Archive for the 'Hacking' Category

AT90USB162 Mini Development Board

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admin
on September 6, 2009
in Circuit, Electronics, Embedded Linux, GNU/Linux, Hacking and open hardware
. 1 Comment

This time I am with an AVR USB board. It is an tiny development board for the AT90USB162 chips.  I have actually made this board design for my friend’s main project. The design has been made using gEDA. It’s an complete open hardware project. But still the schematics are missing.

Actually I have started drawing the board layout using pcb directly instead of using gsch2pcb. I will try to upload the schematic of the board soon as possible.

Special thanks to Sreeraj and Pramode Sir. This project was completed 3 months before. But I didn’t have much time for blogging. Sorry for the late post.

Here are some of the reference links
ATMEL AVR USB AT90USB162 MICROCONTROLLER PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT BOARD
AVRopendousDIP - avropendous - Open Hardware Development Board for the AT90USB162

Here is the board layout file.
sree-usb-noicsp.pcb

Here are some snapshots.

My New CPLD

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on July 17, 2009
in Electronics, Hacking and open hardware
. 0 Comments

Two days before I got my CPLD (complex programmable logic device). Here are some snap shots of my CPLD XC9536.

The main problem is that there is not much support for programming these CPLD xc9536 using free software. There are tools available for programming this cpld. But all of them are for Windows platform.

But there is a small hope. The xilinx website is giving a software named ISE WebPACK Design Software. It’s linux version us available for download.

I have to start hacking the CPLD soon. I have designed the PCB for the JTAG Parallel Cable programmer using PCB.

I would like to say special thanks to Omkar Kulkarni for helping me a lot. He has written a very good tutorial for programming this xc9536 CPlD. check this link   http://elecrom.wordpress.com/2008/03/02/getting-started-with-xilinx-xc9536/

Here are some links that might be useful.

Program an AVR microcontroller in GNU/Linux

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on March 26, 2009
in Electronics, Embedded Linux, FOSS, GNU/Linux, Hacking and open hardware
. 0 Comments

Program an AVR microcontroller in GNU/Linux is a tutorial for programing the AVR ATMega microcontroller.

The tutorial here is written for ATMega8 microcontroller. But still you can program an ATMega series microcontroller using this method.

READ THE TUTORIAL
http://jeffrey.co.in/wiki/doku.php/program_atmega_micro_controllers_in_gnu_linux

This page is a wiki. If you find any missing portions, please edit the wiki if you can… Every content, even the circuit diagram is drawn using FREE SOFTWARE

After a single day work of writing this tutorial, I just googled about my tutorial. The funniest thing I found was that a tutorial similar to mine is in The Linux Documentation Project. One day work full of waste ! I could have just googled it before writting this tutorial… Also he is a student of Pramode Sir.

See this TLDP link..
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/Avr-Microcontrollers-in-Linux-Howto/

GNUdino Revised Version-0.2

Published
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on March 20, 2009
in Arduino, Electronics, Hacking and open hardware
. 0 Comments

I am back with the revised version of GNUdino-AVR.  This is actually one of the projects in FOSSTRONICS .  Also you can understand more about GNUdino-AVR from my previous blog post.
http://jeffrey.co.in/blog/2009/03/gnudino-arduino-design-using-geda/

The last version that I had designed contains several errors.  But first I didn’t realize those mistakes.  But after posting to gEDA-User mailing list I got some suggestions.  These were some of the reply for the mail that I had received from gEDA-User mailing list when I had asked for error check.

My mail
http://archives.seul.org/geda/user/Mar-2009/msg00307.html

Reply mails
http://archives.seul.org/geda/user/Mar-2009/msg00311.html
http://archives.seul.org/geda/user/Mar-2009/msg00312.html

Special thanks to gEDA-User mailing list members for pointing out the errors.

This version has a few of improvements.

1)  Components are on Component side (Last time by mistake I had placed them on the solder side).

2)  Polygons (There was no polygons in the last version).

3)  Numbering of components were removed  (Last time all resistors were ‘R1′ )

This is the source file GNUdino-AVR-0.2.pcb
This time also I have posted for a error check to the gEDA-User mailing list.

If you can please check the file GNUdino-AVR-0.2.pcb for errors. Also comment out those errors. It would be a great thanks if you can do that… :)

These are the files that I have used for tracing from the Eagle layout. The tracing process had been explained in the previous blog post. You don’t have to check these files for errors. These files have been placed for educational purpose i.e those who want to learn PCB track tracing in PCB.

ard-0.2.pcb
120_90-0.2.ppm

For latest versions of GNUdino which are designed from me can be found from  http://jeffrey.co.in/gnudino/

Learn to solder

Published
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on March 5, 2009
in Electronics, Hacking and open hardware
. 0 Comments

Soldering  is one of the essential skill required for an electronics hobbyist. These days I was searching for some cool soldering tutorials. And the result was my favourite site  INSTRUCTABLES .

You can check this link http://www.instructables.com/id/Soldering/ for a whole lot of soldering tutorials with some of them having videos.

The other web page I found was http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutorials.php?tc=2 . Spark Fun is an amazing website. This website has all its circuit open. You can find a whole lot of tutorials and other thing about electronics from its page.

These kind of soldering skills are essential for hacking devices.

From my experience in soldering 50% of soldering skill is obtained by practice. But the remaining 50% skills can be improved only if you have good tools for soldering. At least have an micro soldering iron with you for doing SMD soldering.

HAPPY SOLDERING….