Author Archives: Andi

Brixo, Toaster & Jet Pack: Crowdfunded Hardware Designs

New Crowdfunded Hardware Designs

If you possess an inventive streak, there are various places from where you can draw inspiration for your next big idea. Hardware designs on sites such as the Crowd Supply, Indiegogo, and Kickstarter can provide a spark to fire up your imagination and trigger a series of thoughts to lead you to your next discovery. Some inexpensive favorites are given below.

Legos on Steroids – Brixo

Brixo presents blocks similar to and compatible with those made by Lego, and the difference may not be apparent at first glance. A closer look reveals that Brixo has chrome plated many of their blocks. The special chrome plating conducts electricity and there are three unique connector blocks that Brixo has designed especially for performing specific functions. The three special blocks are the Connector, Trigger, and Action blocks. While the Connector blocks transmit power to the others, the Trigger blocks contain Bluetooth controller and other sensors such as sound, light, and proximity. The Action blocks have motors and lights within them.

The Starter kit comprises one battery case with BLE, one motor block, 20 4×1 blocks, two 2×2 blocks, 10 2×1 blocks, one light switch, and one LED. They offer other kits of increasing numbers of blocks – Standard kit, Makers’ kit, Expert kit, and The Mad Scientist kit. Brixo also offers a Classroom kit for 40 students.

The battery block with its 9 V internal battery powers your entire assembly. The built-in Bluetooth controller allows controlling actions with Brixo’s mobile application. Therefore, you can set the Action blocks to light up, spin, move, and take action using your smartphone. Brixo’s kits are great for learning about IoT and IFTTT.

Dual Output with Toaster

While testing electronic projects, there is usually a requirement for different supplies. For instance, digital circuits need 5 or 3.3 VDC, while analog circuits may require anything between 5-16 Volts. It is cumbersome having to plug in and operate several power supply units to get all the voltages necessary – hence the Toaster.

The Toaster is a single 50 x 25 mm board, and you can plug it into your breadboard. It powers up with either a single USB cable or a wall charger with 5 Volts. Once powered up, one rail on the breadboard will have a variable voltage that can be preset to anywhere between 3.3 and 5 Volts. The other rail can be preset to any voltage between 5 and 16 Volts. The input is protected with a 1.1 A resettable fuse.

Drive Motors with the Jet Pack

The Jet Pack is a motor shield for Arduino wireless programming. As the name implies, its wireless features eliminate the need to hook up the board physically to a computer for programming. That makes Arduino programming and development much easier and quicker. Bluetooth takes care of the data transfer and wireless programmability.

Depending on how you use it, the Jet Pack allows you to drive one stepper motor or two DC motors simultaneously. The creators of the Jet Pack also offer a Rover kit that makes the Jet Pack more robotics-friendly. With the Rover kit, you get all the parts necessary to build a basic remote controlled rover.

Reflow Oven Control with a Raspberry Pi

ntroduction of SMT or Surface Mount Technology components have made it more difficult for Do-It-Yourself enthusiasts to solder these components using a soldering iron. The switch from through-hole components to SMT types had actually made hand soldering easier initially. However, with the introduction of BGA and similar packages that require blind soldering and extremely small packages that are difficult to handle manually, hand soldering with a soldering iron is now practically impossible.

Such special packages need a reflow soldering process to solder them properly to the PCB. This is easy to make with a single board computer such as the Raspberry Pi or RBPi, and a convectional hot air oven designated originally for a bakery or gastronomy purposes. The RBPi helps to make it an open-source universal reflow oven that is also web enabled and PID controlled. Another advantage of using the RBPi as a controller for this oven is it can be used also as a sophisticated pizza oven. Unfortunately, the two functions are not interchangeable, meaning you must not heat food in an oven that you have once used for reflow soldering purposes.

Apart from the RBPi, you will also need SPI-driven cold-junction thermocouple converters, for which, you can use the MAX31855 or the MAX6675, useful for K-Type thermocouples. The above ICs offer cold-junction compensation and digitize the signal from K-Type thermocouples. The data will be in a signed 12/14-bit, SPI compatible, read-only format.

You will also need Solid State Relays for the heaters and the fan, and if these are of the GPIO driven types, intermediate drivers will not be necessary for the RBPi. The heaters are best made of PWM driven MOSFETs, preferably operating at 12 VDC.

