Chumby One was just announced on bunnie’s blog. You can get it now for 99$ pre-order price but once they start shipping the price will go up to 119$. You can read here about the story behing Chumby One and how bunnie tried to keep the price low by using every feature of this new processor from Freescale the i.MX233.  It turns out the i.MX233 has 3 internal switching regulators and it uses only one inductor to do the job. Next to the switching regulators the i.MX233 has even more analog features integrated like : audio codec,  speaker amplifier, USB PHY, video DAC, battery charger and more. This played out an important role in the final price of the Chumby One. You can read more about it on bunnie’s blog.

I was really interested about it when Seeed Studio first announced the DSO nano on their blog, unfortunately I was not able to get one of the beta’s which they offered in a limited number at a lower price. The specs they released don’t advertise for too much power from this portable but it’s style and the fact that is portable together with the low price tag should compensate for the lack of power. And don’t get me wrong on the power issue, the 1 MHz bandwidth is still enough to cover your hobby needs. For me the only big disadvantage is the fact that it has only one channel, but it compensates with the ability of recording readings that you can later compare with the actual reading.

I would love to give you more details about this portable oscilloscope, but I have to wait until I can get my hands on the DSO nano. I’m currently waiting for Seeed to list it on their product page so i can place an order.

Remember those discussions about transmitting electricity wireless, they all concluded that it was just not efficient enough to be worth building such a system. Well it appears things have changed because in this video Eric Giler the CEO of MIT-inspired WiTricity, presents us with a new concept for transmitting electricity wireless.

It’s really interesting because they’ve manage to make the system small enough to fit on a mobile phone. He also states that WiTricity could be powering all of our devices into the future, like tv sets, home appliances and even electric cars. He didn’t touched the price subject though so I wonder how much would such a system cost.

Self Edge NYC, a New York supplier of denim clothing and other accessories, has launched a new payment system based on Apple’s iPhone. The system is named ‘Square’ and it requires no ink or paper to complete a credit card transaction between a store employee and a customer.

This new payment processing method basically consists of having a small card reader inserted in the headphones jack of your iPhone (or iPod Touch) that will transfer the card data to a specific application on the iPhone. The store employee is supposed to enter the total cost of the merchandise purchased, while the customer adds his/her signature using the touchscreen and an email address as a destination for the receipt (the receipt also includes a map with the location of the transaction).

The transaction is processed by Square which currently has a percentage fee (2.5%) and also a fixed fee of 50 cents per transaction. The money is transferred directly to the store’s bank account. The system is supposedly in its alpha-testing phase, but it seems the majority of people that have used it are satisfied so, should it prove successful once released on a large scale, it might be the start for a whole new experience with credit card transactions.

New iPhone Payment System (card reader): [Link]

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you wanted to talk about something important or just simply wanted some peace and quiet while enjoying your drink and a damn TV wouldn’t shut up? Chances are you have. But from now on, you can use this little gadget to silence those TV sets that bother you with loud, uninteresting stuff. You can carry it in your pocket and you can surely have a laugh using it.

Humorously named TV-B-Gone, this TV Disabler can make some annoying situations quite entertaining. The TV-B-Gone can turn off most of the TV sets available, while having about the same size as a universal remote control. It is a nifty little kit made by Adafruit and it is available for purchase for $19.50. It possesses an Atmel ATTINY85V-10-PU programmed microcontroller, 4 IR LEDs used as emitters and a double AAA battery holder (you can find a complete parts list in the link).

The TV Disabler must be pointed at the TV you wish to quiet down. It has a single button that must be pressed and then it starts to transmit its signal using codes that are stored in its memory for all major TV brands. It takes about 2 minutes to send all the codes, but most TV sets will turn off. The TV Disabler also has a green LED that starts glowing once the device is transmitting.

Since the original kit from Adafruit doesn’t have a case, you can make one like the one in the picture above. This project uses a modified Miniature General Purpose ABS Box 1551 Series from Maplin Electronics Ltd. You will have to make 2 holes, one for the button, and the other for the LED. Putting it all inside the box may be tricky, but once you get it right you will have the TV-B-Gone ready and waiting. And you can say goodbye to those noisy TVs disturbing you.

don’t forget to check youritronics custom version of tv-b-gone.

