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How to make your own OLED (organic LED) in a home laboratory? [image source]
An Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) is any Light Emitting Diode (LED) whose emissive electroluminescent layer is composed of a film of organic compounds. The layer usually contains a polymer substance that allows suitable organic compounds to be deposited. They are deposited in rows and columns onto a flat carrier by a simple “printing” process. The resulting matrix of pixels can emit light of different colors.
Your own homebrewed OLED – [Link]
The Rundfunker is a tabletop mp3 player that scans the WLAN for local audio sources and is able to play shared audio-files. It has a built-in 2-way speaker system, a LC display and a very simple yet powerful user interface. The device is independent of any external peripheral equipment – all hardware components are integrated into the appealingly designed housing including an exclusive aluminium front panel. All you need is 12 V DC power supplied e.g. by a mains adapter.
Rundfunker – WLAN mp3 player - [Link]
For around $30 in parts and a good amount of patience, you can have a completely open source and hackable mp3 player ready to go. It can be modified to accept serial commands, be embedded in an art project, used as the voice of your next smart talking robo-sidekick, or filled with music and used as is. Put in whatever size card you want, up to the theoretical limit of the MMC format! All the source and schematics are here for free as part of the Creative Commons. I have kits available if you don’t feel like scavenging for the parts yourself.
This player features a shuffle mode, basic track navigation, volume control, FAT32 support, fragmented file support, an unlimited number of files on the root directory, and high quality playback. Files at 256Kbps can be played without a hitch. Variable bitrate files are supported with peaks up to 320Kbps.
The World’s Simplest Open Source DIY MP3 player - [Link]
The Daisy is a multipurpose sound player for embedded applications. It can be used as a standalone personal music player,as the sound for an art project, in a kiosk, as a museum tour guide, in a toy, or anywhere that high quality embedded audio is desired. It uses MMC or SD flash memory cards so storage size is unlimited. It has several interface modes for either human or machine control.
The Daisy is based on the Microchip PIC18F45j10, which is a new family of PIC microcontrollers. They are capable of running at a full 40MHz at 3.3 volts, which makes them ideal for this application. Also, most of the pins are 5 volt tolerant, easing interface with other microcontrollers. The other chip on board is a VS1011 from VLSI, Finland. It is an .mp3 and .wav decoder chip, a DAC, and a headphone amplifier all in one 28 pin package. I’ve been fooling around with this family of decoders since 2001 and I have never found an mp3 file it couldn’t decode… and the sound is very good!
Daisy mp3 project – [Link]
Howard Gordon, of Surveyor Corp, sent us this announcement about a new, affordable stereo vision camera system for robots. I checked out the video with my 3D glasses. Pretty cool. [via]
This past week, we introduced a new open source 3D stereo vision system for robotics and remote monitoring called Surveyor SVS. It features dual processors, dual cameras, and wifi connectivity, and sells for $550. The SVS is intended for researchers, educators and developers interested in enabling depth perception in their applications without the need for an array of active sensors (e.g. laser scanners, ultrasonics, infrared, etc).
Surveyor Stereo Vision System - [Link]
This device monitors household power usage and logs it to an SD card. A simple analog front-end amplifies the signals from voltage and current detectors and an ATmega168 microcontroller computes the power consumption using the formula P=V*I. The voltage and current are each sampled at 9615 Hz so the integration should be fairly accurate even for highly non-sinusoidal loads such as computers or fluorescent bulbs. A graphical LCD shows the power usage as a strip chart and can also act as an oscilloscope to display the voltage and current waveforms. The current is amplified in three stages (1x, 10x, and 100x) so that different gains can be used giving accurate readings for both high and low power usage. [via]
An AVR-based power usage logger - [Link]
This project provides an simple F1 motor racing style 5 light race start sequence with a random delay that you can use on a real race track, kart circuit or even your slot-car circuit.
Operation is simple; when the start button is pressed all the LED clusters are off. They then illuminate sequentially at one second intervals until all five LED clusters are on. After a random interval between 1 and about 7 seconds the LEDs extinguish, signalling the start of the race. Once the LEDs have extinguished simply press the start button again to initiate another race start sequence.
F1 Gantry Race Start Lights - [Link]
For most of the home hobbyists, one of the most common breadboards to you must be the Arduino type breadboard! The reason why the Arduino breadboards are so popular because of its high quality and cheaper cost than other boards.
You can find Arduino Breadboard available in many types and the Arduino Nano is the smallest, complete and breadboard friendly of all. Arduino Nano is a fine surface mount breadboard embedded version with neat integrated USB on it. The Arduino Nano was been well designed and is being produced by Gravitech.
The Greatest Things You Must Know About Arduino Nano! - [Link]
This project is designed to show how to build time-dependant applications on PICs in C and to deal with restricted hardware. It will also help you to have a start point, if you need a simple way to add text to a PAL composite video signal in real time. With only an 8 pins PIC and a few cheap components, you can superimpose constant or dynamic text to a composite video PAL signal.
Pico OSD – a PIC video superimposer – [Link]
This circuit is suitable for a variety of uses. If you have a solar powered 12 Volt lead-acid battery power source, the circuit can be used to efficiently power lower voltage devices. It can be used to provide power to devices that normally use a set of small batteries for power. Common voltages such as 1.5V, 3V, 4.5V, 6V, 7.5V, and 9V can be produced by this circuit. The circuit has been used to power small fans, portable radios, a miniature TV, and more.
Buck Mode Switching Regulator for Solar Applications - [Link]