The control software runs as a Python daemon on the RBPi. An OS independent multi-user web-client offers live monitoring and remote control. The profile/curve management and slope calculator is browser-based. The software developed for demonstration is a fully functional PID controller, while incorporating a simulator.

The demonstrators have used an EKA KF412 professional hot air oven produced by Teknoeca srl from Italy. The oven uses hot air temperature transfer (convection) as against infrared, and this was considered preferable. The power consumed by the oven was 2.6 KW at 230 V, producing a maximum temperature of 300°C.

The oven chamber has adequate insulation and this increases its thermal inertia. Therefore, once the oven crosses the maximum reflow temperature, a natural cooling process does not offer quick but controlled cooldown. This is necessary to return the solder paste to its rigid state.

A radial fan mounted on the back of the oven handled the above situation. The RBPi drives this fan via a GPIO pin, and it blows fresh cold air at room temperature into the oven. This gives the RBPi total control over the heating and cooling rates of the oven, and it is possible to define a proper reflow solder profile. It is important to know that the reflow profiles for lead-free solder are different from the profile required by leaded solder.

New Velocity & RBPi: Charting an undiscovered island

Not many engineers are familiar with cartography, the map-making process. However, with advances in technology, map-making also uses computers, including using them for gathering, evaluation, and processing the source data. Furthermore, cartographers use the computer for intellectual and graphical design of the map, down to the drawing and reproduction of the final document.

There is more to cartography than mere map-making. Being an academic discipline in its own right, there exist professional associations – regional, national, and international – educational programs, conferences, journals, and other identities related exclusively to cartography. Although technological change has always affected the way cartographers prepare their maps, the computer helps them gain unparalleled control over the mapping process.

New Velocity, a machine based on the single board computer, the Raspberry Pi or RBPi, helps in the charting process. Luiz Zanotello created New Velocity at the University of the Arts at Bremen. This project has been especially helpful in investigating a certain charting error as yet persisting in cartographic maps. It involves the entanglement of physical phenomenon and data, to both of which the digital media gives the same weight.

This anomaly existed for over a century in the form of Sandy Island, located near the French territory of New Caledonia. Although the island appeared on several maps from as early as the late 19th century, an Australian surveyor ship, passing through the area, discovered that the island actually did not exist, and never had. This was followed up by removing the map from all maps. Luiz has reproduced the conditions upon which the island was seen in 1876. This project recreates the charting glitch that put the non-existing island in maps worldwide. By manipulating the digital presence, New Velocity generates a new dataset to support the existence of this fictitious island.

New Velocity has a platform to replicate the up/down movement of a ship floating over high seas. On the platform is an infrared proximity sensor for scanning sand piles. The RBPi maps the spacial data from the proximity sensor for visualization in real time. New Velocity has four preset modes, one for each dataset it records. For instance, it records coastline coordinates, digital geo-tagging, topographical elevation, and water depth surroundings.

New Velocity generates evidence of the presence of an islet in each set of datasets within the range of the island. It also uploads the data posteriorly to the open data bank of Sandy Island for spreading.

The project uses an RBPi2 running the Raspbian Jessie and openFrameworks for generating outputs that include visuals and mapping. Two NEMA 17 stepper motors help to achieve the physical motion. An Arduino Uno running the AccelStepper Library software program operates the motors via two DRV8834 Low-Voltage Stepper Motor Driver Carriers. For sensing the sand pile, New Velocity uses the GP2Y0A41sk0F Analog Distance Sensor, made by Sharp and it can measure from four to 30 cm. The entire project is encased in handcrafted wood and acrylic cases with red LEDs and a toggle button.

New Velocity proves that effective mapping is crucial for finding solutions to cartography, many of them being environmental. Without accurate maps, several activities related to the earth’s surface, such as mineral prospecting, forest management, locational analysis, road construction, weather prospecting, and so many more would remain unpractical.

Can Electrocution Really Kill You?

Although cartoons tend to show a person being fried due to electrocution as the body flashes like fireworks with the bones visible to everyone, in reality, things do not work that way. Electricity does not actually fry you – unless you are struck by a thunderbolt. However, only a frighteningly miniscule amount of electricity is enough to snuff out your life.

