Just like the garage computer explosion of the 70’s through the 80’s, which brought us such things as Apple, pong, Bill Gate’s hair, and the proliferation of personal computers, the maker movement is the new garage hardware explosion. Today, 135 million adults in the United States alone are involved in the maker movement.
Enthusiasts who want to build the products they want, from shortwave radios to personal computers, and to tweak products they’ve bought to make them even better, have long been a part of the electronics industry. By all measures, garage-style innovation remains alive and well today, as “makers” as they are called continue to turn out contemporary gadgets, including 3D printers, drones, and embedded electronics devices.
Making is about individual Do-It-Yourselfers being able to design and create with tools that were, as of a decade or two ago, only available to large, cash-rich corporations: CAD tools, CNC mills, 3D printers, low-quantity PCB manufacturing, open hardware such as Arduinos and similar inexpensive development boards – all items that have made it easier and relatively cheap to make whatever we imagine. For individuals, maker tools can change how someone views their home or their hobbies. The world is ours to make. Humans are genetically wired to be makers. The maker movement is simply the result of making powerful building and communication tools accessible to the masses. There are plenty of projects from makers that show good engineering: Take this Arduino board with tremendous potential, developed by a young maker, as example.
The maker movement is a catalyst to democratize entrepreneurship as these do-it-yourself electronics are proving to be hot sellers: In the past year, unit sales for 3D printing related products; Arduino units, parts and supplies; Raspberry Pi boards; drones and quadcopters; and robotics goods are all on a growth curve in terms of eBay sales. There are many Kickstarter maker projects going on. The Pebble E-Paper Watch raises $10 million. The LIFX smartphone-controlled LED bulb raises $1.3 million. What do these products have in common? They both secured funding through Kickstarter, a crowd-funding website that is changing the game for entrepreneurs. Both products were created by makers who seek to commercialize their inventions. These “startup makers” iterate on prototypes with high-end tools at professional makerspaces.
For companies to remain competitive, they need to embrace the maker movement or leave themselves open for disruption. Researchers found that 96 percent of business leaders believe new technologies have forever changed the rules of business by democratizing information and rewiring customer expectations. - You’ve got to figure out agile innovation. Maybe history is repeating itself as the types of products being sold reminded us of the computer tinkering that used to be happening in the 1970s to 1990s – similar in terms of demographics, tending to be young people, and low budget. Now the do-it-yourself category is deeply intertwined with the electronics industry. Open hardware is in the center in maker movement – we need open hardware designs! How can you publish your designs and still do business with it? Open source ecosystem markets behave differently and therefore require a very different playbook than traditional tech company: the differentiation is not in the technology you build; it is in the process and expertise that you slowly amass over an extended period of time.
By democratizing the product development process, helping these developments get to market, and transforming the way we educate the next generation of innovators, we will usher in the next industrial revolution. The world is ours to make. Earlier the PC created a new generation of software developers who could innovate in the digital world without the limitations of the physical world (virtually no marginal cost, software has become the great equalizer for innovation. Now advances in 3D printing and low-cost microcontrollers as well as the ubiquity of advanced sensors are enabling makers to bridge software with the physical world. Furthermore, the proliferation of wireless connectivity and cloud computing is helping makers contribute to the Internet of Things (IoT). We’re even beginning to see maker designs and devices entering those markets once thought to be off-limits, like medical.
Image source: The world is ours to make: The impact of the maker movement – EDN Magazine
In fact, many parents have engaged in the maker movement with their kids because they know that the education system is not adequately preparing their children for the 21st century. There is a strong movement to spread this DIY idea widely. The Maker Faire, which launched in the Bay Area in California in 2006, underlined the popularity of the movement by drawing a record 215,000 people combined in the Bay Area and New York events in 2014. There’s Maker Media, MakerCon, MakerShed, Make: magazine and 131 Maker Faire events that take place throughout the world. Now the founders of all these Makers want a way to connect what they refer to as the “maker movement” online. So Maker Media created a social network called MakerSpace, a Facebook-like social network that connects participants of Maker Faire in one online community. The new site will allow participants of the event to display their work online. There are many other similar sites that allow yout to present yout work fron Hackaday to your own blog. Today, 135 million adults in the United States alone are involved in the maker movement—although makers can be found everywhere in the world.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Low Power Challenge: LCD Solar Creatures Live On Sunlight, Sleep At Night
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/13/low-power-challenge-lcd-solar-creatures-live-on-sunlight-sleep-at-night/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Curious Etymology Of The Elements
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/13/the-curious-etymology-of-the-elements/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Classic Gaming With FPGA And ATX
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/14/classic-gaming-with-fpga-and-atx/
Playing classic games, whether they are games from the golden age of arcades or simply games from consoles that are long out of production, tends to exist on a spectrum. At one end is grabbing a game’s ROM file, finding an emulator, and kludging together some controls on a keyboard and mouse with your average PC. At the other is meticulously restoring classic hardware for the “true” feel of what the game would have felt like when it was new. Towards the latter end is emulating the hardware with an FPGA which the open-source MiSTer project attempts to do. This build, though, adds ATX capabilities for the retrocomputing platform.
