PicoCNC, the Raspbrerry Pi Pico based CNC control board, has finally emerged from development by Phil Barrett of Brookwood Design, which has a web store on Tindie. First mooted by publicly by him in April 2021, all went quiet in the grblHAL GitHub discussion that August, until now, two years later. And the result looks very nice (and they seem ...
I was looking at the electronics behind the little Petoi dog robot (right), and noticed a chip I was not aware of before, NXP’s PCA9685. On a deeper delve, I noticed Adafruit also uses it for creating the classic 1.0 – 2.0ms pulses that tell hobby servos where to position. It has an I2C input, and can create up to ...
That LK-99 room-temperature superconductor from Korea University sounds interesting. But I type that wearily as, although I want ti to be true, there have been too many false starts to get too excited. Fingers crossed that the researchers have found one at last. UPDATE: It wasn’t true – it isn’t a room-temperature superconductor (link to Nature article – which is an ...
I have seen so many articles and videos on the ‘correct’ way to assemble the anti-backlash nuts on the various small cnc routers that are available for hobby use, particularly ‘1310’ units, and possibly their slightly larger ‘1419’ types cousins. And so many of the articles and videos are partially right, or even just wrong, and plenty of sources complain ...
What a cheek – a 3d printed automatic robot gripper that works without the interference of electronics. Instead, it gets power from air pressure, is triggered when it is pushed against the object to be caught, and then releases when the gripper it turned sideways. A pressure pad at the centre of the claw detects contact and, once the claw ...
Having spent a few days (now weeks) with DesignSpark Mechanical 6, mostly I can say that is it as good as version 5, and there are some enhancements that I still don’t understand – new lines are sometimes blue – must get to the bottom of that. Update 07sep23: Having spoken to some friendly folk as RS: Several of the ...
The Single Pair Ethernet Partner Network has put out an excellent backgrounder on its ‘M12 Hybrid System’, which is a ‘beyond-power-over-Ethernet idea that puts two, three or four power conductors alongside a single pair for Ethernet to transmit up to 9kW as well as data inside one cable with standardised connectors – compared to a few tens of Watts with ...
I had smart meters installed – for two reasons: to automate meter reading, and to get more accurate in-house power readings than the clip-on ‘Owl’ system already installed. Annoyance one, was that I would have been fined £30 if I had not been in when the installer arrived (24 hours notice is required to cancel, so you get fined, for ...
Gloriously, ADI has a section in its LTspice help pages called ‘Undocumented shortcuts‘. But surely… As it happens, there are some good ones there, so take a look if you are an LTspice user. Hats of to whoever had the sense of humour. That reminded me of Innominate Tarn on Haystacks in the English Lake District – named the tarn-with-no-name. ...
I have been a long-term user of DesignSpark Mechanical from RS (a re-badged and simplified version of SpaceClaim). In January, RS re-jigged its DesignSpark offerings, and now anything before DSM version 6 will not work – but you do not get a message why. Later: some annoying issues with DSM6 have appeared You did indeed get a ‘May 31 2023 ...
