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Making a PiPlateBot with the Raspberry Pi

Turtle robots of the yesteryears had always fascinated Robert Doerr and he decided to create one with the popular single board computer, the raspberry Pi or RBPi. He hid all components of the robot inside the plate case, and decided to call his robot PiPlateBot.

Robert Doerr is the owner of Robot Workshop, and a dedicated robot builder. He used the Bud Pi Plate case, as this was strikingly similar to the turtle-style robots computer science students used earlier.

The Pi Plate has a circular design. Twisting off the top allows easy access to the space within that can house additional components. That led Robert try to fit an RBPi inside, along with the other parts required to build a moving robot. According to Robert, the PiPlateBot is the only robot that runs on an RBPi and uses an off the shelf RBPi case. Robert claims he is using as many RBPi-type products as possible for the construction.

To get everything to fit, Robert had to cut two rectangular holes in the Pl Plate enclosure base. Then he glued servos to the bottom and clipped the RBPi and RoboPi boards on the top. On the boards, he placed a BZO power bank to work as a battery. To enable communicating wirelessly with the RBPi, Robert uses a USB Wi-Fi adaptor. This allows him to SSH directly into the RBPi.

The RoboPi is an impressive motor controller, and the most powerful one for the RBPi. Using an eight-core 32-bit Parallax Propeller RISC micro-controller at 100 MHz, it allows offloading hard real time IO from the Linux OS running on the RBPi, thereby giving timing with greater precision to projects. The RoboPi will work with any RBPi model.

Each core on the RISC controller works at 25 MIPS, with each instruction taking only four clock cycles to complete. The RoboPi has three ten-pin IO module expansion connectors and they provide 24 servo-compatible headers. Some of these connectors use jumper selectable power from the internal 5 VDC or the external servo power supply for powering the sensors.

The user can connect servos to screw terminals that provide external power. There are eight headers for setting up an eight channel 0-5 V analog to digital converter. The user has a choice of using MCP3008 for 10-bit AD conversion or MCP3208 for 12-bit AD conversion.

Therefore, while the RBPi does the high-level thinking, the Parallax Propeller chip on the RoboPi board handles all the IO controlling and the real-time tasks. As the RoboPi controller has both C and Python libraries, Robert plans to write a Logo Interpreter to make the PiPlateBot use Logo to emulate the early turtle robots.

As the PiPlateBot has only two servos controlling its two wheels, the robot actually wobbles when operated. Robert had to use furniture gliders to prevent this. He attached them to the front and rear of the PiPlateBot. A sonar sensor fitted on the PiPlateBot allows it to sense its surroundings.

Building a robot is the fun way of learning to use the RBPi, and a great way to learn programming on the SBC.

What are Laminated Bus Bars?

Rather than use one solid bar of copper, the industry prefers laminated bus bars. These are fabricated components with layers of engineered copper bars separated by flat dielectric materials, bound together into a unified construction. Laminated bus bars offer several advantages—improved reliability and reduced system costs. They are available in various sizes and shapes, some as big as a fingertip while others more than twenty feet in length. Several industries use multilayered bus bar solutions routinely and they include telecommunications, computers, industrial, military, transportation, alternative energy, power electronics, and many more.

Laminated bus bars are good for reducing the system costs, improving system reliability, increasing capacitance, lowering inductance, and eliminating wiring errors. Additionally, the physical structure of the bus bars also acts as structural members of a complete power distribution subsystem. Multilayer bus bars function as a structural integration that other wiring methods cannot match.

The decreased assembly time and the internal material handling costs for laminated bus bars bring down the overall manufacturing costs. Assembly operating procedures can be difficult to follow and assemblers often resort to guesswork, leading to wiring errors. Using laminated bus bars eliminates this totally, as installers have to terminate various conductors at specified locations. Not only does this reduce the parts count, it also reduces ordering, inventory costs, and material handling.

