Projects

Homemade MIDI turntable

Cheap and simple homemade MIDI turntable with GPL2 license. Using a ATmega, a HDNS-2000 optical mouse encoder, GCC-AVR, AVR-Libc and FreeRTOS. Homepage of Homemade MIDI turntable.

ARMUS Embedded Linux Board

An ARM920T board running Linux at 200 Mips with sound, Ethernet, CAN, 48+ bidirectionnal IOs and 4 DSPs for motor control (DC, Servos, etc...). Built as a student proof robotics design platform.

Programmable Chip EEG

The Programmable Chip EEG is a Multi-channel electroencephalograph that could be a brain-computer interface.

Open Mobile Gadgets -- open source, open hardware, mobile phone

An open source, open hardware mobile phone in its preliminary development.

=== Music Players including MP3 players === Nguyen Xuan Truong Tin6 k48

TRAXMOD Open source MOD music player for dsPIC/ARM microcontrollers.

PG31 GPS RS232 Dev Board

A simple RS232 example project that takes 3.3V TTL serial and outputs to a super-common RS232 connection. Insto-NMEA!

RS232 Dev Board

A simple RS232 example project that takes all the power it needs from the serial port. Use it to power your microcontroller and communicate between serial port and microcontroller. Takes advantage of the fact that pc serial ports will accept 0-5V rather than the RS232 standard of around negative 10V to positive 10V. Very convenient - no external power required! Note that you may use either a 5.1V zener or a 5V regulator.

RS232 RS485 USB Converter Board

Aim to build a general Converter between different Interfaces.

PG31 GPS USB Dev Board

A great example project using the CP2102 USB to TTL UART IC as well as some basic battery holder info.

Number Six

"#6" (the son of Chalk Roach) is a ultra simple microcontroller development board for Atmel ATmega32 = 16MHz, 2KB SRAM, 16KB Flash

LED displays

• 24" Wall Clock A really big wall clock. Why? Well, cause it might look cool? Probably not. But we do use GPS to get the time! Groovy.
• POV display that spins around, giving the illusion of a large display. (DavidCary)

Cellular Rotary Phone

An indepth breakdown of the Port-O-Rotary. Some clues to help you avoid audio problems with the GM862.

Das Brewmeister! and Fermenter Controller

• Das Brewmeister! : An attempt to wirelessly monitor temperatures of fermentation vessels
• Fermenter Controller : A web available fermenter vessel controller. Uses PICs, I2C, Rs232 and python.

Home controller

Program your appliances to operate automatically in conjunction with your weekly and daily schedule, manually turn them on/off from your PC or use the controller as a process ON/OFF controller to regulate some kind of physical variable to the desired value.

Interactive Lock Box

An interesting project using an accelerometer and capacitive touch ICs.

atomic microscope

An atomic-resolution microscope.

• STM (scanning tunnelling microscope)
• AFM (atomic force microscope)

BlueICE

A bluetooth JTAG ICE debugger for AVR's!!!

Sortof-Networked RFID Reader

A 125Khz RFID Reader with a simple RS232 based ring network - to allow connection of multiple units to the same control computer.

Consider using "RS-232D", aka "EIA/TIA-561". It has all the same wires and voltages as RS-232, but specifies a RJ45 connector.

Also consider RS-485.

(What is the name of the standard for RS-485 on RJ14 ("4 wire RJ-11") or RJ45 ?) (Ethernet? =P)

Battery charger

See "Build A Smart Battery Charger Using A Single-Transistor Circuit" by Ejaz ur Rehman. But be sure to read the "Reader Comments" at the end. The suggestion to add a zener diode is a good idea.

the Open Graphics Project

the Open Graphics Project a project started by chip-designer Timothy Miller. His goal, along with the rest of the project, known as the “Open Graphics Foundation” is to make a 3D accelerated video card which is fully documented, free-licensed, and open source. See the Open Graphics wiki.