The ATX standard was developed as a way to standardize motherboard mounting points in PC cases. This one uses the Mini-ITX version, allowing the MiSTer FPGA board to mount to a PCB which fits into a Mini-ITX case.
https://twitter.com/atlantismister/status/1634825430657277952?s=46&t=STX6B1nZaaJvQi5wwcYn4A
Tomi Engdahl says:
PCIe For Hackers: The Diffpair Prelude
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/14/pcie-for-hackers-the-diffpair-prelude/
PCIe, also known as PCI-Express, is a highly powerful interface. So let’s see what it takes to hack on something that powerful. PCIe is be a bit intimidating at first, however it is reasonably simple to start building PCIe stuff, and the interface is quite resilient for hobbyist-level technology. There will come a time when we want to use a PCIe chip in our designs, or perhaps, make use of the PCIe connection available on a certain Compute Module, and it’s good to make sure that we’re ready for that.
PCIe is everywhere now. Every modern computer has a bunch of PCIe devices performing crucial functions, and even iPhones use PCIe internally to connect the CPU with the flash and WiFi chips. You can get all kinds of PCIe devices: Ethernet controllers, high-throughput WiFi cards, graphics, and all the cheap NVMe drives that gladly provide you with heaps of storage when connected over PCIe.
PCIe is a point-to-point bus that connect two devices together – as opposed to PCI, an older bus, that could connect a chain of devices on your mainboard. One side of a PCIe link is a device, and another is a host. For instance, in a laptop, your CPU will have multiple PCIe ports – some used to connect the GPU, some used to connect a WiFi card, some used for Ethernet, and some used for a NVMe drive.
Each PCIe link consists of at least three differential pairs – one is a 100 MHz clock, REFCLK, that is (almost) always required for a link, and two pairs that form a PCIe lane – one for transmit and another for receive. This is an x link – you can also have 2x, 4x, 8x and 16x links, with four, eight sixteen and thirty-two differential pairs respectively, plus, again, REFCLK. The wider the link, the higher its throughput!
Treating Your Diffpairs With Respect
First off, you want to keep both of the pair’s signals close to each other throughout their length. The closer the two signals are, the better external interference cancellation works, and the less noise they radiate – given that often, multiple diffpairs run next to each other, this will help signal integrity of other pairs as well. Speaking of running separate diffpairs next to each other, you’ll want to keep them away from each other and other things – be it ground fills on the same layer, high-frequency signals. A great rule of thumb is the 5W rule, which says you need to have at least five trace width’s worth of clearance between a diffpair’s trace center and other signals. You don’t always have this much space, but it’s good to adhere to this as much as possible.
You will also want to make sure that there is an uninterrupted ground path right under these signals, alongside the entire pair – having a ground fill is ideal.
Then, there’s the little-talked-about matter – impedance matching. If you’re getting a differential pair from point A to B, you will want to make sure that you get the impedance right, and the basics of it are simpler than you might think.
Now, this means that you have to make sure the impedance for your PCIe link is good along its entire path – which, in practice, means picking suitable connectors and tuning your PCB trace widths and spacings. PCIe hardware is mostly built with 85 Ω impedance in mind. Things like receivers, transmitters, and PCIe-intended connectors are outside your control, and to get the impedance of the entire path is reasonably uniform, you have to adjust the parts under your control to the same value. For a start, if you have to use connectors for your PCIe link, pick ones that don’t have too significant of an impedance mismatch. A good bet is using high-speed connectors or connectors built with PCIe-like signals in mind – full-size PCIe, M.2, mPCIe, USB3, USB-C, and a lot of high-speed connector families from various manufacturers.
