PSoC4 Pioneer Kit from Farnell

Here's an interesting little development board, recommended to us by Jason from BuildBrighton. It's an ARM-based dev board, from those cool kids at Farnell, called the PSoC4 Pioneer Kit (or the CY8CKIT-042 for you part-number junkies). It's an Arduino sized/shaped dev board, is Arduino shield-compatible but with an ARM processor  and costs just £16+VAT!

It comes in a lovely fatter-than-usual DVD case, with mini usb lead and - bizarrely - about four or five little jump leads in a bag. Software is downloadable from http://www.cypress.com/go/cy8ckit-042
What's really exciting is that the processor alone is available for an amazing £1.58 each (in multiples of ten). That's almost as cheap as even the lowest 8-bit PIC microcontroller we use - and much cheaper than the 18F2455 chips we're so keen on using for their USB capabilities.

But it's not just a souped-up usb-capable PIC.... it has up to 6 FPGA modules - meaning you can program what the hardware peripherals actually do: need 6 uart/serial ports on your next device? No problem!

What got us talking about these was CNC Paul's need for a number of quadrature encoders for servo-motor drives on his CNC design. We're still not 100% sure why these are so much more awesome than stepper motors, but he's insistent that servo motors are the way to go and that steppers are just sooooo last year. Which means we need to be able to drive the things which means decoding super-fast high-speed quadrature encoded signals.

So far we've only seen the introductory video, but it was enough to encourage us to buy three of these little beauties - one for me, one for Steve, and one for CNC Paul (Jason already has one, and has a couple of days development head-start on the rest of us!)

The software is already in our download queue and hopefully we'll get a few hours spare to play with it tomorrow and see what the examples are like....

More crazy Farnell packaging

We love Farnell here at Nerd Towers - pop onto their website click around a bit and the next morning, a parcel arrives with all your lovely goodies. Sometimes you can leave it as late at 7pm and your stuff still arrives the next day! But sometimes their choice of packaging leaves a bit to be desired.

Here's what arrived this morning, and the carton it arrived in:

The speakers came in their own dedicated and padded boxes too. Surely a padded envelope would have sufficed?

USB OTG FTDI (any other acronyms?)

A good while back, we made some miniature instruments for playing samples on a PC. They worked quite well and we got a bit of interest and sold a few kits online. But how technology marches on!
No sooner had we got them working with a computer, when users started asking when could they plug them into the mobile phones and Android tablets!

And following on from a discussion with Robot Steve the other night, we're thinking that making mobile-friendly versions of our miniature instruments would be a pretty cool intro to USB OTG.

No sooner had our PIC 24F USB development board arrived, than Jason from Stuff and Nonsense suggested a hardware-based USB stack from FTDI. So we got ourselves a debugger/programmer (https://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=1825836) and a development module (https://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=1825829) off the Farnell website.

That's right - next day, 8am, sure enough there was a thump-thump-thump on the front door and a beaming postie with a parcel covered in Farnell/element14 livery. I guess we really need to do something about fixing that doorbell.

Awesome Farnell

Just a quick post to remind myself as much as anyone else why Farnell are still number one for me...
After chatting with Robot Steve from BuildBrighton, we were talking about creating peripheral devices for mobile phones. We've already made a few USB devices for PCs (USB/HID slave devices) but this was a whole new challenge.

Android have embraced this idea, but in a back-to-front way.
To enable developers to communicate with the widest range of devices already on the market, they've suggested creating a USB device as a host (not a slave as would be the normal way of going about things) and then having the phone act as a slave, just as it would as if it were plugged into your PC.

Sounds straightforward enough, but we've only ever created USB slave devices, not hosts.
A quick look on the Farnell website reveals that the 24F series of PICs with USB host/slave (OTG - on the go) functionality cost as much as, and sometimes less than, the 18F series of PICs we were using for our slave devices. It looks like it's finally time to think about moving up to 16-bit micros and leaving our old 8-bit friends behind....

We ordered one of these PIC development boards at teatime yesterday:
http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=1605296

At 8am, a hefty thump-thump-thump on the front door (our postie isn't afraid to get you out of bed) and it arrived at Nerd Towers:

That's about fourteen hours from deciding to give this stuff a try to it turning up on the doorstep, ready to give it a whirl. Farnell have once again excelled themselves and are proving to be really hacker/maker friendly! We've always preferred Farnell over their rivals, because their website makes finding components really, really easy. They're not always the cheapest, but when the difference between components can be measured in pence, it's service like this that keeps customers loyal.

Fanell Blogger Outreach Program

Here at Nerd Towers, we're big fans of Farnell.
The level of service, fast delivery but most of all, their amazing website leaves the others in the shade!
Although you can sometimes save a few pence (or even a few quid) by going to competitors such as RS, Rapid, Mouser, eBay etc, you often find buying a few bits from one, and a few bits from another - just to get the best deal - means waiting ages for all your different suppliers to send stuff out.

