Eridani – 50 MHz ARM Cortex M3 with USB

Eridani is a LM3S3651 based general purpose development board with USB Host/Device/OTG. You can buy one here. This documentation should help you use it effectively. All of the details on how to setup toolchains for this board are filed under getting started. [Link]

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New Liquipel – Make Your Phone Watersafe

Liquipel™ is a revolutionary process that applies a watersafe™ coating to your electronic devices to protect them in the event of accidental exposure to liquids. It is not visible to the human eye, virtually undetectable and Liquipel™ will not compromise the look, feel, and performance of your electronics.

Liquipel™ is a Nano-Coating that is applied though a propriety process. This process starts by placing devices into the chamber of the Liquipel™ Machine. The Machine then removes all the air to create a vacuum, a special formula is then introduced as a vapor. The vapor then permeates the entire device inside and out, Liquipel™ then bonds to the device on a molecular level, leaving your device watersafe™ for years to come.

Check out our GITEX 2012 Trade video coverage to see Liquipel in action. Link

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Procyon – 80 MHz ARM Cortex M3 with SDRAM, Ethernet, SD, USB

Procyon is a general purpose development board with special features for Ethernet, USB, and audio applications. It is based on Luminary Micro/Texas Instruments LM3S9x9x series of parts. The initial MCU is LM3S9B90.

The board contains the following features:

• 80 MHz, 100 Pin Cortex M3 Processor
• 16 MB SDRAM accessed on a 50 MHz EPI bus
• USB Host/Device/OTG port
• microSD card slot (Attached to SSI1/SPI1)
• 10/100 Ethernet
• I2S header for DAC output interface
• Up to 24 GPIOs available
• 3 UART, 2 I2C, 1 CAN, 2 SPI/SSI (one shared with microSD card)
• 10-bit ADCs
• General purpose timers: four 32-bit or eight 16-bit
• FTDI/Basic UART debug/program interface, on 16 pin GPIO/configuration header
• Three 10 pin headers for daughter boards
• 20 Pin JTAG Header
• User LED and User switch [Link]

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Intelligent Temperature Monitoring and Control System using AVR Microcontroller

Controlling temperature has been a prime objective in various applications including refrigerators, air conditioners, air coolers, heaters, industrial temperature conditioning and so on. Temperature controllers vary in their complexities and algorithms. Some of these use simple control techniques like simple on-off control while others use complex Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) or fuzzy logic algorithms. In this project Shawon Shahryiar discusses about a simple control algorithm and utilize it intelligently unlike analogue controllers. Here are the features of this controller:

• Audio-visual setup for setting temperature limits.
• Fault detection and evasive action.
• Temperature monitoring and display.
• Audio-visual warning.
• System status.
• Settable time frame.
• Data retention with internal EEPROM memory. [Link]

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Wireless Sensor Applications using Dorji’f DRF5150S and DRf4432S Modules

Dorji Applied Technology from China builds different types of RF modules that can be easily incorporated in designing wireless data loggers, sensor network, telemetry and other wireless applications.

Some of their RF modules have an additional pre-programmed microcontroller that allows direct interface of selected analog and digital sensors to the module. This means you don’t need any external MCU or to write codes for these sensors. In this tutorial, Raj from Embedded Lab talks about their DRF5150S and DRF4432S RF modules which are very versatile and easy to use for wireless sensor applications. For illustrative purpose, Raj shows how to put them together to construct a simple wireless sensor application where data from a remote sensor are received and displayed on a PC, without using any external microcontrollers. [Link]

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Mantis 9.1 CNC Mill

The Mantis 9.1 design is a radical departure from version 8 and earlier. Most notably, the part count has been almost halved! The current design has 13 parts, all of which can be made with a handsaw and a drill press. Also, I’ve traded away my alignment free exactly-constrained design for extra stiffness. Several unsuccessful attempts to eradicate the last of the slop in the Z axis on version 8 lead me back to the world of over-constrained parallel rods. My previous attempts at an over-constrained design (versions 1-5) all failed because I was unable to make the rods sufficiently parallel to avoid jamming. What to do? [Link]

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TV-B-Gone Ported to PIC 12F1840

Exapod ported TV-B-Gone, the universal TV off button, to the tiny PIC12F1840. He used the free version of the Hi-Tech compiler so the optimizations leave a lot to be desired, but the code only uses 17% of program memory. The prototype was made on a protoboard and an SOIC packaged PIC. [Link]

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