Reflow oven

I started a new project recently, a reflow oven. This time, I've started with the physical build, and the software side of it will lag behind. I've laser cut the case I designed in OpenSCAD, and I couldn't be more pleased with the results.

The case with the "human interface" components - a touch screen LCD a 1 watt speaker.

I have some projects in R&D for Anibit, and I'm going to need to whip up some PCB's. I need a reflow oven, and I'm going to recycle an old toaster-over. I was inspired by this project, which was in turn based on osPID. The touch-screen was something I've had lying around, waiting for a project. 

New Project - CNC/3D printing

While physical computing has captured my fancy the past few years, one thing that seems to have frustrated me is the physical construction for my projects. I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering, though I went into Software Engineering professionally, so that struck me as odd. I think I've grown accustomed, spoiled even, on the fantastic availability of free and low cost tools available in the software world. I'm used to having as powerful tools to develop software as a hobby as the professionals use. Not so with hardware. Things are getting better though.

I've decided to take it to the next level, and I'm investing in a small CNC that will also be capable of 3D printing. I'll document my progress on ByteCruft. (My robot project is not stalled, but I'm putting the CNC project first, since there's a long lead time with getting up to speed.) I currently know very little about milling beyond what I remember from school almost 20 years ago. I expect my progress to go faster than my typical  'epic' level project, since I'm focusing less on trying to do lot of design myself. I'm mostly cherry picking various kits and packages and making them work together.

Seeeduino Stalker Waterproof Solar kit review PART 2

In my last post, I covered the Seeeduino Stalker board itself, I wanted to get into some of the other aspects of the kit.

The hardware (continued)

Seeeduino Stalker Waterproof Solar kit review

I had a little extra scratch recently, so I decided to geek out on some new toys without  a specific purpose in mind. One of the nuggets I picked up was the Seeeduino Stalker waterproof solar kit. From Seeed Studios in Shenzhen, China.

At the time of writing the kits go for $59.50 US, which, as you'll see in minute, is a pretty good deal, for what you get. I live in North Carolina, and the free shipping via Hong Kong post/registered airmail took about two weeks, give or take a day or two. As an aside, it boggles my mind that I can get something shipped out of Shenzhen *for free*, (my package was several pounds too), and I order something that ships out of a neighboring state and get socked with a $10 shipping fee.

I'm going to take a stab at doing a proper review for the kit, maybe it will inspire me to figure out what to actually do with the thing.

New Graphical Programming Tool for Arduinos

I've mentioned before that I'm a beg fan of the graphical programming paradigm as an educational tool.

Ardublock:

http://blog.ardublock.com/

Is probably the most exciting embedded development "GP" tool I've seen yet. It's well done, and it integrates into the Ardiuno IDE very nicely.


--P

"Sempliduino", My jaunt into Arduinoland.

I've always thought the Arduino was a really cool idea, it lowers the barrier to entry for people without an engineering and/or software background to get their nerd on. Code jockey that I am, I always thought the Ardiuno seemed a little to "beginner" for me. On the other hand, I'm always trying to think of ways to help get my kids interested coding and electronics (eg, see Scratch, more about that later).

Hardware wise, the Arduino at its core is not much more than an ATmega microcontroller, with some convenience hardware(USB serial, voltage regulator, reset button, etc), and a configuration of headers for Arduino add on boards called "shields".

As usual, I dont know exactly what I'm going to get my kids to do with them yet, but I decided that I would order some Mega 28s and some 16 mhz crystals and slap together my own 'duinos on the cheap. Since there are already Adruino minis, and nanos, picos,and femtos, I decided call mine "Sempliduino" which comes from "semplice" and  "Adrduino", the former being Italian for "simple". Yeah, I'm sure that makes no sense to an Italian speaker, but I Googled it and it wasn't taken, so it sticks.

Sempliduino 1.0