At the beginning, it is necessary to get some facts clear. Some major units used by electrical engineers are – volts, amperes, watts, and ohms. Volts describe the difference in potential across two points, while amperes describe the amount of current flowing between the two points. Watts is a measure of the power flow between two points, and is the product of volts and amperes related to the two points. Ohm measures the resistance of a substance to the flow of current through it.

Plumbing offers a suitable analogy. Volts can be equated to the water pressure between the two ends of a pipe. Current is the same as the flow rate, while resistance is similar to the inner diameter of the pipe. As you increase the volts or the pressure, current, or water flow increases, assuming the diameter or resistance of the pipe has remained the same.

Scientists have conducted experiments on healthy humans to find an answer to “How much electricity is needed to kill a human?” The surprise answer is, only seven milli-amperes, for three seconds. Heart is an electrical pump and electricity reaching the heart interrupts its rhythm. The human heart goes arrhythmic and stops working when a current of seven milli-amperes passes through it continuously for three seconds. After that, the other parts of the body begin to shut down as well. Skin-penetrating Tasers do not kill, as the electric pulses they generate are of much shorter duration than that from three seconds.

However, our bodies have their own defenses against electric shock and that is why millions of people do not drop dead every minute with ultra-tiny shocks from the different electrical and electronic gadgets they always use. The major defense comes from the skin – it has a resistance of about 5,000 to 15,000 ohms. The clothes people wear add to the resistance of their skin. To break through such a formidable resistance, the static shock necessary just only to sting your skin is about 20,000 Volts. However, a person may not die from high-voltage electric shock if the electricity did not pass through the heart. If it traveled along the outside of their body, they would live, but likely with a scorched skin. This happens mostly when the skin is wet.

A lightning bolt is a different game altogether. One bolt of lightning can hit with over a billion volts. The resistance air offers to electricity is about 10,000 volts per centimeter. Therefore, for electricity simply to move current through 10 cm of air, the voltage required is 100,000 volts, and this is between the cloud generating the electricity and the earth below our feet. As high-voltage electricity or lightning takes the path of the least resistance when passing to the earth, it passes through the outer surface of the body, scorching the skin.

Use the Raspberry Pi for the Internet of Things

Barriers are coming down between operational technologies. Barriers such as were existing between industrial hardware and software for monitoring and controlling machines and the ERP systems and other information technology people typically use when operating and supporting their business. Manufacturers are having an exciting time as new opportunities are emerging every day for improving the productivity. Along with the rise in the challenges, there are innovations in creating new sources of customer value.

Data is not a new thing for manufacturers. In fact, there was enough data with manufacturers long before the Internet of Things and Big Data came into existence. Although manufacturers have been collecting and analyzing machine data for ages, they can now replace their legacy equipment and systems. With the explosion of the Internet of Things, the flow of data on the customers’ side is also ramping up. Networked products are tightening the connection between customers and manufacturers, with service capabilities expanding and creating entirely new revenue models.

With every organization wanting to participate in the Internet of Things, and IT professionals wanting to know how to add IoT skills to their resume, it is time to look at the different options for learning about IoT. Although there are many ways to gather this knowledge, nothing really can beat the hands-on experience.

The tiny single board computer, the Raspberry Pi or RBPi is one of the key learning platforms for IoT. Not only because this involves very low cost, but also because it offers a complete Linux server in its tiny platform. When you use the RBPi for learning about IoT, you will find that the most difficult thing to face is the picking the right project to make a start.
On the Web, you can find several thousand projects based on the RBPi. They involve the ambitious types, silly types, while some are really great for learning about Linux, RBPi, and the intricacies of the IoT.

When starting out with IoT projects and the RBPi, it is prudent to keep to a boundary – use some common sensors and or controller types. Custom-built hardware is fine for geeks, but for those who are just starting out with IoT, going wild with hardware builds can lead you astray.

While selecting a project, choose one that has something interesting going on for the control software. While it would be foolish to start with an epic development project, just to make a meaningful learning experience, simply calling pre-existing scripts and applications is also likely to cause a loss of interest.

Choose a fun project to start with. Of course, you will be training for the IoT. Nevertheless, training in the form of drudgery is no fun. Therefore, select a project that will want to make you move forward and continue your journey with the education.

