Apple keeps lots of design details secret. You can see some of the previous charging mysteries revealed here. The current Apple devices use the new Lightning Connector. The details behind this connector was unknown until recently.  Here is some info on the chip that is inside. Ramtin Amin has recently taken reverse engineering to the next level by first making a breakout board. It was made to inspect the main WLCSP chip which has 36 BGAs spaced at 0.35mm. The board needed to be a 4 layer PCB with laser drilled blind vias! There is a lot more to be explored but we are a lot closer to knowing the secrets now.

Via: Hack a Day

The ESP8266 is quickly becoming a very popular chip, I am sure this is mostly due to the dirt cheap price point. If you are adding this to a battery operated application you might want to drop the power consumption as low as possible. There are many things that can be done to do this, removing the indication LED is the first obvious step. Jagenberg.info has done some work in this area and has achieved some great results. 78 micro Amps is what can be expected with a flash of new firmware and a small hardware hack.

“manually soldering a single wire of a stranded cable between the reset pin of the module and the XPD_DCDC (8) pin of the MCU, I also removed the red power LED by simply prying it off with a tiny screw driver. With these two modifications, the module is able to make use of the deep-sleep mode and successfully resets and restarts after waking.”

This HCCI Engine Controlling Raspberry Pi setup reads in 240,000 samples per second. I had never heard of an Homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine other than a diesel that simply compressed the air fuel mixture till combustion although I guess that is what some of those cars from the 80 were doing when they would continue to run after the key was turned off? I had always thought that gasoline engines needed a spark plug. But like many things if you through enough tech at it you can overcome the issues. 

“The Pi is recording data about pressure in each of the engine’s cylinders, about the angle of the crank and about heat release – and on the back of that, it’s subsequently controlling the engine in real time over a controller area network”

These Internet Controlled Robots are not available to play with all the time but if you keep an eye on the Twitter channel you will have a chance to have a look and give them a try when they are online next.

“I only put together one robot kit previously, then these two robots both started as Activity Bots.
I hooked up a Raspberry Pi with an HD camera, went through a few wifi options, and got the robot to stream video to twitch.tv and take commands from users via their chat. Later i added the Aruduino for using neopixels and some other future features. We’ve also been making dungeons around the house, made out of cardboard, making quests, and other things for people to do and explore.”

It isn’t a simply task to make a self balancing anything. But if you are thinking of taking on the challenge XenonJohn has documented his design details for this Self-Balancing Raleigh Chopper that could give you a head start.

“Data from the IMU is read by the Arduino Mega 1280. I use a Mega 1280 because they are a lot cheaper online than the 2560, and about the same price as an Uno. They have several hard wired serial outputs which means I can conveniently use one of these to send motor control data to the Sabertooth 2 x 25 Amp power controller, and another to send data to the serial-LCD screen. The Deadman switch and steering buttons (actually brake levers from children’s e-scooters) when pressed will connect their respective Mega pins to ground. The deadman is for safety, if you let go of it all power to the motors will stop after half a second. Digital Pin 12 is connected to an LED. This LED stays lit on startup and goes out after a few seconds when the machine is ready to be brought “level” at which point it will start to balance itself. The potentiometer in the diagram is actually on the left handlebar and is a Magura 5K potentiometer “twist-grip” throttle handle designed for electric vehicles. Turning it makes the machine lean forwards a little, and so it starts to roll forwards. Let it spring back and machine will lean backwards a little and slow down. It makes a very effective method of controlling speed (as well as simply leaning like you would on a Segway).”

If you think the price of 3D printers is hitting the floor check out what Mikelllc built for $60. About 80% of this EWaste 3DPrinter is recycled computer parts which is abundant and readily available.

“First of all, we learn how a generic CNC system works (by assembling and calibrating bearings, guides and threads) and then teach the machine to respond to g-code instructions. After that, we add a small plastic extruder and give an overview on plastic extrusion calibration, driver power tuning and other few operations that will bring the printer to life. Following this instructions you will get a small footprint 3D Printer that is built with about an 80% of recycled components, which gives it a great potential and helps to reduce the cost significantly.”

Mike Harrison from Mike’s Electric Stuff shows off how he used a small thermal imaging sensor and incorporated it into a custom little project with a iPod Nano screen. With a tiny bit of polish this thing would be a great product on any hardware store shelf!