Ben builds a one handed Xbox 360 controller as the viewer build and begins work on his big build of the Xbox 360 laptop.
A viewer challenges Ben to build a small, portable CNC machine. Ben also starts work on the Xbox 360 laptop design.
Ben's friend challenges him to build an automatic, domestic can crusher. Ben also starts building the case for the Xbox 360 laptop.
Just in time for Halloween, Ben makes a see-through Portal shirt based off the classic game. He also hacks up and wires the LCD for the Xbox 360 laptop.
In this episode, Ben builds a specialized laptop computer you can comfortably use in the coach section of an airplane. He also begins the final wiring of the Xbox 360 laptop.
Get ready to rock and rolla as Ben performs a variety of Rock Band equipment mods for his friends and old arch-nemesis. He also finishes and demonstrates the Xbox 360 laptop.
Join Ben Heck on some of his daily adventures in this episode that covers his life outside of the show.
Ben Heck builds a rugged, portable PlayStation 3 system for a husband and wife serving in Afghanistan.
Ben Heck gets a new CNC machine and sets it up so he can build pinball cabinets. He also discusses using embedded processors for pinball and other functions.
Ben Heck builds hand-crank chargers for Android phones, continues work on his new pinball machines and brings an LCD back from the dead.
Ben Heck goes old-school and builds a portable version of the infamous Sega CD-ROM game system.
Ever need a cold drink right now? In this episode, Ben Heck uses peltiers to create an Arduino-controller Super Can Cooler!
Ben builds a new version of one his most popular creations - the Portable Work Bench! Also, on Pinball Wars they get the prototyping system up and working.
Ben builds a retro 1970's styled Xbox 360 portable to promote some upcoming Atari games. Break out the bell bottoms, cue the 8-track and tag along!
To help a physician, Ben builds a hand sanitizing station that detects motions, reminds people to sanitize, and logs their behavior.
Ben answers several of your viewer questions, then works on getting his pinball machine ready for the Midwest Gaming Classic.
Ben and Jones continue working on their custom pinball machine, Jeri Ellsworth shows up to lend a hand.
Ben teams up with Ben Sawyer of the Games for Health Foundation to build some custom controllers to allow cooperative play.
Ben sets out to build his own 3D printer and finds it to be quite the task. After some assistance from Chris Kraft, Ben heads to Maker Faire with Jeri Ellsworth to show off his 3D printer!
Phil Golden is embarking on Expedition Awareness, and Ben helps out with a remote control camera system with monitors nestled inside the car.
After years of getting requests to build one, Ben finally breaks down and makes a video game console automatic game disc changer.
Ben works on some ways to automate functions into an existing home. Door Buzzer? Coming right up!
In this episode, Ben builds some game controllers for accessibility, and also returns to working on his pinball with special guest John Popaduik.
Ben checks out the Google ADK, a device that connects your Android phone to an Ardunio MCU and plans a project with it.
Faced with a challenge from Darren of Hak5, Ben must build the ultimate PC case mod!
Ben loses his challenge with Darren from Hak5 but he is still able to complete the baby rocker. Faced with a safety issue for Alyson's bike he builds a bicycle mod for two!
Tired of hard-to-program alarm clocks? Ben builds one he thinks will be easier to use.
A roll of tape mysteriously rolls off the desk at the Ben Heck headquarters. The team sets out to find the ghost responsible - with chilling results!
The gang continues to work on Ben's pinball game, with help from designer John Popaduik.
In the spirit of "turkey sandwiches for weeks," Ben looks around his shop to see what project he can make from the year's leftover parts.
Ben demonstrates how to get started with FPGAs and CPLDs, devices that let you program logic.
Someone needs Ben to make a specialized controller, but he only decides to tackle the project after a change of heart.
In the spirit of CES, Ben builds a mod for the ever-popular consumer electronic device, the iPhone.
During the lazy videogame and football months of winter, Ben builds a device to promote even more laziness - a controller mounted Hot Pocket Dispenser!
Ben builds a digital version of a Valentine's Day classic - a candy heart with messages that change via Twitter!
Ben turns an infrawave toaster oven into a solder reflow oven that can be used with PCB's.
Ben returns to his roots and builds a replica of his original Atari 2600 portable gaming system.
Tired of lugging around a bunch of stuff at airports, Ben builds Robot Luggage to help lighten the load with the help of Jesse Robinson!
Ben takes a viewer suggestion to make a coin-operated power strip so kids can earn tokens for game play.
In honor of Earth Day, Ben talks about energy savings, then builds a Universal Wall Wart.
Ben helps his friend Charlie, and Charlie's son, build a simple project together - the Squach Tracker 9000. Get ready to find Bigfoot!
Tired of burned dinner? Stir your pots remotely! Ben uses Android and an Arduino to make another lazy-man invention! Who says you can't play video games while you cook?
Not satisfied with the Microsoft Kinect, Ben attempts to build a Minority-Report-like glove to control his Xbo
Ben comes up with a great project just in time for Father's Day.
A retro computer for only about $35? Watch Ben build a retro-styled computer using the Raspberry Pi!
Got a briefcase? Then get to building your portable 3D printer. Make awesome 3D objects wherever you are - think of the possibilities!
Ben builds some portable solar-powered items that could be useful on a camping trip: a charger for gadget addicts and a hands-free rotisserie!
To help a viewer with a new baby on the way, Ben builds a power drive add-on for his wheelchair, with foot controls.
In a throwback to the 80s, Ben builds a Pocket BASIC computer, complete with keyboard and screen.
Ben accepts a viewer challenge to create an automated houseplant rotator to help plants grow evenly on all sides.
Ben builds the automatic sunglasses he's been dreaming about for years.
Check out Ben's thinnest and most portable Xbox 360 laptop ever. Crafting an entirely new design from scratch, Ben uses some clever shortcuts to save space while still retaining some of the Xbox's signature elements, like the light ring.
Ben kicks off the season 3 by starting a device which will prevent teenage drivers from texting while they drive.
Ben finishes creating a device that prevents texting while driving and demonstrates it's usage.
Ben solders a mini oscilloscope to demonstrate surface mount soldering technique.
Ben modifies a keyboard so the WASD keys provide the same analog control of an Xbox controller. Ben takes apart a standard keyboard to install magnets, Hall effect sensors, and a modified Xbox controller to create a better gaming keyboard.
Ben begins building a 3D printer that can print two identical objects simultaneously. In this episode he'll build the duel extruders.
Ben continues to work towards building the ultimate 3D printer that can print two objects at once! In today's episode he builds the X carriage and gets one step closer to finishing the project.
Ben continues to work towards building the ultimate 3D printer that can print two objects at once! In today's episode he finishes building the printer and shows it in action!
In this episode, Ben gets in the holiday spirit and builds a "Naughty or Nice" Meter.
Want to do cool projects? Ben teaches you all the basics to get started using the Arduino from installing the Integrated Development Environment to using outputs, inputs and more.
Ben works with local musician Kevin to mod an Ableton APC40 into a guitar. Ben takes apart the midi controller to see what's inside and gets to work moving around the components. After he has the circuitry ready, Ben and Kevin draw out a design for the guitar.
Ben continues to work towards building a MIDI guitar with an Ableton APC40 he modded in the last episode. Today he builds a custom enclosure and shows off the finished build.
Ben modifies the Squatch tracker into a robot that runs on logic gates. Ben explains what logic gates are and how to use them.
Ben shows you how to build your own AVR development board and how to use it in your projects.
Ben builds a fully functioning custom computer with AMD's Trinity APUs that can also launch rockets! He goes into detail on using MOSFETs and LED displays.
Ben takes apart a NES and gets to work modding the circuitry and building a new cartridge connector.
Ben continues working on the slot loading NES by building a loading mechanism and taking another crack at a custom cartridge connector.
Ben takes apart a NES and gets to work modding the circuitry and building a new cartridge connector. Then, he sets the system up at home and plays games!
In this episode, Ben gives a tutorial on using AutoDesk 123D Design. From the sketch to the actual case he creates, Ben runs through the process in this how to!
Construction on the ultimate gaming system begins, as Ben takes apart a Wii U, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 to combine them into one video game mega console!
Ben continues work on his ultimate gaming system, modding the consoles in this episode!
In part 3 of the Ultimate Gaming System build, Ben builds a custom case to house all three consoles. Once he finishes, he shows off the system and puts it to work!
On this episode of The Ben Heck Show, Ben runs through how to build a PIC32 microcontroller. Then tests it out and uses the low level port access to control some lights.
In this week's episode of The Ben Heck Show, ben helps you avoid frying your electronic projects. Plus, he shows off a couple of small projects he's been working on for fun and answers a viewer question about CNC couplings.
You've got mail! Well, Ben builds a smart mailbox that notifies you when you've got mail in your mailbox!
Ben gives an overview of what it takes to build a pinball game and goes into detail on the electronic aspects on his Ghost Squad pinball game.
Ben shows you the basics of SPI, I2C, and RS-232, some common interfaces you can use with your electronics projects.
Ben gets started on a project to build a dog treat dispenser complete with remote controls and a web cam. In part one Ben builds the mechanical dispenser itself.
Ben continues to build his remote controlled dog treat dispenser and begins work on the raspberry pi being used in it.
Ben continues a project to build a dog treat dispenser complete with remote controls and a web cam. In part three, Ben has the Pi serve up a web page to remotely control the device and to show the live video feed.
Ben takes the show on the road to the Design West Expo in San Jose where he talks to suppliers and checks out the latest innovations.
Ben talks about different types of wire and shows you how to use them in your projects. In this tutorial, he covers extending wires, USB connections and he even shows you how to strip wires with your teeth!
Ben gets to work on a Raspberry Pi gaming device you can take anywhere. In part one Ben gets the electronics working and installs MAME on the Raspberry Pi.
Ben finishes his Raspberry Pi portable gaming device.
Ben goes over schematics, a basic part of any electronics project. He shows what the symbols mean and how to go from schematic to working project.
Ben builds a coin operated tabletop arcade machine. In this part of the projects, he hacks an old CRT, PC power supply, and JAMMA connector.
Ben completes the coin operated tabletop arcade machine. In part two, he builds a custom cabinet, wires everything together, and shows it in action.
Ben shows you the tools you need for modding, hacking, and building projects.
Ben Sawyer of The Games for Health Foundation challenges Ben to build a multifunctional gaming console that kids can play with outside.
Ben goes over everything you need to know to get started with programming.
Ever want a bionic bike bag? Now you can have one! Ben and Alyson work together to create a DIY bike light and turn signal. Alyson crafts a fabric patch that attaches to a backpack and Ben writes a program, installs LEDs, and wires up the components.
As a graphic designer turned engineer, Ben has a treasure trove of tips and tricks for making your electronics projects look awesome. In this episode he'll provide insight on the process of designing, explain some parameters to keep in mind, as well as share his thoughts in creating an aesthetically pleasing design.
Ben unplugs the 3-D printer, laser cutter, and CNC machine and gets to work creating a custom case by hand. He shares tips and tricks to help you build a cool enclosure for your next project.
With parts from a hobby store and his own mad-hacker designs, Ben aims for the sky with a quadcopter project. Today he tests the parts and begins to build a frame.
Ben is determined to get his quadcopter project off the ground. Watch as he finalizes the electronics and completes his flying machine.
Ben shows you the basics of working with the Texas Instrument's MSP430 microcontroller using the LaunchPad development board.
Ben takes on a viewer challenge to build an inexpensive, do-it-yourself camera dolly for taking better digital photos and creating time lapses. In this episode, he figures out the mechanical aspects of the project and assembles the dolly.
Ben gets back to work on his motorized camera dolly. In today's episode he adds the final electronics and captures some test footage. Plus, Ben shows off his Oculus Rift headset, which may be the next big thing in virtual reality gaming. As an extra bonus, be sure to catch Alyson trying the incredible immersive technology for herself.
A Cheap LCD for Hacking. Ben shows the LCD he's hacking and points out what makes this a challenge.
Ben shows the RGB drivers he designed with EAGLE and how to set up the libraries you want to use with before beginning your EAGLE project. Ben gets started on a schematic then uses his schematic to create his board showing the best tools to use.
Come along with Ben as he explores the World Maker Faire in New York City. Tour the fairgrounds with him to see all the cool stuff makers are showing off, some of his favorite vendors, and what's the latest and greatest in the maker movement.
In the spirit of Halloween, Ben gets to work on a prank candy bowl that's sure to scare your friends and trick-or-treaters. The first step is getting the bowl to move mechanically. Ben tries out a few ideas before getting to work constructing a spring-loaded arm.
Ben gets back to work on a prank candy bowl for Halloween. He adds speakers for spooky sounds, a proximity sensor, and a microcontroller. Ben writes a basic program to control the sounds and servo motor before he and Alyson decorate the table and see just how spooky it is.
Ben works with Team Heck's newest member, Rusty. Plus, Ben enlists the help of a local musician, Tyler, to create an accessibility guitar. The team works to fill the request of a South African musician who's lost the use of his right arm. Ben devises a foot-controlled contraption that will strum the guitar so the musician can get back to rocking.
Ben and Rusty continue to create the foot-controlled guitar strumming device they started in the previous episode.
Ben talks with tech superstars about their contributions to the maker movement, recent projects, and what they think is cool in the world of technology. He tracks down Eben Upton, Jeri Ellsworth, Joe Prusa, and Bre Pettis at Maker Faire in NYC, and sits down for Skype chats with Chris Gammell and Jeremy Blum. This time Ben asks the questions!
Ben rethinks one of his favorite tools - the hot glue gun. After years of putting up with uneven extrusion and leaking glue, Ben takes matters into his own hands and starts to build the ultimate glue gun from scratch. In this episode, he outlines the features he desires, goes over the gun's electronic guts, and starts experimenting with ideas for the extruder.
Ben continues his work to create the ultimate in hot-glueing technology. He takes the concepts he developed in the previous episode to build a drip-free, easy to control hot glue gun. He creates a trigger with Hall effect sensors, builds the extruder mechanism, then reduces the size of the electronics to fit on the gun before showing the project in action.
Ben fulfills a young viewer's birthday wish and builds an anti-pickpocket wallet. Ben starts off with using discreet logic to create a small anti-theft device that fits into a wallet. If a capitative switch that identifies the owner isn't triggered, an alarm is set off. After unexpected results, Ben moves onto a solution using a microcontroller and makes wallet thieves regret their lives of crime! (00:23) Ben has a special guest at the shop - a big fan with a big idea. (01:13) Ben goes over his plan to use discreet logic to bring Julian's idea to life and outlines the circuit that will make it work.
Ben gets into the holiday spirit and plays the part of an elf in Santa's workshop. He builds the ultimate toy that he thinks would be a great gift to find under the tree - a robotic tank! He uses a couple of kits plus some of his own designs to bring the toy to life.
Ben takes his use of 3D printers to the next level and tries 3D scanning. He attempts to scan a variety of objects with the Cubify Sense 3D scanner to discover how to get the most out of the device and to create the best prints possible. Ben shows you how to build a rotational device for the scanner and shares what he learns about 3D scanning along the way.
Join Ben as he takes a look inside the Xbox One. As he takes it apart he shares his console hacking insights and starts planning how he's going to make his next great portable Xbox.
Ben continues his work creating game controllers for people with disabilities and builds a one-handed Xbox One controller. He takes you through the steps of moving around the controls and putting everything back together again.
Ben tries out the Beagle Bone Black and shows you what he learns along the way. He shows how to get it set up, three ways to connect to it, and tries out a cool LCD cape. By the time he's done experimenting, he's got an idea for how he'll use the Beagle Bone Black in a future project.
Ben's fed-up with the difficulty of soldering surface-mount components by hand and builds a new reflow oven to keep in his shop. He transforms an inexpensive toaster over into a vital tool for electronics engineers and tinkerers. In this updated oven, he uses two thermal couples to ensure even heat distribution and effective reflow.
Ben takes on a viewer challenge to create a TV proximity sensor to keep kids from sitting too close to the screen and ruining their eyes. He builds a device that uses an infrared sensor to set off flashing LEDs and a piezo buzzer if kids move too closely to where it's mounted on the TV.
Ben is excited to start gaming with the PlayStation 4, but not before he cracks it open and takes a look inside. Join Ben as he voids the warranty on yet another console and shares his master-hacker insights along the way. After he explores the motherboard, he puts the PlayStation 4 back together in time to game with his friends.
Ben shows you how to solder surface mount components with his home-brew solder reflow oven. He goes through the steps of placing parts with solder paste and shares his know-how along the way. After the board comes out of the oven, he demonstrates how to fix solder bridges and other imperfections. He adds some through-hole components and goes over the pros and cons of both methods of soldering.
Ben has been challenged by many viewers to make the OUYA into a Heck-style portable gaming device. For the first part of the project, Ben mods an LCD and the OUYA to be as thin as possible. After removing any unneeded components, he works to wire up the HDMI and get the screen and OUYA working as one. He'll sketch-up an idea for how the project will come together in the next episode before calling it a day.
Ben continues his work to create the OUYA portable his viewers challenged him to build. In this part of the process, he opens the controller to see how he can mod it for his device. After deciding on a plan, he builds the controls for his device from the hacked OUYA controller. Now that the electronics are ready, he can get to work designing a cool case.
Ben finishes the OUYA portable! He shows the case he created and gets to work stuffing it with the LCD and OUYA he hacked in the previous episodes. Ben shares the highlights from soldering and wiring all the parts inside the case, installs batteries, and seals the gaming device up. Finally, he kicks back and enjoys a game on his new system!
Ben continues his fight to overpower winter and takes on a viewer challenge to build bicycle handlebar warmers. Abby bikes to work in the winter and her hands get very cold, even with mittens, so she asks Ben to create a DIY solution for cyclists like herself. Ben gathers some readily available supplies to hack for the build - motorcycle handlebar warmers, a portable USB charger, and a project box. He builds custom cork handlebar grips, goes over how a step-up regulator works.
Ben cracks open the PlayStation4 controller and hacks it for single-handed use. Over the years he's modded many controllers and with the release of new consoles, he's back at it. The PS4 controller presents some new challenges and Ben must devises ways to conquer them. With 3-D printed parts, fine soldering, and a good deal of creativity, Ben creates his newest accessibly controller.
Ben gets to work creating what he imagines a television would be in a steampunk world. This mechanical display will rotate a panel of LEDs at a very fast rate to create an illusion of solid images. After giving an overview of his ideas for the project, Ben gets to work designing PCBs, which he'll stuff using both surface mount and through-hole soldering. He makes sure the LED PCBs function correctly before beginning his designs for this mechanical wonder.
Ben continues building a persistence of vision display. In the previous episode, he designed and stuffed PCBs with LEDS and constant current LED drivers. After he tested his LED panel, he began his designs for the rotating rig that will hold it. Now he can begin laser-cutting and routing out the pieces that will make the mechanical rig work. He etches a copper disc that works carbon brushes, assembles the gear mech, installs and opto-interrupter, and does some tests. He has an unexpected problem.
Ben finishes building a persistence of vision display. He has the LED panels and his home-brew PCBs functioning according to plan. Now Ben and his assistant, Felix, can get to work assembling a solid frame and finding a power source. Ben hooks up the opto-interrupter, writes some code, and takes the display for a spin.
Ben takes on a viewer's idea to make foot pedals to supplement the keyboard and mouse in PC gaming. He gets started by programming a Teensy to work as a human interface device. After showing the theory behind the code and a doing a test, Ben moves on to making the pedals. After making parts with both the CNC and 3-D printer, the building begins. Felix helps out with mounting the Teensy on a PCB and adding some wires. After Ben adds the final touches, he's ready to go home and game!
Ben tears apart a broken laser printer to see what parts he can salvage from it. He finds a variety of useful items from springs to opto-interrupters and muses about how the parts can be incorporated into future projects. A heap of ABS plastic is left in the wake of the teardown and gets Ben brainstorming ideas of how it could be turned into 3-D printer filament instead of going into the recycling bin. Ben ends up with a bunch of new parts!
Ben makes a plan to create a secure dog door by hacking readily available parts. He decides to hack a key fob and a dog shock collar to work in the project. He tears the key fob and collar apart to find a way to interface them. Ben demonstrates how the 555 timer makes the project work. The circuit boards are stripped down and combined to fit into a small enclosure that will go on a collar.
Ben Heck completes the automatic dog-door opener he started in episode 130 with surprising results.
Ben tears down a Mac Classic. What will he find? Ben can't believe another Steve Jobs biopic is being planned in Hollywood! He decides that the best way to pay homage to Steve Jobs is by tearing apart a Mac Classic and seeing what he can find. Will he find signatures inside the case? Will it have a hard drive? Join Ben as he removes the layers to find out.
Ben hacks an old See 'n Say toy with quotes from Dave Jones of the EEVBlog. Ben works on his Dave Jones of the EEVBlog impression and gets the idea to gather a bunch of Dave's sound bites and make a custom sound board by hacking a child's toy. Ben opens up the toy and gets to work on replacing the silly animal sounds with phrases like "pure engineering evil," "amps blow up your circuit," and more!
Ben shows you how to etch your own PCB boards. Ben is always looking for new tools and processes to help with all the projects he builds. He's got a CNC mill, laser cutter, and a 3-D printer, but hasn't found a way to whip up a PCB at his shop. He's hand wired many circuits, but this can be tedious. He's designed PCBs in Eagle and sent them off for production at a board house, but this doesn't help when he wants a PCB the same day. In this episode, Ben experiments with three methods of PCB etching and shares the results.
Ben and Alyson decide to make text radios for this year's Maker Faire. Ben and Alyson are getting ready to head to Maker Faire, but have a problem. In previous years they've had trouble with cell phone reception when they need to communicate with each other. They have a bunch of footage to shoot at the faire and don't want to waste time looking for each other. Ben gets the idea to build text radios! Be builds two radios they can use to send text messages on a dedicated frequency. He makes custom PCBs for the keyboard, LCD, and radio modules which he stuffs into custom cases. Now they're ready for Maker Faire!
Ben goes on a scavenger hunt at Maker Faire to see if he can find parts to create a solar powered phone charger. The challenge is that he must scour the booths to collects everything he'll need to assemble the project at the faire. The only tool he brought along is a portable soldering iron. Watch Ben explore the faire and hack together a hat that will charge his phone.
Ben visits Madison Area Technical College to solve three problems with their high end oscilloscopes.
Ben Heck restores a 34 year old drill press that needs a lot of TLC. Ben is inspired to refurbish an old drill press he received as a hand-me-down. The thirty four year old press is in rough shape and is in need of some cleaning, greasing, and has to be completely rewired. With Felix's help, Ben gets the drill press in working order and makes it look shiny and new.
Ben sets out to create the ultimate in wearables for engineers! Wearables are all the rage and Ben decides to get in on the action. He sets out to create the ultimate in wearables for engineers - solder gauntlets! Ben plans to build a gauntlet for each hand. One will have a retractable soldering iron and the other will have a motorized solder dispenser. In today's episode, Ben gets the soldering iron gauntlet working.
Ben brings his solder right to his fingertips as he finishes his wearable solder gauntlet! Ben gets back to work on creating a wearable soldering iron and solder dispenser so he never has to put anything down while soldering. In the last episode he built a retractable soldering iron that mounts on his right hand. Today he builds a motorized solder dispenser that mounts on his left forearm and brings the solder right to his fingertips! He uses the finished gauntlets to make some fixes on his pinball machine.
Ben takes apart a ZX Spectrum and mods it! Ben has modded many old computers into gaming portables and today he takes a crack at something new - the ZX Spectrum. He gets started by taking the computer apart and for a closer look inside. He makes sure it works by simulating loading a game from tape before he gets down to making modifications. He adds a new EEPROM with two different operating systems and makes some an upgrades to the video RAM.
Ben makes real-world versions of Minecraft blocks, switches, torches and redstone needed to build logic gates. Ben is inspired by Minecraft and how it's possible to create logic gates within the game. He decides to make real-world versions of the blocks, switches, torches and redstone needed to build the gates. He aims to create a fun, hands-on way to learn about logic gates. In today's episode he goes over the plan for the project and builds the red stone blocks.
Ben Heck continues his quest to build real-world versions of Minecraft blocks. Ben continues to build real-world versions of Minecraft blocks, switches, torches, and more. Each block will have a role in creating logic gates just like in the Minecraft game. Ben shows you how he builds each kind of block and does some tests along the way. Once all the pieces are working, he tries building some live action logic gates.
Ben Heck continues his epic journey to build a ZX Spectrum handheld device! Ben continues the epic journey of modding a ZX Spectrum into a handheld device. He works to shrink the size of the circuitry as much as possible so the power of the Speccy can be in the palm of his hands. He makes progress and runs into some challenges with modding the circuitry before he goes through the process of designing a case. With some sketches, Ben shows that it's not just about how everything will fit, but also how everything connects within the case.
Ben creates a motorized web camera using the Raspberry Pi and its camera module so viewers can tune into the shop and take a look behind the scenes. Felix uses his Linux skills to get the Pi streaming to the web and Ben builds the mechanical features of the project. Ben carefully designs the project from the camera out to ensure everything will function once it's all assembled.
Ben creates a project for Little Free Library, an organization that promotes literacy and the love of reading through free book exchanges. They're looking for a way to log usage data from the small library units that are often placed in people's yards. Ben devises a way to save data to an SD card which can be imported into a spreadsheet. He also uses his woodworking skills to design and build a Ben Heck styled mini-library.
Welcome to the final episode of the ZX Spectrum saga! Ben completes the remaining mods for his completely hand-wired portable. Once all the electronic components are tested and working, Ben builds the unit into a specially designed case fresh off the 3D printer. Ben enjoys the fruits of his labor and enjoys some classic gaming on his new system - arguably the most complex project he's ever tackled on the the show.
Ben decides to go back to a simpler time before smartphones by building a DIY basic cell phone. He uses the Adafruit FONA as the foundation of the project along with a keyboard, battery, OLED, and microcontroller. Ben programs the MCU to be the brains of his phone project. Ben get all the pieces working and shows how it will all come together in a custom case in the next episode.
Ben and Felix continue building the simple cell phone. Ben dials in the code to parse the data sent by the FONA to the OLED display and Felix solders the necessary components on the homespun, double-sided PCB. Once the PCB is complete, Ben can begin designing a case for the little phone. Using parts he 3D prints and laser cuts, Ben assembles the unit and is ready to re-live a simpler time with his new phone.
Ben travels to the United Kingdom to attend EMF Camp, an outdoor camping festival for geeks, crafters, and technology enthusiasts. He sets up camp and breaks out the camping chair he souped-up for the occasion. In a series of flashbacks Ben shows how he created the mods back at the shop - including a beverage holder with active cooling and fans that detect campfire smoke to blow it away from the camper. During the Tech Time Out, Ben gives a tour of EMF Camp. See Ben where he’s never been seen before - in the great outdoors!
Ben responds to viewer’s questions about 3-D printing by delivering a full tutorial! He covers the kinds of printers available as well as the basic parts and costs of building your own printer. Ben also demonstrates how to find existing designs to print and gives examples of software for designing objects from scratch. After printing some objects, he shares tips and tricks on how to create the best prints possible.
Felix built a point and shoot camera using spare parts laying around the shop and suggests that Ben shrink it down and put it into a cool enclosure. Ben shares tips and tricks as he works to remove anything unnecessary from the Pi, making it as small as possible. Felix shows how he programmed the Pi to work as a camera in the Tech Time Out. Ben hand wires all the components together until he’s created a super slim Pi point and shoot camera. After he designs and 3D prints a case, it’s time for some selfies!
For years Ben has wanted to take another crack at creating the ultimate in can-crushing technology. In an early episode of the show, his can-crushing experiments didn’t provide the results he’d hoped for and have haunted him ever since. Ben reached out to viewers to share their ideas on the element14 community and with those ideas he’s come up with a new plan.
Ben continues building his crowdsourced can crusher, creating it piece by piece to make sure everything works before routing parts on the CNC.
Ben decides it’s time to create a brawling robot game he’s wanted to build for a while. He builds mechanical robots and uses servos to make them punch as well as move side to side. The servos are hooked up to the Intel Galileo board that is serving up a webpage with controls that can be accessed on a phone. Fight!
Ben uses charging circuits in many of his projects so it’s about time he created his own! Ben uses EAGLE to design the PCB for his circuit and shows each step of the process. Ben uses his “laser paint” technique for homemade PCBs then solders on the parts and tests the circuit. Now he has a ready-made 3.7V charging circuit for upcoming projects!