New TV-B-Gone Case Style: [Link]

June 19th marked the launch of Apple’s “fastest, most powerful iPhone yet”, the iPhone 3G S. Not sure what the S stands for (I’ve came across some guesses while surfing the web, speed, sex, sucks just to name a few), but according to Apple’s official website it should be “up to 2x faster” than the old iPhone 3G and should have a digital compass that reorients the map as you change the direction you’re facing, a 3.0 megapixel camera that can also record VGA video in 30 frames per second and voice control for calling and playing music.

On the outside, the new iPhone remains true to the traditional design of Apple – minimalistic, elegant and slim. As we unfold its shell, the new smartphone from Apple reveals a few interesting improvements. First, the PCB is more compact than before, with nearly every component on the top side of the board. Second, the CPU has changed – iPhone 3G S features the ARM A8 Samsung S5PC100 processor, which runs at 600Mhz with 32KB L1 cache memory instead of 412Mhz with 16KB cache like the ARM 11 Samsung S3C6400 used in the previous model. The new iPhone 3G S also features the PowerVR SGX graphics accelerator that runs at 200Mhz.

The smartphone has a Toshiba NAND flash memory and a new combo in the wireless department: the BCM4325 from Broadcom. It also received an important upgrade to the battery, from 1150mAH to 1219mAH, and it is rumored that the iPhone 3GS’ battery life will be 15-20 percent longer than the iPhone 3G’s. A great and necessary improvement for all iPhone 3G S users.

The most important upgrade of the new Apple device is clearly its Applications Processor Core. With a clock speed of 600Mhz, 256MB DDR SDRAM and the PowerVR SGX graphics processor, the new smartphone has the muscle to manage all kinds of demanding applications and, with the help of the SGX, that includes some serious gaming. The longer battery life also supports this idea and the iPhone 3G S might turn out to be quite a powerful mobile device.

Inside the iPhone 3G S: [Link]

The idea behind this project was born when a friend asked me too take a look at he’s broken GPS unit (MyGuide 3000) to see if I can fix anything. I started checking various parts like voltage regulators, but found nothing wrong. The gps unit was still not powering up so I checked the cpu, an ARM9 from Samsung and found it broken. Of course I couldn’t do anything about that, because of the BGA package and the bootloader needed after replacing it so the gps unit became a source for parts. The most useful and interesting parts from the GPS were the LCD display and the GPS module.

The GPS module is a RoyalTek RGM-3550LP which has an integrated antenna and is powered by SiRF Star III technology. I immediately connected the gps module to my computer’s serial port(using a max232) to test if it was still working. To my surprise the gps module was working and sending NMEA compliant sentences. Then I had this idea of using the gps module as a navigation system together with a notebook computer, but notebooks don’t have a serial port so I had to use a UART to USB bridge.

The most common used UART-USB bridge is the FT232 manufactured by FTDI which is about $4 which is a fair price because you don’t need any external parts for this chip except some bypass capacitors and that saves you time and money. I never used the chip before but it was really easy to get it working. It even has this custom utility that let’s you program some features saved in the internal EEPROM like the maximum bus power and the product and manufacturer descriptor strings. Anyway these are the only two settings that I tinkered with, but the utility let’s you change some more stuff.

The next thing I had to worry was where to get the power for the GPS unit, because it needs 3.3V and the acquisition current is 50 mA. The FT232 has an internal voltage regulator which provides 3.3 V and 50 mA but I decided not to use that in order to extend it’s life so I ended up using the TPS2148 which is a 3.3V LDO from Texas Instruments. It’s specifically designed for USB peripheral power management, and it’s tiny package(MSOP-8) made it ideally for my application. The TPS2148 handles the current limitation so I didn’t had to worry about that either.

After figuring out the parts I was going to use and the schematic, I had to chose an enclosure for this project. The main target was to get it as small as possible but the limit was the gps module size, I couldn’t of got it smaller then the module . So I went and searched for a plastic enclosure, and I found one just perfect for what I needed, the PP85D from Supertronic. The gps module fits just nicely between the screw channels.