Now to tuning the impedance of your diffpair’s PCB traces. Differential pair impedance depends on a lot of variables in reality, but if you’re a hacker starting out, there are simplified calculators that get you most of the way there – this one is my favourite. Scroll down to “Edge-Coupled Surface Microstrip”, leave track height at 35 for routing diffpairs on 1 oz copper layers, leave dielectric constant at 4.3 unless your PCB fab gives you a different value.
https://www.multi-circuit-boards.eu/en/pcb-design-aid/impedance-calculation.html
Now, if you have ever tinkered with PCIe, you might have stumbled upon some forbidden knowledge: in practice, you don’t really-really have to do all of the above.
You might have heard that PCIe runs over wet string – the first known reference to this is in a 2016 presentation on console hacking at 33C3.
nd, unsurprisingly, there’s a big grain of truth – PCIe will still work in suboptimal conditions, and there’s an example after example of it in hacker and consumer worlds! Perhaps the most widely available example of PCIe abuse is passing an 1x PCIe link using USB3 cabling, something the “mining” PCIe risers do – which means that you can just go to your computer accessories store and buy a product that is only possible thanks to some PCIe abuse.
Something else that you might’ve seen and forgotten like a bad dream, is [TobleMiner] putting a x8 PCIe link through, shudder, prototyping wires – for the sake of testing out an adapter idea for cheap high-speed networking cards from HP servers, not compatible with regular PCIe slots both pinout-wise and mechanically.
PCIe is quite a bit more forgiving than quite a few other interfaces, say, USB3. There are link training mechanisms – when a PCIe connection is established, the receiver and transmitter play around with their internal parameters, adjusting them until they reach the fastest speed possible while keeping error rate low, using these parameters for the entire connection afterwards. There are also retransmissions for packets that failed to be received. PCIe has exceptional stability in practice.
It’s clear that PCIe link training has some unique parts to it – for instance, to help you make your layout better, PCIe also lets you invert any differential pair, except REFCLK, by swapping the negative and positive signals, and this will be detected and flawlessly compensated for during link training. Other technologies like USB3, HDMI, or DisplayPort don’t support such quality-of-engineer-life features. Other interfaces often require that multiple lanes should be the same length – making sure that data on one set of pairs doesn’t arrive faster than on the other. PCIe, however, is fine with across-pair mismatches as well, also detecting and compensating for these during link training. These two aren’t meant to be resilience features as much as they’re ease-of-layout features meant to help you design PCBs faster and better, but it sure helps that they’re there.
Try Your Best, No Matter What
Does this resillience help hackers? Yes, absolutely – these two ease-of-layout features are used in basically any professional PCIe design, and if you’re in less sterile conditions, you can push PCIe further at your own risk. On the other hand, don’t just skirt every rule because you’ve seen someone do that – put some good-faith effort into following these five guidelines, even if you’re limited to a two-layer PCB and might never get the perfect impedance value. Following these rules will not only teach you some diffpair discipline for later projects, it will make your PCIe signals all that more resillient and error-free, and your PCIe devices more happy. It might feel good to dismiss all or some of these guidelines, since sometimes it might just work out, but the extra half hour calculating proper impedance on your board will help you ensure that your PCB doesn’t need a second revision and stays loyal to your interests throughout its entire life.
So, here’s a guideline: treat your PCIe differential pairs with respect. If you’re using a two-layer PCB and you’re doing a prototype on the cheap and you want quick turnaround time, don’t just give up on impedance because the traces would need to be way too wide to reach 85 ohms – open the calculator and see just how much you can get the impedance down anyway. Lowering isolation height lowers impedance, so consider going for 0.8mm PCB if your project’s mechanical aspects let you. Move your components around if that helps your PCIe tracks follow a better path, with less noise along the way. Perhaps link training will knock an imperfect link down a generation or two, but that’s better than not reaching a stable link at all. Put your best effort following these guidelines with what you’re given, and the differential pairs will respect your intentions in return.
For instance, if you’re using KiCad, here’s a simple demonstration on how to get a PCIe 1x link from one point to another, routing differential pairs while taking care of impedance, clearances, and via stitching.
