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Frank Zhao, an electrical engineering student at the University of Waterloo just made this cool Toaster Oven Hacked into a Reflow Soldering Oven project. If you are working on a project that has SMD components in it you will need to select a way to reflow the solder paste, there are lots of DIY methods out there and one popular method includes modifying a toaster oven into a reflow oven. The existing control circuitry of the oven is scrapped and replaced with a complex controller which closely monitors the temperature and performs specific temperature profiles to correctly heat and PCB properly. “To control the oven’s temperature, I created my own reflow toaster oven controller circuit. This circuit uses an ATmega32U4 microcontroller to monitor the oven’s temperature using a thermocouple and AD595AQ, and then control the oven’s heating element using a solid state relay. The controller features USB logging/debugging, USB bootloading, a graphic LCD display, and 3 buttons. The firmware features tweaking for all settings, manual temperature control, manual heating element control, and automatic temperature profile control (with a nice temperature history graph display). This circuit will plug into a wall outlet, and the oven will plug into this circuit, while the solid state relay basically acts as a switch between the wall outlet and the oven’s heating element. “
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Thanks to Farnell and Element 14 for sponsoring the contest this week. They will be providing a XL STAR BOARD to the winner. This board contains a accelerometer, Freescale MC9S08MM128, lots of breakout pins and a ton of status LEDs on the PCB. There is a video below so you can see it in action. “The XL STAR BOARD describes the process of developing code for Freescale’s XL_STAR, a low cost development board featuring one of the most recent members of the HCS08 family of 8-bit microcontrollers, the MC9S08MM128.
This contest will run for one week (November 12 – 18, 2011) . Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item pictured above and give an example of what can be done with it. 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 winner will be chosen at random from all of the correct entries. ———————————–———- Added November 20, 2011 The item to guess was a Lamp Dimmer Circuit The winner is Ali H. (there were 218 entries, this might be a record!) ————————————–———- Below is a picture of the prize.
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Martin Landwehrmann from Germany sent in a ton of great build pictures of this BIG DIY LED Matrix and an English description on what André Zibell, Tobias Mc Fadden and Martin have been working on. By the pictures you can see that this creation wasn’t a simple task to put together but the results are great! More Video Links: “I want to tell you about the project we have realized here in munich, germany. I have built a LED Matrix with 1470 Pixels from scratch. Most work was done with the help of many friends in my living room. Each Pixel is a 32×32 mm² sized self desinged PCB with 6 PLCC6 RGB LEDs, a WS2801 IC and all the small parts you need. In total we’ve soldered 26460 pieces by hand. We’ve did most of the soldering in our pizza oven using the reflow method. The slodering paste was brought up using a template and a credit card. Afterwards all the parts were assembled by hand using tweezers. The Pixels were assembled on on a self built 70×70 cm frame made of black coated 2×1 cm aluminum profile. The 4 wires (clock, data,vcc,gnd) between each pixel are hidden under a black heat shrink tube. At the end each of the 30 70x70cm frames got a small connector panel with two (in,out) neutik speakon connectors, a fuse for the current and bus driver for clock and data. The power consumption of each frame is 3A, 24V. For controlling the matrix we are using an Onumen Live-Controller 2100 but we are working on a solution to control it by ARTnet Most Work was done by André Zibell, Tobias Mc Fadden and me.”
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Thanks to Pabloxid for sending in his dancing robot (translated into English). His movements reminds me a bit of Keepon. “Its output devices are: the 2 DC motors at the base, the 3 servos that move the “head”, clusters of LEDs in the “eyes” and an audio system that plays both the internally generated beeps like sounds stored in a small flash drive, using a car MP3 player. His only sensor is a device developed in-house, which I called the “electronic eye”. It consists of an IR transmitter and 4 receivers arranged in a square, handled with software from within the Arduino, which can detect the presence of not only objects but also their movement.“ |
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If you have a LEGO Mindstorms NXT system you now have a new way for it to communicate. Using the Dexter Industries Wifi Sensor you can now connect the system to your WiFi network for a new range of project ideas. Dexter Industries has spent the entire week cooking up interesting ideas and documenting them on their site for all to enjoy. “The sensor can be used to communicate via HTTP, TCP, UDP protocols. The sensor can connect via WPA, WPA2-PSK, and WEP networks, as well as adhoc networks between the NXT and a wifi enable device such as a cell phone or computer. The sensor operates with standard 802.11 b/g/n access and can log onto any home network. The Dexter Industries Wifi Sensor connects to the NXT via the high speed communications Port 4 and is powered by an external 9V battery.”
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Laser Soldering is an interesting concept, instead of heat from an iron or hot air heat a laser with a specific pattern is used to heat the lead, pad and solder to create a perfect solder connection. I can imagine the next generation of soldering system where the pick and place machine will both place the part on the PCB but it will also immediately fuse it in place permanently.
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Matthew Leone from LeoneLabs has just completed his Laser Ball project, it was built inside a tennis ball and uses an Arduino Teensy to power and control 14 red lasers. The ball modes can be changed using a simple mini remote control. The project looks great and apparently took only 5 hours to complete, I am thinking that documenting the project must have taken just as long as the build since the video and pictures of the process look great! “Materials:
Total cost:
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