Amiga floppy project

The Amiga floppy project: designing, building, and programming an adapter to allow PCs to read from Amiga floppies. "This is really designed to be a community project(hence the blog with progress reports)."

This project is the building of an external USB amiga floppy drive controller. It sits between the USB port on a Windows PC, and a regular PC floppy drive. It will allow the PC to create .ADF images from an amiga floppy disk. This device is based on a Parallax SX28 microcontroller, uses Ramtron FRAM memory for temporary track storage, and uses another Parallax component for the USB interface.

See http://www.techtravels.org/amiga/amigablog for the latest in the blow by blow attempts to get this thing off the ground!!

Irsensor-a

Infrared Proximity Sensor Alfa Infrared Proximity Sensor Alfa in www.kedo.com.mx

The Infrared Proximity Sensor Alfa is a sensor to detect objects that can reflect infrared light. It has the following characteristics.

• Designed to detect objects that are close and can reflect infrared lights.
• It has a Infrared Transmitter to eliminate the dependency of solar lighting. So It can be used in the night.
• It has a Infrared Receiver that detects the closest object that reflects the infrared lights.
• It has an incorporated voltage regulator
• The output is a constant 5V when it is active and 0V when no detection.
• You can change the proximity threshold with a potentiometer.

dsPIC30F 5011 Development Board

A development board using Microchip dsPIC30F5011, a 5V based 16-bit microcontroller with DSP functions, EEPROM, ADC, PWM and communciation ports of UARTs, I2C, SPI etc. Contains concise information on:

1. Development environments (IDE)
2. External programming methods (ICSP Programming using ICD2 Programmer)
3. Bootloader implementation (RTSP)
4. Software development tips based on POSIX concepts
5. Basic conversion tips to target board using Microchip dsPIC33FJ128GP306, a pin-to-pin compatible 3.3V microcontroller

Balloon Xscale ARM+FPGA dev board

The Balloon project has produced Balloon3, a high-performance ARM board designed for use by OEMs and Higher education. Spec is PXA270 (583Mhz), FPGA or CPLD, 1GB flash, 784MB RAM, USB (master, slave, OTG), CF slot, expansion bus, 16-bit bus, I2C, LCD, serial, audio. Very low power in CPLD confiuguration. Small, light. Various add-on boards: VGA LCD driver, robot motor driver+A/D, digital IO. Released under the Balloon Open Hardware license, which allows anyone to manufacture and for people to make derivatives. The expansion bus allows balloon to be used as the computing component for various special-purpose devices.

scavenge

Some people derive an inordinate amount of pleasure from building semi-useful objects from zero-cost junk.

In the electronics field, most of the stuff built from scavenged components falls into 2 categories:

• ham radio transmitters and receivers -- built from a few transistors, caps, resistors, and wire
• BEAM robotics -- built from the above plus motors, solar cells, ...

According to http://coprolite.com/art12.html , "I'd love to hear about where you found your 8048. Take a picture of the host that you remove it from (CD player, truck, refridgerator, whatever) and I'll put your picture on a page that chronicles our adventures sifting through the rubble."

openEyes

openEyes is an open-source open-hardware toolkit for low-cost real-time eye tracking. See the OpenEyes hardware and software and the openEyes wiki.

RepRap

RepRap is an open source project to create a 3d printer or fabber machine. There is tons of information available on its website. The current iteration is a 3 axis cartesian robot with 2 extruder heads: a Thermoplastic head that extrudes plastics like HDPE, ABS, and CAPA, and a support material head that extrudes a water soluble material to support the build process.

TwentyDollarWikiDevice

Challenge: Build a Wiki Device with a parts cost of no more than twenty dollars which is usable as a portable wiki. Include feature to make it compatible with a desktop or laptop computer's PersonalWiki, with a connector allowing this use. -- http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TwentyDollarWikiDevice

breakout boards

These are three boards that I designed for a specific project and found them very useful. Each of these boards uses the phoenix contact plugable terminal blocks. The 50-pin breakout board is for a 50-pin ribbon cable. The LEM breakout board is for LEM AC/DC current sensor. The power supply breakout board is for a +5v +/-15v power supply.