Fabricators can make laminated bus bars fit specific needs and customize them for maximizing efficiency. The use of laminated bus bars, therefore, helps the organization build quality into processes. With reductions in wiring errors, the organization has fewer reworks, and they can lower their quality and service costs.

Laminated bus bars offer increased capacitance and lower inductance, resulting in lower characteristic impedance. The benefit to the industry is greater noise cancellation and effective noise suppression. Manufacturers can control the capacitance by using dielectrics of various thicknesses and different relative K factor.

Multilayered bus bars can replace cable harnesses—this eliminates mistakes in wirings. Moreover, failure rate of bus bars is extremely low, while wiring harnesses fail very often. That makes repairing and or replacing wire harnesses an expensive process, while using bus bars in the system is adding an effective insurance.

According to physics, a conductor carrying current develops an electromagnetic field around the conductor. As laminated bus bars have thin parallel conductors with thin dielectric material separating them, the effect of inductance on electrical circuits is a minimum. With opposing potentials laminated together, the magnetic flux cancellation reaches a maximum. Semiconductor applications routinely use laminated bus bars to reduce the proximity effect. GaN and or SiC high frequency circuits also use laminated bus bars to reduce high electromagnetic interference.

Using wide and thin conductors and laminating them together to form bus bars actually decreases the space requirement, thereby allowing a better airflow in systems and improving system thermal characteristics. Moreover, the flexibility of these bus bars provides the industry with a wide variety of interconnecting methods. Assemblers commonly use tabs, embossments, and bushings for installing laminated bus bars. Manufacturers also offer pressed-in fittings that can integrate into the design. This makes laminated bus bars compatible with almost any type of interface.

What is a PCB Via and How is it Made?

Vias are actually holes drilled into PCB layers and electroplated with a thin layer of copper to provide the necessary electrical connectivity. Three most common types of plated through via are in use—plated through holes, blind holes, and buried holes—with plated through holes running through all the layers of the PCB. These are the simplest type of holes to make and the cheapest. However, they take up a huge amount of PCB space, reducing the space available for routing.

Blind vias connect the outermost circuit on the PCB with other circuits on one or more adjacent inner layers. As they do not traverse the entire thickness of the PCB, they increase the space utilization by leaving more space for routing.

Buried vias connect two or more circuit layers in a multi-layered PCB, but do not show up on any of the outer layers. These are the most expensive type of vias and take more time to implement, as the fabricator has to drill the hole in the individual circuit layer when bonding it. However, designers can stack several buried vias in-line or in a staggered manner to make a blind via. Therefore, buried vias offer the maximum space utilization when routing a PCB. Fabricators of high-density interconnect (HDI) boards usually make use of buried vias, most often using lasers for drilling them.

Drilling a Via

At positions for the vias, the fabricator drills holes through the PCB using a metal drill of small diameter. He or she then cleans the hole, de-smears it, and de-burrs it to prepare it for plating. Rather than removing copper as is normally the case with the etching process, the fabricator then adds a thin layer of copper to the newly formed hole through a process of electroplating, thereby connecting the two layers. For a two-layer board, the fabricator then etches circuit patterns on both sides. Via usually have capture pads on both layers.

The process of drilling a via hole using a laser is somewhat different. In general, fabricators use two types of lasers—CO2 and UV—with the latter able to make very small diameter via holes. UV laser-drilled via holes are about 20-35 µm in diameter. As the laser beam is able to ablate through the thin copper layer, capture pads with a central opening are not necessary. Most fabricators program a two-step process for drilling a hole with a laser beam.

In the first step, a wider-focused laser heats the top copper layer, driving the metal rapidly through the melt phase into the vapor phase prior to gas-dynamic effects expelling it from the surface. The laser repeats this for all via positions on the PCB layer.

In the next step, the program focuses the beam tightly and controls the depth the laser can burn. For blind vias, It allows the laser to burn through the intervening dielectric and stop when it has reached the bottom copper layer, before moving on to the neighboring via position.