Ben and Felix work together to create a hacker-friendly Halloween mask. They use basic materials from the hardware store to create the framework of the mask and add servos that will move the creature’s mandibles. Ben wires up a couple of LED matrixes to use as the creature’s eyes. The electronics are mounted on the mask before Ben get’s crafty to skin, paint, and detail the mask. Trick or treat!
Ben decides to take on another retro 8-bit computer project and builds an Apple 1 from scratch. He wires the CPU, ROM, and RAM to a PCB and adds some logic gates for memory addressing. With this basic 6502 computer complete, he uses an oscilloscope to take a look at what the CPU is doing. The digital data shows that the 6502 is functional and Ben can move on to the next step.
Ben continues to create an Apple 1 Replica. In the previous episode, he built the core of the Apple 1 - a 6502 computer with a CPU, ROM, RAM, and a few address decoders. Today Ben works to get some input/output going with an updated interface using a Propeller micro-controller. He can test the new interface by hooking up a display and keyboard.
Ben completes the Apple 1 Replica. In the previous episodes, he built the 6502 computer and got it to function with an LCD and a homemade keyboard. Today Ben builds a 1970s style case to house the computer. When the sleek, wooden case is finished, Ben demonstrates the complete replica.
In this episode Alyson comes out from behind the camera to learn how to solder. Ben shows her the basics and has her do some tests before soldering up a real circuit. Ben helps Alyson as she creates an audio circuit for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module.
Ben and crew are moved into the new workshop, but it could use some improvements. Ben gets to work building a cart to hold all his CNC materials. His second shop hack is to mod an old PC power supply into a bench supply he can use to test projects. Before the move he tossed the old, noisy power supply he had used in the past. Finally, Ben sups up his CNC machine by adding a chip collector to keep the shop free of dust and debris. He rigs up a single ShopVac to both the chip collector and vacuum table. With these shop hacks, building projects will be even easier!
Ben finally tries out an idea he’s had in mind for years - a seeing-eye hat! Ben uses a Parallax Propeller, ultrasonic sensors, and rumble motors to create a hat that helps the wearer to sense their surroundings. His challenge is to create a prototype that lets Ben wander around his shop blindfolded and still have an idea of where he is. Can he do it?
Santa Ben gives his fans what they’ve been asking for - an Xbox One portable project! Since he’s not the the first person to attempt his, Ben wants to make his portable different and decides to go with a tablet form factor. In the first part of the project he creates a magnetic cover that will protect the tablet’s screen and gets started on the first layer that will hold the LCD. In a special edition Tech Time Out Ben unboxes a cartridge from the Atari landfill and tries to get it to work.
Santa Ben continues his work to create a portable Xbox One by Christmas. He’s building the device layer by layer. Ben hacks up many HDMI plugs and works on wiring the Xbox One and LCD. After installing most of the Xbox One components he’s ready to see if the Xbox will boot.
In the final part of the Xbox One Portable series, Ben completes the gaming tablet. He needs to figure out how to make the Blu-Ray drive work at an angle, build the remaining portion of the case, and do a lot more wiring. At the end of the episode he’s ready to boot up the tablet and see if it works.
Ben gets a lot of questions about whether discreet logic, a microcontroller, or a Raspberry Pi is best to use as the brains of a project. In this episode he goes over the strengths and weaknesses of all three as well as their best uses. He takes a stroll down memory lane and uses past projects he’s built on the show as examples.
Ben attempts to create a more efficient chimney that will circulate the heat from the rising smoke to the rest of the room. He gets crafty with plaster of Paris to create the structure of the fireplace and the chimney then installs it in a small model house. He does a control test before adding his chimney mod. Will it work?
Ben finds an LCD that is the perfect size for a pinball display, but it only runs composite video and that just won’t do. Ben uses his oscilloscope to figure out how the LCD works so he can reverse engineer it using an FPGA.
Ben sets out to create a second revision of the Raspberry Pi MAME portable gaming device. This time he has a better display, a newer Pi, and an improved charging circuit. In this episode he gets the Pi set up as a MAME device by installing the CupCade OS on an SD card, configuring the GPIO as game control buttons, and connecting it to the Adafruit TFT screen. Once everything is working, Felix makes a custom PCB based on how Ben designs the unit.
Ben sets out to create a second revision of the Raspberry Pi MAME portable gaming device. This time he has a better display, a newer Pi, and an improved charging circuit. In this episode he finishes off the project by stuffing the PCB created in part one, finishing the case design, wiring and testing the PCB, 3D printing the parts and finally assembling the unit. Learn more about the Keysight 3000T at - http://element14.com/test-and-measure
Ben revisits one of his old projects and comments on what he would have done differently if he had more time. In this rewind and recap episode Ben discusses what went wrong with the persistence of vision display.
Ben decides it’s time to take filming into his own hands or more specifically the hands of the Pixy Camera Sensor from Charmed Labs. Ben sets out to create an auto-tracking camera that utilizes the Pixy Camera’s ability to track color.
For a while now Ben has been having trouble tracing sloths against a window. Meanwhile Felix has been trying to find a use for his old laptop parts. Ben has found a way to solve both of their problems by creating an artists light box out of old laptop LCDs.
From single-handed controllers to hands free wheelchairs Ben Heck is no stranger to accessibility mods. In this episode Ben has decided to make a pinball mod that will allow the user to play any pinball machine with a single hand.
Ben is no stranger to making your favorite consoles portable and this time he has decided to build a portable version of the Sega Dreamcast. In this episode Ben does a Dreamcast teardown, converts the LCD backlight to LED and gets the Dreamcast and LCD to run on batteries.
In this episode Ben sets out to help Backflip films with their upcoming puppet movie The Princess Knight. The film requires its actors to memorize prerecorded dialogue in order to match it with the mouth of a puppet. In this episode Ben sets out to create an animatronic head that would move its mouth automatically by detecting the highs and lows of audio waveform.
Ben and Felix team up to protect themselves from the ultimate foe, Zombies! In order to survive they must create a water filter, a crystal radio and a zombie detection system.
In this episode Ben sets out to help Backflip films with their upcoming puppet movie “The Princess Knight”. The film requires its actors to memorize prerecorded dialogue in order to match it with the mouth of a puppet. In this episode Ben sets out to create an animatronic head that would move its mouth automatically by detecting the highs and lows of audio waveform.
Ben is no stranger to making your favorite consoles portable and this time he has decided to build a portable version of the Sega Dreamcast. In this episode Ben shrinks down the disc drive assembly, creates a custom heat sink and figures out a basic form factor for the unit.
In celebration of earth day Ben has decided to tackle two projects that could help conserve or recycle energy. The first is a thermoelectric generator that recycles waste heat from the production lights that we use on the show. The second is a remote controlled light switch that turns on or off at the press of a button.
Ben is no stranger to making your favorite consoles portable and this time he has decided to build a portable version of the Sega Dreamcast. In this episode Ben designs the case, wires up the unit and plays some games!
In this episode Ben builds his own PIC32 development board. Ben shows us how to design, assemble and test this custom solution.
In this episode Ben and Felix work together to build a Raspberry Pi media streamer that can be used with a television and a server.
In this episode Ben explains the ins and outs of CNC milling using only a Shapeoko and a laptop. Areas of focus include an overview of the parts, creating design files, execution and other CNC tips.
In this episode Ben begins creating a mini pinball machine portable for this years Freescale Technology Forum in Austin,Texas. The pinball machine is half scale, will run off of the Teensy 3.1 and will have electronic music and scoring.
Ben and Max are arguing over which system is better, the Super Nintendo or the Sega Genesis / Megadrive. In this episode Ben will take both consoles apart and then look at the main processor, the co-processors, the audio, the video and see how much ram is in each console. Ben will then hook the consoles up to an oscilloscope and compare the read/write speeds of their busses. There can be only one!
In this episode Ben finishes building his mini pinball machine portable for this years Freescale Technology Forum in Austin,Texas. The pinball machine is half scale, runs off of the Teensy 3.1 and has electronic music and scoring.
In the past Ben has received many requests to build a combo system but has declined because there isn't much involved in simply putting multiple consoles in one box. In this episode Ben sets out to make a real combo system. The core unit with a CPU,RAM,ROM,LOGIC,PSU and controls and then there will be different modules that will attach to this core, transforming it into different systems.
On the Ben Heck Show we use many connectors. In this episode we will talk about all the different types, how to use them, how to identify them and how the pin numbering works. We will also show examples on how best to use them.
In 1972 (when films were silent) three men invented the first scientific pocket calculator. In todays episode Ben and Felix build their own DIY graphing calculator using a Raspberry Pi. The build is also the first to feature the Formlabs Form 1 3D printer.
In the past Ben has received many requests to build a combo system but has declined because there isn’t much involved in simply putting multiple consoles in one box. In this episode Ben continues to build a “real combo system”. The core unit will have a CPU,RAM,ROM,LOGIC,PSU and controls and then there will be different modules that will attach to this core, transforming it into different systems.
Ben revisits one of his old projects and comments on what he would have done differently if he had more time. In this rewind and recap episode Ben discusses what went wrong with the slot loading nintendo.
In this episode Ben teams up with John from John’s Arcade to create the ultimate single handed arcade controller.
Come along with Ben as he explores FTF 2015 in Austin,TX. Tour the technology lab with him to see all the cool stuff Freescale has to offer.
In this episode Ben and Felix set out to make a Geocache using a BeagleBone Black. The device has to be durable, it has to last for at least a month and it has to do something cool when you reach it.
On the Ben Heck Show we use many batteries. In this episode we will talk about some of the different types, how to identify them and what projects they are most useful for.
For todays episode we traveled to Detroit, Michigan for Maker Faire 2015. At the faire various makers stopped by our booth and showed off their projects. Ben judged each project on the following factors - Cool Factor, Usefulness, Manufacturability and Market Potential. Throughout the episode Felix will be giving you updates on what happened around the faire.
In this episode the folks at Back Flip Films need help cleaning up after their weekly Nerf wars. To assist with this Ben will set out on a three part journey to create a Roomba that can collect Nerf darts and bring them back to home base.
In this episode Ben sets out to make an Oscilloscope Watch. The watch will be portable, easy to use and will also function as a voltage meter.
For todays episode we continue our coverage of the Detroit Maker Faire 2015. At the faire various makers stopped by our booth and showed off their projects. Ben judged each project on the following factors - Cool Factor, Usefulness, Manufacturability and Market Potential. Throughout the episode Felix will be giving you updates on what happened around the faire.
Ben has modded many old computers into gaming portables and in this episode Ben returns to an old friend - the ZX Spectrum. He gets started by creating a schematic in eagle and designing a small PCB. Ben will conclude his journey in part 2.
In this episode Ben completes his three part Roomba build to help Flip Films clean up after their weekly nerf wars. Ben completes his build, a Roomba that can collect Nerf darts and bring them back to home base.
Ben has modded many old computers into gaming portables and in this episode Ben returns to an old friend - the ZX Spectrum. In this episode he completes the project.
In this episode Ben receives an obsolete Apple Watch from his future self. In order to save the world Ben must rip it apart and examine its components.
In this episode The Ben Heck Show goes on the road. We’ve travelled to the EATON facility in St. Louis to learn more about circuit protection.
In this special Halloween episode of The Ben Heck Show, the shop has become haunted by the ghost of unfinished projects! Watch as Ben creates two Halloween decorations in order to scare away the spooky ghosts.
The evil Pie Face plans to turn the world to crust, special agent Ben Bondendorf must stop him. In order for Ben to accomplish this he must build some sort of surveillance device that will enable him to stop Pie Face before his evil plan is realized. In this episode Ben and Felix complete the mechanical portion of the build.
The evil Pie Face plans to turn the world to crust, special agent Ben Bondendorf must stop him. In order for Ben to accomplish this he must build some sort of surveillance device that will enable him to stop Pie Face before his evil plan is realized. In this episode Ben and Felix create a control box in the handle of the cooler, write an auto start script for the Pi2, and wire everything together.
Fallout 4 has been released and that means one thing..We need to eliminated any possible reason there might be for getting up off the couch. In this episode Ben does exactly this by creating a new and improved version of this beloved Hot Pocket Dispenser build.
For a while now Ben has been making and selling single handed accessibility controllers. In todays episode Ben will tear down the X-Box One controller and show you how to do mods of your own.
In this episode Ben will go over the basics of programming on CodeBug, from motor control to making your own game! CodeBug is a fun, low cost, programmable wearable device that you can learn to program.
In this episode Ben and Felix set out to create the ultimate Hackbook Pro using the Novena laptop (A new open-hardware computing platform, flexible and powerful, designed for use as a desktop, laptop, or standalone board.) The build will be broken up into three parts, lets get started!
Its that time of the millennium again, time for another Star Wars movie and we thought it would be appropriate to make a Star Wars themed build to coincide with the release of the movie. In this episode Ben, Karen and Felix set out to build an R2-D2 can cooler for your Star Wars cooling needs.
Have your children ever ruined Christmas by opening their presents before it was time? Have your pets ever destroyed your tree? In this episode Ben and company start building the Holiday Present Protection System using weight sensors found in three cheap scales.
In this episode Ben and Felix continue their mission to create the ultimate Hackbook Pro using the Novena laptop (A new open-hardware computing platform, flexible and powerful, designed for use as a desktop, laptop, or standalone board). The build will be broken up into three parts, lets get started!
In this episode Ben and Felix assemble the Pi-Top (a Raspberry Pi laptop you build yourself) and create a small add on breakout board for it.
In this episode Ben takes a stab at repairing an old piece of 70's technology, The Atari Video Music.
In this episode Ben and Felix complete their mission to create the ultimate hackbook using the Novena laptop (A new open-hardware computing platform, flexible and powerful, designed for use as a desktop, laptop, or standalone board.)
In this episode Ben takes a look at the new Steam Controller and then tackles the almost impossible task of designing a controller that would convince PC gamers to switch to console gaming.
In this episode Ben and Felix make a DIY Raspberry Pi Oscilloscope using the Bitscope and a Raspberry Pi 2.
In this episode of the Ben Heck Show we will learn more about FPGA's or Field Programmable Gate Arrays with the DE0-Nano. When is it appropriate to use an FPGA? What types of FPGA's are out there? How can you implement an FPGA into your project? All of these questions and more will be answered. Let's get started!
In this episode of the Ben Heck Show Ben gives the fans what they've always wanted. Using original Game Boy hardware Ben creates a giant gameboy using an FPGA and a VGA screen!
In this episode Ben solders an entire Atari 2600 system from scratch. In a future episode he will test it out and create a cool case around it.
In this episode Ben is away on vacation and Felix has taken over the shop. For today's build we are turning an acoustic guitar into an acoustic electric guitar!
On the Ben Heck Show we always try to use the right tool for the job. In this episode Ben and Karen go through our workflow from bread board to finished product.
In this episode Ben takes apart the Nintendo 64 and the PlayStation 1 and compares their specs. Ben goes over the pros and cons of each system and decides which of the two systems won the war!
In this episode Ben begins making a mechanical television using old records, a flash light, a drill motor and some Photoresistors.
In this episode Ben sets out to build a all in one development kit. This includes a screen, a key board, mouse and a few power options all in one convenient package.
In this episode Ben creates a data logging device that can be used to determine how your checked luggage is being handled. Let's get started!
In this episode Ben continues to make a mechanical television using old records, a flash light, a drill motor and some Photoresistors.
In this special Earth Day Episode of The Ben Heck Show Karen, Ben and Felix go to the thrift store and search for old electronics to salvage. Whoever finds the most useable components wins!
In this episode Ben and Felix make an auto doorknob sanitization unit out of some uv sanitizing lights. Let's get started!
In a previous episode Ben hand wired an Atari 2600, in this episode he finishes the job by making it portable. Let's get started!
In this episode Ben and Felix set out to create a solution for people who may sometimes forget to take their pills. With the invention of the Pill-Minder 2000 users will be alerted not only when they forget to take their pills but also when they are supposed to take their pills in the first place.
Ben and crew take a suggestion from the community. The idea was to create a real life Jumangi board game with pieces that seem to move all by themselves. In this episode Karen figures out the general design of the board game and Ben creates a mechanism for moving the pieces across the board using magnets and servos.
In this episode Ben tears down the Power Glove and reverse engineers it into a computer mouse!
In todays episode Ben works on a functional Sci-fi computer terminal for a space movie that he is working on.
This week Ben, Karen, and Felix continue to work on the Hackmanji board game puzzle portions to help make it educational with electronic logic gates, ranging from AND, OR, to XOR. Ben breaks down the puzzles and solutions to the logic puzzles while Felix solders the logic chips. Karen and Felix design and laser cut the housing, find out how they get on!
In this episode Ben goes over the basics of logic gates to coincide with the Hackmanji board game build.
In this episode the Ben Heck Crew visits the Music Tech Fest in Berlin, Germany. Ben and Felix will be judging some of the projects that take place in the hack camp portion of the festival.
In this episode Ben uses the Raspberry Pi Zero to create the smallest Pi portable computer that he has ever made!
Ben and crew take a suggestion from the community. The idea was to create a real life Jumangi board game with pieces that seem to move all by themselves. In this episode Ben, Felix and Karen finish building the Hackmanji board game.
In this special episode of 'The Ben Heck Show' Terry and Dan Diebold have brought us the Nintendo PlayStation Prototype. This rare console is thought to be the only one left in existence so we have handled it with extreme care. Our goal is to take it apart, find out how it works and in a future episode get it working again. Let's get started!
In this special episode of 'The Ben Heck Show' Terry and Dan Diebold have brought us the Nintendo PlayStation Prototype. This rare console is thought to be the only one left in existence so we have handled it with extreme care. In this episode our goal is to get it working again. Let's get started!
In this episode of The Ben Heck Show Karen, Felix and Ben engage in heated competition. Each competitor must build a robot that will have 3 balloons attached to it. The goal will be to pop the opposing robots balloons using weapons that are either built within the competition time frame or created from scrap found at a local thrift store. Only one robot's balloons will survive!
Ben and Felix produce a laser guided infra-red grid array sensor, connected via i2c to a micro controller with mechanical relays to disconnect the power to a device that causes fire! They integrate a Hitachi HDD44790 based LCD display to create a menu and interface for calibration with an enclosure designed with Autodesk Fusion 360. If advanced technology is almost distinguishable from magic then an electronics component that sets itself on fire has “let the magic blue smoke out” and killed the magic.
In this episode of The Ben Heck Show Karen, Felix and Ben engage in heated competition. Each competitor must build a robot that will have 3 balloons attached to it. The goal will be to pop the opposing robots balloons using weapons that are either built within the competition timeframe or created from scrap found at a local thrift store. Only one robot's balloons will survive!
In this episode of The Ben Heck Show Karen, Felix and Ben engage in heated competition. Each competitor must build a robot that will have3 balloons attached to it.The goal will be to pop the opposing robots balloons using weapons that are either built within the competition timeframe or created from scrap found at a local thrift store. Only one robot's balloons will survive!
There are few things that Ben Heck loves more than to teardown the newest gaming console release, watch how he unboxes the XBox One S and takes apart each component as he goes, including the controller. We learn how cost savings have been made with design alterations to the chassis and the printed circuit boards. Ben also compares the XBox One S side by side with the original XBox One and discovers that a connector is missing, which one could it be? The power supply is one major change with the new XBox console, compared to the early days where it was practically a huge brick! Ben also highlights the changes in the CPU/GPU heatsink and the limitations of hacking the HDMI ports on the board while considering if it can be turned into a laptop. Do you think there's something else we can do with it? Let us know on the element14 Community, where you can learn about upcoming episodes and join The Ben Heck Show team.
Ben works on a Laser Harp using lasers and a photoresistor while Felix sets up the intel Edison with VST: virtual studio technology MIDI music driver to play music on it. How would you use technology to discover a new way for the world to enjoy music?
Inspired by Music Tech Fest in Berlin, The Ben Heck team finishes work on the Intel Edison Laser Harp. Ben and Karen handle all the electromechanical work while Felix, the Linux guy, finishes the coding. Have you ever made an electronic music instrument?
The Ben Heck Team responds to the Pokemon Go craze by taking your suggestions and making them a reality. Their answer: a wrist-mounted, battery extending, team color indicating, phone holding, Pokemon Go Survival Device!
Ben builds a light compensator to supply indoor plants light when the sun isn’t able to provide enough light for them. He uses a Texas Instrument MSP430 Launchpad Development Board, a TI BOOST-AD7042, a DS1307 real time clock, and a grow light. Ben gets his hands on a Texas Instrument MSP430 Launchpad Microcontroller Development Board with a TI BOOST ADS7042 booster pack. BOOST-ADS7042 is a high-speed, low powered ADC analog-to-digital converter. Karen suggests making a light array that gives supplemental light to plants only when they need it suggest as in the winter time. Texas Instrument MSP430 Launchpads have top and bottom headers making it easy to stack many BoosterPacks. With this in mind they add a DS1307 real time clock via the I2C bus so they know what time of day it is. This is important because it gives plants a start time and an end time as well as resting points for receiving light. If the sun is not bright enough then a supplemental light will be activated to help the plant. DS1307 RTC is very common and there are many examples online to get you started. The booster pack has a light sensor on it which will allow the device to know how much light is needed. The booster pack includes an LCD and three buttons that you can use to program it. One button is used to set the default amount of light. The other two buttons are used to set the start and end time to cycle through the hours. The light box is controlled by an SSR controlled by the MSP430 so the microncontroller can turn on an alternating current device. Ben adds a header for a DS1307 real time clock via the 12C bus. Ben populates the board and wires up to the booster pack to the MSP430. He also handles all the coding to make the real time clock work. Ben introduces us to rudimentary electrics on wiring a USA mains plug and using a solid state relay to turn it on and off, and then guides us through using Code Composer Studio and Energia to compile code for the TI MSP430 with
Karen daydreams about being a Superhero. Can Ben transform Karen into Captain Tangent using accelerometers to detect speed, magnetometers to detect orientation, a microcontroller, and speakers that make sounds for punches and kicks? The team begins work on a Superhero combat costume for Halloween. To get started on the sound effects for punches and kicks; Ben uses a Parallax Propeller Prop Dev Stick, four FLORA LSM303 Accelerometers for each limb, and an I2C expander to multiplex the signal. The I2C expander allows communication with individual Accelerometers even though each one shares the same I2C bus address. Ben attaches and solders the Parallax Propeller and the IC2 expander onto a perf board. He then runs experiments with the help of an oscilloscope to get the Propeller to talk to the expander. You can send a command to the expander telling it what device you want then all further commands go to that device. First you tell I2C where to read from then you connect again and get the requested data. MCU’s have dedicated I2C lines, but you can also bit-bang it with any available I/O. Karen supplies speakers from a stereo that was taken apart. They use 3D printed parts to connect the speaker parts to a belt clip. The plan is to place an EL inverter in the back and stereo speakers on each side to provide good stereo separation. The EL wires require AC so they use a DC-AC converter, often called an inverter. To get the propeller to work Ben uses some Arduino code that Felix has already tested. Because there is a lot of example code for the ATMEGA328 (Arduino Uno) it’s a fast way to get stuff running. Ben works on the sensors profiles used to register kicks and punches. In phones, a magnetometer is used to determine the orientation of each sensor. Although phone apps use much more advanced sensor profiles but their profile should be enough to register fast movement. It’s also necessary to examine change over time (10-50ms) to determine the change spe
The team completes Karen’s SuperHero Costume to give it speakers, EL(electroluminescent) Wires, IC2 connected accelerometer sensors, a Parallax Propeller, and an Arduino Mini Microcontroller. Karen transforms into Captain Tangent giving her the power to diffuse problems with tangents! Ben attaches an Arduino Pro Mini Board underneath the board used for audio to get both boards working together. The Atmel chip will do the polling of the I2C Bus and if it sees a trigger event it will send that command to the Propeller telling it to play audio. Since it’s a 3.3 V board as well they can run everything at 3.3V and only use 5V for the audio amplifier. Before designing an enclosure to fit on the belt he runs some tests to make sure the board works with the sensors. He then wires up communication between the Atmel and the Propeller. Ben works on sound effects for Karen’s punches. He adds higher and lower frequencies to give the system three sounds to randomly pick from for variety. He also makes three different sounds for the kicks. After he runs some tests he moves onto the next part which is adding the audio amplifier and speakers and hooking this up to a battery pack. Ben runs into an issue with Adafruit LSM303 Library which he solves by commenting out the Wire.begin() function and going through each of the devices in the multiplexer to select the device and then begin it. You only need to call Wire.begin() once to initiate the I2C Bus on the microcontroller. It’s a good idea to examine a library’s H and CPP files to see what it’s actually doing. When the system initially booted some of the accelerometers weren’t initialized. When it boots you need to tell it to enable your accelerometer and enable your magnetometer. Some of the devices on the serial monitor were coming up as zeros meaning they weren’t properly initialized and causing the I2C bus to hang. The accelerometers aren’t enabled on boot, so proper initialization is a must. Feli
Ben tears apart a Playstation 4 Slim and compares it to the teardown of the recently released Xbox One S. Once he’s torn the PS4 apart it can be put together as a tablet or laptop. The back of the system includes AC in, a camera port for the upcoming Playstation VR , HDMI, and the TOSLINK optical audio port has been removed. PSVR is rumored to have an external processing box between it and the PS4. Ben removes the screw holding the hard drive in place so he can examine the hard drive to see if it’s changed. The hard drive is from a different brand than the previous version. He then removes the back to reveal the wifi module outside the RF cage and a small Blueray drive. The Blueray drive looks proprietary. Sony can create its own Blu-Ray solution whereas Microsoft uses an existing module. Ben removes the power brick to reveal what that looks like. The power supply has two different voltages, 4.8 V at 1.5 amps for the idle state and 12 V at 13 amps. The power supply for the PS4 is very different from the one used in the Xbox One S. Inside the PS4 there is a fan that brings air from the top of the unit and blows it through the reduced heat sink and through the power supply. The Playstation 4 uses [8] 1 gig RAM chips whereas the Xbox One S uses [16] 512 meg chips. Ben removes the CPU clamp to take out the main motherboard. You can guess what IC’s do based on what they’re next to. The power regulation is heat sunk, the APU looks identical to the Xbox One S, a Sega branded chip is most likely a custom video encoder for easily capturing video for streaming, there’s a camera hookup, Ethernet port, hardrive and power inputs, and USB ports. The motherboard for the Xbox One S is compared with the Playstation 4. The Playstation 4 has heatsinks on the RAM whereas the Xbox doesn’t. The Xbox has more RAM chips meaning each chip is smaller whereas the Playstation runs their RAM chips at a much higher frequency. AMD provides the APU (Accelerated Proc
The team builds the ultimate retro gaming controller using an ESP8266 WiFi Module, a transmitter controller, and a receiver on the game console. Universal support includes Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega, and Atari. To make the universal controller wireless they use the inexpensive ESP8266 WiFi Module. It runs on NodeMCU firmware which can be programmed using LUA. Once you write the script in LUA and NodeMCU executes it the controller module and the console module can talk to each other. The controller module is the transmitter and the console module is the receiver. The plan is to build a custom controller with two shift registers in it. The shift registers are used to read the buttons. Each shift register has 8 bits for total of 16 bits. 16 bits are used as there will not be more than 16 buttons. The controller module can shift the data out of the shift registers and into itself which is similar to how a Nintendo controller actually works. Because it reads in 16 bits it does not care what the buttons are for each console, it just gets the data. The custom controller then transmits a 16 bit package in one word to the receiver unit. The receiver takes that data and recreates it on its side with two more shift registers. These would be output registers which would be 74HC595 shift registers. Once again each shift register has 8 bits total for 16 bits, and they are going to be 0 or 1. From that point they connect up the console plugs. The way they connect the plugs to these shift depends on what the buttons actually do. After wiring everything up they use a multimeter to determine what button are being pressed. They then wire up their controllers to match. Each controller is different. In the case of the Nintendo and Super Nintendo there is going to be input shift registers to connect to the output shift registers. For the Sega Genesis they’ll need to take apart an old Sega Genesis and hook the pads beyond the chip directly to the output shift registers
The team begins working on an Atari Junk Keyboard, a version of the Atari Punk Console that combines 555 timers to make a simple circuit that makes Atari-like music and sound effects. Instead of using sequences to repeat Atari-like sounds they decide to make a whole keyboard of the sounds. B The plan is to take the matrix from a set of keys to figure out how they work, add discrete logic by using a circuit to read keys instead of opting for a microcontroller, and then feed that input into a number of Atari Junk Console integrated circuit pairs resulting in multiple sound effects playing at once. They begin their project by first getting the keyboard matrix working so they can later attach it to the Atari Junk Console to make music. Ben begins by wiring up an oscillator. An oscillator is different than a crystal in that the oscillator can output its own waveform whereas a crystal you have to attach something else to it in order to get a square wave. The 1mhz oscillator has power and ground going into it and pins for enable and output. When you hook up power and an oscilloscope to the output pin you should see a 1mhz square wave coming off of it. As that may be a little too fast for the switch matrix a CD74HC4017 Johnson Decade Counter is used to divide the frequencies. A second Johnson counter is also added. On the first Johnson counter one of the outputs is going into the clock input of the second Johnson counter. This prevents 2 useless cycles and keeps timing more consistent. Next he hooks up the outputs of the Johnson Counter to an inverting buffer that will drive the columns as well the flip flop driver that will load the data off of the switches. He uses an Inverting buffer 74HCT540 and wires it so that it so that it goes onto his breadboard. He does more analysis on the oscilloscope after he wires outputs from the Johnson Counter to the Inverting buffer and decides to use another Johnson counter to drive the flip flops. Ben attaches 8 octal fli
The Ben Heck team completes work on the Atari Junk Keyboard. Previously, they took apart a keyboard and made a manually activated switch matrix to read keys. Now it’s time to take those outputs and hook them up to a 555 array to create the Atari sound effects! For inspiration Ben and Felix view a diagram of an Atari Junk Console Circuit by the influential Maker, Forest Mims. To get polyphony, the ability to play multiple notes at one time, they are considering a 555 on every key and making it work through a combination of op-amps, resistors for outputs, and transistors to allow the switch matrix to activate the 555 circuit. Felix works on the PNP transistor bank that will act as a trigger for the 555 timers. He laser cuts a panel for the potentiometers. In order to have as much control over sound as possible, they are going to have one of panels per octave and attach potentiometers to the 555 timers to adjust the frequency of each key individually. There is a lot of wiring to do so Ben and Felix split up the tasks. Ben wires up the bank of 556s and 555s onto a board that will sit on top of the transistor array that Felix is wiring with a header interfacing them. The 555 drives each octave and having six 556s, 2555s in one package, gives you (6 multiplied by two) 12 different notes. There are 12 notes per octave in a musical scale. Ben walks you through wiring up the power bus first and gives tips on soldering and order of operation. He sets up convenient power and ground rails that are close to pins so that when he wires up the 555 circuit anything that has to go to ground has a very short path. This allows him to use fewer wires which is why it’s good to wire your power rails first. Ben makes the power rails using bits of wire cut off of resistors, capacitors, and other things to make the power rails. He attaches them at a right angle on the integrated circuit side, solders them in place, and then bends them at right angles using tweezers, going
A Game Boy printer is used to teach reverse engineering and how data transmission works. The printer is taken apart and hooked up to a Tektronix oscilloscope. Signals are captured, reverse engineered, and replaced with new signals. Using the Game Boy Camera, Ben manages to capture a solid white frame and a solid black frame for testing purposes. This allows him to see how the data is organized. He then hooks up the gamelink cable to the printer and made some test prints. The printer uses thermal paper so it doesn’t have any ink as that would have dried out by now. He discovers that even if you unplug the game boy half way through the print it still finishes the print. This means that the printer has local RAM that stores the image after it starts printing. Ben proceeds to do a teardown of the Game Boy printer. It contains 8 KB RAM to capture images and print it. There’s also an 8 Bit microcontroller. There are no other major IC’s so the code must be inside the MCU, not on an external ROM. There are two optocouplers, also called “opto isolators” because they’re used to isolate signals from each other. The optocoupler has a pair of LEDS inside of it, one emits light, while the other detects light and uses it to trigger a circuit. It’s like a buffer but it’s completely electrically isolated from one side to the other. This is most likely to prevent spikes of current on the print head from affecting the microcontroller. There are 18 pins going to the print head. It sends 5 V to the print head and only syncs to ground, turns on, when something is printing. This gives you power, ground, and 16 bits of data. The communication cable interfaces with the microcontroller, taking the 16 bit connection going into it and using it to send out all 16 pixels vertically and send out more data for every horizontal line. When data is sent over, the Microcontroller puts it into the RAM, once completed, the Microcontroller prints it itself from the RAM. A
Ben's seeing double this week with a retro virtual reality console that was ahead of its time, the Virtual Boy (codename VUE) by Nintendo. The technology behind the Virtual Boy was ahead of its time, and didn't prevent some of the dizzying problems that still affect VR today, as Ben quips "It's like a trip to the eye doctor!". Of course, this means Ben has to take it apart in a traditional teardown to find out what makes the Virtual Boy tick, inside we find a 32bit processor and graphics chip combined along with some very clever mechanical decisions. Unfortunately, as clever as the mechanics are, this hasn't prevented failure and Ben has to design and print a part using Autodesk Fusion 360 to help repair it. Though, now that it's repaired, it's time to improve it! Make sure you catch the next episode, meanwhile let us know what you think of VR technology on the element14 Community!
