Introduction:

Previously, the guys at Farnell gave us some flux pens to try out to help out with our SMD soldering abilities. While the flux pens are no-clean flux, they still leave behind a residue that is visible on the board:

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Introduction:

Near the beginning of November, the NBitWonder staff was contacted by the community outreach team at Farnell. From their email:

Great site. Loved some of the builds you have put together and
wondered whether you’d be interested in the following to provide
parts for any up and coming builds?

As a key pillar of the electronics blogging community we have
indentified your blog to road test some of our new products we
currently have on sale. If you are interested in this scheme then we
will happily send you products which will be yours to keep, free of
charge in exchange for a review of the item.
As a high service distributor across the world, Farnell strive to
gauge feedback from those within the industry with an online presence
in order to make the necessary improvements to our products to delight
our customer base.

A “key pillar of the electronics blogging community”? Thanks Farnell, we’re flattered by the offer!
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For years, man has lived with the 8-bit micro-controller world.  And while endless amazing projects have been created with these humble chips, eventually the torch must be passed to the new kid on the block.  I’m talking about ARM processors.  Capable of running the most basic LED blinkers all the way up to powering your cell phone, the ARM processor with its 32-bit core has been making great strides in the world.

And right now, STMicroelectronics is helping you get into the world of ARM with their STM32F4 Discovery development board.

The STM32F4DISCOVERY helps you to discover the STM32F4 high-performance features and to develop your applications easily. It includes everything required for beginners and experienced users to get started quickly.

Based on the STM32F407VGT6, it includes an ST-LINK/V2 embedded debug tool, two ST MEMS, digital accelerometer and digital microphone, one audio DAC with integrated class D speaker driver, LEDs and push buttons and an USB OTG micro-AB connector.

The best part is, STMicroelectronics is currently allowing you to pick up one of these development boards for free.  Dangerous Prototypes first broke news of this offer, but didn’t know if boards were actually being sent out.  Well, just yesterday my personal Discovery development board came in the mail, and I can’t wait to start experimenting with it.  If you have any interest in tinkering with the 32-bit ARM world, make sure to head over to STMicro and request your own development board.

Day 2 of Maker Faire Fort Wayne was a good time, and warmer than day 1! Day 2 featured a number of interesting attractions, and some photos of the event are shown below:

The Fort Wayne Lincoln Pavilion, where Maker Faire Fort Wayne was held.
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Maker Faire Fort Wayne was a blast, and we enjoyed seeing those of you who battled the cold weather and made it to the event! It was a great opportunity to promote NBitWonder and show off some of the wonderful things we have made, as well as meet many new and interesting people. Read on for day 1 of our Maker Faire coverage: (continue reading…)

Spotted on the interwebz today is a copy of Jamis Buck’s 2011 Ruby Conference presentation, “Algorithm” is not a four-letter word. It’s a fantastic presentation for veteran coders and novices alike.

In his presentation, Jamis details what it takes to become truly good in a given field. Being good at programming, like any other field, requires dedication, practice, and exercise. To help illustrate recreational exercise for programmers, Jamis goes into an explanation of maze-generating algorithms with many examples that is sufficiently detailed without being overly rigorous. Interactive demonstrations of various algorithms are presented, many of which are truly a-maze-ing.

So, sit down and give it a read, you’ll be glad you did.

(Thanks Brandon!)

Big news for the day! A few weeks back, Ian Lesnet and the Dangerous Prototypes crew posted a blog regarding the Microchip ChipKit development kit. For the uninitiated, the ChipKit is essentially Microchip’s long-awaited response to the very popular Arduino development kit. Criticisms were rightfully raised about the open source content of some of Microchip’s software. Rather than ignore the issue entirely or issue some sort of rebuttal, Microchip chose to do the right thing and work with the open source community. (continue reading…)

Over at Thingiverse, user mattmoses has developed an impressive homebrew electric motor design. From the project page:

This is an electric motor made from a printed circuit board, some 3D printed components, 44 magnets, 44 steel washers, and a handful of electronic components for drive circuitry.

It is similar in design to thingiverse.com/thing:802 but it is much easier to make and the performance is much better. Maximum mechanical power output is about 600 mW. Top no-load speed is about 2000 rpm. This is probably enough power to do something useful.

Also provided is an open source script that runs on Matlab or GNU Octave to generate custom motor coil patterns. The script will export CAM files in KiCad or EAGLE format, so you can fabricate coil patterns of your own liking.

While this motor used a commercially produced PCB for the coilplate, the idea is that users can produce functional motors using nothing more than their own 3D printers.

Videos of the motor in action can be found on YouTube and are embedded below:

(Thanks Marc!)

Over in the labs at Ohio State University, a new method of embedding multiple similar antennas into clothing can actually help cut down on signal loss.

While this is not the first time that clothing has been used to send and receive radio signals, the OSU technology is unique in that it uses a computer control device to facilitate several antennas within one piece of fabric.

Because the body’s position may result in one or more of the antennas being blocked by obstacles, or short-circuited against the wearer’s skin, the controller is able to switch between antennas so that the one best able to transmit and receive is activated. In lab tests, the vest was found to be able to work in all directions, offering four times the range of a standard military whip antenna.

While current tests involve flexible film antennas sewn into the clothing, the researchers are also looking at directly printing the antennas on the clothing as well.  And while military applications may seem most obvious, there is also the opportunity to use this technology for the elderly and disabled as well by allowing communication in emergencies.

(via Slashdot)

Big news over at Dangerous Prototypes as they successfully release their open source USB stack today. Via Dangerous Prototypes:

Good news everyone! A new free and open source USB stack is now available for PIC microcontrollers. Today we finished testing and prepared a simple echo test that works with PIC 18F and 24F. We hope a demo release will get more developers involved. A release package and overview are in the forum. As always, thanks to Honken and JTR for making this possible.

Microchip has a free-as-in-beer USB firmware for the PIC microcontroller, but it can’t be redistributed. For a project like the USB IR Toy, we can give you our source code but not the USB source. You have to get that on your own from Microchip. It’s not a huge problem, but it is a barrier for people new to PICs. We used the Microchip firmware because it works great and there wasn’t an alternative.

This looks exciting, and we can’t wait to see what people do with this!