The same process of electroplating as above deposits a thin layer of copper along the walls of the holes left behind by the laser beam, thereby connecting the two layers. The rest of the process for etching the circuit pattern on the two sides remains the same.

How useful are PCB Vias?

Designers use a plated through via as a conduit for transferring signals and power from one layer to another in a multi-layer printed circuit board (PCB). For the PCB fabricator, the plated through via are a cost-effective process for producing PCBs. Therefore, vias are one of the key drivers of the PCB manufacturing industry.

Use of Vias

Apart from simply connecting two or more copper layers, vias are useful for creating very dense boards for special IC packages, especially the fine-pitch components such as BGAs. BGAs with pitch lower than 0.5 mm usually do not leave much space for routing traces between neighboring pads. Designers resort to via-in-pads for breaking out such closely spaced BGA pins.

To prevent solder wicking into the via hole while soldering and leaving the joint bereft of solder, the fabricator has to fill or plug the via. Filling a via is usually with a mixture of epoxy and a conductive material, mostly copper, but the fabricator may also use other metals such as silver, gold, aluminum, tin, or a combination of them. Filling has an additional advantage of increasing the thermal conductivity of the via, useful when multiple filled vias have to remove heat from one layer to another. However, the process of filling a via is expensive.

Plugging a via is a less expensive way, especially when an increase in thermal conductivity does not serve additional value. The fabricator fills the via with solder mask of low-viscosity or a resin type material similar to the laminate. As this plugging protects the copper in the via, no other surface finish is necessary. For both, filled and plugged vias, it is important to use material with CTE matching the board material.

Depending on the application, fabricators may simply tent a via, covering it with solder mask, without filling it. They may have to leave a small hole at the top to allow the via to breathe, as air trapped inside will try to escape during soldering.

Trouble with Vias

The most common defect with vias is plating voids. The electro-deposition process for plating the via wall with a layer of copper can result in voids, gaps, or holes in the plating. The imperfection in the via may limit the amount of current it can transfer, and in worst case, may not transfer at all, if the plating is non-continuous. Usually, an electrical test by the fabricator is necessary to establish all vias are properly functioning.

Another defect is the mismatch of CTE between the copper and the dielectric material. As temperatures rise, the dielectric material may expand faster than the copper tube can, thereby parting the tube and breaking its electrical continuity. Therefore, it is very important for the fabricator to select a dielectric material with a CTE as close as possible to copper.

Vias placed in the flexing area of a flex PCB can separate from the prepreg causing a pad lift and an electrical discontinuity. It is important designers take care to not place any vias in the area where they plan the PCB will flex.

HiFiBerry & Raspberry Pi Put New Life into Old Loudspeakers

If you have some old stereo speakers stored away in your basement, chances are they connect through the old way—with wires—to an amplifier, and that is the reason they were banished to the basement. With HiFiBerry Amp+ and a single board computer, such as the Raspberry Pi (RBPi), you can resurrect your vintage speakers. Using the latest in open source technology, you can now use the renovated loudspeakers wherever you want, since they now operate wirelessly.

HiFiBerry offers their Amp+ as an amplifier for the RBPi. As it is a Class-D power amplifier, it is highly efficient as a stereo module, and you only need to connect the loudspeakers. This high-quality amplifier is ideal for setting up multi-room audio installations.

The amplifier is stable enough to drive 4-Ohm loudspeakers and those with higher impedance as well, pumping out 25 W of output power. However, the best part is the RBPi can fully control the amplifier. As the amplifier includes on-board digital to analog converters, you do not need external sound cards or DACs to provide the 44.1 KHz and 48 KHz sample rates. The board connects directly to the RBPi without needing additional cables, and this provides a full digital sound path for optimal audio performance.