Join Ben as he leaves the workshop behind and goes on a journey to Portland's Retro Gaming Expo! There's little Ben loves more, and this time he's on the hunt for a copy of Road Rash for the Sega Genesis / Megadrive! Though with some happy distractions, Ben gets another chance at the Nintendo Playstation console and discusses the Commodore 64, Nintendo 64 disk drive and the collecting of retro hardware and games with fellow Youtubers. Will Ben manage to repair the Nintendo Playstation and play Super Boss Gaiden? Does he manage to find a copy of Road Rash? You'll have to watch and find out! What's your favorite retro gaming console, or game? Let Ben and the team know on the element14 Community!
Ben and Karen redesign a Nintendo Virtual Boy console as wearable virtual reality gaming headset. The new unit is sleeker and has different focus controls to allow it to be worn on your head like a modern VR helmet. It flips up like a welding helmet and promises portability not found on other VR systems! Ben prints out two layers of plastic. The first layer prevents the mirrors from hitting your eyes or acrylic. The second layer is a solid layer that completely blocks you off from the mirrors. Between these two layers, stiffening creates a solid unit. Additional screw hole tabs so that whatever else they build is easy to attach. Adding extra screw mounts gives you someplace to add the next thing. Ben designs from the “inside out” to ensure enough room for all critical components. He repositions the servo pc from the back to the front. He removes the cams that work the focus as that can be rebuilt later as they still have access to the focus tabs. He also removed the left and right mirror control connectors. Looking for additional ways to make the unit more compact he drops some capacitors down underneath. He does this while keeping track of the polarity. He attaches additional cables for added flexibility and also attaches servo cables directly to the circuit board. Ben recombines everything from the virtual boy into a more compact unit. The servo driver board is on the top instead of the back. He’ll add sliders for the focus rings when he goes to build them as an attachment. 3D printed clamps are on the end to hold the ribbon cables into place. On the bottom the main PCB has been moved back a little bit. A custom acrylic base has been added and connectors have been flipped around to connect through the bottom for added space. Next, he goes to work finding the best way to create some sort of head mounted unit. Ben opts to leave the battery pack and the controller the same as he decides that having a cable that runs down to your hand isn’t any
To untangle Karen from her mess of wires the team discusses everything related to wireless communication! Learn the difference between ELF, SLF, ULF, VLF, LF, MF, HF UHF, and THF frequency bands and different technologies for electronics communication such as WIFI, xBee, Bluetooth, RFID, NFC, and mobile networks. Are you also bit by the technology bug: http://bit.ly/2hbkALB Ben goes over commonly used radio frequency bands. ELF, extremely low frequency (3-30Hz range), is generally used for long range communication like submarine use and maritime use. SLF, super low frequency (30-300Hz range), is still mostly maritime use. VLF, Very Low Frequency (3kHz-30kHz range), is still used for mostly radio navigation and maritime military use. LF, Low Frequency (30kHz-300kHz range), is still used for a lot of radio navigation but it’s also used for amateur radio and universal clock signals. MF, Medium Frequency (300kHz-3MHz range), is used for AM radio. HF, High Frequency (3MHz-30MHz range), is used for short wave radio, CB radio, RFID radar, and more amateur radio. VHF, Very High Frequency (30MHz -300MHz range), is used for FM broadcasts and TV broadcasts. UHF, 300MHz-3000 MHz, is used for TV, cell phones, and other consumer devices. SHF, Super High Frequency (3GHz-30GHz range), is used for WIFI and cellular technology as well as microwave transmitters. EHF, Extremely High Frequency (30GHz-300GHz range) is used for radio astronomy and the millimeter wave scanner used for airport security. THF, Tremendously High Frequency (300GHz-3000GHz range), is used for crazy experimental stuff like particle physics, medical imaging, atomic blasters, and things of that elk. The 2.4 GHz /5 GHz wireless range is usually expressed when referring to the 802.11 (a, b, g, and n) wireless standards. 2.4 GHz is a popular range for products with their own proprietary protocols. 2.4 GHz is the most common protocol with the XBee signal. XBee signals are a little slower than Bluetooth
Ben takes an off-the shelf baby monitor and creates adaptive headphones that switch between a music device such as an iPod or phone and noise from a secondary input such as a crying baby. He does so using integrated circuits, discrete components built into the case. Bit by the bug? Visit: http://bit.ly/2gOSzx6 Ben takes apart a baby monitor to see if he can build the circuitry inside of it. Inside the baby monitor is a radio module, a glop top integrated circuit that runs everything, power regulator, crystal that runs the circuitry, some caps, an antenna, and an IC that might be some sort of memory or identification chip. It might be possible to use the battery that powers the baby monitor to also power the switching circuit. The speaker could also be removed entirely and turned into a headphone jack. In order to see if the amplification going to the speaker needs to be knocked down a bit to prevent hearing damage, Ben hooks it up to a battery to see how much current it draws. It’s drawing about 50 milliamps which isn’t too bad so Ben continues testing with Felix simulating baby sounds. For this project Ben uses the ADG 436 integrated circuit, a two channel switching circuit, so they can use logic on or off to switch from one channel to another. The outputs are hooked up to headphones and a pair of Nintendo Game Boys that act as inputs. There are pull down resistors so that both of the inputs are set to low. Ben looks for a way to combine the switching circuit with the baby monitor. The switching circuit has been tested to work down to about 1.8 volts. He then probes around to see where all the voltages are so that he can power the switching circuit. He finds a boost regulator used to boost the lower level of the batteries up to a stable level of 3.2 volts for device operation. He also finds that the system voltage can be found on many test pads around the unit as well as the positive terminals of several of the electrolytic capacitors. He then
Ben tears apart a PlayStation 4 Pro and compares it to a recently torn down PlayStation 4 Slim. He also compares it to an Xbox One S he recently tore apart as well and talks about its most glaring omission, the lack of 4K support for its blue ray drive. Like the Xbox One S it has a wireless module outside the main RF Cage but in this case they have 3 antennas on them. Unlike the Xbox One wireless isn’t a separate module it’s just an exposed module on the main board. The Pro4 is notable for its lack of 4K blue ray support and initially appears to be the same system as the original but with a bigger APU (accelerated processing unit). A large copper plane is used for the heat sink as opposed to the steel on the PS4 Slim. The top of the unit looks like its power supply, heat sink, and blue ray drive. There’s twice as much power regulation as the PS4 Slim. There’s a built in speaker beeper like the Xbox One. Ben gives his theory on why dies shrinks every time they do a new revision of a console. After getting the die of the PS4 Pro cleaned up he compares it with the Die of the PS4 Slim. There’s more surface area to pull heat from the chip. The biggest difference between the motherboards of the two systems is that they have a lot more power regulation going on and a larger die that sinks more heat in. The heat sink of the new system is about 30% bigger than the old one. It's longer and a little bit thicker. There’s three heat pipes coming out of a copper core and those heat pipes are going directly to the top of the fins of the heat sink. There’s quite a bit more heat dissipation going on with this unit. Ben compares the power supply of the PS4 Pro with the one on the Slim. There’s a pretty big jump in power consumption on the new system. The 12 Volt rail on the new power supply is 23.5 amps. That is nearly twice as much as the Xbox One S. Finally, Ben compares the Blue Ray Drive of both systems. In comparing both drivese, Ben ge
Ben uses a third party playstation 4 controller, a Hori Horitpad FPS Plus, to create a Playstation 4/Playstation 3 accessibility controller. Although he has ten years of experience building accessibility controllers, Ben’s avoided PS4/PS3 accessibility controllers in the past because their circuit board design makes it difficult to modify. Building accessibility controllers is a passion of Ben’s because it allows someone that does not have use of both hands to enjoy one more thing that many of us take for granted. The Xbox 360 and Xbox one use standard circuit boards so they can be easily hacked to make accessibility controllers. In fact, the Xbox One controller is easier to modify than the Xbox 360 controller! Ben’s preference for modding Xbox controllers has nothing to do with being biased against them, the PS4 will have sold over 40 million units after the holiday season and Ben has one too. It has to do with the silk screen printed circuit used on its controllers not allowing it to be modified easily because you can’t solder onto the plastic. After opening up the controller Ben finds circuit boards with well labeled test points. Ben walks you through using Autodesk Fusion 360 to design new parts for the accessibility controller. He moves the D-pad below to allow the face buttons space and works on getting 3D parts to match the curve of an existing part. Ben replaces the 4 buttons used to replace the dpad with lower profile buttons to allow them to rest flush on the circuit board. Felix works on placement for a trigger and an analog stick on the button of the controller. A spring is used for the trigger and button placement is set. After that Ben finds a place to put the PS4/PS3 toggle switch. Ben tests the new accessibility controller by playing some PS4 against Karen!
Ben assembles an Xbox One S Laptop using parts from a previous teardown of an Xbox One S. The new laptop includes 3D printed parts, an aluminum base cut with a CNC machine, a new power supply to power both the Xbox and LCD screen, and smaller fans powered by a rigged circuit using a Tip 102. The major components of the Xbox One S are a Blue Ray Drive, Power Supply Unit, a Motherboard, and a Hard Drive. Ben takes the motherboard and scans an image of it in Adobe Illustrator. He uses laser patterns to knock holes in the board. This gives him as many options for mounting this as possible. He puts together all the Xbox One components. He’s extended the power cable of the blue ray drive, he’s moved the hard drive, he’s put the front panel PCB at a right angle and ported out the buttons (eject, bind, and power), he’s moved the wifi module to an end degree angle, and he’s using the new short HDMI cable to connect to a screen. He replaces the power supply with a more powerful unit as the added power is needed for the LCD screen. He also replaces the large fans with two smaller fans for his laptop. By keeping the control line, the system can throttle the fans up and down as needed by heat load. To do this he rigs up a circuit using a Tip 102. The 12 V fans are wired in parallel, 12 V comes from the console and goes into the positive wire, and the negative wire from the fans goes into the collector of the Tip 102 NPN Darlington Transistor allowing you to switch the current on and off. The control line from the Xbox goes through a 1K resistor and into the base of the Tip 102. Finally, the emitter of the Tip 102 goes into ground. The Tip 102 acts as the circuitry inside the fan did allowing the fan to turn on with their speed controlled by the system. Ben cuts the aluminum base for the Xbox One S laptop with a CNC machine. He can then attach the 3D printed wall sections to the aluminum. Next he attaches the power supply and the blue ray drive to
The Ben Team does a rebuild and repair of a vintage Japanese Pachinko machine! Using a “Prop Dev Stick” microcontroller, a single board audio amplifier, 2N4401 NPN transistors, repurposed speakers, and lighting; they do a refresh of this 70s era classic gambling machine; complete with lights and sound effects!
In the 1980s and 1990s, ‘Boomboxes’ were very popular. The sight of a person carrying a huge music player on their shoulder was iconic, until the Walkman came along. The team decided it's time for a retro-fit, using the intel Edison, with thanks to its Arduino compatible breakout board, and a USB soundcard it's time to make the Boombox smarter while keeping with its original parts. After all, the more parts that's kept, the easier it is to modify! Find out how Ben and the team powered the intel Edison using standard batteries and kept the good times rolling.
It is time to learn the Essentials with Karen and Ben this week, Karen has a project that requires a bit of intelligence and discrete electronics can provide just that. To make the laser cut Star Wars BB8 art light reactive, Ben helps to explain and design a circuit using active and passive components, from resistors, capacitors and inductors to diodes and transistors. These components make the basis of smart electronics we experience today, from video cameras to smart phones. Watch now to find out how you can make your project light reactive with a photoresistor and discrete logic!
Of all the build requests the team receive on the element14 Community, there has been one that has repeatedly came up: Build a Nintendo 64 portable! The Ben Heck Show team has finally decided to give it a go, starting with the Nintendo 64 that was tore down in the Console Wars episode. As unforgiving as the N64 hardware is, Ben is going to manipulate the components to make the portable fully featured, while Felix gets the battery management up and running.
In this episode, Ben miniaturizes the controller using an Arduino Pro Micro and Playstation Vita analog stick, embeds the RAM expansion, and works on a case design with a nod to the Nintendo Switch. The N64 is notorious for being difficult to hack as it’s easily damaged due to all the rewiring required to make it smaller!
Humans by nature can be more than a little bit wasteful, thanks to the introduction of recycling we can minimize this a little, but some things are too good to throw away! Now a new trend is beginning: Upcycling! Karen has the idea to repurpose laptop screens to create a Legend of Zelda inspired lamp, however not just any laptop screen will do. As the team rip apart old hardware they soon discover the different types of screens which have been used in old personal computer laptops and Apple MacBooks over the years. With the correct screens identified, Karen gets down to business with Adobe Illustrator and designs suitable laser cut frames, watch the episode to find out the little tips and tricks to make the perfect design!
Get a window into the world of the Ben Heck Show MST3K style! The team is now focused on longer term builds to ensure a more robust design and detailed build! With this in mind, the team looks back on previous builds, and makes plans to build them again from the ground up! Could they actually bring one of these builds to market? The Ben Heck Team is now going to focus on polishing off one large project as a long term build to bring onto the market as a product. What better way to help determine which one to make than by critiquing past builds, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 style?! Join Ben, Karen and Max as they talk over snippets from each episode and what it was like behind the scenes, including: the guitar controller mod, the teensy pinball portable, real life Minecraft blocks, all seeing eye hat, the Hackmanji build and the great glue gun! Find out which project has won based on the poll on the element14 Community. Take a look at the builds they considered: Felix Hacks a Guitar: http://bit.ly/2mf91IY Teensy Pinball Portable Pt 1: http://bit.ly/2lRBTXb Crowdsourced Can Crusher Pt 1: http://bit.ly/2mktRDU Parallax Sensor Seeing-Eye Hat: http://bit.ly/2lh3mhv Live Action Minecraft Blocks Pt 1: http://bit.ly/2msm71E Take a look at the poll that decided one of those builds: Help the Ben Heck Team Decide: http://bit.ly/2lgKteQ
The Ben Heck Team announces a major change on the show after receiving a lot of interest from community members who would like to see more detail in each episode and longer term builds. By focusing on three long term builds they can give community members what they want to see, a more robust design and detail build. In this episode you’ll see which builds they will be focusing on over the course of the next year and set the stage for their next major challenge in the evolution of the show. Visit the Ben Heck page on the element14 community: http://bit.ly/2m3bxkf Great Glue Gun Episode: http://bit.ly/2miPpTt Hackmanji Episode: http://bit.ly/2lm9MjH Teensy Pinball Portable Episode: http://bit.ly/2mm4HHP Over the next year the Ben Heck Team will be focusing on three long term builds. Two were chosen by Ben while a third was chosen by community members by a poll.
We don't know why Ben does the things that he does sometimes, but he keeps on licking. Discover what we mean as Ben, Karen and Felix tear down the new Nintendo Switch games console and Joy Con controllers. How does it compare to a laptop or tablet computer? Is it designed for easy maintenance or upgradeability? Karen and Ben examine the new Nintendo Switch as they decide what to take part first. Buttons are closer to size of the DS. There’s Phillips screw on the sides and tri-wing screws on the back. It’s thicker than your average modern tablet which is good because you get more power, more battery, and an active cooling unit. Tablets/smartphones passively cool themselves (no fans or vents). There’s a USBC you can get video out of and a kickstand that allows you to put more memory in it. There’s a light tunnel on the console that allows LEDs inside the controller to go through that light tunnel and illuminate out the front. The power supply has both 5 volts and 15 volts. It uses the 15 volts for fast charging and when it’s running in docked mode. Ben takes apart the docking stage to it. It contains 2 USB 2 ports and a USB 3 on the inside. USBC has six differential pairs of data (HDMI only has 4) and multiple power/ground lines to allow high power charging. Inside the board contains a USB 3.0 hub controller. The ribbon cable connects to the USB-C port that docks into the switch. The dock is designed to allow the Switch to run faster since it doesn’t have to worry about battery life.
The Ben Heck Team re-imagines one of Ben Heck’s favorite tools, the glue gun to being work on a prototype for a super glue gun. They get started by tearing apart a bunch of glue guns to find the one that is closest to the one they want to build. The plan is to find one that’s closest to the one they want to use that as their inspiration. Ben and Felix tear down a bunch of glue guns to look for a heating element that’s close to what they want. The blue gun Felix takes apart is fixed temperature while the red gun that Ben takes apart is dual temperature. They hook up a multimeter to get the resistance of the coil and figure out how much current it will draw using Ohm’s law. They’re looking for one winding where they can pulse it to change the temperature. Down the road they’re hoping to find self-contained heating elements. There are two coils in the glue gun. If you pass the current through both of them there’s more resistance which means it uses less current which means its cooler. If you flip the switch and bypass one of them current flows through just one which makes it hotter. Because AC voltage can vary a few volts by geographic location they hook it up to a Kill a Watt to double check the math on the voltage. The Kill a Watt tells you how much energy whatever is plugged in is consuming. Ben finds a glue gun close to the one they want to build. There’s only a single winding so one pair of wires that go to the heater block and then there’s another pair of wires going into the thermistor. The temperature control is done with a potentiometer which is close to what they want to do. It contains a BT135-600 glass passivated triac. The triac is the most commonly used semiconductor device for switching and power control of AC systems. The triac can be switched on by either a positive or negative gate pulse regardless of the polarity of the AC supply at that time. They go to work figuring out how to control it with a DC logic circuit
The Ben Heck Team begin mapping out the Logic Gate Game by considering its purpose, areas for improvement, reducing costs to build to scale, and materials to be used. Ben uses a PIC microcontroller with plenty of I/O, wires up a breadboard, and uses ChipKit to quickly roll out code. The team needs your help deciding on an LCD screen and a microcontroller with enough IO to connect with all the plugs! Ben and Karen begin by mapping out a plan for their prototype using a diagram from a previous build. They get rid of FLIP-FLOP, COUNTER, NAND, and NOR and keep AND, OR, XOR, and NOT. They can make NAND and NOR using the NOT gates. Each game set will come with 10-20 jumper wires to keep costs reasonable. Ben and Karen offer different perspectives on how best to set up a learning game and who their target audience will be. Next, it’s time to Ben and Felix to make a test circuit. Ben takes out a PIC32 starter kit with plenty of IO on it. You program these with Microchip’s MPLB X IDE which can be found online. If they’re able to find a microcontroller with enough I/O they could conceivably simulate all the logic gates. The other option would be to use an external I/O expander. The idea is to use a line of female headers and another line of male headers to crudely simulate their logic gate connections and then trying to do a state machine loop MPlab to get it to simulate what they want. Before going for it with MPlab, Ben first uses the Arduino ChipKit IDE to make things easier so he can roll out a quick example. The ChipKit uses a PIC32MX795F512L which has plenty of I/O to test. Ben wires up the breadboard and writes some code. They’re writing the logic gates in code instead of using IC’s.
In this episode The Ben Heck Team takes a look at the original pinball machine so they can rebuild it as their final long term project for the year. The original Mini Pinball machine was built to a 1:2 scale of an actual pinball machine but there wasn’t very good control to prevent the ball from flying all over the place. The original mini pinball machine used a Teensy 3.2 MCU and a lot of hand-soldered components. The major parts in the original unit are a battery, an audio SD card that could be replaced with the 12-bit DAC built into Teensy 3.6, a volume knob that can be removed, and a start button that can be removed as well. After analyzing the original pinball machine, Ben and Felix test out 8 different sizes of balls. The original ball they used for their pinball machine was too light and floaty. The surface mounted MOSFET Ben looks at is n-channel 80 volts and 39 amps which should be plenty for this project. A MOSFET is a metal oxide semiconductor that can switch powerful loads. After that Ben and Felix take out there meter to measure the charge on various battery packs. Felix breaks out a breadboard to do some solenoid testing. The hope is that they can use one size of small solenoid for everything on the mini pinball. Felix goes over a circuit diagram of everything they’ve wired up. It has 12 volts coming in, the VVD has 12 volts coming in, a diode, a solenoid that goes into the drain of the MOSFET, a switch that’s going to 5 volts, 5 volts comes into the gate, and there is a 10K pulldown resistor on the gate as well that goes to ground, and then the source of the gate goes to ground. The MOSFET allows them to control high current loads with regular TTL level signals (like a MCU). While Felix mocks up a MOSFET test, Ben works on physical stuff such as what type of ball will work best. In the earlier project Ben was really hung up on making it to scale like a pinball machine but comes to realize that was a mistake because the physics d
Special guest David from the Technophiles podcast gets his hands on an NES Classic and shows it to Ben. Ben addresses one of the biggest shortcomings of the NES Classic by showing you how to extend the controller and hook it up to an oscilloscope to check the integrity of the signals! He’ll also show you what’s inside the box and do a tear down of the hard to find retro console! The first thing The Ben Heck Team did was unbox the NES mini. They found some manuals, a poster of the original Nintendo Entertainment System, some power and HDMI cords, the controller, and the unit itself. Following the unboxing of the NES Classic Ben does a teardown of the controller and the unit itself. The controller uses a single sided PCB to save money. There’s power, ground, serial data, and serial clocks. They’ll be looking at the signals from this using the oscilloscope. David also brought his Wii Pro Controller to try with the system and Ben takes that apart as well. It uses the same chip as the NES Mini Controller: WCP405. This means you can wire things up to the PCB of the NES Mini Controller and turn it into a pro controller. After he’s done tearing apart the controller he does a teardown of the unit itself. He discovers a heat sink and a thermal pad. The main board contains the system on a chip, hdmi, and all the power connections. There’s an ARM processor, 256 mb of RAM, 512 MB of Flash storage memory, and a power management chip. On the back there is a chip that takes a parallel RGB image data and turns it into LVDS, differential signaling for HDMI. Ben hooks the controller up to an oscilloscope to check the signals. They use the oscilloscope to read the BUS. After checking the I2C Bus on the scope Ben is confident he can extend the cord with little difficulty. Next, he hooks up the Wii Pro Controller to compare the difference. Finally, Ben looks into extending the controller cable. Ben wires an Xbox One cable to the NES Mini controller to exte
We're making progress with the Super Glue Gun project, though we've hit a problem and we need your help! To push the glue sticks into the gun, we need motor control. For this we're prototyping with ATTiny24, Arduino, TRIACs, and testing different motors, such as stepper motors. It can be tricky, first the team have to identify how much power they use depending on how much effort it needs to turn, and control them using an Arduino. Unfortunately, there are unforeseen consequences!
Taking advantage of Karen's laser cutting design skills and Felix's soldering, the team created a prototype of the logic board game using Karen's magnetic clasp design. Now it's time to give the concept a test-run with help from JT Smith, proprietor of The Game Crafter, whose experience in game design includes games such as "The Captain is Dead". JT informs the team that creating a game which is educational and fun is one of the most difficult concepts to pull off. Usually there needs to be some compromise on the design, but where? While Karen contemplates JT's input, Ben and Felix hack at an LCD display with the Pic32 Microcontroller and a DE0-Nano FPGA, hopefully this will lead to a game design that doesn’t rely solely on LEDs!
Ben continues rebuilding the flipper mecs to get an idea how they can work with the smaller solenoids while Felix continues working on the Teensy 3.1, a popular microcontroller based on Freescale system on a chip. Felix is going to try and get the DAC working, the digital to analog converter, so they can get it to play music and sound effects.
