
Tinkering with electronics - ttsiodras
https://www.thanassis.space/thebeast.html
======
fairpx
I design interfaces for a living, but tinkering with hardware is one of the
most satisfying journeys I know. Every now and then, like OP, I play around
with different hardware projects. It's amazing how, showing a half-baked
hardware project to a friend gets them a lot more exciting than showing them a
nicely designed software project. It feels like when you're tinkering with
hardware a lot more parts of the brain are challenged and thus generate a more
fulfilling experience. I highly recommend everyone who's into software or
design but never did anything with hardware to spend some time this week
building a simple blinking LED project with the Arduino. You'll know exactly
what I'm talking about.

~~~
leggomylibro
I couldn't agree more, but these days Arduinos are both limiting and
expensive.

Consider checking out an ARM Cortex-M board - you can get an STM32F103 'blue
pill'[1] with 20KB RAM, 64KB flash, external oscillators, and a 72MHz clock
speed for $5. Plus, it has lots of extra peripherals like a realtime clock
which can run off of backup power and periodically wake the chip up from
sleep.

The future of embedded development is so bright, you gotta walk around with
sunglasses on.

[1]:
[http://wiki.stm32duino.com/index.php?title=Blue_Pill](http://wiki.stm32duino.com/index.php?title=Blue_Pill)

~~~
vvanders
My current favorite arm cortex are cypress's psoc. They're basically cortex
m0/m3 + embedded cpld that has a direct interconnect to cpu reg/interrupts.

~~~
leggomylibro
How's the open toolchain support with those chips?

I've also heard good things about NXP's Cortex-M chips - apparently they let
you map peripherals to whatever pins you want, which sounds neat. And TI's
MSP432 chips apparently have fantastically low power consumption for their
performance. Atmel's SAM chips look less promising, with minimal peripherals
besides a weird common communication bus that seems to handle things like
I2C/SPI/etc, if I'm reading the datasheets right.

Does that sound right? It'd be nice to learn about all of them, but there are
only so many hours in a day.

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linker3000
Welcome to my weekend!

[https://imgur.com/a/XxMUY](https://imgur.com/a/XxMUY)

This is an AVR-based pong video game (Grant Searle), modified to work with BBC
micro:bits as digital paddles - also operatable from phones via Bluetooth!

This is for a STEM/Code Club event at a local school, for a bit of retro-
meets-contemporary fun, and a paddle programming challenge - let's try using
the micro:bit accelerometers.

The breadboarded circuit will be made up on stripboard, but I'll take along
the prototype.

[https://github.com/linker3000/Microbit-
TVPong](https://github.com/linker3000/Microbit-TVPong)

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DanBC
If you want to get into electronic tinkering the Kris Cochrane youtube channel
is a good palce to start. He only uses hobbyist kit (so really cheap from
AliExpress) and he'll teach simple soldering and surface mount soldering. He
also walks through building reallly cheap chinese electronic kits.

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh8JiW2G9yR2v7TwUm04m_g](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh8JiW2G9yR2v7TwUm04m_g)

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aidos
Great projects!

I got an Arduino recently and it’s the best £6 I’ve spent in ages. My pet
project is building a synth driven from the midi output of my keyboard.

As a software person, “real” electronics felt hard to grok. The Arduino has
been a dream. You have to learn loads along the way. How do I get audio out?
Oh right, what’s PWM? Oh ok, how do these timer things work? But it’s soooo
satisfying.

Highly recommended!

~~~
camtarn
Would love to read more about that synth project. I'm just embarking on a
similar project myself, using a little Cypress PSoC that a friend gave me. I'd
like to make something glitchy and lo-fi - halfway between a Monotron Duo and
an Atari Punk Console.

~~~
JaggedNZ
Checkout
[https://github.com/BleepLabs/Nebulophone](https://github.com/BleepLabs/Nebulophone)

It's not to hard to build and not a bad place to start. The code could be
better, some variables are poorly named and has some minor bugs (off-by-one on
the wave table lookup?). I did start to clean it up but never got to
submitting a pull request before moving onto other projects.

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naveen99
Just found this YouTube playlist on electronics basics on YouTube:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAA9B0175C3E15B47](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAA9B0175C3E15B47)
the videos from the usaf training are particularly good. Person who made this
playlist has a lot of other good ones too.

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Animats
After building some electronics [1] I kind of think it's a pain. It took me
seven tries to get the switching power supply working right. Can't do that on
a prototyping board; layout matters, and all the parts are surface mount.
LTSpice simulations get you close, but not quite there. Then I had to learn to
surface mount solder, which means working with tweezers under a microscope.
I'm not that good at it.

People like that design. Others have built more of them. Someone in Australia
plans to manufacture a hundred or so. There's enough interest for hobbyists to
build it, but not enough for a real production run.

[1] [https://github.com/John-Nagle/ttyloopdriver](https://github.com/John-
Nagle/ttyloopdriver) (USB interface for old Teletype machines, models from
1910 to 1960).

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ilteris
I love tinkering with hardware. I just hate the debugging because now you have
both physical on top of code debugging you have to deal with in order to find
out where things go wrong.

