Received a Hantek DSO-2090 USB oscilloscope today and put it through a few paces.  Here are the results and my impressions from using the device a bit, as well as a few tips for working with it under Linux. The first thing to note is that, in terms of DSOs, this thing is dirt cheap…

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Just got my hands on RedBear Lab‘s Duo—what promises to be a great little BLE/WiFi combo—and got some preliminary testing done.  By the end of the seven straightforward steps detailed here, you’ll know all the basics about the Duo and have your own “Arduino” code running on the device, too.  Other than my own ramblings,…

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I love Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty so, for Halloween this year, I created my own version of Rick Sanchez’ Portal Gun–including a 3d-printed enclosure, printed circuit board, negative energy density tube/crystal thingy, wave file player and laser. Here, I’ll go over the design and construction, as well as a few lessons learned along the…

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I’ve recently had to develop an application using the BLE Nano platform. The BLE Nano is a little module built around the Nordic nRF51822 SoC, along with a minimalist set of support components  including an on-board antenna for the bluetooth wireless connection.  The Nordic itself provides all the Bluetooth low energy functionality and hosts your…

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I do a lot of work with bluetooth low energy (BLE or bluetooth v4.0) and have a few different BLE modules I’ll turn to, but often end up using the Bluegiga BLE112 (as evidenced by my DIY BLE112 breakout).  It’s a great chip but one thing that can get annoying is programming the thing. Whether…

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Today, I finally took the plunge and started exploring how to make 3D printing work for me. I’ve always stumbled when it came time to deal with enclosure and the mechanical aspects of my work, preferring to leave it to some other player in the process or, at best, cutting holes in a standard project…

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Needing a modular power supply that could handle a few amps and both AC and DC input, I recently designed a circuit to perform the task.  Here I’ll go over the main points and a few lessons learned.

I’m pleased to announce that the first set of pages for the Bluetooth Smart/Low Energy Tutorial series have been published.  Within, you’ll find a BLE crash course, a DIY BLE module breakout board (including an Eagle library so you can use it in your circuits) and a complete universal bluetooth low energy client program– with…

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I have an ongoing project that requires a controllable rotating platter and, in order to get sufficient torque and control, I’ve been playing with servo motors to get this working (which is how I fried my faithful little power supply, and wound up needing to construct a new bench supply). To let the small servo…

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I went out to do a beta demonstration at a client’s office, last Thursday, and brought along the prototype circuit boards as well as a small variable power supply.  As I was setting up and pulled out the power supply–a functional but somewhat shoddy little black box with red and black alligator clips–I remarked that…

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