Fuck Yeah Circuits

DangerousPrototypes posted this a few days ago, its an application note from Microchip called BodyCom. It appears to allow communication between devices using the body as a medium, and mentions that the devices do not even need to be in direct contact with the body to achieve this.

A couple of weeks ago I posted the first embedded schematic from my CircuitBee project. The testing phase has been going well, and in the meantime I've been working hard on an Eagle to KiCAD schematic converter. Users can now export their Eagle schematics to KiCAD format and upload them to the CircuitBee system!

This has finally let me realise my original goal for this whole project and release the Illuminatrix Slave Board schematic you see here in a format I'm happy with. This schematic makes use of a PIC16F, and 4 MAX6964 LED Driver chips to control 16 RGB LEDs.

Ah blinky lights. My favourite.

For those of you that use KiCad, I've just started an initial testing phase of my long time pet project CircuitBee.

It lets you embed circuits into your website or blogs (or tumbles!) just as you would a Google Map or YouTube video. Simply upload your circuit, it converts it and then lets you embed it in your blog.

A while ago we posted about the IOIO breakout board for all Android devices to communicate with external hardware. Shortly after, Google announced the Accessory Development Toolkit (ADK) which allows you to do roughly the same thing, in a more official manner, on newer devices.

diydrones.com have posted a preview of one of the first Android hardware accessories that I really want.

Its a breakout board to let you control upto 8 RC channels. This lets you control your favourite UAVs, radio controlled cars, or any other RC device from the comfort of your Android phone/tablet.

They have some great suggestions on how this could be used in hardware projects, such as having your phone doing image analysis and object tracking, taking the heavy computational lifting off the UAV and onto your device.

This excellent guide to home PCB etching by Brad Lyuster of Louisville’s LVL1 hackerspace is well worth a look if you're interested in making your own PCBs for a project.

rucalgary has posted this nice little improvement to the many many POV device designs that have made the rounds on the web in recent years. He's added an accelerometer to make the device a lot easier to use.

With most POV devices you need to move the device at the right speed to get the message to appear consistent and in the same place for people viewing it. This can be quite tricky and takes a bit of practice.

With the uPOV however this is a lot easier since it uses the accelerometer to detect the movement speed and appropriately adjusts its display.

Simon over at WaitingForFriday.com has posted this really detailed article on how to create a USB HID device using a PIC18F4550 microcontroller.

These are fairly chunky PICs but they're really powerful and fully featured and not all that expensive considering what you can do with them. This article details the hardware necessary to make the USB interface, and the software both for the microcontroller and the PC its connected to (windows only).

Flickr user GG has posted this glorious set of photos documenting his homebuilt Z80 computer.

SparkFun have announced pre-orders for this wonderful little breakout controller board for your Android device. It acts as a USB host using a PIC24 microcontroller and allows your Android device to connect to it for communication and charging. Since its a microcontroller underneath its really easy to use all your standard features like PWM, I2C, SPI etc. They've even provided a nice little Java API for you to use in your Android apps to communicate with the device.

I love this fridge climbing robot. Freedombot is a little magnetic surface climbing robot that was designed and built as an entry for the 555 timer contest. Its a great little project with some useful tips for using servos as wheels and other stuff.