Back in January, we developed and launched the NBitWonder forums for the fledgling NBitWonder community. We had a reCaptcha on the user registration page and the general understanding that spambots were unable to crack reCaptchas, and all was blissful for awhile.

That reality came crashing down last week when our site apparently garnered enough recognition among the spam community to start sending spambots to our site. They’re apparently able to crack reCaptchas, and they made some attempts to deface our forums.

Faced with a very similar problem, Ian Lesnet of DangerousPrototypes fame developed a robust anti-spam solution for phpBB that promises to keep the spambots from posting. We’ve adapted his solution to work with our forums, so they should be protected from spammers and remain a place to hold regular discussions.

We remain committed to doing whatever we can to make the NBitWonder community as good as we can, and fighting off spambots is no exception. If you haven’t already, you should come over to our (now spamfree) forums and join the ongoing discussion today!

I was working downstairs in the engineering library at Purdue today when a book on one of the bookshelves caught my attention.

Pulling the books off the shelf, I found these:

I checked the Library of Congress numbers given in the books and found that they were, regrettably, out of print. However, I was lucky enough to find both books available for free online at NASA’s website. Go check them out! Definitely a worthwhile read for the space enthusiast!

Biomedical Results for Apollo
Biomedical Results for Skylab

With yesterday’s release of the Open Source Hardware Definition 1.0, we at NBitWonder thought it ideal to show our renewed support for the idea by producing symbols for use on your hardware projects.  Pictured above are the three currently-proposed OSHW logos converted into EagleCAD PCB symbols.  Grab them for your use from our Eagle library on github!

Over at FreedomDefined, they released Definition 1.0 of the Open Hardware Definition today. Back in October, we covered the release of Open Hardware Definition 0.4, and used as a launching point to discuss our commitment to open source hardware. Definition 1.0 is in most respects identical to definition 0.4, with the exception that section 2 regarding the scope of Open Hardware licenses has been trimmed down and simplified. With that in mind, we here at NBitWonder happily endorse Open Hardware definition 1.0.

For a refresher on our licensing terms, be sure to check out our legal page.

An updated version of the Class-D Amplifier project is being worked through the pipeline as we speak.  It features a number of improvements over the breadboarded version, the greatest of which perhaps is the fact that it’s not on a breadboard.

You can see more information regarding its development in the forum (registration required to see the thread) or in its github repository.

The PCB pictured above was ordered a few days ago — be sure to follow our progress on the project to get any and all updates about its development!

Some time ago, we wrote a tutorial underlining the importance of documentation for the internet. At the bottom of our post, we parted with this rallying call:

And once you make good documentation…

STANDARDIZE IT! Make default templates for the above types of documentation, and develop a checklist for your documentation, so that completing a project can be as easy as running through checkmarks on a list. Save the creativity for the parts of the project that demand it, and let your documentation help guide you through the project while taking up as little of your time as possible.

Sometimes, you have to lead by example, so we went out and did just that. (continue reading…)