Wherever possible we try to source all our components in one hit, from one place. And more often than not, it's from Farnell.

The reason is because their website is so easy to use!
I've never really browsed by category, or spent any time just clicking from item-to-item. I go straight for the search bar, type in what I want and then apply different filters to the results until I get what I want. Unlike some sites (*cough* RS) where even if you provide the exact part number you don't always get a match, the Farnell site has some really clever search intellegence behind it. You can even type in a vague description of the sort of thing you're after and it'll have a stab at what it thinks you mean. And then alongside each set of results, are alternatives or related components. Not Amazon-style-other-people-bought-this, but actually complimentary alternatives to what you've found.

Now we must add in a caveat to this Farnell-love-in.
But it's just another reason we put them above the others - brand loyalty.
Like most other "tech" suppliers, Farnell recently entered into the "community" arena; RS have their DesignSpark community (and their, frankly, dismal PCB design software), Instructables was recently bought up by AutoDesk - suppliers of the eye-wateringly expensive AutoCAD - just to get a community base and even gave away free versions of their CAD software, and Farnell launched element14.

In fact, element14 was one of the first to recognise that what drives geek-communities is a challenge. So they set up the Global HackerSpace Challenge. They even gave each hackspace a budget to buy stuff with. Not drop their own branded "freebies" onto them as a cheap alternative to beta-testing, but gave away real, genuine cash, and said "go buy stuff, make something with it, tell us what you made".

Now Farnell are continuing in this vein, giving away yet more stuff - but allowing the recipient to decide what to choose, not just promoting their own range of products. It's called a "blogger outreach programme".

And we think it's a great idea.
But then again, we probably would, since we're one of the lucky recipients!
It's hard, being given the Farnell catalogue to choose from, to decide what to go for. Choose something too expensive and you just end up looking greedy and getting expensive stuff for the sake of it. But then again, a handful of resistors worth 50p are hardly worth bothering with! In the end, we took a look at the projects we had on the go, and decided to grab some freebies to help complete them.

So yesterday we received 100 SMT LEDs which originally were going to be for our word clock project (using SMT means not having to drill over 200 holes on the next board!) but we might just incorporate into a full-sized light-up guitar fingerboard.

[photo here]

Since we've spent many months working on our range of miniature instruments, we've neglected what it was that first sparked the initial idea - that is a love of cool/geeky (full-sized) guitars. With a load of LEDs, we started designing an acrylic fingerboard (yup, acrylic. Not rosewood or ebony or maple - the usual choice of wood for a fingerboard, but good old laser-cuttable plastic!) The idea is to create a "learn to play" guitar neck, which can light up and show you where to put your fingers. Such guitars do exist, from places like FretLight, but they're quiet expensive!

We've a load of cheap guitars (off eBay) that play ok so we're going to try to retro-fit a light-up fretboard onto an existing instrument. But once we're done, we want the rest of the guitar to light up too!

So our second freebie from Farnell was a selection of EL (electro-luminescent) wire which we're planning on putting around the guitar body, for the ultimate glow-in-the-dark finish!

[EL wire photo]


We're really looking forward to spending a bit of time doing what we do best - just nerding out with a bunch of components and seeing what we can come up with. And, of course, posting the results on our blog.

Check back for progress updates soon!

DIPTrace to replace ExpressPCB?

To date, our preferred PCB layout software of choice has been ExpressPCB.
It's a brilliant bit of kit, easy to use, simple to build your own components, and best of all - FREE! For through-hole work it's really easy to use - draw everything you want on the top (red) layer and print straight onto your press-n-peel. Admittedly getting a usable output for SMT is a bit fiddly at first (install CutePDF then print your boards to a PDF file, load into Inkscape, mirror/flip horizontall and THEN print) but it's nothing that takes more than a minute or two to sort out.

Since we discovered Quick-Teck we've had to give serious consideration to gerber files. Until now, we've never bothered with them - and as a result had no need to learn how to use the, frankly, clunky Eagle interface. But after getting a quote from quick-teck.co.uk for PCB manufacture, and a second one for sourcing the components and assembling the board, we're seriously considering getting our boards supplied ready-assembled.
The problem with this approach is that while PDF schematics and layouts are fine for making your own boards via toner-transfer, and for using to get a quote for a job, they're not really acceptable for making the circuit boards from. Most PCB manufacturers prefer gerber files and Quick-Teck are no different. Which means we're probably going to have to get friendly with Eagle.....

