Hardware Development Links

Product manufacture

• Macrofab – have a very nice interface for developing products
• PCBshopper
• Hackvana – decent PCB fab
• Eurofins – CE testing in China, $500 – $1000

PCB design

• SnapEDA – lots of pcb footprints

Tools

• Screwdriver sets
• Wire cutters
• Tin snips

Component tester

Cheap component tester – gives resistance, inductance etc.

Programmers

• PICKIT 3 – PIC programmer, can program 32-bit PICs

Microcontrollers and their dev boards

• stm32f429 discovery – ARM microcontroller board
• PIC32MX250F128B – £3 with hardware USB support in DIP format, nice chip
• LPC Link 2 – Dual core MCU with 80Msps ADC

Online tools

• Chebyshev Bandpass Filter – Looks useful, need to test output values in SPICE sim

CMOS/TTL chips

• 74F676 – 16-Bit Serial/Parallel-In, Serial-Out Shift Register
• Peregrine PE64102 – Digitally Tunable Capacitor
• SPU0410LR5H-QB (analog) – Knowles MEMS Microphones
• SPH0641LU4H-1 (digital – PDM)- Knowles MEMS Microphones
• MCP3008 – 10Bit ADC (8 channel) SPI (tried with the Pi)

Radio

• 1W 433MHz FSK – Uses a Silicon Lab Si4463 chip. Alternatively they have a 868MHz @ 500mW module. (Both modules use the same chip afaik, but use different band-pass inductors etc.) Supports OOK, FSK, 4FSK and GFSK.

SDR

• Cosycave RTLSDR – bought the cheapest one, as they didn’t have TCXO ones, when I looked
• N-type to MCX connector – for rtlsdr
• Miniwhip – based on PA0RDT design 10kHz – 30MHz active antenna
• Downconverter – can be used to downconvert bluetooth for the rtlsdr
• Mixer basics – how a mixer can be used for up/down conversion

Construction Kit

• proto-pic Bosch Rexroth
• Aluminium-profile Bosch Rexroth
• 80/20 – The Industrial Erector Set (Westgroup apparently sell this in the UK)
• NEMA 14 bracket

Displays

• buydisplay.com
• Nixie tubes
• Mercury Coulometer
• WS2812B Addressable LEDs

Logic analysers

• 16 channel logic analyser – Compatible with Sigrok
• Very cheap FX2LP board

WIFI modules

esp8266

Very cheap wifi module – available very cheaply from aliexpress

There is an excellent quickstart guide which explains how to connect the esp8266 to a USB FTDI module, this works fine provided you make sure the USB cable isn’t too long, or you will get serial corruption!

Linux guide to flashing the esp8266.

You can install eLua on them through nodemcu. To alter the init.lua file which is run by nodemcu on startup use luatool.

Cool modules

• TCD1304 – line CCD
• vl6180 – ToF distance meter
• logic level converter – bi-directional logic level converter
• CYUSB3KIT – USB3 dev kit
• Neato XV-11 – Spinning distance measurement device, sort of like LIDAR, except it’s not using ToF but parallax to measure distance

USB serial

• FTDI 3.3V/5V – module capable of 3.3V or 5V (selectable via a jumper)

Oscilloscopes

• Rigol DS1052E – I’ve got this scope, you can hack it to 100MHz through firmware, which I haven’t done yet.

Lab equipment suppliers

• Akribis
• LabMerchant
• Wikipedia List of lab equipment

Power supplies

• HP47A – works great for high power 12V electronics runs up to 47A
• ATX power supply – seems to only work to around 10A on a 12V rail, more seems to lead to either turning off or cables getting hot
• 500V electrophoresis PSU – low current fairly high voltage PSU, tested it powering nixies
• SparkFun ATX 3.3V, 5V, 12V and -12V all with 5A fuses
• Well made PSU with fan – 5V @ 60.0A, 15.00V @ 14.0A, 15.00v @ 14A, 20.00v @ 10.5A

  

SMPS

Some SMPSs may use a charge pump to convert voltage. Others use an inductor.

• R12-150B – 12VDC in, 95…+210 VDC out, max 50mA output current
• 600W DC-DC 10-60V to 12-80V Boost Converter Step-up Module – Note this has a maximum current of 10A, constant current across the voltage range NOT constant power 

Motors and drivers

• DRV8825 stepper driver (max 2.5A) – up to 32 microsteps, can work with either 3.3V or 5V logic directly. Stepper voltage: 8.2V to 45V.