The HiFiBerry Amp+ comes as a pre-fabricated kit, so it needs no soldering. It is a daughter board for the RBPi, and when the RBPi plugs into it, you need to connect only a single external power supply of 12-18 V to supply both the amplifier and the SBC, as the RBPi draws power from the Amp+. You can use the Amp+ with all RBPi models that have the 40-pin GPIO connector. The board sits on four small plastic spacers that come with the kit.

The specialty of the Amp+ kit is it converts the digital signal into audio with far greater clarity than the RBPi can, and delivers that to the speaker as a 25 W audio amplifier. On the reverse side of the board, the female connector is easily visible, so it is easy to plug in the GPIO pins of the RBPi.

On one side of the board are a jack for powering the board, and six wire-terminals. If for some reason you cannot use the jack to power the board, use the two wire-terminals on the left. The rest of the four wire-terminals are for connecting to a pair of stereo loudspeakers, using two audio cables per speaker.

As the board takes in 12-18 V supply and delivers power to the RBPi as well, it is important to not power the RBPi from its usual 5 V power supply. This reduces the number of wires to the assembly. As the Amp+ board is very small, it does not protrude beyond the RBPi. It is important to mount the board on the four plastic spacers to avoid breaking the GPIO pins.

The SD card for the RBPi can be of the 8 GB type and people have reported better performance with Transcend cards. However, you can use 16 GB cards as well.

Are Ferrites Good for Interference Suppression?

Although ferrite beads and sleeves are a common sight on cables, the technique for reducing both outgoing and incoming RF interference is the least understood. To study ferrites, and to do some comparative frequency domain measurements, one needs actual ferrite samples, a specially designed test jig, a spectrum analyzer, and a tracking generator.

Any current flowing through a metal conductor will create a magnetic field around it. The inductance of the conductor transfers the energy between the current and the magnetic field. A straight wire has a self-inductance of about 20 nH per inch. Any magnetically permeable material placed around the conductor helps to increase the flux density for a given field strength, thereby increasing the inductance.

Ferrite is a magnetically permeable material, and the composition of the different oxides making it up control its permeability, which is frequency dependent. The composition is mainly ferric oxide, along with nickel and zinc oxides. Furthermore, the permeability is complex with both real and imaginary parts. Therefore, the line passing through the ferrite has both inductive and resistive components added to the impedance.

The ratio of these components varies with frequency. The resistive part dominates at higher frequencies, and the ferrite behaves as a frequency dependent resistor. Therefore, the assembly shows loss at high frequencies, with the RF energy dissipating in the bulk of the material. At the same time, there are few or no resonances with stray capacitances.

Cables are usually in the form of a conductor pair, carrying signal and return, or power and return. Multi-way cables may carry several such pairs. The equal and opposite return current in each circuit pair usually cancels the magnetic field from the current in the forward line. Therefore, any ferrite sleeve place around a whole cable will have zero effect on the differential mode currents in the cable. This is true as long as the sum of differential-mode currents in the cable is zero.

However, for currents in the cable in common mode, with conductors carrying current in the same direction, the picture is different. Usually, such cables produce ground-referred noise at the point of connection or have an imbalance of the impedance to ground, causing a part of the signal current returning to ground through paths other than through the cable.

For instance, a screened cable, improperly terminated, may carry common-mode currents. As their return paths are essentially uncontrolled, these currents have a great potential for interference, despite being of low levels. Sometimes, the incoming RF currents, although generated in common mode, convert to differential mode and so affect circuit operation. This happens due to differing impedances at the cable interface.

As common mode currents in a cable generate a magnetic field around it, placing a ferrite sleeve around the cable increases the local impedance of the cable and operates between the source and load impedances.

When interfacing cables, low source impedance implies the ferrite sleeve is most effective when adjacent to a capacitive filter to ground. Since the length and layout of a cable will usually vary, engineers take the average value of the cable impedance as 150 ohms.

How do Antistatic Bags Work?