... or does it?
In our recent trials of different PCB software, we gave RS Component's DesignSpark (PCB design and layout software) a go. Like many companies keen to get in on the maker scene (think Farnell/element14, AutoDesk etc) RS are giving away free software to lower the barriers to get the community involved. The problem we found with DesignSpark is that it was too much like Eagle - complicated and clunky. One thing we did like, however, was that when drawing a schematic, clicking between two sets of pins drew a nice connecting line, with 90 degree bends automatically drawn in the appropriate places: drawing schematics like this is quite nice.

With an inherent dislike of Eagle, and having dismissed DesignSpark, we went looking for alternative software and stumbled upon DipTrace.

DipTrace is a really nice, simple, intuitive PCB design and layout application. It does the nice "semi-auto-complete" drawing on schematics- and then extends this to the PCB layout application too. It has full component auto-place AND trace auto-routing (we haven't used either of these for our projects, but it's nice to know it's there) AND includes helpful auto-drawing when placing traces by hand.

In short, we think DipTrace is an excellent bit of kit.
It's as simple to understand as ExpressPCB, making your own components and layout patterns is a doddle and it has all the fancy export options you'd expect to find (including dxf and gerber). Hobby users haven't been forgotten either - from the print preview screen you can mirror the output (for toner transfer/press-n-peel users) and it even has a "outline the traces for CNC output" option for anyone who wants to rout the traces out from copper clad board on a CNC routing machine.

It took us just a few hours of playing about tonight to not only create a library of our most commonly used components (amended to include big fat pads for easy soldering) but also to draw an intermediate-level schematic and layout the PCB for it. In less than three hours we had a board printed and ready for etching. After three hours with Eagle we were still trying to work out how to move more than two components without screwing up the entire design!

Look out for future posts detailing how to use DipTrace.
We'll be using it a lot in future and hope to convert a lot of our earlier projects using it - starting with our current miniature guitar project.

With a free non-commercial licence (2-sided board, up to 500 pins) you'd have to be a pretty hardcore user to need to upgrade - by which time you shouldn't mind paying the relatively modest licence fee for the full package!

Cold solution tinning powder

Here's a spanky new product (ok, maybe not to you, but it's the first time we've ever seen anything like this) from Farnell - http://uk.farnell.com/mega/600-020/tin-plating-powder-90g-for-1-litre/dp/1550282 - it's tinning powder for homebrew PCBs. You might be able to get the same stuff from Rapid, but we're Farnell diehard fans here, though you may find the same stuff cheaper on eBay.

Wherever you get it from, make sure you buy the stuff that works at room temperature. Dissolve the crystals in warm water (the instructions recommend 50degC but I just made a brew, drank it, gave it a few more minutes then used the left over hot water from the kettle.)

Why bother tinning your homebrew PCBs?
Well, firstly, it makes them easier to solder to. We use loads and loads of flux for the same reason, but as you can see from this board (below) the exposed copper tarnishes quite quickly. Tinning helps reduce tarnishing on your finished boards (and gives them a nice shiny coat which looks a lot neater!)



About twenty quid gets you 90g of powder which, according to the instructions, should make a litre of tinning solution. In powder form, the compound has an unlimited shelf-life. Made up, it's expected to last about six months (but they say that about Ferric Chloride and we're still using the same batch nearly eighteen months after making it up!)



Just make up the solution and drop the board in.
We left ours in for less than ten minutes, face side up. Rather than use the whole lot in one go, we made up about 200ml and just added a bit of powder at a time, stirring until it had dissolved. The result was pretty impressive:



Nice shiny silver traces make for easier soldering!

Farnell/element14 supporting new development

As a member of BuildBrighton, I've been taking part in some exciting competitions run by Farnell/element14. I've been a long-time customer of Farnell and bought most of my equipment through them (long gone are the days when you could pop into a local Maplin store and speak with someone knowledgeable about components and get help with your homebrew project!). They've always offered excellent service, a really comprehensive catalogue of components, and next day delivery even if your order doesn't go in until late into the evening!



I know a lot of people use RS Components and Rapid and even I still scour eBay for job-lot bargains, but mostly, when it comes to sourcing electronics components, there's only one website on my Google Chrome regularly visited list - and it's Farnell. In short, I think Farnell are great!

And now there's even more reason to rave about Farnell - because their recently re-branded element14 department has been running a number of projects to encourage interaction with the developer community. Not only did they organise the Worldwide HackerSpace Challenge, but they also gave away free cash (yes, real, genuine cash to spend anywhere, not just on their webstore) to provide the community maker groups with a budget to develop their own ideas!

As well as this, Farnell are actively encouraging developers to submit their ideas and helping by providing equipment and development kits: all completely free of charge! There are no caveats or conditions - if one of their guys likes what you're doing, look out for an email asking what you'd like to play with from their massive catalogue of components and look out for some freebies in the post!