It’s been almost a year since the Team met Terry Diebold and his Nintendo-Playstation prototype at the 2016 MGC (Midwest Gaming Classic). They have a month to give it back to him at the next Midwest Gaming Classic and their goal is to have it back to him in working condition. There are two digital-to-analog converters (DACs) on the prototype. One of them is for the Super Nintendo side and one of them is for the CD ROM side. They are muxed together after that. DACs take digital streams and turn them into analog signals – audio in this case. Ben has the prototype hooked up to an Oscilloscope so he can take a closer look at it. He checks the signal for the music from Super Mario Kart and is able to determine that the Super Nintendo DAC is working. The CD rom DAC, which is side by side with the SNES DAC, is not working however. Ben’s been doing some mapping of the schematic and thinks he knows what a mystery chip does. Its probably some sort of BUS location decoder chip. Someone has mapped out what data you send out from the expansion port. The chip let’s you talk to other chips on the board based on what type of register is sent out. Ben continues mapping out the chip in order to give him more points from which to test things. After replacing several questionable capacitors off-camera and jiggling some things around, Ben returns to the shop to find that CD ROM on the Nintendo-Playstation prototype is suddenly working. On the board there is a CD ROM controller chip, a digital signal processor, and there’s also a microprocessor on a connected board. When the system is not in game mode, the microcontroller on the connected board tells the CD ROM controller on the motherboard what to do (such as play music). Ben checks the ribbon cables and takes measurements from the three potentiometers on the driver board for the disc. Ben attempts to get a disc to boot up a game disc. A SNES program is sending commands to the NEC microcontroller, telling it
The team gets back to work on the Super Glue Gun. Previously they worked on controlling the heating element with a triac and controlling the motor while extruding the glue through it. The team gets help from a community member who returns a previous super glue gun build to Ben.
Previously, the team worked on the triac to control the hot end, extruding glue through the hot end, and finding the best DC motor and drive gear to push the glue to the hot end. In this episode, the team is going to make another test rig using a slightly faster DC gear motor and get started on programming the ATtiny microcontroller that will drive everything in the glue gun. Ben finds a DC motor with the same form factor as the one he used before, but its 50 rpm instead of 3 rpm. The mounting is different so he goes into Autodesk Fusion 360 to design a 3D Printed mount. Ben exports his design as a DXF (Drawing Exchange Format) so he can cut a paper pattern on the laser, make sure the holes are correct, and once that done he can print it. The paper pattern is way off so it was good thing he started this way than with a 3D print. It takes many tests to get the right dimensions. After 3D the part and measuring the distance, the latest revision to the motor mount is a little loose so another revision is made on the 3D printed part. Once the part is dialed in, they’re going to take the glue stick and get its center point, and use that to make their guide shaft. That will get them close enough to do a test with the hot end again. 50 rpm motor gives them a lot more speed than the 3 rpm motor, however more speed means less torque so hopefully it has enough power to push the glue through the hot end. Once it seems to work, it’s time to make the next revision to the 3D printed part so they can push it through the hot end. Ben has a new board he made for ATtiny development. It’s got a larger socket on it for the ATtiny20. He’s also working on a sub socket for the ATtiny4 to give him a couple of options for what he can use. The ATtiny20, is the most likely candidate for use with the Super Glue Gun, as it gives him 6 IO. The board gives him a way to program these little chips as well, especially as they use the TPI – Tiny Programming Interface – instead o
Now it's Felix's opportunity to break the warranty on a gaming console, only, it's a bit retro. The team are taking apart the original NES, Nintendo Entertainment System for a teardown and repair with tips and tricks on how to make sure your old console gets a new lease of life. Starting with disabling the lockout chip, which is a main cause of problems and also giving the slot loading bay care and attention snice it's one of the common failures, partly because it functions like an old VHS/VCR player! And hear more anecdotes of Ben's experience working at Funcoland (now Gamestop) and other possible mods of the NES!
n this weeks episode the team considers a library from Microchip and how the game will work. Microchip has a library that allows you to drive an LCD glass with just a microcontroller, no need for an external controller or extra RAM. They also discuss gamification; make some diagrams of how they want to space up the screen, what goes on the screen, where to put the plugs, and figure out how the puzzle is going to work on the screen. Ben attempts to use the PIC32 MZ starter kit as a mass storage device with a computer. Acting as a mass storage device, more puzzles could be added just by dragging and dropping from a computer. There are multiple USB ports on the end; there’s one if it’s a device and one if it’s a host such as your computer. Ben want’s the microcontroller to act as a device like a USB thumb drive. There’s also a programming header and a UART with a USB converter. The hope is that there will be a single USB port on the logic gate board game that can be used for charging as well as transferring data. Ben goes over programming the microcontroller using MPLAB harmony, which includes a good number of examples in its library. The problem is it doesn’t really tell you how to use them. What they can do is set up an area of NVM non-volatile memory, the flash that holds the program, and set it up as a small file system. This allows them to access it from within their program to get files. The USB could also use it as a file system so the user can put files there. Although, they may want to have separate file systems so there’s an area of memory that a person can’t destroy just plugging it into their computer. Getting examples to work isn’t that difficult, the real trick is combining them all. This includes some kind of sound, LCD, USB, and file system. After aligning the LCD screen he sets up another NOR gate using the MPLAB IDE. They need to do more work on the gamification and how the screen is going to be set up but if they can comb
Max has been playing his Nintendo Switch 24/7 since he got it, causing him to deal with a debilitating thumb cramp from the analog stick. Ben offers to 3D print an add-on for the joy con to move the analog stick to the proper position. Ben attempts to save Max from making a tragic mistake Ben takes apart the right joy con so he can reposition the analog stick. The analog stick appears to be the cheapest stick he’s come across. It works different than any he’s ever seen before. Because its unconventional, it might not be possible to replace with a standard analog stick. What they might have to do is actually take the stick and move it instead of replacing it with something else. He proposes adding a spacer but he’ll have to test to see if it works if it’s loose. Unfortunately, you need to have either both of the joy cons connected or both of them detached. The challenge that they are facing so far is that they’ll have to make a null connector on both sides so they’re connected but they’re not actually electrically connected. You lose charging capability doing that so the challenge is to design a piece that fits between the mounting point for the analog stick and then very carefully solder five wires. The joy con extension is mostly just 3D printing. The challenge they face is with the flat flex ribbon cable on the joystick itself. It’s quite thin, it’s point five millimeters pitch, pitch being the distance between centers of pins and there is a connector on the PCB that will get ruined if they try to desolder that connector we’ll probably ruin it. They also can’t solder to the flat flex ribbon cable because it’s not actually metal, it’s a conductive ink that they make the traces with. Ben orders a connector so he can plug it in to the flat flex and then manually put wires from the connector over to the PCB. They may need to trim some plastic to make for the extra connector. They’ll have to remove a connector anyways so Ben tr
It's time to code with Arduino and the Teensy 3.6 to create the game logic and sound for the Miniature Pinball machine. Using the C++ Programming language, Ben takes Felix's C code and makes it suitable for embedded microcontroller hardware with a logic state machine, this virtualised state machine monitors what is going on with the Pinball hardware, such as buttons and what the pinball touches, to react to it by increasing your score or playing music and sounds!
Ben and Felix meet with Terry from MathWorks to find out how they can use MATLAB and Simulink to create a simulation of the mini pinball table that uses an Arduino microcontroller. Terry shows how a 3D model of the table created with Autodesk's Fusion 360 can be imported into Simulink and how the ball movement within the table can be simulated. The simulation model lets the team explore how various table configurations will work without having to physically build them. The team can even play virtual games by controlling the flippers on the simulated table with an XBox One controller! Terry also shows how MATLAB and Simulink algorithms can be embedded onto Arduino and other hardware.
In this episode Felix puts together the components necessary to build an Arch Linux based media center PC for your living room. Things to consider when putting together your own computer system include cooling, wiring, airflow, and ensuring the setup properly. Felix puts together a media center worth of his TV. In today’s episode Felix will be building a media center. This will allow him to have a full blown computer under his television. Felix assembles stack of budget grade parts to keep his media center under $400. His parts include a mini ITX form factor case, an ASRock AM1H-ITX Mini ITX motherboard, an Artic M1-Passive fanless heatsink to provide passive cooling without the extra noise of a fan running, an AMD Athlon 5350 Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), a 120 GB SSD from Kingston, some thermal paste for the heatsink, and finally 16 GB of DDR3 RAM from Kingston. Felix starts with the enclosure which is all metal. He then places the ASRock AM1H-ITX Mini ITX motherboard in the enclosure. He then puts in the microprocessor from Advanced Micro Devices. He demonstrates how to orient the microprocessor in the motherboard. There is a locking tab to makes the connection so you don’t need to apply any pressure to it. Next, he’s ready to add the fanless heatsink to the unit. He’ll need to screw the heatsink on from underneath without smearing the grease. Once the processor is installed, it’s time to drop in some RAM. This consists of two sticks of eight gigabytes. He connects the hard drive LED power button and reset button. He also connects the audio interface and the USB for the side. He then gets the power supply installed. He considers wire management and where to mount the hard drive. He opts to install an existing harddrive he has on hand, rather than using the harddrive he was originally going to use, because it already has an operating system installed on it. Once everything is set up Felix walks you through Kodi, the Arch Linu
Today the team is getting back to the super glue gun build. Previously, they worked on the extruder, the hot and triac control, and picked a microcontroller. Now it’s time to take the foam mock up they worked on for the gun and design a PCB that will inside of the handle. Felix walks through the H-bridge testing. The H-bridge controls the motor. The input takes in 12 volts to drive the motor and the control pins make the circuit switch the terminals that are connected to the motor. In other words, the microcontroller allows the pins to switch between positive and ground. After the terminals of the motor driver are connected to the motor, Felix plugs it in to give the switch some power to turn on. He does a final test to make sure the circuit works, turning it in each direction. Ben cuts a pair of PCBs in the shape of a gun handle. He’s designing a PCB based off their foam core design, he’ll then design a 3D printed part around the PCB. He uses the cut PCB to consider placement of the hall effect sensors, the power supply, the microcontroller op-amp triac, and the h-bridge, to fit within a handle will contain a plug at the bottom for AC power. Felix picked up some regulator packages for Ben to take apart piece by piece to see what’s on them. The packages take in 110 VAC and spit out 12 and 5 volts DC. One such piece hooked up to the AC lines is a surface mount chip known as a bridge rectifier. A bridge rectifier is where you take four diodes and you use that to convert an AC voltage to a DC voltage. The other side of the bridge rectifier is still going to be 120 volts but it’ll be DC. He removes parts of the board and puts it onto his board bit by bit.
Usually when people refer to Linux, they are referring to Linux the kernel, and not the operating system. Linux enthusiast Felix Gardner walks you through how Linux functions as a kernel for an OS of a Linux distribution. When people install Linux they are usually talking about an operating system that uses Linux as the kernel. The kernel was developed by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and a bunch of people started contributing to it. The rest of the operating system is GNU which is a recursive acronym for GNU NOT UNIX. GNU is a whole host of the software that makes up the entire operating system except for the kernel. The beginning of GNU dates back to 1983 when Richard Stallman decided to make a UNIX like operating system. UNIX was becoming closed source and Richard wanted to access the software, so he could make changes and manipulate a computer however he wanted. He believed that people should be able to access the software on their computers. GNU has four essential freedoms: Freedom 0 - The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose. Freedom 1 - The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. Freedom 2 – The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor. Freedom 3 - The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. Felix walks you through the subtle difference between free software and open software. He sheds light on the fact that some freeware software is not actually free.
Previously, the team selected the components and made a test PCB for the inside handle. Now it’s time wire it up; attach the motor, trigger, and hot end; and program it using AVR studio to control those things and see how the glue gun works. Once they put the motor and hot end on top they’ll have their first working prototype! Ben goes into Autodesk Fusion 360 to design a few features such as a spring to push back the trigger. He’s adjusted the design to have a quarter inch holes in the trigger. What he hopes to accomplish is to build up the extruder part of this so they can actually test the whole thing. They have all the controls to drive the gun. The extruder part might not be quite so refined. He creates some symmetrical mounting points for driving a size four screw on the inside. He starts printing one half of the trigger so he can get to work on designing the other half. Ben is still working on the extruder design. It has a lot of mass to hold the silicon entry point of the nozzle. He hasn’t started on the nozzle holding yet but he shows where it is going to go. The bearing imported from McMaster Carr, a feature of Fusion 360. He adds a cap to go over the gear and shaft. The glue gun will go right down the middle. Next, it’s time to figure out how to attach the part (using a foam mock up) to the main handle. What matters is the piece’s relation to the hot end as it shows us how far the nozzle’s actually going to be. If you put the motor too far the back the gun is not going to be too short. When he has an idea of how things are going to be put into place he 3D prints the parts. Ben screws the new handle pieces together and then tests the spring. The main things that are going to go up are the motor control, the triac control for the hot end, and then the temperature control. There might be more things in the final product, such as a push button or an LED indicator, but what they have is enough for testing purposes. They test the
Karen has an idea for a project, with Felix's help to create a portable Raspberry Pi photo' booth, useful for weddings and other events. This isn't only a hardware project, it also needs the linux software to help ensure we're saving the files where we want them and even upload them to an online service! Felix takes this as an opportunity to give everyone a crash course in how to use linux on the Raspberry Pi and keep it up to date. After the design's put together, Karen talks us through her python logic to have the camera take pictures! How's your Python programming? What Pi Cam projects have you made? Or how would you have changed this one? Let us know on the element14 Community!
In this segment Felix breaks down the operating system. You’ll find out how the kernel and firmware allow the hardware to interact with the system services, the graphical interface, and the application layer.
The team is struggling with their logic board game project so they bring on Hari, a product specialist from element14, to help them with the build. He’s going to help them assess the current state of the project and analyze whether it’s actually worth taking to completion. The logic board game is a concept the team is attempting to take from concept to product. It’s made the least progress of the three long term builds they’ve worked on this year and it’s probably gone through the most iterations. Since the last iteration, the team decided to try using toggle switches instead of plugs and wires. Hari, likes what they’re doing with the toggle switches, but has some ideas on how they can get a custom solution. They then discuss the target price they had in mind. It’s a little hard to get a firm answer on this because the team isn’t sure what this will develop into. Hari is able to tell them if the number they had in mind is matches what the market they are targeting could support. He compares what they have with something similar and they ponder how much added cost is justified by the product’s unique features. The game was originally mechanical but their decision to include a microcontroller and screen has added heavily to the production costs. This is all part of the market research that Hari wants them to do. Once you determine a product has a favorable reception with its target audience you can get a sense of what your overall demand will be. The obstacle they are facing is that whatever they build would need to also compete with games on smart phones and tablets. After Hari’s visit the team goes over what they’ve learned as a result of their effort in attempting to take a build project to market. They already knew going in that all three of their build projects probably wouldn’t succeed. With this particular project they started with a really good idea but never really fleshed it out in a detailed framework. They did
Ben, Karen, and Felix are joined by Bob Baddeley, a local electrical engineer, for their IoT on Wheels Design Challenge project. Ben works on the mechanical design in Autodesk Fusion 360, Felix gets started working with the Nucleo Board, and Bob shows them how to connect Bluetooth expansion board to an iOS app. The team is working on a device that fits onto your bicycle and communicates with your smartphone over Bluetooth LE to pass information back and forth. It will be able to send a message to an administrator if you hit a pothole, there will be an alarm built into it, vibration and tilt detection, and more. This project is for the IoT on Wheels Design Challenge on element14. They'll be using the ST microelectronics Nucleo64 along with a Bluetooth expansion module. Felix brought in a bicycle for the team to base their measurements on. Once they know how much room they have to work with Ben goes to work drafting a design in Autodesk Fusion 360. It won’t be a one size fits all solution, it will work for this Design Challenge as it will be specific to this build. They won’t be printing the tubes they are drafting, but the drawing will give them a good reference for their build. With the Fusion 360 symmetrical extrusion, you specify length from center, not the total length. After he’s done they’ll know where to put the surface of their object and where to put their mounting clamp. Felix gets started working with the Nucleo Board by going to the ARM mbed OS developer site. Clicking on compiler will take you to the online integrated development environment so you can begin working with your programs. You could install IDE’s and compiler toolchains but the online development saves you from the hassle because online development handles all of this for you. He firsts walks you through selecting the Nucleo-L476RG (Nucleo 64) as your hardware platform and then gets a blinky example going. Coding examples such as the blinky example are common whe
Felix scratches the surface of Linux distributions. He goes over the roots for historical reference, Debian which brings you Ubuntu and Raspbian, Red Hat which brings you Fedora, mentions Slackware, and closes with Arch Linux. Felix goes over the roots of the Linux family tree. He traces the Linux line of succession all the way down to LS or Soft Landing Linux and MCC which comes to you via the Manchester Computer Center. He can't speak to it other than as a historical reference, nor is he aware of whether either one of them is being maintained. There are so many branches of Linux that it would be impossible for anyone to go over all of them in a short segment. However, Felix can and does mention the ones that he finds important. The first distribution he goes over is the Debian. It's a great distribution to own but you have to be aware that its been adapted and branched out into many different distributions. The one that most people are aware of is Ubuntu and for many people, it's their introduction to Linux and GNU. Another Debian distribution, most people that are aware of because of its association with Raspberry Pi, is the Raspbian distribution. Raspbian is great because it's designed for the Raspberry Pi and very well supported by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Slackware is another important distribution of Linux that's been getting some interest these days. Slackware has a shorter lineage than Debian but isn't something that Felix can speak to because he's never installed it or used it for anything. The next distribution of Linux that Felix goes over is Red Hat. Red Hat is developed by a multinational software company that provides open-source solutions to the enterprise community. Red Hat has been influential in setting standards for Linux computing through the industry. Fedora, a very popular distribution of Linux, is brought to you by Red Hat Company. Fedora is the community edition of Red Hat so you know its awesome. The Final distribution that
The N64 Portable has become the bane of Ben’s existence. Now, to the unrestrained delight of Karen, Ben finishes his N64 portable project. In search of help for his N64 Portable, Ben took it to the Midwest Gaming Classic 2017, which takes place in Milwaukee every April. There, he was united with some former Ben Heck forum members who have done a lot of work with the N64 in the past. There he leveraged their extensive experience with wiring the jumper pack. N64 used a short-lived form of RAM called RAMBUS where chips sat in series and had a terminator at the end of the chain (kind of like SCSI)! The length of the wires affected how the RAM bus was terminated so they took the original jumper pack and carefully wired it directly to the motherboard with it lying flat. This gives Ben the low profile he needs to use the original jumper pack and give him the best chance to succeed. The N64 expansion pack is detected so he knows this is working. The old N64 had a pair of 2 megabyte RAM chips on it. You can remove those and install a couple of 4 megabyte RAM chips. This basically gives you the expansion pack built in. Ben works on rewiring the cartridge as he did before. He also plans on using chunks of copper to improve the heatsink. He’s going to need to measure to find the empty spots, measure the height of the chips, as well as the thermal pads. He can then CNC mill a custom copper heatsink to bolt onto the board for maximum heat dissipation. He’s also got some really tiny fans to move some air around. The RAM actually gets hotter than the CPU/GPU. It runs fast to make up for the narrow bus width (9 bits). Ben goes to work on desoldering and rewiring the cartridge slot. He’s getting closer to desoldering the cartridge slot, he’s removed the metal shielding so the only thing holding it in place are the data pins themselves. He uses tweezers to see if the pins can be moved. If they can be moved that means it’s been completely desoldered. He can t
The team are on the road with the IoT on Wheels design challenge to make their bicycle smarter. Using ST Microelectronics Nucleo hardware with Bluetooth Low Energy means the project can pair with other devices, such as an Android smartphone. The team decided to use the sensors in the Nucleo to detect accidents and potholes in the road and be able to record and report them. Due to the project being a prototype it is large and bulky. This is due to the demonstration versions of the hardware, and the 3D printed parts designed in Autodesk Fusion 360 to protect it. Watch now to find out how Felix overcomes problems with the mBed codebase and how the android app works! What do you think of the project? Or have you entered the design challenge? Let us know on the element14 Community!
Felix walks you through downloading NOOBS for your Raspberry Pi, placing NOOBS on your SD card, and installs Raspbian with the Pixel desktop environment. In a previous segment, Felix introduced you to a few different distributions of Linux. Now, he walks you through installing an operating system on the Raspberry Pi using the NOOBS installer. In order to use the noobs installer you must first download it. Felix navigates to the Raspberry Pi noobs download page where he presents your two options for installing NOOBS, the NOOBS offline and network installer and the NOOBS lite, network only install. He drags and drops the NOOBS files onto the SD Card. He takes the SD card and puts it into the Raspberry Pi, connects the screen, the keyboard, gives it power, and then continues with the install procedure. He gets the Raspberry Pi booted up and walks you through the Noobs installer. The installer gives you some options such as edit config, wifi networks to connect to, and a list of operating systems available to install. In this instance, Felix is going to install Raspbian with the Pixel desktop environment. He clicks on the installer and shows you how long you can expect it to take. Once the operating system is installed, you can configure it to do whatever you want it to do, install additional software, and use the software that’s on there. If you were to configure it as a retro gaming system you could do some retro gaming on it.
Felix works on a new revision to the PCB allowing electronic control of the game using a Teensy and an Arduino. Meanwhile, Ben works on some new mechanisms such as pop bumpers using Autodesk 360, 3D parts, and assembling it together to see how it will work and make adjustments to code using the Arduino IDE. Ben needs to make the ball loader mechanism to cycle through the states of the game. Meanwhile Felix is going to be working on a new revision of the PCB. They’re going to reorient it so that it resembles the way they want it to be in the actual game. They’re going to add some light drivers, some switch drivers, and also work on some code. Felix has a breadboard that he’s worked up and now it’s time to make something that represents how it’s going to actually be in the machine. This includes reorienting the microcontroller to the side to give access to usb, figure out a place to put the screen, and redo some of the components. While Felix goes to work on the board, Ben is going to work on some new mechanisms, and they’ll touch base throughout the process to ensure both the mechanisms and board work together. Felix suggests swapping additional headers so they can swap between a teensy and an Arduino so it can potentially use both. An Arduino isn’t going to give you the same sound capability but it’s going to do the same logic and drive the LCD. It’s a 5 V system but they want to have 12 V going in to control the solenoids. The Teensy and Arduino have their own voltage regulators, but 12 V is too high for them. Ben wires up an LED driver, the TI part current driver, and combined it with the chip registers for the switches. He’s attaching it to the SPI bus of the Arduino so that he can try reading and writing in the same operation to save time. If it works on the Arduino it will certainly work on the Teensy. The Teensy uses 4 bit mode for its SD card but it probably has additional SPI buses that they can access. Once he’s got t
Felix gives an update on the progress of the pinball board. He goes over the headers for the Arduino and headers for the Teensy, the shift registers, the LED Driver, the MOSFETs, the amplifier, the screen, the regulator on/off switch, and the battery. There are also two headers for the inputs and the outputs to drive the lights, as well as, four headers to drive the solenoids. One more thing they will need to add are headers to drive the servos on this board. They will need to make sure that whatever mechanisms Ben comes up with will be supported by the main board. Felix runs various tests on the board and shows you what that looks like on the Arduino IDE. Ben reprinted the disk for the pop bumper. The conductivity the ring isn’t great to begin with but as long as there’s some conductivity the MCU should be able to detect the closed switch. After he’s unable to get a reading it becomes clear he’ll need to rewire and solder the wire to the ring. Ben goes to work putting the pieces together. He points out the mounting points for the pop bumper and the solenoid. While Ben is working on that, Felix fires up a switch example. He’s attached the solenoid and the two contacts to the board. There’s a bearing that appears to be working. It looks like it makes efficient contact and it can trigger the microcontroller to send a signal to actuate the solenoid. Servos are easy to use with the Arduino environment so Ben is using one of them for the ball loading mechanism. He points out the playfield and the positioning of it on the table. He then cuts a test portion of the lower playfield on which to mount the ball loading prototype. Ben puts a switch in place that tells you when the ball is drained. Servos keep pretty good track of their own position but a HOME switch will help dial things in even more. Once Ben figures out where to put the home switch they will be able to wire it up to Felix’s example board. Felix shows a hello world example for the LCD to confirm a
Max steps back from the camera to learn about motors, motor drives, and switches from Felix. Felix takes apart a Motor and they work on a basic H-bridge circuit made from P-channel MOSFETs controlled by NPN Transistors.
The team revisits the Logic Board Game, which they previously scrapped, and an idea Karen suggested about using toggle switches. While Ben did not see much use for toggle switches at the time, he’s sees a way to revive the project by making a Decimal Hex Binary Electronic Quiz game. Separately, Felix has a digital abacus project that he has in mind.
Felix goes over disk partitions and file formats. Working from command line, he shows you how to view the disk partitions that are on your storage device and how to modify the file system that they are formatted in. Partitioning a hard drive divides the available space into sections that can be accessed independently. You can allocate an entire drive to a single partition, or use multiple partitions for dual-booting, maintaining swap partition, or to logically separate data such as audio or video files. The partition table stores the required information. Felix gives an overview of two types of partition tables, Master Boot Record (MBR) and Globally Unique Identifier Partition Table (GBT). The first 512 Bytes of a storage device is dedicated to the Master Boot Record (MBR). This comes from an older partitioning scheme that is designed to work with the boot process of the bios. During the boot process the bios loads the beginning 512 Bytes of the first valid disk in the bios disk order. The Global Unique Intentifier Partition Table (GPT) is a partitioning scheme that is part of unified extensible firmware interface specification. It uses globally unique identifiers (GUIDS), UUIDS in the Linux world, to define partitions and partition types. It is designed to succeed the master boot record partitioning scheme method. GPT is recommended for systems that boot via a UEFI system. Felix uses a Raspberry Pi and a (Tux the Linux Penguin) USB dongle to demonstrate how this works. He takes Tux and plugs him into the USB. He utilizes command line to locate where his device comes up in the device tree. He uses the command lsblk to shows there are no partitions set up and the device comes up as SDA. He points out mmcblk0 which is the device. He shows you what mounted partitions look like by pointing to mmcblk2, mmcblk7, mmcblk5, mmcblk1, and mmcblk6. He also shows you the device directory which he gets to by typing in ls /dev. The utility for modifying partit
The team is working on a touch control stand for the Super Glue Gun build. To do this they will need to figure out how to mechanically make the stand pop in and out, figure out how to actuate that either with a DC motor or a servo, and then make some code for the microcontroller, if it’s a servo for instance they need to create a timer library with interrupts, and then figure out how to put a capacitive touch sensor on the trigger that can be read by the microcontroller.
Previously, the team added the mechanism for the auto stand using a metal wire stand and a guitar string acting as a cable. The cable is actuated by a servo and utilizes a servo library for the Atmel ATTiny20 Microcontroller they are using. Now they need to find a capacitive touch sensor library, possibly Qtouch from Atmel, to allow the auto stand to retract when your finger touches the trigger.
Felix discusses how file permissions work with Linux. He covers what they mean, what they’re for, and how to set them.
Ben is happy because he’s standing in front of a table full of oscilloscopes. Felix wants to know what oscilloscopes are and why they’re here. In this episode Ben and Felix evaluate oscilloscopes from Tektronix, Rohde & Schwartz, and Keysight. They discuss the differences between the scopes, what they can do, and put them through the paces.
The team might be onto something here, while the logic gate boardgame had its issues the Hex Game is a lot more fun, and part of the fun is learning to solder! Ben and Felix plan to turn the Hex Game into a kit which could teach how to solder and learn binary or hexadecimal arithmetic. Using Autodesk Eagle, Ben designs a printed circuit board and discusses whether a lipo or AA batteries are better to power it. How can the team keep it simple while keeping it functional?
Felix introduces virtual consoles, terminal emulators, and program shells. He traces the terminal emulator to the teletype and discusses how the terminal program emulates legacy hardware connected a mainframe.
The team made a PCB breadboard prototype of the Hex Logic game, made a laser paint version of it, refined the design in Eagle, and sent for three boards from OSH Park. Now, Ben will solder up the first one to make sure it works. Afterwards, Felix will coach Karen and Max on how to solder up the other two.