Computer boards and sensitive electronic components need protection from electrostatic discharge, especially at the time of shipping, handling, and assembly. This requirement has led to the development of an entirely new class of antistatic packaging materials. Now, a multi-million dollar packaging industry exists, with major developments in polymers. These are special conductive polyethylene and other laminates covered with very thin metalized films. This packaging industry saves several hundred million dollars each year for the computer and electronic industry, dwarfing almost all other industrial and commercial antistatic abatement enterprises.

To demonstrate the working of an antistatic bag that store and ship assembled boards and electronic components, one needs an apparatus including a tonal electrostatic voltmeter or TESV, several antistatic bags big enough to cover the TESV mounted on a tripod, a plastic tube or rod, and a rubbing cloth. Wool or silk cloth will work well with a Teflon, Nylon, or PVC pipe.

To disallow any movement of the TESV when operating, mount the instrument on a tripod, turn it on, and zero the instrument. Now charge a plastic rod by rubbing it with the cloth, and bring it close to the sensing head of the TESV. The instrument will respond by indicating the presence of electrostatic charge.

Covering the TESV with one of the antistatic bags shows it now registers little or no charge when repeating the experiment. Even with the charged conducting object discharging directly to the bag, the TESV shows little or no charge indication. The only possible explanation is the conductive bag shields the TESV from the electrostatic field.

The bag shields the instrument even though it is not connected to ground. If it were necessary to ground the bag to make it work, the antistatic bag would have been more inconvenient and ineffective than they are now. Grounding is not necessary here as electric charge resides only on the outer surface and does not penetrate inside, or into any void enclosed by the conductive material. The ungrounded bag simply holds the charge harmlessly only on the outside.

This also solves the problem of removing a sensitive component from inside the bag. When a person handles the bag, the contact with the hand grounds the bag and drains the charge from its surface. However, if the person were wearing an insulated glove, the component would draw a strong electric spark when it is withdrawn from the bag, and may be damaged.

Antistatic and static shielding materials are commercially available for every size and shape necessary. Specifications usually refer to MIL standards or the rate of charge dissipation, along with abrasion resistance, thickness, and others. Some advertisers refer to their antistatic bags as Faraday cages, since it does not allow charge to penetrate inside the bag.

Another type of antistatic bag has no metal layer, but is actually a bag made of a conductive polyethylene film. The manufacturer claims the bag can dissipate 5 KV in 2 seconds. Although in practice it is the electric charge that dissipates, the voltage is far easier and more convenient to monitor, and is directly proportional to the charge for a fixed capacitance geometry.

How to solder – an illustrated guide

Guide to learning to solderWe love when we come across electronics info and guides that others are sharing freely – and especially those that encourage others to share their knowledge and work.

For example…here is a fully illustrated guide to learning how to solder which was done by the fine folks at http://mightyohm.com. They’ve created a super guide with all the basics covered as well as some interesting tips and tricks that can make your soldering experience a little better. This would be a great staple for some basic electronics classes.

To see the full soldering guide, click on the image above.

Thank you to the creators of this comic book: Mitch Altman, Andie Nordgren and Jeff Keyzer. Great work!

The ins and outs of Peltier Cells

What Are Peltier Cells and How Do They Work?

If you join two dissimilar metals by two separate junctions, and maintain the two junctions at different temperatures, a small voltage develops between the two metals. Conversely, if a voltage is applied to the two metals, allowing a current to pass through them in a certain direction, their junctions develop a temperature difference. The former is called the Seebeck effect and the latter is the Peltier effect.

Many such dissimilar metal junctions are grouped together to form a Peltier cell. Initially, copper and bismuth were the two dissimilar metals used to form the junctions. However, more efficient semi-conductor materials are used in the modern Peltier cell. These are sandwiched between two ceramic plates and the junctions are encased in silicon.

Just as you could pass electric current through a Peltier cell to make one of its surfaces hot and the other cool, so could you place a Peltier cell in between two surfaces with a temperature difference to generate electricity. In fact, BMW places them around the exhaust of their cars to reclaim some electricity from the temperature difference between the hot gases emanating from the car and the atmosphere.

