PCB Rocker

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Published: Sunday, 21 February 2010

Written by Graham Mitchell

Another quick and easy project, this time focused toward a simple robot that rocks a tank full of PCB etchant.

Anyone that fabricates their own Printed Circuit Boards (PCB's) at home will either have a commercial etching tank, or manually rock their etchant solution until the process is complete. Given the price of commercial models are anywhere between $70 and $150, I thought some DIY was in order here. For less than $20 in parts you can make your own PCB Rocker like this one that does the job just fine.

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Development Board: Wireless Transceiver (Sure Electronics, PN GP-GC011)

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Published: Tuesday, 16 February 2010

Written by Graham Mitchell

After a recent article from Jon Chandler, I thought it best to share my recent work on the Sure Electronics 915Mhz Wireless Transceivers.

Here's what one looks like from the box;

It's very important to note here that they come in a pair. That means 2xTransceivers and 2xOmni Antenna. At the time of purchase/writing this article, the modules cost US$17.72 a pair.

The datasheet can be downloaded here: GP-GC011

Read more: Development Board: Wireless Transceiver (Sure Electronics, PN GP-GC011)

Wireless Temperature and Humidity Sensor

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Published: Tuesday, 16 February 2010

Written by Andyo

My most recently completed project is a remote temperature and humidity sensor which wirelessly sends the readings to a base station to display and log the data.

For the base station I used an old iPaq Pocket PC which was past its useful life.  The remote sensor is controlled by a PIC18F1220.

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Development Board: Dedicated 8 Channel Servo Controller

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Published: Sunday, 14 February 2010

Written by Graham Mitchell

Download the Swordfish program and Gerber files here: Dedicated Servo Controller Source Files

This project offers a dedicated solution to control servo motors, which can be controlled via USART data packets. This approach has it advantages, though Andy has made an excellent feature enriched Servo Library which can be used in pretty much any program.

Servo Motor's are one of the many hobby electronic marvels that make life a lot easier when working with motion/kinetic applications. They are somewhat precision instruments that offer their full range of motion with pulse widths usually between 1mS and 2mS. That's not much play, and further more, the positional information must be transmitted to the servo approximately fifty times a second (50Hz).

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Sure 2.4 GHz UART Module

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Published: Friday, 12 February 2010

Written by Jon Chandler

I've recently had a few applications where a wireless link would be handy. Looking on eBay, I found that Sure makes a 2.4 GHz UART module for a decent price (US$14 each on eBay including shipping).  These are designed as a cable replacement, with a claimed range of 10 meters. 

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