PCIe x1 link diffpair routing example (KiCad 7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZC2e_oUon8
Tomi Engdahl says:
The 6 Biggest Mistakes while Building MIDI CONTROLLERS
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u9fmr28CRqc
https://go.musiconerd.com/nerd-musician-pro
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/15/the-international-space-station-is-always-up-there/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Take A Ride Through The Development Of A Custom BLDC Motor Controller
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/15/take-a-ride-through-the-development-of-a-custom-bldc-motor-controller/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.io/project/189967-lask4-finger-movement-detector
Tomi Engdahl says:
Range Testing with FDRS and Node-RED
Test the range of ESP-NOW and LoRa radios
https://hackaday.io/project/190006-range-testing-with-fdrs-and-node-red
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/15/voice-without-sound/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/15/spin-up-to-speed-with-this-stroboscope/
https://www.hackster.io/john-bradnam/stroboscope-27ac17
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/15/e-paper-wall-paper/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/15/unconventional-computing-laboratory-grows-its-own-electronics/
Inside the lab that’s growing mushroom computers
The lead researcher says he is “planning to make a brain from mushrooms.”
https://www.popsci.com/technology/unconventional-computing-lab-mushroom/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/16/wooden-itx-pc-case-smacks-of-sophistication/
Tomi Engdahl says:
20 ingenious uses for WD-40
It’s basically a greasy genie in a bottle.
https://www.popsci.com/story/diy/strange-and-ingenuous-uses-for-wd-40/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Andrew “bunnie” Huang’s IRIS Lets You Peer at Chips’ Inner Workings with a Cheap Digital Camera
Shining a bright enough infrared light at exposed silicon lets you peer down into its metal layers, without even removing it from its board.
https://www.hackster.io/news/andrew-bunnie-huang-s-iris-lets-you-peer-at-chips-inner-workings-with-a-cheap-digital-camera-07362fb653dd
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.hackster.io/news/francis-stokes-jank-uart-to-usb-cable-uses-salvaged-parts-to-keep-a-project-ticking-3f772029576e
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/20/a-feature-rich-amplifier-module-for-3-way-speaker-builds/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/19/the-50-pen-plotter/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/19/the-intricacies-of-starting-a-rocket-engine/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/19/3d-printed-shredder-eats-lettuce-for-brekkast/
Tomi Engdahl says:
[CDPnP] Tiny Semi-Automatic PnP Machine
https://hackaday.io/project/190024-cdpnp-tiny-semi-automatic-pnp-machine
This opensource PnP machine is almost configuration-free, suitable for fast making PCBA samples.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open Source SETI and METI in Space
https://hackaday.io/project/190095-open-source-seti-and-meti-in-space
A crowedfunded and grant recipient (unencumbered) Foundation Set in neutral Switzerland to launchStident and Anyone’s Ideas into Space
Tomi Engdahl says:
myCobot280-M5Stack
https://hackaday.io/project/187812-mycobot280-m5stack
As the world’s smallest six-axis robot arm, myCobot 280 M5 enjoys numerous software interaction methods and expansion interfaces
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.io/project/189879-vu-meter-deck
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/19/tiny-pcb-piezopiano-plays-just-one-octave/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/18/annoying-cicada-magnet-is-nonetheless-authentic/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/18/calibrating-thermal-cameras-with-hot-patterned-objects/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/18/meet-the-new-moteus-bldc-controller-board-the-n1/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/17/creating-gifs-for-the-channels-between-channels/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/18/its-a-486-computer-on-a-breadboard/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Compact Mouse Jiggler Keeps Boss Off Your Back
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/18/compact-mouse-jiggler-keeps-boss-off-your-back/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/18/study-hacker-history-and-update-it/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Real-time Laser Measurement with a Webcam
https://hackaday.io/project/190054-real-time-laser-measurement-with-a-webcam
Measuring the flatness of a surface with a laser and a webcam to microns over large surfaces.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/20/remote-water-quality-monitoring/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/20/haptick-the-strain-gauge-based-6dof-controller/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.io/project/26235-easycook-jerky-dehydrator-hack
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Timeframe
The Timeframe is a beautiful, sleek, battery-powered e-ink display that shows you the day’s schedule, images, and anything else.
https://hackaday.io/project/190080-the-timeframe
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dual Channel POV display
Two channel SERIAL POV led display.
https://hackaday.io/project/190143-dual-channel-pov-display
This is an 8 bit ( led ) x 2 display, A Blue led display and a White led display.