Then after I got the enclosure, I made the pcb using the photo etching technique.. I assembled and tested it, and to my surprise everything worked just fine from the first try. I’m usually not that lucky when I make stuff using new IC’s that I haven’t used before. Sometimes I don’t pay enough attention to the datasheet and I get some small stuff left behind and that messes my entire circuit. Anyway, happy as I was that everything worked from the first try, I put everything inside the enclosure and snapped some pictures of it. As a final note, this was a great project which I enjoyed making, and I really recommend you do something like this if you have a gps unit laying around.

more pictures:

parts list:

• RGM-3550LP gps module x1
• FT232RL x1
• TPS2148 x1
• capacitor 10uF x3
• capacitor 100nF x3
• led x1

schematics and board files were designed in Eagle and can be downloaded here.

Nowadays the LCD and plasma technologies have become pretty cheap and big screen TV’s are more affordable. But your movie experience isn’t complete without good sound. DIY is a very good solution for a home theater speaker setup and subwoofers are the easiest component to build. Once you found a good speaker driver and made a cabinet according to it’s parameters all you need to do is give it a place in the whole system.

Active filters are the best solution to integrate the subwoofer in the HT. This way you add more control, flexibility and you eliminate negative influences of passive filters. The above circuit offers a very simple but effective solution. Using only a handful of electronic components cost is very low. The filter, as it is presented, has two main stages. The first stage, using half of the TL072 IC, sums the “left” and “right” channel into a single channel. By varying R3 you can adjust the gain.

The next stage forms the filter itself. It is a second order filter with 12db/octave slope. The corner frequency is set by the values of R5&7 between approximately 20Hz and 100Hz. You will need to set this frequency to match the other speakers, room and placement. If you don’t have any measuring equipment than trial and error is the way to go. Now there is one more thing you can do to make it really good. If you look at the first stage you will see that the signal will be 180 degrees shifted in phase. This may or may not affect your sound, it really depends on your room and speaker placement. However it would be good to add one simple inverter stage before the filter with gain set to 1 and with a bypass switch. This way you can select 0 or 180 degrees phase shift.

Subwoofer Active Filter: [Link]

This project was probably inspired from the commercially available gadgets, I think there are great but don’t think they worth 100-200$. Now their are many alternatives, from old laptop displays to OLED screens, the presented project uses a small display similar to the Nokia display and a PIC micro controller, the authors made the entire project public including the schematic and pcb files in Eagle format.

The screen used is cheap since it is a copy of the Nokia display, they aquired it from Sparkfun, where you can find source code for different types of micro controllers, the pictures are stored in a microSD card, in the current firmware version are some limitations to the bitmap format and no subfolders are supported. The PIC device used has free C compiler support from Microchip, which is also a great thing if you want to improve the firmware.

The pcb is really compact but not overcrowded, it is possible to replicate with hobbyst equipment, it is a great middle-level project for you to thinker.

Digital picture frame: [Link]

You’ve probably noticed the pictures from my last projects… they look pretty cool. That’s because i got a new camera, a Sony DSC H9. The macros are great, i can see the particles of dust on my circuit boards, the landscapes are great, i took some stuning pictures in my vacation in the mountains.

I’m not gonna go trough all of the aspects in this review, I’m just gonna tell you what impresses me about this camera. I payed for it at a local retail store about $520 complete with a 2 GB memory stick pro duo. The camera was nicely packed and accesorized. For example i got a cool remote control, that i can use to take pictures remotely. I also got a shoulder strap which you don’t get on most cameras.

The battery, is sony, as expected and it last actually more than they say it will. They guarantee that it will last you 300 photos, but i take aprox 600 photos with one charge.

If you plan on getting one, i suggest you take no less than 2 GB memory card. Because on 2 Gb it rarely gets full, and you’ll alaways have room for more pictures when you’re away from your computer and you can’t download them.

Another good thing about the camera, it’s the 15x zoom complete with image stabilization, which helps you get more acurrate details into your pictures when shooting at a distance.

The camera also has other nice functions like many shooting resolutions, the i prefere beeing the widescreen mode. In my opinion this is the best choice in digital camera before moving into the SLR category.

I hear that digital photo frames are they way to show your pictures arround the house these days, maybe one from Sony will work ok together with my H9.