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We’ve tested the new features, and they should work for you. If for some reason, they do not, however, please please PLEASE contact us and let us know.

Much of the NBitWonder founding team consists of Purdue students and alums (indeed, I’m on campus as I write this), and love to write about events happening at Purdue from time to time. If you happen to be in the West Lafayette area this Saturday, Purdue’s hosting their second annual Electric Vehicle (EV) Grand Prix.

A quick description of the event is provided on the EV Grand Prix website:

The Purdue evGrandPrix event is organized by students from the Electric Vehicle Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) teams and students enrolled in electric vehicle courses. The purpose of this event is to accelerate innovation through education. To compete in the Purdue evGrandPrix, multi-disciplinary student teams must design and build energy-efficient electric go-karts. Student teams work together to design, build, and market the go-kart event on Purdue’s campus and throughout Indiana, by partnering with industry, government agencies, and community outreach programs. The winner of the competition is the team that best blends kart design and community outreach with race placement and optimal efficiency during 100 laps of racing.

New to the event this year, a second race will be held one week later on May 7th at the Indy Motorspeedway. The event is free to the public, and should be a great time! If you’re in the area, come on down!

Tonight I finished soldering components on the PCB for VoIP32v2.  Software development will soon begin.  While I cannot guarantee speedy software development, I would like to have at least a simple networking demo ready for Maker Faire North Carolina.

More photos can be found in our Flickr stream.

Microchip announced the release of a few new 16-bit microcontrollers today.
via Microchip:

The PIC24F32KA304 family expands upon the popular PIC24F16KA family by adding twice as much Flash program memory and 30% more RAM, which provides even more support for wireless-communication protocol stacks. Additionally, the numbers of timers and Pulse-Width Modulators were tripled; the numbers of UART, I2C™ and SPI channels doubled; the Analog-to-Digital Converter resolution quadrupled to 12-bits; and the pin count increased to 44-pins, over the PIC24F16KA family. The new PIC24F32KA304 MCUs’ intelligent mTouch sensing module includes a Charge Time Measurement Unit (CTMU) that performs automated scan in sleep mode, enabling extremely low-power capacitive sensing. Further, as many touch-sensing applications are battery powered, this new CTMU dramatically reduces current, thereby conserving even more battery power. As many automotive and white-good applications require operation up to 5V, these MCUs simplify power-supply design by eliminating the need for discrete voltage regulators, and providing full analog performance up to 5V.

This looks very exciting, and we can’t wait to try this out! What do you think? Include your thoughts in the comments below.

Hey everybody!

A few months back, we excitedly announced the news: NBitWonder is going to be exhibiting at Maker Faire North Carolina this year, alongside many other awesome, talented makers. It’s taking place from 10am to 5pm at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds in the Raleigh-Durham area, and is promising to be an awesome time. If you’re in the area, or just want to show your support, come on down. Tickets are on sale now, so if you haven’t already, mark your calendars and come on over. We hope to see lots of you there!

Adafruit‘s [johngineer] provides a look at what engineering turns out to be for so many engineering students.  Click for the full-sized version.

Last night, I started assembling the VoIP32v2 prototype PCB.  I was able to get most of the semiconductors soldered down in addition to their crystal oscillators.  Then my soldering iron tip picked up a coating of melted plastic from somewhere; I think I held it too close to the roll of solder wick I used to clean up along the way.

Assembly will progress in the coming days, as soon as I find a new soldering iron tip.  Be sure to follow the project in its github repository and in the forums.

Great stuff, via CollegeHumor:

A little while back, we released the DCMotorDriver project. The project featured, among other things, a single-sided layout to make homebrew PCB fabrication possible. I had a little bit of extra time this weekend, so I decided to try my hand at making the PCB. I have no prior experience in PCB etching, so I used a kit I had purchased from Pulsar Professional FX a few months back. Some pictures are included below, but for even more pictures, refer to our flickr set.
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Uh oh, this can’t be good. Via the IEEE Spectrum Robotics Blog:

I guess not being punched is just not good enough for some people, so an Australian structural engineer named Kris Tressider has built himself a robot to fight with. It may be powered by windshield wiper motors, but in no way stops it from flailing about in a threatening manner.

There’s a video of this thing in action after the break, so read on. (continue reading…)