Looks like there is a new DIY PCB Etching Solution. If you have some Hydrogen Peroxide, Distilled White Vinegar and Salt you are ready to give it a try.

Via: NBitWonder

“Vinegar – Distilled White Vinegar – diluted with water to 5% acidity (Meijer)
Peroxide – 3% solution (Meijer)
Salt – to taste. (Just keep adding it until the “fizzing” continues all by itself).

Hydrogen peroxide is what we call an oxidizing agent (a mild one), meaning that it easily accepts electrons from other species to form H2O (hydrogen peroxide itself is electron deficient). What happens when it “dissolves” copper metal is that a neutral copper metal atom releases two electrons, to form a Cu2+ ion in solution. All metals tend to release electrons to form positively charged species….we refer to anything that DONATES electrons as a reducing agents. The strength of metals as reducing agents varies and copper is a fairly weak reducing agent.”

The prize this week is a loupe magnifier, this will let you get a close look at whatever you are working on. This contest will run for one week (April 9  – 15, 2011). Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the molecule pictured above.

Please do not give the answer in the comments.

Send an email to contest @ hackedgadgets.com with “Name the Thing Contest” as the subject, and the message body consisting of:

• The name of the item in the above picture
• An example of what the item pictured above can be used for

The winner will be chosen at random from all of the correct entries.

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Added June 9, 2011

The item to guess was Caffeine Molecule

The winner is Cody L. (there were 196 entries)

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Below is a picture of the prize.

Check out this Huge Nixie Clock that Jaroslaw Lupinski built after being wowed by the Union Square clock. I also love clock projects since there is lots of interesting changes just by being a clock.

Thanks for the tip Peter.

“The timekeeping circuit is identical to my previous nixie clock: an Atmega168 controls the show, with a DS1307 keeping time. The only difference is that the sheer number of tubes made for some creative problem solving. Each 74141 chip requires 4 data lines, for a total of 60 inputs, and the Atmega had only 17 spare ones, after SDA and SCL were used for RTC communication. Digging through my array of spare chips, I decided on using shift registers. 74141 chips are BCD->NixieSegment chips, so I can use one 8-bit shift register per two 74141 chips. I drive 12 of the 15 74141 chips with this method. The center three chips are driven directly by the ATMega, because they need to be updated much more often.”

The guys from Sparkfun went on their second trip to China. They checked out some of their suppliers and lots of the markets.

Via: Dangerous Prototypes

“While there were shops and floors for all sorts of electronic goods, Bunnie had heard of a special market that dealt exclusively with bulk cell phones. That’s right, you could buy a pile of cell phones. Heck yes we needed to see this!

This market was truly amazing. It was one of most dense I’ve been to, shoulder to shoulder with very little standing room. Every device imaginable was available (checkout the pile of iPads) and people were literally negotiating a spot price minute by minute. The raw phones were sold for cash and then taken to other parts of the market for parts, resale, or recycling.”

The IR Jammer has been selling very well and is also available in the Maker Shed. PCB Heaven was kind enough to kick the tires and do a full review on the IR Jammer.

“Alan’s IR R-C jammer does exactly this. It has 4 powerful IR LEDs that are driven with pulses of specific frequency. One excellent feature of this Kit, is that it does not transmit one single frequency. That is because, there are several standardized IR transmitting carrier frequencies, and you can never be sure which frequency your remote control sends. In general, IR remote controls may transmit with 30kHz, 33kHz, 36kHz, 38kHz, 40kHz and 56kHz carrier wave frequency. To avoid conflicts and increase reliability, many remote controls may transmit with more than one frequency, making them more difficult to jam.”

The ALS EEG Project is being held in Ort Hermalin Collage in Natanya Israel by Alon Bukai and Ofir Benyamin under the guidance of Amnon Demri. Another video is here.

Thanks Amnon.

“Our system works by use of a helmet which reads EEG signals sent through the brain. These signals are then interpreted by the headset and sent to the laptop attached to the ALS Patients’ wheelchair. From here the laptop issues certain commands such as, “move blinds up” or “lower the volume on TV” through a PLCBus (home automation) unit or an Infrared unit connected to a PC. The laptop and the PC communicate wirelessly over the internet.

For the patient to control the system he first needs to train it to his brain waves. He must think of different things such as: fear, a happy memory or an important event in his life. These thought can then be interpreted into actions which then control the laptop.”

Check out the latest Analogue to Digital Conversion Interrupts on an ATmega168A tutorial over at Protostack. You might not need the information today but it will probably come in handy some day!

“In this tutorial we add a second analogue input and use the ADC Conversion Complete interrupt. The circuit we are using is similar to what we used last time but has an extra trimpot and uses an ATmega168A microcontroller.”