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Entries from Spiff's Electronics Notebook tagged with 'USB'


Introducing the StickDuino (August 25, 2008)

Whoa, how did we miss announcing this? The StickDuino is a fully featured Arduino clone (freeduino) that allows you to carry an Arduino compatible tool around in your pocket.

Head over to it's instructions or buy one below.

Fully Assembled Board Only


Posted by spiffed at 2:05 PM | Comments (0)

Introducing the USB7 (March 28, 2008)

I'd like to introduce you to my latest idea, the USB7. 6 digits of 7 segment awesomeness all controllable from a USB virtual com port (via AVR-CDC). You send it numbers, it displays them, what could be easier?

The protocol is very simple; the device accepts a string of numbers, '+', '-', '.', space, and upper/lower hex digits (A-E). The device will buffer up to 6 characters to display. When you send a newline or carriage return (0x0A or 0x0D) the display will update with the buffered data. Any other character is thrown away. It is important to remember that decimals take up no character space because they share a digit with the previous number. This means you can't start a string with a '.', you must first send a character (even space) then the '.'.

After the jump I'll set it up to show my download speed using LCD Smartie.

Continue reading "Introducing the USB7"


Posted by spiffed at 9:47 AM | Comments (2)

Single Sided FT232RL USB-Serial Converter (January 25, 2008)

Available assembled or as a kit from our WebStore.

Unsatisfied with everything else, I present the simple, single-sided, breadboardable, FT232RL based USB to TTL Serial converter.

I know you're thinking "But everyone under the sun makes an FT232 kit!", and you're right. But they all suffer from a selection of problems:

  • Double sided boards with tiny vias. Not only are these a pain to solder by hand, they also require perfect precision to etch and drill at home.
  • 7 million parts butted as close to each other as the pick-and-place can tolerate. I can't assemble these with tweezers.
  • Signals and power brought out to a DIL style header. There's simply no effective way to plug a DIL header into a breadboard. It's a functional system for wirewrap, perfboards, and stripboards but so is a DIP style connection. It's not very helpful for custom PCBs either, since I might as well integrate the whole circuit into the board.
  • You get the idea.

The answer of course is to design a simple, roomy, single sided board, with a DIP like fit.

Continue reading "Single Sided FT232RL USB-Serial Converter"


Posted by spiffed at 12:27 PM