Another place where Peltier cells are put to use is the picnic basket. It connects to the car battery and has two compartments – one to keep food hot and the other to keep food and drinks cool. Unfortunately, Peltier cells are notoriously inefficient, since all they do is move heat from their cold side to the hot. Part of their efficiency is also dependent on how fast heat is removed from their hot side. Usually, Peltier cells are able to maintain a maximum temperature difference of 40°C between their hot and cold sides.

Active heat sinks use Peltier cells to keep CPUs cool inside heavy-duty computers. These CPUs pack a lot of electronics inside their tiny bodies and generate huge amounts of heat when working at high frequencies of a few Giga-hertz. Peltier cells help to remove the heat from the CPU and keep the temperature constant. One advantage in using Peltier cells for this work is the CPU can regulate the amount of heat removed. The CPU in a computer has temperature sensors inside and when it senses its temperature is going up, it pumps in more current into the Peltier to increase the heat removal.

What does the Peltier do with the heat it has acquired from the hot source? To maintain its functioning, the Peltier has to transfer this heat to the material surrounding its hot surface. Usually, this is an Aluminum or Copper heat sink, which then transfers the heat to the atmosphere.

Active heat sinks that are more exotic use heat-conducting fluids to transfer the heat away from the hot side of the Peltier cell. These are specially formulated fluids with high thermal conductivity running in pipes over the hot surface of the Peltier. As the Peltier gets hot, the fluid takes away the heat and changes to a liquid of a lower density. Convection currents are set up, causing the hot liquid to move away to be replaced by cooler liquid, aiding heat transfer. Heat from the hot liquid is removed in a heat exchanger in a different part of the computer.

Parental Control V-Chip – What is it and how does it work?

Parents are concerned over the type of programs their children watch on the television and would like to exercise their control. They do not want their children watching programs with excessive violence or sexual content. Since it is not possible to be always present when the children are watching TV, it is best to have a device automatically detecting the type of program coming through, and blocking it if it is objectionable.

All television sets made and sold in the US after 1999 have a special electronic chip built in and this is the V-chip. This allows parents to select the level of violent programs, which children can watch in the home. This also means that all TV programs contain a rating transmitted along with the program, which the V-chip can detect.

The FCC defines the ratings as –

TV-Y – Suitable for all children, with no violence and no sexual content
TV-Y7 – Suitable for children aged seven and over
TV-G – Suitable for general audiences, with no violence, no sex and inappropriate language
TV-PG – Parents to exercise their own discretion
TV-14 – Suitable for children above 14 only, with some violence and sex
TV-MA – Suitable for mature audiences only and may contain sexual situations and/or graphic violence

A parent can program the V-chip with a specific rating, and the chip will block all programs or shows above that rating. For example, if you have programmed a V-chip for a TV-G rating, it will allow all programs with a rating of TV-G, TV-Y7 and TV-Y, and will block all the rest.

All television programs transmit synchronizing signals, which allow a proper build-up of the picture on the screen. The electron beam painting the picture on the screen starts to sweep from the top left corner to the right edge of the screen, turns itself off, retraces itself to the left edge and sweeps again to the right edge, moving down a tiny bit in the process, until it has covered the entire height of the screen. The beam then returns from the bottom right hand corner of the screen to the top left hand corner and the whole process repeats. The vertical and horizontal retrace signals transmitted along with the TV program control all this.

As the signal returns from the bottom of the screen to the top, it follows a number of horizontal retrace lines. The twenty-first line of the horizontal retraces has data embedded in it as specified by the XDS standard. This includes captioning information, time of the day, ratings information and many others.

The V-chip is capable of reading this line 21 data, extracts the rating’s information and compares it with the parent’s allowed rating. Accordingly, the chip lets the signal pass through or blocks it.

The V-chip in the television works in conjunction with the cable box and/or the VCR. You can either utilize the V-chip or turn it off.