Linuxstamp

The linuxstamp is an open source processor module. It is designed to be a very simple board capable of running linux. It is based on the Atmel AT91RM9200 processor (An ARM9 processor with a MMU).

Linuxstamp Mboard 1

This is the first mother board for the linuxstamp. It is still in the planning stages (no pcbs).

Free Telephony Project

Free Telephony Project

• Embedded Asterisk IP-PBX hardware and software

• Low cost, completely open IP-PBX hardware including FXS/FXO analog and E1/T1 interfaces, and DSP motherboard hardware. Target price of $100 for a 4 port IP-PBX.

eyes for open robot

• $20 CMOS Camera Module - 640x480 has a "Get-that-camera-working competition" discussion forum and now been adequately documented ... http://elinux.org/wiki/SparkfunCamera ... by David Carne.

• ... perhaps simpler to use an off-the-shelf webcam that plugs directly into a laptop ... Enabling Support for Your (Webcam) Hardware in Linux ... Philips USB Webcam Driver for Linux ... QuickCam ...

Is there a simple way for my Java application to fetch the latest camera image in an Array of pixel values?

RCAP: R/C Auto Pilot: Remote Control Auto Pilot

"The RCAP2 is a Remote Control AutoPilot] for model airplanes, cars and boats. The autopilot function can be switched off or on during flight with the flick of a switch." Uses PIC16F876A to:

• read (servo) commands from the RC server
• read (RS-232) GPS location from a NMEA capable GPS (with programmable goto/waypoints functions)
• drive (servo) commands to the rudder.

RCAP Documentation at Wikibooks , and RCAP PCB layout at Sourceforge .

Wiegand reader simple controller

The PICmicro 16F628 decodes Wiegand protocol coming from card reader. If the card matches one of the 40 cards in EEPROM, it turns on the light (opens the door). Schematic and source code published under GNU terms.

ComClone2 Intercom

ComClone2 is a DIY clone of the industry-standard "party line" production intercom system as first introduced by Clearcom and now sourced by many other vendors. This intercom system is widely used in both live show(theatrical, music, etc.) and video production. Website provides complete construction information including PC board, etc.

other lists of semi-open projects

WikiNode

The WikiNode project tries to link every wiki in the world together. Our "WikiNode" links to closely-related wiki (and their WikiNode links back).

If you want to talk about something that is not quite on-topic here at Open Circuits (say, "desktop PC case modding", or "embedded Linux programming"), our WikiNode helps you find another wiki where people love to talk about that exact topic. The corresponding WikiNode on each of those wiki helps people who want to talk about "open hardware" to discover this wiki.

• Are the Positron projects "open" enough to be mentioned? I especially liked the "Lasercut Acrylic Casebuilding Tutorial" .

• Is the Vislab puck suitable for this list?

• PICList & JAL_List free PCB contest "this will encourage people to publish designs and get more good ideas out into the real world for everyone to see." (So, are these "open" circuits?)

• http://ePanorama.net/ has a bunch of schematics and a web discussion forum. Are they "open" enough to mention here?

• "Yet Another One-hand Keyboard" ( http://chordite.com/ ) "The firmware included in the download lets an Atmel AVR '2313 microcontroller interpret chords and talk to a PS/2 port." -- it's not completely open, but the license allows you to immediately download, for free, lots of technical information and a license to build up to 5 of your own. Building more than 5 requires some sort of payment to license the patent on the hardware configuration. (The software appears to be open source). There seems to be an associated Yahoo mailing list. What is an appropriate way to invite John W. McKown and others on the mailing list to use a wiki such as Open Circuits to maintain a FAQ?

• FC's Electronic Circuits ?