Posted on by mixos

The TPS6282x is an ease-to-use synchronous step-down DC-DC converters family with a very low quiescent current of only 4 µA. Based on the DCS-Control topology, it provides a fast transient response. The internal reference allows to regulate the output voltage down to 0.6 V with a high feedback voltage accuracy of 1% over the junction temperature range of –40°C to 125°C. The family devices are pin-to-pin and BOM-to-BOM compatible. The entire solution requires a small 470-nH inductor, a single 4.7-µF input capacitor and two 10-µF or single 22-µF output capacitor.

Features

  • DCS-control topology
  • 1% feedback or output voltage accuracy (full temperature range)
  • Up to 97% efficiency
  • 26-mΩ and 25-mΩ internal power MOSFETs
  • 2.4-V to 5.5-V input voltage range
  • 4-µA operating quiescent current
  • 2.2-MHz switching frequency
  • Adjustable output voltage from 0.6 V to 4V
  • Power save mode for light load efficiency
  • 100% duty cycle for lowest dropout
  • Active output discharge
  • Power good output
  • Thermal shutdown protection
  • Hiccup short-circuit protection
  • Create a custom design using the TPS6282x with the WEBENCH® Power Designer

The TPS6282x includes an automatically entered power save mode to maintain high efficiency down to very light loads for extending the system battery run-time. The device features a Power Good signal and an internal soft start circuit. It is able to operate in 100% mode. For fault protection, it incorporates a HICCUP short circuit protection as well as a thermal shutdown. The device is available in a 6-pin 1.5 x 1.5-mm QFN package, offering the highest power density solution.

more information: www.ti.com

How the Switching Frequency Affects the Performance of a Buck Converter

Posted on by mixos

The buck converter uses an inherent switching action to regulate voltage. This switching frequency can affect the performance of a buck converter,and is thus very important. This application report analyzes the influence of switching frequency on buck converter performance in terms of efficiency, thermals, ripple, and transient response. It also shows bench test results at both 600-kHz and 1000-kHz using the TPS568230.

How the Switching Frequency Affects the Performance of a Buck Converter – [PDF]

Project-X: The production ready development board

Posted on by Emmanuel Odunlade

Three “Project-X-A1” Pico-ITX boards have been launched by ActPower Taiwan which supports Raspberry Pi HATs and homegrown expansion modules. The prices are between the range of $44 to $76 and run Linux on Allwinner H2+, H3. and H5 SoCs.

The Project-A1-series comes with three different SoC choices from AllWinner, the H2+, the H3 and the H5 which allows for different features depending on the processing and graphics/video capabilities you may need for your project. The Allwinner H2+ and H3 Processor are both quad-core cortex -A7 while the H5 Processor is quad-core Cortex-A53. The H2+, H3, and H5 come with 512MB, 1GB and 2GB system memory (RAM) respectively and storage of 8GB eMMC flash, microSD card slot, 4MB SPI flash for the bootloader, and EEPROM for MAC address and configuration. The boards also have Video Output HDMI 1.4 up to 1080p60 for H2+, HDMI 1.4 up to 4Kp30 for H3 & H5, while the 100 x 72mm SBCs provide 2x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG port, there is also a 40 pin and 20 pin expansion header and a 12V power interface.

The Project-X-A1 boards are equipped with a 12V DC jack with a 12V 2A adapter from which the boards can be powered. The boards are also equipped with a debug UART, a thermal pad, a heat sink/stand, and optional Power-over-Ethernet. The SBCs can work with Raspberry Pi HATs when you use the free RPi adapter to get started with your development faster But, “some work will be required on the software side, as the GPIO configuration is different to the Raspberry Pi,” says the Project-X team.

Several add ons have been created from the company to help users leverage on all the features of the A-series boards and work is ongoing on additional “mezzanines” (add on boards).

Project-X will offer OS images for Ubuntu 18.04 or Raspbian with Linux Kernel 4.19.x and will also support Android and other Linux distros. It will offer standard drivers and tools, and there is also a preliminary expansion pin-out and a support forum. It does not appear that schematics and other open hardware resources will be available.

Specifications listed for Three “Project-X-A1” Pico-ITX boards  include:

SoC (one or the other)

  • Allwinner H2+ quad-core Cortex-A7 processor
  • Allwinner H3 quad-core Cortex-A7 processor
  • Allwinner H5 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor
  • System Memory – H2+: 512MB; H3: 1GB; H5: 2GB
  •  Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, microSD card slot, 4MB SPI flash for bootloader, EEPROM for MAC address and configuration
  • Video Output – H2+: HDMI 1.4 up to  1080p60; H3 & H5: HDMI 1.4 up to 4Kp30
  • Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet
  • USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG port
  • Expansion – 40-pin and 20-pin expansion headers
  • Power Supply – 12V external or internal; optional PoE
  • Dimensions – 100 x 72 mm (Pico-ITX form factor)

The Project-X-A1 boards are available on Kickstarter through Sep. 30 starting at $44, with shipments due in November. More information may be found on the Project-XA1 Kickstarter page and the Project-X website.

How to lower relay power consumption

Posted on by mixos

Clever way of starting-up relays discussed in this app note from Maxim Integrated. via dangerousprototypes.com

Relays are often used as electrically controlled switches. Unlike transistors, their switch contacts are electrically isolated from the control input. On the other hand, the power dissipation in a relay coil may be unattractive for battery-operated applications. You can lower this dissipation by adding an analog switch that allows the relay to operate at a lower voltage.

How to lower relay power consumption – [Link]

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