We got an mBed development kit completely free. In fact we were offered anything from the Farnell products catalogue to try out and review, but we headed straight for the NXP storefront (http://uk.farnell.com/nxp) to check out the latest ARM7 development kits - although PICs are great, we're looking to step up to something bigger and beefier soon, and the NXP mBed system looks like a nice easy introduction to ARM7.

We're kicking a few ideas around to see what we can do with it, but already have a steer on what we can use it for. More details will be posted here as they're finalised.....

mBedded is embedded

A lovely surprise this morning here at Nerd Towers - after an afternoon on the beach, I returned home to find an evaluation kit sitting on the doormat, from the guys at Farnell.
After publishing a number of project ideas at BuildBrighton, and posting some ideas on an earlier blog, Geektar (a guitar for geeks), we were thrilled to be invited to evaluate the mBed development board and to "blog" about the findings here.

So the first thing to do was to have a look what we'd been sent.
The contents seemed a little sparse - a dev board, a usb cable, a plastic credit card showing the pinout and a single sheet of A5 basically saying "go to the website and learn more"



In fact, the credit card proved to be more interesting than we first thought.
It shows all the cool stuff that the processor supports - and it's a pretty impressive list of stuff! The mBed system is based on an ARM7 processor and it has some pretty cool features. It's a 40-pin microcontroller (similar to the PIC18F4550) and has lots of hardware features you'd expect to find on a higher-end 'controller:

2 x hardware SPI interfaces
2 x hardware serial/USART interfaces
2 x hardware I2C interfaces
6 x analogue-to-digital input pins
1 x digital-to-analogue output pin
6 x hardware PWM pins
USB support
CAN interface (home automation CANBUS?)
1 x ethernet/networking interface

Most of these functions are either available on the PIC18F series of chips, or can be recreated in software (see our 20-channel servo controller project for examples of how multiple PWM output pins can be generated using software) but being a 32-bit processor and supporting much faster speeds (PIC 18F runs at up to 48Mhz, ARM7 up to 72Mhz) the mBed controller is perfect for processor intensive tasks like driving displays, multi-processing and so on.



But what sets this chip apart from other chips we've worked with is the exciting introduction of onboard ethernet. Until now, most of our microcontroller projects have been USB-based, requiring a host PC. Most of the time, this is more than adequate, as the functionality of the device can be greatly enhanced through the use of some custom-built software.

But the mBed dev board suddenly makes "real" embedded systems a possibility:
the introduction of the ethernet interface means we can create devices which talk to our home internet connection and control (or be controlled by) commands send so/from the 'net.

The mBed system couldn't be easier to use: the device itself appears, when connected to a PC, as a removable drive. Code is compiled into .bin files and you don't need a programmer or any special hardware to "burn code" - just copy and paste the .bin file to the device, press the reset button and the mBed device restarts, running your code! It's that easy!

The examples on the mBed website are pretty impressive too - it uses a number of pre-built libraries, similar to the approach used by Arduino, and abstracts all the complicated low-level stuff, allowing you to concentrate on just getting your stuff working. Code is written using an online editor and saved to the "cloud", so it's always accessible wherever you are. This makes it ideal for cross-platform development and sharing code, whether you're on Windows, Linux or Mac. There's no software to install or complicated folder paths to set up. In fact, to re-program the device you simply plug it in and download a new file to the removable device.



One of the first ethernet examples on the mBed website shows how an RFID tag can generate tweets, to show who has arrived over the course of the day. As we're looking to make a stand-alone device that will communicate over the internet (without the need for a host controller) these examples will form the basis of most of our learning in the coming days.....

Simplified Invisible Instrument kit contents

It seems that we've had a massive amount of interest in the Invisible Instrument Kits already, so if you're not able to get your hands on one (either at the event, or through the BuildBrighton website) here's a list of what you need.

All the components are available through Farnell.
They've just launched a hacker/maker community called element 14 and are really helpful towards the design/prototyping community. And you can order stuff today and get it by 10am the next morning!

As well as the PCB (you can etch this yourself) you'll need:
1 x PIC 18F2455
2 x 14-pin MCU socket (optional, or replace with 1x28 pin socket)
1 x USB B-type socket
1 x 470nF capacitor
1 x 20Mhz crystal
4 x LDRs (light dependent resistors)
4 x 1M linear potentiometers

And of course, some firmware for the PIC microcontroller.
Here's a pre-compiled hex file you can burn to the chip using any PIC programmer:
http://www.nerdclub.co.uk/files/invisible_instrument_simplified.rar

That's it for the simplified kit. If you want to use the LED indicators (which light up as each input detects and triggers a sound) you might want to use

4 x 5v LEDs

Alternatively, you can use the invisible instrument to play up to 4 sounds per input, and instead of LED outputs, use the same sets of pins to connect pushbuttons to, in order to turn the extra sounds on or off. In which case, you'll need:

4 x push button switches

Happy shopping!