The prototype for the mini pinball machine has a 16x2 LCD display, audio amplifier, 16 switches in, 16 lights out, 4 MOSFET controllers, and 4 servo ports. In today’s episode, Ben translates this prototype into an Eagle design. Ben puts together the PCB for the mini pinball machine in Eagle. He starts with some of the more cumbersome areas first, namely the lights and switches. He’s going to use these molex 2.54 or .1 inch pitch headers. He puts in the 16 switch molex connectors in and 16 for the lights. He’s got to think about how to orient the circuits in relation to the 16 switch molex connectors. He creates spacing so that they are able to make an adapter board that can attach for testing. He won’t run the traces until he has the main components on the board. There should be enough space between these. He lays out placement for the power, the microcontroller, the screen, and input/output plugs on the lower-left. He shows the schematic of the constant current LED driver. Ben reuses a layout of an eagle file for the schematic of the constant current LED driver. They used the TLC59282 constant-current sink driver in the persistence of vision episode and Super Space Shuttle. You source the LED with current and then it sinks into the device. Ben uses a schematic of an LCD display that fits his requirements but lacks an Eagle file so he’ll have to do his own. When working with schematic design software it is often necessary to either hunt down a library or make one. For rare parts it can be quicker to make one. For the schematic, the symbol is representative of the part, whereas the package detail comes from the datasheet. Ben creates a package that matches the physicality of the hardware. After laying out a lot of the parts for the board to run the digital signals Ben needs to attach the SPI signals between the Teensy/Arduino and the I/O chips. At this point he’s added 2 MOSFET packages, headers for the solenoids, voltage regulator, p
Ben tears down an Xbox One X. Marketed as the smallest and most powerful Xbox One, how does it compare in size to an Xbox One S? Ben compares and reveals its CPU/GPU aka APU, heatsink, hard drive, RAM, connectors, and power supply. Max obtained an Xbox One X on launch date and now Ben is going to take it apart. The Xbox One X boasts a much larger GPU, which allows you to do 4K gaming. Microsoft has marketed it as the smallest and most powerful Xbox ever built. It can do 5 teraflops whereas the old one could only do 4 teraflops. Flops are floating-point operations per second. These days the GPUs are much more powerful than the CPU. Both the Xbox and PS4 have combined CPU/GPUs from AMD, called APUs (accelerated processing unit). Ben is not a fan of the latest Xbox controller because it’s a lot more difficult to mod. It has Bluetooth so it does allow you to use it as a wireless controller. The main system weighs approximately 10 pounds so it’s pretty heavy compared to previous iterations. To test Microsoft’s claim that the Xbox one is the smallest and more powerful iteration of Xbox One, Ben puts it up against the shell casing of the Xbox Slim. The Xbox One X is about 5 millimeters wider than the Xbox One Slim. Using a caliper to measure he discovers that the Xbox Box One X is 3.8 inches deeper and .14 inches wider than the Xbox One Slim. The Xbox One X is slightly shorter, 2.5 inches against 2.36 inches so that is the basis for Microsoft calling it the smallest Xbox One. While that is debatable, what is not is the fact that it is definitely the heaviest Xbox One. The Xbox One was originally suppose to be a cable box so it had HDMI In and Out which got quietly dropped. The Xbox One X brought the HDMI In and Out back. Ben removes the Hex screws from the Xbox One case. It comes apart easily after removing two screws. The CPU appears to be mounted upside down. Outside of that, it’s fairly standard Xbox construction. The wireless module is outsi
Ben and Karen are focused on the upper half of the playfield for their mini pinball kit while Felix is all about the sound. Ben and Karen go back to the drawing board to figure out a way they can incorporate walls and barriers in whatever configuration they want. Meanwhile Felix replaces the mechanical rotary potentiometer with something digital. Felix will work in the background to figure out a way for them to do straight amplification without dealing with hissing sounds at the lowest volume. He’ll run some tests to see if they can just run the amplifier at full power and then change the volume based off the DAC. A lot of amplifiers will amplify volume by adding a certain amount of gamin meaning that if you were to have a volume control you would have to do it with a mechanical rotary potentiometer, a digital potentiometer, or adjust the volume of the signal you send to it. His concern is that if they send a bland signal from the DAC would they be subjected to hissing sounds. Eliminating the volume knob will make the unit cheaper to mass produce. Ben and Karen are going to replace the foam mockup of their mini pinball machine with something they can actually play. They’re also going to take a look at whether they can make a shorter lane. They’re trying to figure out what will and won’t fit on the playfield. They aren’t able to make the drain mechanism bigger and have to keep it the same distance from the ball loader, shifting it off center. Ben and Karen go to the drawing board to reconsider their pinball design. Karen’s idea is to litter the playing field with hinges so that you can move the walls and barriers wherever you like. Adding tabs and hinges works for the design of the playfield but before Ben fully incorporating them into the design, Ben is going to check to make sure that the basic stuff works with the new design. He’ll work on the lower level stuff first and build up so they can make a shooting prototype using the tabs. T
The oldest video game record left standing is for the Atari 2600 game Dragster, the first third party game ever and first title released by Activision. A modern speedster, whose done tests with emulation and spreadsheets, claims the recorded score of 5.51 seconds is not possible, the best possible score is 5.57 seconds. Ben does not care about records, he’s using it an excuse to build a RAM analyzer to make decisions on how best to play the game.
Previously, the team worked on all the individual parts and mechanisms within the super glue gun including the trigger, the circuitry, the hot end, the auto stand, and the extruder motor. Now it’s time to bring things together to make a cohesive prototype. They’ll also work on case design and how it works with the autostand. Ben’s been drawing sketches for the case design to figure out placement of the innards. The bottom half will contain the electronics and the top half will bolt onto that and contain the motor, the hot end, and the auto retracting servo. He does a quick mockup with clay to get an idea of the concept in hand. This will help him visualize how the stand will fit in with the enclosure. Ben and Karen have a brainstorming session so they can take an in-depth look at the stand. They received some feedback in a previous episode about how the stand could get in the way, become a false trigger, and other problems. For the stand to work it would have to be used to place the glue gun on a flat surface. For that to happen they need a workable extension retraction but because it would extend past the gun barrel there is some concern that it will get gummed up. To address these concerns, Ben returns to his sketchpad to try and come up with a new design. Next, Ben begins working on a new 3D model in Autodesk Fusion 360. Karen and Ben both agree that it would be beneficial if the gun was longer. This also means that he’ll also need to make some adjustments to the code to accommodate the temperature difference in the hot end. While their original goal was to come up with a mechanism to operate their auto stand, in doing so they come to the realization that they’ll need to redesign almost the entire top portion of the gun, rotating the motor 90 degrees, and adjusting the positioning (possibly swapping out for a bigger one) of the heating elements.
In a previous episode, Ben and Karen worked on the auto stand mechanism only to discover they would need to redesign the entire upper portion of the gun. In this episode, they take apart some Glue Guns to come with some ideas and Ben works on the redesign in Autodesk Fusion 360.
Felix just happens to find an SNES classic mini so Ben suggests they tear it apart. They’ll take it apart, see what’s inside, talk about what they find, and compare it to the NES mini from last year.
Ben is joined by Todd Rogers, owner of the longest held video game world record, whose legacy has been put into jeopardy by statistical models that show that the best possible score is 5.57, not the 5.51 that Todd recorded.
Ben shows you a better way to retro game without miniaturizing an SNES mini. He’ll show you how to attach an LCD screen directly to your Raspberry Pi using the I/O. No HDMI required. Ben’s got a 480x272 TFT-LCD screen, pretty much the same screen that was in the original PlayStation Portable. He’s going to wire it up into 16-bit color which would be 5 bits of red, 6 bits of green, and 5 bits of blue. Ben insulates the screen with a piece of plastic. He bends the ribbon cable back so that he can attach the breakout board into position. He can then see how to fit on the Raspberry Pi A module. Felix is desoldering some parts and should have that for Ben very soon. The plan is to manually wire from the Raspberry Pi over to the module. The 50 pin TFT breakout that he’s using is from Adafruit. It gives you a bunch of solder points so you can attach things to a TFT screen. There is also a voltage booster on this board. It’s for the LED backlight. The LED backlight on this runs at 21 volts and they’re going to power this off 5. They will need a booster circuit to take the 5 volts this runs at and bump it up to a higher voltage that’s just 21. There’s a chip and a coil that will give them their higher voltage. Ben pulls out the header and inserts the flat flex ribbon cable into it. Once he knows it’s in place he can lay it down and that tells him optimum position to place this board. Ben puts the LCD breakout board in place and puts the depopulated Raspberry Pi board in place. Felix removed the GPIO header, camera port, DSI port, HDMI, USB, and AV jack from the Pi. Ben takes a look at a super useful document he found at https://elinux.org/RPi_BCM2835_GPIOs. It’s a list of all the modes the Raspberry Pi GPIO can go into. The thing to look at here is the alt versions. If you go to https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/dpi/README.md you can find a depiction of how the GPIO can be mapped to an RGB color space o
Felix populates the board and makes bodges for the mistakes. Meanwhile Ben makes a laser paint of a new circuit for the inserts and the IR emitter detector. The PCB does two different things, it can either see the ball or can light something up.
In this episode, Ben designs and cuts the plywood enclosure for the mini pinball machine. It’s all tabbed together with screws and nuts. The playfield opens up to access the board. The bottom of the unit is also opened up for easy access to IO from the bottom of the unit. A few months ago they built the flipper ball loading mechanism along with some buttons. Ben’s torn it up because he wants to see how it interfaces with a paper pattern, representing the shape of the new machine, that's been cut to full size. In this case, it's faster to do something with foam core and physically put it together than it is to draw everything on the computer and figure out if things are intersecting. It’s also cheap and quick to mock-up the design with foam core. After fitting it together, they can figure out placement of the flipper buttons. Once he knows it works with the form core he’ll move onto the more expensive six millimeter plywood. Ben gets to work designing in illustrator and continues assembling the pinball kit using the foam core. He’ll also design a board mount. They want to line up their board so that the display is centered. He does a few more tests with the foam core before cutting the more expensive wood. As the cabinet takes shape, an interference between the wood joints and ports on the board emerges that would cause the structure being unstable. Ben goes over some options with Felix. Another consideration for placement of the board is how difficult it would be to access all the plugs for input and output. There at the point where its time to redesign the circuit board, print it out, draw that into their design, and then finalize or prototype the rear panel and both of the bezels. Modifying the PCB hasn’t been too complicated so far. Ben goes over all the changes that were made to the circuit board. He moved the LCD half an inch up, left the Arduino where it was, he moved the Teensy about .7 inches to the right, then he moved the pow
Bob Baddeley, a local entrepreneur and engineer, stops by the shop to show Ben how the team can use their Alexa device to automate their workbench. After walking Ben through the initial setup for building a skill, they’ll use a Python script to command a UART device from a Raspberry Pi down to a USB port in a pinball.
Bob Baddeley returns to continue helping Ben automate his workbench using Alexa and a Raspberry Pi. They’ve already gotten Alexa up and running, talking to a microcontroller over USB. It’s now time to automate everything else in the shop. They’ll use a multimeter and get a reading from it, they’ll go over the network connection to the oscilloscope so that they can change its settings and take screenshots with voice commands. They will interface a Gert Board with the GPIO on the Pi so they can turn bits on and off.
James Ray, the engineering department manager at Avid Technologies, joins Ben to discuss the Hex Game Prototype the team has been working on. Avid is a design services company that takes concepts into full production, utilizing sister companies throughout Avnet.
It is finally done, the Raspberry Pi (with no HDMI) portable MAME emulator based on the Raspberry Pi A+! Ben and Felix have put the finishing touches to the portable gaming device with the use of laser cutting and 3D printing. With 8 GPIO left though, Felix decides that it's best to do a low-level input for the buttons and directional pad to control the device. If you want to build one yourself, we've got the code and build files linked on the element14 Community!
Ben and Karen talk through some of the suggestions from elemnt14 Community members for the super glue gun build, before getting on with the motor placement for the final design. However, after some 'Hand Polling' Ben is concerned that the handle might end up too thick if the motor is placed at the side or near the handle. Luckily, Karen has a proposed design change that could make all of Ben's headaches go away...for a while at least! So Ben goes back to his trusty Autodesk Fusion 360 to make the changes to the design…
The Ben Heck Team has finally reached the conclusion of the Super Glue Gun project. Ben puts the finishing touches on the design using Autodesk Fusion 360, prints the parts, and does final assembly on a proof of concept. Does the super glue gun live up to his name? Does it have what it takes to make it on the consumer market? Ben did some more design on the gun barrel using Autodesk Fusion 360. He thinks he found a way to get the wires through. He got a few pieces, front and rear wood to hold the barrel in place. Ben made a few changes to the motor cap stuff. He put a groove into the bottom of it. That should be enough to get the AC and temperature sensor wires out of the barrel. He designs a place to put the motor driver. Wires take more space then you think. You have to be sure to account for them in your design, including any folds, loops or bends they might do. He does a section analysis to “peel back” the surface and the design works with the motor driver. He’ll print the four halves separately, the two halves of the barrel along with the two halves of the barrel, and glue them together so they represent what a solid piece would look like. On the front hot end of the gun, you have the AC barrel heater along with the temperature sensor. He’ll design it with assembly in mind rather than just glue and screw it together. Kapton tape is used to insulate the parts from heat as well as electricity. Everything fits together once assembled. This includes the AC wires, the sensor wires, and the motor drive wires coming out of the back. This will all go into the base of the handle where all the electronic controls are contained. Once he glues the halves together he’ll have a completed prototype. He’ll have to also make some adjustments to allow for an opening for the programming port. Once assembly is complete he’ll test make sure it works before completing the build. Ben does a motor test to ensure that everything is wired correct
Ben does a teardown of the Sega Saturn by popular request. The console was a rush release to beat out the Sony PlayStation which had a lower price point and subsequently had a better adoption rate. The Sega Saturn was a fourth generation console that was released in North America in 1995. One of the first things Ben notices is that it has a multi-out on the back. It's been tested on an RF video connector from a 4K television to confirm modern televisions still use analog tuners. It also had a battery backup for your games. There’s also a slot for memory cartridge to allow you to have more backup spaces. There was also a RAM expansion that added more frames of animation to games like Street Fighter AlphaIt also had a battery backup for your games. There’s also a slot for memory cartridge to allow you to have more backup spaces. There was also a RAM expansion that added more frames of animation to games like Street Fighter Alpha. Ben unscrews the Sega Saturn on the back to take a look at what’s inside. The top half of the enclosure has a nice mechanical spring-boarded lid. There is an LED with an acrylic light pipe over it to bring the light up to the indicator hole. It’s cheaper than making a separate circuit board. He disconnects the AC to DC Power Supply to take a look at it. It allows 9 volts at 3 amps, 5 volts at 2 amps, 3.3 volts at .6 amps, and ground. The assembly of this is quite similar to the Playstation One, including the built-in power supply. He removes the AC power switch with the capacitor on it. There’s a ribbon cable to control the CD ROM and another ribbon cable going to the controller port. If you were to make a portable of this, the CD ROM would probably be the most difficult part. You’d probably be better off with a SD to CD ROM replacement. The circuit board contains two CPUs. The best way to make your system easy to program is to have two CPUs, a master and a slave. On the back of the board is the ROM th
Ben is putting the finishing touches on the Mini Pinball Kit. The new PCBs from Oshpark have arrived. The board includes everything but the Arduino or the Teensy. It’s got the audio amplifier, the lights, the switches, four MOSFETs, four servos, power regulation, and a bodged in LED light for power. In this episode, Ben takes a look at the board, makes sure that it works when installed in the pinball case, and works out some finishing touches on the prototype game. Ben hooks up an LED to a socket so he could plug it in and test it. He’s changed the code so that it will turn on the LED that is relative to the switch, 16 switches, and 16 LEDs. Ben goes through each one to make sure everything works, tests the coils, and the servos so that he can write some code and put together a test game. The team had trouble selecting which servo library to use. They went with the pwmservo library, which is older but doesn’t conflict with the Arduino library. Ben commences with his tests on the servos. He got two of the switches attached to sound events. They’re going to need to add some debounce to the switches. What this basically means is that, as the switch opens and closes, there can be very small fluctuations in the state, it doesn’t fully open and close each time. Switch debouncing can be achieved through hardware or software. You can’t really tell without the help of a microcontroller, but it’s there. Ben adjusts the switch library, to create an array, so that each switch has its own debounce setting, depending on what kind of switch it is, because they might have different mechanical properties. Ben adjusts the angle of the flippers, puts in larger solenoids, and adjusted the length of the rods throw. He’ll change the layout of some of the feature mounts. Ben fires up Autodesk Fusion 360 so he can make some final adjustments. He makes some progress on the modular wall system as the mini pinball moves closer to a finished build.
Now that the Super Glue Gun is finished, the Mini Pinball is near completion, and they’ve got a Pi Portable in hand, James Ray returns to the show to talk about product viability. James Ray was on a few months ago to talk about the Hex Board Game. He works with Avid, a company that is part of Avnet, the parent company of element14, on bringing products to market and evaluating them on their manufacturability. In today’s episode, they’ll connect over skype to talk about the Super Glue Gun, the Mini Pinball, and the Pi Portable. They conversation begins with a Pi Portable analysis. The Pi Portable is a Raspbery Pi, a screen, and a keyboard that is all driven by the GPIO. To do this there was a lot of hand wiring that was done. The team is thinking that if the all the hand wiring done. If this could be done as a PCB, you could simply plug it into an existing Pi. James suggests the compute module as an option. The drawback would be that they would need to add a SODIMM slot and that requires too much space. The other option would be to do a custom Pi. You would basically take all the Pi internals and do a single PCB that would include all your requirements. James goes over specifics on what Avid can offer them if they go that route. Next they move onto an analysis of the Super Glue Gun and Mini Pinball. They analyze both builds and decide which one to keep and which one to lose.
The pinball kit is almost complete. The team just needs to take some time to create some art, sound, code, scoring, and then test it. Ben goes to work in Adobe Ilustrrator to design a semi generic playfield. Originally, they were going for a semi generic playfield. Ben shows the design of a slope for the ball to launch out of in Fusion 360. He also goes over some of his other design choices. They’re using tabs for the out walls, and “peanut butter cup shapes” for the main field. Ben’s also added some sling rubbers. He figured out placement for the optosensors. Once he settles on a design, it’s time to laser cut the wood. Next, he goes to work on designing the solenoids. It looks like they will need to use the larger solenoids for the flippers. He goes into Fusion to make modifications to the original drawing. Sheet metal can’t bend at perfect right angles – there’s always a curve. Fusion 360 fan figure this out for you. It’s also good for something that needs flattening. The software warn if a design can’t be flattened out (parts intersect one another). After doing some more laser cutting, it’s time to make final assembly. After all the arts in place and audio has been recorded, Ben shows you what the final design of the mini pinball kit looks like. Ben, Karen, Felix, and Max share a moment of levity as they play the mini pinball kit they’ve designed. Ben and Karen do an assessment of the manufacturability of the kit.
Felix wants to repurpose a broken MakerBot by putting a USB microscope on it and turning it into a control precision microscope inspection station. He’ll update the electronic innards with a Beaglebone and a Replicape, as well as, change the interface so he can control it with an Atari 2600 joystick. Jason Kridner, cofounder of BeagleBone, joins Ben and Felix as a special guest. Jason Kridner, co-founder of Beaglebone, connects with Ben and Felix over Skype. Jason reassures Felix that he should be able to keep up with the frame capture on the USB camera and get it to his display. You should be able to take it to a 1080P display and see under the microscope through the micro HDMI. You might be limited to a few frames per second, as opposed to 60 frames per second. When you download the Replicape system firmware it uses the PRU for driving the stepper motor control pulses. The Beaglebone Black has two 32-bit microcontrollers (programmable real-time units), ultra-low latency, RISC cores that run at 200 MHz. It’s got an additional Cortex M3 microcontroller which is also a 32-bit RISC core. People are more interested in the PRUs (programmable real-time units) because they provide the lowest possible latency IO pins. They have registers mapped directly to GPIO pins and can access the full peripheral memory. They also get 5 nano second updates on the I/O pins. Jason also gives Felix some advice on which Linux operating system to use. Ben’s made some custom parts for the gantry and provided a stepper motor so that Felix can assemble the parts. Felix puts the gantry together and attaches the Duratool USB Digital Microscope to the unit. He’ll make some final adjustments but everything seems to be working. Once the Gantry is pieced together, Felix grabs a solar power supply to include in the project. It can cough up 24 volts at five amps. Felix walks you through the printer configuration. He’s installed Kamikaze and is familiarizing himself with O
Ben makes a Yobo portable that accepts NES cartridges. Yobo is a brand of Nintendo clones. They are essentially Nintendos on a chip, glop tops on a circuit board, and it is basically a clone of Nintendo systems. The goal is to make a Yobo portable that is about the size of an NES cartridge. Yobo is a brand of Nintendo clones. They are essentially Nintendos on a chip, glop tops on a circuit board, and it is basically a clone of Nintendo systems. Ben found one of these in a junk pile for $5 and as it turns out it works. He was thinking they could hack it up and use the parts to try to make a really small Nintendo clone. He wants to make it so it’s about the size of an NES cartridge. It will be more than an emulator, it will accept NES cartridges. Ben starts on the case design using Fusion 360. He’s got the PCB mostly done. Ben noticed an issue when they do their laser paint. It’s hard to get the copper out from between traces so he went into design rule check. This is a file that indicates what tolerances the board house will accept. You can check your design against it. Once that’s taken care of the PCB is mostly done. He’ll still need to add a capacitor for the audio amplifier though. He’s using through –hole on some these parts to use up parts on hand (audio amp and controller shift register). Ben continues to fine-tune the design in Illustrator. The final design will use the same type of flat Li-po batter as the Raspberry Pi No HDMI project. Ben laser prints the front panel. He 3d prints parts with Makergear M2 and the old Replicator 1. Felix works on the PCB while Ben works on the screen. Ben always laser paints at the laser’s top resolution of 1200 DPI, even though it’s pretty slow. Meanwhile, Felix uses a scrubbing technique with the PCB to make the copper dissolve faster. Ben uses a digital potentiometer with pushbuttons for the volume control as there’s no room for a physical knob or dial.
Ben takes apart a shop-bought version of a cheap Oregon Trail game to find out how it works. He’s got some questions about a couple of IC2 EEPROM chips and the type of data they store. Felix dumps the chips onto a Raspberry Pi because Linux makes it easier for you to tell what the I2C EEPROMs are used for. Once they know how it works, they’ll use their knowledge to create an ultra-portable version of the Oregon Trail is even smaller and less bulky. The Oregon Trail game from Target only costs about 25 dollars but it’s probably only worth a fraction of that price in parts. Ben unscrews the back of the case and removes the included batteries. The graphics are much better than the Apple II version and it includes PCM sound. Ben rips out all the parts. It contains glop tops, also called “Chip on board” method. A glop top is an epoxy covering for an ASIC. An ASIC is an application integrated circuit. An integrated circuit is bonded to the PCB, and then covered with a glop top to protect it. It’s an inexpensive way to put an integrated circuit into something. The Nintendo on a Chip also had a glop top. When Nintendo included Duck Hunt with their NES it was also using a glop top. Ben desolders the speakers and demo controls to make it easier to take apart. There are quite a few pins under the LCD so it’s probably not running in serial mode. Ben points out the fact that there are two main ASICs, a power regulator, a switch, a cap, and two SOIC chips. Felix dumps the chips onto a Raspberry Pi to learn more about what the two I2C eeproms are used for. Linux allows you to detect IC2 devices and also write to them. To find out what’s on the BUS they are going to ping all 128 locations and see what responses it gets to find the address. They’re test with an off the shelf I2C EEPROM to see if it works first. Felix finds a way to do a Binary dump and they’re well on their way to hacking the Oregon Trail.
Tragedy has befallen Ben Heck, once upon a time he created some awesome levels for Doom and now he wants to revisit them, but he cannot! They reside on an ancient and old media type called 'zip disks', zip drives were made by iomega and came in various sizes from 100mByte up to 1gByte. So to reverse engineer it Ben and Felix are going to find an old computer, an oscilloscope and a parallel port connected zip drive to find out how it talks to one another and make it do their bidding!
Felix has brought in his first game console, the Atari 5200, which was notorious for its bad controllers. That’s exactly why Felix quit playing it. Taking advantage of Ben’s expertise in working with controllers, they’re going to take the controller apart and make a new one. In 1982, the Atari 5200 was Atari’s answer to competing consoles such as the ColecoVision and the Intellivision. It’s basically an Atari 400 computer that was repackaged as a game console. Ben unscrews the case from the bottom of the case. As his first computer was an Atari, he knows what to expect. It’s going to be MOS Technology 6502 game system. He removes the RF shield to get to the main circuit board. He recognizes the Mask ROM due to its reduced pin count but he’ll need to look up and mark the rest of the chips. The CPU is a custom version of the 6502 MOS chip, the ROM boots the system, POKEY which is a potentiometer keyboard controller, the ANTIC chip works as a graphic controller for the display, and the GTIA chip receives data from the ANTIC and adds sprites if applicable before sending the stream to your television. It contains 8 RAM ICs at 16 kb which act collectively as one word of memory. Ben looks up the schematic to find out how the POKEY chip interfaces with the controller ports. He points out the audio and video circuitry which is used to take digital signals and convert them to analog so they can become an RF signal to go to the RF adapter on your TV. Ben goes to work on designing a controller in Autodesk Fusion 360. The board has an Atmega 328 and translates the analog joystick values to a digital potentiometer, providing a range that matches the analog signals which the console can interpret. The board has an Analog Devices AD5242 dual potentiometer on it. Next they are going to take a modern joystick and convert its values to something the Atari by using a sketch Arduino IDE.
If big companies can glue portable electronics together, why can't we? Ben decides to go all the way with the sticky stuff when he rebuilds the Mini Arcade. Originally designed as a keychain, the Mini Arcade isn't quite small enough, so join the team as we hack it, take it apart, find out how it works and rebuild it to make it better, smaller, more compact thanks to the trusty tools of 3D printing and soldering! Ben also finds out something interestingly hidden in the hardware!
Seeing as everyone loves to a bit of intricate soldering, it's time for one last super solder episode! Ben is feeling nostalgic looking at his collection of CPUs so decides to use the z80 to create a basic Microsoft computer...giving him the perfect excuse to do lots of lovely soldering!
Felix introduces Ben to the pocket Beageboard bela.io. It’s good for audio and comes with a real time operating system. Because it’s good for audio Felix is going to make a drum sequencer. Because Felix is the music guy, he’s going to take the lead on the project while Ben works on some other stuff behind the scenes.
The Raspberry Pi No HDMI project went over really well. It could be the basis for a great kit except for the fact that it required a lot of wiring and soldering. Now, Ben and Felix are going to take a look at what it would take to make their work the basis for an all-in-one PCB. It could live as a kickstarter kit where people simply buy the board, attach a screen, a Raspberry Pi A+, and a battery so they can then own their own Raspberry Pi No HDMI.
Matthew Eargle pays a visit to Ben in Madison so that they can work together on a Zen robot garden using CNC parts. The build will use a handheld controller, a stepper motor, and a 3D printed Zen garden rake that will draw designs. A typical Zen garden rake is a flat piece usually made of wood with four large tines coming out of it. The one they print will hook up to the servo and use the mounting points on the servo to make an actuator for the rack and pinion vertical Z. Felix and Karen help Matt program the code for the Arduino shield and board using the Arduino IDE
It's time for hacking in Ben and Felix's Great Clock-Off! How can we keep track of the time without using a personal computer or mobile phone? Ben utilizes discrete electronics and encoders with an LED matrix to keep stock of the time, where as Felix puts together a micro-controller with an LCD display and Real-Time Clock crystal as an alternative and more high tech' option.
Ben’s got his hands on a Vectrex console from 1982 and a rare 3D peripheral, one of the rarest video game items in existence, a Vectrex 3D imager. The Vectrex was a vector display-based home video game console from 1982. In 1984 it became the first home console to have a 3D peripheral which not only colorized but made the graphics 3D. Unlike other non-portable video game consoles, which connected to televisions and rendered raster graphics, the Vectrex used an integrated vector monitor to display vector graphics. It was monochrome and used plastic screen overlays to simulate color and various static graphics and decorations. The Vectrex console requires new capacitors and the Vectrex 3D imager will require Ben to recreate the spinning disc required for it to work.
Sean and Connor Miller join Ben to build a clock crane. It’s a crane sitting on top of a staircase, disguised as a clock, and takes things from the first floor to the second. Back in 2006, Connor’s Mom was diagnosed with MS so she has a lot of trouble carrying two-handed objects up a staircase. This accessibility device will use the matrix creator to enable voice-activated, hands-free carrying of objects such as laundry baskets.
It's the Ben Heck AMA / Interview Livestream!
Clem takes a selfie of himself from as far away as he can possibly do. He’s planning on putting a Raspberry Pi and a camera onto a rocket and film himself from up in the air. The steeper the angle the better he looks. To take a selfie from a hundred meters away he’ll make his own camera using a Raspberry Pi, the camera module, some additional electronics, and a laptop that will be the ground station to control the whole contraption. B4-4 rockets will be used to push the contraption. B4-4 means class B rocket with 4 seconds of thrust and 4 seconds delay until the secondary charge fires. To push the rocket 100 meters in the air he’ll need to calculate the force needed to be exerted by the rocket motor in relation to the weight of his final rocket. You can simulate the flight with dedicated software like “openrocket” on Linux. Clem 3D prints a rocket design from Thingiverse using PLA.
