electronics

A collection of 22 posts

electronics

Turning off the alarm system - and the lights come on!

Following up on the previous post about pulling sensor data from sensors in a Verisure alarm system, here is a slightly more hardware focused post. One use case that the new Verisure alarm system does not handle nicely is machine-to-machine notification when the alarm is disarmed (turned off). Such notifications

electronics

iPhone killed the removable battery  -  How to make a charger for cell phone batteries

Last weekend I finally got around to doing something I have postponed for several years now. Being somewhat of a gadget hoarder, I have ended up with quite a large stack of rechargeable batteries. Everything from 12 Volt lead-acid ones from old UPS:s to Lithium-ion variants from mobile phones.

butler

Let there be (blinky) light!

I was recently in Helsinki, giving a talk at a QlikDevGroup event. Great event, great crowd. The topic was SenseOps and Butler SOS, and I showcased the lamp above as an example of a funky, but still relevant way to monitor user activity in a Qlik Sense Enterprise environment. A

electronics

ESP8266 Over The Air updating - what are the options?

Over the air convenience A real pain point when developing sensor nodes that are scattered around a building (or a country or the world!) is the updating part. How do you get new firmware onto the devices? The cell phone manufacturers were early to investigate the options, but from my

electronics

Microscope software for OSX

Got myself an Andonstar 2 megapixel USB microscope about a year ago, mainly just for testing it out, and having it readily available when some repair project demanded it. The microscope is actually pretty nice given its ca USD 60 price point, with decent picture quality, a sturdy stand (even

electronics

FLIR TG165 unboxing

Got myself a new toy a while ago – A FLIR TG165 infrared camera. These devices used to cost thousands of Euros/Dollars, but during the past year the have come down in price a lot. I got mine from SOS electronic, think they had a campaign on it back when

electronics

Fixing a broken BK Precision 879b LCR meter

Once you got yourself a good multimeter, a good LCR meter is probably the next step. Remember to discharge any caps before measuring them though - otherwise the result might be what caused this post...

electronics

Numato.cc new year's giveaway coming up

Looks like the good folks at Numato are at it again this year, with a very nice giveaway for various electronics kits. Very nice!

electronics

Fixing bash Shellshock vulnerability on Raspberry Pi

The recent bash vulnerability, a.k.a. “Shellshock”, is pretty bad, considering it might actually have been around for a very long time, maybe even dating back to the predecessor of bash. Not good. So what about Raspberry Pi’s? Are they vulnerable? Turns out they are, but there is

electronics

How to get OS X 10.9 Mavericks and Arduino IDE to play nicely with each other

Apple tried to be smart with OS X Mavericks, developing their own FTDI drivers. Just too bad they don’t seem to work. I have been getting nothing but “avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding” errors when trying to upload sketches to various Arduino compatible boards. In the end,

electronics

Raspberry Pi won't boot - only red power light comes on - SD card corrupt? Not so fast...

After having problems with SD cards failing after a few months in a Raspi that was supposed to be always-on, it was time to look for options. The IPE distribution seemed like a perfect match – it effectively makes the Raspi only use a ramdisk, except possibly during boot. When needed

electronics

HP 6632A power supply cleanup and modifications

There is a new tool in the lab: An HP 6632A power supply. It might be a a bit dated, but it has some pretty good and useful specs (0-20 V, 5 A). True, modern supplies are more compact and offer more features in a smaller box, but a major

electronics

Fail of the day #2: SSD drives out of spec

A while back I got an SSD drive with the question whether it could be repaired. At first glance it looked fine. But wait… the PCB is not level. In fact, it is seriously wobbly. What on earth happened to this SSD? Looking closer at the flash ICs, it turns

electronics

FAIL of the day #1: Repair of NiMH charger

When buying some GP branded NiMH rechargeable batteries about a year ago, a “GP PowerBank Travel” charger (model GPPB03GS) was included as a promotion. It’s a nice little charger that runs both off 220 V and 12 V (for use in car, I presume). It can charge 1-4 AA

electronics

JBC CD-2BC soldering station unboxing

Got a new toy the other day… After using the same ERSA MS 6000 soldering station for the past 20 (!) years or so, it was time to upgrade. Nothing wrong with the old one really, except that it was hard to get new tips and that heating it up took

electronics

Two dollar variable fan controller

Well – given current exchange rate, AU 2.59 = USD 2.33.. So it’s not quite a two dollar product, but pretty close. And “2.33 dollar fan controller” did not make for a nice subject line… After the earlier post about variable 12V fan controllers, it might be worth

electronics

Fritzing vs circuits.io vs Eagle - comparing schematics editors

Comparing Fritzing, circuits.io and Eagle in a real-life design scenario.

electronics

One dollar variable fan controller

Let's take a look at how low-cost fan controllers work. Can they even be built from parts in the junk drawer? Sure, no problem!

electronics

TI LaunchPad Stellaris and Anaren CC2530 Zigbee BoosterPack kit

I recently got the chance to evaluate the Anaren AIR CC2530 BoosterPack Kit, which is a ZigBee eval platform for TI’s LaunchPad products, i.e MSP430 and Stellaris. Kudos to the good folks at element14 for providing the kit as part of their RoadTest program. The review is found

electronics

Superprobe meets vintage multimeter

One of the first tools I built myself many, many (decades!) years ago was a logic probe. At the time things like yellow LEDs were still a bit rare and cool, but this baby had both red, yellow and green LEDs to indicate TTL logic levels. It was a true

electronics

Reverse engineering Macbook Air FaceTime camera, part 1

A severely cracked 13″ Macbook Air display came my way some time back. The LCD panel was obviously damaged, but it would be interesting to see what makes such a great display tick, and maybe parts of it could still be used? I believe the display came from a Late

electronics

Smoke tester from Dangerous Prototypes

A while back I got a free PCB from Dangerous Prototype’s Free PCB program. It’s a nice little board designed to provide easy current monitoring during prototype stages of a project. Features include over-current tripping with visual indication, as well as dual 5V and 3.3V supplies. So,