~~~
joezydeco
Typically on a new hardware design I'll write throwaway code that exercises
all outputs. You use this to verify the schematic.

Maybe half the time that code evolves into an API/HAL that the final
application will use. Many times it also becomes code for manufacturing test
(burn in with the test code, then reflash with final production firmware right
before boxing)

Starting out with application code on top of a brand new design will lead to
madness. Take it in smaller steps.

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platz
I would love to see what tinkering could be done with low-power, minimal or
"self-sufficient" location-placement of sensors to gather data and report data
using Lora, cdma, or HF for long range. Why? Because electronics are small and
there should be interesting ways to exploit the difference between this
smallness and full blown CPUs operating on the grid.

But I have a hard time generating good ideas. Any thoughts?

~~~
jerrysievert
take a look at the feather m0 from Adafruit - I have a few deployed where wifi
is quite a ways away, gathering data for me and sending to another one acting
as a base station.

I haven't added solar, as these are inside, near power, but have some solar
panels and hardware waiting for me to deploy out in the field (literally). so
far, it's been my lack of good waterproof enclosures that has slowed me down.
I wonder if there'd be a good opportunity for someone in that space.

~~~
Kliment
Put it in one of those sealable jars with hinges - stuff a few packets of
dessicant inside to stop condensation and you're done. If you need to pass
through wires score a v-shape into the seal and make sure they get squeezed
tight when you close the jar. Something like
[http://img4.foodservicewarehouse.com/Prd/1900SQ/AmericanMeta...](http://img4.foodservicewarehouse.com/Prd/1900SQ/AmericanMetalcraft_HMJ5.jpg)
make sure to get some extra sealing rings if you do passthroughs as it's hard
to get the scoring right.

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murkle
This blog is excellent, and has a good "what to buy" and some similar projects
eg [http://www.technoblogy.com/show?WNM](http://www.technoblogy.com/show?WNM)

The ATtiny85 costs around $1 - it's amazing what you can do with it. I've made
/ adapted quite a few projects from there and other blogs

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vkuruthers
Does anyone know what kind of circuit would be able to convert 12VDC (e.g.
from a small lead acid gel. cell battery) to 20VDC (which my Lenovo E470's DC
charging voltage)? The E470 is my work computer and does not have an easily
swappable battery, so I wanted to experiment with some kind of external
charging system I can use when working remote at sites without accessible
outlets.

~~~
vibrolax
If you want a near turn-key solution, there is this: [http://www.mini-
box.com/DCDC-USB?sc=8&category=1264](http://www.mini-box.com/DCDC-
USB?sc=8&category=1264)

Mini-box has a number of dc-dc converters and battery charging systems for
gel-cell and other batteries. I do not have personal experience with their
products, but I'd try them first if I wanted something other than a hack.

For hacks there are tons of boost converter boards on eBay/aliexpress, but
these typically don't have chargers, short protection, or other features you
might want if you need more robustness

~~~
vkuruthers
Thanks @vibrolax, that does look ideal. I was going to muck around and design
the circuit myself (hopefully based off a solid reference design), but the
COTS setup you listed above looks just like what I need, so I think I'll go
ahead and get it once funds allow :) Thanks again for the tip.

~~~
vibrolax
You're welcome. Another possible solution for you is a dc-dc laptop brick like
these:
[https://www.powerstream.com/ADC-p006.htm](https://www.powerstream.com/ADC-p006.htm).

Fit your gel cell with an auto accessory socket, then plug in the power
supply.

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trisimix
Armbian sounds like a version of ambian