Ben arrived on the scene with his first Atari 2600 portable build, earning him a following and a show. Now it’s time to go full circle. For his final build he’s using an Atari 800, his first computer, as the basis of a final portable build. It started 18 years ago, Ben Heck arrived on the scene with his first Atari 2600 portable build, earning him a following and a show of his own. Now it’s time to bring things full circle. For the final build he’s decided to use the Atari 800, his first computer, as the basis of a final portable build! It will be similar to his ZX Spectrum portable build, he’ll rip out all the chips to make his own circuit board. Before he rides into the sunset an old nemesis makes a return but so does a familiar ally from the past. Will the sinister Pie Face, whose DNA has been fused with Pie changing it to PNA, wreck havoc on his storybook ending? Get ready for closure, get ready for more Allison, in part 1 of the final build project!
Dr. Kitty Boots has been eaten by a Pie Monster of his own making. Now, a Pie Monster has been set loose, eating everything in sight, mostly cats. To defeat him, Pie Face must join forces with his arch nemesis Bondendorf, who is suddenly vulnerable without British Alison. Meanwhile, Ben's final build project, a Portable Atari 800, is looking a lot like the Portable ZX Spectrum. The custom PCBs are designed and laser painted. It’s now time to stuff those PCBs and make sure everything works. Will Ben’s final portable be his greatest act? Can Bondedorf trust Pie face without British Alison? The suspense is palpable, the intensity is simmering, as the series heads toward a dramatic conclusion!
Matt Eargle shares his love for cold war technology by building a homebrew Geiger counter using an old Soviet surplus Geiger tube he happened to have lying around. Embracing a cold war mentality, once completed, his Geiger counter will resemble the CDV 700 series models that were in production from 1954 until 1974, and allow him to conquer his fears with a radiation detector. Matt Eargle is a cold war nut who loves historical technologies. He just happens to have some old Soviet surplus Geiger tube sitting around. He’ll use it to build his own take on a Geiger counter. It will be something like an updated CDV 700 series. The original CDV-700 Series models were in production from 1954 until 1974. Later XXX series models were produced well into the 1980s. In order to build a homebrew version of a Geiger counter, he’ll need a couple of components in addition to his Geiger tube. A Geiger tube has a sealed vial inside a sealed glass tube containing an inert gas. You take that and apply a really high potential, the one he’s using is about 400 volts. When your particle comes in and strikes the nucleus of the gas inside, it temporarily ionizes that gas, just enough to allow some of that voltage through that it can be measured. He’ll need a high voltage source to feed his tube. The cathode of the tube will run into an Arduino. Running the high voltage source through batteries will require a transformer. The transformer will require an AC current. The easiest way to create an AC current would be to create a little oscillator with 555 timers and run that into an inductor. The 555 timer will set up in astable mode to produce an alternating signal at 60 Hz that will get amplified by a MOSFET before running into the transformer. The current from the transformer will go into a diode laddering system which will drive the GM tube. The signal from the Geiger tube will run into an NPN transistor. The output pulse of the tube is around 200V, so it needs to h
Learn how to make a retro-style table tennis game with an FPGA. Take a look at the DE0-Nano development board, along with Altera's Quartus II design software. We also learn about the Verilog language and dive into some code. With the help of additional components, interface directly with a VGA monitor and an NES game controller.
When 3d printing multiple parts is to slow, vaccuum forming can help! Join Clem on his quest to build a cheap DIY vacuum foming machine. Only Basic tools required! An Arduino Uno with Adafruits LCD display shield acts as the controler for the device. Getting it to work is a straightforward task, but achieving good results may take some practice.
Matthew relives some of his youthful hacking by dabbling in a little "pirate radio" broadcasting. In this video, he builds a handheld FM transmitter from some salvaged parts and a Raspberry Pi. The Pi uses a piece of software to convert wav files to frequency-modulated signals emitted from GPIO pin 7. To improve transmission quality and prevent undesired signals, Matthew also designs and builds a band pass filter and seals everything in a shielded case.
Until cryptocurrency replaces money, we have to deal with coins. Instead of just collecting them in a jar, this electronic coin bank lets you know how much you have. The simple part is the count counter module which detects up to 4 coin types. The tricky part is making it battery powered. Thanks to capacitive sensing technology, this coin bank can run off a single charge for months.
Whether you call them "blinkies", "throwies", "sparklers", or anything else, LED art is an interesting nexus of street art and hacker culture. C Events such as DEFCON even have exhibitions for the most creative blinky designs while maker storefronts sell them in every conceivable shape. In this video, Matt collaborates with his friends at the National Upcycled Computing Collective to build a solar-powered "smart" blinky that not only looks cool at night, but contributes its computing power to a worldwide network that's looking for disease cures, extraterrestrial intelligence, rogue asteroids, and more!
True horror stories are much more frightening than made up ones. That's why Clem brings back the ancient nightmare from 550 million years ago- The Anomalocaris. It was one of the first known fierce predators and looked like a squishy shrimp of terror. Things get a little out of hand when another Clem appears on the scene....
Clem tries to convert his cheap tiny CNC machine that never really worked into an easy to use tool. The tiny CNC should use the same worflow and software like a standard 3d printer does. There is one rule that always applies. If you buy cheap random stuff from unknown sources- you are in for a bad time“ The Struggle is real, but the result is a CNC Woodburning machine!
Have you ever wanted to make your very own, custom cell phone? Do you love Linux and wish your phone was more open source? Today, we’re going to see how to make a working prototype cell phone using a Raspberry Pi, an Arduino compatible board, and a GSM module packed into a custom 3D printed case.
Today on element14 presents Mike gives the classic Nintendo ROB a makeover. He adds a pico projector and servo motors to revamp the 80s gaming icon. We also look at how to add voice control to a project using an open source 'hotword' detector.
Do you have trouble with needlessly connected devices? Clem does, for sure! He silently rages while trying to switch on an IOT-Coffeemaker. He tries to get revenge by building the most useless IOT-Device on the planet.
Sean and Conner Miller, build the ultimate smart trike. Their goal is to inspire others to embark on an assistive technology build of their own or to find a way to bring their ideas to life in order to make the world a better place. The inspiration for the project is Sean's wife, who was diagnosed with MS when Connor was two years old. They'll showcase the Arduino MKR1000 IoT kit as a tool for prototyping when coupled to mechanical components. Features of the smart trike include speed sensor and interlock, pedal sensor and interlock, proximity sensor and interlock, garage door opener receiver, braking limit switch and interlock, tilt sensor and interlock, and sd card output to study sensor data and calibrate for best ride quality and safety.
Clem revisits his HACK like HECK project, the VRpi! A Virtual Reality System for the Raspberry Pi. The original device did run Doom exclusively. The VRpi 2 runs OpenArena and other Games, you can even use it as a cheap pseudo VR Kit for your PC-Games. Thanks to the Raspberry Pi 3+ some Arduino micros and Radio transmitters.
Matt is a huge fan of the Twilight Zone, so for Halloween, he's decided to build a classic prop from the old series with a modern twist! The original Mystic Seer was a coin-operated fortune telling machine created for the 1960 episode "Nick of Time". Will this new, electronic fortune teller actually predict the future?
How do you make any electronics project better? Add LEDs. How do you make it infinitely better? Add infinite LEDs! Ok, so we can’t actually add that many LEDs to a project (not to mention the mathematical impossibility), but we can bounce light around endlessly with the infinity mirror effect for a far out light show that makes for a psychedelic addition to any space. So today we’ll be making an infinity polyhedron out of addressable RGB LEDs and a 3D-printed frame.
In part 2 of our quest to build the most Useless IoT Device Ever, Matt--jealous of Hawaii's perfect waves--decides to add flight tracking capabilities to the Rock. Except that the flights he's tracking aren't his own! The AirborneSurfer pulls his namesakes together to build a device that will alert him whenever someone else's plane lands at the destination he'd rather be!
Say goodbye to cramped wrists and handheld gadgets for cutting wire and say hello to your new workhorse on the workbench: the A.W.C.S. The “Ox” is an automatic wire cutting and stripping machine meant to take some of the busywork out of building electronic gadgets. Will it succeed? Will it actually save time? Will my wrists be spared from carpal tunnel and tendonitis? Let’s find out!
An actual Movie Star visits Clem's Bunker. He appeared in Terminator 2: Judgement Day and saved the world by helping john Connor to hack an ATM. we are talking about the Atari portfolio, the smallest fully MS-DOS kompatible Laptop ever made. Clem recreates this beloved device in a modern Form. He uses a Beaglebone Black Wireless and a Touchscreen to build an ultra Portable modern Linux computer, with the classic ATARI look.
Emboldened by the success of his Raspberry PIrate radio, Matt indulges in some more radio hacking by building a specialized QFH antenna and a briefcase form-factor satellite receiver in an attempt to intercept "faxes" from OUTER SPAACEEE!!! Project TIROS is a self-contained, Raspberry Pi-based satellite signal reception system designed to automatically download images and data from NOAA's POES spacecraft as they pass overhead and display the data on an integrated LCD panel. In this video, Matt will walk through how to set up an RTL-SDR module with a Raspberry Pi for automated satellite downloads as well as how to design and build a quadrifilar helical antenna for polar-orbiting signal reception.
The "Game Genie" line of cheat devices was released for several consoles back in the early 90s, but they never made one for the Atari 2600 since by that time it was obsolete. Join us as we travel back in time and use an FPGA to build the video game accessory that never was.
In this video Mike builds an automatic Etch A Sketch™ machine using stepper motors and 3D printed gears.
Typing a password by hand is so blase, so why not spice up your daily PC unlocking routine by creating an overly contrived password keeper? In the modern Fallout games, you find many a RobCo terminal lying about ready to reveal secrets from before the great war, but in order to gain access, you often need to “hack” the system. Let’s re-create our own mini terminal to emulate a keyboard and unlock a computer in “real life.”
For over 30 years, Hallmark has been creating limited-edition sets of popular culture-inspired holiday ornaments. Capitalizing on the popularity of video game nostalgia, they produced a miniature Donkey Kong arcade cabinet as part of the 2018 line. Featuring lights and sound from the game, it's a near-perfect homage to a bygone era designed by artist Orville Wilson. There's only one thing wrong with it: you can't actually play it. In this Very Special Christmas Episode, Matt declares war on the hapless ornament, tears it down to its shell, and rebuilds the interior with a Raspberry Pi, Adafruit OLED screen, and tiny control switches to create a one-of-a-kind PLAYABLE Christmas tree ornament!
Fleamarkets can hold a lot of junk but also treasures, Clem bought a 70's medical device which was used to examine the heartbeat of unborn children and hacks it into a retro style synthesizer. You can use your own heartbeat or even that of any person(born yet or not) to alter the sound of the device. It features a 10 Stage Sequencer and 5 different filters to create various sounds and rhythms.
Inspired by Five Nights at Freddy's, it is a jump scare game based on a security camera system emulator. The premise of the game is that a 9 year old boy sleep walks and it terrifies his father for some reason only to be understood at the end of the game. If his son wakes while sleepwalking, a jump scare will occur. To get the boy back to the bed, you turn on lights along the path back to his room from your PC or Tablet, but, you can't let him walk fully into any given light - or he'll wake up!! The game is set over 6 nights, each with progressively harder scenarios to navigate him through to get back to the bed. When the user hits Escape to pause the game, they then can hit the letter "m" on the keyboard to enable maker mode. This allows the game to talk to a Microcontroller that will control the real, physical world around you. For us, the microcontroller is the Arduino MKR1000.
Matt longs to relive the "glory days" of hobby computing, but he can't decide which direction he wants to go to fill the retrocomputer-shaped hole in his heart. After seeking some inspiration from his muse, William Shatner, he decides to go all the way back to the beginning of the microcomputer revolution by building a working replica of the O.G. personal computer: the MITS Altair 8800. In this Arduino-based build, he'll put his love for LEDs and toggle switches to the test during marathon soldering sessions getting all of the external functions of the Altair working accurately so he can play a few rounds of "Kill The Bit" on the front panel.
Rejoice, you filthy Earth monkeys, because Invader Zim is back! ...soon. If you’re hyped for the new T.V. movie: Enter the Florpus, join DJ as he ventures forth to build an animatronic version of Zim’s robot G.I.R. He might succeed. He might fail spectacularly. Either way, we’re all DOOOOMED! when Zim returns this spring.
It is hard to solder tiny components while filming it. To proved better footage for YOU the viewers, Clem builds a CNC controlled machine that allows him to solder without having to touch the workpiece or the soldering Iron himself. The Foundation for a fully automated soldering robot! Get the B.O.M on element14: http://bit.ly/2BdO2w0
Matt used to hold the high score for every light gun game at the local arcade, but he's a little out of practice since the switch to modern, flat-screen, high-definition displays. Longing for a new challenge, he decides to build a gesture-controlled variation of the classic NES Zapper that will work on modern screens through emulators such as RetroPie and MAME. It's a new take on retro hardware based around an LSM9DS1 and ATmega32u4 that not only breathes life into otherwise forgotten games, but also provides an entirely new hand-eye coordination challenge! Connect with Matt and get the B.O.M. on element14: http://bit.ly/2HATyi5
Buttons, switches, and voice commands are overrated. What if we could control electronics by playing music? Would this be practical? No. Would this be fun? Oh yeah. Join DJ on his journey to build a reverse music box that will only open once it detects the right melody. Connect with DJ and get the B.O.M. on element14: http://bit.ly/2CPbArc
One man's trash is a maker's treasure! Clem found a super8 camera in the trash and soon realized that the original analog films and the processing is crazy expensive nowadays. So he creates a replacement for the film cartridge that turns the super8 camera into a digital one! But that is easier said than done! Connect with Clem Mayer and get the B.O.M. on element14: http://bit.ly/2NklWEi
When the original Game Boy came out there were no smartphones and WiFi didn't exist, so wired multiplayer gaming was perfectly acceptable. But what if it were possible to add wireless capability to this classic handheld? Join us as we build what may be the world's first Game Boy wireless adapter. We'll also see how console games were programmed 30 years ago... in assembly language!
Dave is a big fan of freeform soldering styles and made a tiny skeleton handheld. As the wise Ben Heckendorn said years before, Dave too tells everyone to collect spare LED legs. "Don't throw them away, as they might come in handy one day!" - or they get stuck in your maglock sockets. Here we need them to connect an Attiny85 with some buttons and an I2C display.
Who let the smoke out? Clem had a custom PCB manufactured but tripped into a PCB desing Pittfall that released the magic smoke on the first testrun. Today he shares his # Tipps and Tricks to avoid common PCB design Pitfalls, to get your Proect on track as fast as possible! He uses KiCad to design his PCB but these tipps also apply to Autodesk Eagle or any electronics design software. The beautiful PCBs were made by Aisler.net in Germany, but even the best manufacturer can‘t fix errors you made ,while designing the boards. So make sure to avoid these Pitfalls on your next project!
The Xybernaut Mobile Assistant was one of the earliest attempts at wearable computers--way back in the 1990s! It was an interesting feat of engineering for the time, but technological limitations, a high price tag, and contemporary interface design conventions stood in the way of mainstream success. Matt ran across one of the later models--the MAIV--that was dead-on-arrival, but wanted to add it to his retro computer collection. So with very little documentation available (The Xybernaut corporation went bust in the early 2000s after several commercial flops and some financial chicanery), he tore it down to see what powered it and set about to rebuild it with modern components. Was the Xybernaut a viable platform in hindsight? Is Minesweeper playable on a 2" head-mounted display? Why didn't arm-mounted keyboards catch on? These and more questions will be answered in this week's element14 Presents!
Tired of touchscreens? Touch tone phones a bit too modern for your tastes? Join DJ today as he builds a DIY cell phone that incorporates the mechanism of a rotary phone from 1957. Using a minimum of components and a maximum of grit, follow along as he builds a device from an alternate timeline.
Have you ever wondered how digital synthesizers work? In today's video, Andy shows how to build one with just a handful of parts. He'll use a standard MIDI interface and line-level output for maximum compatibility, and an FPGA for maximum fun!
The PlayStation Classic is the latest in a line of retro-inspired "plug-and-play" consoles capitalizing on the nostalgia train led by the Nintendo NES and SNES Classics, but there's something about it that's just a little amiss. Matt attempts to fix the alleged shortcomings of the PlayStation Classic by converting it into a portable, handheld system so he can enjoy his nostalgia on the go! The task may be easier said than done, though, as he has to battle against southern California's Santa Ana Winds (and their requisite high-static environment), an ailing 3D printer, and the eccentricities of Sony's budget circuit board to assemble a proof-of-concept prototype that will either work flawlessly or just explode in his hands!
Apple watch, schmapple watch! Who wants a smartwatch that’s bloated with software that you don’t really need? Do you long for simple tech times when pagers were part of the daily gadget loadout? Do you have a need for the retro flair of calculator watches? Join DJ as he builds his own watch capable of sending and receiving text messages that has a design flair from the ’80s: Apple watch, schmapple watch! Who wants a smartwatch that’s bloated with software that you don’t really need? Do you long for simple tech times when pagers were part of the daily gadget loadout?
Clem scored a broken Steering Wheel for the PlayStation 1 (yes the first one) at a flea market. Thankfully it is broken so he decided to turn it into an RC transmitter for his old Remote controlled Car! Learn how to use the Arduino MKR Wifi 1010 to make your own Transmitter and Receiver from scratch! It even supports FPV head tracking!
Modern smart phones have become so ubiquitous these days that old analog phones are getting left in the dust. However, you may still have a few of these old phones hanging around your house collecting cobwebs or you may have seen some lingering on the shelves at your local thrift shop. Now’s your chance to put them to good use. In this video, Derek takes you back to a time when stretching a phone cord across the room was the norm by creating a 4-line telephone intercom system with basic ringing capability. The circuit surrounds a DTMF decoder IC which handles keypress detection, a simple AC inverter to handle the ringing and a current source which allows analog communication between multiple phones.
Let's build a device that uses the original Game Boy's hardware to play some fine chiptunes! Ever wondered what you can do with a mainboard when the display is broken? Do you also let the Tetris game run, just to listen to the music? Now there's another project that you can try! Join Dave as he connects a new display to the Game Boy with the help of an Arduino Nano via the Game Boy link port and puts everything in a nice package! Happy Birthday to the GAME BOY, 30 years and still going!
The Portal franchise is one of the most engaging puzzle games of the last decade and beyond the mind-bending physics, is also known for its charming A.I. antagonist: G.L.a.D.O.S.
Clem dreams of making his own Stopmotion movie, just like the claymation films he loved as a kid. But creating these kinds of movies is very difficult and tedious. So he builds a machine that makes it much easier, is controlled with his smartphone and even moves on its own to make the stunning Hollywood shots he dreams of!
To many, "retro handheld gaming" conjures images of the Nintendo Game Boy, Sega Game Gear, or even the Atari Lynx, but Matt wanted to take this retro gaming project all the way back to the dawn of an era--before 8-bit processors and dot matrix screens with stereo sound, back when writing words on an inverted calculator could entertain for hours! In the late 1970s, electronic gaming was all the rage. The Atari 2600 and Magnavox Odyssey had already invaded living rooms while Mattel and Coleco were taking their burgeoning electronic toys divisions and gearing up to enter the console market. The Intellivision and the Colecovision might have fizzled out by the early 1980s, but their legacy in gaming had already been written with blinking lights and buzzers.
Do you feel out of place? Does the modern era of technology fail to meet your tastes? Do you yearn to be a monocle-wearing, dirigible captain with a penchant for designing needlessly complicated contraptions? If so, you may want to strap in as we join DJ on his journey to build a steam-powered RetroPie game console. This build is sure to be classy and dangerous, so buckle up on.
In this episode we’re going to create a device that my dog Piper can use to let me know when she wants to go outside or if she wants water; So is born the BARKS-9 Interface. Upon pressing one of two foot-pedals, LED indicators to illuminate and a notification is played over some speakers, powered by a Raspberry Pi JustBoom audio amplifier.
As, most tinkerers, Clem is in search of alternative sources of energy! The Sun does not shine in his underground bunker, so he taps into a source of power that is abundant in every household - the dreaded tea-candle! Let's face it we all have them lying around and there is at least one family member who buys them all the time. So why not use this dormant "paraffinic batteries" for a project! Clem tests out various Peltier elements and rigs up a circuit to power a simple machine that is rightfully powered by a tea-candle!
We all know how the Raspberry Pi is a great little gem of a single-board computer--a "Jeep" of a board that can go nearly anywhere and does nearly anything--but how well does it work under these abusive conditions? Are the Raspberry Pi's advertised specs accurate? How well will the Raspberry Pi perform in "The Real World"? In this video, Matt puts the Raspberry Pi through a series of grueling tests designed to push it to its operational limits and see just how well it performs under pressure...and fire...and cold.
Johnny 4 wasn't very much alive until Dave put the robot's head on R8-D8s body. Johnny needed input - code that would help him to move around in his new body. Join Dave as he finally makes his robot fully functional, he adds a Matrix Voice shield to a Raspberry PI. With the help of snips.ai, which is an offline voice recognition software, he will control the robot with his voice.
Are you interested in the foldable future, but pining for the tech days of yore when phones flipped vertically and you always felt like James T. Kirk whipping out a communicator? Join us on this unwieldy DIY journey as DJ builds his next iteration of his Raspberry PiPhone that harkens back to the era of the flip phone. Is it a monstrosity or a masterpiece? You decide.
Ramen noodles, the staple food for students around the globe to keep them alive, while they spend all their money on project parts! Clem doesn't even want to waste that precious project building time by preparing a cup of noodles. So, he decides to build an automatic ramen noodle maker. A machine that cooks noodles, adds seasoning and hot sauce automatically. It's 2019 so he connects it to home network!
You're not gonna believe what Dave saw that one night. He never would have believed it, there was this whole, red woosh sound. It means something, driven by a melody he can't forget. He builds a midi controlled light board to visualize it. P.S: No kids were crying while Dave ate the mashed potatoes.
Matt is a fan of both aviation and historical engineering, so he has decided to bring those two worlds together in an attempt to recreate one of the most elusive designs in aeronautics: the ornithopter. The ornithopter is a flapping-wing flying machine that is fairly easy to build small models of, but--like most novel aircraft designs--becomes exponentially more unwieldy at larger scales. Granted, RC ornithopters DO exist, but they're very small and do not mimic the form of a human-carrying fuselage. Will Matt succeed at creating a larger-scaled ornithopter and revolutionize powered flight? Or will he return to his bench and the idiomatic drawing board? Either way, it's going to be an interesting ride!
Andy wants to program his robotic arm to write and draw, but it's missing some features like motor feedback and computer control. Will he be able to add the necessary modifications and make his own artistic automaton?
The hottest new model of Raspberry Pi has hit the shelves and in order to make the most of it, DJ has decided to make a laptop. With the power of 3D printing, CNC routing, and Linux, will this be a daily driver to outshine your current portable computer? Of course not, but will it be fun? Absolutely!
LED oscilloscopes can be cheap and fascinating tools to look at some curvy signals, but the resolution is so poor! When Dave decided to build an XY LED oscilloscope, he wanted to go bigger as well and solder up 400 10mm LEDs. With an XY oscilloscope, you can take a look at Lissajous figures and even watch oscilloscope music on it!
Matt enjoys working with retro computer and gaming platforms, so when a friend asked if he wanted to come to take an "old Commodore laptop" off his hands, he jumped at the chance! The machine had obviously seen its better days, but Matt would not be deterred from such an extreme restoration challenge! Will the SX-64 come back to life? Watch as Matt repairs and rebuilds a relative retro computing rarity, restoring it to its former glory so he can finally play Planet X2!
The new 2019 Mac pro looks like a cheese grater, no doubt. Earlier this year, a Maker exposed the fact that its design did not allow it to be effective for grating cheese, much to the disappointment of Clem! So he took it upon himself to build the world's first Mac Pro that actually grates cheese, and does it with power! The build started out with a Power Mac G5, the first iconic Mac to get dubbed a cheese grater! Clem develops his own motor control development Kit throughout the project and puts it to use in the iGrater /Cheese pro /mac'n'cheese:
To celebrate the launch of Borderlands 3, DJ has embarked on an epic, case-modding journey. Not only is he building a nearly full-scale Claptrap, but he’ll be shoving, er uh, gently placing a full-size gaming PC inside. Is bringing an animatronic Claptrap into a world a terrible idea sure to bring about chaos and despair? Maybe, but there’s no time to think about the consequences...let’s get building!
As makers and engineers, we frequently incorporate microcontrollers, single board computers, and external sensors into our projects. This often requires that we interface our digital circuitry to the analog world. But do you really know what’s going on under the hood of that ADC you’re using? In this video, I cover the basics of using an ADC and focus on the successive approximation register ADC. With that knowledge, we put together a DIY temperature probe using an analog temperature sensor, custom enclosure and a novel method of turning the unit on and off.
To celebrate the launch of Borderlands 3, DJ has embarked on an epic, case-modding journey. Not only is he building a nearly full-scale Claptrap, but he’ll be shoving, er uh, gently placing a full-size gaming PC inside. Is bringing an animatronic Claptrap into a world a terrible idea sure to bring about chaos and despair? Maybe, but there’s no time to think about the consequences... let’s get building!
Tiny resin based 3d printers is all the rage now. Size does matter sometimes and these printers' way of operation does not scale up well. Clem has an Idea to circumvent the technical limitations and breaks proving ground by building a giant 4k Resin 3d printer! Utilizing 2 Raspberry Pis (4 & 3B+) he sets out to probe that FEP foil can be replaced with a specialized liquid to make the LCD-masking technique viable for large format 3d printers!
When Iron Man came out, it certainly had an influence on the maker scene - definitely on Dave. He has decided to finally 3D print the files for a Mark 2/3 helmet found on the internet and upgrade the print with not one but two self-made head-up displays! He talks us through the problems he encountered setting up the displays to work and finally install the lenses and displays into the faceplate. Anyone can do lights and servos, but can your helmet tell you what direction you’re flying to and what your altitude is, based on a humidity sensor? Let’s find out if Dave can do it.
My wife works at home as a shipping manager and has to print several hundred shipping labels each day. The label printer she has just spilled them out onto the floor and then she has to roll them up by hand. I decided to jump in and overengineer a solution so she can get that 30-40 minutes back every day. Come have a look at my approach and see if you would do it the same way!
Here at Element 14 Presents, we don’t want to set the world on fire, we just want to start a flame in your heart, so today, DJ’s going to be making one of his favorite pieces of video game technology: a Pip-Boy from the fallout series. A pip-boy is a personal information processor, that is a wearable computer worn by the player that keeps track of stats, inventory, mapping, biometrics and lots of other things. It’s a smartwatch on steroids and it oozes that clunky retro-futuristic aesthetic found throughout the game world.
Finally, the BeagleBone® AI has been released and Clem is very excited to take it for a spin! He goes beyond his comfort zone and explores PRU (programmable real-time units), OpenCV (Image recognition) and much more on his journey to build an animatronic Terminator inspired skull. It even cites badly impersonated Arnold Schwarzenegger quotes when it detects a human face. This might not be the beginning of Skynet, but it may lead you to build your own AI-powered projects!
Remember Matt's replica Altair 8800 build from a while back? It should come as no surprise that he's a fan of the retro electronics (see also: Project Hawthorne, Project Essex, and Project Pripyat), but due to lack of space, he keeps mainly portables and smaller form factor devices. Even at a reduced size, the Altair replica didn't sit quite right because it still required a full-sized terminal to function properly. So, in this project, Matt converts the desktop Altair into a self-contained laptop replete with emulated green phosphor screen, toggles, and glorious blinkenlights all in a handsome aluminum case that would not have been out of place during the disco era!
One of the great joys of being able to design with electronics is the ability to make your own custom tools. DJ recently picked up a CNC router and in order to make his life a wee bit easier, he’s designed and built a pendant that will allow him to more comfortably, and accurately set up his parts in the machine. Follow along as he tinkers his way to a new gadget that, hopefully, will be of use or inspiration for fellow makers and CNC enthusiasts.