Via slip ring +5 volt and 2 serial IN lines, one for the Blue and the other for the White leds.
Each display has its own ATmega to handle serial data in and timing / driving of the leds.
The PCB is laser printed paper glued to a bakelite or fiberglass blank PCB, then hand drilled with Dremel.
All Schematics, Arduino codes, and more details can be seen here at Instructables– POV danno1802
https://www.instructables.com/DUAL-Channel-SERIAL-POV-Display/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building The World’s Largest Nintendo 3DS
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/21/building-the-worlds-largest-nintendo-3ds/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/21/dispense-60-bolts-in-2-3-seconds/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/21/fresh-pcbs-for-the-quickshot-ii-and-ii-plus-joysticks/
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to fix a crack in a wall or ceiling – DIY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrcjDq3PCJ4
This is how to fix a crack in your wall or ceiling the easy way. This is a very common problem with a simple repair. I will show you step by step how to repair cracks in sheetrock , drywall , plasterboard and gyprock .
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Micro Drill Bits Are Made | How It’s Made
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G55kLhv2d_4
Find out how tiny drill bits are made and packaged in factories.
How carbide inserts are made by Sandvik Coromant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QrynzJ_lZ4
Carbide inserts are used to machine almost everything made of metal. The insert has to withstand extreme heat and force, so it’s made of some of the hardest material in the world.
We take you to the Sandvik Coromant’s world class insert production facility at Gimo, Sweden to witness how an insert is made. See how it’s done!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cutting Tool Geometries Lathe and Mill SME
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbMbFvsRTJo
Tomi Engdahl says:
DON’T USE DRYWALL ANCHORS! Try This Instead! (MOUNTING PLATES–Stud In The Wrong Place)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmArQG7tdwo
DON’T USE WALL ANCHORS! Try This Instead! (MOUNTING PLATES–Stud In The Wrong Place)
Wall anchors can be very unreliable. They’re good for very light-duty applications. But, I see clients try to use wall anchors too often for heavier mounting, or for mounting a lot of small fixtures and hardware.
In these situations, I like to avoid wall anchors all together. Instead, I use MOUNTING PLATES.
Mounting plates are just a piece of wood (about 3/4″ thick, at least 2″ wide, and more than 18″ long) that mounts to the wall, spanning two studs. This provides a layer of wood to attach hardware to.
This gives you the flexibility of putting your hardware wherever you look, while still providing plenty of strength! This is especially great for garage storage!
DON’T USE WALL ANCHORS! Try This Instead! (MOUNTING PLATES–Stud In The Wrong Place)
HOW-TO:
1) Locate studs.
2) Hold your mounting plate in place; level.
3) Pre-drill through mounting plate at stud locations.
4) Drive 3″ fasteners through holes.
5) Pre-drill for harware.
6) Attach hardware.
7) Hang up storage items.
This principle can easily be incorporated into custom built-ins as well! Just put a mounting plate on the underside of shelves and tops. Garage storage can especially benefit from this.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3 Simple Inventions with Electronics – Utsource
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BN6aKz76-I
Project – 1
In this video i will be using a ferrite core from an old flyback transformer for making an induction heating plate that is for metal melting. The video contains the circuit diagram and important note at the end. It is a 12 volt high current induction heater that is very useful for desoldering electronic components.
Project – 2
Today in this video I am going to convert an Induction Motor to a 220v to 12v step down transformer using which I want to make a power supply that’s going to convert 220 volts AC to 12 volts DC for running my 12 volt LED light, incandescent bulbs, DC Motors and even charge my 12 volts ups battery.
The induction motor that I have used here is a shading ring induction motor that I found in a hot air blower.
Project – 3
In this video i will be making a 220V AC to 3.7V DC Converter for Charging 18650 Lithium ion Battery using old discarded mobile chargers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jaw-dropping Physics Toys/Gadgets 9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nct72oPlgPY
Tomi Engdahl says:
4 Ideas for LED bulb ,, will amaze you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sfuMjZXnkE
You will not throw away your damaged LED Lamp after watching this video
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/22/a-studio-condenser-microphone-for-a-constrained-budget/