H-Bridge

Chemicals

• Leuco dyes – Thermochromic/Photochromic etc paints
• Liquid Crystal Thermochromic Thermocolour Sheet

Reverse Engineering

• GGB PicoProbe 12C – 500MHz active probe
• CAT X-Ray – a similar approach would be useful for PCB RE
• Signatone Micropositioner S-931
• Olympus BHM Metallurgical Microscope
• Probestation.tw – Sell probing tools
• 3M 6800 – Full face respirator
• Q-View – Dropper Style Magstripe Developer
• Laser voltage prober – measures reflection of laser beam on transistors (makes use Franz–Keldysh effect), seems a very clever system! Alternatively because of the photo-electric effect, with electrons being emitted when the metal is struck with light, the current of a chip can be monitored using an ammeter capable of measuring to nA.
• On a New Way to Read Data from Memory – Using a laser and sensitive ammeter to read transistor state
• Reading mask rom optically
• degate – Reverse engineering integrated circuits
• Chipwhisperer – side channel analysis and glitching attacks
• Riscure – side channel analysis hardware, along with probing tools etc.
• Chip decapping – H2SO4 (Sulphuric acid), HNO3 (Nitric acid)
• Ubertooth – decode bluetooth packets (as bluetooth adapters themselves aren’t ‘promiscuous’
• Adafruit Bluefruit BLE sniffer – can decode a subset of bluetooth (BLE) not the full bluetooth spec though

AFM (Atomic-force microscopy)

• DIY AFM kit
• AFM developed for a PhD thesis
• AFM probes – around 180 euros for 10 contact mode AFM probes

STM (Scanning tunneling microscope)

• Home built STM – amazing site, definitely has the best explanation and details
• SXM project STM Microscope

Timing Belts & Timing Pinion Pulleys

• Active Robots – Timing belts
• Active Robots – Timing Pinion Pulleys
• Aliexpress – Timing Pinion Pulleys
• Aliexpress – 10m Timing belt £4.87
• Aliexpress – 10x 348mm closed loop Timing belt £7.62
• Aliexpress – 10x 200mm closed loop Timing belt £4.63

Soldering

• Aoyue 2900 – Very good soldering iron, you replace the whole element and tip together

Solid State Relays

• PQLYT 40A SSR – supposed to be a reliable seller

Sheet Metal

• metal cut to size – cut metal to specific sizes

Sheet plastic

• the plastic people – cut plastic to specific sizes

Basic Electronics

• Choosing base resistor for a transistor
• Why MOSFETs need resistors
• Tracewidth calculator – excellent tool, plug in current you want a track to carry etc. and it will tell you the width
  the track should be.
• How 4 layer PCBs are made
• 4 types of N/P-channel MOSFET configurations

Kicad

Library issues

I had problem with libraries from an old instance of Kicad being used.
If you delete .config/kicad/fp-lib-table and in eeschema
go to Preferences > Component libraries, remove the old library paths.

Also in pcbnew go to Preferences > Footprint libraries wizard, to download footprints from github.

Rough guide

• Design schematic in eeschema
• Generate netlist
• Use cvpcb to assign footprints to the schematic components
• Save edits in cvpcb, to write changes to the netlist file
• In pcbnew, read netlist, to load the components

See this guide for lots more detailed info

Useful Kicad extensions/features

• BSDL to kicad schematic component
• svg2mod – Convert SVG to graphic that kicad can load
• quicklib – create kicad schematic component

LinuxCNC

sudo apt-get install pylint
sudo apt-get install libmodbus-dev
sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0-dev
sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev
sudo apt-get install tcl
sudo apt-get install tcllib
sudo apt-get install tcl8.6-dev
sudo apt-get install tk-dev
sudo apt-get install bwidget
sudo apt-get install libtk-img
sudo apt-get install tclx
sudo apt-get install libreadline6-dev
sudo apt-get install libboost-python-dev

. scripts/rip-environment
linuxcnc

Links

• Nicechips – List of interesting semiconductors

Notes

Why do you only need a low pass filter on the Tx of a radio

“For a signal whose fundamental frequency is f , the second harmonic has a frequency 2 f , the third harmonic has a frequency of 3 f , and so on.” – http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/harmonic

This means that harmonics only occur above the carrier frequency (you can only have overtones, not undertones). So only a low pass filter is necessary for filtering harmonics out.

However a bandpass filter, is useful for reception.