Who doesn't love portable computers from the '80s? Too bulky to call them a laptop yet, but much more luggable than other computers from that era. Of course, the easiest way to get a box started is with aluminum extrusions, some laser cut mounts for a Raspberry PI 4, and a mechanical keyboard to get you almost done with the basics! Dave has never built a "daily driver" Raspberry PI build where the SD card doesn't get reformatted with the next use of the Raspberry Pi.
Design and build of a Rasbperry PI based Calendar, ToDo and Weather display on an e-ink screen. The case is made of all 3d printed parts and is able to be set on a desktop, or hung upside down from a shelf. All code written in python and pulls data from Open Weather Map for weather, Google Calendar for the calendar items and Todoist for ToDo items.
In 2016 Clem built a very annoying synthesizer in the form of a wristwatch. After showing it around at various Maker Faires it broke, so he decided to rebuild it better louder and more annoying than ever before! It is user-programmable thanks to the Arduino MKR and a haptic interface with satisfying sliders!
You may know Karen from The Learning Circuit. Now you can find her making projects on Element14 Presents! In this episode, Karen creates an electronic escape room puzzle. Escape rooms have been increasing in popularity in recent years. Go into a room with one hour to solve all of the puzzles, find all of the keys, open all the doors, and ESCAPE! You often have to find specific objects and solve a riddle, placing the objects in a certain spot in a certain way to solve the puzzle. Karen creates a puzzle where you have to choose the correct 3 stuffed animals and place them correctly on the stand in order to open the box. Watch to see how Karen does it and find out how her first project turns out!
Although we mostly rely on smartphones to take photos, portable Photo Booths are a convenient alternative at events like parties and weddings. Building one from scratch in 2019 is easier than ever, particularly using a Raspberry Pi board and camera, along with a Touchscreen Display. In this video, we go over the steps on how to assemble the hardware and setup the software to run a Pi-powered Photo Booth for taking selfies with your besties at the next gathering!
A child of the hyper-consumerist 80s and 90s, Matt grew up on a steady diet of sugared cereal and UHF television. As such, his sense of nostalgia is driven as much by advertising trends of the era as it is by music or other sociological elements. This leads to an interesting relationship with the winter holiday season, where seasonally-themed television commercials hold as high a place in tradition as any carol, tree, or gift exchange. To celebrate this odd bit of seasonal nostalgia, Matt builds a retro-television-themed ornament from a Raspberry Pi that plays those magical commercials from his youth and is powered by a strand of holiday fairy lights!
Everybody loves a 16-bit retro gaming handheld, but that hardly justifies possibly wrecking an old original console for it. Clem encounters a random fake clone console in his storage and has nothing to lose for ripping apart a device that should not exist in the first place. By reverse-engineering the pinout, and fabricating a slick case, he builds a slick retro handheld that plays and feels much better than the clone console before the conversion! Thus, possibly saving a lot of old consoles while removing knockoffs from the market!
What would virtual reality be like if flat panel display technology were never invented? In this project, Andy uses a pair of CRTs and the Raspberry Pi 4 to build a VR headset with stereoscopic 3D, 3DOF head tracking, and custom, browser-based software. It may not be practical but it's definitely unique and guaranteed to have no screen door effect.
Ever have someone barge in on you while you are recording? Well, I have a solution for that! In this episode, we are going to build a DIY wireless Recording light that mounts outside your studio and you can trigger it from the remote at your desk. Utilizing Particle Mesh technology, this device can be expanded to trigger other devices such as your camera, or audio recording device.
Join Derek as he uses a Rubens Tube to demonstrates diode clamping and PWM Sine Wave Generation.
Clem likes to hear Podcasts and Music while working on element14presents videos but he’s not keen on using headphones and does not want to pump the volume to max to hear his speakers across the room. So he turns the ceiling of his workshop into a giant speaker, by building Studio panels. These Panels also reduce room noise for better audio recordings and by adding small LED lights act as soft lightboxes for filming. Dragging around big lights with softboxes is not needed anymore for a lot of shots and the right background music helps keep the groove. All in the name of better, faster project videos! Praise the everlasting Din5_180 Connector for its versatility! You can find more details on the build here: http://bit.ly/3aVZI6S
Frequent thrift shopper, Karen, digs into her to-be-hacked pile and pulls out a plastic sword that has an uncanny resemblance to a piece of the Guts AgroCrag (shout out to the 90s kids in the room!). In this project, Karen uses a BBC micro: bit to level up this toy by adding motion-activated light and sound effects: http://bit.ly/2SrXqEj
As we know, Matt is a sucker for retro novelties and amusement devices, so for Valentine's Day, he wanted to pay homage to the early days of the arcade with a "love tester" device. This Arduino-powered novelty determines a couple's attraction to each other by measuring the electrodermal activity between them and presenting a readout that borrows design cues from the legendary Nintendo Love Tester as well as so many blinkenlight-and-bronze-bedecked wooden cabinets dating back to the heyday of the penny arcade: http://bit.ly/2w4eybx
Everybody likes a new toy, for Clem that means new microcontrollers and sensors! Infineon has a new range of powerful Arduino compatible 32-bit ARM cortex boards and motor driver shields, as well as, sensors! So Clem ventures out to explore them and build a compact demo unit that demonstrates the use of edge devices with 3D magnetic Sensors. It could save a lot of energy in tomorrow's smart cities in the world! http://bit.ly/39QR8oJ
I love the Volumio music player software for the Raspberry PI, but I am tired of digging through my pockets for my phone to change the volume or pause a song. In this episode, we are going to fix that by adding a bunch of buttons and knobs in addition to a touchscreen display to control Volumio 100% from hardware and without the need for a web browser or app! http://bit.ly/3cgezKj
In this video, Derek takes a Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, inertial measurement unit, CCD camera, and a beefed-up pan & tilt mechanism to create an automated planet tracker. Everything is orchestrated via a custom arcade-style controller centered around a Raspberry Pi running C++/OpenCV code to run the UI and control positioning: http://bit.ly/2vGQ6xb
Clems Video production is a one-man-show. He has to switch back and forth between being the subject and the cameraman. Constantly moving around the workshop for every single little correction is very tedious. Why not upgrade any common DSLR with a remotely controlled Zoom/Focus? Commercially available motorized zooms and focus pulling devices are very expensive, so Clem develops his own cheap and flexible solution and finds out if is it worth building this sort of camera equipment yourself. What kind of expensive equipment should he try to recreate next? http://bit.ly/335ahRI
Who doesn't love robots? In this episode, I build a hardware kit and program the software to drive a small, wheeled, non-autonomous robot. The hardware is based around a Raspberry Pi 4 and a Motor HAT used to drive a couple of DC motors. The software is based on Python, using the Flask module to run a web server, the socket io module for sending and receiving commands, and HTML and JavaScript to build a simple Graphical User Interface (GUI) for driving the rover: http://bit.ly/2Wod0EB
Clem reads all your comments on the element14 Community. A lot of people want to save money by shrinking their Arduino projects down to the bare microcontroller! So Clem builds a mechanical arcade-style game by prototyping it on a classic #Arduino Uno and migrating it to a standalone ATmega328P with internal 8Mhz clock, to show you the absolute minimum configuration needed to get your project running on custom hardware! https://bit.ly/2wDW16F
Promotion video Join master hacker, engineer, and tech hobbyist Ben Heck as he tackles new and fun interesting projects each week. Whether he's combining a PS3, Wii U, and Xbox into one mega video game system or building his own pinball machine, Ben shows you step by step how you can take on all kinds of electronic projects. Ben also shares useful tips and answers your questions about 3D printing, microcontrollers, circuitry, modeling, design, and much more. What should Ben build next? Let us know!
Ben gives an update on the results of the TI Plant Booster after three weeks. See how the plant is doing against a control plant, a plant using natural light, and a plant using the light compensator.
Ben Heck's Lunch Box Dev Kit is a portable, plug-and-play hardware development enclosure suitable for diagnosing problems on the go and swapping over between kits. It includes a screen, a keyboard, mouse, and a few power options in one convenient package. It was made using a modified Motorola Atrix phone dock and with various 3D printing tools at their disposal. You can lug your Ben Heck Lunch Box to trade shows or anywhere else you need access to an LCD screen and keyboard to plug-and-play dev boards! The design is inspired by the first portable computers which were commonly known as "Lunchbox" or "Luggable" Computers.
Karen makes a simple circuit. This project covers open and closed circuits, switches, incandescent vs LED lighting, and what to check for if it doesn't work.
Felix discusses compositing managers for Linux.=He shows you how to login to the virtual console, how to instantiate instantiate the windows manager, and then follow up with starting just the desktop environment, and then just a single application:
Karen demonstrates the difference between parallel and series circuits by adding additional voltage and another bulb to a simple circuit.
Felix covers the elements of the desktop environment, focusing on windows display managers and display managers. He shares his thoughts on GNOME, Plasma the newest incarnation of the KDE environment, and MATE for fans of classic GNOME.
Karen shows you some projects that you can do with your kids or if you are around someone else's kids. Wigglebots, are so much fun, you can even do them yourself if no kids are available.
In this segment, Felix is going to introduce you to The Linux Manual. The man page is a form of software documentation that is found on Unix or Unix-like operating system. The manual pages provide a text description of every command available on your system including what they do, how to run them, and what command line arguments they accept. Keep in mind, the manual page has to actually be written and installed on the machine in order to view it.
Felix goes over some of the mechanisms used for account management. He shows you how to create accounts, modify accounts, and remove accounts.
By applying the concept of series and parallel circuits, Karen shows you how to combine a pair of resistors, using Ohms law to calculate the resistance needed to supply the proper voltage to a diode. Karen illustrates Ohm’s Law by making a simple circuit on a breadboard. To do this she uses two sources of power: a 2- AA battery pack that supplies 3 Volts and a 4 - AA battery pack that supplies 6 Volts to create a circuit that powers a red LED. Karen supplies 6 volts to the LED and demonstrates how it’s not a good voltage for it. If you want to use a 6 volt battery pack but don’t want to damage or burn out your LEDs you’ll need to add resistors to your circuit. In order to figure out how, you need to look at Ohm’s law. Ohm’s Law describes the relationship between voltage current and resistance. You use V for voltage (measured in VOLTS), I for current (measured in AMPS), and R for resistance, measured in OHMS). Current is measured in AMPS, named for a French mathematician Andre-Marie Ampere, the I originates from the French phrase for current intensity, intensite de courant. While current intensity has been shortened to just current, it is still represented by I for intensity. To make things easier to understand, Karen compares relationship between voltage, current, and resistance to water flowing through a pipe. Using this analogy, voltage is like water pressure, pushing the electricity through the circuit. Current is the amount of water flowing through the pipe. Resistance is the size of the pipe, which determines how much the flow is restricted. If the pressure (the voltage) stays the same and the resistance increases, making it more difficult for the water to flow, then the flow rate (or the current) must decrease. According to Ohm’s law, you need three variables: voltage, resistance, and current. To solve for resistance, you’ll need to find the voltage and current. The red LED is rated for 2.1 volts and 20 milliamps. In order to make
Karen goes over wires and wire tools, and gives advice on selecting the right hand tools to get you started making circuits. Wire is the artery through which electricity flows. Karen goes over wires and wire tools, and gives advice on selecting the right hand tools to get you started making circuits. Wire is the artery through which electricity flows. Wires come in two types, stranded and solid. If your application requires flexibility, such as in a robotic arm, stranded wire is ideal when the wire needs to be moved frequently. If little or no movement is required, such as when you are prototyping circuits on a breadboard, solid wire is easier to push through. Solid wire consists of a single strand or core of wire, insulated with non-conductive material. Its cheaper to manufacture and provides mechanical ruggedness, due to less surface area to be exposed to corrosives or environment. A stranded wire tends to be a better conductor than solid wire as the individual wires comprise a greater surface area. It’s good for connection between circuit boards where rigidity could cause stress due to movement. Electrical wire typically has an insulative cover that has to be removed to access the conductive metal inside. Conductors are materials characterized by their low opposition to electrical flow. Conductive means that electricity can flow through like with metals. Insulators are known for their capacity to stop the flow of current. Electrons flowing through a conductor or wire tend to generate heat. Thicker wires handle the heat better than thinner wires. Thinner wires can even burn up if too much electricity flows through them. Rubbers and plastics used as insulative materials. Karen goes over different examples of needle-nose pliers. For doing electronics work, small and narrow pliers work best. They allow you to get into tight spots in circuits and they make it easier to manipulate parts and wire. If using very small components, such as sur
Felix shows you how to see what groups are on your system, how to add new groups, how to add users to those groups, and more.
Ben joins Karen to discuss soldering. Soldering is used in electronics to m The main soldering tools you have as options are your soldering pencils and soldering stations. If you’re just getting started soldering or if you’re on a budget, you can start with a cheap handheld soldering iron. Ben cautions going to cheap on a soldering iron. They start at around 15 watts and go up to 80 watts which is bigger than you’d want to use for electronics. According to Ben, 20 to 40 watts is probably the sweet spot. Wattage refers to the current it draws, which lets you know how much power it has in order to melt solder. The higher the wattage, the more solder it can melt or the faster it will melt it. One thing you need to check for is that the plug for your soldering iron has a ground pin. If a device has exposed metal then it’s good for it to have a grounded plug because that allows static to discharge into the earth instead of building up on your tool. Reasons you’d want to get a soldering pencil is that they are cheaper, they are easier to store, and they come with a stand which you want to be sure to use. You don’t want to set a soldering pencil on the table. Some of the drawbacks include the fact that they don’t have a variable temperature control. Ben and Karen take a look at three different models of soldering stations. If you’re using a soldering station, you always have a place to store your soldering iron, and many of them come with a place to put a sponge or a brass pad. Each station has some sort of temperature control, how fine that is will depend on the model. The 21-7945 Tenma Soldering Station uses knob control that goes from yellow up to red, so you don’t get the exact temperature. The 21-10115 Tenma Soldering Station has a digital display. Karen likes it because it gives you three preset temperatures but also allows you to fine-tuning of the temperature. Ben notices that it has a transformer in it. This is good because
Felix shows you how to install retropie through terminal and how to drive a TFT screen with the GPIO of a Raspberry Pi.
Ben returns to the learning circuit to demonstrate his soldering technique to Karen. He'll start by soldering a circuit onto a breadboard that turns on an LED light. He then moves the same circuit over to a perfboard
In this segment, Felix continues working on the Raspberry Pi No HDMI build. Previously, he showed you how to drive a TFT screen directly with the GPIO. Now he's going to reconfigure the Linux kernel and enable the GPIO keyboard matrix module.
Karen breaks down the science of how electricity. She’ll go over Coulomb’s law, use magnets to help visualize how polarity works, and break down how polarity works on an atomic level in an electrical circuit. We use electricity everyday in our homes. Devices plugged into the wall are powered by AC electricity. Handheld devices like our smart phones are powered by DC electricity. Electricity for our devices comes from outlets in our walls and from batteries but how does that work? How does electricity get from one point to another? To explain how electricity works, Karen starts with the most basic parts. Everything, all matter, is made up of atoms. Atoms are made up of particles consisting of protons and neutrons in the core, surrounded by electrons. In an atom, protons are positively charged, while electronics are equally negatively charged. Atoms normally contain the same number of protons and electrons. If this is the case, these atoms are electrically neutral, having no charge. However, this can be changed. An atom can gain or lose an electron by passing it to or from another atom. This causes an atom to become an ion, meaning it has extra or is missing electrons. If an ion has extra electrons it is negatively charged, while an ion with missing electrons is positively charged. Charged ions exert force on each other.
Felix unboxes the Pi-Top. Included are guide booklets, an inventor’s kit, a Raspberry Pi (optional), a box of accessories, and the power supply. There’s also a Pi Top pulse accessory which has also been included. The Pi-top is marketed as a kit for kids to learn about computing. Felix goes into the box of accessories and finds s buttons, potentiometers, jumper cables, and a breakout board. Felix compares the Pi-top with its previous iteration. He takes out the cooling bridge. It’s a heatsink but it also ports over the GPIO to a header located on the hub. He shows you how to plug the Raspberry Pi into the hub. It’s going to supply power, and give you HDMI. It also connects to the cooling bridge and the breakout board. Now that he’s shown you how easy it is to put together, he’s ready to take it apart. He starts with the hub and then precedes to voids the warranty by removing the ribbon cable and prying off the rails. After snapping off the parts, he admires the included battery bank. Next, he takes apart the screen. The screen pops out after he loosens the ribbon cable. Some of the parts that he finds included in the hub are the ATtiny 88, a multiplexer demultiplexer for the GPIO, and for video there is an HDMI to embedded Display Port converter. For the battery there is a lithium-ion battery integrated circuit and a gas gauge. Felix admires the battery pack. On the Pi-top proto plus, Felix discovers an ATtiny 20.
In a previous segment, Karen showed you how to make a simple circuit using an LED. Now, she’s going to apply that to a fun project by showing you how to make an edge lit sign. To make an edge lit sign you add scratches to a piece of acrylic. Those scratches will interrupt a beam of light from an LED and show your design Karen is using acrylic that is 0.1 inches thick. You could also use 1/8 inch or a similar thickness. You don’t want to go to thin, because then it might break. You don’t want to go too thick because it’ll be difficult to deal with. When deciding the size of your acrylic, you want to stick around two to three inches in either rectangular or square. If you go too big, the light of your LED won’t reach your design, and it won’t light up very well. For this particular application, if you’re only using one LED, then you want a smaller design. When drawing your design, you want to make sure that your lines are not going to be too thin because there will not be enough mass to catch the light significantly to really show off your design. When you make your design you want to make sure that you’re using nice, bold lines. Karen draws extra lines within the border of the acrylic. This is because when it’s done, she’s going to be putting aluminum tape around the edges, and this is to make sure that the design isn’t covered up later. When her design is done, she tapes the acrylic down so that it doesn’t shift, and so she can get good alignment between the acrylic and her design. Next, you’re going to want to etch your design. You can use an exacto blade or any kind of hobby knife that has a sharp pointy end. She suggests using electric etchers if you have a child doing this. For her example, she etched in a few different techniques so she could show you the differences of direction of scratch and how it affects your design when you place your LED. She goes over some of her different etching techniques. She suggests d
The pi-top OS is great for learning to code using Python, discover Scratch, or to have fun while interacting with electronics. It also comes with some really great kits. In this segment, Felix boots into the Pi-top OS and goes through initial setup. After selecting his preferences he goes over the tour of the desktop. He also introduces you to the pi-topCODER, a learning tutorial on how to interface with the GPIO using Python. Felix opens up the terminal to learn more about the OS. The pi-top runs a modified version of Raspbian called Polaris. The Polaris OS is basically the same as Raspbian except that it’s been modified to accommodate the additional hardware and include the pi-top dashboard. You can get anything you want from the dashboard through the menus. Felix goes over the programming menu option which supports several coding environments for Python, Java, Scratch, and Sonic Pi. He walks through some of the other menu options such as what’s included with Office, Games, and Settings. He returns to the desktop and demonstrates how you would use the built in pi-top coder to create a circuit using a breadboard.
Circuit Blocks are a great DIY beginners electronics project, more robust and durable than a simple circuit using cardboard and paper clips. It involves more complex components giving you more opportunities for fun and learning while experimenting. This is a great, DIY Beginner electronics project good for elementary school levels and up. I’ve even had Pre-K children use these, but most of them still needed a little help. For our circuit blocks, we’re going to include three main types of components: power sources, loads, and interrupts. The power sources we’ll use will be batteries, which provide DC power or direct current power, meaning a current that flows in one direction. I recommend 2AA 3V battery packs, and maybe a 4AA 6V battery pack. You could even use a 9V battery and clip if you’d like. You’ll need to be careful with more than 3V, but I’ll explain why later. The load in a circuit is anything that consumes power. We’ll be using LEDs, motors, buzzers, and fans. You can also use incandescent lights from either strand holiday lights or buying sockets that hold bulbs. Ideally you’ll want components that are rated for around 3V and for DC power. For motors and fans, they may be rated for more power, but try to get as low as you can near 3V. These motors and fans can handle more power, but will still work at 3V. Most LEDs are rated for 1.5-3V DC. Be careful with the LEDs. If they are fed too many volts, they’ll burn out and stop working. While that’s true for most components, LEDs tend to be less tolerant to voltages above their rating. We’ll also make blocks with interrupts, like buttons, switches, and potentiometers.
Felix reviews the connections between the Raspberry Pi, the TFT adapter, and the button matrix for the Raspberry Pi No HDMI projects. Felix revisits the Raspberry Pi no HDMI project. There were quite a few questions on the community regarding the GPIO connections between the Raspberry Pi and the TFT along with the button matrix. The github repository for this project includes the bill of material, data sheets, enclosure, OS setup, and schematics. In there you can find the GPIO set up, along with a spreadsheet for the GPIO connections, under the OS set up. A good reference for this can be found at www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/dpi/README.md. There you can find a chart that shows the different modes that can output the display through the GPIO. They are using the 565 configuration for the TFT display. It opens up GPIO 27 to 20 for the button matrix. The connections they go with for the TFT screen are GPIO 27, 22, 26, 23, 24, 25, 20, and 21. Finally, Felix shows you where to look for the connections on the Raspberry Pi itself.
Felix takes a look at a security vulnerability that he opened up allowing remote login over SSH as root. He closes up the security vulnerability and shows another way to access files over the network in a more secure manner.
Karen walks you through the Spaceship Interface project which is included in the Arduino Starter Kit book. For this project you’ll need an Arduino Uno the USB cable to plug into your computer, breadboard, jumpers, a tact switch, two red and one LEDs, three 220 ohm resistors for the LEDs, and one 10 kiloohm resistor. The code you’ll need to do this project is included in the Arduino Starter Kit book. The Arduino Starter Kit book includes circuit diagrams and code which is referred to as sketches. A sketch includes a set of functions followed by curly brackets, such as void setup () and void loop (). Anything you put in the curly brackets is the code that is executed when the function is called. Sometimes you will need to create what are known as variables for your code. A variable are items that you want your code to remember so that you can reference them later. One good thing about variables is that if you use the same variable throughout your code and need to adjust the value of the variable, you only need to set the variable to another value at the top of the code. Karen shows you how to set an integer as a variable for the project. After defining the variable, Karen moves along to the setup code. The setup is where we configure the pins so that the Arduino knows what’s an input, what’s an output, and which pins we’re using. In her code the 3 LED are designated as outputs, for pinMode, and the button is designated as an input for pinMode.
Since 2011 this channel has been your one stop shop for amazing builds, exclusive mods and cutting edge ideas. And element14 has no intention of that stopping. Stay tuned because we'll be continuing to deliver fresh videos every Wednesday and Friday specially made for you by a new team of talented electronics enthusiasts.
Felix goes over some basic and essential security configurations for the Raspberry Pi. Modifying the security settings of the Raspberry Pi will allow you to connect to the network more securely. Felix goes over modifying the sudoers file. This file manages how sudo is invoked and what groups or accounts are bestowed with the privileges of sudo. A secure practice is to require an account with sudo privileges to supply a password when calling any program with sudo. Some system administrators like to require anyone logged into the account to also know the root password. The only thing Felix is requiring is for the person to know the passphrase for the account in the sudo group. He also shows you how to create a new key pair. A key pair consists of a public and a private key. He starts by issuing a key gen instruction via SSH. He then shows you how to install and setup fail2ban. Fail2ban is a service that can track failed attemps to the SSH port and if an IP address fails repeatedly, the IP address can be blocked for a period of time, or indefinitely. In the comments below let us know if there is anything related to security that you would like us to go into more detail about.
Switches are used every day to control electronics and electrical devices. They can be used to turn devices on or off, as well as, to send signals. Karen demystifies a variety of switches including push button switches, slide switches, dip switches, rocker switches, toggle switches, rotary switches, and snap action.
Felix gives a basic introduction to 3D design in a Linux environment using a tool called FreeCAD. FreeCAD is a multi-platform parametric 3D modeling program that supports many 3D formats.
Karen works on a Wire Maze game. Move a loop from one end of the maze to another without letting them touch. If they touch, you lose. There’s a second switch for selecting the mode you want. ,She uses a SPDT switch that is On-Off-On so you can select either setting, but still turn the game off. To make the circuit she puts the wire loop and maze after the battery pack, but before the mode switch. After the mode switch, the LEDs and the speaker are in their own circuit, each connected to one of the terminals on the switch.
Felix does something different and focuses on hardware. He field strips the Raspberry Pi A+ by removing the GPIO, USB port, MIPI camera interface (CSI) connector, HDMI, and composite video, leaving the power and SD slot in place.
DaftMike builds a thermometer using an Arduino and a thermistor. He’ll write some Arduino code, build a circuit, and then convert the values into a temperature reading. He’ll use an NTC thermistor as a sensor, a breadboard, wire, and a 100K resistor. He’ll use an Arduino Micro because it plugs directly into the breadboard but you can use any Arduino you like for this. He uses wire to connect 5 volts to the top power rail and ground to the bottom power rail. There are usually multiple ground pins (marked ‘GND’). You can connect to any of these. He connects the thermistor to 5V and in the same column he connects the resistor to ground. It doesn’t matter which way around these components go, they work either way. Finally, you connect midpoint to analog pin p0. You can now write some code. He names the thermistor pin and sets up an array to store a bunch of readings so that you can take an average to sort out the data. He uses a line to set up the serial monitor. In the main code he declares the output as a float and then uses a for loop to calculate the average. A thermistor reading is stored in the array, added to a running total, and then delayed for a while to give the ADC a chance to settle before it runs through the loop again. ADC stands for analog to digital convertor. It converts voltage on the analog pin into a discrete signal. Outside that loop, the code divides the running total by the number of readings to get an average. You can then print it to the terminal. DaftMike gives a diagram of the circuit. It’s a voltage divider where R1 is the thermistor and R2 is 100K. The equation for voltage dividers is Vout = Vin *R2/(R1+R2). Vout is what we measured in the code, Vin is 5 volts, R2 is 100K, and R1 is what we are solving for.
Ben introduces DaftMike, one of the new hosts of element14 Presents.
Ben Heck introduces Clem Mayer, one of the new hosts of element14 presents. Got a question for Clem?
In this episode of sudo Sergeant, Felix takes a look back at past episodes of sudo Sergeant and answers community member’s questions from the comments section.
DaftMike built a thermometer using an Arduino and a thermistor. He expands on this to show you how to build a temperature controlled fan for your desk. It monitors the room temperature to see if it gets too hot. When it's too hot, an Arduino turns on a fan that cools you off! DaftMike goes over the code from last time. It reads a thermistor and prints the temperature to the serial monitor. He moves all the equations he wrote earlier into four separate functions. A function is like its own little program. In Arduino code there is always a setup and a loop function. The setup is at the start and only runs once. The loop comes after that and repeats continuously. Taking the equations from last time, he re-writes them so that they each have their own separate function. The main loop uses these functions to execute the code. Structuring your program this way makes it easier for you to reuse parts of your code. For example, if you wanted to add another temperature sensor then all you would need to do is call these functions again and pass them a different value. It saves you time as well as some program memory. For it to work, he’ll need to add a couple more functions. One for turning the fan on and one for turning the fan off. He’ll also need to set up the built-in LED as an output to stand in for the fan during testing. When that is done, he tests the code. After testing the code, he notice that when the temperature gets close to the trigger point it flashes. This is not what he wants. The way to fix this is to add what’s called hysteresis. Hysteresis is the dependence of the state of a system on its history. It’s when the output of your system, in this case the fan or the LED for now, lags behind the state of your input, which in this case is the room temperature. Returning to the code, instead of a single trigger point, he’s set some thresholds to check. There’s a high threshold and a low threshold. As long as one number is lower
Karen explains what resistors are, how resistors are represented on a schematic, various types of resistors, and the characteristics of those resistors. She’ll go over carbon composite resistors, thin film resistors such as carbon, metal, and metal oxide film; thick film or cermet resistors; wire round resistors; variable resistors such as thermistors, potentiometers, and photo or LDR resistors; SMD resistors; trimmer pots; and more. According to Ohm’s Law, in every circuit there is a balance between voltage, current, and resistance. Most electrical components require a certain voltage and current to function properly. By adding resistors, you can control the voltage and current in various parts of a circuit. Resistance in an electrical circuit is when a material prevents some or all of the electrical current from flowing through it, converting that restricted energy into heat. Every material has some resistance. In resistors, this principle is used to create a controlled amount of resistance that can be used to regulate circuits. Resistors can be made of a variety of materials. Carbon composite resistors are made by combining a conductive material, usually finely ground carbon or graphite, with a non-conducting material like ceramic. Once widely used, they have mostly been replaced by more efficient and precise resistor types. While cheap to produce, their lack of use means they are often more expensive. Carbon film, metal film, and metal oxide film are examples of thin film resistors. Thin film resistors are generally made by depositing a conductive material onto an insulating ceramic rod or substrate. A laser trimmed pattern is cut into the film in order to increase its conductive or resistive path. The resistance value is controlled by varying the thickness of the film. Thin film resistors are the most common type of through-hole resistors. Surface mount resistors are created using the same method as thin film resistor. Surface mount resistor
Ben Heck introduces Matt Eargle, one of the new hosts of element14 presents.