You can buy individual sensors from the market and hook them up to your RBPi. However, as a beginner, you might be well off buying a kit for a specific use such as a single wire temperature sensor or a humidity sensor. Later, when more confident, you could move on to Hardware Attached on Top or HATs for the RBPi.

Pi-Top: Convert your Raspberry Pi into a Laptop

Although we call the Raspberry Pi or RBPi as a single board computer and it is small enough to fit in your pocket, it is hardly useful as a computer when you are on the move. This is mainly because the SBC comes without a keyboard, display, and mouse, intended to keep the costs down. However, if you are interested in turning your RBPi3 into a laptop, there is the Pi-Top.

You get everything necessary to turn your $35 single board computer into a laptop. For instance, you get a 13.3” HD LCD screen with an eDP interface and 1366×768 pixel resolution, which comes with an active 262K color matrix, anti-glare finish, and a 60 Hz refresh rate TFT LCD module. Additionally, you get a keyboard that is fully programmable via USB and a trackpad with a PalmCheck feature that helps prevent unwanted mouse clicks.

Although the Pi-Top converts the RBPI into a general-purpose laptop, its actual strength lies in its being a tinkerer’s toolkit. Pi-Top gives you great power management with LED battery indicators. The power supply requires an input capable of 18 V at 3 A, while it offers two outputs, one of 5 V, 3.5 A, and the other at 3.3 V, 500 mA. One good feature is the 3.3 V output is persistent. That means this voltage is available even when you have powered off the Pi-Top. Battery capacity is substantial, giving a run-time of 10-12 hours. There is protection for all outputs from over-current, over-voltage, over-temperature, and short-circuit. The smart battery pack uses a charging profile recommended by JEITA.

The hub-board of the Pi-Top has a screen driver that converts the HDMI output from the RBPi to the eDP 1.2 interface required by the LCD screen. It allows connection of UART, I2C, and SPI to the RBPi for use with add-on boards. There is even a PS/2 interface. The screen consumes 3 W, but you can dim it with a PWM screen dim control to make it consume less power.

Pi-Top comes with a manual to walk you through the assembly process in steps, while identifying clearly the part necessary to use at each stage. The manual has a pictorial guide to help in assembling the laptop. That makes the job relatively simpler. Since all the tools you need are already included, piecing together the case, cables, and boards into a working laptop is an unforgettable experience. However, you do need to be careful when tightening the smallish 2.5 mm nuts that hold the boards in place, as there are various electronic components on the boards.

Once assembled, the Pi-Top is an impressive sight, with its fluorescent green finish. The external case is injection-molded plastic and is sturdy enough to be travel-worthy. When powered on, you may be surprised at not seeing the familiar Linux-based Raspbian desktop on the screen. That is because the PI-Top re-skins the Raspbian desktop as the pi-topOS. Basically, they have added a launcher and configured the desktop to add a menu button at the bottom left corner – familiar to long-time Windows users with the Start menu.

Create Steam without Boiling Water

According to the primary text books of physics, pure water boils to produce steam at 100°C when the pressure equals 1 atmosphere or 760 mm of mercury, provided the heat supplied equals 640 Kcal for every Kilogram of water. That means, to produce steam, you need to boil water, so it changes its phase from liquid to gas. However, scientists are proving that it is possible to produce steam from water without boiling it – simply by supplying the latent heat necessary to change the phase.

Boiling is not necessary for producing steam if the vessel containing water is lined with a black material capable of absorbing a range of visible and infrared wavelengths of light. This material can create heat from sunlight and pass it on to the water, creating steam without the water going through the boiling stage.

According to a report in the Science Advances, scientists have created such a new, extremely black material. The material is a deep black color as it reflects very little visible light. The base material is pocked with tiny channels or Nano pores, over which there is a layer of gold nanoparticles each only a few billionths of a meter wide. This arrangement can absorb light from the visible spectrum and from some parts of the infrared spectrum, reaching 99% efficiency.

As the structure of the material is highly porous, it floats on water surface and soaks up the sunrays falling on it. As light falls on a gold nanoparticle within one of the Nano pores, photons in the applicable range of wavelength stir up electrons on the gold surface. The electrons oscillate back and forth, and the oscillating electrons are known as plasmons. The plasmons produce intense localized heating, vaporizing the water nearby.

