EEVblog No Script, No Fear, All Opinion

Dick Smith Electronics (known colloquially as Tricky Dicks here in Australia), a once (in)famous electronics components retailer, but long since been just a consumer electronics store, have released some excellent videos highlighting three local Sydney makers as part of their Unleash Your Smith advertising campaign shown on Australian TV and …

Dave shows some techniques on how to build and mount usable PCB based front panels user interfaces with LCD displays and push buttons and capacitive touch buttons onto small cheap extruded aluminium enclosures. In particular for the µSupply project. This is Part 14 of that series. The uCalc project gets …

Mailbag Monday Spoilers: Dual voltage source selection circuit Casio FX-7000G the world’s first graphing scientific calculator, circa 1985. A 1989 vintage analog ohmeter. Teardown of a 450W electronic dimming module. Forum HERE Podcast: Download

Dave checks out the $20 TI EK-TM4C1294XL Tiva C Series TM4C1294 Connected Launchpad Internet of Things. ARM Cortex M4 processor with Ethernet and IoT demo application. How useful is it out of the box? Forum HERE Podcast: Download

Teardown Tuesday. Dave tears down a cash register found in the dumpster. Does it have any useful parts to salvage? German brand Quorion QMP 3282 Datasheets: 128×64 LCD Altera MAX PLD 80C186 clone RISC/DSP processor PF63141 PF63236 Atmel 8051 MC34164 Forum HERE Podcast: Download

Dave builds another bench for the EEVblog lab. Podcast: Download

Teardown Tuesday What’s inside a 1991 vintage IBM PS/2 L40SX 80386SX laptop? Datasheets: IIT 3C87 Co-Processor WD76C30 WD76C20 WD76C10 LT1270 8042 PS/2 Controller Intel 8 Macrocell PLD Forum HERE Podcast: Download

Dominic from the OpenROV project shows off their open source underwater robotic vehicle kit. At the Sydney Maker Faire 2013

The Sydney Robot Workshop show off their screen accurate R2-D2 robot at the Sydney Maker Faire 2013

Dave tests to see if the chips in a 1960’s Apollo LVDC Saturn V Launch Vehicle Digital Computer still work. Fran Blanche LVDC info and videos The Dinosaur Den http://fran-n-bil.com/ Forum HERE Podcast: Download

I answered some questions for Hackaday Here is the video response:

What’s inside one of those omni-directional laser barcode scanner you use at the supermarket, and how does it work? Motorola / Symbol LS9208 Datasheets: Reflective Interrupter Atmel ARM7 Thumb H8S Processor Podcast: Download

Written and composed by MC E-Loc

Dave checks out several FPGA demo boards, and tries out the DE0 Nano and Altera Quartus II software. Forum HERE Podcast: Download

How easy are FPGA’s to hook up and use use compared to traditional microcontrollers? A brief explanation of why FPGA are a lot more complicated to setup and get working that microcontrollers. A short video linking to several other FGPA videos. NOTE: This is very old footage that was meant …