Felix gives an overview of the schematics used for the Pocket Bagle bela.io Drum Sequencer using KiCad. He'll also let you know what he likes about using KiCad circuit design software, how to work off of a Pocket Beagle template for your design, and what you need to know to get started. There are six different schematic sheets for this build. There are schematics for the Bela PocketBeagle Connections, the 3 Digit 7 segment Display, the LED matrix, the Button Matrix, the Power and Motor Driver, and the Analog and Amplifier.
Solder fumes can be harmful to your health. Luckily, Karen has a solution. Build a desktop fan that keeps solder fumes away. You can salvage any old fan, as long as it’s DC, for this to work. To build this circuit, you’ll also need a nine volt battery or a twelve volt power supply, a power switch, an LED, and a resistor. You’ll need the resistor to power the LED, which means you’ll need to know the resistance value. Karen goes over calculating the resistance value to use either the 9 volt or the 12 volt power supply. To build this circuit, you’ll also need a nine volt battery or a twelve volt power supply, a power switch, an LED, and a resistor. You’ll need the resistor to power the LED, which means you’ll need to know the resistance value. Karen goes over calculating the resistance value to use either the 9 volt or the 12 volt power supply. To build this circuit, you’ll also need a nine volt battery or a twelve volt power supply, a power switch, an LED, and a resistor. You’ll need the resistor to power the LED, which means you’ll need to know the resistance value. Karen goes over calculating the resistance value to use either the 9 volt or the 12 volt power supply. The resistor will go in line with the LED. Since this fan is rated for a voltage equal to or higher than the supply voltage, I don’t need to add any more resistance. I also want to be able to control the speed of my fan. This would normally be done using a 555 timer or another chip using PWM. To keep the circuit simple, we’re going to use just a potentiometer instead. It’s not the most efficient way to build this circuit, but it works. Potentiometers are variable resistors. If put in line between the battery and the fan, by adjusting the resistance, we also adjust the amount of voltage supplied to the fan, making it go slower or faster. If we put the LED indicator in series with the motor and potentiometer, it would also be supplied a varying voltage, which would ca
Felix walks you through the steps for installing Arch Linux through terminal. He’ll show you where to download the installer from archlinux.org, how to mount the Arch Linux installer to a USB, how to configure the bios to boot into the USB, and goes through the rest of the install process. Once installed, you’ll be able to login and customize the OS through the GUI.
We take a look at two different types of monochrome LCD and hook them up to an Arduino. LCDs are useful for when you need to display some information, and with plenty of existing code to help us out, they can be added to almost any Arduino project.
Ben Heck introduces James Lewis, aka Bald Engineer, one of the new voices of element14 presents.
In this episode of The Learning Circuit, we add an LCD to an earlier Arduino project. We also look at how to do state change detection and reading the position of a potentiometer.
In this episode, we learn how to read resistor coders to learn the values of resistors. You’ll also learn how to differentiate through-hole resistors and surface mount resistors, as well as, determine the values of four band and five band resistors. There are through-hole resistors and surface mount resistors. Through-hole resistors have color bands on them. Resistors use a color coding system to indicate their value as well as their tolerance. Tolerance is the accuracy or margin of error of the resistor rating. This can Range anywhere from a fraction of a percent up to 20 percent. You can use the color coded resistor chart below to determine the digit multiplier or the tolerance that the color band represents. Resistors with a single black band are zero ohm resistors. Since they have the same packages as other resistors they can easily be placed on a PCB by automated machines. They’re often used as wire simply to connect traces. Karen shows you how to figure the values of some four and five band resistors.
Solder along with Karen as she shows you how to review resistor codes using a substitution box. The kit is useful for prototyping resistors. Once assembled, it can be used on an array of resistors, ranging from 10ohms to 1 mega ohm. The kit includes the knobs to switch from ohm to kilo ohm, a PCB, a bag of resistors, and the parts for the enclosure. It also includes a manual that gives you the placement of the resistors on the PCB, its value, and its color code. Karen is going to show you how to figure these out manually.
We’ve all been there before. A corrupted hard drive that doesn’t allow you boot in. Felix shows you how he repaired his corrupted disk drive in a Linux environment. He’ll show you can do this by plugging it into a different machine, and taking advantage of Terminal to repair the system file on it.
Karen goes over how diodes work and shows you what happens when you hook it up to a power supply in a circuit. Diodes have two axial leads coming out of both ends with a stripe in the middle to indicate which end is the cathode, or the negative end. A diode is an electrical component that allows current to flow in one direction but not the other. Diodes are made with a semiconductor material, mostly silicon but sometimes other materials such as germanium, selenium, or gallium arsenide. Semiconductors typically have four valence electrons in their outer shell. Silicon, being a semiconductor, also has four outer valence electrons. This outer shell can hold up to eight electrons. Electrons are most stable when their outer valence shell has eight electrons, a rule known as the octet rule. Each silicon atom shares an electron to its neighboring silicon atom in order to satisfy the octet rule. When silicon atoms form covalent bonds they crystallize into a very strong structure known as a crystal or a lattice. In the P-type region silicon is doped with boron or gallium. Boron and Silicon have only three outer electrons. When mixed to a silicon lattice, they form “holes” in the crystal structure electron has nothing to bond to. The absence of electrons gives it a positive charge. In the N-type region silicon is doped with antimony, phosphorus, or arsenic. The fifth electron becomes a free electron. It is free to go wherever the current takes it. These free electrons are negative charge carriers. The point where the N-Region and the P-Region meet is called the PN Junction. Near the junction the positive charges and the negative charges, having opposing charges are drawn to each other like magnets. The free electrons in the N-type region migrate over and fill the holes in the P-type region. Because of the charged particles moving around, the area near the junction in the P-type region becomes slightly negatively charged while the area near the jun
In today’s episode, we’re going to make a project using Diodes and Logic. Karen wants to build a skylight where there four LEDs, a white one for the moon and three colors (green, blue, and purple) for three different clusters of stars. It will have three switches. If switch one is on, then the green stars and the moon will be on. Blue and purple would be off. If switch 2 is on then the blue stars and the moon will be on. Green and purple would be off. If switch 3 is on then the purple stars and the moon is on. Green and Blue would be off. To make this happen we’ll need some diodes and to draw out our circuits to see how we’ll have to wire it up, to make it work.
In this episode, Karen reviews p-in junctions and talks about how they differ from other types of common diodes, such as schottky diodes, zener diodes, LEDs (light emitting diodes), laser diodes, and photodiodes. P-N junctions are considered your typical didoes. They have a p-n junction with a threshold voltage that has to be reached before current will flow through them. In silicon diodes, this is 0.7V. Once this is reached, the current will continue flowing. When hooked up backwards, in reverse bias, these diodes do not allow current to flow. If a diode is reverse bias, and it’s supplied with too much voltage, more than it’s breakdown voltage, it’ll “break-down” and current will flow through it in the wrong direction. Schottky diodes often look like typical diodes. But unlike p-n junction diodes, Schottky diodes have a metal-semiconductor junction. Silicon diodes require time for their depletion zone to grow and shrink when switching from allowing forward current to blocking reverse current. There’s a recovery time. Schottky junctions have no depletion zone. Because of their metal-semiconductor junction, Schottky diodes require virtually no recovery time and therefore have much faster switching speeds. This means they can handle switching current better and faster, which makes them useful in high frequency applications.They also have a lower forward voltage drop. Silicon diodes have a voltage drop of around 0.7V, but the voltage drop of Schottky diodes is between 0.15 V and 0.46 V. This means they lose less energy to heat, making them more efficient. Schottky diodes are not useful for all applications, as they can leak a small amount of current backwards. This could be problematic for certain circuits. While Schottky diodes can let some voltage leak through backwards, zener diodes are designed to allow current to flow in both directions. The p-n junction of zener diodes is heavily doped, only a specific voltage, the Zener voltage (Vz) can pass thro
Karen shows you how to build a laser beam projector. It will use a laser diode and two motors with mirrors attached to their shaft so that the mirrors are are spinning. C When the laser beam hits the first mirror it turns it into a circle. That circle gets reflected off of the second mirror and it's projected onto the the wall into a kind of spira trap shape. Potentiometers will allow you to adjust the speed of the motors so that we can adjust how fast the spirograph is spinning.
Karen discusses transistors. Rather than using a physical, mechanical switch, a transistor can act as an electronic switch, using signals to turn it on or off. She'll go over what they are, how they work, and some types of transistors. She covers Bipololar junction transistors (BJT), NPN transistors, PNP transistors, and darlington transistors. Previously, we’ve talked about how diodes work. Silicon diodes have a p-n junction. Bipolar junction transistors or BJTs are bipolar because they have two p-n junctions. BJTs are essentially two diodes in a single package. The two main types are NPN and PNP transistors. NPN transistors have two n-type regions on either side of one p-type region, while PNP transistors have two p-type regions, on either side of one n-type region. Bipolar transistors have 3 leads, one going to each region. Typically, the middle layer is the base. P-type in an NPN, and n-type in a PNP. One of the other layers form the emitter and the third, the collector. These are labelled B, E, and C. On the circuit symbol, the arrow is always on the emitter, so we can tell which lead is the emitter and which is the collector by seeing which one has the arrow. The NPN transistor symbol has an arrow on the emitter pointing out, while the PNP transistor symbol has an arrow on the emitter pointing in. Transistors act as an electronic switch, conducting current across the collector-emitter path when a voltage is applied to the base. The switch is off if there is no base voltage present. When base voltage is present, the switch is on. We know from our diodes lesson, that diodes require a forward voltage of 0.7V before they are turned "on" allowing current to flow. In a standard NPN transistor, when 0.7V is applied between the base and the emitter, the transistor “turns ON”, allowing current to flow from the collector to the emitter. With an NPN transistor, we normally bias the device so that the collector voltage is positive with respect to the emitter.
After years of having brothers and coworkers sneaking off with her candy, Karen is using her new knowledge of transistors to create an alarm to protect her sugary treasure. Make along with Karen an alarm using a photoresistor, buzzer, and transistor!
Karen gets into the nitty gritty of how capacitors, explaining how the metal plates a dielectric manipulate electric charge to store energy. Learn about what materials are used to make capacitors, how to read their values, and what happens when they are put in series or parallel.
Karen makes the Capacitance Substitution Box Kit. It can be used to temporarily substitute for a capacitor in your circuit, or be used to test varying capacitances to see which suits your project best. Solder along with Karen and see a brief practical example of the differences between capacitors of lower and higher value.
In this episode, Karen talks about the two common types of field-effect transistors, MOSFETs and JFETs. Find out the differences between them, and what it means for them to work in depletion and enhancement modes.
Today we’re going to use MOSFETs to make a phase light. For this project, we’re using two n7000s, which are n-channel MOSFETs.
In electronics we use maps called circuit diagrams as a graphical representation of the connections and components in a circuit. Follow along with Karen as she goes over common circuit symbols and how to read them on a schematic.
Follow along with Karen as she walks through reading a schematic and turning it into a functioning circuit. The application of the finished circuit has endless possibilities. Make a dancing robot or a toy with flashing LED eyes, all activated by sound!
In a previous episode, Karen gave an overview of Transistors. James Lewis, the Bald Engineer, is a special guest. They'll revisit some of the topics presented last time, make corrections where necessary, and share their findings with the rest of the community!
Digital multimeters, or DMMs, come in many shapes and sizes. In this video, we compare a Pen Style DMM to a larger more traditional meter. Both have 3.75 digits of resolution, but how do real-world voltage, resistance, capacitance, and diode measurements compare?
Inductors are used in so many electronics, you're likely surrounded by them and don't even know it. Find out how electricity and magnetism are made to work together to make your electronics more stable and efficient in this weeks video about inductors.
When tearing down a product, you will need a screwdriver and plenty of bits. Duratool has you covered with this cordless screwdriver set. In this review, James takes apart a 40-year-old oscilloscope with the help of a cordless screwdriver, some magnetic trays, and a variety of pliers. See inside this antique and see if your bench needs an upgrade.
Learn how to get more bang from your battery by using an inductor to make a battery juicer that can run a flashlight off a single, used battery.
After a multimeter, a soldering iron is the most useful tool in electronics. In this episode, James looks at potential upgrades to your soldering station. Whether you have no iron or a complete re-work station, this video introduces you to possible upgrade options. For example, are you looking for a Weller WES51 alternative? You might consider upgrading to the WX professional series. Get the B.O.M. and connect with James on element14: http://bit.ly/2FHw09r
Capacitors are a seemingly simple device. In this episode, James goes deep into what makes polymer capacitors different from other capacitor types. Spoiler alert: it is a material found on the cathode side of the capacitor that makes a polymer, a polymer. Additionally, he covers what to consider when trying to switch from a multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) to a polymer. Get the B.O.M. on the element14 community: http://bit.ly/2UlyRrY
We've learned about how electricity and magnetism work together in inductors. Now see how those same coils and forces are used to turn electrical energy into mechanical energy in motors. Connect with Karen on the element14 community: http://bit.ly/2HzCGYW
Polymer capacitors offer low ESR and high capacitance in a small package. See what happens when a tantalum polymer replaces an MLCC in a DC-to-DC converter. Or, check the result of replacing a traditional electrolytic capacitor with an aluminum polymer. For fun, James shows measurements on a modern switching power supply and goes back to a classic 8-bit favorite, the Commodore 64.
After hours of playing Breath of the Wild on her Nintendo Switch, Karen decides to make her own Korok mask, complete with spinning pinwheel. Watch as Karen makes a pwm motor controller circuit and uses a force sensitive resistor to bring this Zelda mask to life.
Need to rework through-hole components? Check out this Weller WX-Series soldering gear. It includes a 120 Watt de-soldering iron (WXDP120), 65 Watt (WXP65) iron, and a larger 120 Watt (WXP120) iron. James re-caps a Commodore 64 with the help of this WXR3 soldering system. It takes no time to remove components like capacitors and swap them in with modern replacements. As a bonus, he ends the video by re-working a Raspberry Pi to have a socket header instead of pins!
After doing an overview of the various types in an earlier TLC episode, Karen returns to the topic of switches to clear up the confusion involving poles and throws and to talk about how inductors factor into relays.
When it is time to rework a board with surface mount components, you need more than a traditional soldering iron. Learn how tools like Weller's WX-series can be used to remove parts from a board quickly and easily. See how the Bald Engineer uses hot air to rework circuit boards he has made in the past. He also repeats one of the first electronics hacks he ever did.
Many homes have lights that can be turned on by more than one switch. Karen goes over how these switches work and how to wire one into your project circuit.
An overlooked danger of electronics soldering is the fumes. While the smell and smoke may not be pleasant, the chemicals in the fumes can be harmful. Is solder made with lead your only concern? Learn about where lead-free solder came from, what different flux types mean, and two ways to keep your air (and your lungs clean.) The main product featured is the Weller Zero SMOG EL.
Time to learn about electronics that produce and interpret sound. But before getting into the electronics, it’s good to first understand how sound works. When a sound is generated, a vibration is produced that pushes and vibrates the surrounding air which continues and is carried through the air until it reaches our ears or other devices that can interpret sound.
Even with high-quality genuine tips from a brand like Weller, your tip does not last forever. These 5 useful tips address common soldering iron maintenance questions. Answer questions like: should soldering iron tips last forever?:
The last episode we learned all about sound components, those that make them and those that interpret them. In this episode, Karen assembles as Velleman MK171 Voice Changer kit. She walks you through the instructions, reviewing symbols, components, and concepts learned in previous episodes. This circuit has uses 2 IC chips, LM386N op-amp, and an HT8950, voice modulator chip. When sound is interpreted by the microphone, the signal goes through these ICs, is processed, and changed to modulate the user’s voice. Using the tac switch buttons on the PCB, the voice can be changed, adding vibrato, adjusting the pitch up and down, or made to sound like a robot. The circuit also includes variable resistors that allow for changing the microphone sensitivity and the speaker’s output volume. Batteries and speaker not included.
The TENMA portable power supply (72-2660) offers bench supply capability in a backpack friendly package. The single output is capable of 45 watts with up to 30 volts and 3.75 amps out. The built-in USB ports offer an easy way to power 5 Volts Arduino or Raspberry Pi projects while limiting their current. See how this portable supply performs, the things the Bald Engineer likes about it, and the points to consider before buying.
A new console has launched, so there is only one thing to do with it - take it to pieces! Is this a new console? What has changed? What can we learn about the future of the games consoles?
Any circuits that have more than the most basic of functions requires a little black chip known as an integrated circuit. Integrated circuits, or ICs, fall into 3 categories, analog, digital, or mixed signal. Analog signals can vary in the entire range between the minimum and maximum signals. In the case of this graphic, any voltages between 0V and 5V.Digital signals are typically on or off, high or low, represented by a 1 or 0. Analog ICs are most commonly used for regulation or amplification. Since sound, voice, and music signals are typically analog, they frequently make use of analog ICs. Digital signals, being much simpler as only having two states, allow for the sending and storing of data much more easily and efficiently. Some ICs have components that allow the conversion of analog and digital signals from one to another. These are known as mixed-signal ICs. Follow along to learn about voltage regulators, op-amps, logic gates, 555 timers, microcontrollers, ROM, RAM, and more.
Tearing down a design classic, the iMac G3. Looking at how they fit everything into an "all in one" form factor, and the POWER PC architecture. Will there be any compromises in design to make it all fit?
Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) damage can occur without you knowing it. That’s bad. However, the good news is that with little effort you can prevent it. Duratool has a kit of the most common ESD tools for any electronics workbench. It includes a large mat, grounding cable, wrist strap, ESD-safe cleaner, and a simple electronic tester. Don’t get shocked by ESD; add these simple tools to prevent it.
In the previous episode, Karen did an overview of integrated circuits or ICs. This week, Karen chose an electronics kit that contains two ICs, a phase locked loop, and a ripple binary counter. A phase-locked loop takes one external input and one internal input, comparing the frequencies of their signal and turns that difference into a voltage that goes back to adjust the internal signal. This process continues until both external and internal signals are equal. This process generates an output signal that slowly changes then stabilizes. In today’s kit, an electronic dice kit, that signal from the phase-locked loop IC is used as the clock input signal of the second IC, the binary counter.
In 1998 the big Christmas toy was an interactive animatronic pet. How intelligent was it really? What hardware was crammed into the fluffy exterior? I guess there is only one way to find out - tear it down! http://bit.ly/2Xls86m The ICs are: An LM234 Adjustable current source (a power controller) an HT93LC46 - 1K EEPROM (non-volatile memory, or its storage) an IC with smudged text - although I understand it is an audio amplifier! and 2 potted ASICs which I understand is the CPU and ROM.
An obvious measurement for a capacitor is its capacitance. However, knowing its ESR is critical in design work and an important troubleshooting clue. Capacitors with high ESR can cause significant ripple voltage and can indicate a capacitor near the end of its useful life. The Atlas ESR70 makes quick work of measuring a capacitor's ESR.
Back on the Ben Heck Show, a viewer requested a real-life build of the game from Jumanji. Since magic isn’t real, the team decided to make a game based on logic gates. After spending months helping Ben try to work out their game, “Logic Bomb”, Karen got a taste for digital logic using logic gates and has been itching to get back to the tricky subject that continued to stump her. This episode covers 7 types of logic gates: NOT, AND, NAND, OR, NOR, XOR, and XNOR. Using truth tables and analog circuits, Karen tries to break down the logic to help you understand the literal ins and outs of each type of logic gate:
Not only is tearing down a sewing machine a new experience for me, but we have a computer controlled one. To make things even more interesting, this one is also 24 years old - or so I thought!
A multimeter is a go-to tool for electronics measurements. Knowing how to use it to measure voltage, current, diodes, and transistors can save time (and frustration) while troubleshooting. James explains how the multimeter works so that you can understand what it is doing while using it.
In the previous lesson, Karen explained the logic behind AND, NAND, OR, NOR, NOT, XOR, and XNOR logic gates. In that episode, we also learned that logic gates are typically contained in IC chips, with multiple gates within each chip. For this episode’s project, Karen has decided to throw out the ICs, and instead, use transistors to create each logic gate, further demonstrating how the logic of each gate type works. Follow along to continue the journey of understanding logic gates through the use of transistors. Solder along and you’ll end up with a tidy little project contained within a couple of Altoid tins! In the end, Karen dares you to try your hand at creating the more complicated XOR and XNOR gates out of transistors. Are you up to the challenge?
What was home gaming like in the 1970s? How different were the consoles compared to today's models? What significance did the 1970s show us for the future of computing?
The PEAK DCA Pro is a compact semiconductor analyzer. The DCA75 finds pinouts, determines specs and does curve tracing. Oh, and it is fast. In this video, James shows how well it works with BJTs, MOSFETs, LEDs, and even Voltage regulators.
Things are starting to get complicated. In a previous episode, Karen talked about logic gates and digital logic. In this episode, Karen dives into the more complex, combinational logic devices: multiplexers, demultiplexers, encoders, and decoders. Multiplexers and demultiplexers can be thought of as traffic controllers. They take their inputs and effectively “flip digital switches” in order to route the signals to various outputs. The main difference between the two is that multiplexers take multiple inputs and select which to route to a single output, while demultiplexers take a single input and select which of multiple outputs to route it to. Encoders and decoders are used for more complex applications. They take one form of data and translate it into another form of data. Different varieties work with binary, decimal, binary-coded decimal (BCD), logic level, and 7-segment.
Tearing down not one, but 2 Big Track programmable toys. The original released in 1979, and the modern reproduction from 2019, how different are they? How have the techniques changed? Are there any useful tips we can use in our own projects?
A bench power supply makes powering circuits easy and safe. Learn how to adjust basic controls like voltage. Finally, see how "current limiting" works. See how you can use built-in series or parallel tracking to increase a bench power supply's voltage or current output. Last, if you are in the market for a power supply, do not forget to add some leads like mini-grabbers, alligator clips, and banana plugs.
Karen walks through how to use one type of decoder in a circuit, a BCD to 7-segment. While this circuit would typically use a microcontroller to provide the four necessary input signals, Karen’s circuit uses 4 switches to allow the user to manually input the BCD number. This circuit is helpful for practicing counting in binary as well as learning how to drive a 7-segment display. This circuit uses a common-anode 7-segment LED display that is driven by an SN74LS47N decoder. If you would like to create a circuit using a common-cathode LED display, a 74LS48 decoder could be used and the power would need to be flipped
We compare the inside of a 1988 1G carphone to its 2013 great-grandchild. Other than a big color screen, what else has changed? Let's teardown both to take a look.
An Electronic load can sink current from power sources such as power supplies or batteries. Loads are useful to test a power supply’s design margin or verify a battery’s capacity. See how three different instrument options from ultra low-end to midrange to high-end compare. Learn how modes like constant current and constant resistance can be used for different measurements.
Another new mid-generation release, so what's new? Is it worth the money or should you stick to the original? Will the new Switch Lite be worth the reduced price tag?
In this episode, Karen continues on in her journey to learn about logic ICs. She started with logic gates, then moved onto combination logic devices like muxes, demuxes, encoders, and decoders. This time she looks into sequential logic devices starting with flip-flops. In this episode, we learn about SR Latches, D-type flip-flops, and JK flip-flops. To understand the following devices, you may want to brush up on your logic gates. You’ll see AND, NAND, and NOR gates used to explain the function of these flip-flops. Follow along with Karen in this lesson to learn about latches, the difference between data inputs and clock signals, and what makes a JK flip-flop better than an SR flip-flop.
Spectrum analyzers display signals in the frequency domain. To use one, you only need to know about four controls: reference level, center frequency, and resolution bandwidth. In this episode, see how to use a spectrum analyzer and determine the transmitting frequency of a device.
Almost everyone will have used one, but who has ever taken one apart? Well, let's dive in together and see what it has to share
In the last lesson episode, Karen explored SR and JK flip flops. In this episode, Karen uses an SR Flip Flop with Preset and Clear to demonstrate how the inputs affect the outputs. Using that circuit and no additional parts, Karen shows how to use that flip flop to create a toggle circuit. The final project shows how the circuit can be used to create a Yes/No, Either/Or sign. This circuit is just the beginning. Adding a 555 timer or sensors instead of a button opens the door to the many different ways this circuit can be useful in an everyday item.
How does handheld gaming from 1982 compare to 2004? How different are the techniques and technologies that were both capable of holding out attention for hours at a time? What counted as "cutting edge". What have we gained, and has anything been lost?
Logic analyzers capture digital signals and then display a waveform or list. Serial busses like I2C, SPI, or UART (Serial) can be decoded or triggered on when there are problems in your circuit. In this video, learn the basic controls you need to use (almost) any logic analyzer. You’ll learn how to setup a simple trigger, make measurements, and set things like sample rate or memory depth.
The 555 timer is probably the most common and popular IC to be used in hobby circuits. There are A LOT of projects out there using the 555 in various ways and it’s easy to find schematics to make a project that has already been proven. But rather than just taking plug and playing circuits with the 555 timer, Karen wants to give you the chance to understand the why of what’s happening when you use the 555 timer. In this episode, Karen breaks down what is happening inside the 555 that makes it function. Learn how the inputs interact with the supply voltage to trigger and reset the output high and low. Find out which pins can be used to adjust the threshold at which that change happens. And see which familiar components can be found within the 555.
Digital video these days is easy, but what did it take in the 90s to make a handheld device capable of capturing, recording and playing video? If you think VHS is impressive, just wait for Video 8!
Generating signals with a waveform, function, or arbitrary generator lets you test all kinds of circuits. Learn how to get a function generator to output a signal, the 3 types of waveforms you can create, and which controls matter. James, the Bald Engineer, explains the difference between analog and digital generators.
In the last lesson, we learned what happens inside a 555 timer to make it work. In today’s episode, Karen uses 555 timers to make LED “dominos”. Each unit has an LED connected to the output of a 555 timer and an LDR attached to the trigger. When the LDR senses light, the 555 is triggered turning the light on for a brief period of time. When multiple units are placed in a row, each one triggers the next. The duration that each light is on is determined by an “RC circuit” made of a resistor and capacitor. Changing their values can change the duration that the light is on.
How well do you know your DLP from your LCD? Do you know what an old tube TV has in common with projectors? Join us as we take 2 projectors apart and see the difference a generation makes.
The Analog Discovery 2 combines all the equipment found on a typical electronics workbench into one small package. It packs an oscilloscope, logic analyzer, power supplies, spectrum analyzer, and so much more. As impressive as the hardware is, the Analog Discovery 2’s software, called Waveforms, is fantastic as well. You can configure it for any measurement situation, and it has extensive scripting capability. See if you should be considering adding the Analog Discovery 2 to your electronics workbench.
Karen welcomes guest, William, from Kemet. Kemet makes a special type of inductor designed to have ideal characteristics. William tells us about these metal-composite inductors and how they differ from typical ferrite core inductors. One of these important features is shielding. William and Karen also discuss rated current, saturation current, and core loss in inductors.
Fax Machines, are they confined to history? Are they a relic of an earlier time? What electronic trickery did these classic icons have?
Karen welcomes back William from Kemet to talk more about inductors. Together they conduct experiments to show off some characteristics of various types of inductors. In the first experiment, William uses his store-bought H-field probe, while Karen uses her home-made probe to show the effects of crosstalk. After connecting each inductor to a function generator exporting a square wave, they use the H-field probe to see the EMI of various inductors on an oscilloscope, demonstrating why shielding in inductors is important. In the second experiment, William and Karen use heat-sensing cameras to show the temperature changes when the rated current of an inductor is exceeded. In the third and last experiment, William uses a circuit he created to show saturation current in ferrite core inductors.
If you thought the G3 was iconic, then the G4 should be a legend. What surprises have Apple left hiding for us inside the notorious white dome.
Bench DMMs have an extra set of banana jacks called "sense." Known as a Kelvin or 4-wire measurement, these inputs accurately measure small resistances. Like, milliohms small. In this video, learn how to use a multimeter with 4-wire capability, prove 4-wire is more are accurate (in some cases), and a trick to get more accurate measurements with traditional 2-wire techniques.