To excite a plasmon, the wavelength of light has to match the size of the nanoparticle it hits. Therefore, to use as much of the sun’s spectrum as possible, scientists have created gold nanoparticles in the pores of a variety of sizes. That allows the material to absorb a large range of the wavelengths of light.

Jia Zhu, material scientist at the Nanjing University of China, is pioneering the research group. According to Jia, scientists have been successful in producing steam with plasmonic material earlier as well. However, the new material is different as it improves the efficiency of the entire process, and converts more than 90% of the light energy falling on it to steam.

According to mechanical engineer Nicholas Fang of MIT, not a part of the research, the team has actually produced an intriguing solution. Although scientists have achieved higher efficiencies with other material such as carbon nanotubes, the new material, though not as efficient, will be cheaper to manufacture.

Steam is a very useful form of energy and generating steam efficiently can help many industries. These include producing freshwater from saline water, also known as desalination, running steam engines and sterilization. In the industry, steam is used also for humidification, moisturization, cleaning, atomization, motive, propulsion, drive, and heating. There are several steam-using equipment as well.

Piq: This Ski-sensor Measures Details of your Skiing

Most skiers want feedback about their skiing, for improving their technique. The ski sensor from Rossignol offers one that not only does what skiers want in unprecedented detail, but also light and tiny enough to be unobtrusive. For instance, you get details about edge-to-edge transition time, in-air rotation, g-force, airtime and more. The sensor is slick enough and low profile, so you may not even notice that you have it on you.

This multi-sport ski sensor, Piq, measures just 44 x 38 x 5.4 mm. In the three-piece setup, the largest is the AA-battery sized charging unit. When not in use, you can simply plug this into the USB port of your computer and leave it for charging. It has a steel clamp to allow the Piq sensor to snap under it when you are resting. This gives the Piq sensor a quick recharge during say, lunchtime. In real use, the Piq sensor stays in a small pocket on the ankle strap that you strap around your ankle. You must be careful when you wrap and strap the ankle strap to prevent the Piq sensor from flying out during some of the most aggressive sessions.

Once you have had it on securely, you can forget about the Piq. Those who tried it on for multiple days, say the Piq never budged, even when the skier straight-lined it at over 100 kmph, jumped, skied corn snow, groomers, hard pack, and deep powder. In general, whether you slash, thrash, and even smash a few gates, this tiny, light, and secure Piq sensor will stay with you.

The Piq sensor has its own battery, powering it on for continuous tracking for about three hours, according to the manufacturer. In actual practice, the battery lasts longer than the manufacturer’s claim, before needing a recharge. This is indeed a big plus for the Piq, as it is very rare for the battery performance in a device to exceed the manufacturer’s claims.

While you are on the snow, the Piq sensor will track and record several statistics such as your speed, rotation time in the air, total airtime, G-force when you land, and the G-force when you take a turn. It will record your edge-to-edge transition time and the angulation of your ski in a turn, generally known as the carving degree. You can time your skiing time, as against standing or riding the chair, etc., your total run, and all your motions including the turns and jumps during the session. Piq will even count the turns per minute when you are skiing.

A free Android or iOS app companion allows the user to get access to the data the Piq sensor has acquired. No cable connection is necessary, as the smartphone connects to the sensor via Bluetooth 4.0. However, the app does not give you the data in real-time. Rather, it synchronizes your session when you trigger the specific function within the app.

An interactive, info-graphic style interface displays the data you pulled in and allows you to look at topline data for the session. You can then drill down to specifics about your turns and jumps.

Amputee Patients Feel Again Using Bionic Fingers

Although prosthetics do help amputees to get back some use of their missing limb, feeling is not among them. However, that may soon be changing now. Bionics prosthetics research from EPFL is promising enough to allow an amputee patient to perceive and distinguish between smooth and rough textures. An artificial finger connected surgically to nerves in the upper part of the patient’s arm does the trick. It is expected that this advance will expedite the development of the sense of touch in prosthetic limbs.

The EPFL research has also proven that the same prosthetic touch sensors meant for amputees can be easily tested on people who are able-bodied. For instance, non-amputee persons can feel roughness by stimulation of their nerves – without surgery.

Sylvestro Micera and his team at EPFL in Switzerland and SSSA in Italy have developed this technology in collaboration with Calogero Oddo and his team at SSSA – they have published the results in eLife. Their research is opening new windows on the development of bionic prostheses, and sensory perception is helping to improve the progress.

Dennis Aabo Sørensen, a hand amputee, is helping EPFL with its prosthetic research for some time. The team has implanted electrodes above the stump on his left forearm. The bionic finger connected to his stump allows him to feel sensations of texture at the tip of the index finger of his phantom hand. However, he still feels his missing hand as if he had a closed fist.

When EPFL connected a bionic hand to the electrodes in his left forearm, S⌀rensen could recognize both shape and softness. This time, the team wired the bionic finger to the electrodes meant for his fingertip. Rubbing the bionic finger against several pieces of plastic engraves with different patterns produced a sensation of texture at the tip of the index finger of his phantom hand. For 96 percent of the time, Sørensen was able to differentiate correctly between smooth and rough plastics using his bionic finger.

The group at SSSA in Italy tested the bionic finger on non-amputees while the subjects wore EEG caps. They noted the brain activity of the subjects while they were touching the plastic surfaces with their actual finger. They then compared these against the activity detected while they touched the same surfaces with the bionic fingertip. This was proof to the scientists that bionic fingers could activate the same parts of the brain, as did the real digits.

Therefore, the team is confident not only about leading to prosthetics that can feel, but also about offering the power of artificial touch to industrial, surgical and rescue robots as well.

The artificial fingertip was equipped with sensors that were wired to nerves in Sørensen’s arm. As the fingertip, assisted by a machine, moved over different pieces of plastic with smooth or rough patterns engraved on it, the sensors generated appropriate electrical signals. These signals were then translated into a series of electrical spikes to imitate the language of the nervous system. Once the spikes were delivered to the nerves, Sørensen was able to distinguish between rough and smooth surfaces with repeatable accuracy.

What Are The Cobots?

When inventors Joseph Eagleburger and George Devol were discussing about science fiction novels in 1954, they initiated the idea of industrial robots. It took them six years to give shape to their idea and Unimate entered a secure place in the robotic hall of fame, as the world’s first industrial robot. In 1961, Unimate began working on the assembly lines of the General Motors.

At first, people looked on with suspicion on the safety issues related to Unimate. At the time, the only reference people had for robots, was the laser-firing robot from “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” a thriller from the 1950s. Now, 50 years hence, industrial robots are far less scary.

Traditionally, robots were constructed to work under restriction inside robotic work cells with physical barriers for the safety of human workers. However, modern robots work completely outside any cage. On the factory floors today, working safely alongside their human counterparts, you will find unfettered working robots that are termed collaborative robots or cobots. Nevertheless, no robot is entirely devoid of health and safety features.

Unlike in the past, today’s industrial robots or cobots are designed specifically to work safely around humans. In fact, now robots work hand-in-hand with humans on the same assembly tasks and it has been independently certified that this is safe. The two-armed collaborative robot from ABB Robotics, YuMi, contributed largely to this certification.

To prevent accidents with human workers, cobots utilize sensors installed on them. The sensors monitor the location of humans around them on the factory floor and react to human contact. Therefore, even if a person does come too close to the machinery, it simply and automatically shuts down. Moreover, cobots work with strength, speed, and force limited to avoid causing serious injury to humans if there is any contact.

Most cobots are simple enough to require practically no skill in programming them. Anyone, who can operate a smartphone, can program them to operate. In contrast, complex robots of about a decade ago needed a host of highly skilled technicians to program and monitor them while in operation.

Among the industries that are being transformed by such collaborative machinery, the most to benefit is the automotive industry. As such, this sector has always been at the forefront of industrial robotics. Automotive manufacturers have been using robots and robotic equipment since the 1960s, but a lot has changed since then. The competitive nature of the industry forces manufacturing lines to be highly efficient, flexible and more productive than ever before.

Not that all this means any advancement in robotics is a threat to human jobs on the production line. For instance, builders use a concrete mixer to help the bricklayer and not to replace him. In the same way, collaborative robots only assist workers on the assembly line and do not actually replace them. According to some experts, production line workers will ultimately use collaborative robots as helpers in the same way as engineers use computers to further their own work and make their jobs easier.